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Paper Abstract: Life and career of the Hungarian Communist Party boss. His early life, connections with Soviet Russia. Inception of the Hungarian Communist Party (HCP). Subversion of Hungarian democracy (1945-1948). Rakosi's strategies and brutal activities. Rakosi as a Stalinist dictator. His relations with the Soviets after Stalin's death. His fall from power. Paper Introduction: MATYAS RAKOSI This essay summarizes the life and career of Matyas Rakosi (1892-1971) (Rakosi). After experiencing the harsh privations of life as a professional revolutionary between 1917 and 1944, Rakosi served as Hungarian Communist Party (HCP) boss from 1945 to 1956. During the period 1948-1953 and again in 1955-1956, he ruled Hungary with an iron hand as a Stalinist type dictator. Rakosi was an adroit, shrewd, energetic and strong leader who utterly lacked scruples. Adept at political infighting within brutal internecine Communist party conflicts, Rakosi ultimately fell from power in July 1965 because he failed to adapt to new external and internal realities which followed upon the death of his patron, Josef Stalin, in March 1953. Rakosi's hardline stance and policies helped pave the way for the abortive Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. New York: Praeger, 1972.Kaufman, Jonathan. According to Vali, "the idea of sacrificing Rajk as a propagandascapegoat for the drive against Tito must have been hatched out betweenRakosi and Stalin" (61). He resumed work with Comintern which sent him onsecret missions to Belgium, France and Spain. Afterhis chief Soviet sponsors, Beria, was executed later in 1953 and GeorgiMalenkov fell from power in early 1955, the new Soviet leader, NikitaKhrushchev decided to remove Nagy as Prime Minister. Revolution in Hungary. These requests "fell on deaf ear"(Hoensch 23 ). Teresa Rakowski-Hartstine & Andrew Gyorgy. only by spreading fear and terrorand building up his own personality cult after the removal of all hisrivals" (2 3). The mantle of Hungarian Communist leadership fell onhim in part because Kun and most other senior Hungarian Communists in theSoviet Union had been liquidated during Stalin's purges (1936-1939) andothers in Hungary had met a similar fate at the hands of Horthy's secretpolice, the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross or the Gestapo. He immediately left for theSoviet Union where he ended up managing a paper mill in Kazakhstanprovince. They never in anyreasonably free election thereafter won more than 22 percent of the popularvote (Hoensch 181). Only one vote counted, Stalin's. One such factor was thelongstanding rivalry between 'nationalist' Communist such as Rajk and Kadarand the 'Muscovite' Communist leaders, prominent among whom were Rakosi,Ernst Gero (1898-198 ), Joseph Revai (1898-1959), Mihaly Farkas (19 4-1965)and Imre Nagy (1898-1959). Rakosi's reign of terror "turned outto be harsher and more extensive" than those conducted during the postwarperiod elsewhere in Eastern Europe or in the Soviet Union (374). According to Zimmer, Rakosi was often then andsubsequently "in Stalin's bad graces . His father wasprobably a Jewish small-town grocer, haberdasher or other type of pettybourgeois shopkeeper (Sisa 271; Ignotus 195; & Shawcross 38). Rakosi tossed her out of his office after she told himthat he should use his influence with the Russians because he was Jewish.Rakosi's only religion was orthodox communism. After the RedArmy brutally suppressed the Revolution, the Soviet-installed PrimeMinister, went out of his way to distance his regime from that of Rakosiand 'his clique.' Rakosi's Denouement Rakosi died in his sleep in Russia in 1971 at the age of 79(Kovrig 83). He ably but provocatively defendedhimself at his trial. he was the best public speaker . The Kremlin's disenchantment with Rakosi's dictatorship becameincreasingly evident during the summer of 1953. The Hungarian Central Committee turned against him after heproposed in June 1956 the elimination of 4 members of the Petofi Circle(whom he regarded as anti-Party intellectuals and bureaucrats). His tenure in office was fatallyundermined by Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin at the 1956 2 th PartyCongress. . He talked about a newcollective leadership but continued to conduct himself like a tyrant. Behind the Rape of Hungary. Zimmer added that Rakosi "was at a losswhen it came to substituting more complex but less dehumanizing socialcontrols in the place of the simple, efficient, and brutal methods of thesecret police" (178). In 1918 Rakosi returned to Hungary with Bela Kun, a Hungarian officer-POW in Russia. .. Rakosi and Nagy weresummoned to the Soviet Presidium where they were berated for HCP's failuresin managing the Hungarian economy. Sometime during that same winter, Stalin let Rakosi know that "the'era of parliamentary pirouetting' must come to an end" (Gati 372). MATYAS RAKOSI This essay summarizes the life and career of MatyasRakosi (1892-1971) (Rakosi). They wereprompted by the intensification of the Cold War and the split between theSoviet Union and Yugoslavia's renegade Communist leader Marshal Josef Titowhich became public during the first half of 1948. Communist aspirations to garner majorities at the polls werefrustrated. New York: E. A History of Modern Hungary. New York: David McKay, 1957.Gati, Charles. [but the oft-paranoid Sovietdictator] preferred to surround himself with subordinates who owed theirstatus entirely to him and were entirely dependent on him" (9 ). Subversion of Hungarian Democracy (1945-1948) In the immediate postwar period, HCP under Rakosi's leadershipcollaborated with non-communist parties in the reconstruction of war-tornHungary. Rakosidoublecrossed Rajk who was executed in October 1949. London: Methuen, 1964.Shawcross, William. The latter bore the brunt of the 1949-1951 purges. King Matyas Corvinus (r. were superior in tactical skill andpolitical ruthlessness" (173). There he served as aparty secretary in the executive committee of the Comintern which theBolsheviks formed to spread communism abroad. Hungary a Short History. Sugar, Peter Hanak, & Tibor Frank. Rakosi as Stalinist Dictator (1948-1953) During the popular front period Rakosi preferred to remain in thebackground as a Deputy Prime Minister under non-communist Prime Ministers.He did not become the official leader of the government until 1952, butlong before that he manipulated the levers of power. Hungary A Country Study. . New York:St. Vali said that Rakosi was "dwarfish and ugly" and had a bullneck (45). Kadar resisted all pressures, some emanating from Rakosi himself,to allow him to return to Hungary. In 1924 Rakosi was ordered back to Hungary which he entered illegallyand with false identity papers with instructions to reconstitute HCP whichhad been decimated during the White Terror of Regent Admiral Miklos Horthy.Rakosi was arrested in 1925 along with 53 other Communists and sentenced toeight and a half years in prison. His family was sufficiently well-off to send him to Englandbefore the outbreak of the First World War where he was a junior banker anddabbled in left-wing causes. New York: Viking P, 1997.Kovrig, Bennet. 374). Kadar did permit Rakosi's remains to be returned to Hungaryin 1971. Behindthe scene Rakosi hindered and ultimately sabotaged Nagy's efforts. During his secondexile in Moscow (194 -1944), Rakosi became fluent in Russian and a Russiancitizen, married a woman of Russian-Mongolian origins, and cultivatedcontacts with senior Soviet officials, including Stalin himself(Sisa 275; and Vali 33). Rakosi witnessedfirst hand what happened to anyone who incurred Stalin's suspicion orwrath. Dutton, 1976.Sisa, Stephen. "From Liberation to Revolution, 1945-1956." A History of Hungary, Eds. He decided for foreignpolicy reasons to play along with the establishment of temporary popularfront governments in some East European nations, including Hungary.However, he instructed Rakosi who arrived back in Hungary in February 1945to prepare the way for a communist takeover within three years. The record reveals only oneinstance in which he let personal considerations interfere with Party orofficial business. Berkeley: U of California P, 1974.Macartney, C. TheRussians allowed Rakosi to replace Nagy with a Rakosi stooge, AndrasKegedus. Aninteresting insight into Rakosi's own Jewishness was provided by Holocaustsurvivor Magit Rah who sought Rakosi's aid in 1945 in her effort to locateher missing husband. AVO terrorized the opposition while Rakosiapplied pressure on democratic leaders to emigrate, a course of actionwhich struck most of them as prudent. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 199 .Fejto, Francois. Under various pseudonymsRakosi was dispatched as a secret agent to various Western Europeancountries in 192 -1921. Forty six of 92 Central Committee members who had beenelected to it in 1948 and 1951 were purged (Seton-Watson 154). Conclusion Rakosi was an unprincipled intriguer who possessed and demonstratedabove average survival skills amidst the Byzantine world of postwar Sovietand Hungarian communism. According toHoensch, "the Communists . with his typically Stalinist joviality, hiscaustic and cultivated mind, he impressed all his listeners, Hungarian andforeign" (24-25). Some of the same qualities that had facilitatedhis rise to power, including his ideological obduracy and his serpentineruthlessness, helped grease the skids for his ignominious exit after early1953. Lindemann said he was known for his hardlineopposition to including socialist 'deviationists' in Western communistparties (125 & 27 ). In the end he left a record of slavish adherence to the wishes of hisSoviet masters and presided over a degrading chapter in the history of hishomeland. Rakosi's sadistic and brutal methods of governance were very muchmanifest during the savage Hungarian version of the purge trials which tookplace throughout Eastern Europe between roughly 1949 and 1951. 71-99.Lindemann, Albert S. Hungary. After experiencing the harsh privations oflife as a professional revolutionary between 1917 and 1944, Rakosi servedas Hungarian Communist Party (HCP) boss from 1945 to 1956. Cambridge: Harvard U P,1961.Zimmer, Paul. After the Soviet Red Army entered eastern Hungary in September 1944,a coalition of various reconstituted prewar political parties and HCP setup a provisional government at Debrecen on December 23, 1944. Rakosi, after publicly confessing his errorswas allowed to resign for reasons of health. On his 5 th birthday, Rakosi was hailed by official Party organs asthe 'Beloved Leader of the People.' Hoensch said Rakosi was "able toestablish his personal dictatorship . At first Rajk withstood torture and refused toconfess. He and theRussians made a serious error in replacing Rakosi with the latter'spreferred successor, the colorless and rigid hardliner, Gero. Most (at the senior level all but Nagy) of the Muscovites were Jews.This was a carryover from the Bela Kun regime in which, according toKovrig, 161 of 2 3 senior commissars were Jewish (162). New York: Books for Libraries P,1962.----------------------- 15 He assumed that the trend toward liberalization with theSoviet Union was "a temporary expedient that would give way to Stalinistorthodoxy once the Soviet leaders settled questions of personal rivalryamong themselves" (Zimmer 171). Rakosi was coarsely criticized by KGBboss Lavrenti Beria for attempting to become the first Jewish HungarianKing. Martin's P, 1993.Vali, Ferenc A. Prelude to Power Rakosi was born in rural Hungary on March 9, 1892. Morristown, NJ: Vista Books, 2d ed., 1983.Sugar, Stephen F., Peter Hadak, & Tibor Frank (Eds.). According to Shawcross, "he was an excellentscholar" (38). The most prominent domestic Communist,Laszlo Rajk (19 8-1949), favored an immediate Communist seizure of power.The 5 or so 'Muscovite' Hungarian Communists who were during Septemberand October 1944 holding meetings at the Hotel Lux in Moscow held the sameview as Rajk. Rajk was not a particularly sympathetic figure. pro-Russian)inclinations and often crude manners than to their Jewishness. Eastern European Communist leaderslearned at the November 1947 founding meeting of Comintern's successororganization, Cominform, that "Stalin had abandoned gradualism and reversedhis earlier advocacy of independent 'national roads to socialism'" (Burant5 ). Chicago: Aldine, 1962.Rawkowski-Hartstine, Teresa & Andrew Gyorgy (Eds.). According to Hoensch, most domestic or 'national'Communists favored collaboration with other non-communist parties inpopular front governments (163-164). Rift and Revolt in Hungary. In 194 during a breathing spell in the hostile relations betweenSoviet Russia and Horthy's Hungary produced by the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact,Rakosi and another Hungarian Communist prisoner, Zoltan Vas, were exchangedfor Hungarian flags captured by the Russians in 1849. According to Ignotus, Rakosi in 1945-1946 "posed as abenign father-figure and traditional patriot" (196). That was his appointment of his incompetent brother,Ferenc Biro, as general manager of the nationalized Rakosi Steel Works(Ignotus 2 3). According to Shawcross, "Rakosi and his Moscowfriends had decided well before their return to Budapest that they wouldnot share any of the real powers in the Party with 'those ignorant home-based resistance fighters'" (52). During the latter phase of his imprisonment, Rakosi became a'trusty,' with access to the prison library where Shawcross said he engagedin "a prodigious exercise in self-improvement" (39-4 ). . The 'Red Years' European Socialism Versus Bolshevism, 1919-1921. Stalin handpicked Rakosi tolead the postwar HCP. Relations between the Soviet Unionand the Western powers deteriorated. Inhis dealings with an increasingly more vociferous intelligentsia, Zimmersaid that Rakosi used "the bludgeon rather than the sword" (178). He was arrested in May 1949 andconvicted after a show trial that September of espionage, treason and othercrimes against the State. Afanatic communist,Ignotus said that he resembled "a cross between aninquisitor and a cash register" (2 ). . Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1979.Seton-Watson, Hugh. A History of Hungary. 1458-149 ), the lastHungarian-born King (before Hungary was conquered by the Ottoman Turksafter 1526 and nearly three centuries of Habsburg rule; and Ferenc Rakoczi,who led an unsuccessful popular rebellion against Austrian rule in the late17th and early 18th centuries. Eastern Europe Since 1945. Peter F. . Rakosi took the leadamong Eastern European Communist leaders in villifying Tito and theYugoslav Communists for their heresy from the bloc's party line. Rakosi then threw himself into the task of rebuilding HCP andimproving the public image of the Communists by backing populist measuressuch as land reform and the prosecution of Hungarian fascists and wartimecollaborators. In December 1948 its chief Hungarian prelate, Cardinal JosephMindszenty, was arrested, tortured, tried and sentenced to lifeimprisonment. Crime and Compromise Janos Kadar and the Politics of Hungary Since the Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 199 .Swaim, Geoffrey & Nigel Swaim. Kadar never forgaveRakosi for using him in such a despicable manner to say nothing of hismistreatment at the hands of AVO after Kadar himself was arrested andsentenced to four years' imprisonment in 1951 for crimes he nevercommitted. he seduced, overpowered . Rakosi was ordered to relinquish the Prime Ministership in favor ofNagy. In June 1956 Tito toldKhrushchev that "these men have their hands soaked in blood; they havestaged trials, given false information, sentenced innocent men to death"(Ignotus 84). Rakosi served invarious capacities in Kun's short-lived (133 day) Soviet Republic --asDeputy Commissar for Commerce and as Commander of the Red Guards (Vail 33;& Hoensch 165). Although Jewscomprised less than 1 percent of the Hungarian population during theinterwar period, they exercised much more influence in certain sectors suchas finance than their numbers would warrant. After he returned to full power, Rakosi made several fundamentalmiscalculations. HungarianCommunists were then divided over whether an immediate communist takeoverin Hungary was desirable. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1979. Later that year, Nagy was expelled from HCP. . Bloomington: Indiana U P, 199 . . At the Szeged penitentiary he fomented prisonerprotests while maintaining clandestine contact with outsiderevolutionaries. Rakosi,who needed little prompting to obey Stalin's every wish, arranged mattersso that HCP had by no later than the time of the rigged March 15, 1949general elections a monopoly on political power. Zimmer characterized the Nagy-Rakosi rivalry during 1953-1955 as"a seesaw battle in which Nagy fought Rakosi on unequal terms" (167). Works CitedBurant, Stephen K. . He was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarianarmy and was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1915. . Cutting them up as Rakosi said "like a salami --slice byslice," "the democratic opposition was systematically whittled downpiecemeal until it crumbled entirely" (Sisa 272; & Zimmer 36). He fled to Vienna in August 1919 together with the rest ofKun's entourage and then went onto the Soviet Union. TheCatholic Church, the last remaining recalcitrant social group, waspersecuted. In 1934 or 1935 he was re-tried and sentenced to a lifeterm. (Ed.). Anastas Mikoyan and MikhailSuslov were sent to Hungary to give Rakosi his walking papers. . According to Sugar et al. Zimmer said that "Rakosi's behavior and his policies contributedenormously to the proliferation of hostility throughout the Party and thenation" (1986). He undermined his own credibilitywithin Party and governmental circles as well as with the public byadmitting that the Rajk trial had been "based on a provocation and was amiscarriage of justice" (Swain & Swain 86). It followedKhrushchev's apology to and rapprochement with Tito. He was allowed to remain as First (instead of General) Secretary ofHCP. In the post-November government they were limited toonly two fairly insignificant ministries; however, Soviet Marshall KlementiVoroshilov intervened to ensure that they retained control over theinterior ministry and the secret police, the dreaded AVO (Allam vedelmiOstztaly). Kun founded the HCP in November 1918. During theperiod 1948-1953 and again in 1955-1956, he ruled Hungary with an iron handas a Stalinist type dictator. and what he represented" (233). A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe. Hespent the rest of his life in obscurity. Ignotus said that Rakosi "compensated with energy for the giftsthat nature denied him" (196). Most of this was a false facade designed to cause his enemies tolower their guard. As members of "the creditorclass" and because they had played "a disproportionately large part" inboth the Bolshevik and Kun revolutions, "feeling ran particularly highagainst the Jews" (Macartney 211). Vali saidthat Rakosi "miscalculated the strength of animosity and hatred against him. A one party State calledthe Hungarian People's Republic with a Soviet style Constitution wasannounced in August 1949. Rakosi told gross lies such as that the landredistributed by land reform would never --so long as the Communists sharedpower-- be taken from the peasants, a promise which Rakosi broke shortlythereafter. Rakosi played no role in suppressing the October/November 1956Hungarian Revolution, but revulsion against his rule helpedfoment it. As was commonin fin de siecle Hungary, Rakosi was named after illustrious figures inHungarian history --i.e. . 368-383.Hoensch, Jorg K. Adept at political infightingwithin brutal internecine Communist party conflicts, Rakosi ultimately fellfrom power in July 1965 because he failed to adapt to new external andinternal realities which followed upon the death of his patron, JosefStalin, in March 1953. London: Longman, 1988.Ignotus, Paul. He survived so long largely because theSoviet leaders for their own survival emphasized after Stalin's deathpeaceful transitions of power. They won only 17 percent of seats in the National Assembly as aresult of the November 1945 national elections. Rakosi was an adroit, shrewd, energetic andstrong leader who utterly lacked scruples. However, anti-Semitism was out of favorin postwar Hungary because the Nazi's had transported to Auschwitz andmurdered 33 , of Hungary's 45 , Jews in 1944-1945 (Macartney 232).The evidence suggests that the tensions between home-grown and foreignCommunist leaders had more to do with the latter's alien (e.g. Rakosi's supporters within the Soviet Politburo temporarilystayed Khrushchev's hand; however, he finally dismissed Rakosi after YuriAndropov, Soviet Ambassador to Hungary, advised him that outright rebellionwould be a probable consequence of leaving Rakosi in power. Perhapstwo thousand party leaders/functionaries/ government officials were killed,tens of thousands were consigned to slave labor camps and about 2 , more were imprisoned, stripped of Party membership or deported (Vail 64; &Sugar et al. A. The Spirit of Hungary. He clumsily attempted to shift the blame for theparty purges to his secret police chief, Gabor Peter, whom he had hadarrested in 1952 and later executed. Fejto said he learned from Stalin the importance of iron Partydiscipline (23). . He fared better than most of his victims and Nagy whom theRussians had executed in 1959. Rakosi's downfall came in July 1956. Then Rakosi induced him to admit his crimes by having his aide,Janos Kadar, promise him he could go unharmed into exile. This was accomplishedon April 18, 1955. Nationalism and Communism Essays, 1946-1963. Due to his personal sadism and diabolic duplicity, Rakosicame in fact to be genuinely detested by most of his fellow countrymen.Only much later in May 1956 a simple school teacher, one Gyorgy Litwan,told Rakosi to his face at an HCP meeting: "Comrade Rakosi, the Hungarianpeople no longer trust you" (Ignotus 233). Shawcross said thatafter the October 1917 Russian Revolution, "the Bolsheviks took thisclever, ambitious young capitalist to Moscow to make a clever, ambitiousyoung Communist out of him" (38). Sisa described theRakosi dictatorship as follows: it "was characterized by police terror; thedreaded 'midnight knock' on the doors of terrified victims' the forcedcollectivization of agriculture; and the nationalization [along Sovietlines and in subordination to Soviet interest] of practically the entireeconomy" (275). Rakosi during the Thaw (1953-1956) After Stalin died in March 1953, Rakosi's position was graduallyundermined by the interaction between popular disenchant with Communistrule in Hungary, factional strife within HCP and disenchantment by Rakosi'smasters in the Kremlin over his fitness to rule. Communism in EasternEurope. Fejto described him in the early postwarperiod as "a tribune of the people . P. Hungary's primarily agriculture economy was neglected andreplaced by a centrally planned command economy in which investments inheavy industry were emphasized to the detriment of consumer production.Massively inefficient state-owned and subsidized enterprises proliferated.Hungary within a few years was no longer self-sufficient in food. For the next twenty months, Nagy attempted to implement variousreforms known as his New Course: the release of political prisoners, de-emphasis on heavy industry and the production of more consumer goods andsome liberalization of controls on cultural and intellectual life. "Hungary." Communism in Eastern Europe, Eds. Rakosi's hardline stance and policies helped pavethe way for the abortive Hungarian Revolution of October-November 1956, buthe himself faded into the background a few months before it erupted. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.