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The Development of Imre Nagy as a Politician and a Thinker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

János M. Rainer
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Imre Nagy, Prime Minister during the Hungarian revolution of 1956, was above all a politician. In his frame of mind, his mentality and his actions, he largely conformed to the archetype of a ‘functionary’ that typified leading figures in the Communist movement at the time. The two main features of this mentality were belief in the infallibility of the Communist Party, and belief in the role, mission and vocation of the Party and its functionaries to redeem the world, according to András Hegedüs (member of the Hungarian Politburo 1951–6, and Prime Minister 1955–6 and a dissident sociologist in the 1960s). Another important trait of functionaries in East-central Europe was to see themselves as local representatives of a worldwide Soviet empire, not just of the Party. Although the life and personality of Nagy resembled this pattern, it departed from it in a number of ways that became dramatically manifest, most of all in his final years. One explanation for this departure lies in the ‘intellectual attributes’ or leanings of Nagy as a leading Party functionary. This side of his character prompted him to undertake an intellectual appraisal of political problems on several occasions in his life. In the period leading up to the Hungarian revolution, it made him the leading figure in an expressly intellectual movement: the opposition among the Party intelligentsia. This study is an attempt to trace the specific intellectual path taken by Nagy as a politician.

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Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , November 1997 , pp. 263 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1 Hegedüs, András, ‘A functionárius’ [The Functionary], Századvég [End of the Century], No. 6–7 (1988), 123–32.Google Scholar There is, of course, a large body of writing on the functionary's frame of mind, including for example Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon and Milovan Djilas's The New Class. The problem is summarised in Kornai, János, The Socialist System. The Political Economy of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholarκ

2 On Nagy, see Unwin, Peter, The Voice in the Wilderness. Imre Nagy and the Hungarian Revolution (London/Sydney: MacDonald, 1991)Google Scholar; Méray, Tibor, Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin (New York: Praeger, 1959)Google Scholar; Rainer, János M., Nagy Imre. Politikai életrajz, I. 1896–1953 [Imre Nagy. Political Biography, I: 1896–1953] (Budapest, 1956-os Intézet, 1996).Google Scholar

3 See McCagg, William O. Jr, Stalin Embattled, 1943–1948 (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1978), and Rainer, Nagy Imre, 377–439.Google Scholar

4 Nagy, Imre, On Communism: In Defense of the New Course (New York: Praeger, 1957).Google Scholar

5 Magyar Országos Levéltár [Hungarian National Archives], XX-5-h. Legfelsöbb Bíróság Népbírósági Tanács [Supreme Court People's Judicial Council]. No. V-150.000, Nagy Imre és társai pere [Trial of Imre and Associates]. Vizsgálati iratok 1. köt [Investigation Documents, Vol. 1]. Nagy Imre 1957 ápr. 22-ki kihallgatása [Interrogation of Imre Nagy on 22 April 1957].

6 Nagy, ‘The Five Principles of International Relations and the Question of Our Foreign Policy’, in On Communism, 225–43.

7 Litván, György, ‘A Nagy Imre-csoport politikája’ [The Politics of the Imre Nagy Group], in Baló, Péter and Hegedüs, András B., (eds.), 1956-ról a rendszerváltás küszöbén [On 1956, on the Eve of the Change of System] (Budapest: Széchenyi Szakkollégium/1956-os Intézet)Google Scholar; Péteri, György, ‘New Course Economics: The Field of Economic Research in Hungary after Stalin’, Contemporary European History, Vol. 6, no. 3 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, xxx.

8 Imre Nagy's daughter and heir has refused to allow publication.

9 Magyar Köztársaság Legfelsöbb Bíróság Irattára [Archive of the Supreme Court of the Hungarian Republic], Imre Nagy, Gondolatok, emlékezések [Ideas, Recollections], ms, Snagov, 1957 (hereafter Gondolatok), 1.

10 ibid., 2.

11 ibid., 14.

12 ibid., 50–1.

13 ibid., 57.

14 ibid.

15 ibid., 46.

16 To take a typical example, one of the speakers in the teachers’ debate held on 12 October 1956 by the Peto″fi Circle, the forum of the party opposition, was a representative of the March 15 Circle, formed in the Law Faculty of Budapest's Loránd Eötvös University a few days previously. He put forward the law students’ demands. These included making the Hungarian national day, 15 March (anniversary of the 1848 democratic revolution against the Habsburgs), a public holiday (this had been abolished by the Communists in 1950), abolishing compulsory Russian tuition in schools, public trial of Mihály Karkas, and so on. Gábor Tánczos, secretary of the Petöfi Circle, himself active in the party opposition, called the speaker to order on the grounds that the Petöfi Circle was not in the habit of making demands. See Hegedüs, András B. and Rainer, János M.(eds): A Peto″fi Kör vitái – hiteles jegyzo″könyvek alapjan, VI: Pedagógusvita [The Debates of the Peto″fi Circle – Based on Authentic Minutes, 6: Teachers’ Debate] (Budapest: Múzsák/1956-os Intézet, 1992), 126–7.Google Scholar No less typical was Nagy's opinion of the Technical University's 16 Points, on the eve of 23 October: ‘I was aware of the young people's demands. There were some, one or two demands with which I did not agree in that wording’, Gondolatok, 109.

17 ibid., 55–8.

18 ibid., 54.

19 ibid., 33.

20 ibid.

21 ibid., 53.

22 ibid., 62–6.

23 ibid., 63.

24 ibid., 76.

25 Nagy refers to the five principles adopted by the Bandung Conference of African and Asian countries. The purpose of the conference, hosted by President Sukarno of Indonesia, was to form a non-aligned bloc against the imperialism of the superpowers. The five principles adopted were: non-aggression, respect for sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and peaceful coexistence.

26 Gondolatok, 17.

27 ibid., 19.