Matyas Rakosi was born
in Hungary
in 1892. He served in the
Austro-Hungarian
Army during the
First World War. He was captured by the Russian
Army and spent
most of the war in a prison camp in Russia.
Radicalized by his experiences
in the war, Rajkosi joined the Hungarian Communist Party when he returned
to Hungary in 1918. He was commander of the Red Guard in the Soviet
Republic established by Bela Kun in 1919.
Admiral Miklos
Horthy, commander-in-chief of the Imperial and Royal Fleet, returned
to Hungary in November 1919 and led the overthrow of the Soviet Republic.
Rakosi fled to Russia and with the support of Joseph
Stalin became secretary of Comintern.
Rajkosi returned to Hungary
in 1924 but the following year he was imprisoned by Horthy's government.
On his release in 1940 Rajkosi moved to the Soviet
Union and remained in Moscow for the rest of the Second
World War.
When the Red
Army liberated Hungary from the German
Army in
1945, Rajkosi returned and became general secretary of the Hungarian
Communist Party. In elections held in November, 1945, the Hungarian
Communist Party won only 20 per cent of the votes. However, the communist
filled all the important posts with Rajkosi becoming the most important
political figure in Hungary.
The Hungarian Communist
Party became the largest single party in the elections in 1947 and
served in the coalition People's Independence Front government. With
Rajkosi as prime minister, the communists gradually gained control
of the government and when Laszlo
Rajk, the foreign
secretary, criticized attempts by Joseph Stalin
to impose Stalinist policies on Hungary
he was arrested, tried for treason and executed.
Rakosi now attempted to
impose authoritarian rule. An estimated 2,000 people were executed
and over 100,000 were imprisoned. These policies were opposed by some
members of the Hungarian Communist Party and around 200,000 were expelled
by Rakosi from the organization.
Rakosi had difficulty managing
the economy and the people of Hungary saw living standards fall. His
government became increasingly unpopular and when Joseph
Stalin died in 1953 Rakosi was replaced as prime minister by Imre
Nagy. However,
he retained his position as general secretary of the Hungarian Communist
Party and over the next three years the two men became involved in
a bitter struggle for power.
He was removed from office
in 1956 and in 1962 was expelled from the Hungarian Communist Party.
Matyas Rajkosi died in 1971.
(1)
Peter
Fryer, Hungarian
Tragedy: PostScript (1956)
Look at the hell that
Rákosi made of Hungary and you will see an indictment, not
of Marxism, not of Communism, but of Stalinism. Hypocrisy without
limit; medieval cruelty; dogmas and slogans devoid of life or meaning;
national pride outraged; poverty for all but a tiny handful of leaders
who lived in luxury, with mansions on Rózsadomb, Budapest's
pleasant Hill of Roses (nicknamed by people 'Hill of Cadres'), special
schools for their children, special well-stocked shops for their wives
- even special bathing beaches at Lake Balaton, shut off from the
common people by barbed wire. And to protect the power and privileges
of this Communist aristocracy, the A.V.H. - and behind them the ultimate
sanction, the tanks of the Soviet Army. Against this disgusting caricature
of Socialism our British Stalinists would not, could not, dared not
protest; nor do they now spare a word of comfort or solidarity or
pity for the gallant people who rose at last to wipe out the infamy,
who stretched out their yearning hands for freedom, and who paid such
a heavy price.
Hungary was Stalinism incarnate.
Here in one small, tormented country was the picture, complete in
every detail: the abandonment of humanism, the attachment of primary
importance not to living, breathing, suffering, hoping human beings
but to machines, targets, statistics, tractors, steel mills, plan
fulfilment figures . . . and, of course, tanks. Struck dumb by Stalinism,
we ourselves grotesquely distorted the fine Socialist principle of
international solidarity by making any criticism of present injustices
or inhumanitites in a Communist-led country taboo. Stalinism crippled
us by castrating our moral passion, blinding us to the wrongs done
to men if those wrongs were done in the name of Communism. We Communists
have been indignant about the wrongs done by imperialism: those wrongs
are many and vile; but our one-sided indignation has somehow not rung
true. It has left a sour taste in the mouth of the British worker,
who is quick to detect and condemn hypocrisy.
(2)
Matyas
Rakosi, article in the Szabad Nep
(19th July, 1956)
My comrades frequently
mentioned in the past two years that I do not visit the factories
as often as I did in the past. They were right, the only thing they
did not know is that this was due to the deterioration of my health.
My state of health began to tell on the quality and amount of work
I was able to perform, a fact that is bound to cause harm to the Party
in such an important post. So much about the state of my health.
A regards the mistakes
that I committed in the field of the "cult of personality"
and the violation of socialist legality, I admitted them at the meetings
of the Central Committee in June, 1953, and I have made the same admission
repeatedly ever since. I have also exercised self-criticism publicly.
After the 20th Congress
of the CPSU and Comrade Khrushchev's speech it became clear to me
that the weight and effect of these mistakes were greater than I had
thought and that the harm done to our Party ,through these mistakes
was much more serious than I had previously believed.
These mistakes have made
our Party's work more difficult, they diminished the strength of attractiveness
of the Party and of the People's Democracy, they hindered the development
of the Leninist norms of Party life, of collective leadership, of
constructive criticism, and self- criticism, of democratism in Party
and state life, and of the initiative and creative power of the wide
masses of the working class.
Finally, these mistakes
offered the enemy an extremely wide opportunity for attack. In their
totality, the mistakes that I committed in the most important post
of Party work have caused serious harm to our socialist development
as a whole.
It was up to me to take
the lead in repairing these mistakes. If rehabilitation has at times
proceeded sluggishly and with intermittent breaks, if a certain relapse
was noticed last year in the liquidation of the cult of personality,
if criticism
and self-criticism together with collective leadership have developed
at a slow pace, if sectarian and dogmatic views have not been combated
resolutely enough - then for all this, undoubtedly, serious reponsibility
weighs upon me, having occupied the post of the First Secretary of
the Party.
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