Imre Nagy (1896–1958) was supposed to be remembered as a quietly loyal Hungarian communist — a former prisoner of war in Russia, a working agronomist, a prime minister who had never challenged Moscow’s line. Then, in October 1956, he moved with the protesters: dissolved the ÁVH secret police, declared Hungarian neutrality, and withdrew from the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet invasion of November 8 ended his government; his secret trial and execution came in June 1958, and he was officially rehabilitated on June 16, 1989 — thirty-one years to the day after his hanging — and reburied before a quarter of a million people in Heroes’ Square.
Nagy was born on June 7, 1896, in Kaposvár, in southwestern Hungary. He was a prisoner of war in Russia during the First World War, joined the Bolsheviks, and fought in the Russian Civil War. He returned to Hungary in 1921, helped found the (illegal) Hungarian Communist Party, spent the interwar years in Moscow, and came back to Hungary again with the Red Army in 1944.
He was a working agronomist, not a theoretician, and his politics were always more Hungarian than Moscow’s. As minister of agriculture (1944–45) and speaker of parliament (1947–49), he was a “national communist” in the sense that term would later acquire. His first stint as prime minister, from July 1953 to April 1955, ended when Rákosi outmaneuvered him. He was expelled from the party in 1955 and was living in retirement when the revolution broke out.
The party recalled him as prime minister on October 24, 1956, hoping his name would calm the streets. Instead he moved with the protesters. He dissolved the ÁVH, released political prisoners, promised free elections, and on October 30 declared Hungarian neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. After the second Soviet assault on November 8, he took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. The Kádár government guaranteed him safe passage; he was arrested on November 23 when he left.
He was held in Romania for more than a year, then returned to Budapest for a secret trial in February 1958. The verdict — treason and subversion — was a foregone conclusion. He was hanged on June 16, 1958, in a prison yard, his body buried in an unmarked grave. He was officially rehabilitated on June 16, 1989 — thirty-one years to the day after his execution — and reburied in Heroes’ Square before a crowd of a quarter of a million. The full account of the revolution he briefly led is in the article.