Károly Kiss (1903-1983)
Born in Bicske, Fejér County, Kiss followed his father into the boot and shoe works of the Kelenföld Military Supply Factory (11th District), where he started working in 1916 and soon joined the leather workers' trade union. In 1922, he entered the Hungarian Social Democratic Party, and a year later, the illegal communist party. In 1924, he became a member of the central leadership of the Budapest group of the Shoemaking Workers' Union. In 1925, as a leader of the HSWP, he was arrested with Mátyás Rákosi and Zoltán Vas, but freed in July 1927. Early in 1928, he became a member of the Northern District Committee of what had become the Hungarian Communist Party. He was arrested again in June 1929. On his release, he worked in a shoe factory in Népszínház utca (8th District). In 1931, the Comintern Secretariat gave Kiss and Sándor Fürst the task of creating the upper organizations of the party, but Kiss was dismissed after the wave of arrests later that year. He then travelled to Moscow for a year to obtain experience in the Red Trade-Union International. He was co-opted into Central Committee of the communist party in March 1932 and then returned home, but was arrested immediately. On his release in June 1934, he was ordered to live in h is native Bicske, but remained in Budapest nonetheless, working at an Angyalföld (13th District) shoe factory. In 1941, he was sentenced to a month' s imprisonment for using a false name and then interned until the summer of 1943. He was then brought into the Central Committee again and helped to organize some cells of the resistance. After the German occupation, Kiss was interned again until September 1944. At the beginning of 1945, he became a member of the Budapest National Committee. He was a member of the Budapest Municipal Committee from 1945 to 1949, serving as its vice-chairman in 1948. On April 2, 1945, he became a Budapest representative in the Provisional National Assembly and he remained a member of Parliament until May 1949. In 1945- 6, he headed the Cadre Department of the Hungarian Communist Party Central Committee. From May 1945 to September 1946, he was also a member of the Political Committee. He was chairman of the Central Control Committee of the party from 1946 to 1956. From 1949 to 1950, he was deputy president of the Presidential Council, before returning to head the party Cadre Department again. In April 1951, he headed the committee investigating the affair of János Kádár and Gyula Kállai. He was elected a member of the Steering Committee of the Central Committee, at its meeting in May 1950. At the 2nd Congress of the HWP, Kiss was restored to the Political Committee, remaining a member of it until the Central Committee plenary of June 1953. From 1951 to 1952, he served as foreign minister, after which he was a deputy prime minister until July 4, 1953. He returned to the Central Committee at its meeting in July 1956. On October 28, 1956, he was chosen as a member of the presiding committee charged with running the HWP. He took part in forming the new Kádár regime in Szolnok and returned to Budapest on November 7. On the same day, he became a member of the Provisional Executive Committee of the Kádárite HSWP, and later a Political Committee member as well. He also undertook secretarial duties to do with reorganizing the party. On November 27, Kiss conducted the first national meeting of the new party leadership, held at the party centre in Budapest. He and Antal Apró were the main advocates of restoration in the party leadership. At the February meeting of the Central Committee, Kiss became a member of its Secretariat, which was formed at that time. On May 9, 1957, he was appointed to the Presidential Council, of which he became a deputy president on November 26, 1958. From 1961 until his retirement, he was secretary to the Presidential Council. The plenary of the Central Committee in September 1961 relieved him of his position as a Central Committee secretary. At the August 1962 plenary, he was dropped from the Political Committee, although he remained a Central Committee member until his death. In 1967, he became a vice-president of the trade union federation Szot, and in 1970, vice-president of the Hungarian Solidarity Committee.
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