László Piros ( b. 1917)
Born into a peasant family of Újkigyós, Békés County, Piros had six years of schooling before becoming a butcher and slaughterman's apprentice and then a skilled worker in the meat industry. From 1939 to 1941, he did military service as a border guard. In 1943, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets at Voronezh and volunteered for anti-fascist school and then partisan school. After his training, he fought in Soviet and in Polish territory. In January 1945, he arrived in Debrecen with a group of former partisans. In February, he became secretary of the artisans and miscellaneous industrial section of the trade-union council. He also became president of the Union of Hungarian Food Workers. On December 2, 1945, he was elected deputy general secretary at the 6th general assembly of the trade unions. Meanwhile, he had become a member of the Provisional National Assembly on June 24, 1945, as a representative of the trade unions. From January 1946 to December 1950, he was a member of the Budapest Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party and then the HWP. From the merger congress of June 1948 to October 1956, he was a member or alternate member of the HWP Central Committee. He was also an alternate member of the Political Committee from 1950 to 1953 and again from April 1955 to October 24, 1956. In 1950, Piros became commander of the ÁVH Border Guard with the rank of major general. In January 1953, he was a member of the committee that directed the investigation of the Gábor Péter case. At the Central Committee meeting of June 27-8, 1953, where the Political Committee was re-elected at Moscow's behest, Piros was dropped from the latter. On July 4, 1953, he became deputy interior minister under Ernő Gerő, and on July 6, 1954, interior minister. Piros was re-elected an alternate member of the Political Committee by the Central Committee on April 14, 1954, at the same time as Imre Nagy was excluded from the Political Committee. On October 23, 1956, Piros became a member of the Military Committee formed by the HWP Central Committee. At the overnight meeting of the Central Committee on October 23, he was dropped from the Political Committee, and on October 26, he was dismissed from the government as well. On October 24, Piros, Defence Minister István Bata and several CC members had a meeting with Anastaz Mikoyan and Mihály Suslov, who had just arrived from the Kremlin. On October 25, Piros made a radio appeal to the insurgents to hand in their weapons by October 26. On October 28, he departed for the Soviet Union with Ernő Gerő and András Hegedüs. He returned to the country on November 3 and took part in the KGB action in which the Hungarian government delegation was arrested at Tököl that evening. On November 10, he left the country for the Soviet Union at the behest of János Kádár. Parliament deprived him of his seat at its meeting in May 1957. He returned to Hungary in August 1958 and became chief engineer of the Szeged Salami Factory in September. He was appointed manager of the factory in 1969 and retired in 1977.
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