István Pozsár ( b. 1931)
Pozsár was born in Pomáz, Pest County, to a factory worker and a German governess. After completing upper primary school, he became an electrician's apprentice in 1945. He completed a commercial secondary-school course in 1950, as a Nékosz (people's college) student. Then, as a HWP member, he received a Soviet scholarship to study law in Sverdlovsk, but in the summer of 1951, he was disciplined by his party for 'recalcitrant conduct' and sent home. For a short while, he was chief bookkeeper at the Szentendre agricultural machinery depot, from where he was sent to study at the Karl Marx University in Budapest, receiving an economics degree in 1955. In the same year, he became an assistant lecturer in political economy at the Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest. On October 25, 1956, he became head of the Revolutionary Students' Committee at the Arts Faculty of his university, and on November 1, he headed the newly founded National University Revolutionary Students' Committee. On November 12, he was elected head of the provisional steering committee at the national assembly of the student's organization Mefesz. The next day, he took part in founding the Hungarian Democratic Independence Movement. He was arrested at the beginning of December. On July 4, 1958, he was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment by the Supreme Court, as one of the accused in the trial of György Ádám and associates. He was freed under an individual amnesty in April 1961. From 1961 to 1963, he was a proof-reader at the Révai Printing Press. Later he worked for the Bábolna State Farm, the School Supplies Factory, the Light Industrial Components and Supply Enterprise, the price department of the Office Machine Enterprise, and in middle-management posts in smaller firms. He obtained a doctorate in 1976 and was rehabilitated by his university in 1996.
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