István B. Szabó ( 1893-1976)
Born into a farming family in Békés, Békés County, Szabó completed secondary school and then helped to run the 49-ha family farm. He started his military service in 1913 and was sent to the front when the First World War broke out. Taken prisoner in Russia [?] in March 1915, he made his way home in 1919 through Persia, Turkey and Italy. In 1920, he began to farm on his own account. He was a founder member of the Independent Smallholders Party (FKgP) and helped to organize the mass meeting at Békés in October 1930. He was elected a local councillor in that year in Békés, where he became mayor in 1931. Szabó chaired the FKgP organization in Békés County from 1933 to 1947 and served on the party's national grand assembly. In 1935, he joined the county council. In 1939, he was elected to Parliament as an FKgP member, and in August joined his party' s executive committee. In 1943, he signed the anti-war memorandum drafted by Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky. On December 21, 1944, he became a member of the Provisional National Assembly, being returned to Parliament on November 4, 1945. Szabó was political state secretary at the Defence Ministry from December 23, 1944 until November 1945. On August 20, 1945, he was elected onto the Political Committee of the FKgP and became one of its four vice-chairmen. From February 23 to December 18, 1946, Szabó was state minister in the Ferenc Nagy government, but he was dismissed under pressure from the communists and Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov. On February 28, 1947, he resigned from the FKgP Political Committee, disagreeing with his party's position in the case of Béla Kovács. After Ferenc Nagy had failed to return from Switzerland and resigned as prime minister on May 30, 1947, Szabó was a member of the so-called constitution-defending faction in the FKgP. However, he left the party on August 12, 1947 and joined the [?& opposition] Hungarian Independence Party. However, he was prevented from standing in the general elections at the end of August] after the National Election Committee had excluded him for fabricated reasons. He withdrew from politics altogether when the Hungarian Independence Party had its parliamentary seats taken away on November 20, 1947. Szabó tried peasant farming again, but his situation was made hopeless by attacks upon him. In 1950, he was placed on the kulak list. He worked in Debrecen as a labourer and then in Budapest as a groom. In 1953, he went to work at a crate-making cooperative. During the 1956 revolution, Szabó joined the nine-member executive of the revived FKgP on October 30. From November 3 to 4, he was state minister in the coalition government, on the recommendation of Zoltán Tildy. He applied for asylum in the British Embassy on November 5 and the US Embassy on November 6, but turned away in each case. On March 9, 1957, he was arrested. He was finally sentenced to three years' imprisonment on August 16, 1958, but released under an individual amnesty on November 16, 1959. He then worked for the Mill Installation and Engineering Enterprise as a semi-skilled worker until his retirement in August 1965.
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