Zoltán Szántó ( 1893-1977)
Born in Nagykanizsa, where his father was a butcher, Szántó completed upper commercial school and started medical school, but was prevented from completing it by the outbreak of the First World War. He underwent officer training in 1914 and was then sent to the Galician front. While still a student, he had frequented the Galilei Circle, attended Social Scientific Society lectures and joined the Workers' Training Society. In May 1916, Szántó was taken prisoner by the Russians. While a prisoner of war, he came into contact with the Russian labour movement. On his return to Hungary in 1918, he supported the Aster Revolution of that autumn, as a spokesman for the anti-militarist movement, and then became one of the early members of the Hungarian Communist Party. During the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, he was a member of the workers' soviet in the 7th District of Budapest, then a regimental commander in the Red Army, and finally political commissar of a division. In the summer of that year, he emigrated to Vienna, where he joined Jenő Landler in re-establishing the Hungarian Communist Party. He was co-opted onto the Central Committee of the party as an alternate member in the spring of 1926. He was arrested after returning to Hungary in January 1927 and sentenced, in the trial of the leaders of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, to eight-and-a-half years' imprisonment, which he served in Sopronkőhida. He emigrated to Moscow in 1935, where he worked in the Comintern Secretariat. In June 1936, he became head of the Provisional Secretariat in Prague, which replaced the dissolved Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party. He returned to Moscow in 1938, to represent the Hungarian party in Comintern. During the war, he worked at Moscow Radio, and from the spring of 1944, as head of the Hungarian department at the foreign-language publishers. Early in 1945, he was appointed editor-in-chief of Kossuth Radio in Moscow. He returned to Hungary in June 1945, as regional party secretary for Northern Transdanubia. On June 24, 1945, he became a member of the Provisional National Assembly, and on February 6, 1947, a member of parliament. From 1947 to 1949, he served as ambassador in Belgrade and Tirana, and then until 1954, in Paris. In May 1954, as an adherent of Imre Nagy, he organized the Information Office, of which he became president. In the same month, he became a member of the HWP Central Committee. After Nagy's dismissal, Szántó was appointed ambassador in Warsaw on June 8, 1955, remaining there until July 30, 1956. On October 6, 1956, he joined Ernő Gerő, János Kádár and István Hidas in talks in Moscow, with the senior Soviet officials Anastaz Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov. Szántó was elected to the Political Committee at the all-night HWP Central Committee meeting on October 23-4. On October 26, he became a member of the Directory, and on October 28, a member of the presidium set up to steer the party. He proposed, on October 30, that the new party should be called the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party after the front party for the communist party during the 1920s]. On the following day, he joined the executive committee preparing for the new party's first congress. Along with Lukács György, Szántó voted against Hungary withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact. On November 1, he and Géza Losonczy negotiated with Yugoslav Ambassador Dalibor Soldatić about whether a few communist politicians could receive asylum in the embassy if the need arose. On November 4, he was among those to receive asylum at the Yugoslav Embassy, which he left with György Lukács and Zoltán Vas on November 18. He was arrested by the Soviets and sent on November 23 to Romania, where he was interned. During the investigation of members of the Imre Nagy group, Szántó gave evidence that told against them. He was allowed to return to Hungary in the autumn of 1958 and escaped prosecution, although he was sent into retirement. His party membership was restored in 1965.
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