János Varga ( b. 1927)
Born in Sótony, Vas County, into a family of poor peasants, Varga completed secondary school in Szombathely as a church scholar and then studied chemical engineering at the Budapest Technical University. He transferred to the Budapest (Loránd Eötvös) University in 1948, where he became an assistant lecturer in 1951. In the following year, he joined the HWP. By 1955, he was a reader in the history department, as well as assistant dean of the university and secretary of his departmental party committee. He regularly took part in the meetings of the Kolkhoz Group of disaffected university students and spoke at the history debate of the Petőfi Circle. On October 6, 1956, Varga made a speech after the Rajk reburial, at the commemoration by the Batthyány Lamp (5th District). On October 22-3, he helped to organize the march in solidarity with the Polish demonstrations. He and Zoltán I. Tóth drew up the demands of the university students and teachers. On October 25, he and István Pozsár were elected to the chair of the University Revolutionary Students' Committee. On behalf of the university students, Varga took part in preparing for the national rally planned for October 29 and negotiated on October 30 with Imre Nagy. He attended the meeting of the workers' councils at the Telephone Factory in November. He was a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Hungarian Intelligentsia. From April 1957 to the spring of 1958, Varga was regularly interrogated by Ministry of the Interior organizations but no charges were brought against him. He was promoted to the rank of docens (assistant professor) at his university on December 16, 1956. In the autumn of 1957, he was moved to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Institute of History. In 1968, he became head of the archive directorate (later department) at the Ministry of Culture. He obtained an Academy doctorate in 1972. In 1978, he became director general of the National Archives and titular professor at Budapest University. He retired in 1990. From 1990 to 1994, he served as a Hungarian Democratic Forum member of Parliament.
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