I.B. Tauris, London, New York, 2009
258 p.

Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Series Foreword by Matthew Worley
Foreword by István Deák
Preface to the English Edition by János M. Rainer

1. Beginnings
2. To Remain a Communist
3. Fifteen years in Moscow
4. Forced March Towards Socialism
5. Up the Leader
6. The New Course
7. Victory and Defeat
8. In Opposition
9. Revolution
10. Endgame
11. November the Fourth
12. The Verdict
13. Facing Death - Alone
14. The Legacy
15. Post Mortem
16. Resurrection

Notes
Glossary of Persons
Select Bibliography
Index

Preface to the English Edition by János M. Rainer

(...) The life history, presented here chronologically in the traditional manner, is necessarily a political biography because of its sources – and is unavoidably uneven. I concentrated mainly on events after 1945, focusing especially on Nagy’s sphere of influence after 1953 and during the uprising, giving much less space to all the rest of what Nagy experienced and did before that time.
As with any life history, one might recount Nagy’s biography as the outcome of major decisions, each one valid for the period to follow. It seems to me, however, that in Nagy’s case it is better to speak of processes of decisionmaking.
Although he found answers to the problems of each period of his life, there remained always the possibility of deciding on quite different solutions in each case. When a fundamental decision had to be made, his determination seemed never to be entrenched for all times: it was thus in 1918 when as a prisoner of war in Russia he joined the Communist movement, in the autumn of 1944 when he assumed a leading role in the Hungarian Communist Party as he returned home from Moscow, also in June 1953 when he became for the first time head of the government, and certainly in October 1956 upon the outbreak of revolution. We know of no personal statements as to why he made
the decisions he did in 1918 and 1944. But as regards his decisions in June 1953
and October 1956, he stated in his notes, written in enforced Romanian exile,
before he knew what fate awaited him, as follows:

I was forced to place myself at the helm of the country during the greatest crisis and most difficult times for socialism – twice in fact. The first time was in June 1953 when I had to assume the post of prime minister at the suggestion of the CPSU Presidium and in accordance with the resolution of the Hungarian Central Committee in order to rescue the country from the catastrophe into which the Rákosi clique with its reckless policies had plunged the country. The second time was on 24 October 1956 when I again had to take on the post of premier as the Party, the state security, and the army collapsed and the people took up arms. (My emphases)
Nagy’s formulations sound as if he wanted to suggest that he had made his decision, in 1953 as in 1956, under the pressure of external circumstances and that he had only reluctantly assumed a leadership role. In the years after 1918 his writings intimate that joining the Communist movement was the result of happenstance, his own inclinations and customary posture having played no role in the decision. Nagy, who belonged to the small group that survived the war and exile in Moscow, played no special role in the 1940s until, in 1944, he suddenly became an important member of the party leadership and returned to Hungary as a designated minister. His abrupt rise may be explained by the shortage of a cadre, and his assumption of a leading role was again mainly the outcome of external pressure.

The important decision-making processes that governed Nagy’s life were more often than not the results of accidental circumstance or of sudden choices made under the pressure of external conditions. He himself was then responsible for maintaining his stance once a decision was made, in holding fast to the social or intellectual position resulting from the decision, and in accepting the consequences. External circumstances and pressures surely played a role in
these processes, but they did not account for everything, for Nagy always had room for his own judgement.

The first and most protracted phase of decision-making, involving the search for an answer to the question, how to remain a Communist, lasted almost a decade and a half, 1921 to 1935. The young man who had returned to Hungary from imprisonment in Siberia, already somewhat of a Bolshevik
experienced in party work, encountered a country not yet fully recovered from defeat in war and the failed revolutions of 1918 and 1919, a place where the Communist Party was forbidden and social democracy had just taken its first steps toward a new start. He sought his place first in the legal labour movement in his hometown. After several years, he cautiously established contact
with the underground party, fell into perpetual conflict with the narrow world of doctrinaire ‘party strategists’, and became known to the authorities. He left Hungary at the end of the 1920s after a brief incarceration, functioned with modest success as a worker for the illegal party and escaped from the internal party struggles to the Soviet Union in 1930, where he could devote himself as a Communist professional to theoretical work on agriculture. However, until
he acquired Soviet citizenship in 1936, the path, albeit an increasingly narrow one, to a non-Communist career was not completely closed.

From the mid-1930s until 1944, Nagy had the good luck not to be in a situation requiring a decision. In the Soviet Union he remained a Communist and it was not owing to any decision of his that he survived the Great Terror or that he, as almost the only living agrarian specialist, could return home after 1944 as a minister of the provisional Hungarian government. Under his direction, the most radical land reform in Hungarian history was accomplished. After that he held an even more important post as minister of the interior. But he possessed neither the organizational talent nor the toughness to retain for very long this key position in the Communist hierarchy. When he was relieved of the post, he had again reached the point when a new phase of decision-making would set in. The question was: should one belong to the Communist elite or renounce that role? By 1947 Nagy had involved himself in theoretical arguments with the party leadership over economic and agricultural issues. He was content neither with the excessive tempo nor the radical nature of the seizure of power, a stance that amounted to a direct criticism of the Soviet model. He no longer belonged to the uppermost circle of leadership and was regularly subjected to criticism; clearly he was excluded from the political leadership and was to be

further demoted by being made an ambassador or a university president. But because he was part of the Moscow nucleus he was still a force to be reckoned with. His return in 1950 to the central party apparatus and then to the government was largely attributable to his own personal decision.
His decision made it possible for him to be regarded, after Stalin’s death, by both Moscow and Budapest, as a candidate for the introduction of ‘corrections’ in policy. He believed that 1953 afforded the opportunity to translate his political convictions into practice. Because of his convictions he had twice (in 1929–30 and 1947–49) a choice to make and both times he chose to retreat, performing self-criticism and remaining a Communist and a party functionary.

It appeared in summer 1953, when he became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian Peoples’ Republic, that his earlier compromises had been sensible, for he was now assigned by the Moscow leadership to develop and implement a political line largely in keeping with his own convictions. In that year he attempted to make the ‘policy of correctives’ a genuine reform
policy, in which attempt he faced continuous and substantial resistance.

When his victorious opponents again tried to force Nagy to engage in selfcriticism, he was confronted with the question: how to remain an anti-Stalinist reformer? This time he faced a challenge at the top of the power hierarchy, and an oppositional stance no longer meant simply a synthesis of his former positions (Communist, functionary and reformer) and not merely a consistent refusal of self-criticism. Everything now turned on securing his personal and political autonomy within the Bolshevik movement. That required a constant and sometimes radical confrontation as a way of life, something that Nagy had always avoided. Now he opted for that path, though not always consistently.

His source of strength was chiefly his deep conviction that an anti-Stalinist reform policy was the only correct one. This personal decision was what made Nagy a compass and source of hope for many members of the Communist intelligentsia and even for many non-Communists. The hopes that were placed in Nagy were like a plebiscite: he had been called on the evening of 23 October
to speak to the demonstrators in Budapest, and when it seemed at the outbreak of revolution that he would again be taken in by the Communist leaders, it was the clamour for him that saved him from giving way.

For Nagy the revolution was a tragic situation, a development that ran counter to his personality. The Communist functionary with the outlook of a reformer now addressed himself to consolidating a strongly anti-Communist (though in no way anti-socialist) revolution. The formerly cautious and reflective man full of scruples had now to make daily, even hourly, decisions, each one of which could prove fateful. Because his reform programme, developed
after 1953, and the revolutionary demands were in many respects in harmony with each other, Nagy was able to withstand the pressure of his own party and of the leading powers of the Communist world. What he tried to answer during those days was, how to reconcile a Communist reform programme with the radical wishes of the society expressed in a massive uprising? After the defeat of the revolution and during his detention and imprisonment, Nagy had one last decision to make, probably the most personal one of all: how to keep the faith ? His fate now rested exclusively in the hands of others, but during his internment, his interrogation and trial he could still decide in what manner he would handle his last journey. In his political notes, written in Romania in the winter of 1956–57, he made this journey intellectually and, at
the same time, prepared his political testament. Judging by these texts, he did keep the faith. And he also practised a style of argument that allowed him to defend his earlier decisions. He remained a Communist and did not abandon his socialist outlook. Furthermore, his thinking remained within the categories of an anti-Stalinist reformer; he defended the revolution retrospectively and especially its goal of national independence. Had he recognized the contradictions of his own career, he would probably have been unable to preserve his
integral personality through the last year and a half of his life. The contradictions
remained unresolved but his death could be remembered as a worthy one.

At the time, this would not have occurred to anyone, though it was still his hope that his message would reach his intended audience. More then 30 years later, precisely that did happen. Imre Nagy became an extremely ‘live’ participant in the Hungarian democratic transition in its
most dynamic phase. At this time, the contradictions in Nagy’s life and character were scarcely noticed. The project of socialism, including the Nagy variant – socialism of national type, socialism with a human face – seemed to have vanished from the political agenda. But the ‘history of the death of Imre Nagy’ with its dramatic conclusion still retained a powerful effect. (...)