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41. Internment, Detention without trial of people considered to pose a threat to public order occurred, for instance, in France during the First World War, when citizens of the Central Powers were interned. Internment became a widespread form of punishment in communist countries. Internment camps were set up in Hungary after the Second World War, initially to provide a quick way of detaining large numbers of war criminals and persons suspected of crimes against the people. After the communist take-over, they contained growing numbers of people deemed to belong to groups inimical to socialism: kulaks, social democrats, class aliens, clericalists etc. The camps were abolished in 1953, when Imre Nagy became prime minister. Internment was revived by legal decree No. 31/1956, published on December 13, 1956. Initially it required an order by the prosecution service, but under legal decree No. 1/1957, the power to order internment was transferred to the police force which carried it out as well. The term was six months, which could be extended for two further periods of six months. Internment as a legal institution was abolished by legal decree No. 10/1960. See also ÁVH. |
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42. Irodalmi Ujság, See Writers' Union |
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43. Kádár government (Hungarian Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Government, Magyar Forradalmi Munkás-Paraszt Kormány), The decision to form a counter-government to the Nagy government was taken by the Presidium (Political Committee) of the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow, on October 31, 1956. A list of ministers and a programme were compiled on November 3, and János Kádár appointed to head the 'Hungarian Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Government'. Kádár sought to lend an ostensible legitimacy to the Soviet intervention by appealing for the assistance of Soviet troops on November 4 in a radio address. On November 5-7, members of the counter-government were brought from Szolnok to Budapest under Soviet military protection. There, István Dobi, acting as president of the Presidential Council, unconstitutionally dismissed the Nagy government and swore them in. The members of the government as augmented on 12 November were Kádár (prime minister), Ferenc Münnich (deputy prime minister and armed forces and foreign minister), Imre Dögei (agriculture minister), Antal Apró (industry minister), Sándor Rónai (trade minister), Imre Horváth (foreign minister), István Kossa (finance minister), György Csanádi (government commissioner for posts and transport) and Rezső Nyers (government commissioner for public supplies). This term continued to be used for the Council of Ministers until the early 1970s. |
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44. KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, Committee for State Security), The KGB, as the Soviet security service had been known since 1954, performed security and intelligence tasks inside and outside the Soviet Union. Its main purposes were to protect the Soviet-type communist form of state from its internal and external enemies and to weaken the 'imperialist camp' of the Western countries. Its first president was Ivan Serov. Another well-known head of the KGB was Yuri Andropov from 1967 to 1982. (Andropov was ambassador in Budapest during the 1956 revolution, and in 1982 became general secretary of the CPSU until his death in 1984.) There were KGB agents all over the world and throughout Soviet society. |
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45. Kilián Barracks, The building, on the corner of Üllői út and Ferenc körút (9th District, opposite Corvin köz) was in the midst of the strongest fighting. Most of those stationed at the barracks were soldiers on labour service, belonging to the Military Technical Auxiliary Corps commanded by Colonel Pál Maléter. The corps opposed the rebels in the early days of the revolution, but many of the soldiers fought on the rebel side against the Soviets, and the workers' hostel in the same block became a base for armed rebels as well. Maléter took over command on 25 October, his main objective being to defend the building from attack from whatever quarter. Many of the public attributed the defeat of the Soviets to the soldiers of the Kilián Barracks, which developed into one of the centres of the revolution, while its commander became minister of defence. It was captured by the Soviets on 4 November after fierce fighting. |
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46. Kis Újság (Little Newspaper), This was founded in 1945 as the central political daily paper of the Independent Smallholders' Party (FKgP), which won the 1945 general elections. After the suppression of the FKgP in 1948-9, the Kis Újság was closed in 1952. It appeared again during the 1956 revolution as the organ of the revived FKgP, but was closed again by the Kádár government after November 4. |
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47. KISZ, See KISZ (Communist Youth League) |
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48. Kisz (Communist Youth League), Establishing a successor to Disz, as a single national youth organization controlled by the HSWP, was an important move in restoring the system of Soviet-style political institutions after the revolution. It was already discussed on the HSWP Provisional Executive Committee on December 5, 1956, although it was found to be premature at that time. The party appointed a delegation led by László Földes to consult about establishing Kisz with its Soviet equivalent, Komsomol. Although the Hungarians and the Soviets agreed that Kisz should be constituted on March 15, 1957, the anniversary of the 1848 revolution, the event took place on March 21, anniversary of the proclamation of the short-lived 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, in the Erkel Theatre in Köztársaság tér, a few yards from the Budapest party headquarters, whose storming and occupation on October 30, 1956 had been won of the bloodiest episodes in the revolution. |
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49. Korea, Both the liberating great powers, the Soviet Union and the United States, attached special importance to Korea after it had been freed from Japanese occupation in the Second World War. The peninsula was divided into Soviet and American zones of occupation, each with a government of the appropriate complexion. In 1950, North Korea, with Soviet support, attacked South Korea, with the aim of extending communism over the whole peninsula. South Korea beat back the invasion with US support, but the bloody and merciless war lasted for three years and also involved China. Under an agreement in the summer of 1953, after Stalin's death, there was a return to the status quo. The Korean War, which had threatened to escalate into a third world war, ended with a ceasefire and the same demarcation line that had divided the peninsula since 1945. The division remains to this day. |
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50. Kremlin, The tsars' palace complex in Moscow became the centre of power when the capital was moved to Moscow from Petrograd (St Petersburg) after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Offices and homes of Soviet party and state leaders were moved there, especially after Stalin took power in 1923. The Kremlin, which also contains several Russian Orthodox churches, was closed to the public until Stalin's death in 1953. |
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51. Kulaks, The Russian word kulak means a rich peasant with a relatively large holding. Forced collectivization of Russian agriculture in the late 1920s was accompanied by a crude campaign against the kulaks, who were often unwilling to join collective farms (kolkhoz). As a pejorative term, kulak later came to include other reluctant landowning peasants. Collectivization and the struggle against kulaks began in Hungary in 1948. Kulaks were 'vestiges of capitalism', the size of whose personal property ensured they would oppose the new social system. The term also widened in Hungary to cover actual or assumed rural opponents of collectivization and the Soviet-type system. |
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52. League of Yugoslav Communists, The Communist Party of Yugoslavia, founded in 1919, operated illegally from 1921 to 1941. Its leader from 1937 was Josip Broz Tito, a highly successful partisan leader in the Second World War, who managed to gain power in Yugoslavia in 1945 and impose a totalitarian, Stalin-type communist dictatorship with a one-party system. The Soviet bloc of Eastern European communist countries broke with Yugoslavia in 1948, when Tito proved unwilling to submit to Stalin's will, demanding a relation of partnership instead. Tito remained leader when the name was changed in 1952 to the League of Yugoslav Communists, which marked a formal break with the Soviet type of communist leadership. He and his party saw the events of 1956 in Hungary (and Poland) as a chance to spread Yugoslav ideas of reform to other communist countries. However, his desire for a reconciliation with Khrushchev's Soviet Union took precedence. Fear of a revival of Hungarian nationalism also prompted him to accept the Soviet plan to crush the revolution by force. Membership of the League of Yugoslav Communists was around 800,000-850,000. The central daily paper was Borba (Struggle). |
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53. Local government, Hungary's system of autonomous local government was replaced in 1950 by a system on the Soviet pattern based on councils (soviets). The local councils became adjuncts initially of the Ministry of the Interior, and from 1954 of the Councils Office of the Council of Ministers. Their main task was to implement at local level the assignments received from the central bodies of the administration. They were bureaucratic bodies, whose staff and officials were fully dependent on the superior organizations, so that owed no particular allegiance to the local community, even if they happened to live there. |
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54. Maort trial, The trial of managers of the Hungarian-American Oil Industry Company (Maort) was a prime example of how the new communist regime set about nationalizing the country's partly foreign-owned companies. Maort had received the concession for the South Zala oilfield in 1935. Towards the end of the Second World War, the German occupation forces began a policy of rapid, wasteful exploitation. This was continued by the communist economic policy-makers after 1945, but when a predicted drastic fall in production ensued in 1948, the company's Hungarian and American engineers were arrested and accused of sabotage in a show trial. One of them, Simon Papp, was sentenced to death, although this was commuted to a life sentence on appeal. The others received long prison sentences. Meanwhile the company was nationalized in 1949. |
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55. MEFESZ, See Mefesz (Hungarian Association of University and College Unions) |
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56. Mefesz (Hungarian Association of University and College Unions), The mass students' organization formed in 1945 changed its name to the United Organization of Hungarian University and College Students (same initials) in 1948, and continued to function until the formation of Disz in 1950. A new Mefesz, independent of the party and Disz, was established on October 16, 1956 by the Szeged students, whose example was followed by students in all institutes of higher education in the following few days. In the spring of 1957, Mefesz was prevented from functioning any longer and submerged into Kisz. |
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57. Military Committee (Katonai Bizottság), The main purpose of the Military Committee formed by the HWP Central Committee at its meeting on October 23-4, 1956 was to establish and maintain contact between the party leadership and the Hungarian and Soviet military commanders. Although it intended to arm the working class and pressed for this to be done on several occasions, this never occurred. Headed by István Kovács, its members were Imre Mező, László Földes, Lajos Fehér, and ex officio, István Bata (defence minister) and László Piros (interior minister). On 25 October, as the fighting continued, the Central Committee reinforced and expanded the committee. Kovács, who was not a Political Committee member, was replaced by Antal Apró, but remained a member, while Ferenc Münnich and Sándor Nógrádi joined the committee. It played a significant political role on 26 October by reversing a conciliatory Central Committee resolution based on recommendations by Ferenc Donáth, which might otherwise have brought to a political turning point in the revolution. |
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58. MUK ('Márciusban Újra Kezdjük!' We'll Start Again in March), The slogan 'MUK' began to appear in January and February 1957, mainly in Budapest, but also in other cities and even abroad. Those unable to accept that the revolution had been defeated consisted mainly of some small groups of young people who had taken up arms on the rebel side. They planned a second armed uprising against the regime for March 15, the anniversary of the 1848 revolution. In some places, preparations were made. Former members of armed groups made contact again, collected weapons hidden in parks and forests, and produced and distributed leaflets containing a call to arms. The authorities (notably the Interior Ministry forces) exaggerated the danger of the MUK campaign, using it as a pretext for rounding up almost 6000 people in March. In the event, there was no uprising, but despite the precautions, protests took place, leaflets were distributed and graffiti appeared on March 15. Several people were sentenced to death and executed on charges of taking part in the MUK campaign. |
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59. Multi-party system, This is a basic constituent of bourgeois democracy as a form of state. Several political parties participate in public life. Citizens vote for these in free elections that decide the make-up of the legislature and other representative bodies. So no party can gain absolute power. The parties accept the democratic rules of the game, undertaking not to take power by force, to allow the voters to decide who forms the government, and to step down if they are voted out in the periodic elections. Restoration of a multi-party system, one of the key demands of the 1956 revolution, was accepted by the Nagy government on October 31, 1956. The Kádár government reinstated the one-party system after November 4, when the HSWP gained absolute power. |
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60. National guard (nemzetőrség), Various armed groups and organizations formed during the revolution in Budapest and other towns and villages under various names (national guard, people's guard, workers' guard etc.) to maintain public law and order, which the police were unable to do. They patrolled communities, collected weapons from ÁVH officers and other functionaries and privileged persons under the Rákosi system, saw to the distribution of food and aid, and arranged for various buildings to be guarded (factories, granaries, hospitals etc.) Incorporation of these groups into a single organization began after the ceasefire on October 28. The Revolutionary Armed Forces Committee was formed at the Budapest police headquarters on 30 October to organize and direct them. This was to have operated until the new government was established. |
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