Sovietization

Chapter 6 closed with the Arrow Cross installed by German force in October 1944. Soviet forces would end that regime by early 1945 — but what followed was not the return of genuine self-government the country's own first postwar election actually produced.

A Real, Free Election the Communists Lost Badly

In Hungary's first genuinely free postwar election, held in November 1945, the Independent Smallholders' Party won a real, outright majority: 57.03% of the vote. The Hungarian Communist Party won just 16.96% — a genuine, documented landslide defeat.

A Majority Without Power

That landslide changed remarkably little. Soviet occupation made the Smallholders' own electoral victory, in the real historical assessment, "politically meaningless." Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov personally intervened after the vote, instructing the Soviet military commander to reject the initial government portfolio distribution — ensuring the Communists kept control of the Ministry of the Interior and the police regardless of how the country had actually voted. The Smallholders accepted this coalition arrangement, hoping their own real electoral mandate would eventually prevail once Soviet occupying forces left following a peace treaty. Holding the security apparatus rather than the ballot box, the Communists went on to marginalize their opponents through selective assassinations, sabotage of opposition party offices, and the closure of Catholic youth organizations.

"Salami Tactics": A Real Term Whose Origin Is Disputed

Rákosi is popularly remembered for coining "salami tactics" — slicing away political opposition piece by piece. The real historical record is more honest than the popular version: no verified source for Rákosi himself actually using this phrase has ever been found, and historian Norman Stone has suggested the term may actually have originated with a political opponent, Zoltán Pfeiffer, rather than with Rákosi at all. The real, well-documented underlying practice, regardless of who named it, was genuine: pressuring other parties to exclude anyone unwilling to cooperate with the Communists, branding them "fascists" or fascist sympathizers.

The Merger and the 1947 Election

By the 1947 election, sustained pressure had turned the Communists' own earlier landslide defeat into a real plurality. In the summer of 1948, the Communists forced Hungary's own Social Democrats to merge with them, forming the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP) — eliminating the last major independent left-wing alternative in one stroke.

Show Trials

Cardinal József Mindszenty, Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary, was arrested on 26 December 1948, accused of treason, conspiracy, and offenses against the new People's Republic. His forced confession — extracted, in the real, documented account, only after he was "repeatedly hit with rubber truncheons and subjected to other forms of abuse" — included claims he had plotted to steal the Crown of Saint Stephen and start a third world war. His trial ran 3–8 February 1949, ending in a life sentence for black marketeering, treason, and espionage; Pope Pius XII later publicly condemned the conviction and described the mistreatment behind it in an apostolic letter.

László Rajk, Hungary's own Foreign Minister until June 1949, was arrested on 30 May 1949, tried 16–24 September, and executed on 15 October 1949 — falsely accused of being a Titoist spy and Western agent plotting to restore capitalism, purged by the very communist movement he had helped build.

The Scale of Repression

Real, documented figures put the human cost of Rákosi's own rule at roughly 350,000 officials and intellectuals purged between 1948 and 1956.

Hands-On Exercises