Feuding Hungarians in the West: troubles with the struggle against communist ascendancy in Hungary, 1945-1956

International Social Science Review, Spring-Summer, 2007 by Judith Fai-Podipnik

   Countless are the thousands of the poor and wealthy, the prominent
   and nameless, who, leaving behind their homes, their land, their
   social roots, took the hard trek to the safety of the west, to
   lands where freedom is realized, to await--sometimes in dire
   privation--the coming of a brighter dawn and the liberation of the
   Hungarian people from Soviet dictatorship. (1)

On December 2, 1944, the Hungarian National Front of Independence stepped in to fill the political void left by the fleeing Nazi regime. The government included members of the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Smallholders Party, the National Peasant's Party, and the Liberal Democratic Party. The Communists held the greatest number of seats, 90 out of 230, in the provisional parliament, a foreshadowing of what was to come, the establishment of a Soviet-sponsored totalitarian regime in Hungary. (2)

The precarious political situation in Hungary during the immediate post-World War II era triggered a migration of Magyar politicians to the democratic West. These expatriates encountered suspicion and jealously from Hungarians already living in various host lands as well as prejudice from the indigenous populations. More importantly, the new political evacuees carried with them their ideals, opinions, and conflicts from their homeland, which they would continue to embrace years after they had fled Hungary, causing strife between themselves and established Hungarian immigrant communities in the West. While they all sought to rid their homeland of Soviet domination, factionalism, as much as Cold War politics, (3) squelched their efforts to improve the situation in Hungary. The inimical infighting between the expatriates and their organizations impaired the possibility of a unified movement and affected questions concerning their character and legitimacy with host governments and local Magyars. As historian Thaddeus Radzilowski explains, "... the Cold War brought forth a large number of organizations whose main or even sole function was to fight Communism [which, at times,] ... created odd political alliances. The interests of the ethnic groups ... were sometimes sacrificed to the liberation struggle." (4) Art historian and archeologist Elizabeth Valkenier adds that in several cases, "The[re] was never any unanimity among exiled politicians as to what would constitute an effective liberation." (5)

This article provides a case study of emigre politics following World War II, focusing on Hungarian expatriates from divergent political backgrounds and ideologies. It examines their political aspirations, machinations, successes, and failures which most historians address only briefly in their informative yet broader works on Hungarian immigration. (6) In so doing, this study offers insight into the mentality and postulations, as absurd as they may sometimes have seemed, that propelled Hungarian emigre leaders to act as they did, causing substantial factionalism within the entire emigre community. Such divisions quashed any dreams of helping their homeland defeat the Soviet-backed Communists.

During the interwar years, the Hungarian government banned the Communist Party, forcing those who espoused its tenets either underground or to flee to the Soviet Union. (7) Once the Red Army entered Hungary during World War If, the Communists, led by Matyas Rakosi, a renowned and devout Stalinist, resurfaced. By October 1945, the number of party members skyrocketed from 3,000 during the 1930s to 500,000. (8) Many Hungarian Communists were "... of the 1919 Communist regime of Bela Kun, ... had become Soviet citizens.... members of the invading army, and having been carefully trained in Moscow they were eager to adopt in Hungary the recipe of the world revolutionary conquest as explained in the works of Lenin and Stalin." (9) They were known as Muscovites, those who had received their training and ideological education in the U.S.S.R. or those who supported members of that faction.

Though they initially advocated the establishment of a democratic coalition government following World War II, Hungarian Communists were already infiltrating the highest levels of government. By January 31, 1946, when Hungary officially became a Republic, Rakosi had become Deputy Prime Minister. Laszlo Rajki, a fellow Muscovite, held the multi-potent post of Ministry of the Interior, which controlled the police, the People's Courts, and all municipal administrations. Although the Smallholders Party--a centre-right political group that purported to represent the peasantry and small landowners, and was based on Christian values--won the majority of the vote in the November 1945 election, it failed to secure any notable positions of power or a majority in the Hungarian Parliament. The Communists held the advantage as they controlled the more vital positions in the Hungarian government, and, more significantly, they enjoyed the support of the Soviet Union and the ever-present Red Army. (10)