1939-1944 Stalinism
1948-1953







Years of Transition, 1944-1948


Soviet forces entered Hungarian territory late in 1944. Stalin encouraged the formation of a Provisional Government in the city of Debrecen in December 1944; the government represented a broad coalition and was lead by Bela Miklos, who had served as general under Admiral Horthy. The city of Budapest was subject to a siege, from Dec. 29th to February 13th; the estimated number of killed civilians is 40,000; 80 % of the city were destroyed.
For Stalin, the provisional government served several purposes; for the time being, Soviet supervision of Hungarian affairs went uncontested, the new government, including members of the Horthy administration, could claim legitimacy and the communists which had returned from Moscow held the most important post, the ministry of internal affairs, i.e. control of the police.
At the Yalta Conference, Stalin approved of Churchill's conception to divide the Balkans peninsula into a Soviet and a British sphere of influence. Churchill had conceded Soviet domination in Romania and Bulgaria, claimed British domination over Greece and proposed a 50-50 solution in Yugoslavia and Hungary; in Hungary, only Soviet influence, in form of the presence of the Red Army and the Hungarian Communist party, were evident, and the country, like Romania and Bulgaria, became part of the Soviet sphere of influence.

The multiparty coalition government achieved a number of successes, such as getting the inflation, exorbitant in 1946, under control, repairing the country's infrastructure (bridges etc.) and quickly achieving self-sufficiency in food production. A Land Reform dissolved great estates, which were parcelled out and handed out to hitherto landless peasants.
In free elections held in November 1945, the Smallholders Party gained 57 %, the Social Democrats and the Communists 17 % each and the National Peasant Party 7 % of the vote. After the elections, the government coalition was continued.
A political police, the AVO (under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, thus communist-controlled) made arrests of politically suspect individuals, beginning in 1945, thus preparing the country for a communist takeover. The Communists from time to time demanded the removal of 'reactionary elments' from the government thus step by step increasing communist influence (Salami Tactics). In the winter of 1947 to 1948, the period of political pluralism was ended, Hungary declared a Socialist People's Republic.

CARE delivered food parcels to needy families in 1947-1948, but scaled down her operations due to increasing government interference in 1948 and closed down her operations in the country in 1949 (Campbell p.59).





EXTERNAL
LINKS 		Articles Battle of Budapest, from Wikipedia
The People's Republic, from Hungary : A Short History by C.A. Macartney (1962)
Almost half a century - my lifetime, from Hungary - A Brief History, by Istvan Lazar, 1989/1993
House of Terror, Museum (prison were political prisoners were tortured 1944-1956
DOCUMENTS Hungarian Statesmen, from World Statesmen (B. Cahoon)
Historical Population Statistics : Hungary, from Population Statistics (J. Lahmeyer)
Hungarian banknotes 1930ff, from Ron Wise's World Paper Money and from Currency Museum
REFERENCE Peter F. Sugar (ed.), A History of Hungary, Indiana Univ. Press 1990, 432 pp.
Hungarian New World, pp.165-197; The Man who Rules Hungary, pp.198-212, in : John Gunther, Behind the Curtain, NY : Harper & Bros. (1948) 1949 [G]
Annotated Memoirs of General Miklos Horthy, from Historical Text Archive, Online Book
Wallace J. Campbell, The History of CARE, NY : Praeger 1990 [G]
Article : Hungary, in : Britannica Book of the Year 1945 pp.347-348, 1946 pp.377-378 [G]
Article : Hungary, in : Americana Annual 1945 pp.348-349, 1946 pp.354-356, 1947 pp.330-331 [G]
Article : Peace Conference and Pacts, in : Americana Annual 1947 pp.542-546 (on events of 1946) [G]
Article : Hungary, in : Funk & Wagnall's New Standard Encyclopedia Year Book 1946 pp.211-214 [G]
Article : Hungary, in : New International Year Book 1945 pp.262-263 [G]
George Schöpfflin, Hungary, pp.95-111 in : Martin McCauley (ed.), Communist Power in Europe 1944-1949, London : MacMillan 1977 [G]
Elizabeth Barker, British Policy toward Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary 1944-1946, pp.201-220 in : Martin McCauley (ed.), Communist Power in Europe 1944-1949, London : MacMillan 1977 [G]


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on November 25th 2009

Click here to go Home
Click here to go to Information about KMLA, WHKMLA, the author and webmaster
Click here to go to Statistics