Second Hungarian Republic

From September 1944 until April 1945, as World War II in Europe drew to a close, the Red Army occupied Hungary. The Siege of Budapest lasted almost two months and much of the city was destroyed. Neither the Western Allies nor the Soviet Union supported any changes to Hungary's pre-1938 borders, so the peace treaty signed by Hungary in 1947 declared that "The decisions of the Vienna Award of 2 November 1938 are declared null and void".[http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS076.pdf Treaty of Peace with Hungary] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041204184436/http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS076.pdf |date=2004-12-04 }} This meant that Hungary's borders were moved back to those that existed on 1 January 1938 and it lost the territories it had regained between 1938 and 1941. The Soviet Union also annexed Sub-Carpathia, some of which had been part of Hungary before 1938.

The Soviets set up an alternative government in Debrecen on 21 December 1944{{cite book |last=Kenez |first=Peter |title=Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: The Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944-1948 |date=22 May 2006 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521857666 |page=30}} before capturing Budapest between 18 January and 13 February, 1945. Zoltán Tildy became the provisional prime minister. The Soviet government would demand not merely the return of all materials taken from the USSR, but also the payment of 300 million USD in commodities to Moscow, 200 million to Czechoslovakia and 100 million to Romania.{{cite book |last=Siklos |first=Pierre L. |title=War Finance, Reconstruction, Hyperinflation and Stabilization in Hungary, 1938-48 |year=1991 |publisher=Saint Martin's Press |location=New York City|isbn=978-0-312-05708-4|pages=77-78}}

The combination of high demand for finance to pay war reparations with a very weak system of tax collection meant that during 1945 and 1946, the national currency, the pengő, would be destroyed by the most ruinous hyperinflation in recorded history.{{cite book|last1=McIndoe-Calder |first1=Tara |last2=Bedi |first2=Tara |last3=Mercado |first3=Rogelio |title=Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe: Background, Impact and Policy |year=2019 |publisher=Springer International Publishing |isbn=9783030310158 |pages=34-35 |chapter=Historic Hyperinflation Episodes}} The hyperinflation was largely due to the inability of tax revenues to pay the country’s war debts, but some historians argue it was a deliberate policy of the Soviet Union to destroy Hungary’s middle class.{{cite book|last=Clark|first=Jeff R.|title=Macroeconomics for Managers|year=1990|publisher=Allyn and Bacon|isbn=9780205122103 |page=271}} The only way to restore sanity to the economy was a new currency, so the forint was introduced in 1946.

Between 1946 and 1948, half of Hungary's ethnic German minority (around 250,000 people){{cite book|first=Chad Carl|last=Bryant|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NOCOVmwJFMMC&q=Prague+in+Black%3A+Nazi+Rule+and+Czech+Nationalism|title=Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2007|page=209}} were deported to Germany and there was a forced "exchange of population" between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.{{cite book|last1=Rieber|first1=Alfred J.|title=Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939-1950|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135274894|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7kSMAQAAQBAJ&q=a+forced+%22exchange+of+population%22+between+Hungary+and+Czechoslovakia&pg=PA87|language=en}}

File:Nagy Ferenc-MTI 1946.jpg

In elections held in November 1945, the Independent Smallholders' Party won 57% of the vote. The Hungarian Communist Party, now under the leadership of Mátyás Rákosi and Ernő Gerő, two veterans from the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, received support from only 17% of the population. The Soviet commander in Hungary, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, refused to allow the Smallholders Party to form a government. Instead Voroshilov established a coalition government with the communists holding some of the key posts. Under Parliament, the leader of the Smallholders, Zoltán Tildy, was named president and Ferenc Nagy prime minister in February 1946. Mátyás Rákosi became deputy prime minister.

László Rajk became minister of the interior and in this post established the security police (ÁVO). In February 1947 the police began arresting leaders of the Smallholders Party and the National Peasant Party. It also pressured both parties to expel those members who weren't willing to do the Communists' bidding as "fascists."{{Citation needed|date=January 2025}} Several prominent figures in both parties escaped abroad. Later, Rákosi boasted that he had dealt with his partners in the government, one by one, "cutting them off like slices of salami."{{cite book|year=2019|first1=Lawrence|last1=Freedman|first2=Jeffrey|last2=Michaels|title=The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy: New, Updated and Completely Revised|isbn=9781137573506|page=123}}

By 1947, the power of the other parties in the coalition had been reduced in favour of the Communists, and they became the largest single party in elections held that year. The Communists were the dominant partners in the coalition People's Independence Front government. Nagy was replaced as prime minister by the more pliable Lajos Dinnyés.

In October 1947, Rákosi gave the leaders of the non-Communist parties an ultimatum: cooperate with a new, Communist-dominated coalition government or go into exile.{{cite tech report|url=http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/hutoc.html|title=Hungary: a country study|publisher=Library of Congress Federal Research Division|date=December 1989}} The Social Democratic Party effectively ceased to exist as an independent organization, and Independent Smallholders' Party secretary Béla Kovács was arrested and sent to Siberia.{{cite book |last=Willis |first=Jim |title=Daily Life Behind the Iron Curtain |year=2013 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=9780313397639 |page=97}} Other opposition leaders such as Anna Kéthly, Ferenc Nagy and István Szabó were imprisoned or sent into exile.{{cite book|chapter=Hungary|last=Argentieri|first=Federigo|editor-last1=Curry|editor-first1=Jane Leftwich |editor-last2=Wolchik|editor-first2=Sharon L.|title=Central and East European Politics From Communism to Democracy|year=2018|publisher=Rowman and Littlefield Publishers|isbn=9781538100899|page=290}}

{{History of Hungary}}

The Republic of Hungary effectively ended in June 1948, when the Social Democrats were forced to merge with the Communists to form the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP). However, the few independent-minded Social Democrats still left in the party were pushed out in short order. For all intents and purposes, this left the MDP as the MKP under a new name. In August, Tildy was forced out as president in favour of Social Democrat-turned-Communist Árpád Szakasits. That December, Dinnyés was replaced as leader of the Smallholders and prime minister by the openly pro-Communist István Dobi. At the 1949 elections, voters were presented with a single list from the Communist-controlled Independent People's Front, which carried 95 percent of the vote. By this time, fellow travelers had taken over the other parties and turned them into loyal partners of the Communists.

On 18 August 1949, the Parliament passed Hungary's first written constitution (1949/XX.) – a near-carbon copy of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union. The name of the country became the People's Republic of Hungary, a "country of workers and peasants" where "every authority is held by the working people".{{Citation needed|date=January 2025}} Socialism was declared as the main goal of the nation. A new coat of arms was adopted with Communist symbols, such as the red star, a hammer, and an ear of wheat.

• History of Hungary

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{{Years in Hungary}}

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Hungary, Second

Second Hungarian Republic

Second Hungarian Republic

Category:States and territories established in 1946

Category:States and territories disestablished in 1949

Category:1946 establishments in Hungary

Category:1949 disestablishments in Hungary

Second Hungarian Republic

Second Hungarian Republic

Second Hungarian Republic

Second Hungarian Republic