# Imre Nagy Hungarian communist politician, twice prime minister, and the central figure of the [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956]] — a lifelong party man who ended up leading a revolt against the party and was hanged for it. ## Arc - A prisoner of war in Russia in the First World War who joined the Bolsheviks, Nagy spent the interwar years largely in Moscow and returned with the Soviet-installed leadership in 1944. - As prime minister **1953–1955** he ran the "New Course," easing the terror of the Rákosi years, releasing internees and slowing forced collectivisation. He was removed and expelled from the party in 1955. - Reinstated by popular demand on **24 October 1956**, the day after the revolution began, he moved with it rather than against it: multi-party government, an end to one-party rule, and on **1 November** a declaration of Hungarian neutrality and withdrawal from the [[Warsaw Pact]]. - Soviet forces attacked on **4 November 1956**. Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy, was given a written safe-conduct, and was seized on leaving it. - After a secret trial he was executed on **16 June 1958** and buried face-down in an unmarked plot in section 301 of Budapest's New Public Cemetery. ## The reburial, and why it matters here On **16 June 1989**, on the thirty-first anniversary of the execution, Nagy and four co-defendants were publicly reburied in Heroes' Square before a crowd of some 200,000. Among the speakers was a 26-year-old law graduate, [[Viktor Orbán]], who used the platform to demand free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The speech made Orbán a national figure and is the origin point of the political career documented across this vault. > [!note] The symmetry > Nagy was a communist executed for turning against the system that made him; Orbán entered public life at Nagy's graveside as a liberal anti-communist and later built the system documented at [[Illiberal Democracy]] and [[State Capture]]. Both careers are cases of the same phenomenon — **a politician remembered for the movement he ended up leading rather than the one he came from.** ## See Also - [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956]] · [[Hungarian History Hub]] - [[Viktor Orbán]] · [[Warsaw Pact]] · [[Soviet Union]] · [[Cold War]] - [[Dictators in World History Hub]]