Imre Nagy (7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958)

Imre Nagy was born in Kaposvár in a Calvinist family of poor farm hands. Dropping out of secondary grammar school (because of his father’s losing his job and lack of money), Nagy earns a locksmith’s apprentice certificate and works in a workshop and in agriculture, too. Later he works in a lawyer’s office and at the same time goes to a commerce school until he is drafted in the army.

During World War I, he fights on the Italian front and is wounded in 1915. After recovery he gets a machine gunner’s training and is promoted lance corporal. In 1916 he is sent to the Russian front, where he is wounded again and taken prisoner. He is kept in the Berezovka camp until summer 1918, and in 1919 he works for one year at Lake Baikal as ship builder, locksmith and lumberman. In the civil war he fights in the Red Army and in 1920 he joins the Hungarian and Russian Communist Parties.

In 1921 he returns to Kaposvár, where he is employed by an insurance company and actively participates in the local Social Democratic Party and Trade Union. He marries Mária Égető, daughter of a well-know social democratic family, in a church wedding. They have one child. Because of confrontations, Imre Nagy is expelled from the party and becomes a founding member of the Socialist Workers’ Party of Hungary. He is arrested several times and in 1928 he flees to Vienna. In 1928 and 1929 he works illegally in Budapest as the head of the Agricultural Department of the Communist Party, becomes editor of the Peasants’ Paper and plans to found a peasants’ party.

In 1930 he emigrates with his family to Moscow, the Soviet Union. At the 2nd congress of the Communist Party of Hungary held in early 1930 he is accused of rightist deviation and forced to withdraw his views. In 1935 he is expelled from the party (arrested briefly and loses his job, too), but after a lengthy procedure, he is taken back. He works for the International Agronomy Institute (1930–1936) and the Statistical Office (1937–38). He writes a great number of articles, studies and books on agrarian issues in Hungarian, Russian and German. Several of his writings are published in the Hungarian periodicals Sarló és kalapács (Hammer and Sickle) and Új hang (New Voice). Later he becomes one of the editors of the Hungarian language programs of the Moscow Radio and the editor in chief of Radio Kossuth broadcast from Tbilisi during World War II.