The Hungarian Working People's Party (, abbr. MDP) was the ruling

communist party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...

from 1948 to 1956. It was formed by a merger of the

Hungarian Communist Party The Hungarian Communist Party ( hu, Magyar Kommunista Párt, abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary ( hu, Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja, abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar ...

(MKP) and the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP).Neubauer, John, and Borbála Zsuzsanna Török.
The Exile and Return of Writers from East-Central Europe: A Compendium
'. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. p. 140 Ostensibly a union of equals, the merger had actually occurred as a result of massive pressure brought to bear on the Social Democrats by both the Hungarian Communists, as well as the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. The few independent-minded Social Democrats who had not been sidelined by Communist

salami tactics Salami slicing tactics, also known as salami slicing, salami tactics, the salami-slice strategy, or salami attacks, is the practice of using a series of many small actions to produce a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawf ...

were pushed out in short order after the merger, leaving the party as essentially the MKP under a new name. Its leader was

Mátyás Rákosi Mátyás Rákosi (; born Mátyás Rosenfeld; 9 March 1892
– 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian communis ...

until 1956, then

Ernő Gerő Ernő Gerő (; born Ernő Singer; 8 July 1898 – 12 March 1980) was a Hungarian Communist leader in the period after World War II and briefly in 1956 the most powerful man in Hungary as the second secretary of its ruling communist party. Ear ...

in the same year for three months, and eventually

János Kádár János József Kádár (; ; 26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989), born János József Czermanik, was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, a position he held for 32 years. Declining health l ...

until the party's dissolution. Other minor legal Hungarian political parties were allowed to continue as independent coalition parties until late 1949 but were completely subservient to the MDP. During the

Hungarian Revolution of 1956 The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

, the party was reorganized into the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP) by a circle of communists around Kádár and

Imre Nagy Imre Nagy (; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (''de facto'' Prime Minister) of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader ...

. The new government of Nagy declared to assess the uprising not as counter-revolutionary but as a "great, national and democratic event" and to dissolve

State Security Police A security agency is a governmental organization that conducts intelligence activities for the internal security of a nation. They are the domestic cousins of foreign intelligence agencies, and typically conduct counterintelligence to thwart other ...

(ÁVH). Hungary's declaration to become neutral and to exit the Warsaw Pact caused the second Soviet intervention on 4 November 1956. After 8 November 1956, the MSZMP, under Kádár's leadership, fully supported the Soviet Union.

Chief functionaries of the Hungarian Working People's Party

Leader

Chairman

Electoral history

National Assembly elections

References