János Kádár

János József Kádár (; ; né Czermanik; 26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989) was a Hungarian Communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, a position he held for 32 years. Declining health led to his retirement in 1988, and he died in 1989 after being hospitalized for pneumonia.

Kádár was born in Fiume in poverty to a single mother. After living in the countryside for some years, Kádár and his mother moved to Budapest. He joined the Party of Communists in Hungary's youth organization, KIMSZ, and went on to become a prominent figure in the pre-1939 Communist party, eventually becoming First Secretary. As a leader, he would dissolve the party and reorganize it as the Peace Party, but the new party failed to win much popular support.

After World War II, with Soviet support, the Communist party took power in Hungary. Kádár rose through the party ranks, serving as Interior Minister from 1948 to 1950. In 1951, he was imprisoned by the government of Mátyás Rákosi but was released in 1954 by reformist Prime Minister Imre Nagy. On 25 October 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, Kádár replaced Ernő Gerő as General Secretary of the Party, taking part in Nagy's revolutionary government. A week later, he broke with Nagy over his decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. After Soviet intervention in Hungary, Kádár was selected to lead the country. He ordered Nagy to be executed shortly after coming to power. He gradually moderated, releasing the majority of remaining prisoners of this period in an amnesty in 1963. His leadership was characterized by unrelenting '' Realpolitik''; for a long time, he successfully maneuvered between Moscow's wishes, local interests and the expectations of the Western world. In an interview with a Western journalist, he called himself a "toiler for compromise".

Kádár was succeeded by Károly Grósz as General Secretary on 22 May 1988. Grósz would only serve a year in this post due to the fall of Communism in Europe in 1989. During his time as leader of Hungary, Kádár pushed for an improvement in standards of living. Kádár increased international trade with non-communist countries, in particular those of Western Europe. Kádár's policies differed from those of other Communist leaders, such as Nicolae Ceaușescu, Enver Hoxha, and Wojciech Jaruzelski, all of whom favored more orthodox interpretations of Marxism–Leninism. Kádár's reformist policies and the increasing commercial ties to the Western World would in turn worsen relations with Leonid Brezhnev in the Soviet Union. As the leader of Hungary, Kádár attempted to liberalize the Hungarian economy with a greater focus on consumer goods, in what would become known as Goulash Communism.

Childhood

János Kádár was an illegitimate son of the soldier János Krezinger and the servant maid Borbála Czermanik. Krezinger came from a Bavarian German origin smallholder family of Pusztaszemes, Somogy County. The mother, Borbála Csermanek was born in Ógyalla (today Hurbanovo, Slovakia) to a landless Slovak father and Hungarian mother.Gough 2006, p. 1. The parents of Borbála were too poor to provide schooling for the girl, thus the teenager girl had to work as maid in various villas. Soon Borbála got a job in the popular seaside resort town Opatija. Krezinger met Borbála during his military service in Opatija, but the detailed story of how they met is unknown. Kádár only met his father once, in 1960, when Kádár was already the leader of the country.

Kádár was born out of wedlock in Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) on 26 May 1912.Gough 2006, p. 2. The infant was registered in the Italian version of his name: Giovanni Giuseppe Czermanik (In Hungarian: János József Czermanik) because he was born in the Italian-established Santo Spirito Hospital. Being an illegitimate child, the infant could only receive the Czermanik family name of his mother. Abandoned, Borbála gave birth to János in the middle of the holiday season, as no one wanted to employ a single mother with a child. Borbála went to look for Krezinger, but his family wanted nothing to do with them. She then walked ten kilometres to the city of Kapoly, where she persuaded the Bálint family to care for her child for a fee. Borbála found work in Budapest.Gough 2006, p. 3. To avoid the pronunciation problems of the Slovak-origin Czermanik name in Budapest, the family changed the orthography of their name to Csermanek.

Although Kádár's foster father, Imre Bálint, was in charge, it was Bálint's brother, Sándor Bálint, that Kádár would remember as his true foster father. While Imre served in the army during World War I, Sándor was left to take care of Kádár. Sándor was the only man Kádár had a good relationship with throughout his early childhood. Kádár started working at an early age and helped Sándor take care of his sick wife. Kádár years later recalled how his early experiences moved him towards Marxist–Leninism. He recalls how he was accused of setting a building on fire when the true culprit was the corrupt inspector's son. Suddenly in 1918, at the age of six, Borbála reclaimed him, moved him to Budapest and enrolled him in school. In school he got bullied for his bumpkin manners and his peasant talk.Gough 2006, pp. 3–4.

Borbála worked hard to ensure that Kádár would get a good education. In the summer time, Kádár would find work in the countryside. He was seen as "alien" by his contemporaries, in the countryside they would call him a "city boy" while in the city they would call him a "country boy". Then, in 1920, Borbála got pregnant again; the father left soon. Kádár helped take care of his half-brother, Jenő.Gough 2006, pp. 6–7. At the Cukor Street Elementary School, Kádár proved to be a bright student. He skipped school often, and his mother tried beatings to make it stop. Classes were easy for him and he skipped school to play sports. He did read often however, but his mother was unimpressed by this and sarcastically asked him if he was a "gentleman of leisure". Kádár left school at the age of fourteen in 1926. Kádár started his apprenticeship as a car mechanic. After he was turned down as a car mechanic, he started work as an apprentice of Sándor Izsák, chief Hungarian representative of Torpedo Typewriter Company in the autumn of 1927. Typewriter mechanics had a high standing among the working class, there were only 160 of them in the country.

Party work

His first meeting with Marxist literature came in 1928 after he won a junior chess competition organised by the Barbers Trade Union. His prize was Friedrich Engels

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