György Marosan

György Marosan

György Marosán (born May 15, 1908 in Hosszúpályi , Hajdú-Bihar County , † December 20, 1992 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian diplomat and politician of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party MSZDP (Magyarországi Szociáldemokrata Párt) , the Hungarian Communist Party MKP (Magyar Communista Párt ) , the party of the Hungarian working people MDP (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja) and later the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party MSZMP (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt) , who, as Central Committee secretary and political bureau member, was one of the leading personalities in the beginning of the Kádár era after the Hungarian popular uprising in 1956 and lost all political offices a few years later.

Life

Origin, trade union official and social democrat

Marosán, son of a cantor and teacher , grew up in an orphanage in Debrecen from 1917 before he was brought to Oradea by the Romanian occupation forces with his brothers because of their Romanian descent after the Hungarian-Romanian War in autumn 1919 . However, the brothers were not considered Romanians there either.

In 1922 Marosán became a member of the bakery workers' union and was involved as a union official. In addition, he finished four years of primary school education before moving to Budapest in 1926, where he worked in a bread factory until 1934. Shortly after his arrival in Hungary he became a union member there and in 1927 he joined the Hungarian Social Democratic Party MSZDP (Magyarországi Szociáldemokrata Párt) as a member. In 1939 he became general secretary of the food workers' union and in 1941 a member of the main board of the MSZDP. In 1942 he was one of the initiators and members of a commission to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the death of Attila József , who killed himself in front of a freight train at the age of 32 and is one of the most important poets in the country.

Marosán was arrested in the summer of 1942 and was then in custody for three months. In 1943 he was elected national secretary for organization of the MSZDP as well as general secretary of the trade union ÉMOSZ. After the occupation of Hungary by Germany as part of the Margarethe company during World War II , he was arrested in March 1944 and spent the subsequent period in the Nagykanizsa internment camp . In October 1944 he took part in illegal events in preparation for the party's work in the post-war period and in January 1945 he was one of the organizers of a meeting of leading Social Democrats with representatives of Prime Minister Béla Miklós' interim government in Debrecen.

Post-war period and time up to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising

Supporters of the union of MSZDP and MKP

On April 2, 1945, Marosán became a member of the Provisional Parliament and then belonged to the Parliament (Országgyűlés) with the exception of the legislative period between 1953 and 1958 to 1963. On the XXXIV. Party congress of the MSZDP he became a member of the party executive and the political committee and six months later at the XXXV. Party Congress elected First Secretary of the MSZDP. During this time there was a strengthening of the party's executive work, which was largely led by personalities from the peasant camp. In addition to his functions in the MSZDP, he was also President of the National Association for Workers' Songs (Magyarországi Munkásdalegyletek Országos Szövetségének) , member of the Presidium of the Yugoslav-Hungarian Friendship Society, member of the National Office of the Hungarian-Soviet Cultural Society and member of the National Committee of Budapest.

Marosán was considered to be one of the most ardent supporters of an association between the Hungarian Social Democratic Party MSZDP (Magyarországi Szociáldemokrata Párt) and the Hungarian Communist Party MKP (Magyar Kommunista Párt) after the Second World War. As a result, he came into confrontation with other leading personalities of the MSZDP such as Károly Peyer , Anna Kéthly , Ferenc Szeder , Imre Szélig , Vilmos Böhm and Antal Bán , who saw the sovereignty of social democratic politics endangered and who advocated an organizational separation of the two parties. He played a key role in the phase of the merger of the two parties, which also led to the expulsion of some leading social democrats.

Founding of the MDP, arrest in 1950 and sentenced to death

When the MSZDP and MKP merged to form the Hungarian Working People's Party ( MDP) (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja) on June 12, 1948 , Árpád Szakasits became party chairman and Mátyás Rákosi became general secretary of the party, while Marosán became secretary general after Mihály Farkas and János Kádárse general secretary . At the same time he became a member of the Politburo, a member of the Central Committee (ZK) and the organizational secretariat of the MDP. Two months later, in August 1948, he became First Secretary of the MDP of Budapest and held this office until July 1949.

On June 11, 1949, Marosán became minister of light industry in the government of Prime Minister István Dobi and formally held this ministerial office until August 4, 1950. His ministerial function was expanded in early 1950 when he became a member of the influential National Economic Council (Népgazdasági Tanácsnak) and next to it Became a member of the National Commission. At the same time he became a member of the Presidium of the Hungarian Independent Popular Front MFN (Magyar Függetlenségi Népfront) , which was responsible for drawing up the candidate list for the elections to the Hungarian Parliament (Országgyűlés) , and chairman of this organization in Budapest. In May 1950 he also became Central Committee secretary and head of the administrative department of the Central Committee of the MDP.

Marosán was arrested on July 6, 1950 and sentenced to death by hanging on trumped-up allegations of social democratic tendencies. However, the Supreme Court (Legfelső Bíróság) soon commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.

Rehabilitation and popular uprising in 1956

Marosán was released from prison in March 1956 and publicly rehabilitated on July 21, 1956 after Rákosis was replaced as General Secretary by Ernő Gerő . At the same time he was resumed as a member of the Politburo and the Central Committee of the MDP and on July 30, 1956 he was appointed Vice Prime Minister in the government of Prime Minister András Hegedüs .

On the same day he traveled to a meeting with functionaries of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the Thuringian Forest and had numerous conversations with other party functionaries because of the troubled situation in Hungary and the use of armed forces. During the actual popular uprising in October 1956, however, he remained cautious, but was appointed by Kádar as Minister of State without portfolio in the Revolutionary Workers 'and Peasants' Government formed in Szolnok on November 4, 1956 after Prime Minister Imre Nagy was deposed by Kádár. In the following years his influence grew after the bloody and final suppression of the popular uprising with the support of the Soviet Army .

Kádár era and the time of goulash communism

Promotion to top positions at MSZMP

With the founding of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party MSZMP (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt) as legal successor to the MDP on November 7, 1956, Marosán became a member of its Politburo and was one of the leading politicians in the early days of the subsequent era of Kádár and so-called goulash communism as a milder form of state socialism the MSZMP. In February 1957 he became Central Committee Secretary for Organization and thus de facto deputy to General Secretary János Kádár. A few weeks later, on April 30, 1957, he was also entrusted with the management of the temporary executive committee of the MSZMP in Budapest and thus first secretary of the party leadership there. At the National Conference (Országos Értekezlete) of the MSZMP on June 29, 1957, he was confirmed in his functions as a member of the Politburo and the Central Committee and at the same time elected to one of the five members of the Central Committee's Secretariat. On January 28, 1958, he supported the replacement of János Kádár by Ferenc Münnich as Prime Minister.

In his party functions, Marosán, who between 1957 and 1962 was also a member of the Presidium of the Patriotic Popular Front HNF (Hazafias Népfront) and the council of the capital Budapest, was reassigned at the VII Party Congress on December 5, 1959. In addition, he became a member of the Presidium of the Hungarian People's Republic in January 1960, its collective head of state, chaired by István Dobi, and then succeeded Károly Kiss alongside Dániel Nagy as Vice-Chairman of the Presidium from October 7, 1961 to March 21, 1963 of the People's Republic of Hungary Deputy President Dobi.

Loss of all offices and exclusion from the party

In the course of 1962, Marosán accused the party leadership, and especially Kádár, of a growing personality cult and a return to Stalinism . In his opinion, this leads to the working class disregarding the decisions of the Central Committee. In addition, the party is tracking members. He also accused Kádár of failing to implement norms and resolutions of the collective party leadership. As a result of the growing conflict, he gave up his duties on September 1, 1962.

At the meeting of the Central Committee on October 12, 1962, he was released from his position as Central Committee Secretary and also lost his membership in the Politburo. A year later, in 1963, he was replaced as Vice Chairman of the Presidium of the People's Republic of Hungary and thus one of the two Vice Presidents.

In 1965, Marosán was finally expelled from the MSZMP and was only accepted as a member again in 1972. After the end of the Kádár era, he was made an honorary member at the founding party congress of the Hungarian Socialist Party MSZP (Magyar Szocialista Párt) , but was no longer politically active.

Web links

• Entry in Történelmi Tár (Hungarian)
• Entry on the homepage of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
• Gyorgy Marosan, 84; Hungarian Communist . In: The New York Times, December 21, 1992