Károly Kiss

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Károly Kiss (born September 24, 1903 in Bicske , Fejér county , † December 4, 1983 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian politician of the Hungarian Communist Party MKP (Magyar Kommunista Párt) , the party of the Hungarian working people MDP (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja) and later the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party MSZMP (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt) , who was temporarily Vice-Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.

Life

Shoemaker, communist functionary and arrests

1920s

Kiss, the son of a shoemaker , began vocational training in his father's workshop at the age of twelve in 1915 after attending school and in 1922 became a worker in the Korondi shoe factory. In 1922 he became a member of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party MSZDP (Magyarországi Szociáldemokrata Párt) before he joined the illegal Hungarian Communist Party MKP (Magyar Kommunista Párt) in 1923 . In 1925, together with István Vági, he was one of the co-founders of the then Hungarian Socialist Workers Party MSZMP (Magyarországi Szocialista Munkáspárt) and in September 1925 attended a working class party school in Vienna .

After his return, Kiss was arrested for the first time in July 1926 for preparing for a violent overthrow of state and society and sentenced to 22 months' imprisonment. After his early release from prison, he was elected a worker in the Biermann shoe factory in July 1927 and a member of the regional committee of the MKP for Northern Hungary in early 1928. In June 1929 he was arrested again and this time sentenced to 18 months in prison.

1930s and World War II period

After his release from prison in December 1930 he took a job as a worker in the street shoe factory Népszínház and in 1931 was commissioned with Sándor Fürst to set up a Hungarian secretariat for the Communist International to organize the work of the illegal Communist Party. During this time he lived under police surveillance and most recently with forged identity documents.

Shortly before a large wave of arrests, he managed to escape to Moscow in the summer of 1931 , where he lived in exile for a year and studied at the International Lenin School , the Comintern's training center in Moscow. At a meeting in May 1932 in Vienna he was elected a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the MKP and after his return to Hungary in July 1932 he was arrested again for membership in the communist movement and sentenced to another 18 months' imprisonment. In the subsequent appeal proceedings that he initiated from prison , the prison sentence was increased to 3 years 8 months. After his early release in June 1934, he was obliged to take up residence in Budapest, where he worked in the Angyalföldön shoe factory.

In 1939, Kiss began working as a worker in the Gyárába shoe factory in Nice . He was arrested again in May 1941 using a false name in Kistarcsa and interned in Nagykanizsa . In the summer of 1943 he was fired and returned to Budapest, where he found new employment as a worker in the Ládi shoe factory. After the occupation of Hungary by Germany as part of the Margarethe company during World War II , he was arrested again for participating in the armed resistance organized by the MKP Central Committee in the ninth and tenth districts of Budapest, Ferencváros and Kőbánya .

On January 19, 1945 Kiss was one of the central leaders of the MKP and was elected to its central committee on February 22, 1945. In the following years he was an employee of the management department of the Central Committee, of which he became head in May 1945. On April 2, 1945 he was elected to the Provisional National Assembly.

Political career in the post-war period and in the People's Republic of Hungary

Member of Parliament and Deputy President

On May 21, 1945, Kiss became a member of the MKP's Politburo and was a member of it until September 20, 1946. He then became chairman of the Party Control Commission in September 1946 and held this position for ten years until 1956. In the election of November 4, 1945, he was confirmed in Budapest as a member of the Hungarian Parliament (Országgyűlés) and in the election on August 31, 1947 and from 1945 to 1949 was also secretary of the parliamentary presidium. In addition, he was a member of the Budapest National Committee between 1945 and 1949 and Vice President of the City Council in 1948. In 1947 he was awarded the Hungarian Medal of Freedom (Magyar Szabadság Érdemrend) and in 1948 the Hungarian Order of Merit (Magyar Köztársasági Érdemrend) .

In the election of May 15, 1949, Kiss was elected as a candidate on the joint list of the Hungarian Independent Popular Front MFN (Magyar Függetlenségi Népfront) and the Patriotic Popular Front HNF (Hazafias Népfront) as a member of parliament and represented Zala County in this until 1967 . During this time he was also a graduate of the Miklós Zrínyi - Military Academy (Zrínyi Miklós Katonai Akadémia) from 1949 to 1952 . On May 30, 1949, he was again a member of the Central Committee of the MDP and was at the same time from August 23, 1949 to May 15, 1951, alongside Daniel Nagy as Vice-Chairman of the Presidium of the Hungarian People's Republic, one of the two deputies of President Árpád Szakasits and Sándor Rónai . At the Central Committee meeting on May 31, 1950, he became a member of the party's organizing committee.

Politburo member, Vice Prime Minister and Foreign Minister

On March 1, 1951, Kiss was elected a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee at the IInd Party Congress of the MDP. Shortly thereafter, he was in April 1951. next Mihály Farkas and István Kovacs to the Politburo members who at the instigation of MDP-General Matyas Rakosi conducted the investigations leading to the arrest and political disempowerment of Politburo member Janos Kadar and Foreign Minister Gyula Kállai for alleged support of Josip Broz Tito led.

On May 12, 1951, Kiss succeeded Kállais himself as Foreign Minister and at the same time Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers and held these positions until November 12, 1952. Erik Molnár was then succeeded as Foreign Minister from September 24, 1947 to August 5 1948 held this office. At the meeting of the Central Committee plenum on June 28, 1953, he lost his office as a member of the Politburo and as a member of the Organizing Committee, but remained chairman of the party control commission. During the Central Committee Plenum on July 21, 1956, however, he became a member of the Central Committee of the MDP again.

Hungarian popular uprising in 1956 and the Kádár era

During the Hungarian people's uprising on October 24, 1956, he first became a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the MDP, then lost this office two days later, before he was again a Politburo member from October 28 to 31, 1956.

On November 2, 1956, he went on a visit to Moscow with Antal Apró , György Marosán and Sándor Nógrádi to ask the Soviet Union for help in the fight against the insurgents. After he returned from a return visit travel together with János Kádár from Moscow on November 7, 1956 he was again a member of the Political Bureau of the MDP, which after the suppression of the popular uprising in December 1956 in Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party MSZMP (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt) was renamed . In the period that followed, the party was reorganized and state organizations were reestablished.

At the meeting of the Politburo on February 26, 1957, Kiss was appointed Secretary of the Central Committee for Party Organization and in May 1957 a member of the Presidium of the People's Republic of Hungary. On November 26, 1958, as Vice-Chairman of the Presidium of the People's Republic of Hungary, alongside Dániel Nagy, he was again deputy to President István Dobi . He held this position until his replacement by György Marosán on October 7, 1961. In 1958 he received the Workers and Peasants Medal (Munkás-paraszt Hatalomért Emlékérem) . He himself was the last successor to István Kristóf from October 7, 1961 until his replacement by Lajos Cseterki on April 14, 1967, Secretary of the Presidium of the People's Republic of Hungary.

After he was released from his position as Central Committee Secretary in September 1961, he resigned as a member of the Politburo at the Central Committee plenum on August 16, 1962, but remained a member of the Central Committee of the MSZMP until his death. In 1967 he was awarded the Socialist Patriotic Order of Merit (Szocialista Hazáért Érdemrend) . In addition, he was Vice-President of the National Council of the SZOT (Szakszervezetek Országos Tanácsa) trade unions from May 6, 1967 until his death, and Vice- President of the Hungarian Solidarity Committee MSZB (Magyar Szolidaritási Bizottság) from 1970 until his death . Shortly before his death he was awarded the Order of the Flag of the People's Republic of Hungary (A Magyar Népköztársaság Zászlórendje) .

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