History - The Rákosi dictatorship

After the war

• Independent Smallholders’ Party won > but communists had to be included (Red Army)

• elimination of democratic parties

• 1947 election frauds, communists won > 1948 year of communist turn

• Hungarian Communist Party + Social Democratic Party > Hungarian Working People’s Party

State Protection Authority

• Gábor Péter, directly to Rákosi

• network of spies

• fabricated charges, force, blackmailing, torture

• no trial or legal sentence

Resettlement

• class enemies

• agricultural work, inhumane conditions, strict control

• confiscated properties

• Hungarian Gulags > mines

Purges in Communist Party

• hirelings of Tito (László Rajk) > executed

• former social democrats (Árpád Szakasits) > expelled

• communists (János Kádár, Géza Losonczi) > imprisioned

Personality cult

• Stalin + Mátyás Rákosi (chief secretary, PM)

• photos: buildings, schools, transportation

• arists > idealised

• theaters > Rákosi’s talents

• science references

• parades, marches, celebrations

Economy

• Comecon > self-sufficiency, no trading outside Communist Block

• forced industrialisation > no raw material, insufficient industry, different industrial trends

Five Year Plan

• from 1950

• political aims, not capability of Hungary

• always modified

• decreased productivity, worse starndards of living, housing problems, everyday products wanished, food shorta

Management of labour

• no changing jobs

• piecework, norm of output

• Stakhanovist workers

Land reform

• collectivisation of farms

• state owneship superior, break ability to resist, transfer resources to idustry

• propaganda, taxes, requisition, class enemy, force

• shortage of food, decreased production

Society

• no landowning layer (aristocracy)

• leading layers, middle class > deprived of properties, businesses, resettlement

• wealthy layers down, poor layers up

• migration to industrial centres

Demographic

• effort to increase

• abortion banned (51-55) > Ratkó Era (Minister of Public Health)

After Stalin’s death

• Kruschev > problems in satellite states

• Moscow > eliminate problems (personality cult, roced industrialisation, persecutions)

Replacement of Rákosi

• made to resign

• still chief secretary > Stalinism stayes, power struggle