János Kádár

Childhood

János Kádár was an illegitimate son of the soldier János Krezinger and the servant maid Borbála Csermanek. 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. 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. The infant was registered in the Italian version of his name: Giovanni Giuseppe Czermanik (In Hungarian: János József Csermanek) because he was born in the Italian-established Santo Spirito Hospital. Being an illegitimate child, the infant could only receive the Csermanek 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. 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 Marxism–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.

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. 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's Anti-Dühring. The tournament organiser explained to Kádár that if he didn't understand it after his first reading, he should re-read it again until he understood it. Kádár followed his advice, even if his friends were "unimpressed" by his reading. As he later noted later in his life, he did not understand the reading but it got him thinking: "Immutable laws and connections in the world which I had not suspected." While it may be true that as Kádár comments that the book had great influence over him, it was in 1929 when he was fired after he flared up at his employer after he talked condescendingly towards Kádár. When the Great Depression hit Hungary, Kádár was the first to be fired. What ensued was low paid jobs and poverty. He later became unemployed, and it was this experience which brought him into contact with the Communist Party of Hungary. According to Kádár he became a member of the party in 1931.

In September 1930, Kádár took part in an organised trade union strike. The strike was crushed by the authorities, and many of his fellow Communists were arrested. In the aftermath of the failed strike, he supported the party by gathering signatures for candidates of the Socialist Workers' Bloc, an attempt by the Communist Party to create a front which would win over new supporters. This attempt was thwarted by the authorities, and new arrests ensued. In June 1931, he joined the Communist youth organization, the Communist Young Workers' Association (KIMSZ). He joined the Sverdlov party cell, named after Soviet Yakov Sverdlov. His alias within the party became János Barna. During his early membership, the party was illegal, following the crushing of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic. In December 1931, the authorities had been able to track him down, and Kádár was arrested on charges of spreading communism, and being a communist. He denied the charges, and because of lack of evidence, was released. He was however under constant police surveillance, and after some days, he was back in contact with KIMSZ. He was given new responsibilities, and by May 1933 he became a member of the KIMSZ Budapest committee. Because of his promotion in the Communist hierarchy, he was given a new alias, Róna. The party suggested, but Kádár rejected, the offer of studying at the Lenin Institute in Moscow, claiming that he could not leave his family alone. His advance up the hierarchy came to an end when he was arrested on 21 June 1933 with other Communist activists. Kádár cracked because of police brutality, when he later confronted his fellow arrested Communists, he realized he had made a mistake and denied and retracted all his confessions. He was sentenced to two years in prison. Because of his confessions to the police, he was suspended from KIMSZ.

First Secretaryship

The new leadership after the last mass arrest consisted of Kádár as First Secretary, Gábor Péter, István Szirmai and Pál Tonhauser. During Kádár's first tenure as leader of the party, he faced many problems, the most important being that the Communists were becoming increasingly irrelevant in a fast-changing situation, mostly because of the Hungarian government's continuing interference. In a meeting with Árpád Szakasits, a left-leaning Social Democrat, Kádár was asked to stop the party's illegal infiltration of his party. This meeting led to criticism being mounted against him during a Central Committee plenum meeting. In February 1936, Peter came up with an idea; his idea was to dissolve the party so that party members independently could spread communism, while a small secret leadership structure could keep itself together for some years. This, he said, would stop the continuing mass arrest of the Communist party personnel and in turn strengthen the party for the future. While at the beginning Kádár was against such an idea, the idea grew on him and came to the conclusion that instead of dissolving the party, he would pretend to dissolve it and rename the party which would effectively throw the Hungarian authorities off their trail. The so-called "new party" was formed in August under the name, Peace Party. This decision was not supported by all, and the Moscow-based Hungarian Communists led by Mátyás Rákosi condemned the decision and domestic militants. Kádár disagreed with the criticism laid against him, claiming it was a "tactical retreat" which led to the renaming of the party, but with no changes to either the party's principles or structures. His attempted plan to fool the police failed, and the police continued arresting Hungarian Communists. Later in his life, this would be one of the few topics of his life Kádár would refuse to discuss.

After the German invasion of Hungary, the Peace Party, with other parties, established the Hungarian Front, the party's potential allies were still very wary of them. Therefore, the Popular Front was never able to win much support amongst the populace. In the aftermath of the invasion, the party under Kádár's leadership started partisan operations and created their own Military Committee. Kádár tried to cross the border into Yugoslavia in hope of making contact with the Yugoslav partisans and their leader, Josip Broz Tito. At the same time, Kádár probably hoped to establish better, and stronger, relations with the USSR; something they had been trying to do since 1942. Kádár was given a new identity as an army corporal trying to cross the Hungarian-Yugoslav border. This attempt failed, and he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. The authorities never figured out his real identity therefore members such as Rákosi thought he was a secret agent for the police. There is however no hard proof for these accusations, and incompetence remains the sole plausible reason. It was later proven, when SS officer Otto Winckelmann reported to Berlin that Kádár had been arrested, they had mistakenly confused Kádár for another Communist.

From leadership to show trials

Post–World War II career

After the Soviet conquest of Hungary, the Soviet–Hungarian Communist leadership sent Zoltán Vas and the new Kremlin-approved Central Committee of the Communist Party of Hungary; Kádár became a member. Kádár rose, not because of ideology, or technical knowledge, but rather for his organisational skills. He helped organize the Party's headquarters and designed its membership card. The Soviet troops stationed in Hungary committed mass rapes and pillaged Budapest and the countryside. Kádár told the Interior Minister, "The Soviet command caused really big difficulties in our work, especially in the beginning, and they still do". Kádár was appointed deputy chief of police. He had sharp critics, such as Rákosi's party deputy Ernő Gerő who felt his decision to dissolve the party during the war was a rash decision. Other peers felt he had been over-promoted. Nevertheless, he moved up to the Politburo of the Communist Party of Hungary. In February 1945, Rákosi was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of Hungary.

Rákosi's leadership consisted of Mihály Farkas the Minister of Defence. Kádár and Béla Kovács noted with puzzlement the leadership's total lack of interest in the domestic Communist's experience and outlook. As head of cadres, Kádár supervised membership appointments to the party. This position gave him contacts, some of whom would become very important to him in his later life. After failing to secure a majority in Parliament after the 1945 Hungarian parliamentary election, the Communist leadership started the divide and conquer strategy known as salami tactics. Kádár became a prominent figure during the period between 1945 and the 1947 Hungarian parliamentary election. Kádár had evolved a sense of rivalry with the Social Democratic Party of Hungary, claiming the party was "thrashing" them in government, and that they made it impossible for the Communists to negotiate policy with the Hungarian trade unions.

In 1946, Kádár campaigned for the Communist party in workers districts and factories. These areas were heavily contested between the Communists and the Social Democrats. The Communists were able to persuade the Social Democrats to hold elections in factories where the Communists held the majority. The clear majority results gained by the Communists during this election prompted the Social Democrats to postpone the rest of the election. At the 3rd Congress of the Communist Party of Hungary, Kádár was appointed one of Rákosi's two deputies. He was appointed deputy because of social and ethnic background, the majority of the leadership were of Jewish origins and were intellectuals, Kádár was however a "Hungarian" worker. In the aftermath of his appointment, he enrolled himself in Russian lessons and grew fond of reading, his favorite being The Good Soldier Švejk.

Show trial and rehabilitation

Rákosi told Kádár, in late August 1950, that former Social Democratic party leader Árpád Szakasits had confessed to being a spy for the capitalistic countries. Szakasits' imprisonment would be the start of a long purge against former social democrats, trade union officials, and high-standing Communist party members. The purge would last until 1953, the extent of the purge went so far that the ÁVH held files on around one million, literally one-tenth of Hungary's population at that time. The purges were enacted when Rákosi and his associates were in the middle of the country's collectivising agriculture and the rapid industrialisation efforts. Ernő Gerő's ambition to make Hungary a land made out of "steel and iron" led to a decline in the national standards of living.

At this point, Rákosi had started distrusting Kádár, leading Kádár to resign as Ministry of the Interior citing health and stress reasons for his choice. Kádár believed the longer down the ladder he climbed there was a bigger chance of not being purged. In this he was wrong, and he along with new Minister of the Interior Sándor Zöld, were criticised for not doing a proper enough job to remove the anti-socialist movement within the country. Kádár would later refute most of the allegations the Rákosi leadership put against, but to no avail, and for every letter he wrote to refute an allegation another allegation was put against him. He eventually gave up and in one letter Kádár even admitted to his faults; claiming that he was still "politically backward" and "ideologically untrained" when he headed the prewar Communist Party as First Secretary. Kádár concluded that he had been fooled by the capitalists and therefore offered his resignation from active politics. Instead of resigning, and losing his seats in the Central Committee and the Politburo, his memberships in these organisations were renewed at the party congress. Believing that his position was secure and that Rákosi had given him another chance, Kádár thought nothing more of it. This proved to be wrong, and by the end of March 1951, Rákosi informed the Soviets that Kádár along with Zöld and Gyula Kállai were to be imprisoned.

On 18 April 1951, Zöld had killed his whole family and committed suicide after finding out that Rákosi and his associates had decided to purge him from the party. When the authorities found their bodies, they decided to quickly gather the remaining two before they did something rash too. Kádár, who did not know what had just taken place, was at home taking care of his wife Maria, who had been in and out of the hospital. The Hungarian leadership decided to call him, asking Kádár to meet them at the party headquarters, when leaving his home he was stopped by ÁVH officers and the ÁVH head Gábor Péter.

Role in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Mátyás Rákosi was forced to resign on July in 1956, replaced by Gerő. On 23 October 1956, students marched through Budapest intending to present a petition to the government. The procession swelled as several people poured onto the streets. Gerő replied with a harsh speech that angered the people, and police opened fire. It proved to be the start of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. As the revolution spread throughout the country, Imre Nagy was called back as Prime Minister.

The Hungarian Working People's Party decided to dissolve itself and to reorganize itself as the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. On 25 October 1956, Kádár was elected General Secretary. He was also a member of the Nagy Government as Minister of State.

Nagy began a process of liberalization, removing state controls over the press, releasing many political prisoners, and expressing wishes to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. He formed a coalition government. Although the Soviet leaders issued a statement that they strove to establish a new relationship with Hungary on the basis of mutual respect and equality, in the first days of November, the Presidium of the Soviet Communist Party took a decision to crush the revolution by force.

On 1 November 1956, Kádár, together with Ferenc Münnich, left Hungary for Moscow with the support of the Soviet Embassy in Budapest. There the Soviet leaders tried to convince him that a "counter-revolution" was unfolding in Hungary that must be put to an end at any cost. He only agreed to change sides when the Soviet leaders informed him that the decision had already been taken to crush the revolution with the help of the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary. He was also told that unless he agreed to become prime minister in the new government, the Rákosi–Gerő leadership would be reinstalled. Although he was under duress, he did not, by his own admission, resist as much as he could have. In a speech given on 12 April 1989, he confessed to having played a role in Nagy's execution, calling it his "own personal tragedy". Writing in 1961, American journalist John Gunther said that "Kádár today looks like a man pursued by shadows, a walking corpse".

At dawn on 4 November 1956, Soviet tank divisions moved into Budapest with orders to crush the revolution. The proclamation of the so-called Revolutionary Workers'-Peasants' Government of Hungary, headed by Kádár, was broadcast from Szolnok the same day. He announced a "Fifteen Point Programme" for this new government:

Kádár era

Kádár assumed power in a critical situation. The country was under Soviet military administration for several months. The fallen leaders of the Communist party took refuge in the Soviet Union and were planning to regain power in Hungary. The Chinese, East German, and Czechoslovak leaders demanded severe reprisals against the perpetrators of the "counter-revolution". Despite the distrust surrounding the new leadership and the economic difficulties, Kádár was able to normalize the situation in a remarkably short time. This was due to the realization that, under the circumstances, it was impossible to break away from the Communist bloc. The Hungarian people realized that the promises of the West to help the Hungarian revolution were unfounded and that the logic of the Cold War determined the outcome. Hungary remained part of the Soviet sphere of influence with the tacit agreement of the West. Though influenced strongly by the Soviet Union, Kádár enacted a policy slightly contrary to that of Moscow, for example, allowing considerably large private plots for farmers of collective farms.

Starting in the early 1960s, he gradually lifted Rákosi's more draconian measures against free speech and movement, and also eased some restrictions on cultural activities. He even tolerated samizdat publications to a far greater extent than his counterparts. As Kádár once said, "What kind of regime is it that doesn't have even a tiny little opposition, just for show? But there's also the fact that they can't go beyond a certain limit, and if they try, they'll pay for it." Hungarians had much more freedom than their Eastern Bloc counterparts to go about their daily lives.

The result was a regime that was far more humane than other Communist regimes, especially so when compared to the first seven years of undisguised Communist rule in Hungary. However, it was not a liberal regime in any sense. The Communists maintained absolute control over the government and also encouraged citizens to join party organizations. The National Assembly, like its counterparts in other Communist countries, did little more than approve decisions already made by the MSZMP and its Politburo. Voters were presented with a single list from the Patriotic People's Front, which was dominated by the MSZMP. All prospective candidates had to accept the Front's program in order to stand; indeed, Kádár and his advisers used the Front to weed out candidates they deemed unacceptable. The secret police, the Ministry of Internal Affairs III, while operating with somewhat more restraint than their counterparts in other Eastern Bloc countries (such as the AVH), was nonetheless a feared tool of government control. The Hungarian media remained under censorship that was considered fairly onerous by Western standards, but far less stringent than was the case in other Communist countries.

Resignation, final months and death

János Kádár held power in Hungary until the "apparat coup" (which conducted by Mihail Gorbachev behind the scenes) in the spring of 1988, when he resigned under pressure as General Secretary in the face of mounting economic difficulties and his own ill health. At a party conference in Budapest on 22 May 1988, at which half a dozen of his Politburo associates were also removed, Kádár announced his resignation and was officially replaced as General Secretary by Prime Minister Károly Grósz, who strove to continue Kádár's policies in a modified form adapted to the new circumstances. Kádár was named instead to the ceremonial position of Party President.

He did not wish to be re-elected to the Political Committee, the most important decision-making body of the party. Nevertheless, the post allowed him the right to speak at Central Committee plenums. By May 1989, Kádár was showing unmistakable signs of mental deterioration; his increasingly incoherent speeches were becoming an embarrassment. Doctors encouraged him to go on vacation in the Crimea, but Kádár balked; he remembered how Rákosi had died in Soviet exile and was wary of the same fate. On 8 May, Kádár lost his remaining posts; officially, he retired for health reasons. Grósz and his associates were in no position to resist, as they were in turn were being sidelined by a faction of young "radical reformers" who set out to dismantle Communism altogether and rehabilitate the party's image ahead of free elections due the following year.

On 12 April 1989 Kádár unexpectedly appeared and made a rambling, incoherent speech at the closed meeting of the Central Committee. By the "right of the last word", he wanted to confess about his negotiations in 1956 in Moscow (about which he never spoke publicly) and about the conviction and execution of Imre Nagy. But all the changes that occurred in Eastern Europe and Hungary between 1956 and 1989 were at the same time in his head. An interpretation of Kádár's thoughts was offered by Mihály Kornis, who gave a lecture about János Kádár. According to Miklós Németh's testimony, in late May or early June 1989, a few weeks before his death, Kádár asked a Roman Catholic priest to hear his confession, which some have theorised as a sign of a possible revelation and conversion to Christianity.

Kádár died of cancer on 6 July 1989 aged 77, three months before the formal end of the regime he had largely created. Kádár's grave at the Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest was vandalized on 2 May 2007 as a number of his bones, including his skull, were dug up and stolen, along with his wife Mária Tamáska's urn. A message reading "murderers and traitors may not rest in holy ground 1956–2006" (taken from a song titled "Neveket akarok hallani" written by the rock band Kárpátia) was written nearby. The two dates refer to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 2006 protests in Hungary, respectively. This act was received with widespread revulsion across the political and societal spectrum in Hungary. Police investigations focused on extremist right-wing groups which had been aspiring to "carry out an act that would create a big bang".

Legacy

Kádár's legacy remains disputed in Hungary. Supporters of Kádár argue that the Kádár era was one of peace and stability with widespread job security and robust social protections for average people. Others argue that although Kádár increased the standard of living for Hungarians, and instituted broad liberalization, the country was still fundamentally a dictatorship and a Soviet satellite state.

He is considered one of the most influential figures of 20th century Hungarian history along with István Tisza and Miklós Horthy. A research has found that according to 6% of respondents he was "the greatest Hungarian", finishing 3rd from a list of 10 choices.

Polls indicate that nostalgia for the Kádár era remains widespread in Hungary. According to a 2020 poll carried out by Policy Solutions in Hungary, 54 percent of Hungarians believe most people had a better life under Kádár, compared to 31 percent who say life for most people was worse under Kádár.

Honours and awards

National honours

Hero of Socialist Labour, thrice (1962; 1972; 1982)

Foreign honours

Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion (1949)

Hero of the Soviet Union (1964)

Order of Lenin, twice (1964; 1972)

Order of the Yugoslav Great Star (1964)

Lenin Peace Prize "for peace between nations" (1977)

Order of José Martí (1982)

Order of Klement Gottwald (1982)

Gold Star Order (1982)

In popular culture

An interpretation of events in Kádár's political and personal life, beginning circa 1945, including an association with the trial, execution, reburial, and atonement of László Rajk, and ending with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, are portrayed in Robert Ardrey's 1958 play, Shadow of Heroes.