László Rajk (8 March 1909 – 15 October 1949) was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power (for example, organizing the State Protection Authority (ÁVH)), but he eventually fell victim to Mátyás Rákosi's show trials.

Background and career

Born in Székelyudvarhely, the ninth of eleven children in a family of Transylvanian Saxons, his ties to Communism began at an early age when he became a member of the Communist Party of Hungary (KMP).

Later he was expelled from his university for his political ideas and would become a building worker, until 1936 when he joined the Popular Front in the Spanish Civil War. He became commissar of the Rakosi Battalion of XIII International Brigade. After the collapse of Republican Spain, he was interned in France until 1941, when he was finally able to return to Hungary, where he became Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, an underground Communist movement.

In December 1944 he was arrested by a detachment of the Arrow Cross Party. He was to be executed, and was transported to the prison of Sopronkőhida, then into Germany; but the intercession of his elder brother, Endre, a fascist under-secretary, saved his life. László Rajk was released on 13 May 1945.

He went home to Hungary and took part in party politics. He became a member of all the leader corporations of the party (MKP) and the Extemporal Parliament. Rajk was a member of the High National Council from 7 December 1945 to 2 February 1946. On 20 March 1946 he was appointed minister of the Interior. In this post he organized the Hungarian Communist Party's private army and secret police (an organization analogous to the KGB, Securitate, Stasi and so on), the ÁVH (originally ÁVO), and he became directly responsible for this. Under the cover of "struggle against fascism and reaction" and "defence of the power of proletariat", he prohibited and liquidated several religious, nationalist, and maverick establishments and groups (the number of these was about 1,500), and set up the first show trials.

thumb|Rajk speaking at the podium

He was reassigned from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 5 August 1948 to 30 May 1949. Rákosi, who saw Rajk as a threat to his power, decided to accuse him on false charges and had him arrested on 30 May 1949 on trumped-up charges.

At his trial, held between 16 and 24 September 1949, (This was a precursor to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which began on 23 October.) Júlia Rajk's commitment to rehabilitating her late husband's reputation was instrumental to the large turnout for the funeral.

List of defendants in the Rajk trial

  • László Rajk (born in 1909), Minister of Foreign Affairs (executed)
  • György Pálffy (1909), Lieutenant General (sentence deferred to military court, executed)
  • Lazar Brankov (1912), Counsellor, Yugoslav Legation (life imprisonment)
  • Dr Tibor Szönyi (1903), Member of the National Assembly (executed)
  • András Szalai, (1917), government official (executed)
  • Milan Ognjenovich (1916), government official (9 years)
  • Béla Korondy (1914), Police Colonel (sentence deferred to military court, executed)
  • Pál Justus (1905), member of the National Assembly (life imprisonment)

15 people were executed and 78 others were sentenced to prison in relation to the Rajk case.

Play

László Rajk: the events of his political and family life, beginning circa 1945, his trial, execution, reburial, atonement, and ending with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the USSR's armed invasion of Hungary, are all portrayed in Robert Ardrey's 1958 play, Shadow of Heroes.

See also

  • Júlia Rajk, his wife; political activist
  • László Rajk Jr., his son; architect and political activist
  • Milada Horáková
  • Rudolf Slánský
  • Traicho Kostov
  • Slánský trial
  • Koçi Xoxe
  • Trial of the Generals (Hungary)

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Koltai, Ferenc: László Rajk and his Accomplices before the People's Court, Budapest 1949 (MEK)
  • Litvan, Győrgy The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Reform, Revolt, and Repression 1953–1963, Longman Publishing Group, 1996.
  • Rajk, Laszlo, Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th Ed. Columbia University Press, 2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20060509173752/http://www2.bartleby.com/65/ra/Rajk-Las.html (December 1, 2005)
  • Stokes, Gale (ed.) From Stalinism to Pluralism: a Documentary History of Eastern Europe since 1945, New York and Oxford University Press, 1991.