Imre Nagy

Born to peasants in 1896, Imre Nagy worked as a locksmith before World War I swept him up. He became a committed communist after the Russian Revolution and spent the 1920s in underground party work, then lived in the Soviet Union from 1930 - serving as an NKVD informer through the 1930s. Returning to Hungary near the war's end, he won popular support as Minister of Agriculture in 1944-45 by dividing up land among peasants, then served as Interior Minister before becoming Prime Minister in 1953. He tried to soften Mátyás Rákosi's Stalinist policies but was forced out in 1955 by Rákosi's faction, though writers and common people still saw him as a reformist. When revolution erupted on 23 October 1956, Nagy was restored as Prime Minister the next day, and his government admitted non-communists, dissolved the secret police, and withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact on 1 November. The Soviets invaded on 4 November, and Nagy fled to the Yugoslav embassy, only to be lured out under false promises on 22 November, arrested, and deported to Romania. On 16 June 1958 he was executed for treason and buried in an unmarked grave; thirty-one years later, his reburial with full