Ferenc Nagy

Ferenc Nagy (Hungarian: [ˈfɛrɛnt͡s ˈnɒɟ]; 8 October 1903 – 12 June 1979) was a Hungarian politician of the Smallholders Party who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from 1946 until his forced resignation in 1947. He was also a Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary and a member of the High National Council from 1945 to 1946. Nagy was the second democratically elected prime minister of Hungary, and would be the last until 1990 not to be a Communist or fellow traveler. The subsequent Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy was unrelated to him. A longtime peasant advocate who took part in the anti-fascist resistance, Nagy attempted to consolidate democratic rule during his brief tenure as Prime Minister at the head of a grand coalition of Smallholders, Communists, and Social Democrats. However, he was ultimately unable to resist the intrigues of the Soviet-backed Hungarian Communist Party, which subverted his rule and destroyed his party's elected majority through a fabricated conspiracy. A coup d'état by Mátyás Rákosi, deputy premier and leader of the Communist Party, forced Nagy to resign and go into exile in the United States in June 1947. Subsequently, Nagy became a leader of the Hungarian émigré community and academic lecturer who often spoke on Eastern European affairs. He tried and failed to return to his home country during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and lived out the rest of his life in the United States.