History of Hungary

The History of Hungary covers the period from 1000 to the present.

see also Magyar

Arrival of the Magyar peoples

The Magyar peoples migrated to the Danube basin from the east around 900AD. Hungary was united as a nation in 1001 under King Stephen I.

It fell under Ottoman rule in the sixteenth century, and subsequently became part of the Habsburg Austrian Empire. In 1848-49 the Hungarian people rebelled against the Austrians to gain independence, a movement led by Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894), but the rebellion was crushed with Russian aid. The creation of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in 1867 gave Hungary a measure of equality with Austria within the empire. Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War, Hungary became an independent state. However, the Treaty of Trianon stripped Hungary of much of its territory and population. Slovakia and Ruthenia went to the new state of Czechoslovakia, Transylvania and Partium to Romania and the area around Novi Sad to Yugoslavia. A small area on the western border was ceded to Austria. In the 1920s around one-third of the Magyar people lived outside the new boundaries of Hungary.

World War II

Hungary sought revision of these treaty losses and allied itself (under the autocratic regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy (1868-1957)) with Germany. In the 1939 carve-up of Czechoslovakia, Hungary gained parts of Slovakia and Ruthenia. In 1940 Hitler forced Romania to return northern Transylvania to Hungarian rule, and Hungary also regained territory from Yugoslavia following Germany's conquest of that country in 1941. As a quid pro quo, Hungarian troops fought with the Germans on the Eastern Front, and as the Germans retreated in 1944 and 1945 Hungary came under Soviet occupation; it was also stripped of all its gains between 1939 and 1945.

Communist Control =

Under Soviet protection, the Hungarian communists, led by Mátyás Rákosi (1892-1971) were able to seize control of the state by 'salami tactics' (picking off adversaries one by one). Once in power, Rákosi was a fierce Stalinist, even by the standards of the Soviet bloc; he was removed from office and exiled to the Soviet Union under Soviet pressure following the denouncing of Stalin by Nikita Krushchev in 1956.

In October 1956 a small student demonstration exploded into a major uprising against the Communist Party which rapidly spread throughout the whole country. The new party leader, Imre Nagy (1896-1958) agreed to a number of popular demands, including the disbanding of the hated secret police, the ÁVH, and he further announced that Hungary would withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. This prompted a massive Soviet invasion on 4 November 1956 which, despite fierce resistance, crushed the rebellion by 10 December. Many thousands were executed including (in 1958) Nagy himself.

The Fall of Communism

Nagy was replaced as leader by János Kádár (1912-1989) who instituted 'Goulash Communism': strict political control coupled with more liberal economic and cultural policies. In the short term this led to improved living standards for the Hungarian people: in material terms they, and the East Germans, were the most prosperous nations in the eastern bloc. It also created a readiness to take advantage of the relaxations of glasnost and perestroika being advocated in the 1980s Soviet Union. In 1989 the Hungarian government opened its border with Austria. This led to a flood of refugees from East Germany and thus ultimately to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, and the domino-like collapse of Communist regimes across the Soviet bloc. Democratic elections were first held in 1990; Hungary joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union on May 1, 2004.