Ferenc Nagy

Ferenc Nagy (born Oct. 8, 1903, Bisse, Hung., Austria-Hungary—died June 12, 1979, Fairfax, Va., U.S.) was a statesman who in his brief post-World War II term as premier tried to bring democracy to Hungary.

A member of a Protestant peasant family and a farmer by profession, Nagy began his public career as a local agrarian politician in the Baranya province of Hungary. He helped organize the Smallholders’ Party, representing the interests of the farming majority, in the early 1920s. He became the party’s first general secretary in 1930, served in Parliament from 1939 to 1942, and was jailed by the German Gestapo in 1944. After the war he became premier (1946) of an antifascist coalition government. His policies, however, were thought by the Soviet-backed Communist Party to be too conservative, and he was indicted in 1947 for crimes against the state. Before his trial he succeeded in escaping to Austria and thence to the United States. His book The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain (1948) recounts his experiences. In 1961–62 he served as chairman of the Assembly of Captive European Nations. His years in the United States were spent largely on a dairy farm in Herndon, Va.