Béla Biszku

Béla Biszku
Minister of the Interior of Hungary
In office 1 March 1957 – 13 September 1961
President	János Kádár
Preceded by	Ferenc Münnich
Succeeded by	János Pap
Personal details
Born	(1921-09-13)September 13, 1921 Márokpapi, Hungary
Died	Budapest, Hungary
Political party	Hungarian Communist Party, Hungarian Worker's Party, MSZMP
Profession	politician

The native form of this personal name is Biszku Béla. This article uses the Western name order.

Béla Biszku (13 September 1921 – 31 March 2016) was a Hungarian communist politician, who served as Minister of the Interior from 1957 to 1961. He was charged of suspicion of committing war crimes during the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, becoming the first and to date only former top-official in Hungary who has been prosecuted because of political role in the communist era.

Life

Biszku joined the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) in 1944 and participated in the resistance movement that fought against the German occupation of Hungary and against the collaborationist Arrow Cross Party government during the end of World War II. After the war, he organized Angyalföld, Budapest branch of the communist party, then he had worked for the MKP's Budapest Party Committee since 1946.

Between 1957 and 1961 he served as Interior Minister in the government of János Kádár, and, between 1961 – 1962, became the deputy prime minister. From 1962 until 1978, he was a Secretary of the Central Committee. In 1972, together with Zoltán Komócsin, and other fellow communists, he became involved in a plot to force János Kádár to resign from virtually all of his public functions in an effort to return Hungary to a more orthodox Soviet-style line. To achieve his goals, Biszku tried to convince Yuri Andropov of the rightness of his cause, who immediately alerted Kádár. Afterwards Kádár slowly removed Biszku from power.

He is known for the severity he showed in suppressing and punishing after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, one of the largest revolt against the communist government in the Eastern Bloc and its Soviet-imposed policies, was defeated.

From the End of Communism until 2011, he successfully evaded any kind of prosecution for human rights abuses committed under the Kádár regime while living in relative obscurity, and sought to portray the regime in a favorable light.

Criminal investigation

The National Assembly adopted a "lex Biszku" bill which aimed to hold people who were responsible for post-1956 reprisals and law-enforcement officials accountable for their inhumane actions. Gergely Gulyás told a press conference in October 2011 that the bill was constitutional and consistent with international law.

A criminal investigation against Biszku was opened in 2011. He was charged with denial of communist crimes that may result in a three-year jail sentence.

On 10 September 2012, Biszku was placed under house arrest on charge of suspicion of committing war crimes. He is the first politician of the 1956 Communist leadership to face a criminal inquiry. He was accused of failing to protect civilians in wartime. In addition, he needed to hold responsibility for ordering the security forces to open fire on crowds. In case he was found guilty of the charges brought up against him that he indefatigably denied, he would face a life imprisonment.

His trial was scheduled to begin on 18 March 2014.

On May 13, 2014, he was found guilty of war crimes during the suppression of the October 1956 uprising against communist rule. He was convicted of ordering security forces to open fire on civilians, killing 49 people, and was sentenced to five years and six months in prison. Biszku was also found guilty of other charges, including denying crimes committed by the communist regime - a crime in Hungary, like Holocaust revisionism. However, the Metropolitan Court of Appeals set aside the first degree sentence and ordered a new trial on 1 June 2015.

During the repeat procedure, the Metropolitan Court of Budapest sentenced Biszku to two years in prison, suspended for three years for complicity in war crimes on 17 December 2015. The court also ruled, however, that there was insufficient evidence that Biszku as Minister of the Interior and member of the MSZMP's so-called Provisional Executive Committee had issued the order to fire on 49 protesters in Salgótarján in December 1956 or beat up academics in March 1957.

Biszku died in Budapest on 31 March 2016 at the age of 94, before the potential sentence of the repeat procedure's second degree. Fruzsina Skrabski, who made that documentary film which brought Biszku's impunity and high pension salary to the surface, said the Hungarian jurisdiction "are awaiting his death [...] to prevent the start of an avalanche [...] with regard to the impeachment of former high-ranking Communist politicians."

Literature

• Szabó, Miklós: Adalékok a Magyar Néphadsereg 1961-1962. évi történetéhez. 1. rész, in: Új Honvédségi Szemle. LXI. évf., 2007/9. sz., 96. p
• Bölöny, József: Magyarország kormányai. 1848–1992, 4. bőv. és jav. kiad., Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1992. 269. p.
• G. Tabajdi, K. Ungvári: Elhallgatott múlt, Corvina, Budapest, 2008, pp. 99–100.

References

Political offices
Preceded by Ferenc Münnich	Minister of the Interior 1957 – 1961	Succeeded by János Pap