Imre Nagy, Life and Image
Imre Nagy, Life and Image

Summary/Abstract: Imre Nagy, along with János Kádár and Vice-Admiral Miklós Horthy, arguably counts as one of Hungary’s best-known twentieth-century political figures. For all that, many elements of his life and career remain little known. Outside Hungary he is usually only mentioned in relation to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the state reburial of his remains that took place on June 16th, 1989, one of the defining moments of the country’s change of régime. I shall attempt here a potted biography of Imre Nagy before going on to assess his historical image, and more particularly, how historians outside Hungary have viewed him over the past fifty years. That international evaluation, by and large, was not guided by any research or public discourse in Hungary, though Hungarian-born émigré writers have played a major role in it. The aim of the selection presented here is to outline the various trends that are discernible.

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