JUGOSLAVIJA I PITANJE AZILA IMRE NAĐA
YUGOSLAVIA AND THE POLITICAL ASYLUM FOR IMRE NAGY

Summary/Abstract: The turbulent events which took place in Hungary in the autumn of 1956 brought Imre Nagy into the forefront of political life. He was the prime minister of the Hungarian reformist government from 1953 to 1955 and was deposed and excluded from the Communist party for his conflict with the Stalinist Hungarian leader, M. Rakosi. After the upheavals in Hungary in October 1956 and the first Soviet intervention, I. Nagy was appointed prime minister and when, while occupying that position, he accepted the demands of the revolutionary forces, he became the leader and they symbol of the Hungarian revolution. The main aims of this revolution, the introduction of a multiparty system and independence for Hungaria, were irreconcilably against the interests and the dogma of the USSR and the Soviet leaders decided to quench the Hungarian revolution and to overthrow the government of Imre Nagy by force. Tito ard the Yugoslav administration supported the government of Imre Nagy until it proclaimed the abolition of the single-party system, a cornerstone of the Communist regime, thus threatening Communist political monopoly in the country. From that moment, Yugoslav official politics turned against Nagy to side with the Cremlin. At the meeting with Khrushchev on Brioni island, Tito agreed to Soviet military intervention and to the replacement of Nagy and his government with Janosz Kadar. It was decided on this occasion that the Yugoslavs would attempt to draw Nagy away from the center of political attention by offering him and his closest associates political asylum, a possibility which I. Nagy, faced with imminent Soviet intervention, had already inquired into. However, enormous problems were stirred up when Nagy and his group took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy on 4 November, fleeing before Soviet tanks. While the Yugoslav government struggled to keep their promise to gel Nagy out of the country, both the Soviet and Kadar’s governments demanded his extradition to the new Hungarian government. Negotiations over this problem went on until 21 November, when Kadar’s government accepted the solution proposed by the Yugoslavs to guarantee Nagy and his group a safe return to their homes. When this agreement was being put into effect, Nagy was abducted by the Soviets and immediately deported to Romania. The ensuing protests of the Yugoslav government were ignored and only served to create a serious breach in its relations with the Hungarian and Soviet governments. Nagy was kept in Romania until 1958 when he was returned to Budapest where a secret trial was organized in which he was condemned to death and executed. The Yugoslav government protested once again primarily because it was named in the accusation as an accomplice in Nagy’s »counterrevolutionary activity« but in the end the Yugoslavs were forced to accept this outcome as a fait accompli.

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