Ferenc Nagy (1903–1979) was a smallholder politician, member of parliament, prime minister, and president of the Independent Peasant and Civic Party. He came from a small peasant family of Reformed faith, and his parents farmed 15 cadastral acres (8.63 hectares) of land in Bisse. Ferenc Nagy completed six years of elementary school. He worked on the family estate. As an only child, he had to work hard on the land from the age of 10 while his father fought on the front lines of World War I. He educated himself, wrote, and cultivated his mind. The peasant boy eventually became a respected smallholder politician and the first prime minister of the Second Hungarian Republic.

He married in 1924 and had five children: two sons (Ferenc and László) and his eldest daughter (Julianna) were born in Hungary, while his two younger daughters (Zsuzsanna and Zsófia) were born in the United States. Zsuzsanna and Zsófia are still alive today.

From peasant to prime minister

Ferenc Nagy began writing for various newspapers at a very young age, starting in the 1920s. He acted in village plays and wrote the play Aranykalászok (Golden Ears of Corn). He was the county vice-president of the smallholders' movement founded by István Szabó in Nagyatád, Baranya County, and his political views were published in the county newspapers in Pécs. He gained national fame through the Pesti Hírlap newspaper.

He entered politics in the 1930s. Together with Zoltán Tildy, he organized the Independent Smallholders' Party, of which he was secretary-general between 1930 and 1945. A strong smallholders' party camp was formed in Baranya for the 1939 elections. In 1941, he was one of the initiators of the Hungarian Peasant Association, serving as its president from 1941 to 1943. Throughout his political career in Hungary, he steadfastly represented the interests of rural smallholders and the destitute.

---

He was a pacifist. As a smallholder politician, he fought against the Arrow Cross movement alongside Vincze Vörös and Béla Kovács. During the war, as a member of the Historical Memorial Committee (1942), which brought together anti-fascist forces, he actively participated in the independence and resistance movement. In 1943, he drafted a memorandum with Zoltán Tildy and Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky on withdrawing from the war and maintaining neutrality.

During the German occupation of Hungary, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and imprisoned from April 12 to October 10. After his release, he was forced into hiding when the Arrow Cross Party seized power. Despite his political persecution, he opposed the collective guilt and deportation of Germans from the outset.

The fruits of his political work between the two world wars truly ripened after the war. In early 1945, he began reorganizing the Hungarian Peasant Union and the Independent Smallholders' Party. Between 1945 and 1946, he was briefly Minister of Reconstruction, President of the National Assembly, and a member of the National Council, as well as President of the World Federation of Hungarians. As István Csicsery-Rónay wrote, "In 1945, a charismatic leader of great stature entered the stage of Hungarian history."¹

As prime minister

In the turbulent, reconstruction-driven spirit of the brief democratic period following World War II, the Second Hungarian Republic was able to embark on the long-awaited path of social revolution. The 1945 democratic elections brought a landslide 57% victory for the Independent Smallholders' Party, which gave it enormous political authority to implement urgent social reforms. Instead of Zoltán Tildy, who was elected president of the republic on February 4, 1946, Ferenc Nagy was ultimately appointed prime minister of Hungary and formed a new government. The program of the Independent Smallholders' Party could finally be implemented.