Nagy Imre Gerő Ernő "tiszta lap" politikájáról

In July 1956, the situation of Mátyás Rákosi became untenable in Hungary, and he had to resign as first secretary of the Hungarian Working People’s Party (HWPP). He was succeeded by the second man of the regime, Ernő Gerő, who, like his predecessor, was rejected by the Hungarian society. The HWPP made a serious mistake from points of view: not only by appointing Gerő as the head of the party, but also by failing to restore Imre Nagy’s party membership and reinstate him as head of government. (He had been removed from office in the first half of 1955 and expelled from the party in December 1955.) The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union created a new situation in which even Gerő, previously a committed Stalinist, became an advocate of reform himself. Against all expectations, Gerő, although his rule lasted less than a hundred days, announced and even began to implement significant reforms. In this paper, I examine three questions. Firstly, I compare Imre Nagy’s reforms, the ‘new course’ announced in 1953 with Gerő’s programme, the ‘clean sheet’ policy three years later. Secondly, I will review how Imre Nagy’s request for the reinstatement of his party membership was handled by the old-new party leadership. Finally, I would like to know how Imre Nagy himself assessed the ‘clean sheet’ programme in the late summer and early autumn of 1956, and to what extent his assessment of it changed afterwards, following the 1956 revolution.