Smallholders Party

Smallholders’ Party 

(Kisgazdapárt) of Hungary, more accurately, the Independent Agrarian Party of Smallholders, Agricultural Workers, and Urban Dwellers (Független Kisgazda, Földmunkás és Polgári Agrárpárt), founded in 1909.

The Smallholders’ Party united representatives of the affluent peasantry and some of the landholders. The party repeatedly participated in the governments of bourgeois Hungary. From 1922 to 1930 together with I. Bethlen’s group it formed the governing United Party. In 1930 it was reestablished as a separate party.

The Smallholders’ Party participated in the resistance movement in World War II (1939–45) and was outlawed when Hungary was occupied by fascist German troops in March 1944. In May 1944 it joined the Hungarian Front, which had been formed on the initiative of the Communists. The party’s left wing, which was headed by I. Dobi from 1937 and which reflected essentially the interests of the peasantry and agricultural workers, supported the front’s program. However, its right wing, led by F. Nagy, B. Varga, and others, opposed the democratic transformations in Hungary. In the 1945 elections the Smallholders’ Party obtained 57 percent of the mandate.

After the discovery from December 1946 to May 1947 of a reactionary plot by F. Nagy and other reactionary leaders of the party, who acted with the support of the Catholic Church, the influence of the reactionary forces in the party declined drastically. The left wing headed by Dobi assumed the party leadership. The majority of the members of the Smallholders’ Party participated in the People’s Patriotic Front. An attempt by the right wing to revive the party as a base of the exploiting classes during the counterrevolutionary revolt of 1956 failed completely.

A. I. PUSHKASH