Mátyás Rákosi

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Mátyás Rákosi (né Rosenfeld; 9 March 1892 – 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian communist politician who was the de facto leader of Hungary from 1948 to 1956. He served first as General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party from 1945 to 1948 and then as General Secretary (later renamed First Secretary) of the Hungarian Working People's Party from 1948 to 1956. Mátyás Rákosi was the chief architect of the laws that confiscated the property of various churches in Hungary, as well as the mass deportations to Hungarian forced labor camps, such as Hortobágy and Recsk forced labor camps. Rákosi had been involved in left-wing politics since his youth, and in 1919 was a leading commissar in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. After the fall of the Communist government, he escaped the country and worked abroad as an agent of the Comintern. He was arrested in 1924 after attempting to return to Hungary and organize the Communist Party underground, and ultimately spent over fifteen years...

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