Ferenc Nagy

Ferenc Nagy
Nagy in 1946
Prime Minister of Hungary
In office 4 February 1946 – 31 May 1947
President	Zoltán Tildy
Deputy	Mátyás Rákosi Árpád Szakasits
Preceded by	Zoltán Tildy Mátyás Rákosi (acting)
Succeeded by	Mátyás Rákosi (acting) Lajos Dinnyés
Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary
In office 29 November 1945 – 5 February 1946
Preceded by	Béla Zsedényi
Succeeded by	Béla Varga
Member of the High National Council
In office 7 December 1945 – 1 February 1946 Serving with Zoltán Tildy, László Rajk, and Béla Varga (to 8 January 1946)
Preceded by	Béla Miklós Béla Zsedényi Mátyás Rákosi
Succeeded by	Zoltán Tildy (as President of Hungary)
Member of the National Assembly
In office 15 June 1939 – 12 April 1944
In office 2 April 1945 – 3 June 1947
Personal details
Born	(1903-10-08)8 October 1903 Bisse, Austria-Hungary
Died	12 June 1979(1979-06-12) (aged 75) Herndon, Virginia, U.S.
Citizenship	Hungary United States (from 1947)
Nationality	Hungarian
Political party	Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party
Children	5

Ferenc Nagy (Hungarian: [ˈfɛrɛnt͡s ˈnɒɟ]; 8 October 1903 – 12 June 1979) was a Hungarian politician of the Smallholders Party who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from 1946 until his forced resignation in 1947. He was also a Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary and a member of the High National Council from 1945 to 1946. Nagy was the second democratically elected prime minister of Hungary, and would be the last until 1990 not to be a Communist or fellow traveler. The subsequent Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy was unrelated to him.

A longtime peasant advocate who took part in the anti-fascist resistance, Nagy attempted to consolidate democratic rule during his brief tenure as Prime Minister at the head of a grand coalition of Smallholders, Communists, and Social Democrats. However, he was ultimately unable to resist the intrigues of the Soviet-backed Hungarian Communist Party, which subverted his rule and destroyed his party's elected majority through a fabricated conspiracy. A coup d'état by Mátyás Rákosi, deputy premier and leader of the Communist Party, forced Nagy to resign and go into exile in the United States in June 1947. Subsequently, Nagy became a leader of the Hungarian émigré community and academic lecturer who often spoke on Eastern European affairs. He tried and failed to return to his home country during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and lived out the rest of his life in the United States.