Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Budapest in the Inter-War Period (1919-1945)
All this did not daunt the labour movement. A hundred thousand workers, organized in the trade unions, were members of the Social Democratic Party, and the influence of the Communists also increased in the Budapest factories (the Ganz Electrical Works, Armament and Engineering Works, United Incandescent Lamp Factory, etc.). The Communist László Rajk played an outstanding role in organizing the building workers’ strike in 1935. In the inter-war period Budapest was the headquarters of Communist organization. Again and again the politically conscious masses made their political opinions felt. At the Budapest International Fair of 1941, for instance, thousands queued up daily in front of the pavilion of the Soviet Union despite the batallions of police around it. Nor could the counter-revolutionary regime completely stifle opposition in the Town Hall. When the members of the Municipal General Assembly were reelected in 1920, the right wing failed to drive out the old Liberal cityfathers, the Democratic Party, led by Vilmos Vázsonyi, becoming then the strongest opposition party in the Town Hall. A few years later the bourgeois liberal opposition was strengthened by Károly Rassay’s Liberal Party, by the Kossuth Party, whose leaders (Rusztem Vámbéry, Vince Nagy, Rezső' Rupert) kept the revolutionary flag of October 1918 flying. From 1925 onwards the position of the opposition in the Municipal General Assembly considerably strengthened by the appearance of representatives of the Social Democratic Party. Of all the legal, parliamentary, political parties in Hungary it was the Social Democratic Party alone that really relied on organized masses, and whose loyalty was not made up by Clubs and Party dinners. The Social Democratic Party had entered Parliament as early as 1922—for the first time in Hungarian history—but it was prevented by Government policy from taking a place in the municipal government of the capital up to 1925. Its programme was formulated by Károly Peyer who—having reached an agreement with the Prime Minister, Count István Bethlen—accepted the counter-revolutionary regime as a fact and regarded any radicalism in the practical policies of the Party as a mistaken policy. Nonetheless, the Social Democratic and the Liberal cityfathers launched attack after attack on both the right-wing municipal leadership and the political regime. In the economic field their demands were directed primarily towards the improvement of wages and working conditions, the creation of employment, the initiation of public works, the abolition or reduction of taxes (purchase tax, sales tax) which fell with particular weight on workers and petty-bourgeoisie, and for improvements in housing. In the political domain they campaigned for universal and secret suffrage, civil rights (freedom of assembly, speech, and the press), the restitution of the rights and freedom of municipal autonomy, and an end to Government interference. In the course of the four municipal elections held between the two wars (1920, 1925, 1930, 1935) the social democratic and liberal bourgeois camp not only formed the strongest opposition block, but from 1925, as far as elected members were concerned, gained more seats than the Christian Party supporters of the Government. Although the legal left represented a considerable force in the leadership of the capital, it was unable to achieve any radical change. That would have required a radical transformation of the entire regime. In spite of a number of parties officially represented in Parliament, a one-party regime was in fact in power in Hungary. The Government Party—subordinate to the Prime 54
