Hungary, 1946 — military coup conspiracy
Event Summary
In the last days of December 1946 the communist-controlled Military-Political Department of the Hungarian Defence Ministry, headed by the communist General Gyorgy Palffy, carried out a wave of arrests that launched the affair known as the Conspiracy Against the Republic, the first great show-trial fabrication used by the Hungarian Communist Party to break the majority Independent Smallholders' Party. The Smallholders had won 57 percent in the November 1945 election, but under Soviet pressure they governed in a coalition in which the communists held the Interior Ministry. From 14 to 16 December 1946 Palffy's department arrested the general staff figure Istvan Szent-Miklosy and Janos Hider, and on 20 December the Smallholders' organizing secretary Balint Arany, on charges of conspiracy.
On 5 January 1947 the Interior Ministry publicly announced the discovery of a conspiracy against the republic aimed at overthrowing the democratic system. The fabricated affair, exploiting a minor anti-communist intrigue among former resistance figures, was used to arrest hundreds of Smallholders, strip the party of its parliamentary majority, kidnap secretary-general Bela Kovacs, and ultimately force Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy into exile in mid-1947, a decisive step in the communist salami-tactics takeover.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
31012311946
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: The Smallholders' Party and Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy were the targets; the affair broke the party and helped install communist domination.
Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
New York Times
Washington Post
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →