The Seizure of Power Part Two: Hungary and the Agrarian South

Abstract

We have now to consider the countries to the south of Czechoslovakia, which were still characterised in 1945 by a continuing predominance of the agrarian sector, a minority urban population, an undeveloped working class, and a concomitant pre-war weakness of both socialism and communism.¹ These statements apply in general terms to the Balkan lands. They are less true for Hungary, which did have a large urban population and an industrial working class, although politically the severe repressive measures of the interwar years had taken their toll of the socialist and communist movements. Hungary was on the boundary between north and south, both in its geography and its economic and social structure.