Rayk, Laszlo

A native of Transylvanian Saxons , the ninth of 11 children in the family. By profession - teacher-philologist. He studied in France , where he met with the Marxist teachings. He returned to Hungary in 1930 . In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Hungary (CPV) and Komsomol. In 1931 and 1933 he was arrested. In 1934 - an employee of the propaganda department of the Communist Youth Union of Hungary, and then the head of the communist faction of the All-Hungarian Union of Construction Workers. Laszlo Rajk was one of the organizers and leaders of a powerful strike of construction workers in 1935 . In 1936 he went to Czechoslovakia .

In 1937 - 1939 he fought as part of an international brigade in Spain , was the commissar of the Hungarian battalion. After the defeat of the Spanish Republic, he was interned in France in 1939. In 1941, he illegally returned to Hungary, where he was arrested and sentenced to lengthy imprisonment. He was released in September 1944, was appointed secretary of the CPV Central Committee, was one of the leaders of the Hungarian anti-fascist front. He played a large role in achieving unity between the CPV and the Social Democratic Party , drawn up by the agreement of September 10, 1944. In November 1944 he was again arrested by the Salashists and taken out first to Sopronkekhida , on the border with Austria , and then to Germany . He managed to escape thanks to the intervention of his brother, Andrew Raik, who served the Salashist authorities.

After returning to Hungary in May 1945, Laszlo Raik led the party organization of Budapest , became a member of the Central Committee and Political Bureau of the CPV. At the end of 1945 - September 1946 - Secretary of the CPV Central Committee, from October 1946 - Deputy. Secretary General of the CPV. From March 1946 - Minister of the Interior, from August 1948 - Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary.

Arrested in Budapest on May 30, 1949 . Charged with high treason in the form of espionage in favor of the United States and Titan Yugoslavia, preparing a conspiracy to overthrow the communist regime of Matthias Rakosi. June 11, 1949 retroactively removed from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary. He was the chief of the eight accused in an open, fabricated trial held in Budapest on September 16-22, 1949 (the “Raik-Palfff Trial”). On September 22, 1949, together with two other defendants - former high-ranking communists Tibor Sonya and Andras Shalai - was sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed on October 15, 1949.

Posthumously rehabilitated in 1955 . The reburial of the remains of Raik and his comrades on October 6, 1956, which was attended by 100,000 people, became the most massive public manifestation on the eve of the 1956 uprising .

Raik is allegorically depicted under the name of Andor Knorr, an honest communist anti-fascist who worked in the state security organs, but became a victim of anti-Semitic repressions, in Istvan Szabo 's film “ Taste of Sunlight ”.

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• Granville, Johanna Granville, The First Domino: International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 , Texas A & M University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58544-298-4 .
• Litvan, Gyorgy The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Reform, Revolt, and Repression 1953-1963 , Longman Publishing Group, 1996.
• Rajk, Laszlo, Columbia Encyclopedia , 6th Ed. Columbia University Press, 2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20060509173752/http://www2.bartleby.com/65/ra/Rajk-Las.html (1 Dec. 2005)
• Stokes, Gale (ed.) From Stalinism to Pluralism: a Documentary History of Eastern Europe since 1945 , New York and Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Kimura K. “The Rayk Affair” in the context of Hungarian-Yugoslav relations // Slavic studies. 2012. No. 1. P. 3-15.