Claim: There was a complete failure to provide redress for the crimes of the communist regime.
Rebuttal:
Legal and moral redress began even before the free elections, and several solutions were found for material redress. However, from the outset there was controversy over how much and what kind of redress was possible and useful.
In detail:
Remedying the violations of the communist regime must be divided into several parts. One part involved retroactive redress for illegalities, i.e., the rehabilitation of those who suffered politically motivated convictions, the victims of the Rákosi and Kádár eras, including those convicted and executed after the 1956 revolution. Another issue was the compensation of those who suffered from the violent redistribution of property. This article deals with these two issues. The following article discusses the retrospective punishment of those responsible for the violations.
In the interests of legal justice and bringing the guilty to account, several social organizations were established at the dawn of the regime change. The Historical Justice Committee (TIB) was formed in the spring of 1988, with Erzsébet Nagy, daughter of Prime Minister Imre Nagy, who was executed in 1958, as its first chair. The TIB brought together the victims of the reprisals following the 1956 revolution and played a significant role in ensuring that Imre Nagy’s reburial could take place in June 1989. At that time, most of its leaders were close to the Free Democrats. The National Association of Political Prisoners (POFOSZ) was formed later, in February 1989, and Jenő Fónay, deputy commander of the armed group in Széna Square in 1956, was elected as its president. In addition, interest groups were formed for those who had been deported to Soviet labor camps and GULAG camps (SZORAKÉSZ), political prisoners of the Rákosi era (Association of Hungarian Political Prisoners), victims of Hungarian labor camps (Recsk Association), and deportees.
The first and second so-called nullity laws were passed before the 1990 parliamentary elections. Act XXXVI of 1989 invalidated the sentences imposed during the reprisals following the 1956 revolution, mainly on street fighters, until 1963. Act XXVI of 1990, passed in March 1990, annulled sentences handed down between 1945 and 1963 for other political reasons. The law listed “crimes” such as “crimes against the internal and external security of the state, premeditated crimes, crimes against price gouging and public supply, or failure to report crimes damaging to social property.”
The legislature thus decided on legal, moral, and political rehabilitation with retroactive effect. It declared the above judgments null and void with general effect, so the victims did not have to go to court individually under the law.
However, no decision had yet been made at that time regarding the period following the end of the reprisals after the 1956 revolution; this did not happen until 1992. The cases of political prisoners between 1963 and 1989 were settled by Act IX of 1992. The Act deals with the “perpetrators” of alleged “crimes” against the state and public order, declaring null and void judgments on charges such as conspiracy, rebellion, incitement, abuse of the right of association, illegal border crossing, refusal to return home, press offences, spreading alarmist rumors, etc. In these cases, however, it was stipulated that the courts should declare the verdicts null and void in each individual case in separate proceedings.
In the same year, the National Assembly passed a compensation law providing for financial compensation for those who had been sentenced to death or imprisoned. The law applies to cases between March 11, 1939, and October 23, 1989, meaning that it also provides for compensation for victims of the late Horthy era’s anti-Jewish laws and the Holocaust. The starting date is the 1939 National Defense Act, which introduced forced labor. The legislation specified the amount of compensation and the method of payment (in the form of a monthly pension for those still alive), which was determined by the national and county compensation offices.
However, the “compensation issue,” i.e., the issue of financial compensation for property seized by the state between 1939 and 1990, sparked much more serious political debates, not only between the Antall government and its opposition, but also within the government itself. Moreover, the issue was inseparable from the attitutdes to economic transformation and privatization. In 1990, only one party, the Independent Smallholders Party, fully supported the idea of reprivatization, i.e., that nationalized and collectivized property, factories, and land should be returned to their 1947 owners or their heirs. This was the Smallholders Party’s main program point, with the return of land ownership being the most important issue, of course, to the extent that they made their participation in the government contingent on it. The Christian Democrats and the MDF also supported this endeavor. However, after decades of social and economic change, reprivatization was largely impossible, and the opposition considered it harmful from an economic restructuring perspective. It is true that they also recognized the legitimacy of some form of compensation. The debate was linked to the fate of the collective farms and the question of the structure of agriculture after the change of regime.
In the end, the Antall government opted for a solution based on the 1947 model, but did not decide to return the property to its former owners. The only exception was made for churches, which was regulated by a separate law. Act XXV of 1991 only approved partial compensation: 50% for lost property worth more than 200,000 forints, 30% for property worth more than 300,000 forints, and 10% for property worth more than 500,000 forints. This law introduced compensation vouchers, which could be used to purchase land, privatization transactions, and apartments. Since they were transferable, buyers of these vouchers soon appeared, acquiring large quantities of them well below their face value. The issue caused a rift within the government, with József Torgyán and 12 of his fellow representatives leaving the smallholders’ faction in February 1992. The SZDSZ, although strongly opposed to the law, abstained from voting, while Fidesz voted against it. The young democrats opposed the whole idea of compensation, emphasizing that during the socialist period, not only the former owners but society as a whole had suffered serious disadvantages. “It would be immeasurably unjust to compensate former owners at the expense of generations living today who are completely innocent of the expropriations,” argued Viktor Orbán in the parliamentary debate.
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