The Janos Kadar reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Janos Kadar

János Kádár, originally János Csermanek, (1912-1989) was the General Secretary of the Communist party of Hungary from 1956 to 1988, and served as prime minister twice - 1956-1958 and 1961-1965.

In 1931 he joined the illegal Hungarian Communist Party, and was subsequently arrested several times for unlawful political activities. In 1946 he was elected deputy secretary-general of the Hungarian Communist Party, and then in 1949 became minister of the interior and head of the secret police.

In 1951 he was charged with treason by the Hungarian premier Matyas Rakosi, but was released in 1953. He rose to prominence quickly, and became the deputy premier in the newly created government headed by Imre Nagy.

Kadar was a central figure in the important events after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution which saw the downfall of Imre Nagy. Kadar became party secretary and premier and exercised supreme power in the country until the late 1980s when Communism began to collapse and his own ill-health intervened. He was generally known as one of the more moderate East European communist leaders, although he nevertheless supported the Warsaw Pact suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968.

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