Imre Pozsgay

Who is Imre Pozsgay?

Imre Pozsgay is a Hungarian, ex-Communist, politician who played a key role in Hungary's transition to democracy after 1988. He is currently an advisor to prime minister Viktor Orbán.

Pozsgay joined the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party after he graduated with an English degree from the Lenin Institute in Budapest. He worked for the party at both local and national levels and became deputy minister in 1975.

In the late 1980s, he was one of the first major figures in Hungary to label the 1956 Hungarian revolution not a counterrevolution but a "popular uprising".

His calls for reform led to a falling-out with the party’s leader János Kádár which in turn moved Pozsgay to become chairman of the party’s mass organization the Patriotic Front.

Kádár was removed from his Minister of State position in 1988 and Pozsgay was placed into his old position.

Jointly with Otto von Habsburg, Imre Pozsgay was the sponsor of the Pan-European Picnic of 19 August 1989, where hundreds of East Germans who were visiting Hungary were able to cross the previously impenetrable Iron Curtain into Austria.