Unity Party (Hungary)
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Article ImagesThe Unity Party (Hungarian: Egységes Párt), officially the Catholic-Protestant Farmers, Smallholders, and Civic Party or Christian Farmers, Smallholders and Civic Party (Hungarian: Keresztény-Keresztyén Földmíves-, Kisgazda- és Polgári Párt), was the ruling party of Kingdom of Hungary from 1922 to 1944.
Unity Party Egységes Párt | |
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Logo of the party seen during the early to late 1930s. | |
Leader | István Bethlen (1922–1932) Gyula Gömbös (1932–1936) Béla Imrédy (1938–1939) Miklós Kállay (1942–1944) |
Founder | István Bethlen |
Founded | 2 February 1922 |
Dissolved | 23 March 1944 |
Merger of | KNEP (partial) and OKGFP |
Headquarters | Budapest, Hungary |
Ideology | |
Political position | 1922–1932: Right-wing[4] 1932–1944: Far-right |
Party flag | |
It was founded in early 1922, and in the same year they won a electoral landslide in the parliamentary election.[5] Initially, the party was conservative and agrarian but in the early 1930s its fascist faction grew to become the largest, and shortly after they established a militia.[6] The main leader of the fascist faction was Gyula Gömbös, who served as the prime minister from 1932 to 1936.[7] When he came to power, the party was renamed to National Unity Party (Hungarian: Nemzeti Egység Pártja).
Gömbös declared the party's intention to achieve "total control of the nation's social life".[8] In the 1935 Hungarian Election, Gömbös promoted the creation of a "unitary Hungarian nation with no class distinctions".[9] The party won a huge majority of the seats of the Hungarian parliament in the Hungarian election of May 1939.[10] It won 72 percent of the parliament's seats and won 49 percent of the popular vote in the election.[11] This was a major breakthrough for the far-right in Hungary.[11] The party promoted nationalist propaganda and some of its members sympathized with the Nazi Arrow Cross Party.[11] In 1939, the party was renamed to the Party of Hungarian Life (Hungarian: Magyar Élet Pártja).
It was also called "the Government Party" since it was the governing party of the Kingdom of Hungary during the existence of the Horthy era.[7] A faction of the most pro-Nazi members led by the party's former leader Béla Imrédy split from the party October 1940 to form the Party of Hungarian Renewal [Wikidata] (Magyar Megújulás Pártja) that sought to explicitly "solve" the "Jewish Problem."
Election | Votes | Seats | Rank | Government | Leader | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
# | % | ±pp | # | +/− | ||||
1922 | 623,201 | 38.2% | 38.2 | 140 / 245 |
140 | 1st | Unity Party | István Bethlen |
1926 | 482,086 | 42.2% | 4.0 | 161 / 245 |
21 | 1st | Unity Party | István Bethlen |
1931 | 603,576 | 40.0% | 2.2 | 149 / 245 |
12 | 1st | Unity Party | István Bethlen |
1935 | 879,474 | 44.6% | 4.6 | 164 / 245 |
15 | 1st | Party of National Unity | Gyula Gömbös |
1939 | 1,824,573 | 49.5% | 4.9 | 181 / 260 |
17 | 1st | Party of Hungarian Life | Pál Teleki |
- ^ Stanley G. Payne. A history of fascism, 1914-1945. Oxon, England, UK: Routledge, 2005. pp. 269.
- ^ Miklós Lackó. "Arrow-cross men, national socialists, 1935-1944", Studia historica, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia. Volume 61. Akadémiai Kiadó, 1969. Pp. 65.
- ^ Häkkinen, Ville (2019). From Counterrevolution to Consolidation?. JYU. p. 99.
- ^ Sthttps://mult-kor.hu/ki-volt-grof-bethlen-istvan-miniszterelnok-20161005
- ^ Gregory Curtis Ference. Chronology of 20th-century eastern European history. Gale Research, Inc., 1994. Pp. 226.
- ^ Philip Morgan. Fascism in Europe, 1919-1945. London, England, UK: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 76-77.
- ^ a b Payne, Stanley G. (1996). A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Routledge. ISBN 0203501322.
- ^ Philip Morgan. Fascism in Europe, 1919-1945. London, England, UK: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 76.
- ^ F. L. Carsten. The rise of fascism. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1982. Pp. 173.
- ^ Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák. A History of Hungary. First paperback edition. Bloomington, Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press, 1994. Pp. 341.
- ^ a b c Georgi Karasimeonov. Cleavages, parties, and voters: studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999. p. 70.