Гюла Хорн: Венгр саяхатшысы және премьер-министрі (Gyula Horn: Vengr sayahatshysy jane premier-ministri)

Hungarian politician (1932–2013)

Gyula János Horn (5 July 1932 – 19 June 2013) was a Hungarian politician who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from 1994 to 1998. Horn is remembered as the last Communist Minister of Foreign Affairs who played a major role in demolishing the "Iron Curtain" for East Germans in 1989, contributing to the later unification of Germany, and for the Bokros package, the biggest fiscal austerity programme in post communist Hungary, launched under his premiership, in 1995.

Horn was born in Budapest in 1932 as the third child of transport worker Géza Horn who was of Jewish background and factory worker Anna Csörnyei. He was brought up in a Lutheran household. They lived in conditions of poverty at the so called "Barrack" estate between Nagyicce and Sashalom. There were seven brothers in the family: filmmaker Géza (1925–1956), Károly (1930–1946), Tibor (1935), Sándor (1939), Tamás (1942) and Dénes (1944). After the German occupation of Hungary, his father was kidnapped by the Gestapo due to communist activities in 1944 and never returned home. Gyula Horn's niece is Szófia Havas (b. Szófia Horn, 1955), Member of Parliament between 2006 and 2010, whose father Géza, Jr. was killed under unclear circumstances during the 1956 revolution. He first studied in a lower technicians' school in Hungary. He graduated from the Rostov on Don College of Economics and Finance in 1954. He finished the political academy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP) in 1970. He received Candidate of Economic Sciences in 1977. He married statistician Anna Király in February 1956 and had two children: Anna (1956) and Gyula, Jr. (1969). Horn worked in the Ministry of Finance from 1954 to 1959. He got a job in the Foreign Ministry in 1959, first as an official in the independent Soviet department. In the 1960s he was a diplomat in the Hungarian embassies in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In 1995, Horn's government enacted the "Bokros package", a major austerity program. This was a difficult decision for a social democratic party, and Horn had to expend considerable effort to get most of his party to agree to it. According to a survey in 2011, Viktor Orbán was found to be Hungary's best prime minister since the transition to democracy, József Antall, the head of the first democratically elected government between 1990 and 1993, came second while Horn and Gordon Bajnai (2009–10) tied for the third place.

Although the fiscal austerity package under his rule eroded his popularity heavily, the most controversial part of his life is his role after the 1956 revolution, which started on 23 October and was crushed in the days following 4 November. At the end of October he joined the National Guard, the armed body of the revolution consisting of soldiers, policemen, and civic freedom fighters. In December he joined the "pufajkás" brigades (in German Steppjackenbrigade), a communist paramilitary body set up to help the invading Soviet troops restore the communist regime, and he served there until June 1957. His alleged role is controversial in some circles because such squads were accused of involvement in torturing, harassing and even executing civilians during and after the uprising. According to him, his elder brother was killed by the revolutionists during the uprising. However, his brother's death certificate states that he died in a traffic accident in the countryside. His daughter was born on 30 October. "The conditions were bad. The uprising released many criminals who endangered public safety. In the pufajkás squad, I defended the legal order," he told German paper Die Welt 50 years later. "First, I would like to make it clear that 1956 was not a fight against communism. Even the rebels did not want to wipe it out. This is incorrectly depicted today." Horn's precise role in crushing the revolution is unclear as the reports of his brigade have gaps; however, in 1957 he received the award "For the Worker Peasant Power", which was only granted to those whose services earned satisfaction. After becoming prime minister, when questioned and criticized over this part of his life, he only said: "I was a pufajkás. So what?"