Unity Party (Hungary)

Ruling party of Hungary (1922–1944)

See also: Unity Party (Hungary, 2009)

Unity Party

Egységes Párt

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 (1922-02-02)
Dissolved| 23 March 1944 (1944-03-23)
Merger of| KNEP (partial) and OKGFP
Headquarters| Budapest, Hungary
Ideology|

* Szeged Idea[1][2]
* • Hungarian nationalism
* • Christian nationalism
* • National conservatism[3]
* • Social conservatism
* • Agrarianism
* • Corporatism
* • Anti-communism
* • Antisemitism

Political position| 1922–1932:
Right-wing[4]
1932–1944:
Far-right
Party flag

* Politics of Hungary
* Political parties
* Elections

The 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.

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."

## Electoral results

[edit]

### National Assembly

[edit]

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

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Stanley G. Payne. A history of fascism, 1914-1945. Oxon, England, UK: Routledge, 2005. pp. 269.
2. ^ Miklós Lackó. "Arrow-cross men, national socialists, 1935-1944", Studia historica, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia. Volume 61. Akadémiai Kiadó, 1969. Pp. 65.
3. ^ Häkkinen, Ville (2019). From Counterrevolution to Consolidation?. JYU. p. 99.
4. ^ Sthttps://mult-kor.hu/ki-volt-grof-bethlen-istvan-miniszterelnok-20161005
5. ^ Gregory Curtis Ference. Chronology of 20th-century eastern European history. Gale Research, Inc., 1994. Pp. 226.
6. ^ Philip Morgan. Fascism in Europe, 1919-1945. London, England, UK: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 76-77.
7. ^ a b Payne, Stanley G. (1996). A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Routledge. ISBN 0203501322.
8. ^ Philip Morgan. Fascism in Europe, 1919-1945. London, England, UK: Routledge, 2003. Pp. 76.
9. ^ F. L. Carsten. The rise of fascism. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1982. Pp. 173.
10. ^ Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák. A History of Hungary. First paperback edition. Bloomington, Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press, 1994. Pp. 341.
11. ^ 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.