When a place has been conquered, there comes the question of how much of a local face do you put on your rule. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
I like the visuals of todays stamp. A political leader pleasantly listening to the concerns of country people. Where it falls down is how different the style of dress of leader and follower. Notice also that the little girl has flowers to present to the leader. As a young girl in Germany, my Grandmother was chosen to present the bouguet of flowers to Kaiser Wilhelm when he visited her school. The picture would have looked a lot like this. She remembered it the rest of her life. Yet should a Marxist leader in a classless society be duplicating pictures of Royals. Perhaps its time to reread “Animal Farm”.
Todays stamp is issue A213, a 60 Filler stamp issued by Hungary on March 9th, 1952. It celebrated the 60th anniversary of the birth of Hungarian General Secretary Matyas Rakosi. It was part of a three stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
Matyas Rakosi was born in present day Serbia to a not practicing Jewish family. His ancestors had played a part in the insurrections of 1848. He was well educated including time in London and Hamburg. During World War I, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army until captured by Russia in 1915. He escaped prisoner of war status and joined the Bolshevik insurrections in Saint Petersburg. There was a short lived Communist government in Hungary circa 1920 that he was an official in but soon he was back in exile in the Soviet Union. He married there a divorced lady from Irkutsk, an Asian part of Russia. In January 1945, in preparation for taking Hungary from Germany, the Soviets selected Rakosi to lead and put together a new government. The takeover was somewhat in the system with other parties forced to merge with the communists and then purged of those deemed untrustworthy or disloyal. Rakosi called the mergers and purges salami tactics. You cut then off like you slice a salami.
Hungary was in a predicament when it came to recovering from World War II. Much of the wealth of the country had been destroyed and yet as a former Axis ally, there was also much reparations to pay mainly to Russia. The payments totaled 23 percent of GNP a year. It also had to pay for the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary. West Germany faced similar challenges and pulled off an economic miracle of recovery. Unfortunately Rakosi was no Adenauer.
Rakosi was however a close ally/front man for Stalin. His purges rid the government of Marxist reformers like Imre Nagy. Nagy could sense the discontent and rose up trying to turn Hungary into a neutral but still Communist country. By that time Khrushchev was in power in Russia and Stalin’s stooges were out of favor. Nagy was put down and tried and executed. Rakosi himself was not allowed to stay in power either. He traveled to Russia under the guise of medical treatment but then spent the rest of his life there in out of the way Kirgikistan. Russia offered to let him retire to Hungary if he stayed out of politics but Rakosi refused. His remains were returned to Budapest but his grave is marked only with his initials to prevent vandalism.
No doubt the Axis government that preceded the Communist government did not allow left wing types to mature locally. As was the same with right of center types in Communist times. That makes the awkwardness of being lead by stranger exiles when the pendulum swings. Not a recipe for success. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.