The Salami Tactics: How a Democracy Was Carved into a Dictatorship

Health · Published 18 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: After World War II, Hungary established a parliamentary republic that appeared democratic on paper. Yet, through a systematic process of political intrigue and forced mergers, the Communist Party dismantled its opposition piece by piece, eventually seizing total control of the state in less than four years.

The Second Hungarian Republic was born in February 1946 following the abolition of the monarchy and the Soviet occupation of Hungary. Despite the Independent Smallholders' Party winning a landslide 57% of the vote in the 1945 elections, Soviet commander Marshal Kliment Voroshilov refused to let them form a government. Instead, he forced a coalition where the Hungarian Communist Party, led by Mátyás Rákosi and Ernő Gerő, secured key positions—most notably the Interior Ministry. This gave the Communists a strategic foothold to begin a systematic dismantling of democratic institutions.

Rákosi famously described this process as "salami tactics," where the opposition was eliminated segment by segment. By early 1947, the security police (ÁVO) began arresting leaders of the Smallholders' and National Peasant's parties, labeling them "fascists" to justify their removal. By June 1947, the Communists had effectively gutted the Smallholders' Party through mass arrests and forced exiles. They then used fraud and intimidation to win a larger share of the vote in the August 1947 elections, eventually forcing all remaining non-Communist parties to either merge with them or flee the country.

The final transition to a totalitarian state was completed by 1949. Following a mandatory unification with the Communists, the Social Democratic Party became the Hungarian Working People's Party, leading to the official declaration of a People's Republic. This era was also marked by extreme economic upheaval; the national currency, the pengő, suffered the most ruinous hyperinflation in recorded history between 1945 and 1946. While some historians argue this was a deliberate Soviet policy to destroy the middle class, it was primarily driven by the need to pay 600 million USD in war reparations to the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. By 1949, the transition was complete, establishing a one-party state that would endure until 1989.

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