Sándor Haraszti

Sándor Haraszti (18 November 1897 – 19 January 1982) was a Hungarian journalist and politician.

Biography Harszati was born in the family of a coachman. After graduating from school, he became a railway worker at the MÁV. During the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Haraszti fought in the Ranks of the Hungarian Red Army.

In 1919, he joined the Hungarian Social Democratic Party (MSZDP) in Pécs and went into exile in 1921 in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He then worked in Bač as an editor for the Hungarian-language newspaper Bács-megyei Naplóas. After returning to Hungary in 1929, he joined the illegal Hungarian Communist Party (KMP) as a member and was particularly involved in cultural work. In 1930, he became editor of the Kolozsvár newspaper Korunk and was repeatedly arrested for his illegal communist activities. In June 1944, as a member of the Peace Party (successor of the KMP). After the occupation of Hungary by the German Wehrmacht, he took part in armed struggles of the underground movement.

In October 1956, during the Hungarian uprising, Haraszti became editor-in-chief of the newly founded Népszabadság, Hungary's largest-circulation national daily. In the course of the suppression of the uprising with the support of the Soviet Army, he fled together with Imre Nagy on November 4, 1956, to the Yugoslav embassy, which was then surrounded by Soviet tanks for three weeks. He left the embassy with Nagy on November 22, 1956, but was arrested and deported to Snagov in Romania for solitary confinement. His successor as editor-in-chief of Népszabadság then became Dezső Nemes in January 1957. From 1960 to 1980 he worked as an editor at the Academy Publishing House (Akadémiai Kiadó), which published encyclopedias.