Pestvidéki Ásványbánya Vállalat

In theory, the Cabinet was to control the State Defense Authority, but in reality it belonged to the Political Committee of the Hungarian Workers’ Party (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja – MDP); indeed, its real master was Mátyás (Matthias) Rákosi, the Communist strong man. The ÁVH had its own military barracks, factories, ran internment camps and initiated conceptual (mock) trials, such as that against Cardinal József (Joseph) Minszenty and László (Ladislas) Rajk. From 1945 they operated 199 jails, prisons and internment camps. The number of citizens imprisoned in the 1950's exceeded 80,000 and, once the ÁVH controlled the country's border patrol, close to 100,000 people were incarcerated. There were thousands detained in prisons without being duly charged or sentenced by the courts. The prisons contained medieval torture chambers and the interrogators were not restricted by any constraining laws. It was the “Fist of the Party”, which intended to eliminate all opposition. Their most notorious leader was Lieutenant General Gábor Péter, who became the Head of the State Security Police between 1948 and 1952. The modus operandi of the ÁVH caused concerns for the leaders of the Communist Party. In the fall of 1952, they sacrificed the leader of the ÁVH, Gábor (Gabriel) Péter. He was arrested in Rákosi’s villa, tried by Military Tribune, and sentenced to life on 13 March 1954 for crimes committed against the State and the People. Later, his sentence was commuted to 14 years in prison. The first step in opposition to the ÁVH occurred on 6 October 1956 in Budapest, at the cemetery on Kerepesi Street, at the reburial of László Rajk and his associates, who were illegally executed in 1949. More than ten thousand people demonstrated against the regime and the ÁVH. During the 1956 Revolution and Freedom Fight, ÁVH men conducted large massacres in Miskolc, Mosonmagyaróvár and in Budapest during the demonstrations in front of the Parliament and other places. Although the ÁVH was officially dissolved in 28 October 1956 by Prime Minister Imre (Emeric) Nagy, following the suppression of the Freedom Fight its members continued to inflict mass retaliation upon freedom fighters and civilian demonstrators. After 1989, its role and its structure were officially condemned, but there was no call for its accountability. During the consolidation of the Kádár regime, the functions of the ÁVH were taken over by the Departments of the Ministry of Interior. On 24 February 2002, the “House of Terror” was opened in the very same building which was the headquarters of both the “Arrow-Cross”, 1944-1945, and the Communist security forces, 1945-1989, which committed terrible crimes against their victims. Its permanent exhibition includes means of tortures in torture chambers and other memorabilia. It is located at the infamous “Andrássy út 60”, Budapest. – B: 1230, 1031, 1840, T: 7668, 7103.→Péter, Gábor; Rákosi, Mátyás; Mindszenty, József; Rajk László; Deportations.

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, shorthand, used the symbols devised by Marcus Tullius Tiro, Cicero’s liberated slave, indicated mainly by syllables and some entire words. In Hungarian stenography the first experiment was noted in 1769, when István (Stephen) Gáti (1749-1843), presented his own independent Hungarian system. His system remained experimental only. The era of modern stenography began in 1823 with Franz Xavier Gabelsberger (1787-1849), devising geometrical shortenings of the characters. His system eventually reached Hungary, where Iván Markovits adapted it in 1863 to what became known as the Gabelsberger-Markovits System and was taught in most schools. In time, it became impractical at the speed of normal speech, so Henrik Fabró modernized the Gabelsberger-Markovits system with an emphasis on double and plural vowels, called “fabroisims” to considerably speed up shorthand writing. Later, Dr. Béla Radnai (1891-1962), further refined Fabró’s method by applying the Hungarian language laws and he created the foundation for uniform Hungarian shorthand writing. During World War I, while Radnai was away on military assignments, his students, with the guidance of Zoltán Nemes, further simplified his shorthand system. In 1909 Tivadar Galánthay Glock came up with his new system of stenography. At the Countrywide Stenography Exhibit of 1913 in the Arts and Crafts Museum, he demonstrated stenography for the languages of the Ural–Altaic and related peoples. He adapted the Gabelsberger stenography system to suit the Albanian, Japanese, Korean and Siamese languages as well. In 1927 Radnai’s method became the official system of Hungarian shorthand writing that is still taught today. Hungarian stenographers always finish well at international championships, confirming that the Hungarian shorthand writing system makes it possible to write down even the most difficult dictations. – B: 0942, 1020, 1078, T: 3240, 7669.→Gáti, István; Stenography; Galánthay Glock, Tivadar; Radnai, Béla (2).