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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 30-5-72
TITLE:             Biographical Note on Karoly Olt, New President of Hungarian State Office for Church Affairs
BY:                
DATE:              1959-6-3
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  Hungarian Evaluation & Research
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Church and State, Personalities

--- Begin ---

RFE NEWS & INFORMATION
EVALUATION & RESEARCH
Hung. Eval. & Research

News Background

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON KAROLY OLT, NEW PRESIDENT OF HUNGARIAN
STATE OFFICE FOR CHURCH AFFAIRS

Munich, June 3 (Hungarian Evaluation & Research) --
Radio Budapest yesterday announced the appointment of Karoly Olt
as president of the State Office for Church Affairs, replacing
Janos Horvath who has been transferred to another sphere of
activity (no details yet given).

According to an official biography in "Szabad Nep" of
25 September 1947 on Olt's appointment as Minister of National
Welfare in the cabinet of Lajos Dinnyes, Olt was born in Zagreb
in 1904 into a civil servant's family, spent his early youth in
southern Transylvania (which at that time belonged to Hungary)
and already at the tender age of 14 published an appeal demanding
that government power should be turned over to Mihaly Karplyi,
the left-wing leader of the autumn 1918 revolution. Because of
his progressive thinking Olt clashed with his fellow students
and narrowly escaped expulsion from the school.

In 1920 he came to Budapest and in 1923 entered the
faculty of fine arts of the university to study classical
philology.

As a leader of the left-wing Christian Federation of
Lutheran Students he attended congresses in Bulgaria, Rumania,
Austria and Czechoslovakia and became acquainted with democratic
student movements abroad. Financial difficulties compelled him
to interrupt his studies and to find a job as clerical assistant
to a lawyer... In 1929 he read the "Communist Manifesto" and
discovered the "truth of Marxism."

In 1930 Olt got in touch with the underground
Communist Party and organized an "East European Seminary" in which
university students translated into Hungarian the works of Lenin
among others. Olt recruited young people working in the seminary
into the Federation of Young Communist Workers. In 1932 he was
arrested, tried and sentenced to a mild prison term.

[page 2]

CURT0-(1) BIG NOTE ... OLT

Hungarian Evalo & Research News Background

Honor for Role in Underground                          

In 1933 the police assessed and interrogated him at
length because he was suspect as a result of receiving
Communist literature and letters from abroad. Afterwards he worked as
one of the leaders of the opposition in the Trade Union of
Private Employees.

For his participation in the underground movement
during World War II Olt was awarded the "Freedom Order" after
Hungary's "liberation" by the Red Army.

In February 1945 Olt became president of the Insurance
Company of Private Employees (MABI). That year he was elected to
Parliament and has ever since remained a member, representing a 
constituency of County Fejer. His first high government office
was -- as mentioned above -- Minister of National Welfare, which
he held until June 1949 when he was elected Speaker of Parliament.
He remained in that post until August 1949 when he was appointed
Secretary of the Presidium.

In February 1950 Olt returned to the Cabinet as
Minister of Finance and maintained that position in all the
subsequent cabinets until 27 06tober 1956 when he was omitted from
the government of Imre Nagy.

No Party Position

After the revolution, in May 1957, Olt was elected
to the Presidium and some time in the course of that year was
appointed head of the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers. m*
He was mentioned in that capacity in a Radio Budapest broadcast
on 9 November 1957.

As to his position in the Party, he was member of the
Central Committee from 1945 to October 1956 when the former
Hungarian Communist Party (HWP) was dissolved. He was not elected
in the Central Committee of the new Communist Party (HSWP) and
therefore he has no Party job at present.

Olt is the third president of the State Office for
Church Affairs which was set up by the law 1/51. The first, from
May 1951 to summer 1952, was Istvan Kossa (at present Minister of
Communications and Posts and a member of the Central Committee),
and second Janos Horvath (whose official biography has never

[page 3]

Hungarian Eval. & Research News Background

CORT - (2) NOTE. . .OLT

been disclosed, but who, according to RFE information, was
brought to the State Office for Church Affairs from the
Hungarian Railroads where he acted as chief of the political
section.)

On 31 December 1956 the State Office for Church
Affairs ceased to be an independent organization and continued its
activity as a section of the Ministry of Education.

Emphasizing Tougher Line

As far as the significance of this change in the
leadership of the State Office for Church Affairs is concerned it
can be tentatively assumed that, by appointing such a well-known
Communist personality as Olt, the regime wants to underline the
present harder course toward the churches. This is apparent both
from decree No. 18/59 which requires the consent of the government
for the filling of certain ecclesiastical posts, and from the
pushing into the foreground of anti-religious propaganda.

The importance attached by the regime to relations with
the churches may well be demonstrated also by the eventual
detachment of the State Office for Church Affairs from the Ministry of
Culture and its restoration to its former independent status.

End

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