Grief is the common language of humanity,' commented Radio Free Europe on 6 October 1956 at the time of the reburial of László Rajk, the hardline communist Minister of the Interior in Hungary, who was executed as an alleged 'Titoist' after a show trial in 1949. 1 In this chapter, I analyse two unique features of the process of de-Stalinisation in Hungary. The first is its timing: the process began much earlier than in any other eastern bloc country, and indeed almost immediately after the death of Stalin, with the appointment of a reformist, Imre Nagy (1896-1956), as Prime Minister in July 1953. 2 The second is the key role played in the process by a woman, namely Júlia Rajk (1914-1981), László Rajk's widow. The two processes are linked, as Júlia Rajk and her husband belonged to a privileged group in post-1945 Hungarian society, having been prominent members of Hungary's underground communist movement in the 1930s and early 1940s. Yet this influential couple, and their infant son, fell victim to the first Soviet-style show trial in Hungary in 1949. Júlia Rajk, born as Júlia Földes in 1914, grew up in Budapest in a working-class family that had strong communist traditions. 3 In the 1930s she lived for a while in Paris and became active in promoting Red Aid for Spain. She re-entered Hungary at the beginning of the Second World War and worked illegally for the party, before being arrested, with her husband, by police loyal to the fascist Arrow Cross regime in December 1944. Between 1945 and 1949, as the wife of László Rajk, who had also been a legendary leader in the Spanish Civil War, Júlia Rajk (known in Hungary as Rajk Lászlóné or Mrs László Rajk) became a leading functionary in the communist-controlled Democratic Association of Hungarian Women (MNDSZ). In a trial that took place in March 1950, nine months after her arrest, she received a five-year prison sentence, AQ1 3