Tisza, István

Born Apr. 22, 1861, in Geszt, county of Békés; died Oct. 31, 1918, in Budapest. Hungarian state and political figure. Count (from 1897). Son of K. Tisza.

István Tisza was a landowner. In 1886 he became a deputy to the Hungarian National Assembly. From 1903 to 1905 he was head of the government. In 1910 he became the leader of the National Party of Work, which united the most reactionary circles of the Hungarian landowners and bourgeoisie. Tisza’s election as president of the Chamber of Deputies in 1912 touched off a political strike and demonstration by the Hungarian proletariat in Budapest that ended in a clash with troops, known as Bloody Thursday, on May 23,1912. Again heading the government from 1913 to 1917, Tisza pursued militaristic policies. He resigned in June 1917, during the rise of the revolutionary and antiwar movement. As one of those responsible for World War I, Tisza was killed by rebelling soldiers on the first day of the general strike that grew into the bourgeois-democratic revolution.