Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy and Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs, president of the Hungarian Socialist Party, laid a wreath at a memorial plaque for Imre Nagy, martyred prime minister of the ill-fated anti-Soviet revolution of 1956, at his erstwhile home in Budapest. 

Following the ceremony, Medgyessy wrote in the album of the Nagy Imre House, "I pay my respects to the memory of the committed left-wing, democratic politician, Imre Nagy." 

Wreaths were laid on behalf of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, of which Nagy was a regular member, by former and current presidents Ferenc Glatz and E. Szilveszter Vizi. The daughter of Nagy, Erzsebet, also placed flowers at the memorial. 

Imre Nagy, prime minister of the toppled 1956 Hungarian revolution, and his fellow martyrs were commemorated at a number of memorial sites. Nagy and several of his associates were executed on June 16, 1958 in retaliation for their roles in the revolution suppressed by Soviet troops. 

Nagy was a leader of the Hungarian Communist Party from 1944, but as he criticised Stalin's cult of personality and the forcible farm collectivisation, he was removed from the party leadership in 1949. He was readmitted to the top party echelons at the demand of the participants in the 1956 revolution, which broke out on October 23, 1956. He became prime minister on October 24. Identifying with the will of society, he declared a ceasefire, spoke out for the departure of Soviet troops and announced the reinstatement of the multi-party system. In response to the arrival of additional Soviet forces despite the ceasefire, on November 1 he pronounced Hungary's neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, requesting support from the four great powers and the U.N. 

The Soviets arrested Nagy and took him to Romania. He was condemned to death on trumped-up charges in a closed and secret hearing in Budapest on June 15, 1958, and was executed on June 16. 

His full rehabilitation and formal reburial took place on the eve of the democratic changeover, on June 16, 1989, with tens of thousands of people attending.