The Hungarian People's Republic was a one-party socialist republic from 20 August 1949 to 23 October 1989.It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Union.Pursuant to the 1944 Moscow Conference, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had agreed that after the war Hungary was to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence.The HPR remained in existence until 1989, when opposition forces brought the end of communism in Hungary.The state was considered itself the heir to the Republic of Councils in Hungary, which was formed in 1919 as the first communist state created after the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR). It was designated a people's democratic republic by the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Geographically, it bordered Romania and the Soviet Union (via the Ukrainian SSR) to the east; Yugoslavia to the southwest; Czechoslovakia to the north and Austria to the west.
