BUDAPEST, Hungary — Gyula Obersovszky, a poet and journalist whose opposition to Soviet rule in 1956 brought him a death sentence that was later commuted to life in prison, has died, the state-run news agency MTI reported. He was 74.
Obersovszky died Thursday in a Budapest hospital where he spent the last several weeks with heart ailments.
Born in the southern city of Pecs, Obersovszky worked at various rural newspapers and magazines after World War II.
On the second day of Hungary's 1956 revolt against Soviet rule, Obersovszky founded his Igazsag (Justice) newspaper. When the revolt was repressed in November, he started the underground newspaper Eluenk (Still Alive), which is considered a forerunner of samizdat, the "self-published" underground press influential in former Communist bloc nations.
