Béla Kun
Encyclopedia
Béla Kun born Béla Kohn, was a Hungarian Communist politician
and a Bolshevik Revolutionary who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic
in 1919.
, Transylvania
, Austria-Hungary
(today Lelei, Romania
). Kun's father, a village notary
, was a lapsed Jew
, and his mother a lapsed Protestant
. Béla Magyarized
his birth surname, Kohn, to Kun in 1906.
Despite his parents' secular outlook, he was educated at a famous Reformed
kollegium (grammar school) in the city of Kolozsvár (modern Cluj-Napoca
, Romania
).
At the kollegium Kun won the prize for best essay on Hungarian literature
that allowed him to attend a Gymnasium school. Kun's essay was on the poet Sándor Petőfi
and his concluding paragraphs were:
Before the First World War
, he was a muck-raking
journalist
with sympathies for the Hungarian Social Democratic Party
in Kolozsvár. In addition, Kun served on the Kolozsvár Social Insurance Board, from which he was later to be accused of embezzling. Kun had a fiery reputation and was several times involved in duel
s. In May 1913, Kun married Iren Gal, a music teacher of middle-class background.
, who introduced Kun to many members of Budapest
's left-wing intelligentsia
.
Kun fought for Austria-Hungary in World War I
, and was captured and made a prisoner of war
in 1916 by the Russians. He was sent to a POW
camp in the Urals, where he became a Communist. In 1917, Kun was caught up in what he regarded as the romance of the Russian Revolution
, the idea of which fulfilled for him certain spiritual needs previously unsatisfied. Paradoxically, he held Russians to a certain degree in contempt, feeling that Communism was much better suited to "civilized" nations such as Hungary rather than "barbaric" Russia. During his time in Russia, Kun became fluent in Russian (he was also fluent in German, and competent at English).
In March 1918, in Moscow, Kun co-founded the Hungarian Group of the Russian Communist Party
(the predecessor to the Hungarian Communist Party
). He travelled widely, including to Petrograd and to Moscow. He came to know Vladimir Lenin
there, but inside the party he formed the ultra-radical left-wing political opposition to Lenin and the mainstream Bolshevik
s. Kun and his friends (such as the Italian Umberto Terracini and the Hungarian Mátyás Rákosi
), aggregated around Grigory Zinoviev
or Karl Radek
; instead of Lenin's pragmatism, they espoused and advertised the politics of "revolutionary offensive by any means". Lenin often called them "kunerists".
In the Russian Civil War
in 1918, Kun fought for the Bolsheviks. During this time, he first started to make detailed plans for exporting Communism to Hungary. In November 1918, Kun, with at least several hundred other Hungarian Communists, and with a lot of money given to him by the Soviets, returned to Hungary.
during the war and that were due to be lost permanently under the projected Treaty of Trianon
. Rampant inflation
, housing shortages, mass unemployment
, food shortages and coal shortages further weakened the economy and stimulated widespread protests. In October 1918, the so-called "Aster Revolution
" established a shaky democratic coalition government. Kun founded the Hungarian Communist Party in Budapest on November 4, 1918.
Kun immediately began a highly energetic propaganda
campaign against the government: he and his followers engaged in attacks against the President, Count Mihály Károlyi
and his Social Democratic allies.
Kun's speeches had a considerable impact on his audiences. One who heard such a speech wrote in his diary:
In addition, the Communists held frequent marches and rallies and organized strikes
. Desiring to attempt a revolution in Hungary he communicated by telegraph with Vladimir Lenin
to garner support from the Bolsheviks, which would ultimately not materialise. Kun acquired a sizable following, though the Social Democrats, who were Hungary's largest party, continued to dwarf the Communists.
On March 19, 1919 the French Lieutenant-colonel Fernand Vix presented the "Vix Note", ordering Hungarian forces to be pulled back further from where they were stationed. It was assumed that the military lines would be the new frontiers that would be established by the peace conference between Hungary and the Allies. The Vix Note created a huge upsurge of nationalist outrage, and the Hungarians resolved to fight the Allies rather than accept the national borders. Károlyi resigned from office in favor of the Social Democrats. For their part, the Social Democrats realized that Hungary needed allies for the coming war and in their view, the only ally on offer was Soviet Russia. As Kun was known to be friendly with Lenin, it was assumed that including him in the government would bring Soviet aid for war against the Allies.
The Social Democrats first approached Kun on the subject of a coalition government. Such was the desperation for the Social Democrats to have Kun receive promised Soviet support that it was Kun, a captive, who dictated the terms to his captors. This was despite the Red Army
's full involvement in the Russian Civil War and the unlikelihood that it could be of any direct military assistance.
Kun demanded the merger of the Social Democrat and Communist parties, the proclamation of a Soviet Republic and a host of other radical measures. The Social Democrats agreed to all of his demands. On March 21, 1919, a Soviet Republic was announced; the Social Democrats and Communists were merged under the interim name Hungarian Socialist Party, and Béla Kun was released from prison and sworn into office.
The Social Democrats continued to hold the majority of seats in government. Of the thirty-three People's Commissars of the Revolutionary Governing Council that ruled the Soviet Republic, fourteen were former Communists, seventeen were former Social Democrats, and two had no party affiliation. With the exception of Kun, every Commissar was a former Social Democrat and every Deputy Commissar was a former Communist.
, the second Communist government in Europe after Russia itself, was established on March 21, 1919. In the Soviet Republic, Kun served as Commissar for Foreign Affairs, but he was the dominant personality in the government during its brief existence. As Kun reported to Lenin: "My personal influence in the Revolutionary Governing Council is such that the dictatorship of the proletariat is firmly established, since the masses are backing me".
The first act of the new government was to nationalize
virtually all private property in Hungary. Contrary to advice from Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Béla Kun's government refused to redistribute land to the peasantry, thereby alienating the majority of their support in Hungary. Instead, Kun declared that all land was to be converted into collective farms
and kept on the former estate owners, managers and bailiff
s as the new collective farm managers. As a result the balance of power between the old elite and the peasantry which made up the majority of Kun's support, became dissolved.
In an effort to win peasant support, Kun cancelled all taxes in rural areas. To provide food for the cities, the Soviet Republic resorted to food requisitioning in the countryside through a red militia known as the Lenin Boys
. This caused further conflict between Kun and his supporters in the countryside.
Within the Socialist Party, there was a bitter dispute over the permanent name of the party, which may have reflected underlying tensions between the two merged parties. The former Social Democrats preferred "Hungarian Socialist Worker's Party", while former Communists wanted the "Hungarian Socialist Communist Worker's Party". Within the ranks of the former Communists themselves, a split developed between the rural and urban factions.
After a failed anti-communist coup attempt on June 24, Kun organized a response in the form of the Red Terror
via the secret police
, revolutionary tribunals and semi-regular detachments like Tibor Szamuely
's bodyguards, the Lenin Boys. The numbers of victims were estimated to range from 370 to about 600 persons executed; most sources list 590 proven killings. It has been argued that the major limiting factor on this repression were the former Social Democrats such as József Pogány, relative moderate supports of Kun.
Opposition appeared to be centered on the city of Szeged
and around Rear Admiral Miklós Horthy
, who formed a National Army to fight the Soviet Republic. However, the National Army never saw action and only marched on Budapest after the withdrawal of the Romanians in November. The Horthy regime staged a White Terror
in 1919–20.
The Soviet government lasted for 133 days, falling on August 1, 1919. The Soviet Republic had been formed to resist the Vix Note, and created the Hungarian Red Army to do so. Given the disparity in power between Hungary and the Allies, Hungarian chances for victory were slim at best. To buy time, Kun tried to negotiate with the Allies, meeting the South African Prime Minister, General Jan Smuts
at a summit in Budapest in April. Agreement proved impossible, and Hungary was soon at war later in April with the Kingdom of Romania
and Czechoslovakia
, both aided by France. The Hungarian Red Army achieved some success against the Czechoslovaks, taking much of Slovakia
by June.
However, the Hungarians were repeatedly defeated by the Romanians. By the middle of July 1919, Kun decided to stake everything on an offensive against the Romanians
. The Allied Commander in the Balkans, the French Marshal Louis Franchet d'Esperey wrote to Marshal Ferdinand Foch
on July 21, 1919: "We are convinced that the Hungarian offensive will collapse of its own accord... When the Hungarian offensive is launched, we shall retreat to the line of demaracation, and launch the counteroffensive from that line. Two Romanian brigades will march from Romania to the front in the coming days, according to General Fertianu's promise. You, see, Marshal, we have nothing to fear from the Hungarian army. I can assure you that the Hungarian Soviets will last no more than two or three weeks. And should our offensive not bring the Kun regime down, its untenable internal situation surely will.
The Soviets promised to invade Romania and link up with Kun, and were on verge of doing so. However, military reversals suffered by the Red Army in Ukraine
stopped the invasion of Romania before it began. The Romanians then invaded Hungary, took Budapest, crushed the Communists, and on August 1, 1919 forced them to hand over power to a Social Democratic party.
, then controlled by the Social Democratic Party of Austria
. He was captured and interned in Austria, but was released in exchange for Austrian prisoners in Russia in July 1920.
Once in Russia, Kun rejoined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
and was put in charge of the regional Revolutionary Committee in the Crimea
. In this position he is alleged to have given instructions to kill thousands of members of Crimean ethnic minorities. Victor Serge
, among others, claims in Memoirs of a Revolutionary that Kun, with Lenin's approval, also killed tens of thousands of White
prisoners of war (specifically, detachments of general Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
, troops which had been promised amnesty if they would surrender, and were then murdered). It is said that the Crimean massacres created outrage in the Soviet Communist Party and caused Lenin to censure Kun. Adding to the outrage within the Party was the fact that the massacres had been perpetrated against Russians by a Hungarian outsider. However, the sourcing of these claims is problematic and the fact that Kun became member of the highest committee of the Comintern
and was shortly afterwards sent to Berlin clearly contradicts Lenin's alleged response.
, as an ally of Grigory Zinoviev
. In March 1921, Kun was sent to Germany to advise the Communist Party of Germany
(KPD). He encouraged the KPD to follow the "Theory of the Offensive" as supported by Zinoviev and other Kunerists.
On March 27 a decision was taken by German Communist Party leaders to launch a revolutionary offensive in support of the miners of central Germany. Kun was the driving force behind the German Communist attempted revolutionary campaign known as "Märzaktion" ("March Action
"), which ended in complete failure.
At the beginning of April, Otto Horsing
, the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Oberpräsident of Saxony
, gave instructions to police and paramilitary forces to occupy the copper mines and chemistry plants around Halle
, "to prevent sabotage and attacks on managers". His real motivation was to prevent a Communist takeover and pacify the area, with force if necessary, and purge local unions and local organizations of Communist influence.
Under the leadership of the Anarchist
Max Hoelz, an armed opposition to the state began to unfold. The KPD called on the working class throughout Germany to arm itself in solidarity with the armed opposition. But they had completely misjudged the mood of the German people, and the uprising remained mainly isolated to central Germany. Even unified, Hoelz's anarchists and the KPD had no real mass support, and government forces deployed without significant opposition (the strikers were unwilling to participate in armed conflict with the police). There were even instances (like the factory of Krupp
Factories or the ship factory of Hamburg
) where the workers drove out communist agitators from the workplace with clubs.
The background and organization of the "March Action
" is somewhat obscure. There were those (like Ruth Fischer
, leader of KDP) that claimed that Lenin and Soviet Communist leaders wanted to deflect public attention from the inner problems and crisis of the Comintern and Communist Party. Others have said that the March Action was a direct result of the overzealousness of Lenin's radical, Kunerist opposition, who were anxious to prove their worth to the Party.
In the end, Lenin blamed himself for appointing Kun and charged him with responsibility for the failure of the German revolution. Lenin was considerably angered by Kun's actions and his failure to secure a general uprising in Germany. In a closed Congress of the Operative Committee - as Victor Serge
writes - called his actions idiotic ("les bêtises de Béla Kun"). However, Kun did not lose his membership in the Operative Committee, and the closing document accepted at the end of the sitting formally confessed the "battle spirit" of the German Communists.
Kun was not stripped of his Party offices, but the March Action was the end of the radical opposition and of the theory of "Permanent Offensive":
Through the 1920s, Kun was a prominent Comintern operative, serving mostly in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, but ultimately his notoriety made him useless for undercover work.
's purge
of the Communist old guard in the late 1930s, Kun was accused of Trotskyism
. He was arrested in June 1937, imprisoned and executed. It is believed that the proximate cause of his elimination was an effort by Stalin to remove any "foreign" figures who had influenced the Comintern
.
Over time, accounts have differed over the precise date and manner of Kun's death. Some accounts reported that Kun was secretly executed at the Butovo firing range
in 1937. Others maintain that Kun was sent to the Gulag
and executed there either in 1938 or 1939. Kun's widow was also sent to the Gulag, as were his daughter and son-in-law.
When Kun was politically rehabilitated in 1956, as part of the de-Stalinization
process, the Soviet party told its Hungarian counterpart that Kun had died in prison on November 30, 1939. In 1989, the Soviet government announced that Kun had actually been executed by firing squad in the Gulag
more than a year earlier than that, on August 29, 1938.
It is difficult to overstate the impact of Kun's brief and failed regime on Hungarian history. Though the executions meted out in the Red Terror
were, by contrast to other such upheavals, relatively few, shock and horror at Kun's excesses remained deeply imprinted on the
consciousness of sectors of the middle and upper classes for years to come.
One bitter repercussion was the association of Hungary's Jews with the suffering inflicted by the Communists; since Kun and most of his colleagues were clearly Jewish, many Hungarians recognized a Jewish element in the Bolshevist conspiracy afoot in central Europe. As Louis Birinyi observed,
Another was the severe rightward direction of post-Kun Hungary. The election of admiral Miklós Horthy
, the chief of the National Army, as Hungary's regent was a stark political about-face, and the heat of Horthy's anti-communist feelings was legendary. It was partly to keep the "Asiatic barbarians" of Soviet Communism at bay that Horthy gradually helped steer his country into an alliance with Adolf Hitler
. It was a fatal partnership; Hitler would eventually crush Horthy's regime, invade Hungary, and install a puppet government, which helped the Nazis deport more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz concentration camp
under the antisemitic racial laws.
Hitler's grasp on Hungary was finally loosened by the Red Army
. After the war, Horthy remained in exile, while the Soviets inaugurated a Communist regime under the leadership of Mátyás Rákosi
, one of Kun's few surviving colleagues from the 1919 coup.
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
and a Bolshevik Revolutionary who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic
Hungarian Soviet Republic
The Hungarian Soviet Republic or Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived Communist state established in Hungary in the aftermath of World War I....
in 1919.
Early life
Béla Kun was born in Lele village near SzilágycsehCehu Silvaniei
Cehu Silvaniei is a town in Sălaj County, Transylvania, Romania. Four villages are administered by the town: Horoatu Cehului , Motiş , Nadiş and Ulciug .-History of the town:...
, Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
(today Lelei, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
). Kun's father, a village notary
Civil law notary
Civil-law notaries, or Latin notaries, are lawyers of noncontentious private civil law who draft, take, and record legal instruments for private parties, provide legal advice and give attendance in person, and are vested as public officers with the authentication power of the State...
, was a lapsed Jew
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, and his mother a lapsed Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
. Béla Magyarized
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
his birth surname, Kohn, to Kun in 1906.
Despite his parents' secular outlook, he was educated at a famous Reformed
Reformed Church in Hungary
The Reformed Church in Hungary is a key representative of Christianity in Hungary, being numerically the second-largest denomination in Hungary after the Roman Catholic Church, and the biggest denomination among ethnic Hungarians in Romania...
kollegium (grammar school) in the city of Kolozsvár (modern Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
).
At the kollegium Kun won the prize for best essay on Hungarian literature
Hungarian literature
Hungarian literature is literature written in the Hungarian language, predominantly by Hungarians.There is a limited amount of Old Hungarian literature dating to between the late 12th and the early 16th centuries...
that allowed him to attend a Gymnasium school. Kun's essay was on the poet Sándor Petőfi
Sándor Petofi
Sándor Petőfi , was a Hungarian poet and liberal revolutionary. He is considered as Hungary's national poet and he was one of the key figures of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848...
and his concluding paragraphs were:
The storming rage of Petőfi's soul… turned against the privileged classes, against the people's oppressor… and confronted them with revolutionary abandon. Petőfi felt that the country would not be saved through moderation, but through the use of the most extreme means available. He detested even the thought of cowardice… Petőfi's vision was correct. There is no room for prudence in revolutions whose fate and eventual success is always decided by boldness and raw courage… this is why Petőfi condemned his compatriots for the sin of opportunism and hesitation when faced with the great problems of their age… Petőfi's works must be regarded as the law of the Hungarian soul… and of the… love of the country".
Before the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he was a muck-raking
Muckraker
The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
with sympathies for the Hungarian Social Democratic Party
Hungarian Social Democratic Party
The Hungarian Social Democratic Party is a political party in Hungary. Both the MSZDP and SZDP lay claim to the same heritage: the Social Democratic Party which was part of a governing coalition in Hungary between 1945 and 1948, and a short period in 1956, which itself was renamed from the...
in Kolozsvár. In addition, Kun served on the Kolozsvár Social Insurance Board, from which he was later to be accused of embezzling. Kun had a fiery reputation and was several times involved in duel
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
s. In May 1913, Kun married Iren Gal, a music teacher of middle-class background.
Early career in left politics movement
During his early learning ages at Kolozsvár, Kun became friends with the poet Endre AdyEndre Ady
Endre Ady was a Hungarian poet.-Biography:Ady was born in Érmindszent, Szilágy county . He belonged to an impoverished Calvinist noble family...
, who introduced Kun to many members of Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
's left-wing intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
.
Kun fought for Austria-Hungary in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and was captured and made a prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
in 1916 by the Russians. He was sent to a POW
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
camp in the Urals, where he became a Communist. In 1917, Kun was caught up in what he regarded as the romance of the Russian Revolution
February Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
, the idea of which fulfilled for him certain spiritual needs previously unsatisfied. Paradoxically, he held Russians to a certain degree in contempt, feeling that Communism was much better suited to "civilized" nations such as Hungary rather than "barbaric" Russia. During his time in Russia, Kun became fluent in Russian (he was also fluent in German, and competent at English).
In March 1918, in Moscow, Kun co-founded the Hungarian Group of the Russian Communist Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
(the predecessor to the Hungarian Communist Party
Hungarian Communist Party
The Communist Party of Hungary , renamed Hungarian Communist Party in 1945, was founded on November 24, 1918, and was in power in Hungary briefly from March to August 1919 under Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The communist government was overthrown by the Romanian Army and driven...
). He travelled widely, including to Petrograd and to Moscow. He came to know Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
there, but inside the party he formed the ultra-radical left-wing political opposition to Lenin and the mainstream Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s. Kun and his friends (such as the Italian Umberto Terracini and the Hungarian Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian communist politician. He was born as Mátyás Rosenfeld, in present-day Serbia...
), aggregated around Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
or Karl Radek
Karl Radek
Karl Bernhardovic Radek was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution....
; instead of Lenin's pragmatism, they espoused and advertised the politics of "revolutionary offensive by any means". Lenin often called them "kunerists".
In the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
in 1918, Kun fought for the Bolsheviks. During this time, he first started to make detailed plans for exporting Communism to Hungary. In November 1918, Kun, with at least several hundred other Hungarian Communists, and with a lot of money given to him by the Soviets, returned to Hungary.
To the Soviet Republic
In Hungary, the resources of a shattered government were further strained by refugees from lands lost to the AlliesAllies
In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them...
during the war and that were due to be lost permanently under the projected Treaty of Trianon
Treaty of Trianon
The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement signed in 1920, at the end of World War I, between the Allies of World War I and Hungary . The treaty greatly redefined and reduced Hungary's borders. From its borders before World War I, it lost 72% of its territory, which was reduced from to...
. Rampant inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
, housing shortages, mass unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
, food shortages and coal shortages further weakened the economy and stimulated widespread protests. In October 1918, the so-called "Aster Revolution
Aster Revolution
The Aster Revolution or Chrysanthemum Revolution was a revolution in Hungary led by leftist liberal count Mihály Károlyi, who founded the Hungarian Democratic Republic....
" established a shaky democratic coalition government. Kun founded the Hungarian Communist Party in Budapest on November 4, 1918.
Kun immediately began a highly energetic propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
campaign against the government: he and his followers engaged in attacks against the President, Count Mihály Károlyi
Mihály Károlyi
Count Mihály Ádám György Miklós Károlyi de Nagykároly was briefly Hungary's leader in 1918-19 during a short-lived democracy...
and his Social Democratic allies.
Kun's speeches had a considerable impact on his audiences. One who heard such a speech wrote in his diary:
Yesterday I heard Kun speak… it was an audacious, hateful, enthusiastic oratory. He is a hard-looking man with a head of a bull, thick hair, and moustache, not so much Jewish, but peasant features, would best describe his face… He knows his audience and rules over them… Factory workers long at odds with the Social Democratic Party leaders, young intellectuals, teachers, doctors, lawyers, clerks who came to his room… meet Kun and Marxism.
In addition, the Communists held frequent marches and rallies and organized strikes
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
. Desiring to attempt a revolution in Hungary he communicated by telegraph with Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
to garner support from the Bolsheviks, which would ultimately not materialise. Kun acquired a sizable following, though the Social Democrats, who were Hungary's largest party, continued to dwarf the Communists.
On March 19, 1919 the French Lieutenant-colonel Fernand Vix presented the "Vix Note", ordering Hungarian forces to be pulled back further from where they were stationed. It was assumed that the military lines would be the new frontiers that would be established by the peace conference between Hungary and the Allies. The Vix Note created a huge upsurge of nationalist outrage, and the Hungarians resolved to fight the Allies rather than accept the national borders. Károlyi resigned from office in favor of the Social Democrats. For their part, the Social Democrats realized that Hungary needed allies for the coming war and in their view, the only ally on offer was Soviet Russia. As Kun was known to be friendly with Lenin, it was assumed that including him in the government would bring Soviet aid for war against the Allies.
The Social Democrats first approached Kun on the subject of a coalition government. Such was the desperation for the Social Democrats to have Kun receive promised Soviet support that it was Kun, a captive, who dictated the terms to his captors. This was despite the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
's full involvement in the Russian Civil War and the unlikelihood that it could be of any direct military assistance.
Kun demanded the merger of the Social Democrat and Communist parties, the proclamation of a Soviet Republic and a host of other radical measures. The Social Democrats agreed to all of his demands. On March 21, 1919, a Soviet Republic was announced; the Social Democrats and Communists were merged under the interim name Hungarian Socialist Party, and Béla Kun was released from prison and sworn into office.
The Social Democrats continued to hold the majority of seats in government. Of the thirty-three People's Commissars of the Revolutionary Governing Council that ruled the Soviet Republic, fourteen were former Communists, seventeen were former Social Democrats, and two had no party affiliation. With the exception of Kun, every Commissar was a former Social Democrat and every Deputy Commissar was a former Communist.
The Soviet Republic, 1919
The Hungarian Soviet RepublicHungarian Soviet Republic
The Hungarian Soviet Republic or Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived Communist state established in Hungary in the aftermath of World War I....
, the second Communist government in Europe after Russia itself, was established on March 21, 1919. In the Soviet Republic, Kun served as Commissar for Foreign Affairs, but he was the dominant personality in the government during its brief existence. As Kun reported to Lenin: "My personal influence in the Revolutionary Governing Council is such that the dictatorship of the proletariat is firmly established, since the masses are backing me".
The first act of the new government was to nationalize
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
virtually all private property in Hungary. Contrary to advice from Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Béla Kun's government refused to redistribute land to the peasantry, thereby alienating the majority of their support in Hungary. Instead, Kun declared that all land was to be converted into collective farms
Collective farming
Collective farming and communal farming are types of agricultural production in which the holdings of several farmers are run as a joint enterprise...
and kept on the former estate owners, managers and bailiff
Bailiff
A bailiff is a governor or custodian ; a legal officer to whom some degree of authority, care or jurisdiction is committed...
s as the new collective farm managers. As a result the balance of power between the old elite and the peasantry which made up the majority of Kun's support, became dissolved.
In an effort to win peasant support, Kun cancelled all taxes in rural areas. To provide food for the cities, the Soviet Republic resorted to food requisitioning in the countryside through a red militia known as the Lenin Boys
Lenin Boys
The Lenin Boys were a band of Communist enforcers formed to support the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. The group seems to have contained about 200 young men dressed in leather jackets, acting as the personal guard of Tibor Szamuely, Commissar for Military Affairs...
. This caused further conflict between Kun and his supporters in the countryside.
Within the Socialist Party, there was a bitter dispute over the permanent name of the party, which may have reflected underlying tensions between the two merged parties. The former Social Democrats preferred "Hungarian Socialist Worker's Party", while former Communists wanted the "Hungarian Socialist Communist Worker's Party". Within the ranks of the former Communists themselves, a split developed between the rural and urban factions.
After a failed anti-communist coup attempt on June 24, Kun organized a response in the form of the Red Terror
Red Terror (Hungary)
The Red Terror in Hungary was a series of atrocities aimed at crushing political rivals during the four-month regime of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. It was so named because of its similarity to the Red Terror in Soviet Russia in both purpose and effect...
via the secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
, revolutionary tribunals and semi-regular detachments like Tibor Szamuely
Tibor Szamuely
Tibor Szamuely was a Hungarian Communist leader.Born in Nyíregyháza, a city in the Northeast of Hungary, Szamuely was the oldest son of five children of a Jewish family. After completing his university studies, he became a journalist...
's bodyguards, the Lenin Boys. The numbers of victims were estimated to range from 370 to about 600 persons executed; most sources list 590 proven killings. It has been argued that the major limiting factor on this repression were the former Social Democrats such as József Pogány, relative moderate supports of Kun.
Opposition appeared to be centered on the city of Szeged
Szeged
' is the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county town of Csongrád county. The University of Szeged is one of the most distinguished universities in Hungary....
and around Rear Admiral Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" .Admiral Horthy was an officer of the...
, who formed a National Army to fight the Soviet Republic. However, the National Army never saw action and only marched on Budapest after the withdrawal of the Romanians in November. The Horthy regime staged a White Terror
White Terror
White Terror is the violence carried out by reactionary groups as part of a counter-revolution. In particular, during the 20th century, in several countries the term White Terror was applied to acts of violence against real or suspected socialists and communists.-Historical origin: the French...
in 1919–20.
The Soviet government lasted for 133 days, falling on August 1, 1919. The Soviet Republic had been formed to resist the Vix Note, and created the Hungarian Red Army to do so. Given the disparity in power between Hungary and the Allies, Hungarian chances for victory were slim at best. To buy time, Kun tried to negotiate with the Allies, meeting the South African Prime Minister, General Jan Smuts
Jan Smuts
Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM, CH, ED, KC, FRS, PC was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various cabinet posts, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948...
at a summit in Budapest in April. Agreement proved impossible, and Hungary was soon at war later in April with the Kingdom of Romania
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...
and Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, both aided by France. The Hungarian Red Army achieved some success against the Czechoslovaks, taking much of Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
by June.
However, the Hungarians were repeatedly defeated by the Romanians. By the middle of July 1919, Kun decided to stake everything on an offensive against the Romanians
Hungarian-Romanian War of 1919
The seeds of the Hungarian–Romanian war of 1919 were planted when the union of Transylvania with Romania was proclaimed, on December 1, 1918. In late March 1919, the Bolsheviks came to power in Hungary, at which point its army attempted to retake Transylvania, commencing the war. By its final...
. The Allied Commander in the Balkans, the French Marshal Louis Franchet d'Esperey wrote to Marshal Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch , GCB, OM, DSO was a French soldier, war hero, military theorist, and writer credited with possessing "the most original and subtle mind in the French army" in the early 20th century. He served as general in the French army during World War I and was made Marshal of France in its...
on July 21, 1919: "We are convinced that the Hungarian offensive will collapse of its own accord... When the Hungarian offensive is launched, we shall retreat to the line of demaracation, and launch the counteroffensive from that line. Two Romanian brigades will march from Romania to the front in the coming days, according to General Fertianu's promise. You, see, Marshal, we have nothing to fear from the Hungarian army. I can assure you that the Hungarian Soviets will last no more than two or three weeks. And should our offensive not bring the Kun regime down, its untenable internal situation surely will.
The Soviets promised to invade Romania and link up with Kun, and were on verge of doing so. However, military reversals suffered by the Red Army in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
stopped the invasion of Romania before it began. The Romanians then invaded Hungary, took Budapest, crushed the Communists, and on August 1, 1919 forced them to hand over power to a Social Democratic party.
Activity in Austria and the Crimean areas
Béla Kun then went into exile in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, then controlled by the Social Democratic Party of Austria
Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...
. He was captured and interned in Austria, but was released in exchange for Austrian prisoners in Russia in July 1920.
Once in Russia, Kun rejoined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
and was put in charge of the regional Revolutionary Committee in the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
. In this position he is alleged to have given instructions to kill thousands of members of Crimean ethnic minorities. Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
, among others, claims in Memoirs of a Revolutionary that Kun, with Lenin's approval, also killed tens of thousands of White
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
prisoners of war (specifically, detachments of general Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel or Vrangel was an officer in the Imperial Russian army and later commanding general of the anti-Bolshevik White Army in Southern Russia in the later stages of the Russian Civil War.-Life:Wrangel was born in Mukuliai, Kovno Governorate in the Russian Empire...
, troops which had been promised amnesty if they would surrender, and were then murdered). It is said that the Crimean massacres created outrage in the Soviet Communist Party and caused Lenin to censure Kun. Adding to the outrage within the Party was the fact that the massacres had been perpetrated against Russians by a Hungarian outsider. However, the sourcing of these claims is problematic and the fact that Kun became member of the highest committee of the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
and was shortly afterwards sent to Berlin clearly contradicts Lenin's alleged response.
The "March Action" in Germany
Kun became a leading figure in the CominternComintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, as an ally of Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
. In March 1921, Kun was sent to Germany to advise the Communist Party of Germany
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
(KPD). He encouraged the KPD to follow the "Theory of the Offensive" as supported by Zinoviev and other Kunerists.
On March 27 a decision was taken by German Communist Party leaders to launch a revolutionary offensive in support of the miners of central Germany. Kun was the driving force behind the German Communist attempted revolutionary campaign known as "Märzaktion" ("March Action
March Action
The March Action The March Action The March Action (German "März Aktion" or "Märzkämpfe in Mitteldeutschland" ("The March battles in Central Germany") was a 1921 workers revolt, led by the Communist Party of Germany, the Communist Workers' Party of Germany, and other radical left-wing...
"), which ended in complete failure.
At the beginning of April, Otto Horsing
Otto Hörsing
Friedrich Otto Hörsing was a German social democratic politician.- Biography :Hörsing was born in Groß Schilleningken near Memel, East Prussia and was trained to work as a blacksmith in his youth...
, the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
Oberpräsident of Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
, gave instructions to police and paramilitary forces to occupy the copper mines and chemistry plants around Halle
Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...
, "to prevent sabotage and attacks on managers". His real motivation was to prevent a Communist takeover and pacify the area, with force if necessary, and purge local unions and local organizations of Communist influence.
Under the leadership of the Anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
Max Hoelz, an armed opposition to the state began to unfold. The KPD called on the working class throughout Germany to arm itself in solidarity with the armed opposition. But they had completely misjudged the mood of the German people, and the uprising remained mainly isolated to central Germany. Even unified, Hoelz's anarchists and the KPD had no real mass support, and government forces deployed without significant opposition (the strikers were unwilling to participate in armed conflict with the police). There were even instances (like the factory of Krupp
Krupp
The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...
Factories or the ship factory of Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
) where the workers drove out communist agitators from the workplace with clubs.
The background and organization of the "March Action
March Action
The March Action The March Action The March Action (German "März Aktion" or "Märzkämpfe in Mitteldeutschland" ("The March battles in Central Germany") was a 1921 workers revolt, led by the Communist Party of Germany, the Communist Workers' Party of Germany, and other radical left-wing...
" is somewhat obscure. There were those (like Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer was a German Communist, a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918. According to secret information declassified in 2010, she was a key agent of the American intelligence service known as "The Pond."-Life and work:Born in Leipzig, Ruth Fischer was the daughter of the...
, leader of KDP) that claimed that Lenin and Soviet Communist leaders wanted to deflect public attention from the inner problems and crisis of the Comintern and Communist Party. Others have said that the March Action was a direct result of the overzealousness of Lenin's radical, Kunerist opposition, who were anxious to prove their worth to the Party.
In the end, Lenin blamed himself for appointing Kun and charged him with responsibility for the failure of the German revolution. Lenin was considerably angered by Kun's actions and his failure to secure a general uprising in Germany. In a closed Congress of the Operative Committee - as Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
writes - called his actions idiotic ("les bêtises de Béla Kun"). However, Kun did not lose his membership in the Operative Committee, and the closing document accepted at the end of the sitting formally confessed the "battle spirit" of the German Communists.
Kun was not stripped of his Party offices, but the March Action was the end of the radical opposition and of the theory of "Permanent Offensive":
"The final analysis of things shows that Levin was politically right in many ways. The thesis of Thallheimer and Béla Kun is politically totally false. Phrases and bare attending, playing the radical leftist.".
Through the 1920s, Kun was a prominent Comintern operative, serving mostly in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, but ultimately his notoriety made him useless for undercover work.
Later career
Kun's final undercover assignment ended in 1928 when he was arrested in Vienna by the local police for travelling on a forged passport. When Kun was in Moscow, he spent much of his time feuding with other Hungarian Communist émigrés, several of whom he denounced to the Soviet secret police, the OGPU, which arrested and imprisoned them in the late 1920s and early 1930s.Death and legacy
During Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
of the Communist old guard in the late 1930s, Kun was accused of Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
. He was arrested in June 1937, imprisoned and executed. It is believed that the proximate cause of his elimination was an effort by Stalin to remove any "foreign" figures who had influenced the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
.
Over time, accounts have differed over the precise date and manner of Kun's death. Some accounts reported that Kun was secretly executed at the Butovo firing range
Butovo firing range
The Butovo firing range is the name of a location where more than 20,000 political prisoners were shot during the Great Terror of the Soviet Union and thereafter from 1938 to 1953. It is located in the Yuzhnoye Butovo District of Moscow, near the village of Drozhzhino...
in 1937. Others maintain that Kun was sent to the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
and executed there either in 1938 or 1939. Kun's widow was also sent to the Gulag, as were his daughter and son-in-law.
When Kun was politically rehabilitated in 1956, as part of the de-Stalinization
De-Stalinization
De-Stalinization refers to the process of eliminating the cult of personality, Stalinist political system and the Gulag labour-camp system created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in March 1953...
process, the Soviet party told its Hungarian counterpart that Kun had died in prison on November 30, 1939. In 1989, the Soviet government announced that Kun had actually been executed by firing squad in the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
more than a year earlier than that, on August 29, 1938.
It is difficult to overstate the impact of Kun's brief and failed regime on Hungarian history. Though the executions meted out in the Red Terror
Red Terror (Hungary)
The Red Terror in Hungary was a series of atrocities aimed at crushing political rivals during the four-month regime of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. It was so named because of its similarity to the Red Terror in Soviet Russia in both purpose and effect...
were, by contrast to other such upheavals, relatively few, shock and horror at Kun's excesses remained deeply imprinted on the
consciousness of sectors of the middle and upper classes for years to come.
One bitter repercussion was the association of Hungary's Jews with the suffering inflicted by the Communists; since Kun and most of his colleagues were clearly Jewish, many Hungarians recognized a Jewish element in the Bolshevist conspiracy afoot in central Europe. As Louis Birinyi observed,
The personnel of the "government" were selected from the ranks of the agitators, about ninety-five per cent of "whose names tell us that they were of Jewish origin." The country then was divided into districts, and at the head of each district a commissaire was placed. It was not uncommon for the Bolsheviks to appoint janitors of Jewish churches to the office of commissaire who held in the hollow of their hands the life or death of the people in their districts. Terror squads were organized, and the "red terror" was in full swing.
Another was the severe rightward direction of post-Kun Hungary. The election of admiral Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" .Admiral Horthy was an officer of the...
, the chief of the National Army, as Hungary's regent was a stark political about-face, and the heat of Horthy's anti-communist feelings was legendary. It was partly to keep the "Asiatic barbarians" of Soviet Communism at bay that Horthy gradually helped steer his country into an alliance with Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. It was a fatal partnership; Hitler would eventually crush Horthy's regime, invade Hungary, and install a puppet government, which helped the Nazis deport more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
under the antisemitic racial laws.
Hitler's grasp on Hungary was finally loosened by the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
. After the war, Horthy remained in exile, while the Soviets inaugurated a Communist regime under the leadership of Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian communist politician. He was born as Mátyás Rosenfeld, in present-day Serbia...
, one of Kun's few surviving colleagues from the 1919 coup.
Further reading
- Borsanyi, Gyorgy The life of a Communist revolutionary, Béla Kun translated by Mario Fenyo, BoulderBoulderIn geology, a boulder is a rock with grain size of usually no less than 256 mm diameter. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive....
, Colorado: Social Science Monographs; New York: Distributed by Columbia University PressColumbia University PressColumbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...
, 1993. - Janos, Andrew C. & Slottman, William (editors) Revolution in perspective: essays on the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919: Published for the University of CaliforniaUniversity of CaliforniaThe University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
, Berkeley, Center for Slavic and East European Studies, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1971. - Janos, Andrew The Politics of Backwardness In Hungary 1825–1945 Princeton: Princeton University PressPrinceton University Press-Further reading:* "". Artforum International, 2005.-External links:* * * * *...
, 1982. - Menczer, Béla Béla Kun and the Hungarian Revolution of 1919 pages 299–309 from History Today, Volume XIX, Issue #5, London: History Today Inc., May 1969.
- Tokes, Rudolf Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic: the origins and role of the Communist Party of Hungary in the revolutions of 1918–1919 New York: published for the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, California, by F. A. Praeger, 1967.
- Volgyes, Ivan (editor) Hungary in revolution, 1918–19: nine essays Lincoln: University of Nebraska PressUniversity of Nebraska PressThe University of Nebraska Press, founded in 1941, is a publisher of scholarly and popular-press books. It is the second-largest state university press in the United States and, including private institutions, ranks among the 10 largest university presses in the United States...
, 1971. - Birinyi, Louis The Tragedy of Hungary, An Appeal for World Peace Cleveland, 1924.
External links
- Béla Kun Internet Archive at Marxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet Archive is a volunteer based non-profit organization that maintains a multi-lingual Internet archive of Marxist writers and other similar authors...
. - Wireless Message to Béla Kun, March 23, 1919.
- Crimean government on the ethnic cleansing among Crimean Turks.
- Marxist interpretation of the March Action.