A review of "Bela Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic: The origins and role of the Communist Party of Hungary in the revolutions of 1918-1919" by Rudolf Tökes.
Rudolf Tökes' book about Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic was
published in 1967. The author complains about scarce or contradictory sources,
so I suppose more modern books on the Hungarian revolution 1918-1919 might have
revised some of the conclusions of his work. Yet, I found his book interesting
and informative. And no, I haven't read the more recent studies yet.
In 1918, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy fell in the aftermath of World War I, in which the old empire had fought on the loosing side. In Hungary, a liberal coalition government under Count Mihaly Karolyi declared a republic and attempted to create a modern democracy in a country poised somewhere in between semi-feudalism and anarchy. Perhaps Karolyi's failure was inevitable. In 1919, the Social Democrats forced him to resign. Weirdly, the reform socialists then formed a coalition with the much smaller Communist Party led by Béla Kun. The Communists were thus propelled to power due to something close to a parliamentary vote of no confidence, rather than an armed insurrection. One of many reasons for this curious turn of events was Béla Kun's promise of Soviet military assistance to Hungary, threatened by a military invasion of the Entente powers. Despite some initial military successes, the Hungarian Soviet Republic proved to be short-lived. In the long run, it was too weak to beat back the Czech, Romanian and Entente invasion. Kun and his associates resigned after only four months, at which point the "Soviet Republic" collapsed. The Soviet Russian aid never materialized. (One reason for the failure of the Red Army to save the Hungarian Soviets was the anti-Bolshevik mutiny of the notorious "Ataman" Grigoriev at an extremely inappropriate moment.)
The Hungarian Soviet Republic has always been an extremely curious episode in the history of world Communism and revolutions in general. Béla Kun was a notorious revolutionary firebrand, educated in Soviet Russia. Indeed, on some issues he was to the "left" of the Bolsheviks themselves. The latter had, for tactical reasons to be sure, "stolen" the agrarian program of their SR opponents, permitting the peasantry to keep its private property in land. Kun, on the other hand, wanted the immediate socialization of all land, plus the animals, farmhouses and implements of the individual peasants. Kun and the Hungarian Communists were also notorious for their blood-curling rhetoric and rent-a-mob mentality in general.
Yet, the very same Kun came to power through a peaceful parliamentary shake-up orchestrated by Social Democrats. Their reasons for doing so seem to have been largely nationalist: as a defeated nation, Hungary risked loosing large areas of its former territory to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Serbia - or worse. With the threat of complete dismemberment hanging over the country, the Machiavellian idea of Soviet Russian aid didn't seem so threatening to the Hungarian "Mensheviks". By elevating Kun and other Hungarian Communists to government posts, the Social Democrats hoped to persuade Lenin in Moscow to send in the Red Army...and save Greater Hungary.
By all accounts, the Hungarian Soviet Republic was a strange hybrid of super-revolutionary and "right-wing". A good example was its policy towards the peasantry. On the one hand, all land was immediately nationalized by the new government. On the other hand, the grossly unpopular managers of the semi-feudal estates were allowed to stay as employees of the Soviet Republic! Even the bizarre decision to nationalize pretty much everything on the countryside could be given both "leftist" and "rightist" spins. Kun was obviously a crazed ultra-left in his attitude to the peasantry, but the moderate Social Democrats were also anti-peasantry, presumably out of urbane disdain for the "backward" peasants. The Hungarian Soviet Republic attempted to export the revolution to Austria and Slovakia, and for that reason the Communists had created German, Ruthenian and Slovak associations, but these were scorned by the Social Democrats, who were Hungarian nationalists. Romanians were so generally loathed that not even Kun's Communists had a Romanian association! The "world revolution" looked suspiciously similar to a restoration of Hungary's extensive pre-war borders, and the "federation" proposed by the Soviet Republic to Slovaks and other non-Hungarian nationalities would *not* entail the right to secede. And while Kun and many other leading radicals were Jewish, the left-wing regime was forced to take certain anti-Semitic measures to placate the Jew-hating population. A large group of Galician Jews were extradited from Budapest and sent to Poland. To top off the hybrid character of the regime, Kun negotiated an out-right merger between reform socialists and Communists, creating a united "Hungarian Socialist Party", later called "Socialist-Communist Party".
Kun is often cast in the role of supreme leader and evil genius of the Soviet Republic, but judging by Tökes' account, he was simply one of many bickering "people's commissars", and was often out-voted by the Social Democrats, or outflanked by even more extreme elements to his "left". In many ways, Kun comes across as a tragic and even somewhat tragicomic figure, whose revolutionary speeches simply didn't match the realities on the ground. He reminds me of Gaius Gracchus, cursing the people of Rome for his defeat - or in Kun's case, the Hungarian working class. (See p. 203-204 for Kun's remarkable resignation speech.) Kun didn't seem to have learned much from the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, however. A few years later, we find him in Germany, egging on the putschist "March Action" of the German Communist Party. In the end, Kun fell out with Stalin and was executed during the Great Purges in the Soviet Union, together with many other former leaders of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
As already indicated, Tökes' study of the Hungarian Soviet Republic may have been superseded by more recent studies, but as an introduction to this rarely highlighted episode in Hungarian and Communist history, it works eminently well. My impressions of the Hungarian "soviet republic" have always been similar to those of the author (and hence different from whoever have written the Wiki entries on the subject). This was not a "normal" Communist regime, but some kind of reformist-Communist-nationalist hybrid bent on restoring Greater Hungary under red flags. Are we to believe Tökes, even Béla Kun's role may have been different and less central than often imagined. My only disappointment was that the book said almost nothing about the so-called Slovak Soviet Republic, established under the aegis of the Hungarian Red Army during its northern offensive. I've heard pretty strange stuff about *that* episode, as well.
In 1918, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy fell in the aftermath of World War I, in which the old empire had fought on the loosing side. In Hungary, a liberal coalition government under Count Mihaly Karolyi declared a republic and attempted to create a modern democracy in a country poised somewhere in between semi-feudalism and anarchy. Perhaps Karolyi's failure was inevitable. In 1919, the Social Democrats forced him to resign. Weirdly, the reform socialists then formed a coalition with the much smaller Communist Party led by Béla Kun. The Communists were thus propelled to power due to something close to a parliamentary vote of no confidence, rather than an armed insurrection. One of many reasons for this curious turn of events was Béla Kun's promise of Soviet military assistance to Hungary, threatened by a military invasion of the Entente powers. Despite some initial military successes, the Hungarian Soviet Republic proved to be short-lived. In the long run, it was too weak to beat back the Czech, Romanian and Entente invasion. Kun and his associates resigned after only four months, at which point the "Soviet Republic" collapsed. The Soviet Russian aid never materialized. (One reason for the failure of the Red Army to save the Hungarian Soviets was the anti-Bolshevik mutiny of the notorious "Ataman" Grigoriev at an extremely inappropriate moment.)
The Hungarian Soviet Republic has always been an extremely curious episode in the history of world Communism and revolutions in general. Béla Kun was a notorious revolutionary firebrand, educated in Soviet Russia. Indeed, on some issues he was to the "left" of the Bolsheviks themselves. The latter had, for tactical reasons to be sure, "stolen" the agrarian program of their SR opponents, permitting the peasantry to keep its private property in land. Kun, on the other hand, wanted the immediate socialization of all land, plus the animals, farmhouses and implements of the individual peasants. Kun and the Hungarian Communists were also notorious for their blood-curling rhetoric and rent-a-mob mentality in general.
Yet, the very same Kun came to power through a peaceful parliamentary shake-up orchestrated by Social Democrats. Their reasons for doing so seem to have been largely nationalist: as a defeated nation, Hungary risked loosing large areas of its former territory to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Serbia - or worse. With the threat of complete dismemberment hanging over the country, the Machiavellian idea of Soviet Russian aid didn't seem so threatening to the Hungarian "Mensheviks". By elevating Kun and other Hungarian Communists to government posts, the Social Democrats hoped to persuade Lenin in Moscow to send in the Red Army...and save Greater Hungary.
By all accounts, the Hungarian Soviet Republic was a strange hybrid of super-revolutionary and "right-wing". A good example was its policy towards the peasantry. On the one hand, all land was immediately nationalized by the new government. On the other hand, the grossly unpopular managers of the semi-feudal estates were allowed to stay as employees of the Soviet Republic! Even the bizarre decision to nationalize pretty much everything on the countryside could be given both "leftist" and "rightist" spins. Kun was obviously a crazed ultra-left in his attitude to the peasantry, but the moderate Social Democrats were also anti-peasantry, presumably out of urbane disdain for the "backward" peasants. The Hungarian Soviet Republic attempted to export the revolution to Austria and Slovakia, and for that reason the Communists had created German, Ruthenian and Slovak associations, but these were scorned by the Social Democrats, who were Hungarian nationalists. Romanians were so generally loathed that not even Kun's Communists had a Romanian association! The "world revolution" looked suspiciously similar to a restoration of Hungary's extensive pre-war borders, and the "federation" proposed by the Soviet Republic to Slovaks and other non-Hungarian nationalities would *not* entail the right to secede. And while Kun and many other leading radicals were Jewish, the left-wing regime was forced to take certain anti-Semitic measures to placate the Jew-hating population. A large group of Galician Jews were extradited from Budapest and sent to Poland. To top off the hybrid character of the regime, Kun negotiated an out-right merger between reform socialists and Communists, creating a united "Hungarian Socialist Party", later called "Socialist-Communist Party".
Kun is often cast in the role of supreme leader and evil genius of the Soviet Republic, but judging by Tökes' account, he was simply one of many bickering "people's commissars", and was often out-voted by the Social Democrats, or outflanked by even more extreme elements to his "left". In many ways, Kun comes across as a tragic and even somewhat tragicomic figure, whose revolutionary speeches simply didn't match the realities on the ground. He reminds me of Gaius Gracchus, cursing the people of Rome for his defeat - or in Kun's case, the Hungarian working class. (See p. 203-204 for Kun's remarkable resignation speech.) Kun didn't seem to have learned much from the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, however. A few years later, we find him in Germany, egging on the putschist "March Action" of the German Communist Party. In the end, Kun fell out with Stalin and was executed during the Great Purges in the Soviet Union, together with many other former leaders of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
As already indicated, Tökes' study of the Hungarian Soviet Republic may have been superseded by more recent studies, but as an introduction to this rarely highlighted episode in Hungarian and Communist history, it works eminently well. My impressions of the Hungarian "soviet republic" have always been similar to those of the author (and hence different from whoever have written the Wiki entries on the subject). This was not a "normal" Communist regime, but some kind of reformist-Communist-nationalist hybrid bent on restoring Greater Hungary under red flags. Are we to believe Tökes, even Béla Kun's role may have been different and less central than often imagined. My only disappointment was that the book said almost nothing about the so-called Slovak Soviet Republic, established under the aegis of the Hungarian Red Army during its northern offensive. I've heard pretty strange stuff about *that* episode, as well.
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