Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic: The Origins and Role of the Communist Party of Hungary in the Revolutions of 1918-1919

306 Pages·1967·8.635 MB·English

by  Rudolf L. Tökés

Hoover Institution Publications
Béla Kun and the
Hungarian Soviet Republic

Béla Kun
and the Hungarian
Soviet Republic
The Origins and Role of the Communist Party
of Hungary in the Revolutions of 1918 >1919
RUDOLF L. TŐKÉS
Published for
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
Stanford University, Stanford, California
by
Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers
New York • Washington
Pall Mall Press
London
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded
at Stanford University in 1919 by the late President Herbert Hoover, is a
center for advanced study and research on public and international affairs
in the twentieth century. The views expressed in its publications are en­
tirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
Hoover Institution.
Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers
111 Fourth Avenue, New York, New York 10003, U.S.A.
Pall Mall Press
77-79 Charlotte Street, London, W. 1, England
Published in the United States of America in 1967
by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., Publishers
Published in Great Britain in 1967 by Pall Mall Press, Ltd.
All rights reserved
C 1967 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-17142
Printed in the United States of America
For Mary

Preface
The Communist Party of Hungary was founded in November,
1918, by a group of Russian-trained Hungarian former prisoners of
war and indigenous left socialists for the purpose of overthrowing the
democratic government of Mihály Károlyi and establishing a revolu­
tionary beachhead in Hungary to spread the “bacilli of Bolshevism**
in Europe. Internal disunity and the threat of foreign invasion, ex­
ploited by the communists, caused the downfall of the Károlyi gov­
ernment and the subsequent establishment of the Hungarian Soviet
Republic in March of 1919. The Hungarian Soviet Republic, led by
Béla Kun, fell after 133 days of existence. It was followed by Admiral
Nicholas Horthy’s counterrevolutionary regime, which ruled until
the end of World War H. In early 1945 the Communist Party re-
emerged from the underground to become a decisive force in postwar
politics, and within three years established its complete authority in
Hungary.
This study is concerned with the background and history of the
communists* first, shortlived role in Hungary, and specifically with
the intellectual prehistory and ideological and organizational
achievements of the Communist Party of Hungary in the democratic
and proletarian revolutions of 1918 and 1919. Since most of the
founders and early leaders of the Communist Party of Hungary, in­
cluding Béla Kun and more than nineteen People’s Commissars of
the Hungarian Soviet Republic, fell victim to the Soviet purges, and
also because Stalinist party historians after 1928 viewed the Kun
regime as a Luxemburgist deviation rather than a bona fide prole­
tarian revolution, very little information concerning the party’s early
history, and particularly its Russian origins, was available until 1957.
Since then, in an effort to restore the political credentials of these
fallen communists, several previously suppressed documents, a score
of memoirs, and many specialized monographs have been published
in Hungary and in the Soviet Union. These new data and additional
primary sources from the years 1917 to 1928 necessitate a careful
vu
viii Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic
reconsideration of the crucial yet virtually unknown formative
period of the party's history.
The process of ideological and political "rehabilitation” of old
Bolsheviks is far from complete in Hungary, and some information
is still missing. The record of Hungarian communist activities in
Russia after November, 1918, has not yet been made public, plat­
forms and programmatic statements of socialist opposition groups in
the period preceding the formation of the Communist Party of Hun­
gary are unavailable, data on the Kun-Chicherin correspondence in
the spring and summer of 1918 are missing, and there is insufficient
documentary evidence on charges and countercharges traded among
Hungarian exile communists concerning the record of various opposi­
tion groups during the period of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. As a
result, there are unavoidable gaps in the narrative. However, with
the evidence that is available it should be possible to gain a fresh
insight into the party's early history and reach some valid conclu­
sions concerning its place and meaning in modem Hungarian political
history and its significance in the development of the international
communist movement.
Space limitations do not permit a thorough investigation of many
otherwise relevant diplomatic, economic, social, cultural, and literary
aspects of the October revolution of 1918 and the Hungarian Soviet
Republic of 1919. However, various statistical charts, documentary
materials previously unpublished in English, reconstructed party
organizational blueprints, and biographies of several leading com­
munists are included as appendixes. This additional material, which
is supplementary to the narrative, is designed to support and docu­
ment some of the more unorthodox arguments advanced in the text.
It is my pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professors
Henry L. Roberts and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski of Columbia Univer­
sity for their intellectual and material guidance and generous help
from the very inception of this study. I am also grateful to the Com­
mittee on Research and Publications of the Hoover Institution on
War, Revolution and Peace for its research grant enabling me to
spend a most rewarding summer at the library of the Institution.
Thanks are due to Witold S. Sworakowski and Karol Maichel of the
Hoover Institution staff and to George Löwy of the Columbia Univer­
sity Library for their technical assistance. Nancy Clark’s editorial
advice has been of enormous help in seeing the manuscript through
to completion. To my wife, for her patience, encouragement, and
Preface ix
unerring critical judgment on matters of style and substance, I owe
a special debt that words can never adequately express. For errors
of fact and interpretation in this study, I am, of course, alone
responsible.
R. L. T.
Middletown, Connecticut
March, 1966