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