Hungarian Soviet Republic
The Hungarian Soviet Republic was a short-lived Communist state established in Hungary in 1919 in the chaos after WWI and inspired by Lenin's Soviet Union. It existed from 21 March to 1 August 1919.
As usual in new Communist states, the new regime implemented a Red Terror. One example was the "Lenin Boys", a mobile group deployed at various locations, killing and terrorizing. Tallies of the number of victims of the terror vary; different sources generally count the dead at close to 600. A book published by Dr. Albert Váry in 1922, titled "The Victims of Red Terror in Hungary" documents 590 victims executed.
Jewish influence was high:
- "Béla Kun (Kohn) founded and led the local wing of the Russian Communist Party in early 1918 that later became an independent entity. Along with Jewish colleagues Matyas Rakosi (Roth/Rosenfeld) and Otto Korvin (Klein), Kun’s party organized numerous strikes and conducted violent and subversive attacks against President Karolyi and the ruling Social Democrats. In March 1919 Karolyi resigned, and the SD Party proposed an alliance of necessity with Kun's communists, in the hope of leveraging his connections to the Russian Bolsheviks. Kun agreed to the proposal, on the condition that the government reestablish itself as the “Hungarian Soviet Republic,” which it did. Kun dominated the new government, filling many top seats with Jews; as Muller (2010: 153) explains, “Of the government’s 49 commissars, 31 were of Jewish origin.”He fended off a coup attempt in June, and then conducted what came to be known as the “Red Terror”; this was a paramilitary group, led by Jewish ideologues Georg Lukacs and Tibor Szamuely, that hunted down and killed members of the local opposition. Unfortunately for Kun, ongoing conflicts with neighboring Romania led to an invasion of Hungary, and the promised Russian aid never materialized. Kun and his fellow Jews were driven out in August, just 133 days after taking power."[1]
See also
External links
- The Jewish Role in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919
- The 133 Days of Bela Kun
- Jewish versus Non-Jewish Victims of Bela Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic
