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Hungary Hungarian Soviet Republic
The rise of the Hungarian Communist Party (HCP) to
power was
swift. The party was organized in a Moscow hotel on
November 4,
1918, when a group of Hungarian prisoners of war and
communist
sympathizers formed a Central Committee and dispatched
members to
Hungary to recruit new members, propagate the party's
ideas, and
radicalize Karolyi's government. By February 1919, the
party
numbered 30,000 to 40,000 members, including many
unemployed
ex-soldiers, young intellectuals, and Jews. In the same
month,
Kun was imprisoned for incitement to riot, but his
popularity
skyrocketed when a journalist reported that he had been
beaten by
the police. Kun emerged from jail triumphant when the
Social
Democrats handed power to a government of "People's
Commissars,"
who proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic on March 21,
1919.
The communists wrote a temporary constitution
guaranteeing
freedom of speech and assembly; free education, language
and
cultural rights to minorities; and other rights. It also
provided
for suffrage for people over eighteen years of age except
clergy,
"former exploiters," and certain others. Single-list
elections
took place in April, but members of the parliament were
selected
indirectly by popularly elected committees. On June 25,
Kun's
government proclaimed a dictatorship of the proletariat,
nationalized industrial and commercial enterprises, and
socialized housing, transport, banking, medicine, cultural
institutions, and all landholdings of more than 40.5
hectares.
Kun undertook these measures even though the Hungarian
communists
were relatively few, and the support they enjoyed was
based far
more on their program to restore Hungary's borders than on
their
revolutionary agenda. Kun hoped that the Soviet Russian
government would intervene on Hungary's behalf and that a
worldwide workers' revolution was imminent. In an effort
to
secure its rule in the interim, the communist government
resorted
to arbitrary violence. Revolutionary tribunals ordered
about 590
executions, including some for "crimes against the
revolution."
The government also used "red terror" to expropriate grain
from
peasants. This violence and the regime's moves against the
clergy
also shocked many Hungarians.
In late May, Kun attempted to fulfill his promise to
restore
Hungary's borders. The Hungarian Red Army marched
northward and
reoccupied part of Slovakia. Despite initial military
success,
however, Kun withdrew his troops about three weeks later
when the
French threatened to intervene. This concession shook his
popular
support. Kun then unsuccessfully turned the Hungarian Red
Army on
the Romanians, who broke through Hungarian lines on July
30,
occupied and looted Budapest, and ousted Kun's Soviet
Republic on
August 1, 1919. Kun fled first to Vienna and then to
Soviet
Russia, where he was executed during Stalin's purge of
foreign
communists in the late 1930s.
Data as of September 1989
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