József Cserny
Cserny József
Communist paramilitary commander who led the Lenin Boys and was a leading participant in the Red Terror of 1919
Born into a working-class family in Budapest, he worked as a shoemaker and served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the First World War. In 1918 he escaped to Soviet Russia, joined the Hungarian Communist group and studied at an agitators’ school. Back in Hungary by December 1918, he joined the sailor detachment guarding the Communist Party headquarters. Under the Soviet Republic he commanded more than two hundred men and oversaw some revolutionary tribunal trials, while his men arrested, tortured and executed suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial. Ordered to disarm by Vilmos Böhm at the end of April, the group was re-armed at his request to Béla Kun after the June rising and resumed its activities. Arrested on 4 August after the fall, he was convicted of nine murders and hanged on 18 December 1919.
Career timeline
- 1914–1918Served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy
- 1918Joined the Hungarian Communist group in Soviet Russia
- 1918Sailor guard of the Communist Party headquarters
- 1919Commander of the Lenin Boys
- 1919Sentenced to death for murder and executed