133 days of the second Soviet state in Europe, and the execution cellar 19 years later
“The Hungarian proletariat betrayed not their leaders but itself.” — last speech before the Republic's fall, 1 August 1919
A Transylvanian-born Jewish journalist turned revolutionary, Béla Kun founded and led the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Europe's second proletarian dictatorship. In 133 days he nationalised industry, but his refusal to distribute confiscated land to peasants, turning estates into state farms, lost the countryside; Entente-backed armies crushed the Republic. In Soviet exile he became a key Comintern figure, ECCI Presidium member and head of Agitprop, backing the ultra-left "Third Period" and resisting the 1935 Popular Front turn, clashing with Dimitrov. Swept up in the Great Purge in 1937, tortured, shot in 1938, and posthumously rehabilitated in 1955.
Career timeline
- 1902Joins the Hungarian Social Democratic Party; organises Transylvanian branch
- 1916Taken prisoner by the Russian Army in WWI; exposed to Bolshevism in the Urals camp
- 1917Joins the RSDLP(b); works in the Tomsk party committee and Bolshevik press
- 1918.3Co-founds the Hungarian Group of the Russian Communist Party in Moscow — precursor to the KMP
- 1918.11Returns to Budapest; founds the Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) and becomes CC chair
- 1919.3–8People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and de facto leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
- 1920Chairman of the Crimean Revolutionary Committee
- 1921Directs the March Action in Germany — uprising fails
- 1921–1936Member of the ECCI and its Presidium
- 1924–Head of the ECCI Agitprop Department
- 1937Arrested on charges of leading a counter-revolutionary terrorist organisation
- 1938.8.29Sentenced to death and shot — Kommunarka, Moscow
Architect of Hungary's Sovietization who built one-party rule through 'salami tactics'
Released on 30 October 1940 and reaching Moscow on 6 November, Rákosi stood beside Stalin atop Lenin's Mausoleum the next day as the October Revolution Day parade crossed Red Square.
General secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party (1945–1948) and then general secretary, later first secretary, of the Hungarian Working People's Party (1948–1956), he ruled Hungary as its de facto leader from 1948 to 1956. Arrested in 1925, he received an 8.5-year sentence in 1926 and a life term in 1935, serving over fifteen years in prison before reaching Moscow in November 1940. After returning in 1945 he dismantled the democratic parties through 'salami tactics' and forced the Social Democrats into a merger to build one-party rule, bearing responsibility for mass imprisonment, forced-labour camps and the Rajk show trial. He handed the premiership to Imre Nagy in 1953 yet obstructed reform as first secretary, was removed on 18 July 1956, expelled from the party in 1962, and died in Gorky on 5 February 1971 after deportation to Krasnodar, Tokmak and Arzamas.
Career timeline
- 1919People's Commissar of Trade, Hungarian Soviet Republic; commands Red Guard and Red Army
- 1921–1924Secretary, Executive Committee of the Comintern
- 1925–1940Imprisoned under the Horthy regime (8.5-year sentence, later life; freed 1940)
- 1940–1945Leads the Foreign Bureau of the Hungarian Communist Party, Moscow
- 1945–1948General Secretary, Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party
- 1948–1956First Secretary, Central Committee of the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP); General Secretary until 1953
- 1952–1953Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Hungarian People's Republic
- 1956–1971Forced exile in the USSR (Kirghizia, Arzamas, Gorky)
