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
Related historical events
The Hungarian Soviet Republic: A 133-Day Experiment
On 21 March 1919, the merger of the Social Democratic Party and the Party of Communists in Hungary produced the Hungarian Soviet Republic, the second proletarian dictatorship in Europe after Russia. Its nominal head was Social Democratic president Sándor Garbai. But real power lay with Béla Kun, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Kun communicated directly with Lenin by radiotelegraph, receiving advice and directives, while balancing 14 communists against 17 social democrats on the 33-member Revolutionary Governing Council.
The government abolished aristocratic titles and privileges, separated church from state, guaranteed freedom of speech and assembly, free education, and linguistic and cultural rights for national minorities. It nationalised industrial and commercial enterprises, transport, banking, housing, medicine, cultural institutions, and all landholdings over 40 hectares. Yet the nationalisation of land, confiscating estates without redistributing them to peasants, instead converting them into state farms, proved a decisive error: peasants expecting land received none, turning the countryside hostile and worsening food supply. The party enjoyed broad support among Budapest industrial workers but remained extremely weak in rural Hungary.
Externally, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, backed by the Entente, encroached on Hungarian territory. The Hungarian Red Army, under Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, mounted a remarkable northern counter-offensive in May–June, routing Czechoslovak forces and proclaiming the Slovak Soviet Republic in Prešov. But a Clemenceau Note ultimatum forced withdrawal, surrendering the strategic initiative. Soviet Russia, entangled in civil war against Kolchak and Denikin, could offer only moral support.
Internally, József Cserny's 'Lenin Boys' carried out Red Terror in the countryside, while forced requisitioning of food and suppression of opposition eroded the regime's social base. Tensions between social democrats and communists sharpened over time; Kun blurred the line between commissars and deputy commissars to secure communist dominance, undermining the coalition's institutional balance. On 1 August, with Romanian forces within 100 km of Budapest, the Revolutionary Governing Council resigned. The Republic collapsed after 133 days. Kun fled to Austria; that November, Miklós Horthy entered Budapest and began the White Terror.