Béla Kun

Béla Kun (around 1922)

Béla Kun [ ˈbeːlɒ kun ], pseudonym : Emmerich Schwarz or Elemér Schwarz or Imre Schwarz , (born February 20, 1886 in Szilágycseh in Transylvania , then Austria-Hungary ; † August 29, 1938 in Moscow ) was a Hungarian journalist and politician .

biography

Béla Kun was born under the name Bela Kohn as the son of the Jewish village notary Samu Kohn and his wife Róza Goldberger, who converted to Protestantism . He attended the Reformed - Calvinist National College Silvania in Zillemarkt and studied at the University of Cluj , where he met with Socialists came into contact. He later worked as an employee of a workers' insurance fund. In 1914 Kun went to Budapest , where he published a socialist newspaper. During the First World War he served in the Austro-Hungarian armyand was taken prisoner by Russia in 1916 . In captivity he became a supporter of the Russian Bolsheviks .

In December 1918 he was sent to Hungary to work for a communist revolution . For this purpose he published a newspaper under the title Rote Zeitung . He was soon imprisoned there by the government of Count Mihály Károlyi , but was released on March 21, 1919 following the turmoil that broke out after the end of the First World War. He then formed a council government made up of socialists and communists, in which he only acted as people's representative for external relations, but was the most powerful figure. Among other things, the banks, industrial companies and agricultural goods were nationalized under his leadership . The government was soon dominated by the communists and developed into a dictatorship that ruled with the use of force.

In terms of domestic and foreign policy, the Soviet Republic was not only confronted with enormous social and economic problems as a result of the World War, but also with extensive territorial claims by Czechoslovakia , Romania and the SHS state , which found support from the Entente powers . The occupation of large parts of the former Kingdom of Hungary by Czechoslovak , Romanian, Yugoslav and French troops and the national bitterness of Hungarians over this “robbery” of their historical territory resulted in numerous former officers and soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army, such as for example, Colonel Aurél Stromfeld , made available to the newly established Red Army of the Soviet Republic. This finally succeeded in stopping the "invaders" and in the course of a counter-offensive in the north to bring large parts of Upper Hungary , that is today's Slovakia, under their control and to form a Slovak Soviet Republic there.

The proclamation of the Slovak Council Republic on June 16, 1919 in Prešov and a possible further expansion of the "Hungarian Revolution" resulted in diplomatic notes from the Entente powers to the Hungarian Council Government ("Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaság") in the first half of June 1919 , in which the immediate termination the fighting and the withdrawal of the Red Army behind the line of demarcation established at the Paris Peace Conference . The acceptance of these demands and the withdrawal from the areas conquered shortly before was greeted with bitterness and incomprehension by the soldiers and officers of the Red Army and also by the population, and ultimately caused irreparable damage to the reputation of the council government. This also benefited those counter-revolutionary forces in Hungary who had worked from the beginning to overthrow the Soviet republic. When the Czech and Romanian armed forces finally resumed their advance, the Soviet Republic began to totter. In the course of the Hungarian-Romanian War , Romanian troops advanced far into the interior of Hungary. On July 30, 1919, they crossed the Tisza and on August 1, 1919 the southern army group of the Hungarian Red Army surrendered after fighting near Szolnok. Béla Kun fled and fled to Austria while the Romanian army occupied Budapest and the council government was overthrown.

In Austria Kun was first arrested and interned in Drosendorf , then in Karlstein an der Thaya . From there he managed to escape to the Soviet Union, where he worked in various functions for the CPSU and the Comintern over the next few years .

Among other things, he took part in the March fighting in Central Germany in 1921. In 1924 Kun is said to have stayed in Vienna, where he gave lectures under the code names Emmerich Schwarz , Elemér Schwarz and Imre Schwarz at an agitation school founded by Karl Oeri in July 1924 and attended by all Budapest Communists (together with Jenő Landler and Imre Levai, among others) . In 1928 he was back in Vienna, from where he also unsuccessfully tried to organize socialist currents in Hungary. In 1934 he took part as a foreign delegate on the XVII. CPSU party congress in Moscow. In 1938 he was shot in the Soviet Union as part of the Stalinist purges .

Works

• -, Peter Kischka (translator, foreword): What do the communists want? Hoym, Hamburg 1919, DNB .
• Leninist propaganda . Hoym, Hamburg 1924, DNB .
• -, Willi Munzenberg (preface): Communism in the struggle against social democracy. Verlag Our Time , Berlin 1933, DNB .
• The Second International in dissolution. Publishing Cooperative of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1933, OBV .
• The February battles in Austria and their lessons. Publishing Cooperative of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1934, OBV .
• The most burning question - unity of action. Publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR, Moscow / Leningrad 1934, DNB .
• Otto Bauer's way. From recognition of the corporate state - to recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat . von Schnurpfeil, Leipzig 1934, OBV .
• -, Tibor Hajdú (selection), Geza Engl (transl.): Brothers, to the sun, to freedom! Selected speeches and articles from the time of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 . Corvina-Verlag Budapest 1977, ISBN 963-13-0226-1 .

literature

• Rudolf Tőkés: Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The Origins and Role of the Communist Party of Hungary in the Revolutions of 1918-1919. (English). FA Praeger, New York 1967, LOC , OBV .
• Iván Völgyes (Ed.): Hungary in Revolution, 1918-19. Nine essays . (English). University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1971, ISBN 0-8032-0788-3 , LOC .
• Miklós Szinai: Otto Bauer and Béla Kun. In: Erich Fröschl (ed.), Helge Zoitl (ed.): Otto Bauer (1881–1938). Theory and practice. Contributions to the scientific symposium of the Dr. Karl Renner Institute, held from October 20 to 22, 1981 in Vienna. Europa-Verlag, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-203-50927-X , pp. 11–24.
• On the edge of the Soviet republic. Bela Kun and Austria. In: Konrad Jekl: On the trail of the Republic of Austria. Essays on contemporary Austrian history. Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Vienna ( inter alia ) 1992, ISBN 3-631-48950-1 , pp. 99-126.
• György Borsányi, Mario D. Fenyo (transl.): The Life of a Communist Revolutionary. Bela Kun. Atlantic studies on society in change, Volume 75, ZDB -ID 1202668-2 . Social Science Monographs, Boulder 1993. ISBN 0-88033-260-3 , LOC , OBV .

Web links

Commons : Béla Kun  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Béla Kun in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Béla Kun in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Entry on Béla Kun at litkult1920er.aau.at , a project of the University of Klagenfurt

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} The Budapest Communist Trial. First day of negotiation. (...) Bela Kun's alleged stay in Vienna. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, No. 22208/1926, July 13, 1926, p. 4, bottom left. (Online at ANNO ). '
   The trial of Rakosi. In:  Arbeiter-Zeitung , Morgenblatt, No. 191/1926 (XXXIXth year), July 13, 1926, p. 5, top left. (Online at ANNO ). .
2. ^ The Communist Trial in Hungary. In:  Arbeiter-Zeitung , Morgenblatt, No. 193/1926, July 15, 1926, p. 2, top center. (Online at ANNO ). .
3. ↑ ^{a b} From the Budapest Communist Trial. In:  Arbeiter-Zeitung , Morgenblatt, No. 194/1926, July 16, 1926, p. 3, top center. (Online at ANNO ). .
4. ↑ Списки жертв , Russian , accessed August 25, 2012.
5. ↑ György Borsányi, Mario D. Fenyo (trans.): The Life of a Revolutionary Communist. Bela Kun. Atlantic studies on society in change, Volume 75, ZDB-ID 1202668-2. Social Science Monographs, Boulder 1993. ISBN 0-88033-260-3
6. ↑ Daily report. Bela Kun's visit to Vienna ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Wiener Morgenzeitung , No. 194/1919 (Volume I), August 3, 1919, p. 5, center right. 
7. ↑ Some remarks on the Kun case ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Wiener Morgenzeitung. No. 195/1919 (Volume I), August 4, 1919, p. 3, top center. 
8. ↑ Bela Kun arrested in Vienna. In:  Arbeiter-Zeitung , No. 118/1928 (XLI. Volume), April 28, 1928, p. 1. (Online at ANNO ). .