Coup d'état On 20 March, Károlyi announced that the government of Prime Minister
Dénes Berinkey would resign. Károlyi and Berinkey had been placed in an untenable situation when they received a note from Paris, the
Vix Note, ordering Hungarian troops to further withdraw their lines. It was widely assumed that the new military lines would be the postwar boundaries. The presentation of the Vix Note proved fatal to the government, which was by then devoid of significant support. Károlyi and Berinkey concluded that they were not in a position to reject the note although they believed that accepting it would endanger Hungary's territorial integrity. On 21 March, Károlyi informed the Council of Ministers that only Social Democrats could form a new government, as they were the party with the highest public support in the largest cities and especially in Budapest. To form a governing coalition, the Social Democrats started secret negotiations with the Communist leaders, who were still imprisoned, and decided to merge their two parties under the name of the Hungarian Socialist Party. President Károlyi, who was an outspoken anticommunist, was not informed about the merger. Thus, he swore in what he believed to be a Social Democratic government, only to find himself faced with one dominated by Communists. Károlyi resigned on 21 March. Béla Kun and his fellow communists were released from the Margit Ring prison on the night of 20 March. The liberal president Károlyi was arrested by the new Communist government on the first day; in July, he managed to make his escape and flee to Paris. For the Social Democrats, an alliance with the KMP not only increased their standing with the industrial working class but also gave them a potential link to the increasingly powerful
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), as Kun had strong ties with prominent Russian Bolsheviks. Following
Vladimir Lenin's model but without the direct participation of the
workers' councils (soviets) from which it took its name, the newly united Socialist Party created a government called the Revolutionary Governing Council, which proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic and dismissed President Károlyi on 21 March. In a radio dispatch to the
Russian SFSR, Kun informed Lenin that a
dictatorship of the proletariat had been established in Hungary and asked for a treaty of alliance with the Russian SFSR. Accordingly, the Communists started to purge the Social Democrats from the government on the next day.
Garbai government ,
Béla Kun,
Vilmos Böhm,
Tibor Szamuely,
György Nyisztor,
Jenő Varga,
Zsigmond Kunfi,
Dezső Bokányi,
József Pogány,
Béla Vágó,
Zoltán Rónai,
Károly Vántus,
Jenő Landler,
Béla Szántó,
Sándor Szabados,
György Lukács,
Jenő Hamburger,
Gyula Hevesi, and
Antal Dovcsák. The government was formally led by Sándor Garbai, but Kun, as the Commissar of Foreign Affairs, held the real power because only Kun had the acquaintance and friendship with Lenin. He was the only person in the government who met and talked to the Bolshevik leader during the Russian Revolution, and Kun kept the contact with the
Kremlin via radio communication. The ministries, often rotated among the various members of the government, were: •
Sándor Garbai – president and prime minister of the Hungarian Soviet Republic •
Jenő Landler – commissar of the interior •
Sándor Csizmadia,
Károly Vántus,
Jenő Hamburger, and
György Nyisztor – commissars of agriculture •
József Pogány, later also
Rezső Fiedler,
József Haubrich and
Béla Szántó – commissars of Defense •
Zoltán Rónai, later also
István Láday – commissars of Justice •
Jenő Landler – commissar of trade •
Mór Erdélyi, later also
Bernát Kondor – commissars of food •
Zsigmond Kunfi, later also
György Lukács,
Tibor Szamuely, and
Sándor Szabados – commissars of education • Béla Kun – commissar of foreign affairs •
Dezső Bokányi – commissar of labor •
Henrik Kalmár – commissar of German affairs •
Jenő Varga, later also
Gyula Lengyel – commissars of Finance •
Vilmos Böhm – commissar for socialism, later also
Antal Dovcsák After the declaration of the constitution changes took place in the commissariat. The new ministries were: • Jenő Varga,
Mátyás Rákosi,
Gyula Hevesi,
József Kelen,
Ferenc Bajáki – commissars of economic production • Jenő Landler,
Béla Vágó – commissars of internal affairs, railways and navigation • Béla Kun,
Péter Ágoston and
József Pogány – commissars of Foreign Affairs
Policies This government consisted of a coalition of socialists and communists, but with the exception of Kun, all commissars were former social democrats. Under the rule of Kun, the new government, which had adopted in full the program of the Communists, decreed the abolition of aristocratic titles and privileges, the
separation of church and state, codified
freedom of assembly and
freedom of speech, and implemented free education and language and cultural rights to minorities. in the Hungarian countryside, where the authority of that government was often nonexistent. The Communist party and their policies had real popular support among only the proletarian masses of large industrial centers, especially in Budapest, where the working class represented a high proportion of the inhabitants. , the
de facto leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic The Hungarian government was left on its own, and a Red Guard was established under the command of
Mátyás Rákosi. In addition, a group of 200 armed men known as the
Lenin Boys formed a mobile detachment under the leadership of
József Cserny. This detachment was deployed at various locations around the country where
counter-revolutionary movements were suspected to operate. The Lenin Boys as well as other similar groups and agitators killed and terrorised many people (e.g. armed with hand grenades and using their rifles' butts they disbanded religious ceremonies). They executed victims without trial, and this caused a number of conflicts with the local population, some of which turned violent. The situation of the Hungarian Communists began to deteriorate in the capital city Budapest after a failed coup by the Social Democrats on 24 June; the newly composed Communist government of Sándor Garbai resorted to large-scale reprisals.
Revolutionary tribunals ordered executions of people who were suspected of having been involved in the attempted coup. This became known as the
Red Terror, and greatly reduced domestic support for the government even among the working classes of the highly industrialized suburb districts and metropolitan area of Budapest.
Foreign policy scandal and downfall ,
Béla Kun,
Jenő Landler (left to right). The monument is now located at the
Memento Park open-air museum outside Budapest. In late May, after the Entente military representative demanded more territorial concessions from Hungary, Kun attempted to fulfill his promise to adhere to Hungary's historical borders. The men of the Hungarian Red Army were recruited from the volunteers of the Budapest proletariat. In June, the Hungarian Red Army invaded the eastern part of the newly forming
Czechoslovak state (today's
Slovakia), the former so-called
Upper Hungary. The Hungarian Red Army achieved some military success early on: under the leadership of Colonel
Aurél Stromfeld, it ousted Czech troops from the north, and planned to march against the
Romanian Army in the east. Despite promises for the restoration of the former borders of Hungary, the Communists declared the establishment of the
Slovak Soviet Republic in
Prešov on 16 June. After the proclamation of the Slovak Soviet Republic, the Hungarian nationalists and patriots soon realized that the new communist government had no intention of recapturing the lost territories, only in spreading communist ideology and the establishment of other communist states in Europe, thus sacrificing Hungarian national interests. The Hungarian patriots in the Red Army and the professional military officers saw this as a betrayal, and their support for the government began to erode (the communists and their government supported the establishment of the Slovak Communist state, while the Hungarian patriots wanted to keep the reoccupied territories for Hungary). Despite a series of military victories against the Czechoslovak army, the Hungarian Red Army started to disintegrate due to tension between nationalists and communists during the establishment of the Slovak Soviet Republic. The concession eroded support of the communist government among professional military officers and nationalists in the Hungarian Red Army; even the
chief of the general staff Aurél Stromfeld, resigned his post in protest. When the French promised the Hungarian government that Romanian forces would withdraw from the
Tiszántúl, Kun withdrew his remaining military units who had remained loyal after the political fiasco in Upper Hungary; however, following the Red Army's retreat from the north, the Romanian forces were not pulled back. Kun then unsuccessfully tried to turn the remaining units of the demoralized Hungarian Red Army on the Romanians with
Hungarian-Romanian War of 1919. The Hungarian Soviet found it increasingly difficult to fight Romania with its small force of communist volunteers from Budapest, and support for both the war and the Communist party was waning at home. After the demoralizing retreat from northern Hungary (later part of Czechoslovakia), only the most dedicated Hungarian Communists volunteered for combat, and the Romanian Army broke through the weak lines of the Hungarian Red Army on 30 July. speaking to soldiers Béla Kun, together with other high-ranking Communists, fled to Vienna on 1 August Before they fled to Vienna, Kun and his followers took along numerous art treasures and the gold stocks of the National Bank. The Budapest Workers' Soviet elected a new government, headed by
Gyula Peidl, which lasted only a few days before Romanian forces entered Budapest on 6 August. In the power vacuum created by the fall of the soviet republic and the presence of the Romanian Army, semi-regular detachments (technically under
Horthy's command, but mostly independent in practice) initiated a campaign of violence against communists,
leftists, and
Jews, known as the
White Terror. Many supporters of the Hungarian Soviet Republic were executed without trial; others, including
Péter Ágoston,
Ferenc Bajáki,
Dezső Bokányi,
Antal Dovcsák,
József Haubrich,
Kalmár Henrik,
Kelen József,
György Nyisztor, Sándor Szabados, and
Károly Vántus, were imprisoned by trial ("comissar suits"). Actor
Bela Lugosi, the founder of the country's National Trade Union of Actors (the world's first film actor's union), managed to escape. Most were later released to the Soviet Union by amnesty during the reign of Horthy, after a prisoner exchange agreement between Hungary and the Russian Soviet government in 1921. In all, about 415 prisoners were released as a result of this agreement. Kun himself, along with an unknown number of other Hungarian communists, were executed during
Joseph Stalin's
Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Soviet Union, to which they had fled in the 1920s. Rákosi, one of the surviving members of the government, would go on to be the first leader of the second and longer-lasting attempt at a
Communist state in Hungary, the
People's Republic of Hungary, from 1949 to 1956. ==See also==