Jewish versus Non-Jewish Victims of Bela Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic

A Piece of Inconvenient History

Recently I have documented both the story of Bela Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic (1) and the near-absolute domination of its leadership by jews. (2) As a follow-up to these it is important to examine whether this domination of the leadership of the Hungarian Soviet Republic by individuals of jewish descent had any impact on their governance.

The easiest way to do this in terms of such a short-lived but murderous government – other than noting the suggestive but certainly not conclusive fact that Kun’s government waged total war on Christianity during the 133 days that they were in a position to do so – (3) is to look at those we know who were its victims.

We don’t have a conclusive number for those who were murdered on the orders of Kun and his jewish cronies, like Tibor Szamuely, Otto Korvin-Klein and Gyorgy Lukacs, as the estimates range from a few hundred to a few thousand. (4) We do know the names of 570 people who were executed for ‘counter-revolutionary activities’ during the 133 Days. (5)

Of these some 44 (or 7.7 percent) are known to have been jewish. (6)

Similarly of the 715 hostages taken by the Kun regime; some 164 (or 22.9 percent) are known to have been jewish. (7)

Comparing these figures to the percentage of Hungarian citizens who were jewish – Macartney uses 5 percent but it is actually 4.9 percent – (8) according to the 1900 Census. (9) Patai asserts that the overwhelmingly jewish leadership of the Hungarian Soviet Republic disproportionately executed jews at a rate of 1.6 times more than non-jews, while it also took jews hostage at a rate of 4.7 times that of non-jews.

Therefore Patai deduces from this fact that the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s jewish leaders sought to demonstrate that they were above their ostensible ethno-religious loyalty by disproportionately targeting their fellow jews. (10)

This argument is superficially conclusive, but the very real problem with it is that it assumes that the Hungarian Soviet Republic targeted the population irrespective of their socio-economic status, which given that Marxism explicitly defines its political enemies in socio-economic terms vis-à-vis Marxian class-based analysis is clearly incorrect.

Patai’s argument must then be reconsidered, because it fails to take into account how many jews would be considered members of bourgeoisie or likely counter-revolutionaries according to their socio-economic status.

These percentage figures of jewish representation among the likely target groups of Marxist repression are given by the same 1900 survey data as: (11)

Jews were 12.5 percent of Industrialists

Jews were 54.0 percent of Small Business Owners

Jews were 85.0 percent of Financiers and Bankers

Jews were 42.4% of Journalists

Now if we factor in the percentage representation of jews among these likely socio-economic target groups. Only then when we look at the hostages from Budapest and thirteen other cities taken by Kun’s government compared to the percentage of jewish industrialists; do we find that the percentage of jews targeted by the Hungarian Soviet Republic is above that of their representation in the groups that Marxist revolutionaries will naturally target.

If Patai’s conclusion was correct then the percentage of jews targeted by the enforcers of the Hungarian Soviet Republic would be higher in general than the representation of the jews among the groups that Marxist revolutionaries would target.

In fact the reality is that the jews were often only targeted half (or in the case of those executed for ‘counter-revolutionary activities’ a fourth to a fifth) as much as they should have been based upon their representation among these groups.

Thus we can see that Patai’s conclusion is not only wrong, but an inversion of reality. Jews were targeted significantly less – and thus non-jews significantly more - than they should have been based upon their representation among the bourgeoisie: who are the main opponents of Marxism according to its own ideology.

We can conclude from this that their fellow jews - who dominated the leadership of the Hungarian Soviet Republic – actively persecuted the Hungarian people and not the jews. Thus we should view the jews as a protected elite class during the Hungarian Soviet Republic and therefore the anti-Semitic response to the fall of Bela Kun’s murderous dictatorship is at least somewhat justified.

References

(1) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-133-days-of-bela-kun

(2) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-jewish-role-in-the-hungarian

(3) Jorg Hoensch, 1996, ‘A History of Modern Hungary 1867-1994’, 2nd Edition, Longman: New York, p. 93

(4) Miklos Molnar, 2001, ‘A Concise History of Hungary’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 259

(5) Raphael Patai, 1996, ‘The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology’, 1st Edition, Wayne State University Press: Detroit, p. 464

(6) Ibid.

(7) Ibid.

(8) C. Macartney, 1962, ‘Hungary: A Short History’, 1st Edition, Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, p. 191

(9) Patai, Op. Cit., p. 465

(10) Ibid.

(11) Macartney, Op. Cit., pp. 191-192