The 133 Days of Bela Kun

Days of Mayhem and Murder

In a previous article I have documented the jewish domination of Bela Kun’s short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. (1) It is thus perhaps interesting to document some of what went on in Kun’s 133 days of rule over Hungary with this jewish domination in mind.

In doing this we should bear in mind that despite being only 4.9 percent of the population in 1900. (2)

Jews were: (3)

12.5 percent of Industrialists

21.8 percent of Salaried Employees in Industry

54.0 percent of Small Business Owners

61.1 percent of the Employees of Small Businesses

85.0 percent of Financiers and Bankers

42.0 percent of Finance and Banking Employees

In other words while jews were but a tiny part of the Hungarian population. They were grossly over-represented in most powerful areas in the economy, but not in the government or the armed forces. (4)

Thus when at the close of the First World War and the subsequent collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the republican coalition government of Count Mihaly Karolyi’s Independence Party ascended to power on 31st October 1918. (5) It was perhaps inevitable that due to the vengeful pressure applied by the Allied powers and the newly radicalised population (6) that whatever happened in terms of new political movements would have a very strong jewish component to them.

That this was likely to derive from the political left was perhaps inevitable as well since Karolyi’s governing coalition contained three separate parties: his own Independence Party, the Social Democrats and the Radicals which governed via the medium of a ‘National Council’. (7)

All these parties were of the political left and this is hardly surprising given that Karolyi held a favourable opinion of the February and October revolutions in Russia in addition to being an avowed anti-militarist. (8) Karolyi’s political naiveté is no better demonstrated than by his belief that a Social Democrat and a revolutionary Marxist were in fact the same thing and thus neither were a threat to his political programme for Hungary. (9)

Out of this ferment the Hungarian Communist Party formed from the Radical and Social Democratic parties on 24th November 1918. (10) Early on this party became almost completely dominated by a jewish communist revolutionary named Bela Kun. (11) Kun’s success derived primarily from his previous role as a colleague of Lenin’s during the Russian revolution in 1917 and his editorship of the fledgling Hungarian Communist Party’s newspaper ‘Red News’. (12)

Mobilising the millions of Hungarian civilians displaced by war as well as demobilised former soldiers in addition to the poor. (13) By playing on the misery of these hungry, desperate people. Kun helped inspire widespread strikes from late December and by 5th January the means of production were largely in the hands of the communists. (14)

Hungarian society was in almost complete anarchy at this point with policeman being routinely shot in the street by both revolutionaries and criminals. (15)

Faced with this situation; Karolyi’s government took the decision to arrest the communist leaders on 21st February 1919, but as they had built up a widespread network of sympathisers and fellow travellers at this point. They were able to lead the Hungarian Communist Party with little to no obstacles from inside their prison cells. (16)

Hungary at this point was almost completely ungovernable. The final blow to Karolyi’s government came on 21st March when the Communists and Social Democrats united and merged as one party, while the Western Allies also rebuffed Karolyi’s pleas for assistance in dealing with the communist threat. (17)

Karolyi then resigned his position and handed over the reins of government to the ‘Revolutionary Governing Council’; whose ostensible chairman was the Social Democratic leader Sandor Garbai – who wasn’t jewish – (18) while it was really ruled by the head of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs: Bela Kun. (19)

Despite this veneer of unity: Kun quickly claimed and was granted dictatorial powers by Garbai. (20)

Kun then immediately took sudden and rather drastic measures to recreate Lenin’s policies in Russia.

Molnar helpfully summarises these and their effects as follows:

‘[The Hungarian Soviet Republic’s] revolutionary governors took countless measures: enterprises, banks, insurance companies, wholesale trade and apartment blocks were nationalized; social decrees were passed in favour of women and children, the press, cultural activity and liberal professions were subject to government control. Hardship, rationing and inflation soon followed. The Hungarian crown once on a par with the Swiss franc, fell by 90 per cent; ‘blue’ bank notes, good ones, were replaced by ‘white notes’ issued in Budapest mistrusted by all. The gravest mistake was to allocate lands confiscated from larger land owners to co-operatives rather than to the expectant peasants and agricultural workers.’ (21)

Not only did Kun do this, but he also introduced a raft of quite frankly farcical policies like the nationalisation of all indoor toilets as public toilets on certain days on the week. (22)

This failure to fulfil their promises as well as their ideologically myopic policy making quickly lead to mass popular unrest among the Hungarian people. The response from the Kun government (on the explicit advice of Lenin himself) (23) was what you might expect:  a murderous crackdown on dissenters, which caused even Kun’s Social Democratic allies to recoil in horror. (24)

The group charged with carrying out this brutal crackdown against dissenters was called ‘The Lenin Boys’, which had been set up early on Kun’s regime as a parallel police force, specialising in spreading terror in order to quell political dissent. (25) Its commander was Tibor Szamuely, the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs, who was a genocidal Marxist fanatic of jewish origin. (26)

We don’t know how many people Szamuely’s ‘The Lenin Boys’ tortured and killed, but estimates range from a few hundred to a few thousand. (27) The brutal atrocities committed by ‘The Lenin Boys’ towards their real, or perceived, opponents are however well known. (28)

These enemies tended to be a mix of ideological opponents - counter-revolutionaries and former members of the bourgeoisie who were being dispossessed and persecuted by Gyorgy Lukacs, the jewish People’s Commissar for Education and Culture (29) – and the rural population who Kun and the Revolutionary Governing Council sought to scapegoat for food and fuel shortages. (30)

By the time of the first congress of the united Communist and Social Democratic parties on 12-13th June; the coalition had all but fallen apart with most of the Social Democrats taking the opportunity provided by the party congress to resign. This party now purged of those who were not resolved upon committing the most brutal and genocidal actions in the name of Marxism changed its name to the ‘Socialist Communist Party of the Hungarian Workers’. (31)

This congress was largely a political farce however since with mass unrest in Hungary itself, because of, to quote Jorg Hoensch, ‘errors of political judgement, economic problems and blind terror’. (32)

Thus Kun’s Marxist dictatorship was increasingly both impoverished and impotent in the face of civil disobedience and revolt on a grand scale.

His regime was also imploding on the battlefield; since despite limited military successes against the Czechs in May. (33) Romanian forces, as well as others, decisively smashed through the tiny Hungarian Red Army – which was also hampered by the meddling of its political commissars – (34) on 30th July. (35)

Kun and his cabinet – with the exception of Lukacs and his fellow jew Otto Korvin-Klein (the head of Kun’s ‘Political Investigating Authority’) (36) who stayed behind to lead the ‘communist resistance’ (despite openly blaming the Hungarian people for his own failures) (37) – fled to Austria on 1st August and with them left the jewish-lead campaign of Red Terror that had been haunting the Hungarian people for 133 days.

The popular anti-Semitic backlash that began in the days after the disestablishment of the Hungarian Soviet Republic was merely the predictable angry response of a people who for a third of that year had been subject to widespread torture and murder under the boot of an eternally ‘persecuted religious minority’. (38)

The question is: can you really blame them?

I have to say that I can’t.

References

(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-jewish-role-in-the-hungarian

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

(3) Ibid.

(4) Ibid, pp. 191-192

(5) Paul Lendvai, Nick Clark (Trans.), 1988, ‘Hungary: The Art of Survival’, 1st Edition, I.B. Tauris: London, p. 17

(6) Ibid.

(7) Miklos Molnar, 2001, ‘A Concise History of Hungary’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 250

(8) Ibid, p. 251

(9) Ibid, p. 253

(10) Ibid, p. 254; Jorg Hoensch, 1996, ‘A History of Modern Hungary 1867-1994’, 2nd Edition, Longman: New York, p. 88

(11) Molnar, Op. Cit., p. 254

(12) Hoensch, Op. Cit., p. 88

(13) Molnar, Op. Cit., p. 254

(14) Hoensch, Op. Cit., p. 89

(15) Ibid, p. 91

(16) Ibid.

(17) Ibid, p. 92

(18) Jonas Alexis, 2013, ‘Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A History of Conflict between Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism from the Early Church to Modern Times’, Vol. II, 1st Edition, WestBow: Bloomington, p. 499

(19) Hoensch, Op. Cit., p. 92; Molnar, Op. Cit., p. 254

(20) Hoensch, Op. Cit., p. 92

(21) Molnar, Op. Cit., pp. 256-257

(22) David Woodward, 2009, ‘World War I Almanac’, 1st Edition, Facts on File: New York, p. 482

(23) Molnar, Op. Cit., p. 259

(24) Hoensch, Op. Cit., p. 94

(25) Molnar, Op. Cit., pp. 258-259

(26) Macartney, Op. Cit., p. 205

(27) Molnar, Op. Cit., p. 259

(28) Hoensch, Op. Cit., p. 96

(29) Ibid, p. 93

(30) Ibid, p. 96

(31) Ibid, pp. 96-97

(32) Ibid, p. 98

(33) Ibid, p. 96

(34) Ibid, p. 93

(35) Molnar, Op. Cit., p. 261

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

(37) Molnar, Op. Cit. p. 254

(38) Ibid, p. 261; Macartney, Op. Cit., p. 21