Was there political unrest in Hungary after W.W.I ?
Revolution, counterrevolution, and the regency, 1918-45
On Oct. 31, 1918, when the defeat of the monarchy was imminent, Charles IV (1916- 1918) appointed Micheal Károlyi (1875 – 1955) prime minister at the head of an improvised administration based on a left-wing National Council. After the monarchy had signed an armistice on November 3 and King Charles had "renounced participation" in public affairs on the 13th, the National Council dissolved Parliament on the 16th and proclaimed Hungary an independent republic, with Károlyi as provisional president. The separation from Austria was popular, but all Károlyi's supposed friends disappointed him, and all his premises proved mistaken. Serb, Czech, and Romanian troops installed themselves in two-thirds of the helpless country, and, in the confusion, orderly social reform was impossible. The government steadily moved leftward, and in March 1919 Károlyi's government was replaced by a soviet republic, controlled by Béla Kun (1885 - 1938, assassinated in the UdSSR). His “Red-Army“ invaded parts of Slowakia. A so called counter-government under Pal Teleki apointed Admiral Miklós Horthy (1868-1957) as commander of the Hungarian army. On August 4 Kun and his associates fled Budapest, and two days later Romanian troops took control over Budapest from August to November.
After the Romanians withdrew, Admiral Horthy was appointed Regent by parliamant since there was no king in 1920 and established a government. His conservative government lasted 25 years. Under Horthy, Hungary again became a monarchy, though it had no king. Instead, Horthy ruled as regent (temporary ruler in the place of a monarch).
Kun, Béla
1886-1937, Hungarian Communist. A prisoner of war in Russia after 1915, he embraced Bolshevism. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917 he was sent to Hungary as a propagandist. In 1919, Count Michael Károlyi and his government resigned and the Communists and Social Democrats formed a coalition government under Kun. Kun set up a dictatorship of the proletariat; nationalized banks, large businesses and estates, and all private property above a certain minimum; and ruthlessly put down all opposition. He raised a Red Army and overran Slovakia. The allies forced Kun to evacuate Slovakia, and a counterrevolution broke out. Kun was at first victorious over the counterrevolutionists, but he was defeated by a Romanian army of intervention and was forced to flee
to Vienna. Kun’s Red Terror was followed by a White Terror. Nicholas Horthy de Nagybanya became regent of Hungary. Kun, after being held at an insane asylum in Vienna, went (1920) to Soviet Russia. He reappeared (1928) in Vienna and was briefly imprisoned but was allowed to return to the USSR. There he took an active part in the Comintern until he was accused of anti-Stalinism and perished in the Communist party purges of the 1930s. In the late 1950s and 1960s his reputation was restored in the USSR.
Horty
1868-1957 A member of a noble Protestant family, Horthy entered the Austro-Hungarian naval academy at Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) at age 14. Aide-de-camp to the emperor Francis Joseph (1909-14), he distinguished himself as a naval commander in World War I by several times breaking the Allied Adriatic blockade. Promoted to admiral in 1918, he presided over the Austro-Hungarian fleet's transfer to Yugoslavia in October 1918.The following year, at the request of the counter-revolutionary government at Szeged, Hungary, Horthy organized an army to oppose the Communist regime of Béla Kun and led his troops into the capital in November after Kun had fled. Although he disliked Adolf Hitler, he sympathized with the German dictator's "crusade against Bolshevism," and initially acquiesced in Hungary's adherence to the German side in World War II. His later efforts to extricate Hungary from the war led to his forced abdication and abduction by the Germans in 1944. He was released by Allied troops in May 1945 and allowed to go to Portugal, where his memoirs, Confidential Papers, were published in 1965.
Tasks
1. What do you think, which role did Romania play in the political development in Hungary ?
Sources
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