Hungarian Soviet Research Articles

Nicholas Roosevelt in Hungary, 1930–1933: Expectations and illusions

AbstractAlthough a score of new studies have been published about the various aspects of the history of American–Hungarian relations in the past three decades, there are still a considerable number of uncovered chapters. The present article will introduce one of the American ministers who served in Hungary in the interwar years. Nicholas Roosevelt came from a well-known family that gave two presidents to the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, and the name helped him throughout his storied career. Since he had visited Hungary at the time of the establishment of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in March 1919, he had first-hand experience regarding his host country. His service as American minister (1930–1933) fell in the first years of the unfolding Great Depression, which defined the basic conditions for Hungary, as well for the United States and Europe. Nicholas Roosevelt was an avid writer, and he left behind a plethora of both private and official documents containing, among other things, his thoughts and opinions about Hungary and Hungarians. Building this as a primary source, along with a number of secondary sources, the article will bring closer the economically and politically shaky days of Hungary in the early 1930s through the eyes of the American minister posted in Budapest, thereby enriching our knowledge about the relations between the two countries.

THE ROLE OF PETRO BUBELA IN THE GENESIS OF UKRAINIAN-HUNGARIAN RELATION IN 1918 – 1919

This article discusses the role of Petro Bubela in the emergence and development of relations between the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (WUPR) and Hungary in 1918 – 1919. After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the formation of new nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe, the problem of forming a new international relations system became acute. The genesis of Ukrainian-Hungarian interstate relations was important for both countries and the political situation in the region. Based on the analysis of archival materials and memoirs, the authors analyzed the stages of development of these relations. They concluded that the main problem for both sides was the issue of political affiliation in Transcarpathia. However, this issue was postponed due to the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918 – 1919 and Budapest's military conflicts with its neighbors. The parties focused on economic and military cooperation. It was found out that аtaman Petro Bubela, who at that time was the Deputy Secretary of State for Military Affairs in the Western Region of the Ukrainian People's Republic (WRUPR) and was involved in the logistics and technical support of the Galician Army (GA) with military equipment, weapons, medicines and various goods for the needs of the army, was in contact with Hungary on these issues. It was found that Petro Bubela established relations with a representative of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (HSR), who arrived in Stanislaviv in 1919 thanks to the government of the Western Region Ukrainian People's Republic, signed a trade agreement with Hungary. It was installed that Petro Bubela personally corresponded with Kuhn Bela, the National Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (HSR). It was noted that one of the reasons for Petro Bubela's retirement from the position of Deputy Secretary in Military Affairs of the Western Region Ukrainian People's Republic in June 1919, as he claimed himself, it was the existence of links with Soviet Hungary's representative. Thus, we believe that the topic of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations in 1918 – 1919, the participation in their establishment of certain prominent representatives in the Western Region Ukrainian People's Republic (WRUPR), such as, in particular, Petro Bubela is the prospect and requires further researches.

A szeriális közlés diadala

Krúdy was an extremely productive author of his contemporary literary field. His publication process could easily become automatized by the different patterns of serialization. The paper links these patterns with cliches of Krúdy’s oeuvre, for example his relationship with the wellknown modernist journal Nyugat (‘West’) and Kálmán Mikszáth, whose narrative innovations and themes became a model for him, according to “shallow” contemporary critics. From the beginning of the 1910’s Krúdy serially published newspaper articles with only short pauses, and he signed an important contract with Singer and Wolfner Publishing in 1914. The participants came to terms about a 16-volume serial of his complete works. They managed to publish many of these books despite the crisis of the outbreak of WWI. Furthermore, Krúdy could handle the yet-unpublished works of the arrangement under different titles at other publishing houses. This short analysis of Krúdy’s networking demonstrates that this contract functioned as a kind of protection against some of the author’s steps which later had crucial consequences. Serial publishing in important newspapers during the Aster Revolution and the Hungarian Soviet Republic was like a red flag to a bull, namely to the conservative literary system, because it regarded Krúdy’s serial publishing in 1918–19 as the main “evidence” for his propaganda-based prosecution from 1920.

Anita Kurimay. Queer Budapest, 1873–1961

Anita Kurimay. <i>Queer Budapest, 1873–1961</i>

The Peacemaker Woodrow Wilson and the Hungarian Soviet Republic

Abstract The rise of the Hungarian Soviet Republic shocked the peacemakers at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, as it signaled the spread of Bolshevism from Soviet Russia to the West. They feared that the dreaded ideology could inspire a revolution in Germany. For this reason, some of the peace conferees favored military intervention and the overthrow of the Hungarian government. President Wilson, the most influential leader in Paris, was against intervention and called for caution. He was concerned that the US forces would get into a never-ending quagmire in Hungary. Drawing lessons from the Thermidorian turn of revolutions, he counted on the eventual collapse of the radical Bolshevik experiment in Hungary. For this reason, he also objected to the aggressive acts of the so-called small allies, Romania and Czecho-Slovakia, on Hungarian soil. He blamed them for the rise and survival of the Soviet regime, as their aggression generated nationalist resistance in Hungary. Wilson’s eventual solution to the Hungarian problem was the speedy completion of the peace treaty. For its sake he abandoned his much-touted principle of self-determination and was willing to disregard any part of his Fourteen Points.

Balázs Ablonczy. Ismeretlen Trianon: Az összeomlás és a békeszerződés történetei, 1918–1921 [Unknown Trianon: histories of the collapse and the peace treaty, 1918–21

Balázs Ablonczy. <i>Ismeretlen Trianon: Az összeomlás és a békeszerződés történetei, 1918–1921</i> [Unknown Trianon: histories of the collapse and the peace treaty, 1918–21

Soviet strategy regarding the Romanian territories (1918-1924)

In 1918, Bessarabia proclaimed its independence from the Russian Empire and united with Romania. The Bolsheviks pursued the objective of transforming Bessarabia into a bridgehead for the Romanian revolution. The project failed. In 1918, Soviet Russia, counting on the support of Hungarian Soviet troops, prepared for war against Romania. And this project ended in failure. At the beginning of 1920, the highest-ranking military specialists prepared a report addressed to L. Trotsky, the president of the Revolutionary-Military Council of the Russian Soviet Republic, in which they argued the necessity of regaining Bessarabia, because the province, they claimed, covered the entire south of Russia from Hungary and Romania. In the situation where Romania would not accept the retrocession of Bessarabia, the option of delimiting the Romanian territory between the Prut and Dniester was proposed based on the ethnic structure of the population of the counties of the former Bessarabian governorate and, above all, based on the strategic interests of Soviet Russia. On October 12, 1924, the III Session of the Central Executive Committee of Ukraine adopted the decision “On the creation of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within Ukraine”, according to which the border of the SSR, to the west and southwest, lied on “state border of the USSR”. In the conviction of some Bolshevik leaders from Balta and Kyiv, this formula would have meant that the territory between the Dniester and the Prut was also included in the composition of the MASSR, since the Soviet Union had not recognized the union of Bessarabia with Romania. At the current stage of the research, no official document was identified in which the western and southwestern borders of the MASSR were fixed on the Prut River and the Danube. On the contrary, the western and southwestern border of the MASSR was not even declared on the Prut and the Danube but remained on the Dniester.

János Pelle. Vérvád, hisztéria, népítélet: “Zsidókérdés” Magyarországon 1945-ben és 1946-ban

János Pelle. <i>Vérvád, hisztéria, népítélet: “Zsidókérdés” Magyarországon 1945-ben és 1946-ban</i>

Székely Hadosztály és a Magyar Tanácsköztársaság történetének néhány összefüggése az erdélyi front összeomlásának tükrében

Szilvássy, Zoltán: Some connections of the history of Sekler Division and the Hungarian Soviet Republic in the light of the collapse of the Transylvanian Front On April 16, 1919, after a successful attack of Romanian intervention forces the counter-revolutionary Hungarian Székely Division and the Red Army were bot unable to hold the Eastern front line. Unfortunately, and as a result of this event, all the great cities of the Hungarian Plain were fallen, including Debrecen. The red terror, carried out by communists, resulted counter-revolution in Debrecen (18 April, 1919) which was crushed by local communist forces within a short time with the help of Austrian internationalists led by Leo Rothziegel. The loss of the city was especially painful for the Hungarian Soviet Republic because Debrecen was the "capital of the Southeast", a major industrial and agricultural center and an important transport hub. The fate of Debrecen, like the rest of the cities of the Tisza region, was determined by the collapse of the Csucsa front line. In an open field, suffering from lack of munition, the Székely Division could not stop the advance of the Romanian intervention army, which reached the line of the River Tisza. The defense of the historic area of the Kingdom of Hungary was not included in the aims of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which used Hungary as a springboard in the process of spreading the world revolution. The betrayal of the effort for the territorial integrity of the country caused a huge gap between the Székely Division and the communist forces which resulted the collapse of the Transylvanian Front line.

Memory Politics Issues in Relation to the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919)

Memory Politics Issues in Relation to the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919)

Načrti avtonomne in upravne organiziranosti Slovenske krajine v obdobju Károlyijeve ljudske republike (od novembra 1918 do marca 1919)

The article discusses a specific field of the history of the Prekmurje Slovenes and the Prekmurje area itself, from the end of the First World War to the formation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, namely attempts to find a solution for the administrative or autonomous organization of the Slovene community there, to keep the Prekmurje area as a part of the Hungarian state. Various Slovene and Hungarian studies have mentioned contents related to attempts at the autonomous or administrative organization of the Slovene community (probably most thoroughly written by László Kővágó and Miroslav Kokolj). However, there have been almost no articles that would focus directly on this topic. In the context of the preparation of this article we have primarily processed the Hungarian and Slovene archive resources (as well as some newly researched ones), published local newspapers from that period (especially Novine and Muraszombat és vidéke) and a part of literature, where the authors – allthough the studies were mostly ideologically oriented – also devoted major attention to substantive questions of the planned autonomous and administrative arrangements of Prekmurje Slovenes.

A National Army Under the Red Banner? The Mobilisation of the Hungarian Red Army in 1919

This paper investigates the mobilisation of the Hungarian Red Army in 1919 by the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. It challenges the literature's existing interpretations, explaining the successful mobilisation of the regime with its ‘nationalist’ or ‘Bolshevik’ character. First, the paper examines the military policy of the regime, arguing that it was not a mere copy of the Russian communist model but was a unique combination of social-democratic and communist ideas. Second, it analyses the recruitment propaganda and demonstrates how it combined dogmatic Bolshevism with traditional elements of the wartime propaganda. Third, it investigates the methods used by the Hungarian Soviet Republic to mobilise the population both in Budapest and in the rural eastern countryside. It argues that the mobilisation was possible through the involvement of civil associations (mostly the trade unions) and the incorporation of the former Habsburg regiments in the new Red Army.

Finkey Ferenc hatása a kriminálpedagógia fejlődésére

Ferenc Finkey’s scientific achievements and human qualities have made him one of the most prominent personalities in the field of legal sciences and prison affairs. He did not, of course, begin his epoch-making activity in a “vacuum”, so we consider it important to present the antecedents, the penological initiatives of the early 19th century, focusing on youth protection and work in prisons, and we describe the social and political reasons that supported or made it difficult for Finkey’s ideas to emerge. The fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic had tragic consequences for criminal pedagogy trying its wings. We have gathered a bouquet of human and professional reasons why Finkey has distanced himself from the spirituality, events, and aspirations of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in every way. Fortunately for criminal pedagogy, Finkey’s professional career and scientific aspirations were not broken by the proletarian dictatorship and the subsequent ideological retaliation. Finally, we prove the greatness of Ferenc Finkey's theoretical system in criminal pedagogy by using the ideas formulated in his own work Punishment and Pedagogy, which is considered to be the most important one for the topic of our study.

Intellectual Evolution of Georg Lukács in the Context of Developing Lenin’s Idea of Revolution

The Hungarian philosopher, Georg Lukács, recognized the crisis-consciousness of his generation at the turn of the 20th century and began to search for solutions in the art. However, his theory about art proved to be illusory, being unable to reshape society. After many philosophical attempts to realize his theory in praxis, in 1918 Lukács turned to Marxism and later became one of the most influential Marxist thinkers of his time. In 1919, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic fell, Lukács, like many other intellectuals, had to flee abroad. In emigration, he started to summarize the experiences of the fallen revolution and referred to Lenin’s ideas in his early Marxist works, in ‘History and Class Consciousness’ (1923) and ‘Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought’ (1924). This paper aims to follow Lukács’ path, how he became a Marxist from an Essayist, and what solutions he found for the social crises of his era.

Introduction

The centennial of the Hungarian Republic of Councils in March 2019 has passed without much fanfare in Hungary, its commemoration largely overshadowed by events centered on the approaching hundredth anniversary of the Trianon Treaty and highlighting the significance of the country’s twentieth-century history as the main battlefield of current memory politics. In 2018, a representative volume examining the political and cultural legacy of the Hungarian Soviet Republic at its centennial was published not in Hungary but in Vienna, edited by Austrian and Swiss historians.1 The volume contains contributions, in German, by Hungarian historians based in Hungary and abroad, as well as by many young Austrian, German, and Swiss scholars. Though until very recently this was the only substantial volume on the Hungarian Republic of Councils,2 the collaborative effort offers evidence of the lively scholarly interest in the Hungarian revolutions, and demonstrates the benefits of a transnational approach to one of the most controversial but also iconic events of the postwar period.A roundtable panel, held in Vancouver at the Hungarian Studies Association of Canada annual meeting in June 2019, considered the place and legacy of the Hungarian Republic of Councils (and the liberal-democratic revolution that preceded it) within twentieth-century Hungarian history and beyond. The editors of Hungarian Studies Review then extended an invitation to specialists of twentieth-century Hungarian history to address some general and specific aspects of this legacy. Participants were asked to respond to one or more of the following questions:Though arguably short-lived, the liberal-democratic Hungarian People’s Republic and the 133-day Republic of Councils constitute a pivotal moment in Hungarian history. The six contributions that follow suggest possible new ways of thinking about this revolutionary moment in Hungarian history. They are presented here in the hope that they will help generate scholarly conversations on a topic whose study has continued to develop along ideological and political lines, entrenching, rather than narrowing, the divisions among the general public and historians alike.

Iskolák a Tanácsköztársaság idején és a baranyai felekezeti tanítók felelősségre vonása

The Hungarian Soviet Republic reorganized schools fundamentally. Efforts were made to reduce the influence of the churches by seeking to achieve religious neutrality on an ideological basis. To do so, schools - not only the institutions maintained by the denominations, but also by the municipality, associations and private persons - were socialized, with the state playing the primary role in education. The Revolutionary Governing Council (government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic) and the Commissariat for Public Education - which replaced the Ministry of Religion and Public Education - took measures to take over schools by the State and displace religion. They strove to re-educate teachers in a communist spirit; priests, nuns, and monks were continued to be employed as teachers only, if they declared themselves secular. In addition to nationalization, they wanted to solve the problems of the education immediately with radical solutions. In several cases, this may have gained the support of teachers, whose vast majority – as presented in various forums – were basically dissatisfied with their previous (financial and social) situation.&nbsp;After the fall of the system, there was a sharp political shift with an even more intense emphasis on religious education. Because of that, the investigation of teachers who supported, or at least served the measures of the&nbsp;Hungarian Soviet Republic&nbsp;proved to be essential. One of the conclusions based on the documents revealed by the disciplinary proceedings is that the denominational teachers, whose task was the religious and moral education of the children, tended to give a firm voice to their political orientation aside from this. However, as several cases show, these prosecutions may have served as a means of personal revenge when most teachers were investigated and, in many cases, false or unfounded charges were reported.

A trianoni békediktátum és az önálló magyar haderő

Az első világháború elvesztése és a Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaság Vörös Hadseregének katonai veresége után az 1919 nyarán megszervezett Nemzeti Hadsereg maradt az egyetlen számottevő haderő Magyarországon. A Nagy Háborút Magyarország számára hivatalosan is lezáró, 1920. június 4-én a versailles-i Nagy-Trianon palotában aláírt békediktátum rendkívül súlyos katonai rendelkezéseket tartalmazott. Az antantállamok által engedélyezett 35 000 fős magyar hadsereg még az új országhatárok megvédésére sem volt alkalmas. Első komoly erőpróbáját IV. Károly két visszatérési kísérlete jelentette, amellyel sikerrel megbirkózott. A hadsereg a nyugat-magyarországi felkelés okán a trianoni határok megváltoztatásában is szerephez jutott. A magyar katonai vezetés a megengedett létszámon felüli alakulatait és tisztjeit több minisztérium felügyelete alatt rejtette el az 1927-ig az országban működő Szövetségközi Katonai Ellenőrző Bizottság elől. Az 1927 után megindult korlátozott hadseregfejlesztés eredményeként tíz év alatt több mint háromszorosára nőtt a Magyar Királyi Honvédség létszáma.&#x0D; KULCSSZAVAK: trianoni békediktátum, katonai rendelkezések, Nemzeti Hadsereg, Magyar Királyi Honvédség, rejtés, korlátozott fejlesztés

Műszaki kiválóságok: Molnár Pál

Sorozatunk következő műszaki kiválósága Molnár Pál. Műszaki tisztként harcolt az I. világháborúban, részt vett a Tanácsköztársaság Vörös Hadseregének honvédő harcában, és szolgált a Nemzeti Hadseregben. Mindvégig műszaki szakmai beosztásokban dolgozott, eljutva az altábornagyi rendfokozatig. Sorsa mégis tragikusan ért véget, ami még inkább indokolja, hogy megemlékezzünk róla.

Ervin Sinkó's Search for Community: The Early Years, 1898-1919

Before the political shift that occurred in1989, the biographies of early communists who had participated in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 could not be the subjects of critical histories. Later, such historical actors were either vilified or simply neglected. This article contributes to the reversal of this neglect by examining the youth of the novelist Ervin Sinkó (1898-1967), who both participated in the rule of the Soviet Republic and authored Optimisták, Történelmi regény 1918-1919-ből [‘The Optimists, a Historical Novel About 1918-1919’]. This article describes how the experience of anti-Semitism and traumas caused by the First World War led Sinkó through a number of fluid, intermediary stages that culminated in his support of communism; eventually, however, Sinkó’s experiences within the Soviet Republic’s regime prompted him to abandon communism in favor of an idiosyncratic form of Christianity. From another perspective, this work also traces the concurrent development of Sinkó's personality, from that of an aggressive adolescent to a compassionate adult.

The Abyss Looks Back

The Abyss Looks Back Kenneth Surin (bio) Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of The Frankfurt School Stuart Jeffries Verso www.versobooks.com/books 448 Pages; Print, $16.95 By allowing themselves [i.e. philosophers] to still think at all vis-a-vis the naked reproduction of existence, they behave as the privileged; by leaving things in thought, they declare the nullity of their privilege . . . There is no exit from the entanglement. The only responsible option is to deny oneself the ideological misuse of one's own existence, and as for the rest, to behave in private as modestly, inconspicuously and unpretentiously as required, not for reasons of good upbringing, but because of the shame that when one is in hell, there is still air to breathe. —Adorno, Minima Moralia (1951). My breath was taken away when I first read this passage in the Jephcott translation in 1974, just as it was when I read it again as a quotation in Stuart Jeffries's superb book, which animates this and other passages in the works (and lives) of the Frankfurt School in a way not hitherto seen in the extensive existing biographical literature. Jeffries calls this a "collective biography," and it blends, beautifully, twentieth-century German and world history, personal biography, and analysis of the School's theories. It is somewhat fashionable to say that the time of the Frankfurt School has passed, that its analysis of capitalism (necessarily confined to monopoly capitalism or Fordism by the circumstances of its members' births and deaths) has been bypassed by a new economic dispensation, which some call neoliberalism or post-Fordism, all conjoined with globalization. The immediate context for the School's thinking—the Nazi horrors and the Stalinist terror—has also receded somewhat into the historical past (or so it would seem). One of this book's many virtues is that it shows this not to be the case. Writing a "group biography" requires each of the School's key members to be approached in relation to the others, and the chapters to be organized by decade rather than thematically, since not everyone was working on the same project at the same time due to differences in interest and expertise. For example, no one had the musical training Adorno received from Alban Berg, no one had Benjamin's voracious literary tastes and interest in Jewish mysticism, and while Adorno, Marcuse, and Fromm all had a deep interest in psychoanalysis, they approached it very differently, some commonalities notwithstanding. The overarching interest was of course Marxism, but here again there were significant differences: Benjamin emphasized the eschatological dimensions of Marxism in his "archaeological" project of redeeming the future by excavating the past; Adorno and Marcuse focused on alienation and the culture industry; Horkheimer was most interested in the implications of Marxist thought for a critical philosophy (though it was Adorno who wrote more extensively and rigorously about philosophy than any of his colleagues). The Grand Hotel Abyss takes its title from Lukács's accusation that the members of the Frankfurt School had become residents of this beautiful hotel, which was "equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity." Lukács, as a revolutionary commissar, had ordered the execution of several people during the brief Hungarian Soviet, a descent into the depths of praxis no member of the Frankfurt School aspired to or attained. Lukács's first-hand experience of revolution as a bloody business almost certainly envenomed his distaste for the mere "theorists" who resided in The Grand Hotel. Jeffries shows Lukács to be both right and wrong in this assessment. Right, because it is obvious that an abstention from a "spontaneous" praxis was a defining feature of the central figures of the Frankfurt School, with the exception of Marcuse in the heady late 1960s, when he became a darling of the soixante-huitards. Marcuse believed the 68er students were revolutionary protagonists, along with others whom Marx would have characterized as lumpens. (I was a 68er student, and although there were students in my residential hall of the English university I attended who stored guns under their...