Béla Kun

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Béla Kun, drawing by Béla Uitz, 1930; in the Legújabbkori … (credit: Courtesy of the Legujabbkori Torteneti Muzeum, Budapest)

(born Feb. 20, 1886, Szilágycseh, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary — died Nov. 30, 1939?, U.S.S.R.) Hungarian communist leader. He fought in the Austrian army in World War I, was captured by the Russians, and became a Bolshevik. After returning to Hungary in 1918, he founded the Hungarian Communist Party. When Count Károlyi resigned in March 1919, Kun headed the new Hungarian Soviet Republic. He created a Red Army that reconquered much of the territory lost to Czechoslovaks and Romanians and eliminated moderate elements in the government. In August the regime collapsed, and Kun fled to Vienna and then Russia. As a leader of the Comintern, he tried to foment revolution in Germany and Austria in the 1920s. Eventually accused of "Trotskyism," he fell victim to Joseph Stalin's purge trials.

For more information on Béla Kun, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Szilagyczeh, Transylvania, 20 Feb. 1886; d. Soviet Union, Aug. 1938) Hungarian; Communist dictator 1919 Kun was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Austria-Hungary. Before the First World War he worked as a journalist and joined the Social Democrats. He fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1916, when he was captured by the Russians. He joined the Bolshevik Party after the October Revolution of 1917, came to Lenin's notice, and was specially trained in revolutionary technique. He returned to Hungary after the war and founded the Hungary Communist Party (HCP) on 20 December 1918. In March 1919 Kun brought about the fall of the liberal provisional government of Count Mihály Károlyi and came to power with the help of the Social Democrats, who joined the Communists in a coalition. The new government was dominated by the Communists, even though the HCP had only 7,000 members at the beginning of 1919. They set up a Bolshevik-style dictatorship based on their secret police. Kun formed a Red Army which regained from Romania and Czechoslovakia most of the territory which Hungary lost in the First World War. However, the Kun regime was generally loathed in Hungary because of its brutality and its policies of collectivization of agriculture and nationalization of industry. After only four and a half months in power, Kun's regime was swept away by the Romanians and the counter-revolutionary forces of Horthy. In August 1919 Kun fled to Vienna then Moscow.

In 1921 Kun was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Comintern. In 1938 he was arrested by the NKVD, charged with "Trotskyism", and shot in August. He was formally rehabilitated in 1958.