Hungarian Soviet Republic - Downfall

Downfall

See also: Revolutions and interventions in Hungary (1918–1920) and Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919

In late May, after the Entente military representative demanded more territorial concessions from Hungary, Kun attempted to fulfill his promise to restore Hungary's borders. At some point in June, the Hungarian Red Army invaded the eastern part of the newly-forming Czechoslovak state (today's Slovakia), then controlled by Czechoslovak forces and declared a Slovak Soviet Republic in Prešov on 16 June 1919. The Hungarian Red Army achieved some military successes: under the lead of Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, it ousted Czech troops from the north, and planned to march against the Romanian army in the east. Despite initial military success, however, Kun withdrew his troops about three weeks later when the French promised the Hungarian government that Romanian forces would withdraw from the Tiszántúl. This concession shook his popular support. Following the Red Army's retreat from the north, the Romanian forces were not pulled back.

The situation of the Hungarian Communists began to deteriorate when, after a failed coup by the Social Democrats on 24 June, the new Communist government of Antal Dovcsák resorted to large-scale reprisals. Revolutionary tribunals ordered executions of people who were suspected of having been involved in the attempted coup. This became known as the "Red Terror", and greatly reduced domestic support for the government.

The Hungarian Soviet found it increasingly difficult to fight Czechoslovakia and later Romania with the small volunteer force, and support for both the war and the Communist Party was waning at home, partly due to the most dedicated Communists having volunteered for combat.

Kun then unsuccessfully turned the Hungarian Red Army on the Romanians, who broke through the weak Hungarian lines on 30 July.

Béla Kun, together with other high-ranking Communists, fled to Austria on 1 August with only a minority, including György Lukács, the former Commissar for Culture and noted Marxist philosopher, remaining to organise an underground Communist Party. The Budapest Workers' Soviet elected a new government, headed by Gyula Peidl, which only lasted a few days before Romanian forces entered Budapest on 6 August, putting an end to the Hungarian Soviet Republic.

In the power vacuum created by the fall of the Soviet Republic and the presence of the Romanian Army, semi-regular detachments (technically under Horthy's command, but mostly independent in practice) initiated a campaign of violence against Communists, leftists and Jews, known as the White Terror. Many supporters of the Hungarian Soviet Republic were executed without trial; others, including Péter Ágoston, Ferenc Bajáki, Dezső Bokányi, Antal Dovcsák, József Haubrich, Henrik Kalmár, József Kelen, György Nyisztor, Sándor Szabados, and Károly Vántus, were imprisoned by trial ("comissar suits"). Most of them were later released to the Soviet Union by amnesty during the reign of Horthy, after a prisoner exchange agreement between Hungary and the Russian Soviet government in 1921. In all, about 415 prisoners were released as a result of this agreement. Kun himself and an unknown number of other Hungarian communists were executed during the Great Purge of the late 1930s.