ACTA HISTORICA - A MTA TÖRTÉNETTUDOMÁNYI FOLYÓIRATA TOM. 25 (1979)
25. kötet / 1-2. sz. - ETUDES - L. KŐVÁGÓ: The International Socialist Federation of Hungary in 1919
L. Kővágó of the new revolutionary vanguard on a national basis, in accordance with the dynamically developing revolutionary opportunities and needs, proceeded comparatively slowly, mainly because the revolutionary left-wing social democrats clung to the party frameworks that had been evolved during the decades of battle of the workers' movements, and were slow to break with leaders who had become opportunistic. The process of forming these new nationally-based vanguards was completed and urged on by the work of socialist revolutionaries who were working abroad, in countries where revolutionary development was more advanced. From 1917, after the Great October Socialist Revolution, a school of revolution for the socialist revolutionaries was provided by Leninist revolutionary theory and the Russian revolutionary experience, and Soviet Russia became the country from which they could aid the revolutionary development of their own countries.1 During the Revolution, there were about 4 million foreigners present in Russia, 2 million of them prisoners of war from the armies of the Central Powers. Prisoners of war who sympathized with the proletarian revolution, some of whom had also taken part in the preparations for the Great October Socialist Revolution, began at the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918 to form their own organizations. Even by January 1918, p.o.w. organizations, including those in the most distant parts of Russia, were seeking possibilities of linking their groups and establishing an organizational centre. From January 13, 1918, there was a p.o.w. committee working in Moscow, to which ever more groups from all over the country were affiliating.2 At the March 14 meeting of the p.o.w. committee, on the proposal of Réla Kun and other Petrograd delegates, a motion was passed declaring that besides an organization of all prisoners of war in Russia, party organizations of foreigners, national sections and alliances of them needed setting up within the Communist Party framework. P.o.w. members of the Russian Communist Party (Eolsheviks) began setting up their national party groups from March onwards, and established the Russian Communist Party (Eolsheviks) Federation of Foreign Groups in May.3 What first springs to mind out of the exploits and organization of foreign revolutionaries in Russia is the formation of the international units and their successful part in the armed defence of the revolution's achievements. However, 1 A large number of studies have been published on the part played by foreigners in the Russian Socialist Revolution — see the volume : Internatsionalishty v boyakh za vlasti Sovetov (Moscow 1965) 2 Tsentralniï Partiinii Arkhiv Instituta Marksizma- Lenin izma — hereinafter CPA IML — Fond 549, Group 4, File 248, pp. 111-131. 3 See : Vosmoi sezd RKP(b) Mart 1919 goda (Moscow 1959) pp. 499-504 and 520 — 521 ; Internatsionalishty v boyakh op. cit. ; Uchastiê trudyakhchikhsya zarubézhnykh stran v VOSR i zashehité у её zavoevaniï (in MS.) (Moscow 1965.) 1 Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 25, 1979