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

* The Hungarian International Socialist Federation in 1919 3 the original task the p.o.w. revolutionaries undertook was different. It was the crisis caused by the attack of the counter-revolutionary generals and the foreign imperialist forces on the young socialist Soviet republic that made the revolutionary prisoners of war centre their work primarily on armed defence of the Russian Soviet Republic. This can be clearly seen in the documents setting out the national sections' programmes. The Hungarian party group's aim was outlined both in a letter to the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Central Committee and in an action programme of April 4, 1918. (Both were signed by Béla Kun as chairman and Ernő Pór as secretary.) The programme's starting point was that the mass movement in Hungary required an organization of the kind the Bolshevik one in Russia had been before the revolution. As the first of their aims it mentions publication of a paper to be entitled Szociális Forradalom (Social Revolution), the task of which would he "to work out the revolutionary tactics of the Hungarian proletariat, with special reference to the agrarian question," and to spread communist ideas among the Hungarian p.o.w. in Russia and among the Hungarian proletariat and peasantry "in the interests of the socialist revolution." Among further activities are mentioned the publication of propa­ganda pamphlets and the training of agitators, as well as consideration of the tasks to be undertaken in Hungary for a socialist revolution. The action programme sets out detailed plans for making contact with the American proletariat and European socialist leaders. Both the letter and the action programme reflect how the Hungarian p.o.w. communists had subordinated their whole activity to a central aim. In the first issue of the paper Szociális Forradalom (Social Revolution), in which the formation of the Hungarian communist group was announced, this aim was expressed as follows: "The task, as every revolutionary-minded proletarian knows, a task for the most immedi­ate future, is to prepare without delay for the revolution in Hungary. Those Hungarian proletarians whom the war brought here to Russia as prisoners of war have united together in this task."4 The Yugoslav group announced in a letter to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in June 1918 that they would publish a paper entitled Mirovaja Revoljucija, which would set cut to "spread communist ideas among prisoners of war in Russia, and among the Yugoslav proletarians living in Austria-Hungary and in the Balkans, for the success of an armed socialist revolution."5 4 CPA IML Г. 17, Gr. 4, Fue 97, p. 1 — Letter to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on March 25, 1918, and Action Programme, pp. 2—4 ; 'Kommu­nista magyarok csoportja' (The Group of Hungarian Communists) in the first issue of Szociális Forradalom (Social Revolution — Moscow, April 1918). 6 CPA IML F. 17, Gr. 4, File 107, pp. 4 —5 ; on the formation and working aims of the Yugoslav group see also Uchastié yugoslavskikh trudyashchikhsya v Oktyabrskoi revoluytsii i grazhdanskoi voiné v SSSR (Moscow 1976) pp. 11 and 111 —112. Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 25, 1979

Next