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 4 The action programmes of the other national groups in the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Federation of Foreign Groups were substan­tially, and in some cases word for word, the same as the above. And despite the fact that mobilization for the defense of the achievements of the Soviet republic were because of the emergency in the forefront of their activity, the groups still kept to the fore their main political aims — the tasks in their own countries. This is clearly demonstrated in their activities in October and November 1918. When it became known in Moscow that the front lines of the Central Powers were becoming unsteady, and that amidst ever stronger revolutionary movements of soldiers and working masses, the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had begun, the foreign groups began feverish prepara­tions to intervene directly in the revolutionary movements that were evolving in their countries, so as to drive them in the direction of socialist development. Let us take a typical document of the times — the decision carried by the Yugoslav group at a meeting on November 5, 1918. Its starting point is that events were demonstrating the sharpness with which the masses were veering to the left, and that the revolution was beginning; the main tasks were seen as the immediate formation of a "Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the South Slavs", and "preventing any possibility of a nationalist-type counter-revolu­tion such as those led in the past by Windischgrätz and Jelacic" occurring in the Balkans, such as would "play but a secondary role in the evolvement of revolution." To achieve these, group members were divided into three sections: the first would go to the Balkans to undertake revolutionary work, while the second guaranteed the continuity of transport and communications, and the third remained in Moscow to organize publishing activities and manage the group's affairs.6 The group that in those times undertook the most intense work and the widest organizational activities was the Hungarian section of the Federation of Foreign Groups. From the Hungarian Social Democratic Party's manifesto of October 8, 1918, which was influenced by the strong development of the mass movements, but which in its aims remained within the confines of a bourgeois democratic revolution, the leaders of the Hungarian communist group in Moscow concluded that the Social Democrats had ceased to be a party of the workers and poor peasantry. So the communist group considered that a communist party had to be formed immediately, one that would act on behalf of the working masses, head their movements, which had become leaderless, and guide them in the direction of a socialist revolution. « CPA IML F. 17, Gr. 4, File 107, pp. 21-22 ; F. 549, Gr. 6, File 3, p. 8. Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 25, 1979

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