Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/453

Rh

ho were persecuted by the Soviets which attacked Christianity ,nd the Church after the Russian model and were only pre- vented from closing all places of worship by the wrath of the people. In the schools and among the country folk the com- missaries preached atheism, free love and the advantages of communal kitchens. In consequence of the industrial crisis, the Soviets were unable to supply the peasants with any imple- ments, while the Soviet currency, which in violation of the charter of the State Bank was turned out by the printing press in immense quantities, was now worthless. The peasants therefore refused to supply any produce, and the towns, and especially Budapest, suffered from want of food. Isolated up- risings of the peasantry were bloodily suppressed by Szamuelly's " terror troops." Since most of the ruling politicians and Peo- ple's Commissaries (Bela Kun, Szamuelly, Commandants Pogany and Bohm, and Finance Commissary Eugene Varga) belonged to the younger generation of Jews, anti-Communist feeling in the country assumed more and more the character of anti-Semi- tism. In May 1919, the politicians, officers and officials who had fled from the terror to the districts in Rumanian occupa- tion formed a counter-revolutionary Government under Count Julius Karolyi (b. May 7 1871), which, establishing itself at Szeged, proceeded, under the direction of the former Vice- Adml. Nicholas Horthy, to recruit and organize a " National army" against the Communists.

Downfall of the Soviet Government. The Soviet Government viewed Hungary as Lenin's outpost, which was to be held until Communism had been victorious in the neighbouring coun- tries also. Bela Kun, therefore, attempted to open negotia- tions for peace with the Allies and was prepared to abandon Hungary's territorial claims if thereby he could secure the con- tinuance of Soviet rule and gain greater opportunities for prop- aganda. On the other hand, the Soviet Government created a " Red army " " for the liberation of the Proletariat." As Bela Kun failed to come to an agreement with Gen. Smuts, the delegate of the Supreme Council in, Paris, Rumanian troops on April 10 1919 took the offensive against Soviet Hungary, de- feated the Red army and occupied the line of the Theiss. After this disaster, the Soviet Government reorganized the Red army. The system of soldiers' councils and civil commis- saries with the army was abolished; and the authority of pro- fessional officers and discipline were restored; the use of national emblems was permitted and appeals to patriotism were used in order to excite the soldiers against the invading enemy. The Serbs and Rumanians having refused a fresh offer made to them by Bela Kun, the latter determined to anticipate their now inevitable offensive by ordering an attack on the Czechs. The soldiers, fired by patriotic enthusiasm, defeated the Czechs and occupied the greater part of northern Hungary. But when, on the categorical demand of Clemenceau (June 8), Bela Kun gave back the reconquered territories to the Czechs, in the hope thereby of saving the Soviet Government, the moral of the troops was completely broken. The growth of national anti- revolutionary feeling and the boycotting of the capital by the peasantry, which led to starvation among the workmen, drove the Soviet Government to make a last desperate attack on the Rumanians in order to secure the harvest of the Theiss district.

But the Red troops scattered at the first attack; the Ruma- nians crossed the Theiss, and advanced on Budapest without meeting any resistance. The Soviet Government resigned on Aug. i. Its Communist members, including Bela Kun, went to Vienna, where they were allowed the right of asylum by the Austrian Government. Later, some of them left for Russia. Szamuelly, the leader of the " terror troops," shot himself during his flight.

Hungary after Bolshevism, 1919. In view of the Communist breakdown, the Socialist organizations now reasserted the principles of democracy, severed their connexion with the Communists, and, under the presidency of Julius Peidl, formed a purely Social-Democratic Ministry. But the influence of the Social Democrats had been so weakened by their cooperation with the Bolshevists that the new Ministry could only survive

for five days. On Aug. 6 a group of citizens and officers de- manded its resignation, and it obeyed.

The representatives of the Entente in Budapest put the government of the country into the hands of the popular Arch- duke Joseph, who formed a Ministry of members of the counter- revolutionary middle class, under the premiership of Stephen Friedrich (b. July i 1883).

The Rumanian Occupation. After the disbandment of the Red army Rumanian troops occupied Budapest and the whole of what remained of Hungary, with the exception of the western border counties, in spite of the prohibition of the Entente representative in Budapest. As a result, political activity in the country was crippled, and the reestablishment of order after the Bolshevik experiment retarded. The Rumanians were several times ordered to evacuate the country by Clemen- ceau, in the name of the Supreme Council, but they declared that they wished first to take revenge on Hungary for the plundering of Rumania by the German troops during the war. They took grain, fodder, cattle, 1,151 locomotives, 40,950 railway carriages, all the post-office motor-cars from Budapest, 4,000 telephone installations from the Budapest central exchange, the telephones and typewriting machines from the Govern- ment offices and schools, beds and bed linen from hotels and prisons, and scientific apparatus from the schools. Machinery was removed from factories; the iron beams of the Cyor cannon works were torn from the walls and carried off the journey to Rumania in open trucks entirely destroyed them. It was only as the result of an ultimatum from the Supreme Council that the Rumanians at last withdrew from Budapest (Nov. n) and from the line of the Theiss (Feb. 1920).

New Governments, 1920. After the fall of Bolshevist rule and the Rumanian occupation, Hungary was only able slowly to regain order in her internal affairs. The neighbouring coun- tries hostile to the Habsburgs (Czechs, Yugoslavs, Rumanians) would not tolerate the regency of the Archduke Joseph. By an order of the Entente, accordingly, the Archduke, together with the prime minister whom he had appointed, resigned office, and the political parties appointed the Christian Socialist Karl Huzzar (b. Sept. 10 1882) president, pending the meeting of the National Assembly. Order was maintained during the Rumanian occupation by a civil police force, and, after the Rumanian withdrawal, by the national army under Horthy. The effects of the Bolshevist dictatorship had now produced a strong reaction. During the dictatorship, the extermination of the bourgeoisie and the shooting of whole villages of peasants had been spoken of at meetings and in the official press as nor- mal Government measures, the result being that both citizens and peasants only slowly became again accustomed to a system based on orderly justice. During the masterless days after the fall of Bolshevism, there were in the country districts many cases of lynch law exercised upon the Communists. The suc- cessive Governments of Huzzar, Simonyi-Semadam (b. March 28 1864), Count Paul Teleki (b. Nov. n 1879, formerly professor of geography), which held office from June 19 1920 to April 15 1921, took great pains to restore the authority of the law, and in order to restrain unlawful acts of vengeance they several times proclaimed martial law, and broke up by force of arms certain civil and military organizations.

The relations of the political parties were quite changed as a result of Bolshevism. In the place of former parties, differen- tiated by their ideas of the State, new ones sprang up which, in opposition to the anti-national and anti-religious tendencies of Bolshevism, formulated a National-Christian programme intended to make impossible any repetition of the Communist times. At the elections in Jan. 1920, which for the first time in Hungary were conducted on the basis of universal and secret suffrage, with the exception of six Democrats, only members of the Bourgeois Christian Nationalist and Peasant Farmers' parties were elected to the National Assembly. Socialist ideas had forfeited all sympathy among the rural population and the citizens of the towns on account of their association with Bol- shevism. The trades unions found their political activities