Revolution and Counter-Revolution

Chapter 2 closed with the First Hungarian Republic declared on 16 November 1918, Károlyi at its head. That government lasted barely four months — and what replaced it, twice over within a single year, was far more violent than anything the dual monarchy's own collapse had produced.

Károlyi's Fall: The Vix Note

On 20 March 1919, Károlyi's government received a real Allied ultimatum, the Vix Note, demanding further Hungarian military withdrawal — lines widely assumed at the time to become the actual postwar borders. The note proved fatal to a government already, in the real historical assessment, "devoid of significant support." Recognizing that accepting it would endanger Hungary's own territorial integrity, yet feeling unable to reject it either, Károlyi resigned rather than sign.

The Hungarian Soviet Republic

Power passed to the Social Democrats, who merged with the Communists to proclaim the Hungarian Soviet Republic on 21 March 1919. Its own formal leadership followed one arrangement; its real power followed another entirely. Sándor Garbai served as nominal prime minister and head of government, but Béla Kun — officially only the regime's Commissar of Foreign Affairs — held the actual, real power, since he alone had a personal acquaintance and working relationship with Lenin. The regime lasted 133 days, from 21 March to 1 August 1919.

The Red Terror

Tibor Szamuely, People's Commissar for Military Affairs, directed the regime's own real campaign of revolutionary terror — traveling the country by armored train with paramilitary forces known as the "Lenin Boys," commanded operationally by József Cserny, while Mátyás Rákosi commanded a separate Red Guard. Szamuely's own real, documented April 1919 words were direct: "Blood will make us powerful. Blood will lead us to the true world of the Commune." Revolutionary tribunals under this apparatus executed a real, documented 370 to 590 people without trial.

Collapse

Romanian forces broke through the Hungarian Red Army's own lines on 30 July 1919. Kun fled to Vienna on 1 August; Romanian troops entered Budapest on 4 August 1919. Szamuely himself attempted to flee to Austria the following day, was arrested after an illegal border crossing, and died that same day — officially recorded as suicide, though the real circumstances remain genuinely disputed among historians.

The White Terror

Miklós Horthy, a former Austro-Hungarian admiral still regarded as a war hero, was asked in June 1919 to command a counter-revolutionary National Army. Under commanders including Pál Prónay — described in the real historical record as "the most notorious of unit commanders" — Iván Héjjas, Anton Lehár, and Gyula Ostenburg-Moravek, this force carried out a real, sustained campaign of violence against communists, liberals, and — with an explicit, documented antisemitic character — Jewish communities broadly blamed as "traitors and communists" specifically because several of the Red Terror's own most prominent leaders, including Kun and Szamuely, had been Jewish. Real documented casualty estimates for the White Terror range from 1,500 to 6,000 deaths between 1919 and 1921, through summary executions, public hangings, torture, and corpse desecration; violence peaked in 1919, receding noticeably by 1920 though continuing sporadically into 1921.

Horthy Enters Budapest

Horthy's National Army entered Budapest on 16 November 1919 — a full three months after the Romanians had already occupied the city and the Communist regime had already fallen. He was elected Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary on 1 March 1920, a position he would hold until October 1944 — the subject of this course's next two chapters.

Hands-On Exercises