Peter Pastor: Hungary Between Wilson and Lenin...

CONCLUSIONS

Military defeat and Allied insistence on the establishment of representative government as a precondition for peace assisted the revolutionary forces in Hungary in their quest for power. The revolutionary government of Mihaly Katrolyi aimed to liquidate the quasi-feudal remnants of an outmoded order. It promised universal suffrage, agrarian reforms, tax reforms and the division of large estates. Karolyi counted on Allied support and sympathy once the armistice was signed. He expected the United States to play a major role in bringing Hungary back into the community of nations.

The democratic ideals of Wilson, his calls for new diplomacy and internationalism were eagerly embraced by the Hungarian revolutionaries. Moreover, Jaszi's plan for an "Eastern Switzerland" as a solution for the century-old nationalities problem was a further illustration of Hungary's willingness to attempt novel solutions.

The expectations of the supporters of the revolution were disappointed. Hostility greeted the People's Republic of Hungary. Serbian, Rumanian, and Czechoslovak armies flouted the Belgrade convention of November 13, 1918 with the open support of France. At the same time, the Hungarian republic received little encouragement from the other great powers: England and, more importantly, the United States.

It is evident that President Wilson remained loyal to his foreign policy directive of November 1, 1918, which kept the United States out of direct involvement in East Central European affairs, especially those of Hungary. Visiting American missions recommended measures to ease Hungary's economic and political crises. These suggestions, however, never took concrete shapes. The numerous letters of Hungarian leaders sent to President Wilson remained unanswered. The lone enthusiastic pro-Karolyi voice of George Creel in Wilson's immediate entourage failed to move the American leader to action.

Jaszi,s plan for a federated Central Europe fell on deaf ears. The cry for national sovereignty had drowned the call for reason. Thus nation states were created in an area where they never existed before and where therefore a federal system had some rudimentary basis as a Habsburg heritage.

Outright hostility and hands-off attitude toward Hungary were largely the outcome of the emotional atmosphere that affected all those who found themselves on the side of the victors at the end of the war. The fear of Bolshevism forced the hands of even those Allied policy-makers who seemed determined to remain objective and impartial. Effective participation in the Russian Civil War by Hungarian prisoners of war later became a stigma that had to be borne by the whole People's Republic. internal democracy, permitting the Hungarian communists to function in Hungary in an orderly fashion, was interpreted by many Allied officials as a government conspiracy to spread Bolshevism.

Racial prejudices, the anti-Magyarism and anti-Semitism of many of the diplomats working outside the limelight also contributed to the Allies, unfriendly attitude toward Hungary. At her post in Switzerland Bedy-Schwimmer was avoided by the American ambassador because she was a Jew while her feminist sympathies were offensive to the host country. Her recall in January 1919 was symbolic of Hungarian failure.

American and British aloofness caused Hungarian policy to be redirected toward Soviet Russia, whose leader Lenin had indicated as early as November 1918 the willingness of Russia to support Hungary. The Hungarians warned the Allies from that month on that the lack of recognition of Hungary would prompt Budapest to turn to Moscow for help. This was the message of Jaszi,s Arad speech, in Kunfi's stern warning to Coolidge, Garami's plea to Cuninghame and Bohm's appeal to Vix. When their pleas remained unheeded, the Karolyi regime collapsed to be replaced by Bela Kun's Soviet Republic. His pro-Russian policy brought about a veritable diplomatic revolution for Hungary. Not since the projects of Peter the Great was there an instance when Hungary was in alliance with Russia.

It is significant to note that a reorganization of Hungarian foreign policy toward Russia was an implicit part of Karolyi's policy. A switch of Hungary's intentional relation did not come about earlier because it was hoped that the aims of the Frostflower Revolution could be perpetuated with Allied support. As Karolyi's pro-Western policy met with continual failure and the Bolsheviks seemed to be on their way to victory in Russia, the establishment of a Soviet Republic seemed to be the best way to preserve the accomplishments of the revolution. The socialists who dominated the Katrolyi government agreed with the communists on social policy. It was on the question of the political leadership where the two Marxist parties differed. While the Social Democrats hoped to achieve socialism through evolution within a liberal parliamentary system the Communist Party opted for a dictatorship. [1.] The failure of Karolyi's pro-Western policy healed the rift between the two Marxist parties at the expense of social democracy.

Bela Kun, the leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, like Katrolyi before him, received his mandate for leadership as a result of his explicit attitudes in the area of foreign policy. Being a pupil of Lenin, he was most likely to attract the support of the Russian communists. As a commissar of foreign affairs of the republic, however, Kun did not change the basic aim of Hungarian foreign policy-the preservation of Hungary's territorial integrity. He rejected the new Allied terms presented to him by General Smuts; a "new armistice line that was running further east than Colonel Vix's line." [2.] The new demarcation line was to be declared a military boundary with no effect on the decisions to be made at Versailles. The South African also promised Kun his support for Hungary's invitation to the Peace Conference. In return Hungary had to observe the armistice agreement and stop rearming. These favorable conditions ought to have been accepted without delay, but were rejected by Kun on the grounds that they would lead to a second Brest-Litovsk. [3.]

The birth of the communist republic gave the neighbors of Hungary the pretext they wanted to launch an invasion. It further gave them the excuse to dispense with the notion of plebiscites in the contested areas, claiming that the communist danger prevented them from following democratic practices. [4.] By the end of April, the Rumanian Army was near Budapest. To stem the advance, class instinct merged with national pride and half the working population of Budapest enlisted in the newly formed Hungarian Red Army. This force was led by Vilmos Bohm and staffed mainly by former Imperial and Royal Army officers. The Red Army had several successful encounters with the invaders, but in the long run the odds proved to be overwhelmingly in favor of the aggressors. [5.] All attempts by the Russian Red Army to link up with the Hungarians were frustrated by the sharp fighting taking place in the Ukraine between Red and White forces. As a consequence of the setbacks the Reds suffered at this time, Commissar of War Trotsky's plan to form a separate Russian liberation army had to be abandoned. [6.] Rather than having the Russians save the Hungarian revolution, the contrary seemed to be the case. As a result of the Rumanian intervention in Hungary, all the Rumanian interventionist forces were withdrawn from the Russian front, which reduced the pressures on the Red Army.

On August I the leaders of the Hungarian Soviet Republic resigned and fled the country. The right-wing socialist, Gyula Peidl, disassociating himself from his earstwhile allies, formed a new government that was overthrown within a few days by lstvan Friedrich, who had the backing of the Habsburg Archduke Joseph. On November 1 4, 1919, the Rumanians occupying Budapest retreated from the Hungarian capital, taking as much loot as they could on the way. A few days after the Rumanian evacuation, the counter-revolutionary National Army, organized in Rumanian-occupied Szeged under French tutelage, entered Budapest with Admiral Miklos Horthy at its head. [7.]

The months following the fall of the Soviet Republic were a period of "White Terror" during which thousands perished. Those suspected of communist sympathies were rounded up by terrorist gangs, beaten, tortured, and murdered. Jews especially were the victims of the terror as they were accused of being the major disseminators of communism.

In November the Friedrich government was replaced by one that was led by the clerical Karoly Huszar with the support of Horthy's troops. In January 1920, under Allied pressure, elections were held for seats in the National Assembly. Social democratic candidates, however, were arrested as a danger to public safety, so the party boycotted the elections. The communists were legally barred from participating. Voting was supposed to be on the basis of universal suffrage, but the continued existence of the terror made a mockery of such principles.

The newly elected National Assembly, meeting in the Parliament building under the watchful eyes of the National Army, was forced to "elect,, Admiral Horthy as Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, over which he ruled until 1944. During his "reign", most social reforms introduced by the two republics were repealed and power was returned to those privileged classes who shared it before 1918. The recognition of this government by the Allies was the last example of the betrayal of the ideas of Wilson. If there was any segment of the Hungarian people that could be considered as culprits of the war, it was the ruling class which now had power again. Admiral Horthy as the wartime commander of the Austro-Hungarian Navy symbolized a leadership that Allied war pronouncements promised to destroy. Thus the Allies made it possible for the partial fulfillment of the war aims of the prewar oligarchy--the perpetuation of their socioeconomic privileges.

If justice was served at Trianon, where Hungary was reduced to onethird of its prewar size, it was only because the harshest of all the peace treaties was accepted by men who were responsible for the war. This would have meant that the second part of their war aims--the continued exploitation of the nationalities was frustrated. The new Hungary for the first time in its thousand year history was ethnically almost purely Magyar with over two million compatriots living outside its borders. The truth, however, was that the Horthy leadership refused to accept the Treaty from the moment it was signed. This intransigence doomed all hopes for international stability in East Central Europe.

Peter Pastor: Hungary Between Wilson and Lenin...