Béla Kun

Anticommunists and antisemites have some... overlap. Where they find a communist Jew, they know what to think of him. So: Béla Kohen, late of Hungary, 1918-19.

Hungary was riding high as of early 1918. The Russians were fleeing the scene, allowing Hungary a free hand to settle accounts with the Moldavia. "Romania" signed a treaty all but signing itself away to the Empire. Then came the Armistice. The tables were turned, and Hungary's leader dismissed the army. Romania, in response, (re-)enlisted her own army. In the winter of 1918/19 were many armed Romanian veterans - and Romanian-ethnic veterans of Hungary - eager for a Hungarian adventure.

Transylvania and the Pannonian Plain were the two Magyar-majority regions of the old Hungarian half-empire. Romania gobbled Transylvania right quick. Over in Budapest, the old government had entirely discredited itself. Enter Béla, returning from Lenin's Russia, calling himself post-Jewish "Kun".

Over March 1919 Béla promised only in part the red armband. Mostly what Béla promised was to reënlist the Hungarian army and to hold Hungarian territory. Unfortunately what he got, for that, was a Budapest urban militia of factory-workers.

Many analogies have been made with the Munich soviet against the rest of Bavaria. The farmers, I take it, didn't want the armband. Béla's allegiance to Lenin - admittedly overstated - made the armband personal, for the Balkan peoples. They may not have wanted to be Romanian subjects. But they wanted the nightmare from Russia so much less.

And... yeah, his name was (((Kun))), and he ruled like a Kohen. After a June coup (which didn't work), his gitz Georg Lukacs and Tibor Szamuely promulgated a Red terror that alienated even more Hungarians. Tearing down the statues of Christian saints and Magyar heroes, for instance.

You know who else didn't want the armband? The Allies / Entente, that's who. Especially after March 1919 when Liebknecht and Eisner were both on the outs, and every eye was on Munich. And then Béla made some stupid mistakes like holding onto Slovakia - as a bargaining chip - instead of resisting the Romanians. Slovakia was too close to Western(ish) nations like the Czechs and Poles. And of course over 1919 the Russians had no reach over their ukraine (soon to be the Poles' ukraine), ensuring no Soviet troops were in any position to aid in any Balkan adventure.

Under Béla the Hungarian army lost on all fronts until that Vanguard Of The Proletariat quit in July blaming ... the proles.

Béla as "Leninist", then, isn't why we should condemn him. Béla was even a patriot - if only of Hungarian soil, having proved himself no friend of Magyar blood or Christian spirit. We should condemn Béla mainly because he was an idiot and a fool.