KUN, BELA (1886— ), Hungarian politician, was born near Gyor, of middle class Jewish parentage. He passed his youth unnoticed, and he eventually entered the University of Kolozs var (Chij), where he graduated in jurisprudence. He intended to become a lawyer, but soon tired of the profession and took up journalism and politics, early becoming an extremely active mem ber of the Socialist party; his work and influence at this period were, however, no more than local. Having become implicated in the mismanagement of the funds of a workmen's co-operative society, he fell into disgrace, withdrew temporarily from public life, and obtained a minor post on the socialist daily paper, Nepszava, in Budapest.
Captured by the Russians early in the World War, Kun was in Russia at the time of the revolution. He immediately ranged himself on the side of the Bolsheviks and became an apostle of their gospel among the Hungarian prisoners of war. After the Armistice, he planned to return to his country in order to help to win her to Bolshevism. He was already known to, and ap preciated by, Lenin. He was therefore furnished with a false passport, and, disguising himself as a Red Cross doctor, crossed the frontier with a party of fellow-revolutionaries.
Lenin had supplied Kun with liberal funds; but the whole political situation favoured him. The extreme revolutionary gazette Vords U jsag (Red News), which he soon began to pub lish, won him many supporters among the despairing masses who found Karolyi's half-measures futile. Kun soon found himself in conflict with the police and on one occasion shortly before his advent to power was badly injured and imprisoned. He had not yet recovered and was still in gaol when, in the spring of 1919, the Karolyi cabinet, as a protest against the harsh conditions of the victorious powers, decided to hand over the Government to the Bolsheviks, and placed Kun at their head.
Kun's programme was to "arm at once, and forcibly transfer every industry and all landed property without conservation into the hands of the proletariat." At first he collaborated with the Social democrats, but soon shouldered them aside, nationalized all banks, all concerns with over 20 employees, all landed property over i,000 ac., every building other than workmen's dwellings. All jewellery, all private property above the minimum (e.g., two suits, 4 shirts, 2 pairs of boots and 4 socks) was seized; servants abolished, bathrooms made public on Saturday nights; priests, with the insane, criminals and shopkeepers employing paid as sistants were declared incapable of the active or passive suffrage. International loans of over ro,000 kronen were repudiated. All this entailed prodigious work and the creation of a new bureau cracy which was most unpopular. Moreover, the reforms were
unsuccessful; in practice the former owners of estates and fac tories remained on as their managers, the only difference being that production deteriorated very rapidly and the State had to pay the wages and make up the deficit. Kun started to issue a new currency, which the peasants, already disappointed that the division of the large estates, proposed and partly begun by Karolyi, had been stopped, and fearful that their turn would come to be nationalized, refused to accept. They boycotted the towns; and as the blockade was still on, the urban population starved, while prices soared.
Kun planned to convert the peasants to communism by force of arms; but meanwhile there were foreign campaigns to wage. After a first failure with the "soldiers councils" system, Kun and Boehm organized a well-disciplined army, with which they attacked and defeated the Czech troops occupying Slovakia. Kun, who considered himself Lenin's advance guard in Central Europe, and held long daily conversations by wireless with his master, made tireless communist propaganda at home and in Vienna, and tried hard and not unsuccessfully to play off the Allied great and lesser Powers against each other. When, how ever, the Entente stopped the Hungarian advance in Slovakia, he could no longer appeal to nationalist feelings, and his position became desperate. The peasants were discontented, the counter revolution was organizing. Kun commenced a "Red terror" against his enemies in Hungary, and again attacked the Rumani ans, but they easily drove his forces back, and he fled to Vienna on Aug. 1. Here he was interned in the local lunatic asylum, but after an attempt had been made to murder him by means of poisoned Easter eggs (which, being a Jew, he did not eat), he was allowed to go to Russia. Here he played an obscure but apparently important part, and was believed to visit central Europe periodically. On April 26, 1928, he was arrested in Vienna, whither he had returned to organize a Hungarian Communist party. The Austrian Government refused to extradite him to Hungary, on the ground that the evidence given at his previous trials in absentia in Hungary had not satisfactorily proved crim inal offences against him. He therefore escaped with three months' imprisonment for minor offences and a renewal of his de portation order.
Kun was the only man amongst the Hungarian Bolsheviks who possessed at the same time an aptitude for ruling a country, and a genuine fanaticism. He was a cruel and violent man only when he thought it necessary for the triumph of his ideas. But he was impulsive and incredibly naïve, with an extremely limited knowledge of men. (G. Ro.; C. A. M.)