World War I
1914-1918 		1921-1939










Post-War Turmoil, 1918-1921


Government and Political Status .
The Aster or Chrysanthemum Revolution : On October 25th 1918, Mihaly Karolyi Count de Nagykaroly, since 1916 an opponent of the Great War, formed the Hungarian National Council (consisting of Karolyi's United Party, of the Social Democrats and of the Radical Party). On November 1st 1918 Karolyi was named PM by Emperor Charles I. (King Charles IV. of Hungary) who hoped to save the monarchy; following Charles I. abdication on November 11th, with the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, Karolyi proclaimed the People's Republic of Hungary, and assumed the office of provisional president (November 16th 1918).
Simultaneously, a revolution on local level had established a number of Soviets, mostly controlled by the Social Democrats, upon whom Karolyi's government depended, as they provided the bulk of the parliamentarians in his National Council. Late in the war, a federative model for Austria-Hungary or Hungary had been proposed; following the demise of the monarchy, the political organizations representing the ethnic minorities rather opted for independence from Hungary respective annexation into Romania; Karolyi faced the problem of having to govern a country the borders of which were in a state of flux. The Allies argued that the abdication of Emperor Charles had invalidated the armistice of November 3rd; the new armistice for Hungary contained stricter provisions, which, by his political opponents, were blamed on Karolyi. Cooperation within the bloc forming the Hungarian National Council did not work; Karolyi's land reform was not implemented. His order to reduce the Hungarian army according to the armistice conditions rendered the truncated country defenseless on the occasion of numerous transgressions by the forces of Czechoslovakia, SHS and Romania.
Soviet Republic . Bela Kun had broken with the Social Democratic party and formed the Hungarian Communist Party on Nov. 4th 1918. In March 1919, mass demonstrations against the HNC administrations were held; with the support of the Social Democrats, on March 21st the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed, with Social Democrat Sandor Garbai as chairman and Communist Bela Kun as minister of foreign affairs; yet Bela Kun's small Communist Party dominated policy. Property was nationalized, agriculture organized in collectives. Following a failed coup against the Soviet Republic, the secret police unleashed a campaign of Red Terror. Hungarian forces invaded Slovak and Transylvanian territory. In August 1918, the Hungarians were defeated by the Romanians; Kun fled into exile in Austria.
White Administration . A White Governing Council, under the protection of Romanian troops, had been founded in Arad on May 5th 1919. On August 5th 1919, the Soviet administration was ousted in a coup; now a period of White Terror swept Hungary. The discontinuities in the Hungarian administration had cost the country dearly. Yet the conditions for peace were so extreme that Hungary, pressed by inflation and starvation due to a continued blockade, only signed the Treaty of Trianon on June 4th 1920. In 1919-1920 administrations in Hungary changed frequently; the restoration of the Habsburgs as Kings of Hungary was considered in 1919 and 1921; the forces of Charles IV. were defeated October 24th 1921, he himself arrested and asked to abdicate as King of Hungary. On March 1st 1920, Miklos Horthy had assumed the position of governor or regent; he remained in office until 1944, restoring political stability to Hungary. The white administration of Hungary was labelled "the most reactionary in all of Europe" (quoted after NIYB 1920).

The Question of Hungary's Borders . When the political structure of the Kingdom of Hungary was to be reorganized in October-November 1918, the larger ethnic minorities were no longer interested in a solution providing regional autonomy within the Kingdom of Hungary, but advocated a split from Hungary. The chaotic political development in core Hungary, the country's inability to defend itself against foreign aggression resulted in a situation where the Hungarian government finally realized it had to accept faites accompli in the Treaty of Trianon (June 4th 1920) : it had to cede Transylvania and adjacent regions in eastern Hungary to Romania, most of the Banat (split by SHS and Romania), Croatia-Slavonia and the Bachka (western Vojvodina) to SHS, Fiume which was declared a free city, Slovakia and Carpatho-Ruthenia to Czechoslovakia. The status of Western Hungary (Lajtabanszag, Burgenland) was to be decided by plebiscite. On December 14th to 16th, the inhabitants, except for the district of Sopron (Ödenburg) opted for Austria; Sopron was reintegrated into Hungary.
The Treaty of Trianon deprived Hungary of roughly 60 % of both territory and population of the prewar Kingdom of Hungary; the prevalent attitude among Hungarians toward the treaty conditions was "nay, nay, never". Relations with SHS/Yugoslavia, Romania and Czechoslovakia would remain precarious throughout the Interbellum; the aforementioned states formed the Little Entente in 1921 to prevent Hungary from reclaiming lost territory.
While the argument that the ceded territories had non-Hungarian population majorities was correct, the Trianon borders left considerable ethnic Hungarian minorities in Romanian Transylvania, in Czechoslovak Slovakia and Carpatho-Ruthenia, in the Vojvodina (SHS).

The Economy . Core Hungary is a fertile plain, in which, in the time of the Dual Monarchy, agriculture dominated. Hungary's industries were centered in the few cities and in the fringe regions of Slovakia and Transylvania, where mining was possible; these regions were now cut off.
The Aster Revolution of October 1918 took place in front of a situation marked by a coupon economy no longer capable of supplying the population with basic necessities. Yet the return of large numbers of soldiers, the influx of refugees, the continued economic blockade, the termination of German coal supplies on which the country heavily depended, drastically worsened the situation. The land reform promised by Mihaly Karolyi did not materialize; the Armistice Commission pressured the Hungarian government to make boder concessions, using the needs of the Hungarian populace as a tool to press home her demands.
The Soviet Republic (March-August 1919) energetically pursued measures to address the problems, but the collectivization of the land failed to solve the immediate problems; by the time the next harvest was to be brought in, it was toppled already. The periods of Red Terror and White Terror did not contribute to improving the situation. The Romanian occupation force confiscated goods and shipped them to Romania. The White administration (since August 1919) undid the reforms implemented by the Soviet Republic; yet only the signing of the Treaty of Trianon (June 4th 1920) removed the blockade and thus provided the condition for a gradual economic recovery. An attempt was made to terminate rampant inflation in May 1921, by implementing a currency reform, with limited success.

Society . During the years of the Dual Monarchy (1867-1918), Hungary was an anachronistic polity as the Hungarian nobility ran a country in a century where the hold of nobility over politics was declining almost everywhere else. Elections to the Hungarian diet were not only engineered in a way to produce as few representatives of ethnic minorities as possible, but also discriminated against the parties representing the working classes. Even the leading figure of the Aster Revolution, Mihaly Karolyi, was an estate-owning count, that is until he parcelled out his land to kickstart his land reform which failed to take off.
The Social Democrats, which had joined Karolyi's Hungarian National Council, were distrustful of parliamentary and electoral procedures which in the past time and again had been used to discriminate against them; thus the establishment of Soviets in various locations. The Hungarian Soviet Republic went beyond, confiscating the basisd of the power of the country's nobility - the estates, and during the period of the Red Terror, going after their lives.
Thus, Hungary in 1918-1919 not only experienced the painful loss of territory and population as well as democratization, but also a drastic change of her social structure and the pool, from which her political leadership was drawn.
A number of Jews held prominent positions in Hungary's Soviet Republic; in response the political atmosphere after the toppling of the Soviet Republic was anti-Semitic; c.3,000 Jews died in the White Terror, and c.80,000 Hungarian Jews chose to have themselves baptized (NIYB).





EXTERNAL
LINKS 		Hungary and the Paris Peace Treaties, links from Corvinus Library
Era of Dualism, from C.A. Macartney, Hungary - A Short History, 1962
From Sarajevo to Trianon, from Istvan Lazar, Hungary - A Brief History, 1989/1993
Peter Pastor, Hungary between Wilson and Lenin : the Hungarian Revolution of 1918-1919 and the Big Three, 1976, posted by Magyar Elektronik Konyvtar
Istvan Mocsy : The Effects of World War I : The Uprooted Hungarian Refugees and Their Impact on Hungary's Domestic Politics, 1918-1921, 1983, posted by Magyar Elektronik Konyvtar
Articles : History of Hungary - Reds and Whites 1918-1919, Hungarian Soviet Republic, Bela Kun, Milhaly Karolyi, Charles I. of Austria, from Wikipedia
The Aster Revolution, The Socialist Alternative : a Soviet Republic, in : Revolutions and National Movements after the Collapse of the Monarchy (1918-1919) by Zoltan Szasz; deals with the fate of Transylvania; posted at MEK
Red Terror in Hungary 1919, from ACED
A Global History of Currencies : Hungary
DOCUMENTS Hungarian Statesmen, from World Statesmen (B. Cahoon)
Historical Population Statistics : Hungary, from Population Statistics (J. Lahmeyer)
Maps from Magyar Elektronikus Konyvtar : Hungary before and after the Treaty of Trianon
An Undiplomatic Diary by the American Member of the Inter-Allied Military Commission to Hungary 1919-1920, by Maj.Gen. Harry Hill Bandholtz, posted by Magyar Elektronik Konyvtar
The Annotated Memoirs of Admiral Miklos Horthy, Regent of Hungary, 1996, posted by Magyar Elektronik Konyvtar
Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Hungary - And Protocol and Declaration, signed at Trianon June 4th 1920, downloadable from Corvinus Library, 273 K
Hungarian banknotes, from Ron Wise's World Paper Money
Bela Kun Archive, from marxists.org
REFERENCE Peter F. Sugar (ed.), A History of Hungary, Indiana Univ. Press 1990, 432 pp.
Annotated Memoirs of General Miklos Horthy, from Historical Text Archive, Online Book
Article : Austria-Hungary, in : New International Year Book 1919 pp.71-77, 1920 pp. [G]
Article : Hungary, in : New International Year Book 1920 pp.330-332, 1921 pp.328-331 [G]
Article : Hungary, in : Statesman's Year Book 1919 pp.677-686 [G]
Stephen Graham, Europe - Whither Bound ? Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 (Toronto 1922), chapter VII : Budapest, posted online by Gutenberg Library Online


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on October 17th 2007

Click here to go Home
Click here to go to Information about KMLA, WHKMLA, the author and webmaster
Click here to go to Statistics