Béla Kun

Hungarian Communist revolutionary and politician, the de facto leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs

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Lived 1886–1938, aged 52

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Wikipedia
53 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1886–1938
Aged 52

Summary

Updated 2026-06-10

He ran a Soviet republic in Hungary for four months in 1919, then fled to Russia where he organized the Red Terror in Crimea. Stalin had him shot in 1938.

Biography

About

Béla Kun studied at Franz Joseph University in Kolozsvár and worked as a journalist until the First World War sent him into the Austro-Hungarian Army. Captured by Russian forces in 1916 and shipped to a POW camp in the Urals, he found communism, befriended Lenin in Moscow, and co-founded a Hungarian branch of the Russian Communist Party in 1918. He returned to Hungary that November with Soviet backing, agitated against Mihály Károlyi's government from a jail cell, and in March 1919 led a coup that declared a Hungarian Soviet Republic. As foreign minister he held the real power, taking orders f…

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