Jay Rothermel
21st March 2009, 05:09
90th Anniversary of the Founding of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
3/21/1919
from the:
Minutes of the
Second Congress of the
Communist International
Petrograd, July 19 – August 7 1920
First Session
continued
Zinoviev: The Congress intends to direct a special appeal to all the workers of the world concerning a section of our troops who are in an especially difficult position and are making enormous sacrifices. I am speaking of the Hungarian proletariat. The representative of the Austrian Communists, Comrade Steinhardt, has the floor.
Steinhardt: Comrades, when, in March last year, the First Congress of the Communist International was ending and directly following it the Eighth Party Congress of the Communist Party of Russia was beginning, we received in Moscow a telegram from Comrade Bela Kun in which he reported that the Hungarian workers had taken power into their hands and that the *Hungarian Soviet Republic* had been set up.
This news filled us, it is true, with great joy, but at the same time we viewed with some concern the immediate circumstances under which this great event had taken place. For Soviet power had not been conquered in Hungary through years and years of bloody struggle against the bourgeoisie, but power had been taken over from the bourgeoisie without a struggle, and that with comrades in arms who were known in the International as the most backward layers of the Social Democratic Parties of any country, that is to say with the Hungarian Social Democrats. What we feared did in fact happen.
From the very first days the Hungarian Social Democrats, who had amalgamated with the Communist Party, were saboteurs. This amalgamation was the Hungarian Communist Party’s greatest mistake. The organs of the trades unions committed sabotage, the bourgeoisie, international capital, all united to overthrow the Hungarian Soviet government. The inevitable happened. Threatened by the Rumanians, those boyars, those libertines; hard pressed by the English mercenaries who, in the name of Horthy, have covered themselves in eternal shame throughout history; threatened by Czechoslovakia in the North; with no support from German Austria because the Social Democracy in German Austria has declared war on us, and with no support from Germany, the Soviet government was forced from the very first days to carry out a desperate struggle. But, comrades, despite all this it was a great event, for, for the first time, there arose a Soviet Republic in the midst of the Western capitalist countries, in the midst of the enemy camp. In the eyes of the capitalists, that was a crime that had to be expiated by all the means in their power. It is repugnant even to express what kind of bestialities have been taking place in Hungary in the last year. Nothing can be more inhuman than what is being done to the workers, completely irrespective of whether they are Communists, Social Democrats or even Christian Socialists, by Horthy’s bands. As a result, Hungary stands completely defence less. On this historical spot, at this extraordinarily historical hour, it is the duty of the Communist International to raise a protest, and not only a protest in words, but a protest of powerful deeds, against these bands of Horthy’s.
In just the same way as the workers in Czechoslovakia have united in order to send not a weapon, not a single wagon-load of war material to Poland, in just the same way as in German Austria and Germany our Workers Councils have united so that not a single wagon-load is sent against Soviet Russia, so we must unite so that, together with our brothers, we can quickly turn Horthy’s Hungary once more into Soviet Hungary, a civilised country. Comrades, I therefore ask you to adopt the following appeal to all workers unanimously and without debate, and to act in accordance with it at every hour in every country. For that, comrades, is what matters.
To the Workers of all Countries.
Working men and women!
In the days when Soviet Russia is victoriously repulsing the attack of the criminal clique of Polish aristocrats, when all over the world the wave of workers’ indignation is rising against the capitalist governments, when the revolutionary proletariat, at the Congress of the Communist International, is carrying out the unification of a workers’ army of many millions of heads, there is a country that is covered with the corpses of the best revolutionaries. This country is Hungary. International capital, that repulsive and base monstrosity, has slain the young *Hungarian Soviet Republic*. All the powers of the old world had united in the campaign against it: the professional murderers in generals’ tunics and the Christian priests, the London bankers and the aristocratic scum of Rumania, the French profiteers and the social traitors of every country, the black mercenaries and the ‘civilized’ men of culture. Surrounded on all sides, its arms and legs broken, the *Hungarian Soviet Republic* died amidst the terrible tortures of the Golgotha of counter-revolution to rise again as soon as we can rush to its assistance. This bestial counter-revolution, led by the scum of officer gangs of the English hireling Admiral Horthy, is now dancing its detestable dance on the corpses of the workers. There is no cruelty, no baseness, no bestial cynicism that the unrestrained violence of the Christian ‘order’ of the generals has not used. Thousands have been hanged and shot, tens of thousands thrown into prison, slain, murdered by stealth, thrown into the sewers, vanished without trace, robbed, raped, crippled by torture – this is the order that has been restored by the democratic ‘League of Nations’ with the help of the heroes of the Second International. ‘Woe to the conquered!’ cries the English Colonel – and shoots down the communist worker. ‘Woe to
the conquered!’ cries the brutish landowner, and rapes a working-class woman. ‘Woe to the conquered!’ cries the White Guard prison warder and puts the worker who has not yet been put under the soil behind lock and key.
Working men and women!
In the hour when we hear the bones of the defeated Hungarian proletariat grinding, you have the duty to raise your voice and to check the criminal hand of the bourgeois hangmen who flay people alive, force them to eat human excrement, rape women and slit open the bellies of women communists.
Even the lackeys of capital, the heroes of the social-patriotic Amsterdam trades union International, have, frightened by their own baseness, boycotted White Hungary. And its Commission has established thousands of piratical misdeeds by the Hungarian government and the whole Horthy gang. And thus they are traitors enough to betray even their own treachery.
In the name of millions of workers on the threshold of world war against capital, the Communist International at its World Congress directs to the whole proletariat the appeal:
– All rise to fight the executioners of Hungary!
– Stop the munition trains! Blow up all military transport that is heading for Horthy’s Hungary!
– Render harmless the officers who are rushing to the murder of workers!
– Disorganise the production of all arms without exception by a mighty wave of rotating strikes! Arm only yourselves! Make every effort in word and deed to disrupt the armies of imperialism. Surround the land of murderers and butchers with a wall of hatred!
Workers! If you remain indifferent you yourselves will be the hangmen’s assistants!
Join the ranks of the fighters! Save your proletarian honour! Save the suffering Hungarian proletariat!
Hungarian workers! Take courage! The proletariat of the whole world is with you. The Communist International sends you the expressions of its fraternal love.
Soviet Hungary is dead! Long live Soviet Hungary!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/ch01a.htm
3/21/1919
from the:
Minutes of the
Second Congress of the
Communist International
Petrograd, July 19 – August 7 1920
First Session
continued
Zinoviev: The Congress intends to direct a special appeal to all the workers of the world concerning a section of our troops who are in an especially difficult position and are making enormous sacrifices. I am speaking of the Hungarian proletariat. The representative of the Austrian Communists, Comrade Steinhardt, has the floor.
Steinhardt: Comrades, when, in March last year, the First Congress of the Communist International was ending and directly following it the Eighth Party Congress of the Communist Party of Russia was beginning, we received in Moscow a telegram from Comrade Bela Kun in which he reported that the Hungarian workers had taken power into their hands and that the *Hungarian Soviet Republic* had been set up.
This news filled us, it is true, with great joy, but at the same time we viewed with some concern the immediate circumstances under which this great event had taken place. For Soviet power had not been conquered in Hungary through years and years of bloody struggle against the bourgeoisie, but power had been taken over from the bourgeoisie without a struggle, and that with comrades in arms who were known in the International as the most backward layers of the Social Democratic Parties of any country, that is to say with the Hungarian Social Democrats. What we feared did in fact happen.
From the very first days the Hungarian Social Democrats, who had amalgamated with the Communist Party, were saboteurs. This amalgamation was the Hungarian Communist Party’s greatest mistake. The organs of the trades unions committed sabotage, the bourgeoisie, international capital, all united to overthrow the Hungarian Soviet government. The inevitable happened. Threatened by the Rumanians, those boyars, those libertines; hard pressed by the English mercenaries who, in the name of Horthy, have covered themselves in eternal shame throughout history; threatened by Czechoslovakia in the North; with no support from German Austria because the Social Democracy in German Austria has declared war on us, and with no support from Germany, the Soviet government was forced from the very first days to carry out a desperate struggle. But, comrades, despite all this it was a great event, for, for the first time, there arose a Soviet Republic in the midst of the Western capitalist countries, in the midst of the enemy camp. In the eyes of the capitalists, that was a crime that had to be expiated by all the means in their power. It is repugnant even to express what kind of bestialities have been taking place in Hungary in the last year. Nothing can be more inhuman than what is being done to the workers, completely irrespective of whether they are Communists, Social Democrats or even Christian Socialists, by Horthy’s bands. As a result, Hungary stands completely defence less. On this historical spot, at this extraordinarily historical hour, it is the duty of the Communist International to raise a protest, and not only a protest in words, but a protest of powerful deeds, against these bands of Horthy’s.
In just the same way as the workers in Czechoslovakia have united in order to send not a weapon, not a single wagon-load of war material to Poland, in just the same way as in German Austria and Germany our Workers Councils have united so that not a single wagon-load is sent against Soviet Russia, so we must unite so that, together with our brothers, we can quickly turn Horthy’s Hungary once more into Soviet Hungary, a civilised country. Comrades, I therefore ask you to adopt the following appeal to all workers unanimously and without debate, and to act in accordance with it at every hour in every country. For that, comrades, is what matters.
To the Workers of all Countries.
Working men and women!
In the days when Soviet Russia is victoriously repulsing the attack of the criminal clique of Polish aristocrats, when all over the world the wave of workers’ indignation is rising against the capitalist governments, when the revolutionary proletariat, at the Congress of the Communist International, is carrying out the unification of a workers’ army of many millions of heads, there is a country that is covered with the corpses of the best revolutionaries. This country is Hungary. International capital, that repulsive and base monstrosity, has slain the young *Hungarian Soviet Republic*. All the powers of the old world had united in the campaign against it: the professional murderers in generals’ tunics and the Christian priests, the London bankers and the aristocratic scum of Rumania, the French profiteers and the social traitors of every country, the black mercenaries and the ‘civilized’ men of culture. Surrounded on all sides, its arms and legs broken, the *Hungarian Soviet Republic* died amidst the terrible tortures of the Golgotha of counter-revolution to rise again as soon as we can rush to its assistance. This bestial counter-revolution, led by the scum of officer gangs of the English hireling Admiral Horthy, is now dancing its detestable dance on the corpses of the workers. There is no cruelty, no baseness, no bestial cynicism that the unrestrained violence of the Christian ‘order’ of the generals has not used. Thousands have been hanged and shot, tens of thousands thrown into prison, slain, murdered by stealth, thrown into the sewers, vanished without trace, robbed, raped, crippled by torture – this is the order that has been restored by the democratic ‘League of Nations’ with the help of the heroes of the Second International. ‘Woe to the conquered!’ cries the English Colonel – and shoots down the communist worker. ‘Woe to
the conquered!’ cries the brutish landowner, and rapes a working-class woman. ‘Woe to the conquered!’ cries the White Guard prison warder and puts the worker who has not yet been put under the soil behind lock and key.
Working men and women!
In the hour when we hear the bones of the defeated Hungarian proletariat grinding, you have the duty to raise your voice and to check the criminal hand of the bourgeois hangmen who flay people alive, force them to eat human excrement, rape women and slit open the bellies of women communists.
Even the lackeys of capital, the heroes of the social-patriotic Amsterdam trades union International, have, frightened by their own baseness, boycotted White Hungary. And its Commission has established thousands of piratical misdeeds by the Hungarian government and the whole Horthy gang. And thus they are traitors enough to betray even their own treachery.
In the name of millions of workers on the threshold of world war against capital, the Communist International at its World Congress directs to the whole proletariat the appeal:
– All rise to fight the executioners of Hungary!
– Stop the munition trains! Blow up all military transport that is heading for Horthy’s Hungary!
– Render harmless the officers who are rushing to the murder of workers!
– Disorganise the production of all arms without exception by a mighty wave of rotating strikes! Arm only yourselves! Make every effort in word and deed to disrupt the armies of imperialism. Surround the land of murderers and butchers with a wall of hatred!
Workers! If you remain indifferent you yourselves will be the hangmen’s assistants!
Join the ranks of the fighters! Save your proletarian honour! Save the suffering Hungarian proletariat!
Hungarian workers! Take courage! The proletariat of the whole world is with you. The Communist International sends you the expressions of its fraternal love.
Soviet Hungary is dead! Long live Soviet Hungary!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/ch01a.htm