EMISSARY OF RUSSIA

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2665, 3 September 1937, Page 8

EMISSARY OF RUSSIA

-- —— LEADER OF HUNGARIAN REVOLT OVERNIGHT FAME IN 1919. Among those who have come under Joseph Stalin’s “iron hand” in Russia is Bela Kun. Bela Kun achieved fame overnight in 1919 when he led the bloodless revolution which, overthrew the Liberal Government of Count Karolyi, and established a short-lived Communist dictatorship in Hungary. He was sent to Hungary as a Russian emmissary, but although he'had learnt his politics from Lenin he was a Hungarian by birth and education. Born in 1886 at Georgia (Transylvania) he graduated in jurisprudence at the University of Korolsvar. From law he turned to journalism and politics, and befoie the war he founded and edited a Left wing’ newspaper in Budapest.

During the war he fought in the Hungarian army, and was taken prisoner by the Russians. In Russia he was educated as a Communist, and after the war was sent to Hungary with a forged passport to spread the revolution. In the chaos and depression of post-war Middle Europe he had rapid success, and established himself as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars. After a few months, however, he fled to Austria in the face of a simultaneous invasion by the Czechs and Rumanians. There he was interned in a lunatic asylum, but was freed and returned to Rus-

Since then he has been engaged on minor propagandist missions. He visited Barcelona shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish civil war. He was chairman of the Third International in 1928.