Chapter 30 – From the Great War to the “dictatorship of despair”: The Red Count and Lenin’s Agent
-Archduke Franz Ferdinand was murdered on June 28th 1914 in Sarajevo by Serbian student Gavrilo Princip Hungarian people weren’t sad about his because he was an opponent of Hungarian Hegemony; The idea of potentially fighting a war in his honour was considered as “grotesque”
-The month long delay following his assassination to the declaration of war against Serbia was due to Hungarian PM Istvan Tisza who considered the time and pretext unsuitable for war. He was only interested in preserving the Magyars leading role in the country – Annexation of the larger Slav population would threaten dualism. -Tisza was forced to agree to the declaration of war due to united pressure from Vienna and Berlin but with the understanding that Serbian wouldn’t be annexed following the war.
-During the first half of the war, Tisza had a firm hold on the government but the longer the war lasted, the worst conditions got and less support he had. -Wages dropped 47% for blue collar and 67% for white collar workers. Of the 3.4 million Hungarian conscripted for war, 530 000 were killed and 1.4 injured (833 000 were POW’s) -There were hunger protests due to the lack of food -As conditions worsened, other political parties benefited…Especially the Social Democrats who had 200 000 members in 1917 When Franz Joseph (the symbolic unifier of the Dual Monarchy) died in Nov 1916, People in the Danube began speaking of a new ear of freedom -During this period, people were obsessed with works that dealt with the collapse of the Dualist state -On October 16, 1918 both the opposition and Tisza declared the war lost and that the monarchy must work to maintain peace from within
-Tisza was murdered in his villa on October 31, 1918 (the day of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, by several armed soldiers Ironically, Tisza was the only leading politician to war about the consequences of war prior to the declaration
-The revolutions in October 1918, March 1919 and the counter-revolution of 1919-20 were all a direct result of the war. They weren’t class conditioned social revolutions but the product of tensions caused by national rivalries and by the unfairness of the measures adopted in the treaty of Versailles.
-Mihaly Karolyi (1875-1955) was the main protagonist in the transitional period following the war and the leader of the bourgeois-democratic revolution that killed Tisza -Karolyi was born to one of the richest and oldest aristocratic families in the monarchy -During the war, he travelled throughout the ally countries promoting his concept of democratic transformation and federalization of Hungary. In 1917, he published his ideas in Switzerland and was allowed to present them by French President Poincare -In 1917, with the Democratic Party and bourgeois radicals, he formed the “suffrage block” -Few things helped move the revolution: -On the eve of defeat in Sept 1818, the leader of the opposition was deer-stalking rather than trying to win the war -In a letter on Sept 25th, the opposition wrote not to expect any change on the front before the spring of 1919 and the following day Bulgaria fell -King Charles sent the opposition leader on a pointless reconnaissance trip in Switzerland rather than trying to negotiate with revolutionary demands to keep peace at home -On Oct 25, Karolyi’s party, Social Democrats, and bourgeois radicals created the “Hungarian National Council” which was ready to assume governance of country under a 12 point program demanding the conclusion of the peace, independence from Austria, reconciliation with nationalities without losing territory, introduction of universal suffrage -The old ruling class tried to stop/delay the appointment of Karolyi as PM and convinced the King to appointment Janos Hadik instead -This angered the
