THE COLUNIST Why Bolshevism Failed in Hungary hostility, the Allied blockade, and Al From Viewpoint of a Radical swing immediately true to this star, it is bepotestar is himself. If he does not always lied intervention, but that need not be here cause he is momentarily deflected by his tradiscussed. Other factors of a more intimate Special Budapest Correspondent to Manditional religiosity and the influence of the kind helped to bring Bela Kun Communist Chester Guardian Weekly priest. His habit of keeping a stocking experiment to the ground. The first of these has long been an embarrassment to Austrowas the excessively proletarian character of for what happened. If there is any blame, it Hungarian finance. Into the stocking he Hungarian Communism. The second was the is upon the abominable social system that regularly has put by year after year the obtained in Hungary before the first or Ka thick, blue tinted notes of the Austro Hunblockade of Budapest by the peasants a blockade that still continues, is entirely non rolyi revolution of October. Suddenly ter garian Bank of 1, 000 kronen denomination political, and originates in the narrow ego leased from their political and economic slax and less until a vast proportion of the ism of the peasant mind anywhere and with a paper currency of the Dual Monarchy has sense of power, and unfortunately they used everywhere. third, and less important thus accumulated and become stagnant.
cause was the sabotage of the upper bour their power to their own undoing.
Bela Kun Government had to issue paper geoisie. Among the subordinate factors one They could not bring themselves to be money, like any other Government. Had might mention the dependence of Hungary lieve that these intellectuals were, after the printing press of the Austro Hungarian industrial life upon that of her neighbors, all, proletarian like themselves, men who Bank been in Budapest instead of Viena, particularly Germany, for raw materials and worked for their livelihood, who loved their this would have been simple enough. As it certain essential industrial processes. work, and whose work was indispensable. was, the Soviet Government had to make That Bela Kun was able to hold out for No; they were bourgeois, black coated, the best imitation it could, and it was a very four months against this complex of diffi well fed, formerly privileged, and therefore poor imitation.
culties was a miracle.
This Jewish clerk were they suspect.
Production commis All the stories about Bela Kun forgery had the miraculous gift of leadership as few saries who knew their business found them of foreign money, English bank notes and popular leaders have had it; for the nearest selves resisted and without authority. Ere the like, are the impudent invention of cheap parallel one must go to our revivalist preach long their place was taken by some dem journalism. He had not the resources or ers; he knew and played upon the mass agogue from the ranks.
the skill to turn out Hungarian money, phychology in politics as a Sankey or So with the central Productions Depart much less that of other countries. Indeed Billy Sunday does with the religious emoment. It became, or nearly became, for one had it been possible to set a first rate note tions.
must not exaggerate, a department of mob forger to work on the national currency Hungarian Communism was by no means orators. Some good men did remain. There and it is questionable how such notes would the farcical thing that hostile propaganda were production commissaries who retained have been forgeries the Soviet regime has made it out to be. Essentially it consisted authority in their factories and did splendid might have been saved. The Hungarian of that compound of State and Guild Soci work. There were factories big ones, too peasant refused to accept the new white alism, of a central bureaucracy and au that functioned as admirably as if they money, so called because it was white intonomous factory councils, towards which were run by a board of directors. But these stead of blue blacked. To him anything but all Europe east of the Rhine seems to be were exceptional instances. It is little the stiff, inctuous richblue notes to which tending. Every factory was controlled by its wonder that the well meaning intelligenzia he was accustomed was not money. He workers council of three, five, or seven this useful and high minded section, simply refused to sell, and the fatal blockade shop stewards, but it was managed and downed tools and adopted a passive of the town by the country began. Only the run by the Production Commissioner, an sabotage.
few fortunate townspeople who had hoarded expert appointed by the State Department No class in Hungary is more to be pitied.
up a store of blue money or who had jewof Production. The Commissioner was not Under the Red Terror, which was none the elry to sell could obtain food. The masses supposed to be under the orders of the Worker Council, and any dispute had to be less real, though it was not, despite all the dependent upon daily, weekly, or monthly referred to the central department. It was propagandist reports, stained to any great wages had only the new money, and had to extent by atrocities, this class suffered unstarve in a land of plenty.
intended to preserve proper discipline and to Nothing that Bela Kun could do, no mea give the right degree of authority to skilled justly from proletarian distrust. To day it is sure was conceivable that could have shaken knowledge and the communal represents suffering equally unjustly under the White Terror for having attempted to do its duty the peasant. Five years of unchecked proative.
to the community under the Bolshevik fiteering at the expense of the city, the naIt was Bela Kun desire that the central tion, and the neighboring countries had ensystem.
department should have the deciding voice riched the countryside. It had money In fairness, again, to the working class, it that the production commissaries should be must be remembered that the new regime lied blockade, the town had nothing to sell enough, and in any case, thanks to the Almen of expert ability, and at least some members of the workers councils too should was fighting for its life against enemies that the peasant wanted. And such is the within and without. Starvation saps any be experts. Vor was there any insuperable egoism of the peasant as Budapest in the obstacle. The technical experts engineers, faith, and the workers needed exhortation as last six months and Vienna during the last chemists, foremen, and the like lent a patient in an hospital needs morphia infive years have shown, so stubborn and inMob orators were poor works sensible is he. that he will calmly allow themselves willingly to the task. Mos: ot jections them did so perhaps because it was the only managers, but they were necessary stimumillions to starre rather than mitigate his way of earning a living. Many, howerer. lants to endurance. Without them the Bolseriously accepted Communism as the only shevik enthusiasm would soon have faded greed. Sooner or later the peasantry, among whom are classed also the landowning class, way out of Hungary appalling difficult es away out of pure inanition. They were to Puritan would have brought Sovietism down in Nor was the start altogether unpropiti Bolshevik Hungary what the Hungary ous. Things were done at a stroke which, preachers were to Cromwell army.
Among enlightened people here it is beOf all these exhorters the prince was Bela for example, the clear sighted bureaucrats lieved that in course of time Communism of the Imperial Economic Ministry at BerKun himself. Again and again he rallied would have shed of its faults and have lin frankly admitted to be necessary the the masses when they were all but lost to settled down into a fairly good working sysconcentration of industry at a time when him by a hypodermic injection of his mobtem, distinguishable perhaps only in psychtwo thirds of the factories were almost oratory. Eventually even he failed, and the ology and name from that which will inparalysed by lack of raw material, the Red army melted away almost in a night. It evitably come throughout Central Europe.
elimination of useless factories the cutting was never defeated by the Rumanians. It Experience has begun to teach the lesson down oi unneccessary establishment exwas deserted by the workers in the rear that outside intervention brings only dispenses. Big financial men proffered their when the strain had finally brought their aster in its train.
advice, not for any doctrinaire belief in Comnerves to the breaking point.
munism on the contrary, their antagonism Bela Kun was hampered throughout and remained, but in the patriotic belief that finally borne down by the deadweight of the Anniversary Greetings from Russia sound finance is necessary for any regime. peasantry. The Hungarian peasant reBut everything was spoiled by the prole sembles the French peasant as described tarian fury that rapidly roared up into white by Zola in La Terre, narrow, suspicious, sia have advanced, during the last week, an London, Nov. Bolshevik forces in Rusheat. Class hatred took the place of the grasping, miserly. He has been neither pro average of thirty miles along fronts totaling communal spirit, and soon developed into a Bolshevik nor anti Bolshevik, pro Monarchclass terrorism. It is idle to apportion blame from 250 to 300 miles. They are now morist nor anti Monarchist. His one political ing forward on virtually every front.