2.03: The Hungarian Soviet Republic

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Not unlike the Paris Commune, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which held power in that country for 133 heroic days in 1919, exerted influence through example in greater measure than its brief lease on life would suggest. Not only did it raise the profile and recast the soul of Georg Lukács, but in its own time, it was recognized as a failed example of communist revolution worth learning from. 

Soviet communism came to Hungary in the golden hour between the Bolshevik success, and that moment expectation of World Revolution was fully extinguished in the minds of communists everywhere. The Marxist politics of Hungary 1919 is our subject in this episode.