Béla Kun (1886–1938)
Born 1886 CE, died 1938 CE.
Béla Kun (Hungarian: Kun Béla, born Béla Kohn; 20 February 1886 – 29 August 1938) was a Hungarian communist revolutionary and politician who in 1919 governed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. After attending Franz Joseph University at Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoca, Romania), Kun had worked as a journalist until World War I. He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army, was captured by the Imperial Russian Army in 1916, and was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Ural Mountains. In Russia, Kun embraced communist ideas, and in 1918 in Moscow he co-founded a Hungarian arm of the Russian Communist Party. He befriended Vladimir Lenin and fought for the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. In November 1918 Kun returned to Hungary with Soviet support and set up the Party of Communists in Hungary. Adopting Lenin's tactics, he agitated against the government of Mihály Károlyi and achieved great popularity despite being imprisoned. After his release in March 1919, Kun led a successful coup d'état, formed a Communist-Social Democratic coalition government, and proclaimed a Hungarian Soviet Republic.
Text from the Wikipedia article Béla_Kun, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.