Tibor Szamuely
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- See also Tibor Szamuely (historian)
- The native form of this personal name is Szamuely Tibor. This article uses the Western name order.
Tibor Szamuely (1890 – 1919) was a Hungarian Communist leader.
Szamuely (original Samuel)[citation needed] was the oldest son of five children of a Jewish family. After university, he became a journalist. He started his political activities as a member of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party.
Szamuely was a soldier during World War I, in which he was captured by the Russians in 1915. After the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 he was released, and became a Communist. In Moscow he organized a Communist group together with Béla Kun among the Hungarian prisoners of war. Many of them, including Szamuely and Kun, joined the Soviet Red Army and fought in the Russian Revolutionary War. Szamuely later went to Germany and in December 1918 he took part in the formation of the German Communist Party with Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
In March 1919, there was a Communist revolution in Hungary, under the leadership of Béla Kun. Tibor Szamuely became another prominent leader of the young Hungarian Soviet Republic. He occupied a number of posts, but finally became people's commissar for Military Affairs and chief of the “Red Terror” to combat counterrevolutionary activities. In late May 1919, Szamuely made a trip to Moscow by airplane to campaign for world revolution together with Lenin. Szamuely’s own personal guards were nicknamed The Lenin Boys.
The Hungarian Soviet Republic only lasted for a couple of months until the communist government was overthrown by several invading foreign forces, mainly Rumanian. Szamuely managed to evade the “White Terror” and fled in his car towards Austria, but after making an illegal border crossing, he was seized by the Austrian authorities and was killed. Some sources say he committed suicide. His body was hacked and scattered in the fields.
[edit] Trvia
He had a nephew who was also named Tibor Szamuely and became a historian.
[edit] Book
- Tibor Szamuely Alarm! - ausgewählte Reden und Aufsätze (Berlin. 1959).
