Révész, Tamás; Beneš, Jakub; (2025) Parallel Revolution: Hungarian Peasants during the Upheavals of 1918–1920. The Journal of Modern History , 97 (3) pp. 638-667. 10.1086/736621.

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Abstract

This article is the first study of Hungarian peasant revolutionism during the political upheavals that immediately followed the First World War and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. Historians of Hungary have charted the revolutionary movements that brought to power Mihály Károlyi’s liberal regime in November 1918 and Béla Kun’s communist regime in March 1919, but they have mostly neglected the rural revolution that unfolded in parallel with events in Budapest. Although peasants enacted their vision of a new society for just a brief period in November 1918, their experience decisively shaped their attitudes toward successive urban-based governments. Rural discontent stemming in large part from the peasants’ stillborn revolution contributed to the fall of both Károlyi and Kun and helped pave the way for the counterrevolutionary regime of Miklós Horthy. It also influenced interwar Hungarian political culture in important ways. Instead of seeing Hungarian peasants as mere consumers of revolution emanating from the capital, as either passive allies or opponents, this article reveals villagers’ autonomy in articulating and pursuing revolutionary demands of their own. Communist tactics vis-à-vis the countryside, which have preoccupied many Hungarian historians as well as scholars of revolution in other overwhelmingly agrarian societies, appear less significant than peasants’ own radical expectations. The evidence from Hungary in 1918–20 demonstrates the critical importance of wartime mobilization and the role of rural veterans as instigators of political unrest in triggering modern peasant uprisings.

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