The Austro-Hungarian Revolutions
Chapter III – Revolution in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Comintern preparations – harnessing national dissent
Ever since the revolution in Romania, Trotsky had known that his next target would be the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire. Of all the ethnic groups of the Empire, only the dominant Austrians and Magyars were more or less happy with their situation, and even among the Hungarians there was substantial nationalist dissent. After careful planning, actual preparations began in early 1934 when at the urgings of the Soviet Ambassador in Bucharest, the Romanian Red Army began preparing the bases and facilities where the future Red Armies were to be trained and equipped. At the same time, Comintern agents infiltrated the Empire to organize existing Communist cells for the clandestine recruitment of new followers and plan for the uprising.
The core of the future Red Army units would be Union and Socialist Party Cadres in the big industrial cities. The Communist agitators were not shy about using anti-German innuendo in their propaganda, especially once the full extent to which the working classes of the Slavic and Romanian minorities of the Empire responded to it became clear to them. But while Romanian resentment was still smouldering since the Great War, the Slavic grievances with the German invader were millennial;
Drang nach Osten had always been (or at least been perceived as being) at somebody’s expense. The fact that Germans generally saw this conquest as a civilising, rather than imperialist mission only added insult to injury. In short, the Slavs of the Empire were tired of playing the barbarian to be ennobled by the civilised German. The idea of identifying with a radically different society, proud, powerful and secure in the knowledge of its inherent superiority over the Germanic Empires had a deep appeal to the subjugated Slavic peoples of Austria-Hungary – thus they accepted in one bundle radical socialism, Panslavism (the idea of a united Slavic race, in this particular instance under the aegis of the Soviet Union) and revolution. In Serbia, all these factors were added to the thirst for revenge and national liberation of a defeated and conquered country, only twenty years since in the Imperial fold, making the Serbian revolutionaries particularly virulent.
Hungary, together with Galizia and Austria proper soon turned out the be the biggest headache for Trotsky and his agents; as an officially equal partner to Austria, the Hungarians didn’t have the same inferiority complex as the Slavic nations and to a much greater extent were ready to live with the current state of affairs. The knowledge that national liberation for Slavs and Romanians would inevitably lead to the mutilation of Hungary also helped foster a sense of Hungarian solidarity with the Imperial cause. As a result, if nationalism helped revolution on in other parts of the Empire, it hindered it in Hungary and only ideologically committed socialists would consider bringing it about. Something similar was the case with ethnic German areas such as Austria proper, the Sudeten or the various ethnic German towns and cities in diverse parts of the Empire. As for Galizia, at least the ethnic Polish parts had their national ambitions channelled into joining the Polish Kingdom, and this together with a strong catholic faith made the poles all but impervious to Communist/Anarchist overtures. As for the so called Galizians themselves, who were nothing but ethnic Ukrainians, joining the Hetmanate, an inambigous puppet seemed less desirable to the promises of Land and Freedom of the Makhnovschina to many, if not a majority. Few were really happy with being subjects of Vienna.
To make up for the shortage of Hungarian revolutionary enthusiasm, it was decided that since all ethnic Romanian areas were within the Kingdom of Hungary, the Romanian element of the Red Army would fight under the banners of the Soviet Republic of Hungary, and once the revolution was successful, this new state would duly secede the Romanian areas to its neighbour. Since the Communist Government of Romania had decided to contribute several divisions of the their best regular troops to the cause of Austro-Hungarian revolution, and ethnic Romanians were (together with Serbians) by far the most numerous exiles training in Romania, the end result was that the leader of the Hungarian Communist party, the notoriously ruthless Bela Kun gained a pre-eminence among the revolutionary leaders out of all proportion to his actual numbers of followers. In fact, to the extent that the Austro-Hungarian revolution had such a thing as a supreme leader, his name would have been Bela Kun.
During the spring and early summer of 1935, there was a constant trickle of recruits going east over the Carpathians and in the other direction, as they completed their training, an ongoing, slow but very deliberate infiltration by regular Red Army units. The Comintern was in a hurry; they knew that the anarchists were close to launching their own coup, and if it succeeded, the Comintern would be left with the choice of either invading a workers state or standing by and let an anarchist state challenge Communist leadership of International Socialism.
Competing anarchist activities
From the start, there was competition and dissent among the would-be revolutionaries. With their connections in the Comintern (where many still secretly harboured sympathies with the Anarcho-Communist cause of the Makhnoschina) the anarchist movement was not slow in realising where the next revolution would take place. They had for a long time been working the countryside of the Empire, and now they stepped up their efforts, sending in their most prominent personalities, including the famed “Ukranian Zapata” himself, Nestor Makhno.
As in many other countries were the seed of revolution had been planted, the Communists might have been dominant in the cities, among industrial workers, but in the countryside, the peasants were more attracted to anarchism. This is natural: for the industrial worker, state ownership of the factory he’s working in might seem like the best way to job security, fair treatment and reasonable wages, while part ownership of the business could mean loosing his livelihood if the business goes badly.
But the farmer has always had a deep attachment to the soil he works – to loose the ownership of that land is intolerable to him, even if he might well reconcile himself to sharing ownership of all the village lands with his neighbours, the people he knows since childhood. And the anarchists proposed nothing else. Thus, Austria-Hungary still being the traditional and charmingly rural state it was, anarchist peasant proselytes largely outnumbered their worker Communist counterparts. The anarchists organized themselves in militias along regional lines; the Freedom Army Jan Huss (FAJH) in Bohemia, the Slovak Popular Liberation Militia (SPLM) in Slovakia, the Magyar Land and Freedom Militias (MLFM) in Hungary and finally, the Libertarian Legions of Bosnia, Crotia and Serbia respectively. Of these last three, only the Bosnian had any great following: the Serbians, much more than other Slavs were united behind the Communist Party of Serbia and in Croatia, national dissent was already channelled through the fiercely conservative and nationalistic
Ustashe. The equivalent movement in Serbia, the monarchist so-called
Cetniks didn’t have any great following – there was widespread disillusion with the Karajordevic monarchy, which, it was perceived, had squandered the national freedom so bloodily won from the Turks.
Geographic distribution of the uprising
Thus, the revolutionary outbreak, or rather outbreaks that shook the Eastern marches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the fall of 1935 were undoubtedly fuelled by nationalism more than a socialist agenda – thus it was mainly (from north to south) in Moravia, Slovakia, Eastern Hungary (which was Romanian-inhabited) and in the former Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro that the revolutionary banner was hoisted. Some ethnically separate areas, however, had national aspirations that were incompatible with a Left-wing revolution, such as Austrian Galicia. The Poles there yearned for incorporation into the Kingdom of Poland, and the Ruthenians (ethnic Ukrainians) wished to be united with the Ukrainian Hetmanate. Since both these states owned their independence to the Central Powers, and in the case of the Ukraine especially, depended entirely on their continued support to remain independent, Polish-Galician and Ruthenian nationalism was not especially belligerent or anti-Germanic. The general feeling in these areas was that a peaceful border revision was possible and therefore desirable.
Croatia was a different issue. There was already in place a strong and well organized nationalist movement which demanded independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Croatia was considered a part of the Kingdom of Hungary), and which had no compunction about using violence to reach these goals. The problem, from the Comintern point of view, was that this movement, the Ustasha, was an extreme right movement under the dictatorial control of a rabid extremist leader, Dr Ante Pavelic. The Ustasha got its weapon and training from fascist Italy, which hoped that it would be able to fulfil its irredentist claims on the south Tyrol and Fiume once Austria was weakened by internal rebellion. Furthermore, the Ustasha claimed all of Bosnia-Herzegovina as Croatian land, something which would have upset not only the Muslim Bosnians, but also the many Serbs living there. When the revolutions began, the Ustasha at first fought side by side with the Imperial Army to defeat the “Godless Bolsheviks”. Their long-term allegiance could however not be relied on by any stretch of good faith.
The most traditionally
Kaisertreu areas of the Empire were hardly touched by the uprising, even when there was a significant Socialist (albeit more often than not Social Democrat) presence, as in Austria proper. Areas were ethnic Germans lived as a minority among a Slavic populace, such as the Sudetenland, in Transylvania or the big cities of Prague were next to unanimously loyal to the Kaiser. In Transylvania that loyalty cost the Germans dearly as their lands were almost immediately overrun by the Revolutionaries, who made little difference between ethnic Germans and enemies of the people. Thousands were summarily shot, hanged or murdered in other even more barbaric ways. Tens of thousands were driven from their homes as fugitives.
The Magyars, as one of the privileged nationalities of the Empire also remained mostly loyal, even though a minority did rebel out of purely Communist or Anarchist sympathies. They were however not able to overcome the resistance of the Royal Hungarian army. As the Red Armies pressed closer, many would surface as local party leaders, administrators of Bela Kun’s reign of Red terror.
Of the areas of the Empire that did rebel, Romanian Hungary has already been mentioned. Here, Romanian agitators had for years been able to work their sedition without standing out as a foreigner would have, with language and culture as a barrier. Strangely enough, it was Romanians expatriate anarchists who had gained by far the most converts, rather than their Comintern compatriots. Many of them had not contented themselves with preaching to their countrymen, but had brought the libertarian gospel to Hungarians, Slovaks and Czechs. Proper Makhnovschina members from southeast Ukraine had worked the towns and villages of Ruthenia, but without much effect. The inhabitants were too thoroughly “mystified” by nationalist delusions.
Serbia, on the other hand, after less than twenty years under the Austrian yoke still had the feel of a conquered country. Pan Slavic sentiment of brotherhood with the Russians, added to the smouldering resentment and thirst for revenge of a defeated nation made Serbia the main supporter of Moscow-style Communism in the Empire. When the rebellion began, the Red Army of the South Slavic Peoples Republic would quickly become the strongest of the revolutionary armies, as volunteers jammed every recruitment office in Red-held Belgrade.
Serbian recruits have received their rifles
Outbreak
The revolution began in earnest on October 1st, 1935 when armed anarchist militias suddenly appeared on the streets of cities and villages to seize weapons- and ammunition depots, radio stations, newspapers and government buildings. Fierce street battles were fought with police and those few army units that had had time to sending out any forces from their barracks. Many had been overrun in the first rush as surprised soldiers were kicked out of their beds and rounded up by the Anarchist Militiamen.
While surviving army units fought desperately to regroup and break out of the sieges their barracks were subjected to, the conventional forces of the Revolution, clandestinely deployed to the forested and broken border areas with Romania, rolled into action – south of Presov, it was the North Slavic Peoples Army, in Transylvania the Red Army of Liberation of Hungary and North of Belgrade, the South Slavic People’s Army, each one numbering ten divisions. All three insurgent armies also had many cadre formations, complete with stored equipment, officers and even NCO’s in order to quickly absorb the expected flow of recruits into new divisions.
On October 1st, several divisions of regular Red Army of Liberation of Hungary troops (almost wholly ethnic Romanian) swept down from their hidden bases in the Carphatians to attack the mountain passes from behind. The meagre Austrio-Hungarian garrisons holding the fortifications there were completely surprised by an attack from behind and wiped out. As soon as the passes were taken, they started to disgorge a stream of insurgent divisions, all “voluntaries” crossing the border “illegally” and “without the knowledge or consent of the Government of the Peoples Republic of Romania”. These protestations of innocence of course fooled no one except the most gullible – they were a joke even among appreciative Red Army troops.
Reactions of the League of Nations
It was more than obvious that such a well armed and organized force was hardly the result of a spontaneous uprising, and Austria and Germany immediately protested to the League of Nations, accusing Romania and the USSR of a covert invasion. Trotsky had long since decided that the Communist Countries would not take part in the “Bourgeoisie diplomatic charade”, but he did send a representative to the emergency meeting of the League of Nations held in London on October 6th. With a completely straight face, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maksim Litvinov, denied all knowledge of “these scandalous allegations” and yet had the temerity to proclaim the unconditional support of the USSR, France and Romania for the “Worker and Peasant States” of the North- and South Slavic Peoples Republic and the Hungarian Union of Soviets against foreign intervention. Maurice Thorez had not been consulted about this guarantee and was understandably outraged, since French re-armament was far from complete. He did not speak out to deny it, however.
As a result of this, after a full day of debate and discussion, the League of Nations could not agree to anything more than a ban on arms sales to the rebel forces and to Romania, an entire symbolic measure since no member country except Republican Spain had so far ever sold any Arms to a Comintern country. Kaiser Wilhelm II had asked for a full joint intervention in support of Austria-Hungary (hoping that a common response of the World Community would be less damaging to the prestige of Kaiser Otto than a purely German one) but neither Great Britain nor the United States felt any desire to be drawn into conflict with the USSR and France. Japan was not a member of the League of Nations since 1931, and Italy was torn between the fear of having the Red Beast on its doorstep and the hope of gaining an Ustasha-led Croatia as area of influence in the dismembering Empire.
Rough-looking troopers of the South Slavic Peoples Army in Bosnia
High tide of the revolution - Imperial military reaction
On the ground, the Red Advance continued. Under the ruthless command of Serbian Communist leader Milan Gorkic, Serbia was liberated within weeks and the South Slavic Peoples Army pushed on into Bosnia with a continually swelling number of formations. In the north, the Reds quickly overran most of Slovakia, except the capital Bratislava and continued into Moravia, completely ignoring undefended Galicia for the time being. In the centre, finally, Bela Kun’s forces rolled forward on a broad front, only being held in December at the very gates of Budapest, on the shores of the Danube.
The Imperial Government reacted sluggishly, but it did react. The Austrian Army was the only one of the three separate Armies of the Empire to retain any cohesion, partly because in the German ethnic areas (and in central-western Hungary), anarchism wasn’t strong enough to interfere effectively with mobilisation.. The Imperial Army and the Hungarian Royal Army with their many Slovaks, Romanians and Serbs, broke up almost entirely as every division lost a sizeable portion of its soldiers through desertions and mutiny; the anarchist agitators had done their job well. The remaining loyal Hungarian forces were reformed as replacement companies and battalions in depleted Austrian Army divisions, and this helped the Imperial forces slow down the enemy advance to a considerable degree, at least in the central portion of the front. In Bosnia, however, the Austrian forces were so badly outnumbered that a complete rout would have taken place without the aid of the Ustasha Militia. That this aid came with strings attached was obvious to the Kaiser, and yet he could hardly refuse it. Thanks to the hard resistance put up by the troops of the “Poglavnic” Pavelic, the Red Serbian advance could finally be checked in December in central Croatia.
As the front slowly solidified in Hungary and Croatia, in Moravia the rebels won a stunning victory in late November, when aided by two battalions of Soviet-made T-26 tracks they broke through the Imperial front, smashing two divisions and advancing in depth to the very gates of Prague, where they had to stop only because of the complete inadequacy of their supply system, shortly before New Years Eve of 1935.
