The Bourgeois-Democratic Governments and the Hungarian Soviet Republic under Charge

Abstract

Based on the archival documents, the article examines the way the authorities, during the time of the restoration after the fall of the bourgeois-democratic government and the Hungarian Soviet Republic, treated the people’s commissioners. The author of the article examines in detail the existing sources related to the trial of the people’s commissioners, showing the court’s attitude towards the bourgeois-democratic and the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s governments that brought significant changes into the Hungarian legal and constitutional development. Ten people’s commissioners were arrested by the police at the beginning of 1919, Fall and condemned in a martial legal process. The people’s commissioners were not arrested because of crimes they personally committed but because they used to be members of the former Hungarian Soviet Republic’s government. They were held responsible in person for all functions of the government carried out during the time of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The charges could be divided into four sections: lese-majesty and revolt, solicitation to commit murder in 167 cases, blackmailing and theft and counterfeiting. The trial lasted for five months and in the end, the court of five judges found all the ten people’s commissioners guilty. Four of them were condemned to death and the other six were condemned to life imprisonment. Later, Governor Miklós Horthy changed the death penalties by his grace to life imprisonment. At last, all the ten people’s commissioners were expulsed from the country to the Soviet Union in 1922.