BOSNIAKS IN HUNGARY DURING THE SOVIET REPUBLIC OF 1919
BOSNIAKS IN HUNGARY DURING THE SOVIET REPUBLIC OF 1919

Summary/Abstract: In Europe, in the penultimate year of the Great War (1914-1918), a revolution broke out in Russia, which was almost fatal for the countries of the Entente. The horrors of the war, the heavy losses, the starvation of the civilian population and the deprivation gave Marxist and anarchist revolutionary groups the right reasons to radicalise the masses. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy collapsed with the loss of the war, and no one was able to stop the revolutionary, rebellious masses and the communist politicians who fuelled them. In 1919, Hungary became the first country to form a Bolshevik government (Soviet Republic), which included in its newly formed (transformed) army the Southern Slavic (including Bosnian) soldiers of the Monarchy. In this study I will describe the situation, movements and actions of the troops fighting on the side of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, mainly Bosniaks, from April to the end of July 1919. Emphasis will be placed on the events along the Mura River, on the southern border of the country, where Bosnian troops engaged in several engagements with the forces of the Kingdom of Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia. Based on the sources found in the Hungarian Military Archives, I will examine the composition of the units, their equipment, the soldiers’ situation, their equipment, their actions, the attitude of the officers towards their subordinates and the communist power. In the summer of 1919, the end of Bolshevik rule seemed to be gradually approaching, desertions increased, morale deteriorated, supplies were stagnant and then cut off, and chaos ensued in many places. The so-called South Slav Battalion and the so-called „Red Hunters” are the focus of my writing here. Bosniak troops were stationed in many parts of the country and heroically took part in the Soviet Republic’s defensive fighting. Finally, I will look at the period after the fall of the Soviet Republic and how the fate of Bosnian veterans of the First World War and the later Soviet Republic subsequently unfolded under the established Horthy regime. My study sheds light on the fact that Bosnian soldiers not only fought with death-defying courage alongside their Hungarian comrades on the front lines of the First World War, but later, during a strange and terrible period, during the months of the communist takeover, they also sided with the Hungarians and actively participated in the struggle of the Soviet Republic.

• Details
• Contents