Kŕrolyi & Bethlen: Hungary

Makers of the Modern World Series
By Bryan Cartledge

Miháyl Károlyi and István Bethlen: Hungary portrays the turbulent events at the conclusion of WWI that surrounded two key Hungarian statesmen and their efforts to save their country from drastic partition, a continuing Communist threat and Allies that they perceived as being unjust. This volume, from the particular perspective of Hungary, is one of 32 in the series Makers of the Modern World that describes the personalities, circumstances and events surrounding the countries that were ‘remade’ after the Paris Treaties. Immediately in the first pages that Cartledge raises the prospect that the prevention of WWI lay in the hands of Prime Minister Tisza, when in July 1914, in the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Tisza had told Franz Josef of Austria that “an attack upon Serbia would conjure up war with Russia and thus world war”, only to agree later against his better judgement, just for them both to please Kaiser Wilhelm.

Cartledge reveals that to the exhausted delegates, Hungary was a tiresome loose end, a country made to wait nervously by the Allies for its allotment in the dismemberment of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its belief in the 14 points of Woodrow Wilson and that the “peoples of Austria-Hungary … should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development” were to be dashed a year after the peace conferences started, at the Treaty of Trianon. When Hungary was finally called to Paris, their delegates were sent home having lost Hungary two-thirds of its territory and half its population. Following the signing of the Treaty “a punishment without historical precedent”, the despair of the Hungarians echoed throughout the country. National monuments and flags were draped in black, newspapers such as the Nemzeti Újság wrote scathing editorials (“the Hungarian cry of anguish can be heard throughout the unfeeling world”) and crowds congregated to chant the slogan of revisionism: “Nem, nem, soha!” (No, no, never!).

Two personalities, similar in background and upbringing were to lead Hungary through this turbulent period: Miháyl Károlyi and István Bethlen. Cartledge describes Károlyi as a passionate man who aged 37 in 1912 challenges Prime Minister Tisza to an illegal duel. As leader of his country immediately following the War, Károlyi was a great believer in the 14 points of Woodrow Wilson and argued for significant concessions to the “nationalities” living within Hungarian borders. As one of Hungary’s largest landowners, he was the first and only one to distribute his land to the peasants. Cartlege dramatically captures the scene of Károlyi on a wooden platform in the middle of fields, surrounded by peasants who had waited hours, pointing to fields in the four points of the compass and announcing “All this was mine until now. From this day on, it belongs to you!” Károlyi was ousted by the new Communist regime in 1918, went into exile and returned 27 years later a disillusioned man. 

István Bethlen, in contrast, believed that the landowning class “should hold on to its supremacy and hegemony, for the sake of all citizens of this nation”, was opposed to franchise of most literate men and women and wanted the Allies to occupy Hungary to protect it from the Communist threat. This came in the form of Bela Kun, who had imbibed Communism in Soviet Russia, idolised Lenin and made Hungary the first country in Europe to be brought, briefly in 1919, under Communist rule. Again in power after the Treaty of Trianon, Bethlen concentrated his energies on promoting the cause of revision, leading Hungary to greater political stability and economic growth. Between the wars, he mistrusted Hungary’s increasing trade and sympathy with Nazi Germany under the Prime Minister Gyula Gombos. 

Review from The Budapest Times (page 16, 28 September - 4 October 2009):

'Bryan Cartledge is to be congratulated on having achieved the almost impossible - in this small-sized, short work he has managed to relate, clearly and precisely, the extremely complicated story of the background to the notorious 1920 Trianon Treaty, under which Hungary lost two thirds of its territory and half of its population. This is some achievement!

Meanwhile, Cartledge, while explaining the pain and sorrow that many Hungarians felt, and still feel about the whole affair, is mindful of both the complexities and the banalities of the matter.'

Bryan Cartledge examines the fate of Hungary and the consequences of the Treaty of Trianon to the present day, from the perspective of a British diplomat, who, having served in Sweden, the Soviet Union and Iran, became Britain’s Ambassador to Hungary in 1980.  He was Principal of Linacre College, Oxford.