Béla Illés (Born: Béla Lipner from Kassa,

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

; now

Košice Košice is the largest city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary. With a population of approximately 230,000, Košice is the second-largest cit ...

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), March 22, 1895 –

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, January 5, 1974) was a Hungarian left-wing and Communist writer and journalist of

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descent, who spent over 20 years of his life in exile in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. In 1945 he returned to Hungary in Soviet uniform as a major in the

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. In now Communist Hungary, he was not particularly appreciated by the Minister of Culture, József Révai, nor by

György Lukács György Lukács (born Bernát György Löwinger; ; ; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and Aesthetics, aesthetician. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an inter ...

. However, he was used as a writer of articles intended for the masses glorifying the communist system and the Soviet Union. He himself took the model role for literary Socialist realism. He was awarded the

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twice, in 1950 and 1956. In 1948, he came up with the (almost certainly fictional) story of the

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cavalry captain Alexei Gusev, who had opposed the tsarist intervention in the suppression of the

1848 revolution in Hungary The Hungarian Revolution of 1848, also known in Hungary as Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–1849 () was one of many European Revolutions of 1848 and was closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas. ...

in 1848, and had been executed for it in

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along with six companions. In 1948, a Hungarian delegation travelled to the Soviet Union to pay their respects at the graves of Gusev and his companions. However, the graves and the archival documents cited by Illés were nowhere to be found. (Illés claimed he had found information about Gusev in the Minsk archives. However, the archives were burnt to the ground during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, so there was nothing left to research.) Although Béla Illés never admitted to the forgery, historians saw it as proven by the mid-1950s. However, in contemporary Communist propaganda, Gusev became a symbol of the (purported) centuries-old Russian-Hungarian and then Soviet-Hungarian "friendship", coincidentally with the centennial of the 1848 revolution, which was celebrated in Hungary on a grand scale. His writing was printed en masse, and streets were named after Gusev.

Publications

* Carpathian Rapody was fst published in English in 1963 by Corvina, trans. Grace Blair the wife of Emil Gardos

References

External links

* 1974 deaths 1895 births Writers from Košice 20th-century Hungarian journalists Hungarian expatriates in the Soviet Union {{Hungary-writer-stub