László Rudas (born Adolf Róth; 21 February 1885 in

Sárvár Sárvár ( or ; ; ) is a town in Vas County, Hungary. Sárvár lies on the banks of the River Rába at Kemeneshát. The population is nearly 16,000. The town has become a tourist centre of international renown. Etymology ''Sár'' means "mud" i ...

– 29 April 1950 in

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 ...

) was a Hungarian

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

newspaper editor, philosopher, professor and politician who become director of the Central Party School of the

Communist Party of Hungary The Hungarian Communist Party (, , abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary (, , abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar period and briefly after World War II. It was founded on Novem ...

Biography

Before the 1918 Revolution

László Rudas was born in

in to a poor working-class family on 21 February 1885. He joined the

Social Democratic Party of Hungary The Social Democratic Party of Hungary (, , MSZDP) is a social democracy, social democratic list of political parties in Hungary, political party in Hungary. Historically, the party was dissolved during Government of National Unity (Hungary), the ...

(SDP) in 1903 as a university student and identified with the

revolutionary socialist Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolu ...

left wing of the party. From 1905 he was on the staff of ''Népszava'' (People's Voice), the official organ of the Hungarian SDP. Following the October 1918 Hungarian Revolution, Rudas consistently stood on the left wing of the Hungarian SDP, voting with a minority of the Central Committee to condemn the Hungarian majority socialists for participation in the independent Hungarian government of

Mihály Károlyi Count Mihály Ádám György Miklós Károlyi de Nagykároly (; ; or in short simple form: Michael Károlyi; 4 March 1875 – 19 March 1955) was a Hungarian politician who served as a leader of the short-lived and unrecognized First Hungarian Re ...

. Whereas the majority socialists sought an independent Hungary within the framework of a monarchy, the left wing sought insurrection leading to establishment of a workers' republic of the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

type, as was currently being established in

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...

. On November 17, 1918, Rudas and his co-thinker, János Hirrosik, called a secret meeting of 50 left wing members of the SDP. Rudas denounced the compromises made by the leadership of his party and called for the immediate formation of a new radical political organization, an idea which was not immediately supported by a majority of the session's participants. However, a week later, on November 24, members of the SDP met in a private apartment in

Buda Buda (, ) is the part of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, that lies on the western bank of the Danube. Historically, “Buda” referred only to the royal walled city on Castle Hill (), which was constructed by Béla IV between 1247 and ...

and acceded to Béla Kun's demand for the establishment of the

. Rudas was a member from the Party's inception and was one of 18 original members on its first Central Committee. members. He also served as editor-in-chief of the party's official newspaper, ''Vörös Ujság'' ("Red Gazette"). Rudas was the first translator of

V.I. Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

's ''The'' ''State and Revolution'' into Hungarian and also produced a number of other translations of Russian pamphlet literature. Rudas was designated as the delegate of the Hungarian party to the founding congress of the

Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...

(Comintern) in March 1919, but was unable to reach

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

until a month after the gathering had concluded. Rudas stayed in Moscow for several months, attending meetings of the

Executive Committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...

of the Communist International (ECCI). He then left for

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

and

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, where he took part in the highly factionalized politics of the exiled

Hungarian Communist Party The Hungarian Communist Party (, , abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary (, , abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar period and briefly after World War II. It was founded on Novem ...

(CP). During the Hungarian Revolution, Rudas stood with the far left of the revolutionary government, urging "strong and merciless" application of the proletarian dictatorship "until the world revolution spreads elsewhere in Europe." He was regarded by revolutionary leader Béla Kun as an advisor on ideological matters, along with

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 ...

After the fall of the Hungarian Revolution

After the fall of the Hungarian revolutionary government, Rudas was among the 100,000 people who emigrated from the country, avoiding the fate of many — some 5,000 executions were conducted and 75,000 imprisonments made of revolutionary participants by the right wing regime of

Miklós Horthy Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya (18 June 1868 – 9 February 1957) was a Hungarian admiral and statesman who was the Regent of Hungary, regent of the Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946), Kingdom of Hungary Hungary between the World Wars, during the ...

. Rudas, ever the leftist, drew a radical conclusion from the fall of the Kun regime, declaring in 1920 that "the mistake lay not in unification f various strata of the country behind the revolutionary government The mistake was in the communists' abandonment of the struggle to captivate the masses." In the extreme factional politics following the fall of the revolution, the hardline Rudas was an opponent of József Pogány ( John Pepper), regarded by the left wing as an opportunist; the moderate wing of the Communist Party regarded Rudas and his associates as dangerous revolutionary adventurers. In March 1922 Rudas returned to Moscow to attend meetings of ECCI and its Presidium. He was co-opted into the Comintern apparatus, remaining to teach in Moscow at the

Institute of Red Professors The Institute of Red Professors of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) () was an institute of graduate-level education in the Marxist social sciences located in the Orthodox Convent of the Passion, Moscow. History It was founded in February 1 ...

, later at the Comintern's

International Lenin School The International Lenin School (ILS) () was an official training school operated in Moscow, Soviet Union, by the Communist International from May 1926 to 1938. It was resumed after the Second World War and run by the Communist Party of the Soviet ...

. During the 1930s, Rudas worked at the

Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute The Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute (, ), established in Moscow in 1919 as the Marx–Engels Institute (, ), was a Soviet library and archive attached to the Communist Academy. The institute was later attached to the governing Central Committee ...

in Moscow and contributed frequently to the theoretical journal ''Pod znamenem marksizma'' ("

Under the Banner of Marxism ''Under the Banner of Marxism'' (, ) was a Soviet Union, Soviet philosophical and socio-economic journal published in Moscow from 1922 to 1944. It was published monthly, except for 1933–1935, when it was published bi-monthly. History In a lett ...

"). He was arrested in 1938, during the last days of the

Great Terror The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the assassination of Sergei Kirov by Leonid Nikolaev ...

, but was subsequently released. He was arrested again in 1941 during the first panicky days of the German invasion but was released again, along with Lukács, who had also been taken in the roundup. After the conclusion of 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 ...

, Rudas returned to Hungary, where he became director of the Central Party School of the Communist Party of Hungary as well as a member of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

. He also served as a member of parliament from 1945 to 1950. Rudas was a voice of staunch party orthodoxy, leading a criticism of the ideas of

Lukács Lukács () is a Hungarian surname, derived from the given name Lukács, which is the Hungarian equivalent of Lucas. Alternative spellings and derivative forms in neighboring languages include Lukacs, Lukáč, Lukač, Lukach, Lucaci and Lukači� ...

in 1949.Kovrig, ''Communism in Hungary: From Kun to Kádár,'' p. 261. László Rudas died in

on 29 April 1950.

Footnotes

Works

Books and pamphlets

* ''Dialectical Materialism and Communism.'' London: Labour Monthly, 1934. 2nd ed., 1935.

Articles

* "The Proletarian Revolution in Hungary," ''The Communist International,'' vol. 1, no. 1 (May 1, 1919), p. 55. * "The Meaning of Sidney Hook," ''The Communist,'' vol. 14, no. 4 (April 1935), pp. 326–349.