Educated at the Kolozsvar Kollegium in Romania, Kun (who had Hungarianized his surname of Kohn) was a gifted student. After attending Gymnasium, he began a career as a journalist. At the outbreak of the First World War, Kun fought for Austria-Hungary and was captured by the Russians in 1916. During his internment in a POW camp in the Urals, he became a Communist. He remained in Russia after his release and established the Hungarian Group of the Russian Communist Party in 1918 and fought for the Bolsheviks later that year. He met Lenin, but disagreed with his policies, siding rather with Radek and Zinoviev. He returned to Hungary in November 1918 and found the country in turmoil following the defeat by the Allies. After a violent propaganda campaign and demonstrations that resulted in his arrest in early 1919, Kun was released in March 1919, after agreeing to use his influence with Lenin in support of Hungary's dispute with the Allies over national boundaries. Kun and his followers took over the government and established the Hungarian Soviet Republic, but after leading an incompetent regime that resulted in many deaths, high inflation and other problems, they were ousted by the Romanian invasion in August 1919. Kun was exiled to Vienna, imprisoned by the Austrian authorities and finally exchanged for other prisoners with Russia. Kun was made head of the Crimean Revolutionary Council and is said to have been personally responsible for the deaths of thousands. He was then made a member of the Komintern. He traveled to Berlin in 1921 to act as an advisor to the German Communist Party. In 1928, he was arrested in Vienna for travelling on a forged passport. Finally returning to Moscow, Kun was eventually to suffer the fate of many of he old school of the Party. Accused of Trotskyism, he was arrested and tortured by the NKVD and sent to the Gulag, where he was eventually executed. This, in spite of the fact that he was a staunch Stalinist. His writings consist of pamphlets, newspaper articles and political essays.
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