History/Political Science paper by Göllner, András B.
Ilona Duczynska and the 1919 Hungarian Commune
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Ilona Duczynska (1897-1978) was one of the most significant Austro-Hungarian revolutionary figures of the 20th century. She was a comrade of Lenin and of the men and women who made the 1917 Russian Revolution. She was most certainly the spark plug that lit the fuse of the 1918-1919 Hungarian revolutions, which hammered the final nails into the coffin of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She is the most important female Hungarian representative of the "professional revolutionary” for whom the fight for social justice does not have a national identity, has no territorial boundaries. She is the type of revolutionary that revolutions tend to devour. Duczynska was always a puzzle, an irritant in the eyes of the Bolsheviks. She was kicked out of every Communist Party that she ever joined. Had she not left Russia in 1920, she would have been surely executed along with her closest comrades, lovers and admirers who stayed behind or went to Russia to seek safe haven from the Fascism sweeping through Europe after WWI.
This presentation will examine a small but significant part of Duzyinska’s revolutionary “identity” - her role in the short lived 1919 Hungarian Republic of Councils. Was she an obedient servant, a local propagandist for the Russian Bolsheviks or an independent Hungarian warrior for social justice, committed to the transformation of her country’s unjust, unsustainable socio-political system?
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
András B. Göllner is a Political-Economist (PhD. The London School of Economics) and Emeritus Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University, Montreal. Author of three books, and numerous articles in refereed scholarly journals, Göllner also publishes on social media surfaces and in such well known media outlets as The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, The National Post, Social Europe or the Montreal Gazette. His latest book, Ilona: Portrait of a Revolutionary is being released this year by Montreal publisher LLP Inc. His current research focuses on the political language of Cyber Capitalism.