Magyar, Ludwig Ignatievich

Start of business

Lajos Milhofer was born on November 25, 1891 in the family of a small Jewish merchant who became an employee. After college, he studied law at a university in Pecs , which, however, he had to leave. Mother died early; Lajosh was supposed to help the family. He gave lessons, collaborated in the local newspaper Pécsi Hírlap. In 1909-1910 consists (as he later wrote in his autobiography) of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary, from which he later departs. In 1912, Lajos moved to Budapest , where he began working for the newspaper Világ. During the First World War, it was the articles in Vilag, signed by the pseudonym Magyar, that would bring Lajosh the first fame ^[1] .. In the same 1912, he, together with wrote the pamphlet Balkans in War. In the years 1914-1915. Lajosh worked as a war correspondent and in 1916 he began his other pamphlet - “The Hidden Aspect of War”. The manuscript was ready for publication already in 1919, but the work was published only in 1966 by the efforts of Magyar's first wife, ^[2] .

The ideas of the October Revolution, events in Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1918 had a profound influence on the formation of Magyar's revolutionary convictions. The news of the revolution in Hungary (October 1918) found Magyar in Vienna, where he had been since March 1917 as a correspondent. Lajos returns to Budapest and adjoins the left-radical elements that went on the communists of Hungary in March 1919. On the eve of the March Revolution, he was the youngest member of the , the highest authority in Hungary.

During the existence of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, L. Magyar was a member of the Collegium for Press, the Secretary General of the Journalists' Union, and published articles in the Hungarian trade union body, the newspaper Nepsava (Voice of the People). After the defeat of Soviet Hungary, L. Magyar appeared on January 27, 1920 before a counter-revolutionary court. The former colleagues of L. Magyar in the bourgeois press expected “repentance” from him (the previous trials against the participants in the revolution ended in the death penalty for all the accused). However, being non-partisan at that time, L. Magyar courageously declared his communist convictions in court.

The reaction wanted to introduce Soviet Hungary as terrorists. They tried to accuse L. Magyar of participating in the murder of the dictator of pre-revolutionary Hungary, Count I. Tisa, but this charge was refuted. The court turned into a battle between two worldviews.

I was tormented by doubts whether I served the cause of the proletariat, the cause of building socialism ... Now I am firmly convinced that since the defeat of our revolution, I was brought to a bourgeois court and heavily accused, so I honestly served the proletariat. Capitalism has sent the Black Horseman to humanity. Endless wars, death, cemeteries, a sea of ​​blood, millions of crippled, burned cities marked the path of the Black Horseman. The Red Horseman moved towards him from the East. These two heroes, personifying the past and the future, slavery and freedom, exploitation and liberation, are fighting all over the world. Gallows, bullets and prisons await the red soldiers, but the army of the revolution is growing and growing. I am an ordinary soldier of this army.

USSR

Magyar was sentenced to lengthy imprisonment. Conversations in prison with the Communists, reading of Marxist-Leninist literature contributed to the final formation of the Marxist views of L. Magyar. Already in prison, he studied Russian. Two years later, he was exchanged for counterrevolutionaries arrested in Soviet Russia.

On the first of March 1922, Lajos Magyar arrived in Moscow. Here he spoke on Tuesdays to other emigrants with a “living newspaper”, retelling in different languages ​​news from Soviet newspapers; a month later, he demanded constant work and entered ROSTA . Since 1922, L. Magyar - member of the CPSU (b) . In the years 1923-1924. he was a correspondent for GROWTH in Germany; in 1924-1926 headed the foreign department “ Pravda (newspaper) Pravda ”. In 1926 he moved to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs ; they were going to send him to Afghanistan , but he asked to be sent to revolutionary China. From that time until the end of his activity, L. Magyar devoted his strength to studying the problems of China and the national-colonial revolution.

China

In September 1926, L. Magyar arrived in Beijing as a press officer of the Soviet embassy. In addition to his main work, he collected materials for a book on agriculture in China. On April 5, 1927, he wrote to his first wife, Blanca Peici: “Now I am in Beijing. I work and study a lot. It seems that I already know more about China than . ” The next day, April 6, 1927, the Chinese counterrevolutionaries raided the Soviet embassy. It was then that the founder of the Chinese Communist Party, Li Dazhao , with whom Magyar was personally acquainted, was captured and soon killed.

From Beijing, L. Magyar was first transferred to Hankow , then to Shanghai , where he headed the Bureau of Information of the Soviet Consulate General. Magyar was pleased with this translation for several reasons: firstly, Shanghai was the crucible of revolutionary life, and secondly, large libraries were concentrated in Shanghai. In July 1927, Magyar wrote to his wife:

I am happy for my appointment to Shanghai, since it is actually the center of the Chinese labor movement. Moreover, here are the best libraries in China that I now most need. I can’t remember, dear, if I wrote to you that in Beijing I spent twelve to fourteen hours reading books about China every day. Shanghai will be a great place to continue such research. The climate is not much better than in Hankow, where the heat saved me a few pounds. Provided that it will not be so hot and the events will not take an unexpected turn, I must successfully complete one major business. I want to write a book about China with special attention to its economic life. I have gathered a lot of material. If I manage to implement my plan the way I want, the book will be interesting and informative. Now I spend all my energy on it. After a huge amount of newspaper essays and other garbage, this will be the first important work in my life. How much I can do in the end remains to be seen. ”

In a letter dated August 20, the scientist with undisguised pleasure reported:

I have already started writing a book. About one sixth is ready. You will be surprised to see what an expert in agriculture I have become. To understand issues related to Chinese land, I had to study the issues of irrigation, rice cultivation, manure, livestock breeding, etc., with such a depth that I can be appointed bailiff. I’m afraid that in practice I can’t distinguish wheat from rye, but I am well versed in the theory of the production of silk, cotton, tobacco, rice and beans, and I have an understanding of property relations not only in China, but also in Japan, India, Korea and the island of Java, etc. What an interesting world this is and how different it is from the one in which we grew up. I work with the utmost dedication and attention to detail, working hard to create a truly good book. Perhaps one day a boy from Budapest will come in handy for many [here], who came here by chance and studied those problems of [local] life that were still ignored by others.

The situation in Central China was no less difficult than in Beijing. After the break with the Kuomintang in the spring and summer of 1927, the situation of employees of Soviet institutions became extremely complicated. Magyar had to relive the second raid of the counter-revolutionary rioters. On November 7, 1927, the Russian White Guards, with the complete connivance of the authorities, attacked the Soviet Consulate General in Shanghai. The angry crowd, who had just listened to the prayer "for the murdered members of the Romanov family," was breaking in the door, about to smash the building. Magyar, armed with a revolver, was among several employees holding the front line of defense - directly at the entrance to the building. There was a moment when heavy doors came in and the rioters burst inside. Magyar and his comrades did not flinch and continued to shoot. This created a turning point, the crowd fled. Only when it was over did the English settlement police appear. The Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs L. M. Karakhan sent a special telegram of thanks to the Soviet Consul General in Shanghai, B. I. Kozlovsky, and to the officers who distinguished themselves in defending the consulate; the first among them was named L. Magyar.

Return to Moscow. Arrest

After returning from China in 1928, Magyar worked at the International Agrarian Institute for a year and a half, managing the Eastern Department. In the same year, the monograph "The Economics of Agriculture of China", written in China, saw the light.

In 1929, L. Magyar transferred to the apparatus of the Communist International, where until 1934 he served as deputy head of the Eastern Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, working under the direct supervision of O. V. Kuusinen. At that time, the famous Soviet Chinese scholars P. A. Myth, who actually performed the duties of the first deputy head of the secretariat, and V. N. Kuchumov, who were mainly involved in the revolutionary movement in countries of the foreign Far East, collaborated in the Eastern Secretariat; L. Magyar dealt mainly with the development of the revolutionary movement in the Middle East. At the same time, he continued to deeply study the problems of the revolutionary movement in China and the Chinese economy. In 1930, he published the book Essays on the Economy of China, and also acted as the editor-in-chief of the book by M. D. Kokin and G. K. Papayan, “Jing-tien. The agrarian system of ancient China ”, to which he wrote a great theoretical introduction.

In 1931-1932 L. Magyar, on behalf of the leadership of the Comintern, edited in France the French edition of the Comintern bulletin Inprecor. Returning to Moscow, he continues to combine political activity in the Comintern with scientific work, gives lectures on national-colonial problems at the Institute of the Red Professors, the Communist University of the Workers of the East and other higher educational institutions, and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Problems of China. He was elected to the Moscow City Council.

Arrested on December 29, 1934 as a member of the anti-Soviet Zinoviev organization. During interrogation on April 16, 1937, Magyar confessed: “I kept in touch [with the Neumann group] through Heinz Neumann, Remmele, Munich, Leo Flig and a number of other persons whose names I can no longer recall. This connection is due to the fact that I was interested in the mood of this group, of course from the point of view of using it for activities to harm the party. ” During the interrogation on July 25, 1937, he named [as members of the Zinoviev organization] Georg Samueli, Franz Münich .... Ludwig Keyes and himself, Ludwig Magyar. All the activities of the anti-Soviet organization Bela Kun was aimed at the decomposition of the Communist Party of Hungary. On November 2, 1937, at a court hearing of the All-Russian Supreme Council of the All-Union Military Forces, Magyar declared that he did not admit his guilt. At the same time, he confirmed his statements made during the preliminary investigation: “Comrades, all the facts set forth in my statements really had a place to be, and for myself I do not consider this a crime. Whether they are a crime for the Soviet government does not interest me. ”

Sentenced to be shot by the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under articles 58.8 [“Organization of counter-revolutionary purposes of terrorist acts directed against representatives of the Soviet government or workers of revolutionary workers and peasants organizations, as well as participation in the implementation of such acts, at least an individual participant in such an act and did not belong to the counter-revolutionary organization ”] and 58.11 [“ Active actions or active struggle against the working class and the revolutionary movement, manifested in responsible or top-secret ostach under the tsarist regime or with counter-revolutionary governments during the civil war ”] of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR [as amended in 1926]. The case was closed by a decision of the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on June 30, 1956 for the lack of corpus delicti in his actions.

The first wife of Ludwig Magyar - actress Blanca Peici, who survived her executed husband for 51 years - in 1986 established the Lioios Magyar Prize in the homeland, which is awarded in the field of journalism.

The second wife of Magyar Erzbét Sipos (Korvin after her first husband) (Korvin (Sipos) Erzsébet) is a Hungarian revolutionary. Like her husband, she was exchanged for Hungarian prisoners and lived in the USSR.

• The current state of the Chinese revolution: discussion at the Communist Academy] / Communist Acad., Institute of World Economy and World Politics. - M.: Publishing House of the Communist Acad., 1929. - 83 p.
• Essays on the economy of China. / Ed., With a foreword. and final article E. Varga; Communist Acad., Institute of World Economy and World Politics. - M .: Publishing House of the Communist Acad., 1930. - 304 p.
• Agricultural Economics in China / 2nd ed., Rev. - Moscow; Leningrad: Ogiz - State. social. Publishing House, 1931. - 360 p.
• The Soviet movement in China - M .: State. social economy publishing house; L .: State. social economy Publishing House, 1931. - 37 p.
• From the Canton Commune to the Chinese Councils] - M.: Publishing House of the Central Committee of the USSR Ministry of Natural Resources, 1934. - 31 p.
• Magyar Lajos, ésői tudósitások. - Bdpst. , 1966.