With the shout of “LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!”, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, formed on the evening of March 21st, 1919 lasted for only 133 days. The violence and intensity of the Red Terror in Hungary rivaled that of Soviet Russia. The scars inflicted by the mass-executions of right-wing dissidents, the destruction of morals in education, and the desecration of holy spaces can still be felt today.
An Outlaw’s Diary: The Commune is Cécile Tormay’s riveting first-hand account of the Hungarian Bolshevik Revolution, from the initial seizure of power to the quick demise under foreign jackboot. A writer, intellectual, and right-wing social activist, Tormay was hounded by agents of the Hungarian Soviet Republic throughout the country. Relying only on the charity of friends and the kindness of strangers, she moved disguised and pseudonymously from place to place. Tormay risked her life to write this diary as a warning to future generations.
She describes not just the despair of the dispossessed Hungarians and the depravity of the communist enforcers – many soviet officers were convicted murderers released from prison and given governmental authority to police the populace – but also the quiet determination of the peasantry and middle classes who, through it all, held faith in God and Nation.
For the first time since its original English publishing in 1923 readers can experience this stirring and lucid account of one of the 20th Century’s forgotten epochs. Antelope Hill Publishing is proud to reintroduce Cécile Tormay’s An Outlaw’s Diary: The Commune.
