The Hungarian Soviet Republic is a milestone in history for the Austrian Labor Party and a first early socialist attempt that is firmly anchored in the tradition of the world communist movement. It also has special significance for us because part of today's Austrian territory, Burgenland, was part of the Soviet Republic.

The outbreak of the revolution on March 21, 1919 came a few months after the end of the First World War, to which seven million people fell victim in the Hungarian half of the Habsburg Monarchy. Many of them were civilians. The war left Hungary - like many other countries - devastated, with an impoverished population that was starving and deeply saddened and despondent by the great toll of human life.

The Hungarian communists under the leadership of Béla Kun emerged as a factor in a new social order that was concerned with the interests of the impoverished population and not with those of the nobility, capital, and large landowners. War was also declared on the clerics, whose warmongering contributed greatly to the misfortune that the First World War had brought upon the country.

In the Soviet Republic, achievements such as the eight-hour day, increases in wages and pensions for war victims, free health care, and the introduction of health and accident insurance were achieved. The right to housing has been brought into focus through the reduction of rents and an unprecedented redistribution of housing ownership. The school system was nationalised and the central economic enterprises were municipalized. What the Soviet Republic was no longer able to do was expropriate large estates and distribute land to small farmers.

The revolution - like all others in history - had to struggle from day one with the bitter opposition of the former ruling class and had no chance of putting an orderly structure of a socialist state into practice. With the help of the brutal hordes of the later Hungarian fascist leader Miklas Horthy, the Soviet Republic was bloodily smashed and its protagonists were persecuted and often killed. Its end on August 1, 1919 was a further trauma for the Hungarian working class, already suffering from the war.

The defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic is also due to the lack of support from the Austrian social democrats. The still very young KPÖ took part in the revolution with fighters as well as with solidarity actions in Austria, and proved itself to be an internationalist force from the start.

The Hungarian Soviet Republic will continue to be an integral part of European and global revolutionary history. It has a permanent place in our memories. The courageous Hungarian and Austrian communists who fought and died for a socialist Hungary will live on in our struggles.

In the Soviet Republic, achievements such as the eight-hour day, increases in wages and pensions for war victims, free health care, and the introduction of health and accident insurance were achieved. The right to housing was brought into focus through the reduction of rents and an unprecedented redistribution of housing ownership. The school system was nationalised and the central economic enterprises were municipalized. What the Soviet Republic was no longer able to do was expropriate large estates and distribute land to small farmers.

The revolution - like all others in history - had to struggle from day one with the bitter opposition of the former ruling class and had no chance of putting an orderly structure of a socialist state into practice. With the help of the brutal hordes of the later Hungarian fascist leader Miklas Horthy, the Soviet Republic was bloodily smashed and its protagonists were persecuted and often killed. Its end on August 1, 1919 was a further trauma for the Hungarian working class, already suffering from the war.

The defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic is also due to the lack of support from the Austrian social democrats. The still very young KPÖ took part in the revolution with fighters as well as with solidarity actions in Austria, and proved itself to be an internationalist force from the start.

The Hungarian Soviet Republic will continue to be an integral part of European and global revolutionary history. It has a permanent place in our memories. The courageous Hungarian and Austrian communists who fought and died for a socialist Hungary will live on in our struggles.

At the same time, the brutal suppression and destruction of the revolutionary movement in Hungary by reaction confirms the lessons from the victorious October Revolution and the break of the Bolsheviks with the opportunism and revisionism of the Mensheviks in the run-up to the First Imperialist World War.