Berzeviczy Albert és az 1918-1919. évi forradalmak

One of the witnesses of the events which followed the collapse of the historic Hungary was Albert Berzeviczy. Before the last hours of the state in 1918, he had been a prominent politician in the Hungarian parliament. At the time of the Aster Revolution, he retired from the political life. He did not support the new Hungarian prime minister Count Mihály Károlyi, since he believed that the Count was a talentless and weak-handed leader, who disarmed the Hungarian army at the end of the First World War, and did not defend our borderlines against our enemies, for example the Romanians, Serbs, and Czechoslovakians. After the downfall of Mihály Károlyi – on 21st March 1919 – Berzeviczy became the enemy of the new regime, the bolshevist Hungarian Soviet Republic. In the eyes of the Bolsheviks, he was a representative of the old state order. At Easter of 1919, he was arrested and imprisoned for four days. After being set free, he lived in his own flat in the Hungarian capital city, but in May he hid in his brother-in-law’s flat for a week. The collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic was “a liberation” for him. He wrote in his memoirs that in his opinion the bolshevist regime was an irreligious, unpatriotic, and totally corrupt system. After “the liberation,” in February 1920 he met the most important leader of the counterrevolution, Miklós Horthy for the first time. It seemed to Berzeviczy that Horthy was a talented soldier and warlord, however, he was not skilled enough in political matters. At that time, little did he know that Miklós Horthy was to become the governor of Hungary for 24 years (1920-1944).