Lenin Boys

The Lenin Boys (Hungarian: Lenin-fiúk) were a small communist paramilitary formed to support the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. The group consisted of about 200 young men dressed in leather jackets, acting as the personal guard of Tibor Szamuely, Commissar for Military Affairs. Their unit commander was József Cserny. The Lenin Boys were used as an instrument to suppress counter-revolutionary urges against the revolutionary government.

Tibor Szamuely, the leader of the Lenin Boys, meets with Vladimir Lenin in Moscow

József Cserny (left), a commander of the Lenin Boys

After a failed counter-revolutionary coup attempt in June 1919, communist leader Béla Kun is said to have used the Lenin Youth to stamp out counter-revolutionary urges among monarchists and other reactionaries. Tallies of the number of victims of the terror vary; different sources generally count the dead at around 400 to 600. A book published by Albert Váry in 1922, titled "The Victims of Red Terror in Hungary" documents 590 suspects executed by communist paramilitaries.

After the Hungarian–Romanian War, Romanian Army troops entered Hungary and took Budapest on August 6, 1919, Kun and other members of the government fled. After the arrival of Miklós Horthy's counter-revolutionary death squads in Budapest three months later, anti-communist officers carried out waves of retributive violence against communists and their supporters (as well as suspected leftists of any stripe) known as the White Terror, wherein as many as 1,000 people were killed. As many communist leaders were ethnically Jewish, this encouraged anti-semitic lynchings in Budapest by paramilitary forces. The Lenin Youth were also targeted.

Cserny with the Lenin Boys

Cserny was captured, tried, and executed by the new regime in December 1919, along with several other Lenin Boys.[1]