Bokanyi, Dezso

Bokányi, Dezső 

Born Feb. 11, 1871, in the small town of Köfaragó; died 1940, in Moscow. Figure in the Hungarian workers’ movement. Stonemason by trade.

Bokányi joined the Social Democratic Party of Hungary in 1890 and served as a member of its administration from 1894 to March 1919. He was editor of the newspaper Népszava from 1895. From 1919 he was a member of the Communist Party of Hungary. Under the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, he was people’s commissar for labor affairs and commander of the III Corps of the Hungarian Red Army. After the fall of the republic, he was arrested and sentenced to death (December 1920). He was freed from prison by the exchange of political prisoners in 1922 and went to the USSR. During the last years of his life he was a member of the executive committee of the International Organization of Aid in the Struggle for Revolution. He translated a number of K. Marx’s works into Hungarian.

REFERENCE

A magyar munkásmozgalom tŏrténetének válogatott dokumentumai, 6th ed. Budapest, 1959.