Béla Kun | Typed letter signed, concerning the role of the Agitprop department in controlling the press, 1924

Béla Kun

Typed letter signed, to the Central Committee of the German Communist Party

in German, ordering that future copies of specific publications be sent to the central committee of Comintern's Agitprop department for scrutiny, in order to ensure better control and management of Communist publications, in German, headed stationery of the "Agitational-Propagandist Department of the Department of the ECCI [ie. Executive Committee of the Communist International] Moscou" (with text in German, French, English, and Russian), 1 page, folio, Moscow, August 1924, fold tear, minor staining

A RARE LETTER SIGNED BY ONE OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS EARLY BOLSHEVIK LEADERS, AND PROPONENT OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM. The Hungarian Communist Béla Kun (1886-1938) led the brutal and short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, oversaw the massacre of tens of thousands of people when he controlled the Revolutionary Committee in Crimea in 1920, and spurred the German Communist Party into an abortive uprising in March 1921. Kun lost the active support of Lenin with this last failure, but he continued to hold a number of significant positions in Comintern throughout the 1920s. He was shot in 1938 following a show-trial. RARE: WE ARE AWARE OF ONLY ONE OTHER LETTER BY KUN THAT HAS COME TO MARKET IN THE LAST THIRTY YEARS.

PROVENANCE:

J.A.Stargardt, 30 November 1988, lot 1187