Bela Kiraly:THERE ARE not many instances in modern history of a soldier who, having once held a commanding position in the armed forces of his native land, is able to reinvent himself as a scholar in another country. This, however, is the case with Bela Kiraly, who has died aged 97.
During the Hungarian uprising of 1956, he held the position of commander of the revolutionary national guard and was forced to flee the country after the Soviet military intervention of November 4th. Kiraly managed to start a new life and forge a career as a historian in the US.
His early career was that of an average Hungarian officer during the interwar Horthy regime. Born in Kaposvar, he was trained at the Ludovika academy and at the Honved academy from 1930 to 1935, serving as an officer with the infantry and later with an artillery unit.
In 1942, he was promoted to head a sub-department in the ministry of defence and joined the general staff of the Hungarian army.
In 1945, he crossed the front with his brigade to surrender to the Red army. Although taken prisoner, he managed to escape from Soviet captivity. After the war, Kiraly took part in the reorganisation of the new, democratic Hungarian army, becoming staff leader of the first battalion in 1946-1947 and rising to the rank of brigadier general by 1950, when he was appointed director of the Miklos Zrinyi military academy – the highest point of his army career.
During the military purge of 1951, he was arrested and sentenced to death, but on appeal this was changed to life imprisonment.
Released from jail (though not rehabilitated) in 1956, during the first days of the revolution, Kiraly was invited by Imre Nagy’s government to rejoin military service.
He was appointed to head the newly formed national guard and preside over the revolutionary military committee. After the Soviet intervention that November, Kiraly tried to organise armed resistance in the Buda hills but soon realised the futility of this. He fled to Austria and, in the spring of 1957, was in England for a time.
Soon after Kiraly emigrated to the US and, while not giving up political activities, he took a graduate course at Columbia University, New York, where in 1962 he received a doctorate in history.
That was the beginning of a long and fruitful career as a historian of the early modern period, and later of the 20th century. In 1963 he obtained a teaching position at Brooklyn College, New York, where he taught military history until 1983.
His research into Hungarian history resulted in 1969 in Hungary in the Late Eighteenth Century: the Decline of Enlightened Despotism, dealing mostly with the rise of nationalism after the death of empress Maria Theresa. This was followed in 1975 by a monograph on the influential 19th-century statesman Ferenc Deak.
Having initiated the Brooklyn College Studies on Society in Change research organisation in 1975, three years later Kiraly founded Atlantic Research and Publications, in Highland Lakes, New Jersey. This issued numerous works on central eastern Europe, including a social science monograph series.
The change of regime in Hungary meant rehabilitation for Kiraly, whose name had appeared on the “death list” of Yuri Andropov, Soviet ambassador to Hungary in 1956, who played a major role in the suppression (the Soviets had demanded the execution of a number of “rebellious” Hungarian politicians). Kiraly returned to Budapest, was one of the speakers at Nagy’s reburial in June 1989 and became member of parliament in 1990 on the list of the Free Democratic party.
However, his scholarly work continued, resulting in books in both English and Hungarian. His crowning achievement was a vast collection, published on the 40th anniversary of the uprising, entitled 1956: The Hungarian Revolution and War for Independence (2006), which he edited with Lee Congdon and Hungarian-American scholar Karoly Nagy.
In 2004, Kiraly was elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He never wrote an autobiography, but Honvedsegbol-Nephadsereg, Szemelyes Visszaemlekezesek, 1944-1956 (From the Honved Army to a People’s Army, Personal Reminiscences, 1944-1956), published in 1986, contains much interesting information about his life.
A hardworking, broadminded scholar, a man of democratic convictions and great integrity, Kiraly was liked by many of his colleagues as well as politicians, and was respected even by his political enemies. Like that of Gen Pal Maleter, who was executed along with Nagy in 1958, his name will be remembered as one of the leading figures of the revolution.
Kiraly was divorced from his wife. A son and a grandson survive him.
Bela Kiraly: born April 14th, 1912; died July 4th, 2009