Gyula Alpári

Born Oct. 16, 1882; died July 17, 1944. Figure in the Hungarian and international workers’ movement.

In 1901, Alpári joined the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (SDPH). He was a leader of the youth movement in Hungary and one of the founders of the Socialist International of Youth (1907). As one of the leaders of the left opposition, he was expelled from the party in 1910. When at the Copenhagen Congress of the Second International (1910) the decision of the International Socialist Bureau on annulling Alpári’s deputy credentials as a result of his expulsion from the SDPH was discussed, V. I. Lenin, K. Liebknecht, K. Zetkin, and R. Luxemburg supported Alpári. From 1918, Alpári was a member of the Communist Party of Hungary, and in February 1919 he became a member of its central committee. On June 24, 1919, he became deputy people’s commissar of foreign affairs of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. After the Soviet regime was overthrown in Hungary, Alpári emigrated. He participated actively in the communist parties of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and France. He participated in the Third (1921) and Sixth (1928) Congresses of the Comintern. He was editor of the information bulletins of Comintern, International Press Correspondence (1921–33) and Rundshau juber politik, wirtshaft und arbeiterbewegung (July 1932–October 1939). In 1940, after the invasion of France by the German fascist troops, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Paris and killed in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen.