Lajos Magyar

(in Russian, Liudvig Ignat’evich Mad’iar; pseudonym of L. Milhofer or Mil’gorf). Born Nov. 25, 1891, in Istvandi, Somogy County; died July 17, 1940. A figure in the Hungarian and international labor movement; historian. The son of a merchant.

Magyar was a journalist by profession. He was prominent in the struggle for Soviet power in Hungary and was imprisoned after its defeat. In 1922 he went to the USSR in a prisoners’ exchange and joined the CPSU the same year. He worked on the staff of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) and then of the newspaper Pravda from 1922 to 1926. In 1926 and 1927, Magyar was in diplomatic service in China. Upon his return to Moscow he served as chief of the Oriental Department of the International Agrarian Institute from 1928 to 1929 and deputy chief of the Oriental Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International from 1929 to 1934. Magyar lectured on the national and colonial question at many higher educational institutions of Moscow and wrote the books Economics of Agriculture in China (1928; 2nd ed., 1931) and Outline of the Economy of China (1930).