Epilogue - The Agitators and the Armoured Train

Summary

In 1969, responding to the call of the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the First Hungarian Soviet Republic, the film The Agitators was shot. Although the film in many ways was the outcome of the cult of 1919 in late socialist Hungary, it signalled a very important shift in the meanings of that particular event. The historical interpretations of the Soviet Republic were born to address the problems of counterrevolution during the late 1950s. In the late 1960s, however, 1919 addressed the opposite: the problems of interpreting revolution. Formally, Dezső Magyar's film is about the history of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and evokes the familiar problems of the interpretation of the Soviet Republic. Its focus is a group of Communist intellectuals formed by young revolutionaries who set off with enthusiasm and commitment to convince the masses of the cause of the proletarian revolution in the Budapest of 1919. The film takes place in the typical settings for historical representations of the Soviet Republic: in the Soviet House (the headquarters of the revolutionary government), in factories, among workers, in a baron's palace and on the front.