IVáN HéJJAS (1890–1950) CONTROVERSIAL CAREER OF A RADICAL RIGHT-WING MILITARY OFFICER AND POLITICIAN IN THE HORTHY ERA HUNGARY
Balázs Kántás, PhD

Abstract
The person and actions of Reserve First Lieutenant, later Reserve Captain Iván Héjjas (1890–1950), the main perpetrator of the wave of paramilitary violence that took place between 1919 and 1921 in the Danube-Tisza Interfluve, have become the subject of increasing debate in the politics of memory. The present short monograph does not intend to enter into debates on the politics of memory regarding the assessment of Héjjas's person, but its author, as an academic researcher, undertakes to paint a nuanced picture of First Lieutenant Iván Héjjas, a distinctive figure of the political elite of the Horthy Era Hungary (1920-1945), and, more broadly, of the historical period and political system in which the politician whose biography it seeks to reconstruct operated. According to the available data, Iván Héjjas was a central character and cult figure of the Hungarian radical right-wing militia movement that was born in 1920. His political biography between the two world wars is, with some simplification, practically the history of the Hungarian radical right-wing, quasi-state paramilitary formations, troops and militias. In Hungary between 1920 and 1944, Héjjas was primarily the very politician through the person and network of contacts of whom the authoritarian conservative political elite/government and the otherwise heterogeneous, sometimes government-supporting, sometimes government-overthrowing radical right-wing paramilitaryorganisations and irregular military formations were linked, and through whose mediation the government used these armed formations for its own military purposes that did not fit into official domestic and foreign policy. It was also Héjjas who, of all the detachment commanders of the White Terror between 1919 and 1921, reached the highest social and political level, and therefore, his career certainly deserves unbiased attention.

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