After the rav­ages of World War I and the col­lapse of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire, Budapest was engulfed by rev­o­lu­tion and maraud­ing for­eign armies in 1919. Fac­to­ry work­ers, dis­il­lu­sioned ex-sol­diers, land­less peas­ants, artists, and intel­lec­tu­als began form­ing grass­roots coun­cils to get the coun­try back on its feet. This groundswell pro­duced a unique cross-class alliance in pur­suit of social jus­tice, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism, and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, which quick­ly led to the for­ma­tion of the Hun­gar­i­an Repub­lic of Coun­cils. After only four months, how­ev­er, this rad­i­cal­ly new exper­i­ment in self-gov­ern­ment end­ed in tragedy and vir­tu­al­ly all of the Republic’s lead­er­ship were exe­cut­ed. Over time, the rev­o­lu­tion has not only been smeared by the Hun­gar­i­an right wing but also mis­un­der­stood and large­ly for­got­ten by the rest of the world. This vol­ume will set the his­tor­i­cal record straight on the hero­ic but trag­ic events of 1919, pay­ing trib­ute to the peo­ple who gave their lives to a tena­cious and coura­geous idea. These essays bring togeth­er inter­na­tion­al­ly respect­ed schol­ars from Europe and North Amer­i­ca, includ­ing Péter Csun­der­lik, Raquel Varela, Kari Polanyi Levitt, Mag­da Aranyos­si, Lajos Cso­ma, Susan Zim­mer­mann, Christo­pher Adam, András B. Göll­ner, Marie-Josée Laval­lée, and Dim­itrios Roussopoulos.