Béla Kun (February 20, 1886 – 1938(?)/1939(?)) Hungarian Communist politician, who ruled Hungary for a brief time in 1919.

Kun was born Béla Kohn in Szilágycseh (today Cehu Silvaniei), a village in Transylvania. His father was a lapsed Jew, and his mother a lapsed Protestant. His father was the village notary. Bela Magyarized his surname to Kun in 1906.

Though Kun was hostile to all forms of religion, his original Jewish surname was to be the cause of much anti-semitic prejudice against him later in his career. Despite his secular upbringing, Kun was educated at a famous Calvinist kollegium (grammar school) in the city of Kolozsvar (modern Cluj-Napoca, Romania).

At the kollegium Kun won the prize for best essay on Hungarian literature that allowed him to attend a Gymnasium school. Kun's essay was on the poet Sandor Petőfi and his concluding paragraphs were "The storming rage of Petőfi's soul...turned against the privileged classes, against the people's oppressor...and confronted them with revolutionary abandon. Petőfi felt that the country would not be saved through moderation, but through the use of the most extreme means available. He detested even the thought of cowardice... Petőfi's vision was correct. There is no room for prudence in revolutions whose fate and eventual success is always decided by boldness and raw courage...this is why Petőfi condemned his compatriots for the sin of opportunism and hesitation when faced with the great problems of their age...Petőfi's works must be regarded as the law of the Hungarian soul..and of the...love of the country"1.

Before the First World War, he was a muck-raking journalist with sympathies for the Hungarian Social Democratic Party in Kolozsvár. In addition, Kun served on the Kolozsvár Social Insurance Board, from which Kun was later to be accused of embezzling. Kun had a fiery reputation and was several times involved in duels. In May 1913, Kun married a beautiful music teacher of middle-class background named Iren Gal.