Editing Béla Kun (section)

===Early life===
Béla Kohn, later known as Béla Kun, was born on February 20, 1886 in the village of Lele, located near Szilágycseh, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary (today Lelei, Romania). His father was a lapsed Jewish village notary, while his mother was Protestant. Despite his parents' secular outlook, he was educated at the Silvania Főgimnázium in Zilah (present-day Colegiul Naţional "Silvania" Zalău) and a famous Reformed''kollegium'' (grammar school) in the city of Kolozsvár (modern Cluj-Napoca, Romania).

At the ''kollegium'' Kun won the prize for best essay on Hungarian literature that allowed him to attend a gymnasium. His essay was on the poet Sándor Petőfi and the concluding paragraphs were:

Béla changed his birth surname, ''Kohn,'' to ''Kun'' in 1904, although the almanac of the University of Kolozsvár still referred to him in print by his former name as late as the year 1909. There is no archival evidence as to the exact date the name was legally changed, although it is clear that from 1904 all those around him referred to him as Béla Kun rather than Kohn, and he likewise made the Magyar variant his signature.

Before [[World War I]], 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 he was later to be accused of embezzling. He had a fiery reputation and was involved in duels several times. In May 1913 he married Irén Gál, a music teacher of middle-class background.