Editing Béla Kun (section)

=== The "March Action" in Germany ===
Kun became a leading figure in the Comintern as an ally of [[Grigory Zinoviev]]. In March 1921, he was sent to Germany to advise the [[Communist Party of Germany]] (KPD) and encouraged the KPD to follow the "Theory of the Offensive" as supported by Zinoviev and other Kunerists.

On 27 March, German Communist Party leaders decided to launch a revolutionary offensive in support of miners in central Germany. Kun was the driving force behind the German Communist attempted revolutionary campaign known as "Märzaktion" ("March Action"), which ended in complete failure.

In the end, Lenin blamed himself for appointing Kun and charged him with responsibility for the failure of the German revolution. He was considerably angered by Kun's actions and his failure to secure a general uprising in Germany. In a closed Congress of the Operative Committee - as Victor Serge writes - Lenin called his actions idiotic ("''les bêtises de Béla Kun''"). But Kun did not lose his membership in the Operative Committee, and the closing document accepted at the end of the sitting formally acknowledged the "battle spirit" of the German Communists.

Kun was not stripped of his Party offices, but the March Action was the end of the radical opposition and of the theory of "Permanent Offensive":

Throughout the 1920s Kun was a prominent Comintern operative, serving mostly in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, but his notoriety ultimately made him useless for undercover work.