Easter Coup
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The Easter Coup, also known as the Pascha Coup or Easter Putsch, was an attempt by members of Nerotysia’s government and military to take control of the country from the Revolutionary Nerotysian Communist Party. The coup was led by a group of nationalist and fascist-leaning generals and state officials who had become disillusioned with the party’s rule, and resorted to military action after their allies within the party were ousted.
Disloyal Nerotysian armies entered the cities of Shynka and Farsakely on April 9th, 1939, shutting down government buildings and arresting hundreds of party functionaries. Civil resistance sprouted rapidly against the coup, and a general strike was organized in protest by the Labor Directorate. This was followed by a coordinated counterattack by loyalist military forces and the party’s own Revolutionary Guard, which finally defeated the coup a week after it had begun, on April 15th.
Despite its failure, the coup destabilized the country and triggered the Nerotysian Civil War a few weeks later, and also prompted a vast purge of government and military officials, critically weakening the nation and paving the way for the nearly-successful Kolish invasion of Nerotysia two years later.
Background
Mátyás Lynszk died on June 8th, 1938, after having ruled Nerotysia amid near-universal popularity for almost twenty years. Despite his own political neutrality, factional tensions within and without the party thrived under his tenure, and intensified rapidly as his health began to wane in 1935. Three principal factions evolved within the party’s legislature - a right-wing coalition pioneered by party founder Aleksander Enkolić; an alliance of hard-line leftists led by Filip Kyrestesz and Béla Pulszky; and a nationalist wing organized around Adam Buzov and Janos Horváth. The nationalists consisted mostly of “Paper Volniks,” members who had not joined the party directly, but had instead been a member of a previous organization which had been absorbed into the party during the revolution. The original ringleader of the nationalists was Josip Buzov, who had been a member of the Peninsular Socialist Revolutionary Party before the revolution, and joined the party when the PSRP was absorbed into it. As such, many of the nationalists had not even called themselves Marxists before joining the party, and had instead identified with a variety of left-wing ideologies.
After Josip’s death, his son Adam assumed his position and led the nationalists to diverge even further from the rest of the party, harshly criticising the aggressive secularization of Nerotysian society and calling for a program of “national patriotism” based around Nyroslavism and panslavism, in order to build up a supremely powerful and militarized nation state. He claimed that his program was the only way to guarantee the survival of the class struggle in a hostile, bourgeois-dominated world. Janos Horváth held closer to classical Marxism and attempted to build alliances with other factions, but Buzov’s radicalism stymied his efforts. Tensions grew after Buzov gave a speech in January 1938 calling for a pact of “nonaggression and mutual understanding” with the fascist Fourth Kolish Empire, earning intense condemnation throughout the party.
Upon Lynszk’s death, the right- and left-wings of the party had already formed a plan to oust Buzov and his nationalists from the party, as they had come to view him as a threat to the Nerotysian state. The right-left alliance was formalized at the 8th Party Congress in October of 1938, when both Enkolić and Pulszky gave speeches denouncing the nationalists as “corrupted revisionists” and “traitors to the revolution.” Immediately following the Congress, the party’s Central Committee voted to create an Organizational Committee with the power to expel members of the Central Committee from the party - the entire nationalist wing was expelled within a week. Protests sprouted in numerous cities; in response, many of Buzov’s allies were allowed to rejoin the Central Committee, so long as they abandoned their more radical proposals, including the pact with Kolintha. Horváth initially agreed to the demands, but reversed his decision under pressure from Buzov. The ouster had destroyed Buzov’s faith in the party; instead, he turned to his allies in the military.
Preparation
On 28 May 1938, through a low-level aide on Enkolić’s personal staff, Adam Buzov learned that Lynszk was nearing death, and was not expected to survive the month of June. The aide also informed Buzov that Enkolić and the rightist leadership had privately met with the leftist leadership, and that all personal staffers had been locked out of the room. A few days later, Buzov revealed both of these facts to LVK Chairman Ferenc Barbas, who told Buzov that he had placed both Enkolić and Kyrestesz under surveillance, and that the two had met several times in the past few weeks.
Lynszk was pronounced dead in the morning of 8 June - that night, Buzov organized a meeting with Barbas, Chief of Defense Anton Branković, President of Shynka Sebestyen Kállai, General of the 2nd Army Jovan Hranilović, and Major Generals Josip Ćorluka and Nikola Vidaković, of Divisions 12 and 14 of the 2nd Army. During the meeting, Buzov proposed a plan of action to incapacitate the leadership of both the rightist and leftist wings of the party. Following this, the Premier would call a national state of emergency, and create a State Crisis Committee to oversee the reorganization of the party and the establishment of total state authority. The conspirators agreed to participate, but all agreed that it should be a last-resort measure, only to be undertaken in dire circumstances. At this point, Buzov anticipated that he could win the power struggle within the party after Lynszk’s death.
Five months later, Buzov and his nationalist faction lost seats at the 8th Party Congress, and subsequently failed to prevent their ouster by the new Central Committee. By 12 November 1938, all of the nationalists had been expelled from the party, and by 15 November, he had met with his co-conspirators and convinced them to begin preparations for the coup. Premier Filip Lavrinović agreed to participate on 28 November, and two days later, General Florijan Ostojić of the 5th Army pledged his support. The two armies quietly gathered around Shynka and the industrial city of Farsakely, and Buzov ensured that the cities’ police would not interfere. The nationalists were formally invited back into the party on 13 December, so long as they abandoned their radicalism - Horváth agreed on 14 December, but reversed his decision the next day, after Buzov involved him in the plot.
On 2 January 1939, Hranilović became aware of a corporal within his army named Pavel Slavujević, who had become a popular focal point among the troops for resistance to the party’s rule. Though he never directly attacked the party, Slavujević constantly spoke of the “great destiny” of the Nyroslavic races and glorified Nerotysian culture. Hranilović told Buzov of the corporal, and they agreed to include him in the State Crisis Committee after the coup, to secure the loyalty of the soldiers.
On 27 February, the conspirators met at Barbas’ apartment in Shynka and drew up a list of targets, naming some to be executed and resolving to imprison the rest indefinitely. Enkolić, Kyrestesz, Pulszky, Lakatos, Irinivić and Žuvela would all be executed after a brief show trial, and their top lieutenants would be imprisoned until they were either rehabilitated or banished. The conspirators also formalized their plan, resolving to occupy the Kaspala, the Partisan’s Palace, and the incomplete Amity Palace and impose martial law on Shynka and Farsakely. The military would act on the orders of the Premier, who would produce fabricated documents alleging a conspiracy within the party to assassinate government officials.
Buzov called a final meeting on 11 March, where it was agreed that the coup would take place on the day of Easter, 9 April. The reason for this was simple - most party members had abandoned religion, and would attend work on the holy day, but the soldiers guarding their workplaces were not as atheistic. Buzov estimated that almost half the Revolutionary Guard would stay home on Easter, thereby halving the security detail guarding the Kaspala. Horváth called it “the party’s most vulnerable day.”