K

Kádár, János (1912–89), First Secretary of the Communist Party of HUNGARY (1956–88). Having been imprisoned under HORTHY DE NAGYBÁNYA'S regime, Kádár became minister of the interior under RÁKOSI from 1948 to 1950. He then found himself jailed again until 1954, after a Party purge. Subsequently rehabilitated, he briefly shared power with NAGY during the preliminaries to the HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956. As the confrontation with the SOVIET UNION worsened, Kádár abandoned his colleague and supported the RED ARMY'S brutal intervention. Rewarded by KHRUSHCHEV with the premiership, he reasserted the Party's authority through a regime that was initially highly repressive. However, during his thirty-year span of leadership, Kádár did shift towards promoting modest measures of economic modernization (e.g. some accommodation of private enterprise) and even of political liberalization. By the later 1980s, when the reformist GORBACHEV held power in Moscow, the limited scale of these changes looked increasingly inadequate to secure continuance of communist control. Shortly before the onset of the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91, the more radical modernizers within the Hungarian party succeeded, albeit too belatedly, in obtaining Kádár's resignation. (See also COMMUNISM)

Kadets A centrist party, otherwise known as the Constitutional Democrats, that emerged during the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905. Supported by the intelligentsia, professional middle classes, representatives of the ZEMSTVA and a smattering of industrialists, the Kadets formed the majority faction in the first DUMA, aligning with the Trudoviki, an agrarian-based social-democratic party. In opposition to the tsar, they called for land reform and further extension of liberal-democratic freedoms, and were generally more radical than the Octobrists. Given that NICHOLAS II had power to dissolve the Duma, their opposition was easily ignored. By the time of the third Duma in 1907, the Kadets had lost seats, and moderated their position. In 1914 they supported entry into WORLD WAR I, but then became critical of the tsarist regime's handling of the conflict. Following the 1917 February Revolution the Kadets, previously the pre-eminent liberal party, found themselves on the right and were forcibly disbanded soon after the BOLSHEVIK takeover in November (see RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917).

Kaliningrad This region and its ice-free port on the Baltic coast were known as Königsberg and formed part of East Prussia until awarded to the SOVIET UNION by the POTSDAM CONFERENCE at the end of WORLD WAR II. It was then renamed in honor of Mikhail Kalinin, Soviet head of state from 1919 to 1946. Since the dissolution of the USSR, Kaliningrad's inhabitants (430,000 in the 2002 census) have lived within a Russian enclave directly bordered only by Poland and Lithuania.

Kamenev, Lev (1883–1936), Russian revolutionary, head of the Soviet state (1917), founder member of the POLITBURO (1919–25), and victim of the GREAT PURGES. Of modest origins, he was a BOLSHEVIK of the first hour (see also COMMUNISM) and a participant in the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905. Thereafter he was prominent among Russian left-wing exiles, returning to his homeland in 1914, only to be arrested on the outbreak of war. A captive in Siberia, he was freed in February 1917 and made his way to Moscow. Along with ZINOVIEV, he opposed LENIN'S plans for an armed insurrection, but in the event had little choice but to follow these. For a short period in 1917 he even found himself chairing the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, becoming more or less head of state, though real power remained with Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He was a member of the politburo from 1919, but his allegiances were unclear in the power struggle which followed Lenin's death. In 1924 he conspired with STALIN and Zinoviev to thwart the ambitions of TROTSKY (his own brother-in-law). A year later, he opposed Stalin's “socialism in one country.” Increasingly marginalized by the Soviet leader, in 1926–7 he was appointed ambassador to Italy and a year later was ousted from the Communist Party. Readmitted in 1932, in 1935 he was wrongly associated with the murder of KIROV. In 1936 Kamenev was tried and executed for treason in one of the first show trials. His family died in the GULAG. Together with Zinoviev, he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1988.

Kapp putsch Attempted coup against the WEIMAR REPUBLIC in March 1920. This was led by Wolfgang Kapp, a right-wing German nationalist angered at the humiliation of the VERSAILLES TREATY. He enjoyed considerable support among the 400,000 men belonging to the FREIKORPS, paramilitary groups who had returned from the front and were unwilling to discard their uniforms. To reduce the German armed forces to the 100,000 men stipulated by Versailles, orders were issued in February 1920 for the disbanding of the so-called Ehrhardt Brigade, which President EBERT had previously used to support his regime, though its antipathy to democracy was well known. General Lüttwitz, the brigade's monarchist commander, refused and ordered his men to occupy Berlin, which they did on March 13, pledging their support for a new government under Kapp. The coup collapsed within four days. It is sometimes said that the general strike, ordered by the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY (SPD), was responsible for defeating the putsch. More important, though, was the refusal of the SPD-led cabinet of Gustav Bauer to liaise with the putschists and the failure of the ministerial bureaucracy to support their cause. Unconvinced that the SPD could provide proper defense against right-wing extremism, the Communists set out in late March to reignite the GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1918–19. Their efforts were crushed by government troops, who a week earlier had supported Kapp. So came to an end the upheavals that marked the start of the Weimar regime. These suggested that its survival was now more likely to be threatened from the right than the left. The putschists were never properly prosecuted: Kapp died in 1922 before his case came to court, and many of the Freikorps were integrated into the regular army.

Karadjordjević dynasty (see under SERBIA)

Karamanlis, Constantine (1907–98), Prime Minister (1955–63, 1974–80) and President (1980–5, 1990–5) of GREECE. Trained as a lawyer, he developed into his nation's leading statesman during the decades following the GREEK CIVIL WAR of the later 1940s. When he first obtained the premiership as successor to Alexander Papagos, Karamanlis remolded conservative support into the form of the National Radical Union. During the rule of the GREEK COLONELS (1967–74) he exiled himself to Paris, but swiftly returned at the end of their regime to lead a democratic revival. Now heading a New Democracy Party, he laid the foundations for a republican constitution, and also Greek membership of the European Community (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION) which was finally achieved in 1981. During his first presidential period, the statesmanship of Karamanlis was particularly evident in the constructive relationship that he developed with Andreas Papandreou, the first Socialist to become premier of Greece.

Károlyi, Mihály (1875–1955). Born into one of HUNGARY'S richest families, Count Károlyi entered parliament in 1905. Though he initially supported Austro-Hungarian involvement in WORLD WAR I, by 1916 he was already advocating a separate peace with the Allies. When the HABSBURGE EMPIRE was close to dissolution in October 1918, Emperor Charles I appointed Károlyi as Hungary's premier. By mid-November this liberal reformist was leading a new republic, and he was confirmed as its president two months later. He stood down in March 1919, dismayed by the Allied decision to award TRANSYLVANIA to ROMANIA. Károlyi soon went into exile, as an opponent first of KUN'S communist dictatorship and thereafter of HORTHY DE NAGYBÁNYA'S counter-revolutionary one. He returned home in 1946, and went on to serve briefly as ambassador in Paris – where he chose to remain after resigning in 1949 because of the Kremlin-inspired communist purges occurring in Hungary.

Katyn massacre Soviet war crime. Following the outbreak of WORLD WAR II and STALIN'S occupation of eastern POLAND in 1939 under the terms of the secret protocol to the NAZI–SOVIET PACT, some 20,000 Polish officers and other professionals were captured and imprisoned in three Russian camps. In April 1943 the Germans reported discovering around 4,500 of them buried in mass graves at Katyn, near Smolensk. A RED CROSS investigation concluded that responsibility lay with the Soviet Union. Even so, in 1945 the Russians insisted on dating this atrocity to the later part of 1941 (when the Germans had captured the relevant area) and on including it among the charges leveled against prominent Nazis at the NUREMBERG TRIALS. The Western prosecutors maintained their distance from the accusation, and the concluding judgment registered a thunderously loud silence on the matter. Only in 1990, under GORBACHEV, did the waning Soviet regime acknowledge that in April 1940 the NKVD had indeed murdered not only those exhumed at Katyn but also the rest of this Polish cohort. Discovery of further mass graves at Kharkov and Mednoye subsequently confirmed that wider scale of Stalinist criminality.

Kautsky, Karl (1854–1938), politician and thinker, influential in the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY (SPD). He was born in Prague to middle-class Jewish parents. After the family relocated to Vienna, Kautsky joined the fledgling Austrian SPD. He also travelled to London where he met ENGELS who became a close associate. In 1901 he returned to Germany and established himself as a leading member of the SPD, opposing both the revisionism of BERNSTEIN and the hard left's unreconstructed Marxism (see MARX). Though he voted military credits in 1914, as did most other socialists, he became a critic of WORLD WAR I. In 1917 he helped to found the Independent Social Democratic Party, rejoining the SPD in 1920. At the time of the GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1918–19, he served as foreign minister in the brief-lived SPD-dominated government, but was unconvinced by LENIN'S calls for a revolutionary peace. In the 1920s, Kautsky settled in Vienna where he devoted much of his time to uncovering the secret diplomacy that had preceded the World War. When HITLER launched the ANSCHLUSS, he left for Prague before spending his last months in Holland. (See also SOCIALISM)

Kekkonen, Urho (1900–86), President of FINLAND (1956–81). Having already held ministerial posts in the years immediately before World War II, this Social Democrat went on to serve four brief terms as premier in the years from 1950 to 1956. He then embarked on a long presidency that made him his country's most influential politician of the post-1945 epoch. Although constrained by heavy dependence on the SOVIET UNION and by the presence within Finland of a substantial Communist Party, Kekkonen succeeded in maintaining democratic government and developing a form of WELFARISM broadly comparable to the Swedish model. He also upheld Finland's formal NEUTRALITY, while cultivating improved relations with the rest of SCANDINAVIA. It was fitting that, towards the end of a career so focused on reducing COLD WAR tensions, he should have hosted the HELSINKI CONFERENCE of 1975.

Kellogg–Briand Pact Agreement of 1928 (sometimes referred to as the Pact of Paris) initiated by France and the USA which renounced war “as an instrument of national policy.” Despite the new spirit of reconciliation inspired by LOCARNO, the French foreign minister BRIAND remained anxious to enlist additional international security against Germany. He thus proposed to Frank Kellogg, the US secretary of state, a treaty that repudiated war between their two nations. Washington was initially unenthusiastic, but, conscious of domestic antiwar sentiment, suggested a multilateral pact renouncing war except in circumstances of self-defense. This was signed by 15 states (including Germany) in Paris on August 27, 1928. Eventually some sixty countries in and beyond Europe subscribed to it. In doing so, they committed themselves to very little, since the pact neither stipulated mechanisms of enforcement nor even defined “aggression.” It was never more than a symbolic gesture, and did nothing to weaken the belligerent ambitions of HITLER and others.

Kerensky, Alexander (1881–1970), Russian revolutionary and leader of the 1917 Provisional Government. A lawyer by training, he earned a reputation for defending political activists persecuted by the tsarist regime. He joined the Socialist Revolutionary party (see POPULISM) and entered the DUMA in 1912. At the beginning of the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917, he became minister of justice within the Provisional Government, and deputy chair of the Petrograd soviet. Elevated to minister of war in May 1917, and appointed prime minister in July, he was determined to honor Russia's commitments to its wartime allies and looked ahead to a democratic future. With this in mind, he might have well have initiated the botched KORNILOV AFFAIR. The BOLSHEVIK takeover ended his premiership, and Kerensky wisely fled to France, before settling in Australia and eventually the USA.

Keynes, John Maynard (1883–1946), British economist. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he became a member of the cultured Bloomsbury set. In 1919, Keynes was chief Treasury advisor at the PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT. After the VERSAILLES TREATY was concluded, he resigned in order to publish The Economic Consequences of the Peace, a damning indictment of its terms that swiftly became an international bestseller. Keynes maintained that US President Wilson had been duped by the wiles of LLOYD GEORGE and by CLEMENCEAU'S myopic concern for French interests alone. Rather than pursuing European recovery through free trade and through the issue of mutual bonds, so as to pay off war debts, the peacemakers were ruining this objective by insisting upon excessive REPARATIONS that would prevent Germany from re-establishing its proper role in the international economy. With the onset of the GREAT DEPRESSION[2], and fearful of COMMUNISM and FASCISM alike, Keynes then undertook a major theoretical revamping of economic LIBERALISM that validated some greater measure of state intervention. In essence, he argued that at times of downturn governments should accept a deficit as the private sector would not invest. So as to maintain full employment, it was thus necessary for states to pursue reflationary policies focused on public works and other forms of social investment. These ideas reached fulfillment in the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). Its macroeconomic prescriptions influenced not only Roosevelt's New Deal program in the USA but also the kinds of WELFARISM pursued in western Europe after 1945. Much of the international governmental response to the global recession that began so abruptly in 2008 was similarly influenced by such Keynesianism. As for the economist himself, he returned to the Treasury in 1940, and accepted a peerage two years later. Keynes advocated a World Bank, and in July 1944 represented the UK at the conference which led to the BRETTON WOODS AGREEMENT and established the International Monetary Fund. Given his own physical exhaustion and the dire position of the British economy, there was little he could do to resist American dominance of the proceedings. However, Keynes did secure a large US loan to the UK which staved off the prospect of national bankruptcy.

KGB Acronym for the Russian title “Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti,” or Committee for State Security. This was the label for the organization through which, from 1954 to 1991, the SOVIET UNION conducted its main secret police operations. The work of the KGB subsumed the interior functions of the former NKVD, while also extending into the sphere of foreign espionage. Its most notable operative was ANDROPOV, whose particularly efficient tenure as its chief lasted from 1967 to 1982 and assisted him in becoming BREZHNEV'S successor as overall Soviet leader. By the early 1980s the KGB was employing a million officials, and using a still greater number of informers. The reductions of scale and function imposed after 1985 by GORBACHEV prompted some of its leading figures to support the unsuccessful coup mounted against him in August 1991. This failure hastened the demise of the KGB, which had been virtually dissolved even before the Soviet Union itself fragmented at the end of the same year.

Khrushchev, Nikita (1894–1971), General Secretary of the Communist Party (1953–64) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (1958–64) of the SOVIET UNION. Born in the Ukraine, he fought for COMMUNISM in the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR and then emerged during the 1930s as a leading Party figure within his native region. His service in World War II included participation in the battle of STALINGRAD. In 1949 Khrushchev became secretary of the Party's central committee and a key agricultural advisor to STALIN. Upon the latter's death early in 1953 it was MALENKOV who initially emerged as both general secretary and chairman of ministers. However, by the end of that year Khrushchev had replaced him in the first of these posts, just as BULGANIN was to do in the second during 1955. While “B and K” (as they were often known in the West) operated formally in tandem until 1958, the balance of power steadily shifted towards Khrushchev. It was he who had taken the lead on “destalinization,” first announced at the 20^th Party Congress in February 1956. The strict limits of any intended liberalization soon became apparent, however, when in early November he also authorized the suppression of the HUNGARIAN RISING. During 1957, with the help of the KGB, Khrushchev succeeded in defeating an attempt by reactionaries within the POLITBURO to oust him due to his revisionist retreat from Stalinism. By the following year he had accumulated sufficient authority to engineer the demotion of Bulganin for “anti-party” conduct and to add the premiership to his own existing responsibilities. In the COLD WAR context, Khrushchev proved to be an erratic leader. He aggravated tensions not only through his policy on Hungary but also by approving construction of the BERLIN WALL in 1961 and initiating the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Conversely, though, he won some credit in the West for his criticisms of Stalin and for his willingness to agree in 1963 a ban on further testing of nuclear weaponry. Deterioration of Soviet relations with China played a major role in prompting the Politburo to overthrow him in October 1964. However, his handling of domestic issues also contributed to the downfall. He had not only embarked with characteristic impetuosity on ill-judged projects of agricultural reform but had also increasingly alienated the army, the KGB, and the regional office-holders of the Party. Even at the end, however, Khrushchev remained the beneficiary of his own revisionism: when supplanted by BREZHNEV and KOSYGIN, Khrushchev was not “liquidated” in the once-familiar Stalinist manner but permitted to retire into the peaceful obscurity of a country dacha.

Kiesinger, Kurt Georg (1904–88), Chancellor of the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY (1966–9). Despite having been a member of the Nazi party and a wartime Foreign Office official of the Third Reich (see NAZISM), Kiesinger emerged during the ADENAUER era as a rising force in the movement for CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY. He became minister-president of Baden-Württemberg in 1958, and then succeeded ERHARD as federal chancellor in 1966. In this role Kiesinger formed a “grand coalition” that brought the Socialists, led by BRANDT, into the West German government for the first time. As well as favoring neo-Keynesian rather than neo-liberal economic strategies, the new administration began to adopt more conciliatory policies towards the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. Loathed by Kiesinger, the charismatic Brandt attracted (as foreign minister) most of the credit for this OSTPOLITIK. The 1969 elections produced a reconfigured coalition, in which Brandt became chancellor and from which the Christian Democrats were excluded. Two years later Kiesinger resigned as their party leader.

Kirov, Sergei (1886–1934), prominent BOLSHEVIK whose murder at STALIN'S behest initiated the GREAT PURGES of the 1930s. Born into poverty, the young Kirov entered far-left politics, joining the Social Democratic Labor Party and participating in the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905, for which he was arrested. On release in 1906, he became a Bolshevik and spent much of his life, until 1917, evading the attention of the authorities. Having fought in the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR, he became a Communist Party chief, first in Azerbaijan and then Leningrad. As a member of the POLITBURO, he was mistrusted by Stalin who saw him as a rival. For that reason Kirov was assassinated in 1934, though blame for this was attached to TROTSKY and other prominent Bolsheviks (including KAMENEV and ZINOVIEV) whom Stalin also wanted to eliminate. In 1935 Stalin ordered that the world-famous Mariinsky Ballet be renamed the Kirov, in honor of a figure whose love of dance had also extended to several affairs with ballerinas. Though it reverted to its original name after the fall of the SOVIET UNION, this St Petersburg company is still often known as the Kirov.

kleindeutsch/Kleindeutschland (see under GERMAN UNIFICATION)

Kohl, Helmut (1930-), Chancellor of the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY (1982–98). As a Catholic conservative, he became chairman of the Christian Democratic Party (see CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY) in 1973. He eventually obtained the chancellorship when a parliamentary “constructive vote of no confidence” triggered the downfall of SCHMIDT'S coalition government. Kohl then remained in power until electorally defeated in 1998 by the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY under SCHRÖDER. During the longest tenure so far registered by any chancellor of the FRG, Kohl was firm in his support both for NATO and for the continuation of OSTPOLITIK. He was similarly committed to strengthening cooperation with MITTERRAND'S France and to sustaining more generally the impetus of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. The high point in Kohl's career came in October 1990 when, following the fall of the BERLIN WALL and the collapse of the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC amidst the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989-91 in the Soviet bloc, he became leader of a reunited nation (see GERMAN REUNIFICATION). He had succeeded in getting the four principal powers that had presided over his country's defeat in 1945 to accept, albeit with some reluctance, his policy of completing the FRG's absorption of East Germany with the utmost speed. Such haste brought Kohl much subsequent criticism, particularly on the domestic economic front. This came not only from West Germans faced with the immediate financial burdens of the annexation but also from East Germans suddenly exposed to the tempest of “the social market.” Kohl himself persisted in claiming, not unreasonably, that any slower reunification might well have been even more painful and risky, not least because of the instability widespread across central and eastern Europe during the early 1990s. Having resigned as leader of the Christian Democrats after the heavy electoral defeat of 1998, Kohl was soon disgraced by parliamentary investigations into his involvement in illicit party funding during his chancellorship.

kolkhoz Type of collective farm in the SOVIET UNION. The kolkhozy were initially developed on a voluntary basis, but, after 1929 and the state takeover of private holdings, peasants were forcibly congregated into them. They then became the chief centers of COLLECTIVIZATION within agricultural production. Whereas on state-run farms, known as sovkhozy, workers received a wage, on the kolkhozy they were also entitled to a share of the profits. These were meager as the farms were compelled to sell to the government at artificially low rates which did not reflect inflation levels. Though the kolkhozy did allow for some private enterprise, they were hugely unpopular among peasants, who were unable to move to other employment thanks to the Soviet system of internal passports. The kolkhozy came under strict state supervision, and in the eyes of many commentators they embodied a new variant of SERFDOM. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 brought about their privatization.

Kolowrat, Count Anton (1778–1861), Prague-born aristocrat who made his career in service of the HABSBURG EMPIRE. As governor of BOHEMIA from 1810, he was a notable promoter of Czech culture. In 1825 he joined the state council, and in 1835 became a permanent member of the State Conference which administered the regency required after the accession of the mentally frail FERDINAND I. Here a bitter rivalry developed between Kolowrat and chancellor METTERNICH, the “foreign” Rhinelander. On issues of domestic and especially financial policy, the former tended increasingly to encroach upon the authority of the latter. The upshot was a growing stagnation in imperial governance, which contributed to making Vienna one of the earliest centers of upheaval in the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848-9. After Metternich's resignation in March 1848, Kolowrat succeeded him as first minister for barely a month, before he too was driven from office.

Königgrlsquätz, Battle of (see SADOWA)

Kornilov affair Putsch attempted on August 27, 1917 by General Lavr Kornilov, recently made commander of the Russian armed forces, which weakened the authority of KERENSKY'S Provisional Government and made a BOLSHEVIK takeover the more likely. There was an irony here. Troubled by the existence of the Petrograd Soviet and the general breakdown of law and order, Kerensky almost certainly encouraged Kornilov to mount a coup so as to disgrace the forces of counter-revolution and consolidate his own position as prime minister. Whatever the case, the ploy badly backfired. In the face of Kornilov's troops led by General Krymov, the Petrograd SOVIET held firm, and most of those involved in the venture were arrested. In the heat of the crisis Kerensky had also felt compelled to arm the Red Guards, which left him vulnerable when the Bolsheviks eventually mobilized. Held under house arrest, Kornilov escaped, only to be killed fighting the Bolsheviks in the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR. (See also RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917)

Kosovo Region of the BALKANS lying to the north of MACEDONIA. Control of Kosovo has long been disputed between its Serb and its ethnic Albanian (see ALBANIA) inhabitants. For the former, the territory became hallowed as the site of their nation's defeat by Ottoman forces in 1389, which resulted in more than 500 years of subjection to Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE). Reclaimed by SERBIA in 1913, the region eventually became part of federal YUGOSLAVIA. When that structure began to dissolve during the 1990s the Belgrade government found itself increasingly challenged by the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army. In 1997 MILOŠEVIĆ, as head of the residual federation, launched a campaign of “ETHNIC CLEANSING” aimed at giving his fellow-Serbs total possession of the area. Early in 1999 NATO responded with air strikes that forced a military retreat, soon followed by a large-scale exodus of Serb civilians too. Kosovo was subsequently placed under the administration of the UNITED NATIONS, aided by NATO peacekeepers. During much of the first decade of the twenty-first century the future of this region (where ethnic Albanian MUSLIMS now constituted 90 percent of the overall population of some 2.4 million) looked uncertain. However, the pressure for full independence that increasingly came from the anti-Serb majority eventually prevailed. In 2008 most of the international community agreed to recognize Kosovo's sovereignty, with the proviso that for the time being the European Union (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION) should assume a supervisory role over its affairs. Russian and Serbian dissent from this solution suggested that the region would remain a source of potential instability.

Kossuth, Louis (1802–94), revolutionary hero and champion of NATIONALISM in HUNGARY. This minor noble practiced as a lawyer before attending the national Diet and publishing reports of its proceedings. A notoriously outspoken liberal, he was arrested in 1837 and imprisoned for four years, after which he became a journalist. When the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 began, he championed independence from the HABSBURG EMPIRE and was soon serving as finance minister in an administration run from Budapest. In September 1848 he became head of a National Defense Committee. This succeeded in defying Austrian forces to the point where in April 1849 Hungary proclaimed itself an independent republic under Kossuth's presidency. The fledgling state was generally resented by its non-Magyar minorities, but managed to survive until defeated by Russian military intervention. In August 1849 Kossuth went into exile, first in Turkey, then England and Italy where he was fêted as a great patriot. He opposed the 1867 AUSGLEICH, and continued advocating Hungarian independence until his death.

Kosygin, Alexei (1904–80), Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the SOVIET UNION (1964–80). After joining the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1939, he held various ministerial appointments (including one approximating to deputy premier during World War II) before succeeding to the premiership itself after KHRUSCHEV'S removal in 1964. In that role he continued to concentrate on domestic issues, experimenting particularly with greater decentralization of industry. Conversely, formulation of external policies was increasingly left to BREZHNEV (who as the party's general secretary soon overshadowed him) and GROMYKO.

Kreisky, Bruno (1911–90), Chancellor of AUSTRIA (1970–83). This Social Democrat first became noteworthy for his role in helping to negotiate the 1955 State Treaty, which restored full Austrian sovereignty in return for guarantees of permanent NEUTRALITY. Kreisky began his chancellorship with a minority administration, but from 1971 until 1983 was able to govern with a parliamentary majority and to establish himself as Austria's most influential politician of the post-1945 epoch. He pursued socially progressive policies, and improved relations with neighboring communist regimes. He also urged greater European support for the emerging economies of Africa and Asia, and, notwithstanding his own Jewish background, showed particular sympathy for the cause of Palestinian nationhood.

Kristallnacht “Crystal night,” or “night of [broken] glass,” suffered by the JEWS of Germany on November 9–10, 1938. HITLER'S Nazi regime (see NAZISM) used the death of one of its junior diplomats, murdered in Paris by a Jewish youth, as pretext for a POGROM. Urged on by GOEBBELS especially, this included widespread destruction and looting of synagogues, businesses, and other property. The GESTAPO killed nearly a hundred Jews and injured many more, as well as sending some 20,000 to CONCENTRATION CAMPS. The government also imposed property confiscations and a fine of 1 billion marks on the persecuted community. Kristallnacht appalled many non-Jewish Germans, and also attracted general condemnation from abroad. Despite this, it proved to be a signal that the Nazis, whose ANTISEMITISM was already amply evident (e.g. in the NUREMBERG LAWS of 1935), would now be increasingly inclined to unleash yet more violence against their alleged racial enemies (see RACISM).

Kronstadt uprising Protest in March 1921 by Russian sailors at the Kronstadt naval base on the Gulf of Finland. Having been enthusiastic supporters of both the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917, they had become disillusioned by the restrictive political controls imposed by the BOLSHEVIKS and the harsh living conditions of WAR COMMUNISM. Among other demands, they agitated for new elections to the SOVIETS, the right of free speech, and the release of political prisoners. The mutiny was condemned by LENIN as the work of counter-revolutionaries, and was brutally crushed by ZINOVIEV. It is possible that as many as 2,000 sailors were subsequently killed; many more were deported to labor camps; and others took refuge in Finland. The uprising was the last serious challenge to Bolshevik authority, and its crushing illustrated Lenin's determination to suppress all dissent.

Kropotkin, Peter (1842–1921), Russian anarchist writer. Born into the nobility, Kropotkin had served briefly at the court of ALEXANDER II before becoming a geographer. Having first fully engaged with ideas of ANARCHISM during a visit to western Europe in 1872, he was imprisoned by the tsarist authorities two years later. He escaped back to the West in 1876, where he eventually succeeded BAKUNIN as the leading anarchist publicist. In his most celebrated work, Mutual Aid (1897), Kropotkin preached a form of SOCIAL DARWINISM claiming that the most fundamental natural law was one of cooperation rather than struggle. He argued that natural goodness had been corrupted by vicious environment, and that the proper goal of social evolution depended on attaining a morality springing from what was good within mankind rather than from the external compulsions imposed by the state. However, the spontaneous appearance of such “morality without obligation or sanction” could only occur under conditions of common possession and absolute equality. The author of Mutual Aid did not return to his homeland until 1917, when he rejected the offer of a place in KERENSKY'S government (see RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917). After the BOLSHEVIK takeover, he showed increasing disillusionment with LENIN'S regime, and Kropotkin's own funeral in 1921 marked the last occasion on which Soviet officials permitted a public demonstration of libertarian dissent.

Krupps Family dynasty of steel and arms manufacturers, whose rise mirrored Germany's industrial takeoff (see INDUSTRIALIZATION). The business was started by Friedrich Krupp (1787–1826), a wealthy merchant, who founded a factory in his home town of Essen in 1811. It was, however, his son Alfried (1812–87) who transformed the business, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the ZOLLVEREIN, the growth in railways, and new techniques of steel processing. Significant involvement in munitions manufacture started only after the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR when the business benefited from the arms race that preceded WORLD WAR I. It has been argued that the firm – now under the control of Friedrich Alfred Krupp (1854–1902), and then of his daughter Bertha who married Gustav von Bohlen (who was allowed to change his name to Krupp) – strongly influenced the belligerent course of German foreign policy in the pre-1914 period. After the war, Krupps refocused its energies on railways, though HITLER'S rise to power led to renewed demand for military material. During WORLD WAR II, the business employed a large slave-labor force from eastern Europe. In 1945 family members were arrested; Alfried Krupp (1907–67) was sentenced to a 12-year imprisonment, though Gustav was deemed too senile to stand trial; and the Allies took over the firm, much of which lay in ruins. In 1953 the business was partially restored to family control and enjoyed a revival in fortunes, being involved in the West German “economic miracle.” Family involvement ended in the late 1960s with the death of Alfried, though the firm still carries the Krupp name.

kulaks Russian term for “fist,” applied to the richer (allegedly “tight-fisted”) class of peasants. They profited especially from STOLYPIN'S agrarian reforms of 1906, and were later mercilessly persecuted by STALIN. In the aftermath of the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905, Stolypin hoped to promote social stability by creating a landowning peasantry, such as existed in France after 1789, which would be conservative in its political and social outlook. It is calculated that by 1917 the kulaks comprised perhaps less than a fifth of the agrarian population, though their numbers may have grown under the NEW ECONOMIC POLICY. In Stalin's eyes they were a class enemy and, during the process of COLLECTIVIZATION, he pursued a ruthless policy of slaughtering or otherwise deporting them to the GULAG. The lack of reliable statistics prevents any firm calculation of how many agrarian workers of all kinds suffered from “dekulakization,” but the commonest estimates suggest some 5 million.

Kulturkampf German term for “culture struggle,” coined by the Prussian liberal Rudolf Virchow, and used to describe the conflict between the state and the Catholic Church (see CATHOLICISM) in the aftermath of GERMAN UNIFICATION. It sprang from the fears both of BISMARCK and the liberals that Catholics lacked loyalty to the new order, and from the fact that the church threatened to be an extremely effective agent for mobilizing opposition in the new national elections conducted under universal male suffrage. Therefore the Prussian state, and to a lesser extent the GERMAN EMPIRE at large, adopted a policy of SECULARIZATION that targeted the Catholic Church. The earliest measures in 1871 sought to restrict the political activities of clergy, but the so-called May Laws of 1873, and a series of anticlerical measures (see ANTICLERICALISM) in the following two years, amounted to an even deeper attack on the independence and power of the church. The response from clergy and laity alike was remarkably resilient. Despite the imprisonment or exile of many priests, the German Center Party or ZENTRUM, dominated by the brilliant parliamentarian WINDTHORST, drew on the spirit of resistance among Catholics to become a major force in the Reichstag. By the late 1870s Bismarck, anxious to rid himself of reliance on liberals for parliamentary support, agreed with the Zentrum to tone down his anti-Catholic measures in return for backing over key issues. By 1886 the anti-Catholic laws had been almost entirely repealed.

Kun, Béla (1886–1938), leader of HUNGARY'S first communist regime (March 21–August 1, 1919). While serving in the army of the Habsburg Empire during WORLD WAR I, Kun was captured by the Russians. After the BOLSHEVIK seizure of power (see RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917), he returned to newly-independent Hungary as a promoter of COMMUNISM. He soon succeeded in replacing KÁROLYI'S liberal republican government with his own Soviet-style dictatorship. Until this collapsed in the face of invasion by Romania and of counter-revolutionary pressures from HORTHY DE NAGBÁNYA, Kun's regime seemed to provide the clearest example of Bolshevism's ability to spread abroad. The deposed dictator fled back to Russia, where he eventually became a victim of the GREAT PURGES.

Kursk, Battle of Largest tank battle ever fought, which took place July–August 1943, on the Eastern Front during WORLD WAR II. Hitler sought to regain the initiative following the defeat at STALINGRAD by trapping five Soviet armies that occupied a huge salient around Kursk in the Ukraine. Alerted in advance of the plan (codenamed Zitadelle) by their espionage ring “Lucy”, the Soviets built up a series of concentric defenses, and halted the German advances. They began a successful counter-attack on July 12, and over the following seven weeks of fighting in the Kursk region they killed, severely wounded, or captured around 500,000 of the enemy forces. Though the toll upon the RED ARMY may well have been roughly similar, it was by then in a better position than the Wehrmacht to make good such losses. After their retreat from the Kursk salient the Germans proved incapable of mounting further major offensives towards the East.