The republic was established on 14 August 1921 and was dissolved on 20 August 1921. The area of southern Hungary was occupied by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes' army and was administrated by the people's administration from Novi Sad. Following the defeat of Béla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in the summer of 1919, many communist dissidents from Budapest, escaping from the "white terror" of Admiral Miklós Horthy, emigrated to Baranya, where Béla Linder, mayor of Pécs, gave them refuge. Linder, the military attaché of the Hungarian Soviet Republic based in Vienna in Austria, became the mayor of Pécs in September 1920.
