[6] While Pogány dedicated himself to promotion of what one historian has called "the often impossible demands of the soldiers,"[6] he nonetheless remained for a time supportive of the policies of the left-wing government of Count Mihály Károlyi.

[1][5] On 13 November 1918, Mihály Károlyi's new minister of defense, Albert Bartha, decided to take on the Budapest Soldiers' Soviet head on in an attempt to bolster the sagging discipline of the army.

[7] Before this resignation was publicized, Pogány, acting without the endorsement of the Social Democratic Party, led a soldiers' demonstration on the Ministry of Defense demanding Bartha's dismissal.

The formal announcement of the resignation on 12 December made it appear to have been the direct result of the street action, further bolstering the status of the Budapest Soldiers' Soviet at the expense of the authority of the officers corps.

[1][7] At the time of the March 1919 uprising which proclaimed a Hungarian Soviet Republic with Béla Kun as de facto leader, Pogány cast his lot decisively with the revolution.

[5] While the two parties were formally ratifying the agreement, Pogány's Soldiers' Soviet assumed control of the Budapest police, occupied the collector jail, and dispatched armed bands throughout the capital to intimidate political opponents.

This policy, begun by Pogány and continued by his successor, proved to be a total failure, however, as only about 5,000 qualified individuals chose to enlist in the Hungarian Red Army after an intensive three week campaign.

[12] Pogány also joined Tibor Szamuely as an adherent of "Red Terror" — proposing that the Soviet government take as hostages 200 prominent citizens as a means of forcing an end to counter-revolutionary resistance.

When the Red government was overthrown by Admiral Horthy and his allies, Pogány fled to Austria and later to Soviet Russia to avoid being killed in the reprisals known as the "White Terror."

Pogány was accused by the new regime of complicity in the murder of former Hungarian Prime Minister Count István Tisza by a group of soldiers during the Chrysanthemum Revolution of October 1918.

[5] Along with other émigré Hungarian radicals in Soviet Russia, Pogány was set to work in the apparatus of the Communist International (Comintern), which was at the time attempting to foment general socialist revolution across Europe.

Pogány, as a member of the governing Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party, was closely allied to Béla Kun in the factional turmoil which ensued.

Future factional ally Benjamin Gitlow later recalled the initial impression which Pepper made upon him when he first met him at the Bridgman convention: The second of the three Comintern nuncios looked like a Hungarian version of the proverbial traveling salesman.

Short and stocky, with a large head and a disproportionately larger nose that proudly bore a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched importantly on its bridge, he dressed like a dude, combed his hair sleek and neat, was always clean-shaven, smoked gold-tipped cigarettes, listened attentively to everything that was being said in his presence, and said absolutely nothing....

"[2]A factional foe, James P. Cannon, later recalled the decisive role which Pepper played in the American Communist movement of the 1920s: He first came to this country in the summer of 1922 and soon began to regulate party affairs with the arbitrary authority of a receiver appointed by the court to take over a bankrupt concern.

An acute factionalist, Pepper was early to attempt to bolster the standing of his American allies in Moscow by agitating against Leon Trotsky and accusing the Foster group of softness towards the discredited Soviet leader.

Pepper was a delegate of the Communist Party of America to the 5th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, convened in March 1925, to which he delivered the report of the Information Department on 6 April 1925.

[5] At the 7th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, held in November and December 1926, Pepper was named a member of the political commission, where he was instrumental in helping to remove his nemesis Grigory Zinoviev from the Comintern Presidency.

In 1929, Stalin repeated accusations against him at the ECCI Presidium and in May 1929 the Comintern sent an open letter to the American Communist Party relaying the news that the "Pepper case" would shortly be submitted to the disciplinary International Control Commission (ICC) of the Comintern[5] The ICC returned its verdict in September 1929, confirming the accusations made against Pepper and removing him from all functions in the Communist International.