Anarchism in Hungary emerged from the social democratic movement in the late 19th century, coming to play a prominent role in the anti-militarist movement during World War I and in the subsequent revolution that culminated in the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The anarchist movement was then repressed by the Horthy regime, before re-emerging as part of the anti-fascist resistance movement during World War II. This second wave of anarchism was also repressed, this time by the newly established communist regime. Anarchist ideas were briefly expressed during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but remained largely suppressed until the fall of socialism, which gave way to a third wave of anarchism in Hungary.

Following the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Kingdom of Hungary was placed under martial law by the Austrian Empire. This period of political repression remained in place until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which established a dual monarchy with Hungarian sovereignty over the "Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen". This brought with it an acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, which led to the gradual adoption of socialist ideas among the country's lower classes.

In 1881, a left-wing opposition emerged from the Social Democratic Party of Hungary, establishing a distinct social anarchist organization which advocate for the overthrow of capitalism in a popular revolution. Despite suffering censorship by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the group published both the Hungarian language newspaper Népakarat and the German language newspaper Radikal. In 1884, the Ministry of Interior ordered the imprisonment of Hungarian anarchists and expelled foreign radicals from the country, resulting in the suppression of the group.

In the 1890s, another faction broke off from the Social Democrats and joined together with a group of Christian anarchists to agitate among the Hungarian peasantry, developing a strand of agrarian socialism that was influenced by the ideas of Mutualism and Narodism. This led to the establishment of the Independent Socialist Party in 1897, which pursued an anti-statist platform based around broad policies of land reform. After the movement organized a strike among farmworkers, the Hungarian government undertook a campaign of repression against the peasants' movement, dispersing their meetings, banning their publications and forcing their leading members into exile. One of the activists that emerged from this peasant movement was the anarchist Sándor Csizmadia, who went on to form a rural workers' union in 1905. The group quickly grew to include over 75,000 members and organized peasant strikes, but was repressed by the state, which imposed fines on farmworkers that abstained from work. Ervin Szabó had also attempted to organise an internal opposition within the Social Democratic Party, in an effort to reform its platform towards a more radical agrarian politics. But he eventually broke from the party entirely and joined the Revolutionary Socialist Group, an organization of anarchists and socialists that had been disillusioned by party politics. The group published anti-parliamentary and anti-militarist propaganda throughout Budapest and Szabó himself brought revolutionary syndicalist organization to the table.

At the turn of the 20th century, Ervin Batthyany began to establish clubs, reading rooms and schools to educate people through anarchist means. At the time the Catholic Church held a monopoly on the education system, as such Batthyany's establishments were described by the clergy as "ungodly" and one of his schools was attacked by a clericalist mob. Nevertheless, Batthyany continued to provide free education, while he also funded several anarchist publications and gave lectures on the subject of anarchism. His schools were eventually requisitioned by the state and Batthyany went into exile in England.

Ervin Szabó was one of the early organizers in the movement against Hungarian participation in World War I, agitating alongside György Lukács, Mihály Babits and Béla Balázs. Szabó maintained regular contact with many other European anti-war activists, enough so that the Metropolitan Library acted as a centre for the distribution of anti-war propaganda in Hungary. Propaganda work was spearheaded by the anarchist writer Lajos Kassák, who published the anti-war paper A Tett, fusing his avant-garde style with a principled opposition to the militarism of the Central Powers, but was censored by the Hungarian authorities.

A core part of the anti-war movement was formed by the Galileo Circle. From September 1917, Szabó arranged regular meetings with members of the Galileo Circle and Ilona Duczyńska, during which they decided on the publication of a manifesto based on the line of the Zimmerwald movement and organized a street demonstration against the war, which led many more activists to join the group. On November 17, the group led the country's first anti-war demonstration, calling for "Peace or Revolution" before eventually being broken up by police. But despite the attempts at repression, this action ignited many more demonstrations throughout the country, organized independently by a variety of different groups. On December 26, syndicalists in Budapest even established the country's first workers' council to coordinate a general strike against the war.

In January 1918, members of the Revolutionary Socialist Group were arrested after distributing anti-war leaflets within an army barracks. The Galileo Circle was subsequently suppressed and almost all the prominent members of the anti-war movement were arrested for sedition. The Budapest Workers' Council responded by calling a general strike, during which 150,000 workers demonstrated in the streets of the capital. Despite the unions that led the strike being outside the control of the Social Democratic Party, the party claimed it as their victory and quickly called off the strike, which the unions agreed to in order to avoid splitting the movement. Despite the new recruits brought into the movement by the propaganda efforts of Ottó Korvin, who distributed leaflets calling for workers' councils, featuring references to An Appeal to the Young by Peter Kropotkin, the anti-war movement was largely broken in May 1918, when over 50 leading revolutionary socialists and syndicalists were arrested by the police, including Ilona Duczyńska. In June 1918, a new wave of strikes spread throughout Hungary, protesting against the shooting of workers by the Hungarian authorities, but these strikes too were called off by the Social Democratic Party.