Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation

It would be particularly interesting to study the reasons why the postwar revolutionary transformation of our countries toward social ism has taken place within the old frontiers of prewar bourgeois nation-states. Here, historic inevitability preserved the smaller sovereign states, whereas in Russia it favored the great international federation of the Soviet Union. Be that as it may, our frontiers proved to be foundations for peace and socialist development. Therefore, it is self evident that full recognition of these frontiers and acceptance of the

judgment of history is an essential precondition for the full establishment of minority rights, alongside the majority nations which became socialist societies themselves.

Already before the war, Titulescu, the liberal bourgeois political leader in Romania, spoke of the "spiritualization" of frontiers. Count Mihaly Karolyi, the "grand old man" of the Hungarian left, championed a Danubian confederation. After the war, Petru Groza, Prime Minister of Romania, suggested a Hungarian-Romanian customs union. Now, when the great socialist transformation in both countries has reached a stage of consolidation, the demand for frontier adjustments only surfaces occasionally in the provocative propaganda of dissidents in the West. Our tasks are to improve the relations within these frontiers and between neighboring socialist countries-that is the way to do away with outstanding minority problems.

Sometimes it is a subject for debate whether the problem of nationalities has achieved its perfect solution in our socialist countries of the Danube Valley, or not. In my view, this is just a play on words. It is a great achievement that the fascist Herrenvolk concept, racist discrimination, the pitting of majorities against minorities, and vice versa, are things of the past. The emergence of people's democracies also has meant liberation for our minorities (except the short-lived deportation of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia). The constitution of every single socialist country proclaims national equality, the right to one's own language and culture, rejects any and every kind of dis crimination among citizens. These principles are thus the guiding lights of public life in our countries. Members of all nationalities are represented in our public administrations. The minorities can enjoy their own press, theaters, and schools. Their villages and towns share the fruits of scientific and technical advancement.

However, proudly as we may contrast the achievements of our socialist system with the forcible assimilation and cunning attempts at absorption going on in the West, we must admit that our resistance to similar remnants of our past is not as explicit as it ought to be. We can still find certain inconsistencies in our everyday life--deviations, that is, from the Soviet solution. In other words, the settlement of the nationality question is not quite complete. Not yet. In this respect, I agree with those who say that this question, like many other problems of socialist construction, can only be solved in a continuing manner.

What I really mean is that the infiltration of the French "nation state" idea is still noticeable in our countries. In the last century this idea became the inspiration of nationalist movements throughout Europe. In the Danube region, however, it produced double-edged results. For instance, in Hungary, the Law of Nationalities of 1868 abolished all national discrimination. Yet, at the same time, the concept of the unitary "Hungarian political nation" created the artificial notion of individual "Slovak-speaking Hungarians" or "Romanian speaking Hungarians," instead of safeguarding the rights of these minorities as collective communities. It was in this way that a "liberal" law opened the door to a more-or-less coercive assimilation of the minorities by the Hungarian majority.

Today, during the creative phase of socialist development, we still have to face certain "bourgeois" features of nationalism. After all, this phase has had to solve quite a few problems that should have been the task of capitalism. It is no wonder, therefore, that the seemingly attractive-though essentially contradictory-nineteenth-century French idea of the "nation-state" resurfaced in our part of the world, clashing with the Soviet internationalist theory and practice.

May I quote some examples from Romania? There was a time when the interpretation of the concept of "Romanian socialist nation" was not fully clarified and the dangers of misinterpretation were looming large. But then Janos Fazekas, Deputy Prime Minister, clarified the question in the classic Marxist-Leninist manner at a party congress. According to him, the Hungarian minority in Romania cannot be simply incorporated in the "Romanian socialist nation," because the Hungarians are members of a separate "entity," a different "ethnic community." As such, the Hungarians have their own specific characteristics and a different ethos. Yet, one essential feature is also their indissoluble unity with the Romanian nation within the same socialist state.

This important pronouncement thus substituted the concept of "Romanian socialist nationality" in place of the "Romanian socialist nation." So, at one stroke, the unnatural consequences of an assumed danger of incorporation into the majority were averted. Hungarians in Romania from then on could shake off the nightmare of absorption and could look fonvard to a promising future of joint patriotism.

A dispute at the Writers Association of Romania-on the subject of the existence or nonexistence of Hungarian literature in Romania-

had a similar outcome. Chauvinistic ideas may always arise from the subconscious; so, someone suggested that instead of "Hungarian writers of Romania" we should call them "Romanian authors writing in Hungarian." This would have meant a distortion of what rightfully stands for "Romanian" with a separate history and national consciousness. Furthermore, it would have forced upon us an artificial homogeneity, a slide back to the bourgeois interpretation of the abstract French idea of citizenship. It would have also ruined the important role of a "bridge" between socialist states to be played by Hungarian and Romanian literature. Fortunately, Romanian and Hungarian writers clarified the question offering thus another example of a truly democratic exchange of views, the only authentic one in a truly socialist context.

These examples, showing the socialist vigilance of Communists in Romania, do not mean that Romania is the only socialist country where the rejection of the "nation-state" is necessary. In Hungary, in contrast to the exemplary nationality policy of the state, one can sometimes note in the press the formalistic French equation of state and nation. We have also been witnessing in Czechoslovakia the painful process through which two nations and several nationalities have struggled to achieve a satisfactory coexistence within the same socialist state.

Painfully, but we are moving everyvhere in the Danube region toward the establishment of community rights for all nationalities. This follows logically from the acceptance of the concept of "socialist nationality" in a socialist society. In Hungary, this development has led to the democratic associations of South Slav, German, Romanian, and Slovak nationalities; in Czechoslovakia, to the cultural association of Hungarians, in Romania to the workers' councils of Hungarians, Germans and Serbs. Doubtless there are many more stages to come in the course of this development. Socialist integration will dissolve the ideological remnants of the still existing tendencies toward forcible assimilation or willful isolation. Progress toward Communism will open further vistas of coexistence between Socialist nations and nationalities as well as between our fraternal socialist states.

P.E.F.: How would you assess the state of self-knowledge among our nations?

E.B.: The various constitutions of our socialist countries safeguard the free use of every citizen's own language. By means of the press,

publishing, theaters, schools, and cultural associations, the state ensures the equality of development for all nationalities. Also planned economic development in our countries, the distribution of industry, serves the whole community equally, without bias regarding national minority areas. This is in sharp contrast with the practices in the capitalist world, both past and present; there, it is usually the less developed and very often the minority areas that are disadvantaged, either owing to lack of planning or to deliberate discrimination.

In our socialist world there might occur now and then certain events eliciting local or individual complaints. This is being counter balanced by those fundamental achievements which allow the self development of every nationality. Nevertheless, when we are digging deeper, analyzing the key questions of language and culture, like schooling and scientific work, our conditions do reveal certain unsolved problems. It is, fortunately, our common socialist development, and our fraternal coexistence, that make such an analysis at all possible.

First and foremost, we must clarify the physiological and psychological role played by the mother tongue. What is its essence and how does it relate to any other languages? The mother tongue is the tool for forming concepts from early, instinctual beginnings to the grasping of the most complex configurations. Through the language of litera ture, politics, administration, science, a person reaches full under standing of the world, and it is the mother tongue that shapes all these thinking processes. All other languages that may be desirable in a working life-like the language of the majority and of course the great world languages-can be learned properly only by an adjustment to the conceptual thinking developed through the medium of the mother tongue. To come to the main point: Every single child in a minority group should be able to study at every level of schooling in his own language. Only in this way would he be enabled to conceptualize the differences between languages and thus to make another language his own. In normal circumstances, every young person in a minority should carry on his studies in his own language, from nursery school to university. We have statistics galore to prove that in this manner he will be able to learn the majority language more easily, more correctly, and also better understand the concepts learned in a "foreign" language.

The complexity of higher education nowadays makes it impossible

to ensure training in the mother tongue for every nationality in every field. However, under the ideal circumstances suggested above, at this higher stage the student would already be effectively bilingual and suffer no hardships in his further development. Furthermore, lecture ships in minority languages at higher institutions could ensure parallel teachings of scientific and professional terminologies in minority lan guages. That would greatly help the working masses of minority origin. The ever-increasing priority given to technical education makes the need of such minority-language lectureships the more urgent at the universities run in the majority language. This way, the supply of properly trained teachers at minority technical colleges would be ensured; also the exchange of information and experience in the various technical fields would be considerably improved countrywide. On top of that, without a full command of the mother tongue at every level, a nationality cannot properly fulfill its role in bridge-building between neighboring countries.

We have to mention all this because-among the thousand-and one problems of socialist development-the cultivation of mother tongues at the highest levels, the historical necessity of bilingualism, and the rightful national minority claims of the working masses have not yet aroused enough spontaneity in the higher spheres of planning. Year by year, we find increasing numbers of young people of minority origin who (owing perhaps partly to their parents' negligence but mainly to the lack of a satisfactory network of schools) must continue their studies in another language. Thus, sadly, they will never reach a higher level either in their mother tongue or in the language of their studies; their education will remain at a low level and their contri bution to society remain unsatisfactory. They cannot render useful service to their own people, and their ability to communicate with another culture will not develop either; thus their value to the majority will also diminish.

Deliberate assimilation is against the official policy of our socialist countries. However, it is not enough to brandish our constitutional minority rights. We must work for the recognition of our common interests in this respect. Only this way can we remain faithful to the "unity of theory and practice" preached by Lenin.

Furthermore, a language is not only a means of communication, but also a treasure-house of wisdom accumulated through the centuries. It is the bond between people and their environment; a witness

to human development. Therefore it is also a tool for documentation and explanation. It should be the means of exploring and explaining the land of one's birth, its geography, ethnology, and place-names; of safeguarding the heritage, the eminent achievements of the people; of knowing its living literature, as well as deciphering the message of ancient gravestones.

We owe all this to our future. A minority can only become a creative factor in the new historical period if it is in full possession of its own libraries, museums and collections, places of worship, its institutions for the study of literature and history. We have a respectable number of experts among every nationality in Central and Eastern Europe, and the results of their work regularly appear in minority periodicals. In Yugoslavia, I can refer to the Institute of Hungarology in Novi Sad (Ujvidek); in Romania, to the scientific journal of the Transylvanian Saxons in Sibiu (Nagyszeben); the Hungarian-language A Het in Bucharest, the Korunk in Cluj (Kolozsvar); in Slovakia, to the seminar held in 1977 by Irodalmi Szemle in Bratislava (Pozsony) under the title "Nationality and Science."

However, this desirable self-knowledge of our national minorities has so far found expression largely in the framework of literary and linguistic studies only. Studies in folklore, in science, or in cultural subjects in the broadest sense are still an unfulfilled promise. Neither can we see the very desirable cooperation between the academies of our socialist countries. If a timely change does not occur in this field, blanks will arise on our map of the Danube Valley--the treasures of whole regions, of individual ethnic groups will sink into oblivion.

It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that national self-knowl edge at a scientific level, the history of nations (which is the basis of socialist consciousness), and their comparative study, is an essential factor in that "bridge-building" between nations I have mentioned. If we make proper use of the principle of internationalism in this immense field, we can counteract all tendencies toward self-isolation and their hidden chauvinistic threats.

A problem of greatest importance arises from the social changes precipitated by industrialization and urbanization: demographic shifts (affecting both majorities and minorities), population movements, the emergence of isolated groups, as well as an increase in areas of mixed populations. This process cannot be stopped and we must take stock of the consequences. How does it affect the survival of minorities?

Who is to assess the new tasks? It is in the universal-national and international-interest that all the necessary services to mixed populations, to transferred ethnic groups, should be organized and directed by the state. This is a constitutional duty. In the past, the ecclesiastical network of the Greek Orthodox church used to follow Serb, Romanian, or Macedonian emigrants moving west; in the opposite direction, the churches and schools of the Calvinist faith followed eastward the Hungarian settlers in Moldavia and Wallachia. Nowadays, only a minority nationality firmly integrated into the political community of the state as a whole can perform such social tasks. A complete new organization is required in order to satisfy the needs of minority groups moving into urban areas, into new industrial complexes. Assessment of their social stratification, their requirements for schools and institutions, the safeguarding of use of their own language-through their newspapers, theaters, amateur groups-is an urgent task. New growing forms of coexistence, new exchanges between different cultures, new links in the chain of socialist integration may thus arise to the immense benefit of all. Surely all this is in the national interest in order to strengthen inner cohesion, not to mention the necessity of setting new examples in true internationalism. It is everybody's turn to show a good example. "We have realized in our country, on a small scale, what you are going to realize on a much larger scale in your countries," declared Lenin in 1919, at the Congress of Eastern Communist parties. Since then, millions in Asia and Africa, in their newly independent countries, are nurturing their national languages and cultures by following the example of Soviet nationality policies. The limelight now is upon us, the socialist countries which have arisen since 1945. Our future, the future of majority nations as well as that of their minorities, depends on the growth of our successful coexistence. Also, our prestige in the world will grow only to the extent that internationalism will be the guiding light of our nations. Only the strengthening of coexistence among us will bring the full fruition of equal rights for all of us. This is the only way to avoid national conflict in the course of socialist integration.

P.E.F.: What is your view of the practical question: How can people speaking the same language, but living behind different frontiers, best enhance the cultivation of their common language and common tradition, best deal with their present problems, best engage in the "bridge building" you have mentioned?

E.B.: Just as the building of socialism in one country is a question of internal politics, so is the settlement of the nationality question. It cannot be solved by external force, by intervention, by sloganizing, or by provocation. In particular, it ill behooves the capitalist West to attempt such an interference. After all, they are unable or unwilling to ensure free development even to their own national minorities. Their hidden or indeed open aim is forcible assimilation, to create thereby a pliable raw material for their class rule. The sovereignty of socialist states cannot and must not tolerate any such interference in the affairs of majorities and minorities. The autochthonous forms of party life and state building must be based on common agreements, on international socialist cooperation. We all agree that mutual economic help among socialist states is the best means for progress toward communism. By the same token, any cultural flowering based on such economic structure is dependent on our mutual help and cooperation.

Socialist legality is against any action aimed at retarding or hurting the development of nations and nationalities. Socialist coexistence and cooperation are regulated by the principle of full equality. These simple facts elevate the socialist world to the exceptional position where it can serve as an example to all oppressed peoples of the world, offering the hope of a better future for all national minorities. Our coexistence, our mutual help, our solutions based on peaceful agreements serve as moral imperatives, going beyond simple observance of equality before the law. They also serve as a visible counterforce against attempts at assimilation, against irredentism, against terrorism (as a last resort of an oppressed minority). They are, besides, the strongest possible arguments supporting the worldwide endeavors for peace of the Soviet Union, the peaceful settlement of problems in the Third World and, in the last analysis, the noble humanism of the UN charter. These principles should apply to the Irish problem or that of the peoples of Palestine, the Kurds or the Quechua Indians. All solutions must be based on humanism and the common interest of all peoples of the world.

It is therefore of universal importance, part of our responsibilities toward the whole world, that our achievements in the field of nationality policies should be jointly assessed, the results exchanged in writing or at conferences. The successes of coexistence between majority and minorities, the "bridge-building" efforts across frontiers, the

ever-increasing inner cohesion of socialist states, allow us to tackle new tasks set for us by new claims, new developments.

We can reduce the risk of any kind of imperialist intervention, if we can strengthen socialist integration by perfecting the solutions of our nationality problems. It is essential to draw the poison fangs of chauvinistic remnants lingering under the surface among both minorities and majorities. This way we can elevate the Danube Valley into a shining beacon for the brotherhood of peoples.

This is the main task of the resurrected minority studies, now called in their new socialist form: nationality studies. We must find the methods that may open new vistas of further development. Only thus can we make practical reality of the noble pronouncement made in 1971 by Nicolae Ceausescu, party secretary and leading statesman of the Romanian Socialist Republic (which, on the strength of the numbers and importance of its minorities, is destined to show a supreme

example): "Romanians and Hungarians have been living in the same cities, in the same villages, for hundreds of years-they will live to gether there for thousands of years!"

EDITOR'S NOTE.

Hungarian friends, who met Edgar Balogh in the course of his visits to Budapest recently, described him as a disillusioned man, pessimistic of Hungarian-Romanian relations, and of the Hungarian minorities' situation in general. S.B.*

Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation