Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation

Fair solutions of national conflicts in the Danube region are a matter of "mutual willingness" to recognize the equality of rights to national self - determination - so argued Istvan Bibo, foremost political ideologist of Hungary's postpartition era, in one of his best known essays hauntingly titled, "The Misery of the East - European Small States."1 Since World War II, however, the general trend has been further away from "mutual willingness" to recognize the equality of rights to national self - determination. One of the newest characteristics of Danubian state - building has been the legitimization of the homogeneous nation - state solution. It regards expulsion and assimilation as legitimate means of solving national minority problems. This policy was only partially successful in its postwar implementation.2 But the idea itself affected the treatment of national minorities almost everywhere in the Danube region. Ethnic justice seems to be even less respected today than it was before World War II. And, ironically, this situation has come about despite the fact that the Danube region has been under the rule of Communists who, theoretically, are committed to Marxist - Leninist principles of national equality and self - determination.

Yugoslavia alone among the Communist countries with Hungarian minorities has provided for the Hungarians a relatively tolerable home under the shield of Marxist - Leninist nationality policy. Yugoslavia also separated itself from the Soviet Union's postwar creation, the Soviet bloc. Thus, paradoxically, the Soviet - propagated Marxist - Leninist nationality

policy has actually been proven more welcome in independent Communist Yugoslavia than in the Soviet bloc itself, including the Soviet Union's own territorial acquisition in the Danube region, the Carpatho - Ukraine.

Postwar Communist Hungary alone among the countries of the Soviet bloc has been ruled by a regime which ostentatiously indulged in antinational indoctrination. The Communist regime in Hungary was forcibly feeding its people humiliating doctrines of national inferiority. Hungarians were taught to regard themselves as a "guilty nation," a "fascist nation," and to behave accordingly, unlearning in particular such nationalist bad habits as poking their noses into the internal affairs of their neighbors ruling over Hungarian minorities.

In 1956, postwar Hungarian bitterness and frustration erupted in a national uprising. Soviet armed intervention crushed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Unexpectedly, however, out of the postwar and postrevolutionary humiliations, a liberalized regime emerged under Janos Kadar. Kadar's Hungary is often thought of as a showcase nation of the Soviet bloc - "Russia's Hong Kong," as Budapest slang calls it. It is relatively prosperous, displaying relative freedoms which are uncommon in the Soviet bloc. Yet, along with a newly - found sense of national pride and self - esteem, a sense of national tragedy is tormenting the Hungarians. This time, it is caused not so much by Russian occupation - unwelcome as that may be - but by the constantly worsening conditions of the Hungarian minorities, particularly in Romania and Czechoslovakia.3

With some measure of national autonomy in Hungary regained, the Hungarian public has been inevitably reawakened to the plight of the Hungarian minorities. In a sense, it is a reawakened Hungarian "revisionism" which Hungary's neighbors had hoped to silence forever. However, though triggered by injustices of the peace settlement and unfair treatment of the minorities, as was pre - World War II revisionism, Hungarian concern today for the nation as a whole resolutely denies any affinity with the chauvinistic revisionist propaganda of the Horthy era. The new nationalism of socialist Hungary reflects the postwar democratization of Hungarian society. Its appeal is to universal human rights, its aim is to spread peacefully the principles of national equality and international solidarity among the peoples of the Danube region.

With the Soviet Union as the pillar of the territorial status quo, it would be more illusory than ever for the Hungarians to advocate boundary revisions. In fact, the nationalist obsession with boundary revision expired with the Horthy regime. Yet, there is no mood of resignation either - no willingness to accept discrimination against Hungarians as a permanent feature of the Hungarian future. The national mood in Hungary is a mixture of acute resentment and vague hope that in one way or another fairness may prevail, someday, somehow. In a way, many events of the contemporary world incite such hopes. From even more desperate situations than the Hungarians find themselves in today, peoples in different parts of the world have lived to see their national aspirations fulfilled since World War II. Former colonial peoples, some even lacking collectively developed longings to become nations, have been granted rights of national self - determination. Changes closer to home, in areas with more similarity to the problems of the Danube region, may serve as an encouragement, too. Franco - German reconciliation in particular, which made the European Community possible in the West, is seen by many Hungarians as a positive precedent illustrating how deepseated nationalist hostilities can be superseded by regional peace. And, closest to home, the Yugoslav example of a relatively tolerant nationality policy is taken as a sign that national minority life in the Danube region - even under the existing status quo - should not necessarily be made unbearable by the ruling majority.

The communiques of international meetings between Communist countries of the Danube region speak only of fraternal harmony. It cannot be known, therefore, in what way Hungary's Communist regime is trying behind the facade of proletarian internationalism to induce its fraternal Communist neighbors to ease the nationalist pressures on the Hungarian minorities. But, in Hungary itself, the Communist regime has lately somewhat eased the ban on public discussion of Hungarian minority problems, which prompted Party ideologues to warn against Hungarian minority issues becoming "priority" national concerns.

One long overdue concession is in the field of scholarship. An Institute for Hungarian Studies began its work recently at the National Szechenyi Library. It will continue the study of the Hungarian diaspora in the West which, unlike the Hungarian minorities, was never a forbidden topic. In addition, the Institute is also scheduled to begin

a systematic survey of the status of the indigenous Hungarian minorities in the neighboring countries which, although comprising over one - fourth of the nation, for nearly forty years has been an area of total neglect. (On signs of change in the Hungarian official attitude, see Annex V of chapter 14.)

Publicity of the plight of the Hungarian minorities remains scrupulously restricted. On the other hand, what still is not mentionable publicly has been a lively topic of long standing in Hungarian underground literature. One of the Hungarian semi - underground writers of international renown, Gyorgy Konrad, in one of his works published abroad, has recently given a good description of how Hungarians of the democratic - reformist generation see themselves today as a nation:

The three medieval kingdoms of Central Europe - the Polish, the Czech, and the Hungarian - had been apparently the work of peoples who could master great perseverance in the art of survival. Each of them in different ways has paid dearly for its independence. If after centuries of effort they are still unsuccessful, this proves only that their stubborn struggle for selfdetermination is to be continued until they win it.

It would be nonsense and lacking in historical understanding, for instance, to assume that the Hungarian people, after shaking off the supremacy of so many other powers, would ever sink into a slumber of surrender and do nothing against their present, or future, occupiers. The Hungarian people, not unlike other people, will not rest until they win their self - deterrnination in the Carpathian Basin. They wish to face all their neighbors with friendly strength, not submitting themselves to any of them, not subduing any of them either, but living with all of them in natural reciprocity and cooperation....

The Hungarian state has been the principal aim of the entire history of the Hungarians: If not a kingdom, at least a principality; if not the country as a whole, at least Transylvania; if not the Carpathian Basin as a whole, at least the center of it; if not with full sovereignty, at least with partial sovereignty. They made deals with the Turks, Germans, Russians; they made compromises; but never exclusively under duress or with hatred. Even if it is half - way independence only, there should be a Hungarian state. Wherever Hungarians live, they should be free to speak Hungarian; the authority in charge of their affairs should be Hungarian.4

In plain political prose: What the Hungarian minorities need for their survival is autonomy. For, only autonomy can safeguard a national minority collectively against the majority nationality in charge of the powers of the state. Experience teaches only too convincingly

that, in a national conflict situation, individuals without collective safeguards are helpless victims of oppression.

Today none of the four countries that have annexed territories with either homogeneous or mixed Hungarian populations have recognized the collective national rights of the Hungarian minorities, let alone their claim to territorial autonomy. Two of the four countries, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, declare themselves as multinational states. Constitutionally, both are unions of "nations and nationalities." Yet, neither of them specifically acknowledges the Hungarian nationality's right to autonomy. The Hungarians are granted minority rights only within larger autonomous or centralized regions ruled by the majority - in Vojvodina by the Serbs, and in Transcarpathia by the Ukrainians. In the other two countries, Czechoslovakia and Romania, the situation is worse - even theoretically. Both declare themselves outright as national states - of the Czechs and Slovaks, and of the Romanians, respectively. The Hungarians are relegated to newly concocted categories whose very names stress only the ties to the state authority under which the Hungarians live rather than the nationality to which they belong.

The Hungarians in Romania are defined as a "co - inhabiting nationality," and those in Czechoslovakia as "citizens of Hungarian national origins." In the 1950s, under Soviet pressure, Romania granted autonomy of sorts to the Hungarians of Transylvania, only to abolish it when Soviet occupation troops were withdrawn as a reward for Romania's loyalty to the Soviets at the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Ever since, the Romanians have embarked on an ultra - nationalistic course, leaving no doubts about their ultimate goal of liquidating the Hungarians as a national collective. The Slovak treatment of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia is becoming ever more akin to that of the Romanians. Still mourning their failure to expel the Hungarians forthwith after World War II (the way the Czechs did their German rivals), the Slovaks are working hard to make the Hungarians disappear by assimilation. Their method, cultural pauperization of the minority, nowadays called "cultural genocide," is in many ways reminiscent of the assimilation methods pre - World War I Hungary practiced - except that the Hungarian state of the nineteenth - century European liberal capitalist era operated without the instruments of oppression the Communist totalitarian states of Eastern Europe have at their disposal today

Danubian dissidents of the majority nationalities often argue that the Hungarian minorities, demand for autonomy is for something the majorities themselves would like to enjoy. This is sidetracking the issue of national minority oppression. Of course no democratic autonomy is conceivable under a totalitarian regime. On the other hand, even in a one - party totalitarian society, ethnic autonomy of any sort could offer some protection to a minority nationality against the ruling majority. Both majorities and minorities are suffering oppression in the Danube region today. But this does not lessen the national majorities' power to oppress national minorities. If anything, the totalitarian state enhances it.

Whatever their definition or status, the Hungarian minorities in all four countries of the Danube region are targets of "patriotic" indoctrination, exhorting them to be loyal to the "common fatherland," which means loyalty to Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. But patriotic propaganda is a poor weapon against the potential disloyalty of national minorities. Communist claims of ethnic fairness in most states of the Danube region are too unreal to be taken seriously. Unless the state is reasonably fair to a national minority - as is the case with Yugoslavia's treatment of its Hungarian minority - propaganda of the "socialist solution" will not win the minorities' loyalty to the state.

Communist parties of the Danube region, while pledging allegiance to the state and nation, are also ideologically committed to "proletarian internationalism" and "bridge - building" among neighboring countries. The national minorities (or "nationalities," according to Communist terminology which shuns as reactionary the term "minorities") are supposed to play a prominent role in the Marxist - Leninist program of "bridge - building."

The idea that Hungarian minorities may serve as "bridges" among the peoples of the Danube region is an attractive one. The "bridge" role may even suit the new line in Hungarian thinking about nationalism. National thinking today, not unlike traditional nationalism, embraces the entire scene of Hungary's history in the Danube region. It serves the cause of Hungarian national unity. However, instead of reclaiming the privileged position of the past for the Hungarians, the new thinking envisages reconciliation, ethnic equality, regional cooperation. The Hungarian people, whether in Hungary or in the

neighboring states, feel as one nation. But in order to live as one nation they also have to live in peace with their neighbors in the Danube region. The theoretical search for an answer to this complex regional problem is not confined to the official Marxist - Leninist "bridge" ideology. Another approach to it, by way of a revival of Oscar Jaszi's federalist legacy, is the old idea of a Danubian federation. In a Communist country, it is an unusual way, too, considering Jaszi's well - known anti - Marxist and anti - Soviet record. A democratic Danubian federation may not be easier to realize today than it was after World War I when Jaszi tried it in vain in the turmoil of Austria - Hungary's collapse. But its spirit is alive and gaining intellectual popularity in Hungary today under the Communist approved ideological slogan of "Danubian patriotism."5 It is a beautiful idea. Whether it can help to overcome the divisive forces of Danubian nationalism and resolve the painful problem of Hungarian minorities is a different question.

Today, the national minorities are sources of conflict rather than bridges of understanding. They could become bridge - builders of Danubian peace only if the national majorities could agree on the building plan of a Danubian regional union. The trouble today with the implementation of the official "bridge" program stems from the nationalist climate of the nation - state system and from the glaring imbalance in the distribution of national minorities among the Danubian states. The Hungarians, with large ethnic minorities of their own people in the neighboring states, feel compelled by their sense of national unity to seek regional cooperation. On the other hand, ethnic minorities of the neighboring peoples in Hungary today are so insignificant, in comparison to the size of Hungarian minorities in the neighboring states, that there is no compelling national incentive on the part of Hungary's neighbors to foster reciprocal ethnic tolerance in the spirit of regional patriotism.

Under the existing circumstances, the prospects for the national survival of the Hungarian minorities are far from encouraging. Yet, in this age of worldwide nationalist agitation, it is unlikely that the Hungarian national minorities will meekly succumb to denationalization and politely disappear. Also, there is growing pressure on the Hungarian Communist regime to do more than just repeat the "proletarian internationalist" slogans of "bridge - building," while lumping

the Hungarian minorities together with all the Hungarians "abroad," as if there were no differences between Hungarians across the borders in the Danube region and those in Australia or the United States. Whether a change from public silence to open concern in the Hungarian government's attitude - if at all tolerated by the Russianscould directly bring about a change of attitude among Hungary's Danubian neighbors is not at all certain. But, if combined with international attention to the oppression of Hungarian minorities, it may perhaps in some cases put pressure on the oppressors to mend their ways. International publicity may well turn out to be a more effective remedy than proletarian internationalism.

Dictates following defeats in two world wars created the present Hungarian problem, but dictates cannot solve it. It may ultimately be solved by peaceful evolution, provided historical circumstances allow the Danube region to outgrow its ethnocentric intolerance and develop into a community of nations, similar to the one which, however slowly, is breaking new ground for peace through reconciliation and cooperation on a regional scale in Western Europe.

Meanwhile, unpredictable as events in the Communist world often are, the possibility of a change for the better under Soviet Russian auspices should not be ruled out. After all, it was Stalin's intervention against President Benes's anti - minority policy that stopped the persecution of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia after World War II.6 It was along the same lines of Marxist - Leninist nationality policy that, for a while in the 1950s, the Hungarians of Transylvania were granted, on Soviet prodding, autonomy by the ruling Romanians. And Yugoslavia's Tito (trained in the Soviet way of thinking) showed respect for the Marxist - Leninist principles by advocating a tolerant minority policy toward the Hungarians, both before and after Belgrade's break with Moscow.7

The "socialist world," as the East European Communists are fond of calling the Soviet bloc, is theoretically committed to treating national minorities according to principles of democratic equality. Theoretically, territorial autonomy is the very essence of the MarxistLeninist nationality policy. In the Soviet Union, it has been translated into practice - at least to the extent that Soviet Russian realities are compatible with such democratic theories. The question in the Danube region is whether the Soviet leaders would consider it in their interest to follow the divide - and - rule routine, as others have done

before, or to choose to become true peacemakers and throw their weight in favor of reconciliation, something no one has done before. Admittedly, the latter is only a pious hope because, regrettably, the Soviets are more likely to follow the former course.

Yet, if not spontaneous changes in Communist attitudes, perhaps a change in the international climate outside the "socialist world" may influence the Soviets and the nations in their orbit to tackle the Hungarian nationality problem more equitably. For the time being though this too must seem as just another pious hope.

After World War II, President Benes's campaign against the national minorities carried the day in the world of the victors. From his wartime argument that the "fascist" national minorities destroyed "democratic" Czechoslovakia, he developed a general theory, maintaining that national minorities are a threat to peace and should be liquidated. The emotions of the moment at that time precluded any rational discussion of the issues involved. The tangled nationality problems of Central Europe were even less objectively tackled after World War II than they had been after World War I.8

But even with wartime emotions subsiding, the anti-minority position has found unintentional support in the human rights movement of postwar years. Dominated as that movement has been by former colonial peoples, the worldwide agitation for human rights has concerned itself almost exclusively with oppression of non-whites by whites, while by and large ignoring national conflicts among whites. This is the reverse of the post - World War I situation, when the rights of the colonial peoples were conveniently ignored amidst Western humanistic agitation for the liberation of Europe's oppressed nations.

Another tilting of human rights toward special interests has come with the Western emphasis on free emigration. Israel, anxious to increase Jewish ethnic strength in the hostile Arab Middle East, regards Eastern Europe - more specifically the Soviet Union - as the most promising place from which to attract immigrants. The United States vigorously supports this effort. In fact, the American Trade Act of 1974 tied most-favored-nation treatment to free emigration as an assurance of the "continued dedication of the United States to fundamental human rights." West Germany likewise has become an energetic supporter of free emigration, regarding it a top human rights issue. Plagued by a postwar manpower shortage, repatriation of the

remaining German ethnic minorities from Eastern Europe became a popular German national objective. This is a truly radical change considering that, before World War II, the Germans, more than anybody else in Europe, had kept protection of the national minorities on the agenda of international interest.

The United Nations dropped from its organization the prewar League of Nations' machinery for international protection of national minorities.9 This was not due merely to postwar anti-minority arguments, but also to the idea that national minority rights are actually part of human rights. The human rights approach to national rights may sound correct in principle, but in practice a lack of explicit commitment to national minority protection invariably favors the majority. For instance, in a recent U.N. Human Rights Commission - sponsored comprehensive study on minority rights, in a six-point definition of minority protection five points dealt with no need or undesirability of minority protection, from the point of view of the majority nations.ldeg.

With the Helsinki accords of 1975, the national minority issue has at least been nominally restored to the agenda of international interest. The Helsinki Final Act explicitly declared respect for national minority rights. At the time of the founding of the United Nations, right after World War II, such a declaration would have been inconceivable. It is disappointing, however, that the follow - up conferences on the Helsinki accords have so far ignored the human rights complaints of the Hungarian minorities. For the time being, although the Hungarians are Europe's largest minority, to the world at large the Hungarian nationality problem does not appear to exist.

The Communist revolution after World War II, with all its promises of internationalism, has proven itself no less nationalistic than the bourgeois nationalist revolutions after World War I. The Danube region is deadlocked in nationalist discord, which is not the work of local nationalist intractability alone.

The peace settlements after both world wars contributed greatly to convincing Hungary's neighbors that the annexation of large territories inhabited by Hungarians is just and fair.l' They have treated these territories as their own exclusive national domains. Their effortssince World War II in particular - to eliminate the Hungarian presence from these territories by forcible assimilation, dispersal, and colonization have been relentless. Even the vestiges of the past are

not spared. Historical falsifications aimed at denying Hungarian realities abound.12 Under such a climate of ethnocentric nationalism, no sense of fairness which might advance reconciliation is likely to grow inside the Danube region. Perhaps only impartial assistance from the outside can end the nationalist feuds that have for so long frustrated the rule of justice and peace among the Danubian peoples in general, and between the Hungarians and their neighbors in particular. For the time being, however, no effective source of such impartial assistance from the outside is in sight. The Hungarians, majority and minonty alike, must fend for themselves.

Twice in the past, crippled but undaunted, the Hungarians survived long periods of foreign rule and temporary terntonal partitions. The first such period, following the sixteenth - century catastrophe of the Ottoman Turkish conquest, lasted for one hundred and fifty years. The second one, following an ambiguous liberation from the Turks, lasted even longer under the dominion of the German Habsburgs. In our time, the Hungarian state, though greatly diminished in size, has so far survived the heavy hand of Soviet Russian suzerainty remarkably well. The question is whether the Hungarian minorities - struggling against the threats to the preservation of their national identity in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Ukrainewill survive the twentieth-century adversities of Hungarian history.

In a world concerned with nuclear holocaust, the future of the Hungarian minonties may appear as a matter of small concern indeed. The dimensions and ramifications of the Hungarian problem as a whole, however, are far from negligible. They affect, as they have for a long time, all the peoples and states in and around the Danube region - and thus the policies of the Great Powers as well. In the light of past experiences, humanitanan considerations apart, to ignore any of the unresolved problems of this explosive region would seem rather unwise.

Notes

1. Istvan Bibo, A keleteuropai kisallamok nyomorusaga (Budapest, 1946); reprinted in Istvan Bibo, Harmadik ut (London, 1960), 110 - 67, and also in Bibo's collected works published by the European Protestant Hungarian Free University (Bern, 1981 - ), 1:202 - 51. An English edition of excerpts

from Istvan Bibo's principal writings, including the above quoted essay, is in preparation.

2. For the Benes thesis on the homogeneous nation-state, see Chapter 11, above. Also, on the implementation of his thesis, see Chapters 4 and 5, above.

3. For further details on Communist Hungary's attitude toward the Hungarian minorities, see Chapter 14, above.

4. Gyorgy Konrad, "A magyar ut", Magyar Fuzetek, no. 12 (1983): 78. The text quoted here in the editor's translation differs slightly from the one in Richard Allen,s translation from the Hungarian in Gyorgy Konrad, Antipolitics (New York, 1984), 150 - 51.

5. Peter Hanak, Jaszi Oszkar dunai patriotizmusa (Budapest, 1985), and his Introduction to the Hungarian trans1ation of Jaszi's The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Budapest, 1983), 53. Also, on the theme of new Hungarian nationalism, see Istvan [Stephen] Borsody, "A magyar nacionalizmus demokratizalasa," Uj Latohatar, 32/3 - 4 (1982): 311 - 22.

6. See page 6 of my preface to Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority, 1945 - 1948 (New York, 1982), an English version of Kalman Janics's book, A hontalansag Evei.

7. For the Tito thesis, see Chapter 12, above. 8. In the perspective of twentieth - century world history, I have dealt with the problems of peace in the Danube region in my book, The Tragedy of Central Europe: Nazi and Soviet Conquest and Aftermath, rev. and updated ed. (New Haven, 1980), originally published under the title The Triumph of Tyranny: The Nazi and Soviet Conquest of Central Europe (London, 1960).

9. For an evaluation of the League of Nations' and the United Nations' attitudes toward national minorities, see Chapter 6, above.

10. Special Report by the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the UN Human Rights Commission, compiled under the direction of Francesco Capotorti: Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious, and Linguistic Minorities (New York, 1979), 5 - 6.

11. In Western archives (in the United States in particular), there are plenty of papers indicating Western misgivings about the nation-state order in the Danube region, either from the point of view of international stability or because of unfairness in drawing the national boundaries. The standard excuse, however, in explaining the role of the Great Powers as arbiters of peacemaking has been to refer to the Danubian peoples, intractability. This view was first formulated after World War I by Charles Seymour, chief of the Austro-Hungarian Division of the American Peace Commission: "The nationalities . . . [had been] bursting with nationalistic ambitions . . . if they preferred disunion no one could deny them" (Charles Seymour,

"The End of an Empire: Remnants of Austria-Hungary," in Edward Mandel House and Charles Seymour, eds., What Really Happened at Paris [New York, 1921], 90.) This view, which has found wide acceptance, conveniently glosses over an essential point in Danubian peacemaking presided over by the Great Powers as final arbiters. Namely, that territorial promises and awards by the Great Powers to the small victor nations at the expense of their defeated rivals a priori excluded any incentive on their part to practice mutual fairness and to seek regional union.

12. For conflicting views on Hungary's history, see Chapter 15, above.

Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation