Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority

To what extent national interests were the crucial factor in the final stage of the Second World War was duly noted by the Slovak historian Motoska. He even attempted, better than the Hungarian historians, to analyze the complex situation of the Hungarian masses:

When the Arrow-Cross rule of terror was nearing its end, resistance among the ranks of Hungarian soldiers increased. But there were no forces at work which could have given the Hungarians new direction out of their state of passive resistance.³⁶

Current Hungarian official historical writing indiscriminately compares resistance movements of different nations without explaining the causes that accounted for their differences. Shameful as it is, we have to turn to Motoska, the Slovak historian in order to understand the different context of the Hungarian and Slovak resistance movements:

Unlike in Hungary, the Slovak resistance movement was united. It was the national movement of all classes and groups . . . Even the leftists worked in a nationalist spirit. Hence the conflict between the views of Slovak and Hungarian Communists regarding the solution of the question of national minorities after the war . . . The Hungarian Communists counted on proletarian solidarity with the Slovak Communists. No wonder that, after the war, the Hungarian Communists had a hard time to resign themselves to the events tin Slovakia] of the years 1945-48 . . .³⁷

One wonders only: How could any Hungarian at any time, and during the period of 1945-1948 in particular, look for any signs of "proletarian solidarity" on the Slovak side? Persecution hit the Hungarian working class indiscriminately, and the poor peasant often more severely than the well-to-do.

Motoska recognizes the same phenomenon in Slovakia's Hungarian regions that the Strokaè report of the Ukrainian partisans did in Hungary proper - namely that the Hungarian people, including the working class, Were not aware of them being "liberated;" moreover, that they were hostile towards the Soviet "liberators." But Motoska, disingenuously, does not admit that the "hostile' Hungarian attitude in liberated Slovakia reflected the anti-Hungarian attitude of the Slovaks. He disparages the Hungarian masses for their "essentially passive resistance" in the face of "the arrival of the liberation army."³⁸ Thus, not unlike the postwar Hungarian historians, Motoska too sees only the facts, but fails to explain them. He fails to face the question: Why should Slovakia's "liberated" Hungarians have felt enthusiasm when the anti-Hungarian leaflets berated them and condemned them to toss of freedom?

The anti-Hungarian objective of the Slovak uprising of 1944 was eagerly promoted by actions of the Czechoslovak governmental-exile. On August 29, 1944, consistent with Benes's anti-German and anti-Hungarian ideology, the London government had sent a message to Slovakia via Army Commander-in-Chief Ingr: "We find it self-evident that you should declare yourself part of the Czechoslovak army at the moment of launching the struggle against the Germans and Hungarians." Another message from London to General Golián of the partisan army emphasized the ideology of Czechoslovak unity: "Declare yourselves part of the Czechoslovak army."³⁹ And without waiting for a reply, the London government actually announced that the military units fighting in Slovakia are units of the Czechoslovak army.⁴⁰

At the end of August, Benes did not know yet that after Rumania's surrender to the Soviets, the main thrust of the war in the Danube region had shifted to the south-east, and that the general Soviet offensive across the Carpathians from the north would not be mounted against Hungary. Unaware of the change, the London government sent new instructions to General Viest in Slovakia on September 8: "In case of the collapse or surrender of Hungary the annexed Slovak territories [annexed by Hungary in 1938] must be re-occupied!"⁴¹ In those days, the London exiles still counted on a quick success of the Slovak uprising with the support of a Soviet offensive in a north-to-south direction toward the Hungarian mid-Danube region.

General Pika's instructions dispatched from Moscow on September 18 attest to a more realistic assessment of the situation: "We [fighters of the Slovak uprising] must not launch an offensive against Hungary until the arrival of the Red Army and of the Czechoslovak units [fighting together

with the Red Army]!"⁴² The limited extent of the uprising, and the inaction of the so-called Malar-division in Eastern Slovakia, as well as the unreliability of the Slovak garrisons at Trnava and Nitra in the West, made in fact the launching of an offensive not possible at all without Soviet support.

The Baòská Bistrica headquarters of the Slovak uprising issued its first measure against the Hungarians on September 6. This directive 6/1944 of the Slovak National Council eliminated Hungarian secondary education, leaving the Hungarian minority only with elementary schools. It also abolished any Hungarian school set up after Munich in 1938. Actually, the directive had no practical implications at that time because the Slovak up rising never extended to Slovakia's Hungarian-inhabited regions. Yet, this first measure started the large scale civil rights and cultural suppression of the Hungarian minority, although it has often been called a democratic" gesture (perhaps by way of comparison with later developments).

Anyway, the real turning point in dealing with the Hungarian question in liberated Slovakia should be dated from the September 5,1944, session of the Slovak National Council which adopted the smidke-Ferjenèik report on their Moscow mission. From that moment on the radical policy of anti-Hungarian discrimination took effect, as determined by the leaders in exile both in London and Moscow.

After September 5, the gist of the policy against the non-Slav nationalities was deportation coupled with property confiscation. If any democratic illusions survived, they were dispelled by the proclamation published in mid-September, designed to persuade Slovak public opinion that anti-Fascism and national revolution meant deportation of the Hungarians. The new concept of the Slav nation-state eliminated the Hungarian minority from the legally recognized ranks of the country's inhabitants. The tone of the September appeal already anticipated the 1945 Kosice program of total discrimination: The National Committee, in a in most ruthless manner, wilt confiscate the property of the traitors, Germans and Hungarians, the wealth of those who committed crimes against the nation."⁴³ As interpreted in practice, the entire Hungarian ethnic group was collectively declared guilty and condemned to loss of civil rights and property confiscation. The principle was the same as that of the later Presidential decree 108/1945, which served as the basic law for carrying out the Kosice program of total discrimination against the national minorities of liberated Czechoslovakia.

The naive and uninformed, who believed in Soviet liberation as a social revolution, thought that the class of exploiters alone had been affected by the September proclamation. They should have been enlightened by the text of the proclamation itself which precluded all possible misunderstandings: "All the property of the Germans, Hungarians and traitors, acquired at our expense will be confiscated, and will be provisionally transferred to the care of the National Committees."⁴⁴ There could be no doubt. "All the property" included the property of the Hungarian working class as well.

Historians later argued that the principle of discrimination was yet unknown in 1944, and that the leaders of the Slovak uprising were led by "democratic" sentiments toward the Hungarian minority. The up-rising measures' were described as having been "internationalist." Some authors found concrete evidence in support of this interpretation. For instance, J. Purgat quotes the report of information officer spáta regarding a statement by Laco Novomesky, a prominent Slovak Communist writer: "Our view is that we cannot adopt a uniformly negative attitude towards every German and every Hungarian. Many Hungarians have remained more faithful to the Republic than any number of Slovaks or Czechs . . . They must not be abandoned and betrayed in the struggle."⁴⁵ Historian Purgat believes that with this quote he has furnished solid evidence in support of the "democratic" measures taken toward the Hungarians during the Slovak uprising. However, he ignored the next sentence of information officers spáta 's report: "Of course I don't know how he [Novomesky] might fare with such noble humanistic sentiments in present-day Slovakia."⁴⁶

The measures taken against the Hungarian minority were clearly rooted in the new Slav ideology of Czechoslovak nationalism. Yet a view, still popular among Slovaks, maintains that discrimination against the Hungarians was caused by the Hungarian political climate of 1944: "The road which might have led to mutual understanding was barred by the wavering Hungarian attempt to surrender, and especially by the dreadful Arrow-Cross terror in Hungary which also engulfed Slovakia's territories under Hungarian occupation"⁴⁷

By the fall of 1944, the Slovak revolution had been openly transformed from a class struggle into a nationalist war against the Hungarians. A Slovak capitalist was an ally of the revolution, provided he was not a known collaborator (which was hard to know under the circumstances). But a Hungarian proletarian, unless he could prove (which was not easy under the circumstances) that he had been an active fighter against Fascism, was regarded as an enemy. On September 22, 1944, the Slovak Pravda wrote:

"The landed estates of the Hungarians and Germans have to be confiscated right away and without compensation." The land reform in fact a became a radical tool of nationalist discrimination against the Hungarians. It preserved the large estates of Slovak landlords, but excluded the landless Hungarian peasants from the benefits of land distribution. In the course of socialization of industry, too, the ethnic bias of nationalism prevailed. Characteristically, the Slovak Pravda consistently attacked only the factories of Germans and Hungarians as targets of struggle against big business."⁴⁸

Theories of Slovak historians claiming that the discriminatory policies against the Hungarian minority were spontaneous outbreaks of some kind of popular rage against Horthy's failure to leave the war, or against the subsequent Hungarian Arrow Cross terror, are altogether contrary to the facts. A new, purely Slav concept of Czechoslovak nation-state was declared at the time of the Slovak uprising, in accordance with the nationalist directives received from the exiles. The groundwork for the later "Constitutional" discrimination against the nationalities was already laid at that time in exile, even though it was published at home only in 1945. Historian Marta Vartiková is correct in pointing out: "The decree of 1945] concerning the confiscation of the enemy properties of Germans and Hungarians was worked out at the time of the uprising by the Slovak National Council [in 1944] ."⁴⁹

To discover some sort of "internationalist" in the Slovak uprising it would amount to a distortion of history. (More recent literature, as seen from Vartikovás work no longer makes such "internationalist" claims.) Certainly, the Hungarians, joining the Slovak uprising in a struggle against Nazism and the Germans did not know that they were fighting for their own and their fellow Hungarians' deportation from Slovakia and confiscation of all Hungarian property. Nobody told them right away that the objective of the Slovak uprising was to establish a purely Slovak nation-state.

In retrospect, however, it should be clear that the main motivation behind the Slovak uprising was the expectation to create favorable conditions for the liquidation of the Hungarian minority living within Slovakia's pre-Munich frontiers. Otherwise, from the Slovak point of view, the uprising itself made little sense. After all, the Allied had already pledged the restoration of Czechoslovakia's prewar frontiers. Moreover, militarily, as we now know, the uprising was not even brought into line with the Soviet strategic plans of that time.⁵⁰

The composition of the Slovak National Council was limited to two parties, the Communist and the Democrat, while General Golián was a so-called Independent. The power of the Democrats, however, was secondary, as evaluated by the Communist sverma in a letter sent to Moscow in October 1944: "The Democrats (srobár, Ursíny, Zatko) do not yet have a party. They have some kind of central committee, and they publish the Èas. But they do not have positions within the bureaucratic structure and they hold the union of farmers in their hands through Ursíny. Today they are united with us, though they back down and are afraid of us."⁵¹

Incidentally, the Democrats at that time (but not later) were somewhat uncertain regarding the anti-Hungarian objectives of the national revolution. Will any Hungarians remain at all within the restored Czechoslovak Republic and, if so, what will happen to them? The program of the Democratic Party addressed itself to that question at the beginning of October: "The national minorities, in case they cannot be transferred from the Re public within the framework of a large-scale exchange of populations program, will receive whatever rights the new international order guarantees them, and corresponding to the rights guaranteed to the Slovaks in the motherland of the minorities."⁵²

Such "democratic" considerations were actually out of date already at that time. The information the Communist sverma brought from Moscow rendered any democratic plans regarding the minorities illusory. Nevertheless, postwar historians have been fond of citing the Democratic Party program as a proof the "internationalist and democratic" spirit of that time. The October program of the Democratic Party, in fact, had but marginal significance. Its authors might have believed that some kind of international agreement would guarantee the rights of the national minorities after the war. But since September 5, the realities of power were represented by the instructions handed down by the Czech Communist Gottwald and forwarded from Moscow by sverma: "as regards the question of the Germans and [italics added] the Hungarians within the new Republic: Radical measures will be taken to reduce the German population of the Republic. I declare that we will raise no obstacles of any kind to a radical solution of all [italics added] these questions. "⁵³

At the same time, the Slovak National Council also received identical information regarding minority matters from the Czechoslovak government in London which said: "among others, a decree is under discussion now by which the Germans and [italics added] the Hungarians will be shorn of their citizenship, with the exception of those who fought for the Republic."⁵⁴ This information received on September 24 from the London government came as no surprise. Several resolutely anti-Hungarian measures had been already in the making against the Hungarian minority (though premature at that time for lack of power to carry them out) in the directive pertaining to the so-called "democratic transformation of society. " According to a directive dated September 17, 1944, the national committees were to be organized in the spirit of anti-Hungarian discrimination by excluding the Hungarians unequivocally from all civil rights. Paragraph Six of the directive issued by the interim representative in charge of internal affairs declared: "The local national committees may not include German or Hungarian members. In other words, the Hungarian minority was ordered to be excluded from self-government and from the exercise of basic civil rights in general. Legally speaking, the Hungarians should have been first deprived of the Czechoslovak citizenship, The Presidential decree 108/1945 caught up with that omission.

By the middle of October the tone of public utterances became even sharper. In particular, class solidarity preached by the Communists vanished altogether. At a gathering of farmers, the Communist Marek Èulen, speaking of the coming "national and democratic revolution," advocated the confiscation of the land of the Hungarian peasants, outlining thus the new form of socialist ideology of extreme nationalist content: "We must seize without delay all the lands owned by Germans and Hungarians, or by their treacherous helpers, and distribute them without compensation among the Slovak farmers."⁵⁶ Thus began the war against the Hungarian proletariat. Resistance at home aligned itself with exile policies,

The new tone encountered no obstacles. All that was needed was to apply the anti-Semitic slogans of the Tiso era to the Hungarians. The worn-out denunciation of "Jewish capital" turned into a denunciation of "German and Hungarian capital." This curious new spirit of "class struggle" captivated the congress of the labor union committees at Podbrezová: "We do not raise the issue of property rights, but we do insist that it is necessary to nationalize the wealth of German and Hungarian capitalists, and everything which is in the hands of our enemies at home or abroad."⁵⁷ Class in Marxist sense ceased to exist. Capital meant German and Hungarian capital. The international revolution was taken over by the Slav proletariat, solely entitled to receive the rewards of the revolution.

By the middle of October, militarily the uprising was in deep trouble. Nevertheless, on October 17, Jozef Lettrich, Chairman of the Democratic Party, still struck on optimistic note. In a debate at a meeting of interim representatives, he spoke of the impending annexation of Slovakia's lost territories: "We must carefully prepare the occupation of this area Many serious issues will arise then. We must be ready for action any day now."⁵⁸

Actually, this might have sounded realistic just a couple of days earlier. For, as the Hungarian Communist A. I. Puskás pointed out: "Horthy knew full well that all he had to do was issue the order for the execution of the conditions of the armistice and the Soviet troops would reach Budapest within a few hours."⁵⁹ The Nazi Germans, too, seemed to share that view. Former German ambassador to Hungary Veesenmayer spoke to that effect at the trial of the Hungarian Fascist Andor Jaross: "Had the Hungarian army surrendered on October 15 [the day of Horthy's miscarried attempt to leave the war] , the Germans would have been forced to withdraw their forces from the Danube basis."⁶⁰ And, indeed, according to the terms of the Soviet-Hungarian armistice signed in Moscow on October 11, 1944, the Hungarian troops and the Hungarian administration were to be drawn within ten days to the Trianon boundaries, which would have meant recovery by the Slovaks of the lost territories, as Lettrich hoped that it may soon happen.

The Hungarian army's failure to obey Horthy's order and surrender became later a factor in condemning collectively Slovakia's Hungarian minority. Ferenc Szálasi's Arrow Cross regime became full proof of the "Fascist nation" charge against the Hungarians. In this connection, a report of the Czechoslovak government in London dated November 16, 1944, is of particular interest:

In the second week of October we still hoped to establish a link between our soldiers and the Soviet forces in the Southeast where the army of Malinowski crossed the Transylvanian Alps and created a serious military and political crisis in Hungary by crossing the Tisza River as well. It was generally assumed everywhere among the Allies that the Hungarian army would collapse, and make it impossible for the Germans to carry on a sustained defense. However, contrary to all expectations, by their rapid intervention, the German units and the Gestapo succeeded in preventing Hungary from stepping out of the war. It is interesting, and instructive for the future, that even after such an upheaval the Hungarian army did not lose any of its combativeness and its inclination to continue the war, and kept on fighting alongside the Germans under hopeless conditions . . .Therefore, after a brief spell of optimism, nurtured by the possibility of the eventual collapse of Hungary, a grave and far reaching crisis occurred in Slovakia, leading to the collapse of [Slovak] military resistance.⁶¹

The Czechoslovak view was wrong only in believing that the Hungarian army held out alongside the Hiterlite coalition solely because the Gestapo and the German units prevented the switch to an anti-Fascist stand. The fact of the matter is that the Hungarian Army had no inclination to switch sides. This was also the mood of overwhelming majority of the officer corps.⁶² And I have already clarified the reasons for this deplorable attitude in my discussion of the Hungarian vacuum."

However, had the leaders of the Slovak uprising in Bañská Bystrica, in September and October 1944, sought the helping hand of the Hungarian working class instead of proclaiming the policy of discrimination against the Hungarian minority, the Slovak uprising itself might have fared differently. A new friendly tone might have perhaps affected even developments in Hungary. All this of course is only guesswork-idle speculation. Only two things are certain: Local fraternization with Hungarians fighting in the Slovak uprising had no positive impact whatsoever on Slovak-Hungarian relations. Alleged participation of Hungarian units in suppressing the uprising, on the other hand, had an exaggerated negative effect.

The role of the Hungarian units in the defeat of the Slovak uprising is not clear. Yet, in the hysteria of anti-Hungarian reprisals exaggerated charges have recklessly been leveled: "It is not possible to erase this Hungarian crime from history. Hungary contributed to the subjugation of our liberated lands, not to mention those Hungarian divisions which combed the partisan-controlled areas with the help of SS troops."⁶³ The term "combing," incidentally, had several meanings in those times. It might have meant checking identifications-but also mass murders.

Later historical literature knows of no atrocities committed by Hungarian units against the civilian population. Moreover, it is common knowledge that Hungarian troops took no part in the military operations: "Hungarian units did not participate in the attack . . . It was only at a later phase of the uprising that Hungarian units entered Slovak territory, and performed guard duties."⁶⁴

Following the German defeat of the Slovak uprising, more than ever the recapture of Southern Slovakia has fired Slovak hostility against the Hungarians. The repossession of the "lost territories" became the battle cry! German diplomacy took due notice of the Slovak mood: "Broad masses of the Slovak population expect that in the context of a new political and international order the Vienna Award of November 2, 1938, according to which the southern areas of Slovakia had been attached to Hungary, will be rectified. Faith in the revision of the boundaries had found deep root in the Slovak nation. This was taken advantage of by the enemy propaganda claiming that the new Czechoslovakia will reestablish the borderline prior to the Vienna Award of 1938 and bring about an aggrandizement of Slovakia."⁶⁵

In sharp contrast to Slovak hopes, Hungary, collapsing into a "vacuum," faced the grim fact that any sacrifice would be rewarded by a bitter retreat to the Trianon boundaries. Already in the summer of 1944, the Hungarian government was well aware of this, but no one dared to say it publicly. The chief of the General Staff reported the "Anglo-Saxon position" according to which "Hungary will return to its Trianon boundaries."⁶⁵ And at a cabinet meeting, Minister of the Interior Miklós Bonczos while pondering the chances of withdrawing from the war, was musing about "merits" and "interests" in international politics. The Allies, he said, "considered only their own interests."⁶⁶ Others knew this truth well

Before the Hungarian minister discovered it. The greatest expert of all time in that respect, Edvard Benes, recorded in his First-World War memoirs: "One must always adjust one's tactics to the interests of the victorious Great Powers, and make use of their interests for one's own goais."⁶⁷

For reasons already mentioned, at the time of the Slovak national uprising, Hungarian resistance activity was but sparse. Stemming from the mood of national "vacuum," Hungarian passivity prevailed everywhere, even in the immediate vicinity of the Slovak uprising. Both the Hungarian -civilian population and the army remained passive.

Instead of searching the true causes, some Slovak historians devised -contrived theories to explain Hungary's apathy: "An important role was played by a feeling of aristocratic pride and of dumb anti-Communism," suggested one of them.⁶⁸ This hardly could explain the passivity of workers and peasants. After all, the Hungarian working class did have revolutionary traditions. They certainly did not suffer from aristocratic pride.

In addition to the Hungarian feelings of a "vacuum," among the causes of passivity were also the news from the liberated territories of Czechoslovakia.

After the liberation of Eastern Slovakia in late 1944, discrimination against the Hungarian population got immediately under way. Hungarians were summarily barred from the exercise of civil rights. When elections for the national committees took place in the liberated areas of Eastern Slovakia at the end of 1944, the "Germans, Hungarians, and the traitors" were deprived of the right to vote.⁶⁹ It cannot be doubted that the exclusion of the Hungarians from political rights happened at the instigation of higher authorities rather than on the initiative of the local population.

By November 1944, the resistance leaders of the home front and the exiles were in full agreement on the expulsion of the Hungarian minority. A delegation of the Slovak National Council arrived in London in November 1944 to confirm the agreement reached between the London exiles -and Moscow, on the transfer of the Hungarian popuiation.⁷⁰

What some historians refer to as "democratic" initiatives in the matter of the Hungarian minority simply did not exist. Ever since the September directives which ordered the Hungarian secondary schools to be closed the course of actions was anti democratic, though not yet to the same degree as the moral nihilism of 1945 and of subsequent years. But there is no trace of a "humanistic stand," or of an internationalist class solidarity." There is no democracy, only in some pages of the Slovak memoir literature. The goal of the Slovak political leadership with regard to the Hungarian minority was simply ethnic elimination, the strategy of liquidation.

After the war the leading politicians cleverly claimed: "It was the wish of the people, expressed in the Slovak uprising, that the Hungarian minority should be liquidated." According to Dr. Lettrich, Chairman of the Democratic Party: "At the time of the uprising the Slovak masses expressed their wish that they want the new Czechoslovakia to become not a multinational State but the national state of Czechs and Slovaks alone, with no minority rights for other nationalities. We based our program on the principles of resettlement, expulsion, and re-Slovakization as the new form of solving the problem of Hungarians in Slovakia. Hence the uprising has the character of a national revolution for which there is no precedent in our history.^"71 Viliam siroky, speaking on behalf of the Communist Party, concurred: "It follows from the sad experiences we have had with the Germans and the Hungarians that, since they had betrayed the Republic at the moment of gravest crisis, our people demanded already in their struggle for liberation that the Germans and Hungarians be expelled from the Republic, in order to make the Czechoslovak Republic into a strong Slavic state."⁷²

Thus was the myth of the will of the people born in support of the policy of the Hungarians' expulsion - a policy actually imposed from above. The following chapters will deal with the efforts to carry out this policy, which did not lack nationalist support-but hit on some international stumbling blocks.

Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority