Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority

It is worth quoting the following from a detailed Slovak report on the transferred Slovaks in their new environment:

At the beginning of December, I visited resettled Slovaks in Deáki and Pered, in the county of Vágsellye . . . Deáki received 700 re-settlers and Pered the same . . . If only the villages had a more Slovak character. I heard a father, to quote his son: father, when are we moving under the Tatra mountains to our Slovak villages? All that we hear is Hungarian. The street is full of it. At the same time, the settlers also wished to emphasize that they are willing to bear patiently the initial difficulties. They are unhappy only about having to speak Hungarian even at home, because often their stubborn Hungarian fellow citizens speak to them in Hungarian in a downright provocative tone . . . Some of the villagers even said that they do not feel personally quite safe.²⁰

The fact of the matter is that the forcible transfers brought about a series of crises in the villages, and later errors aggravated the situation. No wonder that mutual prejudice is still the living legacy of 1947, the year of the population exchange - and more.

The year 1947 witnessed not only the realization of the population exchange, but also brought to fruition the so-called re-Slovakization action.

Since early spring 1947, the press had been urging prompt processing of re-Slovakization requests. The administration, however, proceeded haltingly. Applicants were kept in suspense and the chaos grew as time passed.

A memorandum prepared by the local branch of the Matica Slovenská and of the Slovenská Liga, the two institutions in charge of the re-Slovakization campaign, complained in May 1947: "Liberated Southern Slovakia is full of Hungarianized Slovaks, and of Slovaks whose national consciousness has not yet been aroused. Their fate cannot be indifferent to us.

The memorandum also complained of the harmful economic consequences of re-Slovakization in some communities: "Economic life has reached the stage of bankruptcy. The damages reported informally are enormous . . . and the moral consequences are even more serious. The re-Slovakized person is ridiculed, threatened, treated as a traitor. He does not wish to frequent Hungarians, and does not dare to come among us [Slovaks] we have forced uncertainty upon him and feelings of a lower order, we have jeopardized his rights to his property."²¹

Re-Slovakization of Hungarians, unexpectedly, also aggravated Czechoslovak relations. And there the impact of re-Slovakization had been most immediately felt, in cities like Baòská Bystrica, Gelnica, Poprad, Presov, Spisská Nová Ves, _ilina. In solidly or significantly Hungarian populated areas, however, the re-Slovakization campaign had met with more problems than its promoters had been able to solve. And, despite the re-Slovakization the Hungarian character of the cities did not change perceptibly, not to speak of the countryside. From Levice (Léva) in the West to Kosice (Kassa) in the East, the sound of Hungarian along the ethnic borderline kept irritating the Slovak chauvinistic sensitivity.

Slovakization of Hungarians, which mean to serve the government program of turning Czechoslovakia into a pure Slav state, paradoxically, aggravated the not overly fraternal relations between Czechs and Slovaks. In some places, re-Slovakization committees had been impotent, the Slovaks complained, because Czechs were chosen to preside over them. And Czechs, supposedly, had not been sufficiently prejudiced against the Hungarian population, nor could they have been sufficiently familiar with the confused ethnic situation in Slovakia. The Slovak paper Èas was urging the transfer of the re-Slovakization administration entirely under the jurisdiction of the Slovak National Council in Bratislava.²² Práca objected to the appointment of a Czech as chairman of the re-Slovakization committee.²³ Nové Prudy expressed skepticism in the entire business of re-Slovakization. The papers said: "Re-Slovakization is a matter of re-education, and reeducation cannot take place overnight, not even in a month, it cannot be carried out by means of decisions and ordinances."²⁴

The main difficulty with re-Slovakization was that the "re-Slovakized" Hungarians did not take the forcible change of nationality seriously. The senselessness of the action had become an open Secret. There was no way of forcing hundreds of thousands of "re-Slovakized" Hungarians to forget their language and culture overnight. A Slovak writer had good reason to dispair over the situation in the "re-Slovakized" Hungarian town of Érsekújvár (Nové Zámky): "80% of the Hungarian population of Nové Zamky re-Slovakized . . . On the other hand, the fact remains that one can barely hear Slovak spoken in Nové Zamky. You will never find these 80% Slovaks. Only a few government employees speak Slovak here and there. What happened to the re-Slovakized persons? ²⁵

The once fanatic confidence of the Slovaks in "re-Slovakization" of the Hungarians had been broken. The passive resistance of the Hungarians had solidified. Economic circumstances too, had been working against the success of Slovakization, whether by means of re-Slovakization or resettlement. Many a Slovak settler, seeing that his survival was in jeopardy in a Hungarian environment, was to consider leaving, although Èas warned: "This would be a great mistake and has to be prevented!"²⁶

In 1947, despite failures of the Slovakization efforts, the people of the disintegrating society of the Hungarian minority were searching in vain for encouraging signs which might end their plight.

The countries of Eastern Europe had already been shaped into a solid Soviet bloc. In world perspective, the growing tensions of the cold war were determining the relative positions of both large and small nations. In Slovakia, however, it was as if time had come to a standstill. Officially, an anachronistic parochial nationalism of the Slovaks ruled seemingly insuperable. The Slovak nationalists in power obstinately refused to take cognizance of the existence of the Hungarians which prevented them from turning the country into a purely Slovak nation-state. All Hungarian initiatives at reconciliation have met with brusque official Slovak refusal. Any suggestion that citizenship rights to the Hungarian minority should be restored was treated as being tantamount to treason against the Czechoslovak Republic. Neither the obvious fiasco of re-Slovakization, nor the partial success of the population exchange could bring the rulers of the country to their senses. Not to speak of the dismal consequences of the deportation of Hungarians to the Czech lands, creating conditions of serfdom reminiscent of a wretched past when peasants could not own land but were tied to it like cattle and forced to cultivate it for the benefit of feudal lords.

In the heat of the Slovakization campaign, even the position of the Hungarians with a revolutionary record became critical. The concept of a "reliable Hungarian vanished in Czechoslovakia. A person of Hungarian nationality could not be granted citizenship or enjoy any political right of any kind even if he had fought with arms against Fascism during the war. The official nationalist temper of the country was such that it expected every anti-Fascist to "re-Slovakize" without exception. Thus there remained but two alternatives: To give up one's nationality, or to leave voluntarily for Hungary. Those who did not re-Slovakize and stayed (like the well-known Hungarian anti-Fascist writer, Zoltán Fábry) automatically ostracized themselves, they became undesirable aliens, even if they had been granted exemption from the Presidential decrees in 1945, issued against the minorities. The Slovak National Council in Bratislava kept warning the population that every applicant for citizenship had to be accompanied by a "certificate of nationality," to make sure that no person of German or Hungarian nationality would receive civil rights.²⁷

No wonder, the Slovak nationalist leadership had been watching nervously, and with anger, the "Slav brother" Yugoslavia where, after initial barbaric reprisals, the integration of the Hungarian minority into a federal State had begun already in 1946. When in the fall of 1947, following the Communist take-over in Hungary, the first postwar visit to Belgrade of the Hungarian Prime Minister Dinnyés was to take place, the Slovak press noted bitterly: "The Slav brothers in Yugoslavia are negotiating with the Hungarians, with that Hungary which has caused us so much trouble in settling the nationalities issue in Slovakia. The Yugoslavs probably consider the Hungarian Communists as honorary Slavs, just like the Nazis had made an exception of them a few years ago by regarding them as honorary Aryans [a favorite Czechoslovak slight, referring to the Hungarians' non-Aryan Asiatic origins] "²⁸

An earlier visit that year (in 1947) to Prague of the Hungarian Communist Mátyás Rákosi, by then the real power behind the Budapest regime, had left no friendly memories behind either. Rákosi, namely, insisted on the restoration of the rights of the Hungarian minority, which elicited irritated comments in the Czechoslovak press:

In one respect Hungary today is identical with the former regime, its views regarding the minorities have not changed. Although Czechoslovakia is a nation-state of the Czechs and the Slovaks, the Hungarian Communist government today continues to advocate the views of Gyöngyösi [Foreign Minister of the Coalition Government], namely that the Hungarians of Czechoslovakia have to be granted minority rights. This will be the hardest nut to crack in the Czechoslovak-Hungarian negotiations . . .

Following the Communist take-over in Hungary, the Hungarian Social Democratic press anticipated improvement in the Situation of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia. One such report was promptly denied as unfounded in Prague: "Some of our press organs spread the news [based on reports of the Budapest Népszava] to the effect that Hungarian schools will reopen in Czechoslovakia on September 1, 1947 . . . Hungarian schools were not discussed either in the Cabinet, or in the National Assembly, and their re-installation was never even considered. On the contrary our entire policy is aimed at bringing about by mutual agreement a total population exchange [between Czechoslovakia and Hungary] . . . Representatives of the Czechoslovak and Hungarian Social Democratic parties have discussed in that sense this issue recently."³⁰

It was not exactly "in that sense" (namely, "total" exchange) that the Hungarian Socialists have been trying to influence Czechoslovak policy toward the Hungarian minority. Their efforts, however, were of no avail. The ruling Czechoslovak élite remained as hostile against the Hungarians toward the end of 1947 as it had always been since the end of the war.

For the Hungarian school-age children, the third "empty year" started on September 1, 1947. General illiteracy was spreading. Since the war, about 100,000 Hungarian school-age children could not attend school. In desperation, some Hungarian parents began to urge to founding of Slovak schools in Hungarian regions. As one anonymous letter written put it in the Bratislava Èas: "Let us have Slovak schools! Masses of children do not not go to the school in Czallóköz [_itny Ostrov once a pure Hungarian island of the Danube]

. . . children of ten and even older cannot write or read! Who will be responsible for these illiterates?"³¹

Some Slovak nationalists, on the other hand, were convinced that they were winning the baffle against the Hungarians. In a lengthy demographic and historical essay, Juraj Palkoviè came to the conclusion that only a fragment of the former Hungarian minority is left, and soon all Hungarians will be assimilated: "It is not possible to determine the present number of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia, but after the conclusion of re-Slovakization and the carrying out of the population exchange not many Hungarians will remain, barely a third of their numbers in 1930."³² Palkoviè discounted the Hungarians deported to Bohemia, considered the 300,000 re-Slovakized persons as Slovaks, and thus arrived at 200,000 Hungarians "remaining, "who could be easily assimilated.

Palkoviè's computer was tilling too soon the bell for the death of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia. Even at the time Palkoviè was predicting the liquidation of the Hungarians, other Slovak observers were less optimistic about the Slovakization of the Hungarian regions of Slovakia: "A large part of the population cannot speak proper Slovak, little has been done for this [Hungarian populated] area until the present. There are no Slovak books in the villages, and thus we have to appeal to the Delegate in Charge of Schools and bring his attention to the fact that in two years he has not taken any advantage of the opportunities for Slovakizing this area."³³

In retrospect, the Slovakization effort under the postwar regime came to be regarded as harmful to Socialism by Communist commentators. It is worth quoting the remarks of a recent observer, Dr. F. Tomek:

The fact that the question of the Hungarian workers remained unsolved also had its [harmful] consequences. According to the ground rules of the labor unions, they [Hungarians] could not become members, even though in certain places they constituted the majority of the workforce. The officers of the Slovak Labor Union Council attempted to solve the problem on January 22, 1947, by proposing the right of membership in labor unions in Slovakia for the actually employed German and Hungarian workers, since these workers were fully participating in the effort for the reconstructionof the country, and most had not committed offenses against the Slovak and Czech nations. Unfortunately, the Central Council of the Labor Union adopted a negative stance, and weakened the struggle of the working class in Slovakia by 80,000 Hungarian workers.³⁴

Even before the Communist take-over in Czechoslovakia, in February 1948, there were a few people who had the courage to criticize publicly the senseless and reactionary Slovak nationalist policy. The Minister of Interior in the Prague government characterized the representatives of the Slovak Democratic Party as "L'udák-Fascist elements."³⁵

Toward the end of the postwar coalition regime, the Czech press occasionally struck a realistic tone in the matter of the nationalities problem. In August 1947, the Czech National Socialist Dnìsek raised the question: what should be done with the remaining Germans? It approved of the mitigation of the discriminatory measures, and advocated civil rights for the remaining 150,000 Germans.³⁶ As for the Hungarians, the Czech Social Democratic Èil encouraged a Czechoslovak-Hungarian rapprochement, and by the end of 1947 demanded economic cooperation between the two neighbors.³⁷

In contrast, the Czech People's Party, representing the "democratic" opposition to the Communists, supported uncompromisingly the anti-Hungarian Slovak nationalist policy, as this excerpt from its weekly, Obzory, illustrates:

The principle of the expulsion of 200,000 Hungarians was not included in the peace treaty, thus we must deal with a strong Hungarian minority. Even if it is not dangerous now, it may become dangerous tomorrow. We have had sad experiences in the past and we cannot rely on the promises of the Hungarians that in the future they will respect the jaws of the Republic. The Hungarian government already considers the demands of the Hungarian minority [for civil rights] as part of its own program. This attitude was confirmed by the summer visit of the leadership of the Hungarian Communist Party . . . But let us await the facts. The Republic is a nation-state, we do not recognize national minorities. Should Yugoslavia guarantee rights to its minorities, it would do this because it is not a nation-state. Our Parliament spoke to the Hungarians in unmistakable terms.³⁸

The commentator in the Obzory was referring to the debate in the National Assembly on the ratification of the peace treaty with Hungary during which the Slovak representatives, both of the left and of the right, Laco Novomesky and Fedor Hod_a, resolutely professed their faith in the homogeneous Slav nation-state.³⁹ Nor did the paper fail to reject the eventual "new directions in the policy of the KSÈ [Czechoslovak Communist Party]

The patriots of the KSÈ are gradually burying the principle of the nation-state . . . The first secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party [Mátyás Rákosi] declared at a rally that during his visit to Prague, where he arrived at the invitation of the KSÈ, he discussed the minority rights of the Hungarians with positive results . . . We must ask the gentlemen of the KSC whether they have indeed dropped the principle of the nation-state . . . The question is much too serious for the Rudé Právo [organ of the KSÈ] to pass over it in silence.⁴⁰

The Constitutional Assembly elected in 1946 was not able to draft a new Czechoslovak constitution because of conflicting views among the coalition parties. The Communist Prime Minister Klement Gottwald did present a draft to the National Assembly as early as July 8, 1946, and the draft definitely stated that the Czechoslovak Republic is the national state of the Czechs and the Slovaks. Press comments emphasized this point by adding: "The expulsion of the Germans and the Hungarians, the Czechization and Slovakization of the border lands will be assured by constitutional guarantees, so that in the future only the Czech and Slovak nations may decide in matters of state or public life. The civil rights of other Slav nations and the non-Slav Germans and Hungarians will be respected."⁴¹

Althrough 1947, the Coalition Government of Czechoslovakia still solidly and unanimously professed the fundamental principle of expulsion with regard to the Hungarian minority. The Communist Party, too, as a member of the coalition, had not ceased to advocate that principle.

The Communists, in fact, explicitly denied in the spring of 1947 reports of a rapprochement between the Czechoslovak and the Hungarian parties, or any plans for changes in the new constitution.⁴²

Yet a conflict between the Czech Communist and the Slovak nationalist points of view became increasingly noticeable by the summer of 1947 over the handling of the Hungarian question. In June, following the collapse of the Coalition Government of Ferenc Nagy in Hungary, the Czech Communist paper Tvorba pointed out that the road of Hungarian evolution is determined not by the press campaigns of the "reactionary" Hungarians, but by the "democratic" Hungarians.⁴³ Tvorba also looked forward with confidence toward the upcoming Hungarian elections: "They [the elections] will bring about a new situation in Hungary, and they will decide whether Hungary's road will lead to a people's democracy and socialism, or whether the power or reaction and bourgeois democracy will be revived."⁴⁴

The Czech Communist leadership seemed to be well aware of the dead end the mishandling of the Hungarian issue in Slovakia had led to. The "leftward" turn of the political trend in Hungary, following the Communist takeover in June 1947, came to be regarded by the Czech Communists as a convenient opportunity for settling the Hungarian question in Czechoslovakia by different means. The Slovaks, however, whether of the right or of the left, resisted conciliatory moves. In three years since the end of the war, there was only one conciliatory gesture of Slovak cultural policy toward the Hungarian minority: Communists in Hungarian-populated Komárom (Komárno), at the end of 1947, issued a Hungarian-language calendar. However, even that had been rapidly withdrawn from circulation by the Communists because of attacks by their bourgeois coalition partners. The Slovak National Council wanted to carry over intact the anti-Hungarian "liberation platform" of 1945 into 1948, without party distinctions, insisting on the principle of the pure Slav nation-state. This chauvinistic principle, depriving the Hungarians of all their civil rights, also demanded that no schools should be opened in Slovakia for the Hungarian national minority in 1948.

Thus, as the new year arrived, once again the Hungarian children entering school age, were condemned to illiteracy in "democratic" Czechoslovakia, for the third straight year, in the middle of Europe, at the dawn of the Atomic Age.

Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority