A Case Study on Trianon

The Baranya Republic was a short-lived, Soviet-oriented mini-state whose rise and brief existence on occupied Hungarian territory during the peacemaking aftermath of the first World War were tolerated and fostered by the newly-proclaimed Kingdom of Yugoslavia.¹ The political process, which produced antithetic governments within the same national domain, portended similar developments on a global scale after the Second World War. In the chaotic conditions attendant on the restructuring of the lands long ruled by the defeated Habsburg Empire, the separatist government in Baranya temporarily served the national interests of the Yugoslav occupiers as well as the socialist objectives of its Hungarian leaders, but finally foundered on the continental strategy of the victorious Entente powers which aimed to subordinate Middle European territorial appetites to the overriding diplomatic objective of erecting a barrier against the westward expansion of Communism.

As Austria-Hungary entered World War I, Baranya² was one of sixty-three Hungarian counties. It was situated in the Danube-Drava triangle of western Hungary, bordering on the Associated Kingdom of Croatia in the south. In July 1914, the area of Baranya County covered 1,963 square miles and had a population of 299,312.³ In size, therefore, the prewar county was somewhat smaller than the State of Delaware. Eighty-five percent of the population spoke Hungarian either as a mother tongue (51.3%) or as a second language (33.7%). Speakers of Serbo-Croatian formed 9% of the inhabitants.⁴ Because of the rich anthracite mines in the center of the county and the thirty-seven relatively large-size industrial plants around the county seat, Pecs⁵ 52% of the population was engaged in mining industry and related occupations.⁶ Pecs had a population of 47,556 during this period, with a labor force of 22,642, of whom 14,897 were manual workers and miners resident in the city and its environs.⁷

In conservative, prewar Hungary, Pecs was known as a "nest of

reds."⁸ It was the only industrial town in old Hungary with mines in its immediate peripheries. This made for close cooperation between the suburban miners and the urban industrial proletariat. It was perhaps because of this combination of forces that long before the war Pecs had become a stronghold of the trade union and socialist movements in Hungary. The first Hungarian miners' union was established here.⁹ Pecs, however, was not only "red" but also "black " in the Stendhalian sense. At the other end of the political spectrum were the powerful and influential clerics. The landed estates of the Roman Catholic Episcopal See and of the Cathedral Chapter covered about 100,000 cadastral holds (one Hungarian hold equals 1.42 acres). In the center of the city stood a baroque monument to the Holy Trinity, elevating the sculptured image of the Host for all inhabitants, fidel and infidel. In addition to the cathedral, there were also a seminary, a monastery, a convent, a Roman Catholic Law Academy, and a multitude of churches. In the inner city the street scene was enlivened by a large army of priests, monks and nuns, all wearing their distinctive and characteristic garb. The clerical-socialist polarization probably accounted for the fact that by the time war was declared in July 1914, a "throne and altar" type of patriotic Right was staring a militant, internationally-minded Left in the face.

One of the earliest symptoms of the impending collapse of the Central Powers, a military mutiny and an ensuing firefight between ethnically antagonistic regiments of the multinational Habsburg Empire, took place in Pecs at Whitsuntide 1918. The latent class struggle in the city added to the seriousness of the disaffection in the garrison. News of the mutiny reached the miners in their suburban homes only after its suppression, but on the mistaken assumption that the war was over and a revolution had broken out, they armed themselves, began a march on the city and walked into the arms of the victorious status quo forces. Survivors were freed during the following autumn after the collapse of the old regime and the establishment of the new liberal-democratic government.

Mihaly Karolyi (1875-1955), the aristocratic leader of pro-Entente Hungarian liberals, headed the new regime, first as Premier and then as President, from October 31, 1918 until March 20, 1919. The Karolyi government signed a Military Convention amounting to an armistice with the Allies in Belgrade on November 13, under the terms of which Yugoslav forces were allowed to advance into

Hungary and, in accordance with The Hague Regulations, to establish a military government without replacing the existing civil administration in the occupied territories.¹⁰ The Yugoslav Army crossed the Drava River into Baranya on November 14, entered Pecs the same day, but defiantly continued its northward march well beyond the Belgrade Convention line. Four-fifths of the county, including Pecs, were thus detached from the mother country. In exceeding the territorial provisions of the Belgrade armistice, the Yugoslavs were motivated by a strategic wish to push their borders as far north as possible, beyond the southward slope of the Mecsek massif (1,146 feet), and by the dictates of a postwar energy crisis were calling for possession of the rich Pecs coalmines.

The presence of foreign troops in Baranya was unresistingly recognized by both the conservative Right and the radical Left as a safeguard preventing the opposing ideological camp from gaining the upper hand in county and city. As long as the Karolyi government remained in power in Budapest (122 miles to the north as the crow flies), Right and Left continued their uneasy truce, united in loyalty to the national capital while under enemy occupation, even though in the intoxication of victory the Yugoslav forces chose to ignore the pertinent paragraphs of the Belgrade convention.

The occupiers began establishing a Yugoslav civil administration and on December 1, 1918, Belgrade officially announced that Yugoslavia would permanently annex all occupied Hungarian areas.¹¹ Two days later, in an outburst of Hungarian nationalism transcending ideological divisions, which took the form of a "People's Resolution," a citizens' assembly in Pecs rejected any change in the territorial status quo under which their city might be wrenched from Hungary and joined either to Yugoslavia or to any other state structure.¹² As Yugoslav military highhandedness continued and the economic situation deteriorated, a resistance movement came into existence spearheaded by the Socialists and their labor unions in cooperation with the Christian Socialists and the illegal Communist Party. A general strike, which paralyzed the city from February 21 to March 13, 1919, was first met with repressive measures on the part of the occupiers, including the taking of hostages and cavalry charges in the streets against demonstrators. In Yugoslavia sympathy demonstrations took place, protesting the use of the Royal Army as Cossacks in Pecs. Increasing pressures at home and in Baranya finally brought concessions from the Yugoslav military

authorities and constituted a victory for the Socialist workers of Baranya loyal to their homeland. But a week after the end of the strike, President Karolyi and the Berinkey government, unwilling to accept territorial truncations, resigned in Budapest and was replaced by a Hungarian Soviet Republic (HSR) dominated by the communist Bela Kun. The assumption of power by the revolutionary proletariat in the political center was a deathblow to undivided national loyalties in peripheral Baranya. The Right and Left now began to reappraise their positions in the light of class interests: the former at a discreet distance from the territorial integrity ideal of traditional nationalism; the latter fusing with it in a passionate embrace.

Already during the winter of the general strike, there had appeared signs of improving relations between occupying Yugoslav officialdom and the leaders of the Baranya Right, probably in reaction to a leftward drift in the Budapest government. It did not escape notice in Baranya that on January 3, 1919 control over the Salgotarjan coalmines in northern Hungary was to be shared between a workers' council and the board of directors.¹³ Indeed, the Budapest official gazette announced that by the end of March 1919 all Hungarian mines would be placed under government control as a first step toward nationalization.¹⁴ A land reform law was promulgated on February 16, 1919. The high-minded, idealistic Karolyi began on February 21, 1919 to distribute his own landed property among his incredulous peasants.¹⁵ The provincial Right realized that reunion with the mother country at the end of the Yugoslav occupation would certainly mean the extension of the new Hungarian laws into Baranya. The leftward drift in Budapest appeared to be turning the military demarcation line separating Hungary and Yugoslavia into an ideological boundary between the radicalism of the mother country and conservatism under Yugoslav protection. The Baranya mines and the large estates of the county, including those of the Diocese and the Chapter, were at stake. The changing attitudes of the Right, no doubt motivated by a recognition of the new political realities, could be conjectured from the growing cordiality between the leading clerical circles in Pecs and the top stratum of the occupiers.

The catalytic effect of the Karolyi reforms portended the shape of things to come in Baranya during the ensuing three years. The local political situation began to evolve in the form of three interlocked processes: a tug-of-war between the provincial Right and Left; the governmental metamorphoses in Budapest from bourgeois to proletarian

radicalism and then again to ultra-conservatism; and finally victorious Yugoslavia's maneuverings to achieve its maximum territorial aspirations at defeated Hungary's expense. The Entente architects of the new East Central European status quo, however, were more concerned about the Soviet threat from the East than about Yugoslavia's new frontiers. The two problems had to be solved integrally; the new frontiers had to be drawn as functions of the anti-Bolshevik continental grand strategy.

Until this grand strategy of the hegemonial Atlantic powers could prevail over Yugoslav intransigence, occupied Baranya was in a political flux. For the Yugoslavs the basic rule was to side with the opponents of the center. When the Left was in power in Budapest, it was the Baranya Right which turned its back on the center; when the Right took over from the Left in the national capital, it was the Baranya Left which began moving away from the center with Yugoslav backing. The volte face of the Yugoslavs occurred abruptly, strictly in response to external events.

The fall of the Karolyi regime and the rise of the Hungarian Soviet Republic on March 21, 1919 had the effect in Baranya of an ideological inhibitor on the Right and of a catalyst speeding up the amalgam of socialism and nationalism for the Left. The interests of the Right required, and its political comportment indicated, that until a return to a rightist political course in unoccupied Hungarian territory, Baranya had better remain under Yugoslav military occupation, at least temporarily detached from the Communist-controlled mother country. As for the left, never before had the Baranya workers and miners been more attached in allegiance to the national government of their country than in the spring and summer of 1919, while the revolutionary proletariat ruled in Budapest.

In the eyes of the Baranya Right the Communists of Bela Kun in power were naturally a greater threat to the socio-economic equilibrium of the county than the bourgeois radicals of Mihaly Karolyi. Confirming this assumption, the HSR in Budapest began, before the end of the first week of its existence, to issue a plethora of nationalizing decrees. Between March 20 and April 3, 1919, all Hungarian industrial plants, mines, means of transportation, medium-size and large landed estates as well as educational institutions were declared socialist property. In occupied Baranya all establishment economic interests, both landed and industrial, were at once psychologically affected.

At the other end of the Baranya political spectrum, among the miners and the workers, the amalgam of socialism and nationalism was facilitated by economic factors. Wages were higher in HSR territory than in Pecs and its environs. First a trickle and then a torrent of Pecs-Baranya workers and miners began to flow northward across the line of demarcation into Soviet Hungary. Ten of the Pecs Socialist chiefs transferred their activities to the HSR-controlled parts of neighboring Somogy County. From there they established direct contact with Bela Kun in Budapest.¹⁶ In a letter addressed to Bela Kun and also in personal conversations¹⁷ Gyula Hajdu, the most prominent Baranya Socialist leader in exile, proposed and pressed for the entry of HSR military forces into Yugoslav-occupied Baranya.¹⁸

While the nationalism of the Baranya Left was thus waxing to chauvinism, the economic situation in Pecs was not developing to the liking of the occupiers. A new and disturbing factor entered into the preeminent Yugoslav occupation problem, which was maintaining coal production at a maximum level. After the proclamation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Budapest, a steady drop in the yield of the coalfields began owing to the northward flight of the Pecs miners to HSR territory.¹⁹ Production was reduced perhaps to as low as one-third of the peacetime yield not only because some of the miners had fled to unoccupied territory, but also because of slowdowns in the shafts by the stay-homes.

All this undoubtedly had an effect on the visibly continuing rapprochement between the Yugoslav occupiers and the Baranya Right, which was paralleled by a growing estrangement between the Serbs and the local Left. Within two weeks of the Hungarian Soviets' coming to power in Budapest, the Yugoslav occupying authorities in Baranya permitted the return to Pecs of its old-regime Mayor Andor Nendtvich, whom they had expelled from their territories on January 30, 1919, during the period of still undivided Right-Left loyalty to the center. Since by late spring the Pecs press had become predominantly leftist military censorship was made more severe.²⁰ The celebration of May Day, 1919 was banned.

In the course of continuing Serb-Right rapprochement and Serb-Left estrangement in the urban areas, word came to Baranya from the north during the first days of August that the Hungarian Soviets had fallen in Budapest. Hungary, its capital under Romanian occupation, was in a state of anarchy in which counterrevolutionary,

anti-Communist, nationalist forces were grouping and regrouping to fill the political vacuum. Once more the signal was given in the center for the peripheral Right and Left to shift positions on nationalist allegiances. For the Baranya Right the disappearance in the center of the leftist inhibitor allowed a return to an old-fashioned, traditional nationalism. Henceforth it was the Right which wanted the Yugoslavs to leave and the Left which was anxious to have them stay. Additionally, the Left was being pushed farther toward its ideological extreme, first, by the political influence of Mihaly Karolyi's and Bela Kun's followers fleeing from the White Terror and, second, by the Increasing likelihood of Baranya's reincorporation into a counterrevolutionary Hungary.

In the minds of the Paris peacemakers the minor territorial dispute between Hungary and Yugoslavia began to assume a certain relevance to the seemingly westward surge of Bolshevism. The groundwork for the Hungarian peace treaty and for the new, restricted Hungarian frontiers was being laid during an international red scare marked by a Spartacist uprising in Berlin (January 1919), the establishment of the Third or Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow (March 2, 1919), the reality of the Hungarian Soviets (March 21-August 1, 1919), the brief spectacle of a Soviet Republic in Bavaria (April-May 1919), a mutiny at Odessa in the French Black Sea fleet (April 16-22, 1919), the final failure of Allied Intervention in revolutionary Russia both via Murmansk-Archangel (October 1919) and, almost simultaneously, in the southern Ukraine. The text of the Hungarian treaty was put in its final shape (January 15-May 4, 1920) in a psychological climate affected by another Spartacist insurrection, this time in the Ruhr (March 1920), by the outbreak of a Polish-Russian war (April 25, 1920), and by impending Red Army landings at Enzeli, on Iran's Caspian coast (May 17, 1920). The need for a East Central European barrier against Communism seemed greater and more urgent than ever. Romania was proving itself staunchly anti-Bolshevik by its war against the Soviets (May 18, 1919-March 2, 1920); the abortive Slovak Soviet republic in Preshov (June 1919) was a thing of the past. Only Yugoslavia, because of its sponsorship of a reportedly "red" regime in Baranya, appeared to be an unsealed spillway in the dam being built against Soviet political and ideological expansion.

Beginning with August 1919 the basic attitude of the Pecs proletarian Left to the occupiers was determined by a recognition of the fact

that their presence prevented the eruption of the White Terror. Reacting vehemently to the bloody events, a mass meeting of Pecs Socialist workers on February 26 declared itself in favor of continued Yugoslav occupation of Baranya for the duration of the White Terror in unoccupied territory.²¹ The radicalization and leftward shift of the Pecs labor movement was facilitated by another measure of the occupiers. The miners returning from the north were scattered over a twenty-mile radius in the mining area, thus increasing the possibilities of agitation and of forming new clandestine cells. The Yugoslavs turned over the streets of Pecs to the proletarian masses for ideological and political marches and demonstrations. On March 15 they held a protective umbrella over a mass meeting which endorsed the earlier (February 26, 1920) declaration in favor of a continued Yugoslav occupation and ranged the Pecs labor movement on the side of the Comintern, the new international revolutionary organization set up in Moscow the year before (March 2, 1919). On March 21, they saw to the maintenance of order while the workers were commemorating the first anniversary of the fallen Hungarian Soviets. On May 1, 1920, for the first time since the beginning of the occupation, the Yugoslav authorities permitted the celebration of International Labor Day.

The Pecs Right sullenly watched the seeming proletarian dominance of streets and squares. It was confident, however, that soon the conservative prewar establishment would resume its rule in a Pecs reunited with truncated Hungary. It was being whispered that the peace treaty, a preliminary text of which had been handed the Hungarian delegation in Paris on January 15, 1920, would fix the new Yugoslav-Hungarian frontier in a way disappointing to both the occupiers and their left-wing proteges. In Baranya County the new border would run south not only of the military line of demarcation, but also far to the south of the Belgrade Convention boundary, returning Pecs and most of Baranya, including the coal mines, to Hungarian sovereignty.

Either the Right had begun showing too much confidence or the Yugoslav occupying administration started losing its calm, because at the end of 1919 a crackdown on the local right began. Starting on December 11, 1919 and culminating in January of the following year, seventeen former Hungarian military officers had their houses searched and were arrested on charges of conspiracy, espionage, and

illegal recruitment of armed forces.²² When the Interallied Military Commission (IMC) was established in Pecs subsequent to these arrests (May 28, 1920), the Right wishfully and correctly interpreted this event, too, as a portent of an impending Yugoslav evacuation.

A week after the arrival of the IMC in Pecs, news was received from Paris, jubilantly by the Right and mournfully by the Left, that the Hungarian peace treaty had been signed and that the victors had awarded most of Baranya, as far south as Karasica Brook, to Hungary. The Right was ready to accept, although the delineation of the new international frontier entailed a minor loss of Hungarian territory. But the left balked and swore to prevent the entry of Horthy's troops, treaty or no treaty.

All told, the treaty awarded Yugoslavia only 1,193 square kilometers (23.4%) of the total prewar Baranya area of 5,106 square kilometers, containing 34 villages of the Baranyavar, Siklos, and Mohacs districts. At the same time it gave her a five year access to the yield of the Pecs mines. Neither Hungary nor Yugoslavia had undue reason to complain about this solution. Hungary gave up less territory in this area than anywhere else along its peripheries, retaining both Pecs and the coalfields. Yugoslavia was satisfied both in its ethnic and economic claims.

But for the time being, this was only on paper. The treaty would not enter into force until after completion of the ratification process, which might yet take months or years. The entry into force would be marked by an exchange of ratifications at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was only after the deposition of the ratifications that Yugoslavia would be under obligation to withdraw its military forces to the south side of the new international boundary. Would Belgrade comply?

The Yugoslav-controlled leftist press in Pecs opined that the territorial provisions of the Treaty of Trianon need not be considered as final. In its October 13, 1920 number the Pecs Socialist daily Munkas (Worker) attributed to a "Yugoslav statesman" the assertion that a separate Baranya Republic could remain an autonomous state under Yugoslav military occupation even after the ratification process of the Treaty of Trianon had been completed.²³ In its October 29 issue, the same paper quoted the Mayor of Pecs, Bela Linder, as disclaiming any connection between the future of Pecs and the ratification of the Treaty of Trianon. The city, Linder commented, would not be

returned to Hungary until its working population petitioned for its reincorporation.²⁴ There was certainly no basis for this statement in the current diplomatic process or in international law.

The occupied status of Baranya thus continued unchanged after the signing of the peace treaty on June 4, 1920. Since the Bela Kun interlude, however, the Hungarian question seemed to have acquired more importance in Paris. The Romanian occupation of Budapest (August-November 1919) was followed by the establishment of a Conference of Allied Diplomatic Representatives and Generals in the Hungarian capital. The Interallied Military Commission (IMC) in Pecs, dominated by the French Major Raoul Derain, was reporting to the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris through this intermediate body.

Both Hungary and Yugoslavia signed in a revisionist spirit. For fifteen months following the signing, the Yugoslavs continued their effort to cling to their military frontier north of the new treaty line. Ideologically analyzed, the Yugoslavs' attempt in 1920-21 to accomplish this objective was to satisfy their own nationalism while promoting their proteges' socialism. In the East Central Europe of 1920-21 this was a diplomatic impossibility.

In the case of the proteges a choice had to be made between the two ideologies. The left-wing socialist regime in Pecs could continue to exist only in detachment from Horthy Hungary by jettisoning the Hungarian nationalist aim of Baranya's reunification with Hungary in favor of proletarian internationalism.

The eastward Baranya drift began a week after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon. On June 12 the Pecs Social Democratic Party officially changed its name to Socialist Party in Pecs" (SPP)²⁵ This was done in order to draw a line between the Social Democratic Party of Hungary which under the leadership of Karoly Peyer was willing to compromise with Horthy.

"Our enemies," wrote the Pecs Munkas (Worker), "are the Social Democrats, the social patriots, and the social chauvinists." The Socialist Party in Pecs (SPP) formally declared its adherence to the Comintern in October 1920.²⁶. At the third Congress of the Comintern, which opened in Moscow on July 22, 1921, the SPP was represented by two invited delegates from Pecs, the chemical industry worker Rudolf Wommert and the miner Richard Friedl. The two SPP representatives, who had deliberating but not voting rights,

submitted a lengthy and detailed report on the Pecs-Baranya situation of the Congress.²⁷

The new orientation did not disqualify the Pecs Socialists from Yugoslav backing. In rapid succession, first the defunct (since 1919) Pecs National Council was reestablished on Socialist demand; next, the Council ordered elections for a new municipal governing body of 100 members. The elections took place under Yugoslav supervision on August 29-30, 1920, before the public announcement of the Comintern ties and resulted in an overwhelming Socialist victory. The franchise and the balloting were reportedly less democratic than in a British or French election. The protesting conservative Mayor, Andor Nendtvich, who through some oversight was still sitting behind his desk in his City Hall office, was summarily arrested and deported into unoccupied Hungary.²⁸ He was replaced by the refugee Bela Linder,²⁹ briefly Minister of War in the fallen Karolyi regime and then Special Envoy and co-signer of the Belgrade Military Convention. Backed by Belgrade, Linder's immediate objective was a prolongation of the Yugoslav occupation in an autonomous Baranya, for possibly five years, at the end of which a plebiscite should decide the final disposition of the territory.³⁰

The experts of the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris correctly analyzed Yugoslav motivation and intentions vis-a-vis Baranya as being primarily centered on coal. For the most part the railroads of Yugoslavia were propelled by Pecs coal. "It is for this reason that the South Slav state has prolonged, contre tout droit, the occupation of this region."³¹ Accordingly, in order to remove all obstacles to a future evacuation, on December 15, 1920 the Conference of Ambassadors invited the Reparations Commission to take measures that the pertinent provisions of the Treaty of Trianon regarding the exploitation of the Pecs coal mines were applied, implemented, and carried out under its control.³² It was not until May 7, 1921, however, that the Conference of Ambassadors was able to convey to the Hungarian Government the decision of the Reparations Commission regarding the implementation of the pertinent provisions of the Treaty of Trianon regarding the Pecs mines. The commission had decided, the Hungarians were told, that the Yugoslavs were to be entitled "for the first year, to receive 54% of the net production of the mines in the Pecs basin ... [and that] this percentage shall be maintained after the first year unless another figure should be adopted."

A Case Study on Trianon