The Position of Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia in 1996*

Abstract

The official language of the medieval Kingdom of Hungaria was Latin until the mid-nineteenth century (Szekfű, 1926); the throne was occupied from the second half of the sixteenth century by the Hapsburgs. The subsequent change to Hungarian was due to several factors, but was caused above all by the ideas of the French Revolution, and by the early anti-Austrian nationalistic endeavors of the Hungarian gentry, endeavors which also expressed the economic interests of the country. As soon as the official idiom of the kingdom became Hungarian, it triggered similar aspirations among the non-Magyar minority groups against the dominating and assimilating Hungarian majority. These aspirations were prominent among the causes of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of World War I. Within the former Kingdom of Hungary the Felvidék (Upper Land) roughly coincided with what was, after 1919, Slovakia. The eastern part of the kingdom, Ardeal/Erdély/Siebenbürgen/Transylvania, which had enjoyed a certain autonomy between the sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, became a part of Romania in the same year. Thus, both in Romania and in Slovakia (as also in Yugoslavia and to a lesser extent in Austria) a Hungarian minority was created by the 1919 borders. Revision of the peace treaties became the focal point of Hungarian politics in the inter-war period. During World War II Hungary attained a partial revision in respect to, first, the southern part of Slovakia, and also the entire Ruténföld/Rusinsko, which had from the 1920s been administered by the Czechoslovak State); second, northern Transylvania; and third, two further areas which had belonged to the then-dissolved Yugoslav kingdom. As a consequence of these revisions, a considerable number of non-Hungarians once again became minorities in the Hungarian State. After World War II, the 1919 borders were reinstated (with two exceptions: the major exception being that Ruténföld became part of Ukraine). The situation of the minorities was also reinstated, but differently in each instance. This was the age when some kind of democratic reconciliation was on the agenda in Romania (Balogh, 1985; Lázok and Vincze, 1995; “Mit kíván,” 1946/1988), after a period of thorough self-searching and a synthesizing of historical research and political experience (see Bibó, 1946).