The Slovenian-Hungarian Border: A Historical Outline

Abstract

The article presents the facts relating to a century of shifting borders along the frontier between today’s Slovenia and Hungary. As borders primarily symbolize the physical strength of the state, they are an essential subject for people living in borderlands anywhere in the world. Following the Great War, the 1919 delineation of borders in what had for centuries been a stable area (Slovenian March) caused upheaval not only for political actors but also for those persons who suddenly found themselves living in separate states. Later in 1948, the border became part of the Iron Curtain, which completely paralyzed communications in the Yugoslavian (Slovenian)-Hungarian cross-border region and branded it with a highly specific historical and social dynamic. The turn of the 1980s to the 1990s was marked by the fall of the Iron Curtain between the East-European (communist) and Western (capitalist) worlds. After 2004 and 2007, when the Slovenian and Hungarian states became first members of the European Union and then the Schengen area, it seemed that the border would fade away.