Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation

Another factor, besides Habsburg centralizing tendencies, that curtailed Hungarian independent nationhood in post-Turkish times was the dramatic change in the ethnic composition of the Hungarian state. From the late medieval 80 percent majority, the Magyar ratio sank to an estimated 40 percent minority toward the end of the eighteenth century. Post-Turkish colonization schemes introduced by the Habsburg kings as well as uncontrolled massive population movements into depopulated areas accounted for the drastic ethnic shift to the detriment of the Magyars. Masses of Serbian and Croatian immigrants settled in the south of Hungary, changing the medieval ethnic boundary between Magyars and Southern Slavs. A no less substantial ethnic change was taking place in the east of Hungary in the wake of continuous Romanian immigration from Wallachia and Moldavia. According to some sources the so-called "Romanization" of Transylvania was the result of migration chiefly taking place as late as the eighteenth century.l2 And with the Habsburg domination came, of course, masses of German-speaking settlers, whose arrival added substantial numbers to the earlier Germans of medieval origin.

However, from a poor minority in the late eighteenth century, the ratio of the Magyar-speaking population in Hungary rose to a precarious 54 percent majority in 1910, the year of the last census prior to the collapse of the Hungarian state in the wake of defeat in World War I. Hungarian demographic success was an insult to the national sensitivities and aspirations of the non-Magyar nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It has been seen by them as statistical proof of forcible Magyarization, an emotional issue which, to this day, defies any rational discussion between Hungarians and their neighbors.

In retrospect, of course, even the staunchest defender of the Hungarian cause must wish the Hungarians had embarked on a course different from blind chauvinism in their efforts to correct their historic misfortunes. The Hungarians made grave mistakes in trying to remake their multiethnic historical state into a unilingual modern nationstate on the West European model. There were abundant warning signs, reminding the Hungarians of their folly. But no warning was strong

enough to divert the Hungarians from their singleminded nationalist goals. Not even the few Hungarians aware of the rising nationalist sentiments among Hungary's non-Magyars were willing to make sufficient concessions. And, as time went on, nothing less than recognition of national equality for all of its inhabitants could have saved historic Hungary from ethnic disintegration.

Lack of Hungarian sensitivity to the national rights of their non Magyar-speaking countrymen was fostered by great gaps in national consciousness between Magyars and non-Magyars. The non-Magyars of Hungary only recently became affected by modern nationalist sentiments; the Magyars, by the virtue of their continuous statehood, in one form or another, needed no awakening although modern nationalism certainly contributed to national stirrings of a new kind by the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The Hungarian revolution of 1848-49 against Austria fully revealed both the superior power and the menacing weakness of the Hungarian national movement. Under Lajos Kossuth's leadership, the Hungarians were capable of staging a national uprising against Austria which nearly wrecked the Habsburg Empire. On the other hand, Hungary's non-Magyars turned against the liberal Hungarian revolutionary leadership and sided instead with reactionary Vienna. Nationalist feelings by that time were such that Austrian promises of special status for national groups were preferable to Hungarian liberalism which only belatedly acknowledged the national rights of the non-Magyars. Yet, in spite of an ensuing civil war within Hungary, the Hungarian war of independence was not quite hopeless. It was eventually crushed only with the help of tsarist Russia's intervention, Austria's faithful helper in keeping alive the reactionary legacy of the Holy Alliance. In the long run, Russia's intervention also heightened the Hungarians' fear of a Panslav danger. Panslavism in fact became one of the great obstacles to Slav-Magyar reconciliation in Central Europe. It filled the region's Slavs with exaggerated expectations and the non-Slav Magyars with exaggerated fears of the reactionary design to unite all Slavs into a great conservative commonwealth of nations under Holy Russia's imperial auspices.

Yet Hungary's defeat in 1849 did inject some element of realism into Hungarian political thinking. The successors of the fiery nationalist Kossuth in Hungarian politics were men of moderation. Kossuth himself began toying with plans for a Danubian federation with Hun-

gary's Romanian and Serbian neighbors. But, as far as concessions went, neither Kossuth in exile nor the Hungarians at home, who concluded the Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867 with Austria, were willing to go further than recognizing nationality rights in the context of individual civil rights. The territorial integrity of Hungary was not negotiable, not even with the most liberal of Hungarians, except one: Count Laszlo Teleki, a former exile and follower of Kossuth. But Teleki committed suicide.

Ferenc Deak and Jozsef Eotvos, architects of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, went as far as any living Hungarians were ready to go at that time concerning Hungary's non-Magyars' nationality rights. The Nationalities Law of 1868 granted them individual language rights in matters of education, local administration, and justice. A separate compromise with Croatia (united with Hungary since the eleventh century) confirmed the autonomy of the Zagreb Diet. But the head (the "ban") of the autonomous administration of Croatia-Slavonia was appointed by the Hungarian government. The Croats also sent a delegation to the Hungarian parliament in Budapest. The Adriatic port city of Fiume (and the adjacent littoral) became a corpus separatum under the Hungarian crown, but Hungary made some territorial concessions in Lower Slavonia to Croatia in exchange.

The Nationalities Law of 1868 was quite an unusual act of generosity in contemporary nationalist Europe, when the idea of minority protection was generally shunned by the triumphant concept of the nationstate. Not even post-World War I Europe, committed to international protection of national minorities, went further than the Hungarian law of 1868 in granting individual language rights within the general framework of civil rights. On the other hand, neither prewar Hungary's non-Magyar nationalities nor the national minorities after World War I were satisfied with such concessions. They wanted national equality. They wanted collective rights. They wanted self-determination. They wanted territorial selfgovernment.

PreWorld War I Hungary, instead of radically expanding the rights of the non-Magyars by granting them territorial autonomy, moved swiftly away even from the much smaller concessions of the Nationalities Law of 1868. The political passivity of the non-Magyars, as a protest against the inadequacy of the Nationalities Law, played into the hands of the Magyar opponents of the Law. Hungarian national

restraint, incipient in the compromises of the 1860s, was soon over powered by passions of nationalist narrowmindedness. From the 1870s, dualist Hungary embarked on an ambitious policy of Magyarization. This forcible drive toward assimilation (as distinguished from a spontaneous one) had no more than forty years to do real harm to Hungary's non-Magyars during the fifty years of Austria-Hungary's existence. But the relatively short period of national oppression was long enough for the oppressed to forget the centuries of Hungary's existence as their peaceful haven and even protector of their survival as modern nationalities. The Kingdom of Hungary in fact sheltered the national awakening of Romanians and Serbs at a time when their kinfolk in their Balkan homelands were still prostrate under Turkish domination. And without the shield of the Hungarian state two smaller Slavic people, the Slovaks and Subcarpathian Ruthenes, might have been absorbed by their stronger Slavic next of kin. Recent Czech and Ukrainian efforts to this effect are strong indications of such a likelihood. Yet, Hungary's former non-Magyar nationalities continue to view the Hungarian state solely in its role as an oppressor. Their historians and politicians have tarnished the record of the period of Hungary's ethnic peace that preceded the age of nationalism. To this very day, mythical beliefs in an alleged millennial Magyar crime of national oppression are among the foremost impediments frustrating the reconciliation between Hungarians and their neighbors.

Hungary's detractors gave an equally unfounded interpretation of Hungary's alliance with Germany in World War I. They turned it into another millennial crime, which was a truly outlandish distortion in view of the centuries of Magyar struggle against the Habsburg variety of German Drang nach Osten. True, in 1870, in collusion with Austria's Germans, the Hungarians torpedoed an Austro-Czech compromise plan, committing a tragic mistake, a senseless blow against the Danube region's chances to evolve into a federal union of nations. True, too, after 1878 dualist Austria-Hungary was an ally of Imperial Germany. Yet, against a few decades of Hungarian reliance on German power stood centuries of resistance: the Hungarian struggle against the dynastic imperialism of the German Habsburgs in Central Europe. 13 To set the record of Hungarian statebuilding and nationbuilding

straight, no other issue looms larger than the clarification of the much maligned Hungarian policy of Magyarization. To speak of a "millennial oppression" of Hungary's non-Magyars, as Hungary's neighbors do, is utter nonsense. The Magyar founders of the Hungarian state in fact distinguished themselves by tolerance toward peoples of different languages and cultures. The roots of this tolerance, as some historians believe, may go back to the practices of Asiatic steppe people, like the Magyars, in leaving alone the social habits and fabrics of peoples they conquered. A no less commendable followup to this pagan liberalism was medieval Hungary's Christian policy of granting groups of peoples of non-Magyar tongues, whether natives or colonists, certain forms of "autonomy. headed by persons from their own ranks."14 Spontaneous linguistic Magyarization has, of course, always taken place, since the Magyars have been recognized as builders and rulers of the Hungarian state. Similar assimilations had taken place everywhere else in Europe. Hungary was no exception to the rule.

Until the age of modern nationalism, only the Habsburgs tried to challenge the Magyar preponderance in the Kingdom of Hungary. But the Habsburg effort at Germanization in Hungary remained notably unsuccessful compared to similar efforts in other areas, particularly Bohemia-Moravia. The nobility in Hungary originally came from many ethnic groups but by modern times it was predominantly Hungarians-peaking despite Turkish dismemberment and subsequent Habsburg rule. Given the preponderance of Magyars within the ranks of the Hungarian nobility it is perhaps not surprising that when the demands of modern nationalism stirred up language conflicts, the ruling Hungarian nobility took it for granted that it was their birth right to make Hungary into a Magyar-speaking state and nation. The Magyar-speaking population enthusiastically followed suit. In fact, it was considered extremely unpopular for a Magyar to oppose Magyarization. Neophyte zeal of the recently assimilated Magyars, especially of Slovak and German origin, only fueled the flames of chauvinistic intolerance.

Magyarization in a way became too great a temptation following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. After more than three centuries, the Magyars once again became masters of their own state. The Hungarian cause, though not fully triumphant in the eyes of Magyars yearning for independence from Austria, scored a great victory with the Compromise of 1867. The political moderation, evident

in the 1860s, soon gave way to patriotic emotions embracing linguistic Magyarization as a sacred goal of national policy.

The forcible Magyarization was launched under Kalman Tisza's premiership. He introduced the 1879 Education Act which made the teaching of Magyar compulsory in state primary schools. Other measures to suppress the ethnic cultural and national aspirations of non-Magyars followed. A linguistically homogeneous Hungary was to be achieved through the system of education and administration. Whether this was an attainable goal is rather doubtful. The policy itself was cut short by Hungary's defeat in World War I. But the Magyar pressure seemed brutal enough to convince Hungary's nationally conscious non-Magyars that the policy of Magyarization threatened their people's linguistic survival. Only Croatia-Slavonia was spared the frenzy of Magyarization - though, with singular lack of wisdom, the Hungarian language was decreed mandatory on Croatian railroads in 1907, adding fuel to Hungary's worsening relations with the South Slavs.

Magyarization in Hungary became forcible, but the label does not fit all the facts to which it is applied. First of all, assimilation remained, as before, overwhelmingly spontaneous; if for no other reason than because there was not much opportunity to advance, above the village level, without knowledge of the Hungarian language. Spontaneous or forcible, Magyarization increased the number of Magyars, but it did not alter ethnic boundaries within Hungary. The towns may have been Magyarized, but in the countryside the territorial ethnic divisions remained basically the same as they had been for the last two centuries. Unlike Hungary's neighbors following Hungary's post-World War I partitions, the Hungarians never embarked on a policy of colonization in order to change the ethnic character of territories under their exclusive domination. Also, a closer look at the numerical results of assimilation during Hungary's dualist era may correct some of the misconceptions created by sweeping denunciations of Magyarization.

The increase in the number of Magyar-speaking inhabitants achieved by assimilation between 1850 and 1910 is put by recent research at two million. Well over half of this Magyarization, by all evidence, was spontaneous. The list of assimilated Magyars is led by Jews (700,000), whose enthusiasm to join the Magyar nation is best reflected in their outstanding contributions to Hungarian moderniza-

tion in all aspects of life, both material and intellectual. The next largest group was Hungary's Germans, mostly scattered among Magyars in the central regions (500,000). Their assimilation, too, despite some anti-Hungarian Pan-Germanic agitation from Vienna, was spontaneous and smooth until Hitler's time. This leaves 800,000 newly assimilated Magyars belonging to ethnic groups whose nationally conscious elites opposed assimilation and fought Magyarization with ever growing determination. Resistance to Magyarization was strongest among the Romanians and South Slavs, weakest among the Slovaks. Between 1850 and 1910, an estimated 400,000 Slovaks became Magyarspeaking, but of Romanians and South Slavs, only 150,000 each. The remaining 100,000 newly assimilated Magyars belonged to the statistical "others" among them the Magyarophile Ruthenes whose ethnically conscious national elite was even smaller than that of the Slovaks.15 This statistical mirror greatly reduces the alleged enormity of Magyar culpability for Magyarization, dramatized and exaggerated out of proportion by anti-Hungarian propaganda. It does not reduce, however, the seriousness of the nationality conflict as a whole. At least one third of Hungary's population (not counting Croatia) on the eve of World War I was potentially, if not actively, irredentist and separatist. Among them, broken down by nationalities, the Romanians represented 17 percent of Hungary's total population, the Slovaks 12 percent, and the other Slavs 5 percent. Thus, the potentially disloyal nationalities in pre-World War I Hungary represented about the same proportion of the country's population as did the disloyal Germans in post-World War II Czechoslovakia. After World War II these Bohemian and Moravian Germans were punished for their disloyalty by expulsion from Czechoslovakia. However, in Hungary, after World War I, the disloyal nationalities punished the Hungarians, which proves that circumstances indeed alter cases

. There were ugly aspects to Magyarization in preWorld War I Hungary which offended the non-Magyar people's human dignity: the haughtiness of the shallow "gentleman" class, the offensive harping on Hungarian cultural superiority. And there were several serious incidents which were shameful indeed, even without propagandistic exaggerations. On the other hand, as Hugh Seton-Watson has pointed out: "Judged by the methods of the midtwentieth century, in Europe, or beyond, the forcible Magyarization of Kalman Tisza and his suc-

cessors was comparatively mild; yet in an age which was accustomed to humane standards in government, it was resented as unjust and brutal."16

The Hungarian ruling class bears grave responsibility for the chauvinistic nationalism which alienated the non-Magyar nationalities from the Hungarian state. Moreover, the fear of the alleged separatist tendencies of Hungary's non-Magyar inhabitants also affected Hungarian policy concerning the long overdue extension of suffrage which had been very narrowly defined in 1867. The great majority of the population, Magyars and non-Magyars alike, were deprived of a voice in political life. The parliament and the administration in general were run exclusively by the nobility and the "gentrified" uppermiddle class.

The ruling classes, supported by Hungarian nationalist public opinion, opposed universal suffrage, arguing that it would strengthen the separatist-irredentist tendencies among the non-Magyar nationalities. Opposed to this reactionary-chauvinistic leadership, was the liberal democratic and socialist-progressive school of thought. Its ideas were most memorably articulated by the sociologist-politician Oszkar Jaszi. He maintained that, if there was a way to save historic Hungary from ethnic disintegration, it was through radical democratization.17 In the best tradition of nineteenth-century Hungarian liberal thinkers Istvan Szechenyi and Jozsef Eotvos in particular Jaszi tried to alert his compatriots to the dangers of the nationality problem. His efforts, not unlike those of other farsighted Hungarians of his time, were entirely in vain. Yet, undaunted by the defeat of the Hungarian democratic revolution of 1918 (led by Jaszi's disciple in nationality affairs, Count Mihaly Karolyi), Oszkar Jaszi remained, in his American exile, an untiring advocate of a democratic federalist Central European solution.

It may seem in retrospect as if any effort to save historic Hungary might have been doomed to failure. Yet Hungary was not a ramshackle state. (Austria-Hungary as a whole may have deserved to be called a "ramshackle empire," according to David Lloyd George's memorable epithet.) In the 1910 census 54 percent of Hungary's multi ethnic population declared itself Magyar. But the percentage of loyalty to the Hungarian state was much higher. Forcible Magyarization did not significantly erode the sentiments of historical patriotism

among Hungary's non-Magyars. Separatist irredenta sentiments were not widespread enough to threaten the Hungarian state with disso lution. In fact, it was Magyar success that angered the political elites of nationally conscious non-Magyars. And the Magyar failure to allay the anger of non-Magyars by timely compromise resulted in historical Hungary's demise only in combination with Austria-Hungary's defeat in World War I.

The peacemakers' solution to the nationality problems in the Danube region was the partition of Hungary and the establishment of either new or enlarged national states. Yet all these states continued to be plagued by nationality conflicts. A better solution would have been, as Jaszi believed, a Hungary reorganized "on the model of Switzerland" within a federalized Central Europe which would have been "a better guarantee of democracy, of economic progress and of peace" than the new order of nationstates.18 The new order was a work of vengeance. Yet faults and failures that initially triggered the vengeance do not account for the magnitude of injustice inflicted on Hungary following its defeat in World War I. To comprehend Hungary's territorial and ethnic partition, the brutality of war and its impact on wartime diplomacy as well as on the policy of peacemaking must be taken into consideration.

As the brutality of war in Europe intensified, the search for an ideal peace to justify the carnage increased apace. The Western democracies embraced the slogan that seemed to satisfy the wartime need: Liberation of the small and oppressed nations of Europe. They also found an exile from Austria-Hungary with extraordinary talent for articulating this slogan in an attractive peace plan which seemed satisfactory from both idealistic and pragmatic points of view. The man in exile was Tomas G. Masaryk; the peace plan was called the "New Europe." Masaryk's success was proof of his extraordinary talents, but it also proved the tragic political aimlessness of the Western democracies in World War I. With considerable pride Masaryk recorded in his memoirs: ". . . we supplied the Allies with a political program. This is no exaggeration, as our friends from France, England and America admit. Nor did we give them only our program. We gave them programs for the liberation of other peoples and for the reconstruction of Europe as a whole."19

A compatriot of Masaryk, the Czech historian Otakar Odlozilik, said of him: "Masaryk saw the principal enemy in the past."20 This

meant not just the Habsburgs, but perhaps even more the Hungarians. In fact, in the Danube region, the destruction of Hungary's historical statehood was the primary objective of the Masaryk plan. To Masaryk, a pupil of Palacky, the "meaning" of Czech history was the struggle with the Germans. A corollary of this philosophy of Czech history was the thesis that the Magyars were "invaders" who spoiled Slavic history. The plan Masaryk so successfully sold to his Western backers promised to make Europe safe against the Germans as well as their accomplices, the Magyars. It was to be achieved by liberating the Slavs, by creating a "Slavic barrier" of "buffer states" in Central and Eastern Europe. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania the latter an honorary member of the Slavic club on account of Romanian hostility to the Magyars were to serve as pillars of this "Slavic bulwark" to which Masaryk had hoped eventually to add Russia as well.21

Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation