Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary

While the Rumanians were busily laying the groundwork for Great Rumania, other nationalities in and around Hungary were plotting their own strategies at her expense. Needless to say, these plans often conflicted with one another, especially in the case of the Serbs and Croats.

The Croats were striving for the realization of an ancient ideal called "Illyrism," the union of all southern Slavs on the Balkan peninsula to form a "Great Croatia." The very word "Illyria" made the Austrian government nervous. It was actually banned for a while and was replaced by the name "Yugoslav," which remains in use today.

In 1860, a movement for the formation of this state was launched by Ante Starcevic who claimed that all Serbs were really Croats. Serbia meanwhile was making the same claims in reverse.

Both parties were exaggerating. There was more noise than substance in the claims of Starcevic, who, as the son of an Orthodox mother and a Catholic father, exemplified that which actually separates the two peoples more than perhaps anything else - religion. The Serbs belong to the Byzantine rite, whereas the Croatians and Slovenians are Roman Catholic, with a small segment being Moslem.

However, if a Catholic Croat is converted to Serbian Orthodoxy he automatically becomes Serb, and conversely.

More realistic were the political aims of Bishop J.J. Strossmayer who launched a Yugoslav movement headed by Croats striving to create spiritual unity among Yugoslavs as precondition to their political union. The Serbian clergy, however, viewed this idea with a jaundiced eye, suspecting that it was a trap to induce them to renounce their Orthodox faith.

Strossmayer's movement suffered a setback when a mini-Compromise, the Nagoda, was reached between Hungary and Croatia the year after the Compromise of 1867. By paving the way towards this agreement, Ferenc Deák recognized the special status of Croatia within Hungary, saying: "The Croats form a political nation within our country, while the other non Magyars are part of the Hungarian nation."

The Nagoda compromise granted far-reaching autonomy to Croatia-Slavonia within the Hungarian Kingdom. The Croatian language was to be allowed even in the deliberations of the Hungarian Parliament. The Croatian national flag was to be hoisted alongside the Hungarian tricolor above the Parliament building when the Diet was in session. Croatian was to be used not only in the schools, but also as the language of command in the Croatian territorial army. The chief local executive, the Ban (Viceroy), was to be appointed by the King on the recommendation of the Premier of Hungary. Hungary assumed 93.5% of the expenses of common affairs, and on Deák's recommendation, three Magyar counties were attached to Croatia.

Relations between the Croats and Magyars deteriorated, however, during the following decades, mainly due to measures introduced by Magyar governments or local authorities in violation of the spirit of the Nagoda.

Although one provision of the Nagoda formally recognized the unity of Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia, neither the Austrians nor the Magyars were anxious to implement this unity. Furthermore, Hungarian schools were built on Croatian territories, and Hungarian coats of arms and flags appeared on public buildings as well. A Magyar Archbishop was appointed to Zagreb (Agram), damaging Croatian pride and sensibilities without really doing much harm. The Croats were particularly incensed by the Railway Servant's Act which required that all railway workers in Croatia speak Magyar. The Croats' dissatisfaction and demands made little impact on the Hungarian conscience, and gave rise to the saying that "the Croats don't know what they really want, but they want it fast."

At the turn of the century a new political star rose in the Croatian sky in the person of Stephen Radic, the founder of the Peasant Party. Radic had made a name for himself in 1895 at an anti-Hungarian and anti-Austrian riot in Zagreb. In 1902 he produced a grandiose plan advocating a quintuple monarchy: a federation of five states, three of them Slavic, one of which would embrace all the South Yugoslavs of the Monarchy.

A Love-Hate Triangle

Up to this point there was no love lost between the Serbs and Croats each schemed to the detriment of

the other. The animosity between the two peoples was aggravated by the cunning maneuvering of Count Khuen-Héderváry, the Magyar Ban of Croatia, who governed for twenty years. Following the principle of "divide and rule" he openly favored the Serb minority in Croatia over the Croats themselves. (At that time there were about 1,600,000 Croats and 600,000 Serbs in Croatia. About 400,000 Serbs and 180,000 Croats lived in Hungary proper, while the independent Kingdom of Serbia had a population of about four million at the turn of the century.)

Since Turkish times, the Serbs and Magyars had a love-hate relationship, highlighted by heroism against their common enemy, the Turks, but tarnished by fierce fighting among themselves. Habsburg diplomacy often set them against each other, as it did in Rákóczi's time and during the War of Independence. Prof. Macartney describes the Magyar sentiments toward the Serbs thus:

...The Serbs are more honest and more efficient than the Rumanians and they possess a certain manliness that endears them to the Magyars in particular. It is curious, but certain, that Hungary resents the bludgeon blows which she receives from the Serbs far less than the pinpricks of the Czechs... (Hungary and Her Successors)

When the Turks were finally driven from Hungary in 1718, the Bácska and Bánát regions in Southern Hungary, to which the native Magyars were forbidden to return by the Habsburg Administration, became a sanctuary for Rumanian, Serbian and German settlers. The purpose of this colonization was to hold the Magyars in check in their own backyard.

This policy paid off handsomely for Vienna when the Rumanians and the Serbs savagely fought the Magyars during the War of Independence in 1848-49. An autonomous Serb Voivodina was formed from the Bácska and Bánát regions after the war. In the Compromise of 1867, however, Hungary regained control over this territory which had been rightfully hers since the Conquest. But as Professor Macartney notes, the Magyar were considered unwelcome "new-comers" in their own land by the Rumanian and Serbian settlers:

To them Hungarian rule was an innovation, the Magyars newcomers. "The Magyars were never here," said a Rumanian to me on the frontier "and no one wants them here," a remark which, unacceptable to the historian, and exaggerated even in other aspects, reflects a certain attitude of mind prevalent among a part of the frontier population. It would have been inconceivable, for example, in Slovakia.

The Serbs in Hungary were a prosperous group. They owned the richest soil in Hungary and could pursue their cultural aspirations unhindered. The Srpska Matica, the famous cultural society in Újvidék (now Novi Sad) became the mother of modern Serbian culture.

But the Serbs fared even better in Croatia where for twenty years they were the darlings of Ban Khuen-Héderváry. It was only after his departure in 1903 that a rapprochement between Croats and Serbs resulted in a parliamentary coalition. A momentous change occurred in the same year in neighboring Serbia, where the Russophile Karageorgevic dynasty took over the throne in the person of Peter I, whose predecessor was murdered by pro-Russian officers.

A "Master-stroke" Turns into a Blunder

Curiously enough, the rapprochement between Serbs and Croats that was initiated in the south was greatly accelerated in the north, where many Serbo-Croatian students, including Stephen Radic, attended the University of Prague. The lectures of Professor Thomas G. Masaryk inspired them with the new spirit of Slavic awakening and visions of South Slav (Yugoslav) unity. Masaryk's students returned home committed revolutionaries.

The first formal Serbo-Croatian coalition, albeit an ephemeral one, was formed in Fiume (now Rijeka) in 1905 by the Dalmatian Croats M. Supilo and Dr. Trumbic.

In 1908, the Monarchy's formal annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina poured oil onto the fire of the Yugoslav movement as both Croatians and Serbs considered the region their own territory. At first, however, many Croatian and Slovenian politicians rejoiced because they interpreted the move as a step toward the creation of a South Slav state within the Habsburg framework. Given these expectations, the annexation could have been a master-stroke, if Bosnia-Herzegovina had been transferred to Croatia. Such a gesture - enlarging Croatia - could have restored the former solidarity between the Croats and the Monarchy in general and Hungary in particular, while bringing the Yugoslav movement to an end.

But the Magyars (and the Austrians) missed their historic chance and the annexation became a self-inflicted blow. Agitation against the Monarchy reached a new crescendo in the Slav world and the rest of Europe. The English press denounced the annexation as "brigandage," while the British government made its first moves toward rapprochement with Russia. Belgrade was outraged. The demonstrations in the Serb capital were echoed by protests in Prague where students, shouting "Long live Serbia!" attacked non-Slavic students and trampled on the Monarchy's flags.

Serbia mobilized to wrest Bosnia from the Monarchy for herself; Serbian Premier Pasic rushed to St. Petersburg to appeal to Russia for help. The Russians, however, not yet prepared for a general war, bowed to a German ultimatum and warned Serbia to desist from belligerence. Humiliated, the Serbs had to back down; they sent only guerilla troops to Bosnia. High-ranking Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Izvolsky, assured them that Bosnia had not been irretrievably lost, and that in time "days of joy would come." A Panslav gathering at St. Petersburg published a circular advising the Balkan Slavs to be patient and wait until Russian military power could gain strength and stand "as protectress of the Slavic world."

Andrássy's earlier warning against the formal annexation of Bosnia had come true: "An annexation would make all our advantages illusory and our success doubtful." He had warned of the financial burdens that would befall the Monarchy in the event of annexation and said, "In the end we will get the Bosnian bone without the meat."

The "Pig-War"

But for the time being, the cause of diplomatic indigestion was, literally, pork - a commodity fought over during an economic "Pig-War" between Serbia and the Monarchy triggered by the Austrian decision to bar Serbian pig shipments. Austria's move was partly in retaliation against Serbian agitation, but mostly to support domestic hog prices in Hungary, including the Voivodina which was populated by Serbs. The Austrian ban on pigs sent the peasants in Serbia up in arms and spawned violent demonstrations in Belgrade and elsewhere. The "Pig-War" even damaged Vienna's relations with Russia, which sided with her Slavic brothers. Finally, Hungarian agricultural circles also joined the uproar when Aehrental, the Monarchy's Foreign Minister, at last admitted a fixed quota of Serbian pork products into Austria - a settlement that left both Hungary and Serbia dissatisfied. In addition to the other troubles it caused, the "Pig-War" only larded the flames of Yugoslav hostility toward everything Austrian and Hungarian.

The "Black Hand" Strikes

The deterioration of Hungarian-Croatian (and Serbian) relations culminated in the so-called Zagreb (Agram) Trial in 1908, in which the star witness for the prosecution, a certain Nastic, produced a pamphlet that offered apparent evidence of Panslavic revolutionary intrigue against the Monarchy involving both Croats and Serbs. Although the evidence was tenuous, thirty Serbs and Croats were arrested and given prison terms. Although they were later acquitted by a higher tribunal, the damage had been done, and the entire Slavic press and the many European journals they influenced had a field day condemning Vienna and Budapest.

Once again, by prosecuting a minor affair Austria-Hungary exposed itself to attack. Hungary was particularly vulnerable, since she had but few advocates abroad to counter the far-reaching propaganda of the Rumanians and Slavs.

The Serbs were active on the homefront, too. It was about this time that the Crna Ruka (Black Hand), a chauvinistic terrorist organization in Serbia, began to make itself felt. In 1912-13 Serbian nationalism was given a big boost when a Balkan Alliance, formed with Russian help, successfully drove the Turks from

Europe. Premier Pasic exulted: "The first round is won; now we must prepare for the second, against Austria!"

Austria, of course, was personified by Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose plan to bring a Southern Slav State into the Monarchy countered the interests of both Panslavism and Great Serbia.

The second, and last, round soon followed. The starting signal was given by the pistol shots of the Herzegovinan student, Gavrilo Princip, a member of the "Black Hand," when he assassinated the Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

As Princip's co-conspirator later confessed, "Franz Ferdinand had to die because he was the enemy of the Slavs."

"Yugoslavia" - Yes and No

A legend says that God once told a Serb, "I will do for you whatever you wish - but I warn you, anything I do for you, I will do doubly for your neighbor"

"Lord," the Serb answered, "pluck out one of my eyes!"

This gory little allegory points out the hard historical reality that "neighbor" in the Balkans most often translates as "enemy."

This was the case with the Croats and Serbs at the beginning of the Great War, the Yugoslav ideal notwithstanding. The Croats were deeply shocked by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. They had been expecting the Archduke to add Croatia, enlarged with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia, to the Monarchy as a third member but this dream went up in the smoke of an assassin's gun. After the assassination they retaliated so violently against the Serbs in Croatia that Premier István Tisza stood up in the Hungarian Parliament to protest Croatian excesses.

As a result, Yugoslavism stood on shaky ground from the outset of the war and remained that way for virtually the next five years. The Yugoslav road to Trianon was not as smooth as that of the Czechoslovaks, since the Czechs could twist their junior partners - the politically innocent Slovaks - around their little finger. The Croats and Serbs were matched in toughness and political tradition. Their rivalry during the war was complicated by a third neighbor, Italy, whose interest lay in the possession of the Dalmatian seacoast and Fiume, Hungary's only window to the sea. Thus, Italy opposed Serbian and especially, Croatian ambitions. The resulting "hate triangle" spelled conflict not only for the three nations directly involved, but also for the Entente powers, since ultimately all three joined the Allied camp.

A Yugoslav state never existed historically, much less a Yugoslav nation, which was yet to be created. Like Czechoslovakia, its formation was pushed by exiled politicians. In the case of Yugoslavia, it was the Croat exiles who did the pushing; the Serbs were reluctant partners. The first step on the road was the formation of a Yugoslav Committee in Paris on April 30, 1915. The most prominent founders were all Croats: Ivan Mestrovic, the world-famous sculptor; Franjo Supilo, and Ante Trumbic. The Englishmen R.W. Seton-Watson and H. Wickham-Steed lent their good offices to help form this Committee whose professed goal was to create a Yugoslavia encompassing Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Dalmatia and Bosnia.

But the founders did not know that the previous day the Allies and Italy had signed the secret Treaty of London in which Italy had been promised large tracts of Croatian and Slovene territory, including Dalmatia, in return for entering the war. The next month, Italy declared war on her former allies, Austria-Hungary and Germany. The Italians paid a heavy price for the "secret" treaty, whose details were soon revealed. Twelve carefully prepared Italian offensives along the Isonzo front broke down with heavy casualties when Croats and Slovenes in the Monarchy's army fought the Italian troops together with their Magyar and Austrian comrades.

From its inception, the Yugoslav Committee had to fight a political war on two fronts: against Italian territorial claims based on the London Treaty, and against the resistance of a tough man, Nicola Pasic, the Premier of Serbia. After the fall of his country, Pasic transferred his government to the island of Corfu. Though he toyed with the Yugoslav idea, Pasic really wanted to create a Great Serbia embracing the other peoples of Yugoslavia, including the Croats. While his idea was rejected by Franjo Supilo, it was reluctantly accepted by Ante Trumbic, who advocated a union at any price, hoping that in time the dispute between Serbia and Croatia would be resolved.

The cornerstone for a Yugoslav state was laid in Corfu during a 35-day marathon conference where the Serbian point of view prevailed. According to the declaration issued by the conference, the new state would be a monarchy headed by the Serbian dynasty, but it would guarantee the equality of all Yugoslav peoples. Since the Serbian government opposed the name Yugoslavia, the formal name of the monarchy would be "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes." As a Croatian historian later remarked, "By its very title the future kingdom bore the seeds of dissension, since it emphasized trinity instead of unity."

After two more years of intermittent haggling, the union of the three Yugoslav peoples was finally officially proclaimed on December 1, 1918, following the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. The chief architects of this union were Stephen

Radic, Ante Trumbic and Svetozar Pribicevic. Their senior partner, the Serbian Pasic, wryly quipped on May 1, 1919: "The Yugoslav nation is a single people, with three religions and two alphabets." So much for the "union" which was cautiously accepted by the Croats and Slovenes, uneasy about Serbian domination. Such fears were voiced by Ante Trumbic in a memorandum as early as 1918, at a time when Serbs and Croats were supposedly enjoying their political honeymoon:

"Our people have no confidence in such an anti-democratic government. From the point of view of civilization, our lands in Austria-Hungary are much more advanced than Serbia, and they will not be willing to submit to a government which is not on the same level..."

These brave words notwithstanding, submit they did - and they have been unable to extricate themselves from the tight embrace of their Serbian brother ever since.

The "Croatian Golgotha"

The many years that have since elapsed have failed to bring harmony to the area, and, ironically, the situation turned into a deadly affair for the very man who had been the most ardent advocate of Croatia's separation from Hungary, Stephen Radic. First, the government tried to silence him by imprisonment in 1924. A few years later, after his release, Radic and two other Croatian deputies were fatally wounded by a Serbian assassin's bullets during an open session of the Yugoslav Parliament in Belgrade. It became known publicly that the assassin, Punisha Ratshits, a member of a Panserbian group, had spent several hours at King Alexander's palace on the evening preceding the murder. Before long, the King abolished the cumbersome title of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in favor of the simpler "Kingdom of Yugoslavia."

The Croats, reeling the increasingly heavy hand of their Serbian brothers, agitated more and more insistently for separate statehood.

Dr. Vladko Macek, a loyal successor to the murdered Radic, was also jailed, then released. In 1932, utterly disillusioned, he published a five-point secessionist program which demanded a return to the situation that had existed on December 1, 1918, preceding the creation of Yugoslavia.

On March 7, 1932, a Croatian Peasant-Democratic Coalition issued a sharp protest against the prevailing conditions in the Yugoslav Kingdom, saying:

This hegemony rests on immoral methods of violence and oppression. Having seized monopoly of power but incapable of wielding it intelligently, the Serbs from Serbia are using it for the purpose of destroying all moral values, all modern institutions and achievements, all material wealth and the spiritual peace of the people...

In the turbulent years between 1918 and 1937, Yugoslavia had 35 governments with a total of 656 ministers. Of these, 399 were Serbs from Serbia, and only 26 (or four percent) were the elected representatives of Croatia. Out of 165 generals in the Yugoslav army, 161 were Serbians, and only one Croat.

These and other signs of Serbian hegemony prompted one of the chief architects of the Serbo-Croat-Slovene union, Svetozar Pribicevic, a Serb from Croatia, to write in a book published in Paris under the title La Dictature du Roi Alexandre in 1933:

The Serbs are a minority in Yugoslavia. Their hegemony is untenable, the more so as this hegemony is wielded only by the Serbs of Serbia who do not represent more than half of all Serbs... Thus, the alleged representatives of three million Serbs of Serbia (the rest are Serbs from Croatia, Montenegro and Backa) govern a country of fourteen million inhabitants. Under no conditions and at no price will the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy continue to support these methods...

As a matter of fact they did not. In 1941, Yugoslavia fell apart within days, as did Czechoslovakia a few years earlier, with the Germans, Hungarians, Croatians and Slovenes picking up the pieces. The Croats and Slovenes gained separate statehood under German tutelage, but not for long. At the end of the war the status quo ante was restored.

As another Croatian publication lamented fourteen years later:

Great powerful, invincible and united Yugoslavia became the biggest fairy tale of modern times, and this mystification served her as a prop in all the crises she underwent until 1941, and was again responsible for her re-establishment in 1945. Since nearly everybody had been deceived by this lie, nobody dared to call the bluff for fear of becoming an object of ridicule. In a play similar to Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, and lasting now more than forty years, the various European powers vied for Yugoslavia's favors. This has kept, and keeps, Yugoslavia alive, not her inner strength, or the support and wishes of her own people. (Republica Hrvatska, Sept. 1959, Buenos Aires).

These are bitter words, indeed, although they are biased in omitting, among others, the merits of Tito Yugoslavia in creating a stumbling block for Soviet imperialism in the Balkans. Actually, the brotherly love between the Serbs and Croats of yesteryear has turned, since World War II, into a venomous hatred.

The turn for the worse was provoked by a massacre, since called by American Croatian leaders "the worst tragedy that ever befell the Croatian people in their thirteen centuries of political and national history."

By and large, world public is unaware of the tragic events that occurred in the Bleiburg-Maribor area along the Austrian-Yugoslav border at the end of World War II. But some details have found their way into the Congressional Record of the United States:

On May 16, 1945, eleven days after the war was over, the Croatian Golgotha began at the Austrian-Yugoslav border. Tens of thousands of Croatian soldiers and civilians were encamped on a large field near Bleiburg on the Austrian side. After the Croatian soldiers were asked to lay down their arms by the British authorities, and then forced to return home, they were fired upon by the Tito partisans from the nearby forests. On the Bleiburg field, an estimated 50,000 Croatian soldiers were slaughtered...

...The Bleiburg massacres were only the beginning...According to eyewitness reports, the greatest massacre on Yugoslav territory took place near Maribor in Slovenia... The motto was the `Croatian soldiers must die in order that Yugoslavia may live' (Congressional Record, May 30, 1960).

The more gruesome details of the massacre, vividly described in the Congressional Record and putting the number of victims at 150,000, are omitted here.

If even one tenth of the numbers claimed are true, the tragedy would surpass the scale of the infamous Katyn massacre, another tragedy largely ignored by the West in the euphoria following World War II.

Whatever the case may be, Croatians the world over mourn it as "the Croatian Golgotha." Still, while the massacre took place in 1945, the Croats had entered their road to Calvary much earlier. They did so in 1918... (See Appendix).

The Epitome of Balkanization

In the decades after World War II no country in Eastern Europe received more foreign aid than Yugoslavia. Its independent stand versus the Soviet Union enhanced Tito's international prestige tremendously. From 1945 onward close to 100 billion dollars poured into the country, not to speak of the many billions Yugoslav guest workers sent home from free Europe to support their families. When exchange rates were set at the end of the war, a dollar's worth was 33 dinars. In 1989 one dollar was worth 60,000 dinars with a yearly inflation rate of 1200 per cent, aggravated by some 20 billions foreign debt.

So much about the economic "viability" of a country which is a non-plus ultra of "balkanization." Following World War II Yugoslavia was cobbled together as a federation of six republics and two autonomous regions (Kosovo and Voivodina). Its peoples practice three religions (Eastern Orthodox, Western Catholic and Moslem), and embrace two cultures (Byzantine Slavic and Western Christian). It is also a country which uses two alphabets, Cyrillic and Latin. Six major ethnic groups and 22 smaller ones make Yugoslavia the most heterogeneous country in Europe. Inevitably, the country is fragmented, and serious ethnic rivalries arise. For 35 years, its communist leader, Marshall Tito, succeeded in keeping Yugoslavia glued together, owing much to the flow of dollars pouring in from the West.

After Tito's departure the money flow ebbed and ethnic rivalries surfaced again. Bloody clashes occurred, most notably between the Serbs and Albanians in the Kosovo region which 500 years ago had been the heart of Serbia. Today the Albanians in Kosovo number cca 1,800,000 with 200,000 Serbs living with them.

To foreign tourists, Tito still seems to receive a Lenin-like veneration at his white marble mausoleum built on a verdant hilltop in Belgrade. Such a semblance of adoration is, however, misleading, because the Tito-cult has become an irritant in the eyes of Serb nationalists.

In retrospect, to them Tito was a Serb-hater Croat who had made the Serbs join a federation without domination by a single nationality - to the detriment of the Serbs who, being the strongest ethnic group, feel predestined to have such a leading role. The Serbs especially took amiss that Tito had removed Kosovo and Voivodina from Serbian control by making them autonomous regions.

No wonder that after Tito's death in 1980, Serbian nationalism began to reassert itself. This process gained momentum by the rise of a charismatic leader, Slobodan Milosevic, dubbed by his critics as an "ethnic Stalinist." Milosevic succeeded in pushing through a constitutional reform which restored Serbian domination over Kosovo and Voivodina. Violent resistance to this takeover was drowned in blood by the Serbian controlled military in Kosovo.

Hungarian Ethnic Strength Weakened

In contrast, the Serbian takeover in Voivodina, where the bulk of Yugoslavia's Magyar population lives, was a bloodless affair due to Serbian majority in that region. In 1981 cca 2 million people lived in Voivodina, among them 1,107,000 Serbs, 385,000 Magyars, 109,000 Croats, 70,000 Slovaks and 47,000 Rumanians. Due to their numerical inferiority, the Magyars play but a subordinate role in Yugoslav politics, but on the whole, their treatment has been liberal. They have been allowed to speak and publish

in Hungarian, and have bilingual education.

According to official statistics, in 1948 496,000 Magyars lived in Yugoslavia (3.2% of the total population), in 1961 504,000. Twenty years later, however the census found only 427,000 Hungarians in Yugoslavia. Included in this number were Croatia's cca 30,000 Magyars and 10,000 Hungarians in Slovenia. Their number in both republics is decreasing due to the very low birthrate. In Croatia the Magyars are treated well, and in Slovenia the treatment of minorities is exemplary. The state is regarded as a commonwealth of Slovenian, Italian and Hungarian nationalities, and equal treatment or languages is mandatory. Ties with the mother country are supported, and the display of national symbols permitted.

Paradoxically, despite liberal conditions, the number of Magyars in Yugoslavia has been decreasing at a greater rate than in countries where Magyar minorities have been severely suppressed (e.g. Rumania, Czechoslovakia and Carpatho-Ruthenia in the Soviet Union).

Besides natural assimilation due to mixed marriages, and a very low birthrate, the underlying reason for the decline seems to be distrust in the future. Many Magyars fear that eventual upheavals might bring new ordeals, and their children's success will be hindered unless they declare themselves Yugoslavs. Private estimates hold that the number of such "renegade" Magyars is somewhere between 75,000 to 100,000. In the last decade alone the Magyars suffered a loss of 60,000 in ethnic strength.

This gradual withering away of Yugoslavia's Hungarians might soon change, however, if only as a reaction to the nationalist regime introduced in Voivodina by Milosevic's Serbia. The Serbian House of Representatives in 1989 approved a uniform educational law aimed at throwing difficulties at minority language education.

Apprehensive about the eruption of Serbian nationalism, the Magyars' attitude is beginning to harden. In March, 1990, they formed a Democratic Alliance of Voivodina's Hungarians which aims to become an umbrella organization for all Magyars in Yugoslavia. An appeal issued by the Alliance said in part:

"Voivodina's Hungarians are watching us in hopeful expectation that we can protect their interests so that they will be spared a relapse into ordeals they would suffer in an anti-democratic society.

By founding this organization we hope to show not only hat the great changes which recently swept East Europe are irreversible, but also that we can express and represent our community's interests... keeping in mind that the developing trend of common European interests is favorable to minorities..."

The Unraveling of Yugoslavia

Whatever may develop in Voivodina cannot be more than a side-show compared to developments on the federal level, where the break-up of the dominant communist parties signaled the falling apart of the Yugoslav federation. Following the pattern set by Hungary in 1989, both Croatia and Slovenia adopted multi-party systems, and held elections in the spring of 1990. As a result, communist power in both republics was eliminated in favor of a free market oriented, democratic society, further fracturing the country. Now Yugoslavia with six republics, three religions, two alphabets, and ethnic rivalries had two different political and economic systems, one communist and the other democratic-capitalist, all existing within an outdated frame-work.

The death-blow to the now unraveling federation was the secession of both Croatia and Slovenia, whose eventual union could have constituted an economically viable, culturally and historically compatible state.

Enter the Serbs who have a historical obsession to dominate all territories where Serbs live, in-eluding regions of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. To achieve this goal, the use of military force is justified in their eyes. The apocalyptic dimensions of the Serbs' war under the guise of "ethnic cleansing" has uprooted 8.8 million mostly non-Serb people and caused hundreds of thousands of casualties. The bloody horrors of this aggression need not be detailed here, because they have become engraved in mankind's memory through television and media headlines. Instead, the obscure diplomatic and psychological background of Serbian behavior will be examined in the following. Before doing so, however, let us cast a glance on how the Serbs' war has affected Hungarians in former Yugoslavia.

The sad answer is that besides the total destruction of a number of villages through ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands of Serbs, dislocated by military operations, fled to Voivodina, further increasing the proportion of Serbs in the population and upsetting the existing ethnic balance. Where the Magyars once represented 34% of the population, now their ratio is only 17%. At the beginning of the war, between 1991-92, about 20,000 Hungarians, mainly young men, escaped from Voivodina to avoid forced conscription into the Serb army. Since then, the number of young men fleeing military service has at least doubled, which makes it nearly impossible to determine the true count of Voivodinan Hungarians. The best estimate places their number at about 300,000, with the large scale exodus of its young men putting the viability of the Voivodinan Magyar population in peril.

Hungary's relations with both Croatia where there are about 25,000 Magyars, and Slovenia (with 10,000 Magyars) are excellent as both countries treat the Magyar minorities in an exemplary way.

The Magyars of Voivodina, however, have become, so to say, a "lost tribe," the single remaining major group of Western Christian culture in the grip of Serb-dominated Byzantine-Slavic world.

The war could probably have been avoided had the United States not unwittingly given a green light to Serbian aggression, when, in the middle of 1990, James Baker, secretary of state of the Bush administration, declared that the United States supported the existence of Yugoslavia and would recognize neither Croatia nor Slovenia as separate states. In other words, the United States would deny these nations the right to self-determination. This statement harmonized with the views of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. The sympathy of Great Britain and France toward Yugoslavia - their own creation through the Treaty of Trianon - was understandable, because every mother loves her child, even if the newborn is deformed. Furthermore, the Russians' sympathy for their Slav brothers in the Balkans is proverbial.

The formation of Slovenia and Croatia (and later Bosnia) as independent states could not have occurred without the unexpectedly strong pressure Germany had applied in their favor. It was not easy, because even when the European Community, along with 39 countries, had recognized their independence, Washington's approval came only slowly and reluctantly. Paris, London, Moscow and Washington were not enthusiastic about the dissolution of Yugoslavia, because of their unspoken apprehension that Germany could use the new states as springboards toward extending her influence in the Balkans.

Pan-Serbianism on the March

The Serbs, being crafty politicians, sensed these apprehensions, and encouraged by Washington's statements, decided to take as much as possible of former Yugoslavia for themselves. Their primary aim was to carve out almost one third of Croatia's territory to establish a new Serbian republic called Krajina. Once the Serbs occupied this area, 15,000 UN troops arrived as "peace-keepers" to preserve the truce.

Having "peace" at their back, the Serbs turned their full fury against Bosnia-Herzegovina, a predominantly Moslem state, successfully annexing 70% of its territory, while exerting constant military pressure on Sarajevo and other still unoccupied Bosnian cities.

Slovenia, thanks to its geographical location, escaped the Serbs' grasp. Not so Croatia, which has struggled from the arrival of about one million refugees, part of the 3.8 million unfortunate people who had been uprooted by Serbian ethnic cleansing. This huge wave of refugees tumbling upon an original population of only 4.5 million was an influx equivalent to 50 million refugees flooding into the United States. As of 1995 Croatia, deprived of 80% of her territory, having lost 87% of her productive capacity, remains in a desperate fight for survival, and may indeed face further fighting against the Serbs. Such a development could trigger an unpredictable expansion of the war.

The Serbs themselves seem confident, sensing the reluctance of European great powers to turn against them decisively. Efforts to bring peace have been characterized by short-lived armistices, ineffective political mediations and empty military threats by UN-NATO forces. All these could very well be a camouflage for an unavowed preventive strategy by Paris, London and Moscow who, in collusion with Washington, were in the past always able to count on the Serbs as allies in two world wars. To use effective military force against the Serbs now would be almost a betrayal. After the collapse of Yugoslavia, a Great Serbia could become their strategic bastion on the Balkan peninsula should Germany try to gain dominance there. If Bosnia and perhaps Croatia must be sacrificed on the altar of this concept, then so be it...

Belgrade was particularly fortunate that in the first two years of Serbian aggression, it had as a supporter Lawrence S. Eagleburger, assistant secretary of state in Washington. This diplomat's sympathy toward Belgrade, his personal friendship with Milosevic, and his business connections in Yugoslavia may have contributed to the Bush administration's pro-Serb policy. Eagleburger's background connections were detailed in the February 24, 1992 issue of the liberal New Republic. On the conservative side, David Funderburk, a former United States ambassador to Bucharest, in his book The Betrayal of America accused Eagleburger of a betrayal of American interests in Rumania and Yugoslavia. (p.23.)

From a historical point of view, the drive for a Great Serbia seems to stem from an unquenchable zeal to extend Serbian control to all territories where Serbs live, even as minorities. This zeal can be traced to the ideology of their Byzantine, orthodox religion, which, in greatly simplified terms, actively promotes the welfare and ambitions of its orthodox members through political means. (p.28.)

An in-depth analysis of Serbian behavior on page 369 in the Annex. -

Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary