Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority

BEYOND AN INTRODUCTION TO A BOOK

The Homeless Years" needs no introduction. The book's very first pages impress the reader deeply. The author, Kálmán Janics, MD, cuts right to the core, not only of his subject. He reveals the hidden feelings and painful needs of millions of his people. My words here serve as a commentary of sorts - as an addition. As a man of letters I am adding my data to the data of a man of science.

When cultural contacts between the nations of Central Europe reopened after the Second World War, the honor befell upon me to represent in Prague the Hungarian Writers' Union at the invitation of the Czech Writers' Union. At the same time a Czech writer was being received in Budapest. It was a part of a kind of exchange program. The people who had suffered so dreadfully through the war and under Fascism were now extending their hands to each other through their artists. This included opera singers and dancers. Their performances demonstrated their talents very successfully. Now the artists of the word were called upon to prove their talents with words.

One reason I had been chosen was that before the war, together with Attila József and Lõrinc Szabó, I translated Czech and Slovak poetry into Hungarian. It was for an anthology that Anton Straka, prewar Press and Cultural Attaché at the Czechoslovak Legation in Budapest, had helped us to edit with mutual enthusiasm, several years before his martyrdom at the hands of the Nazis. We became true friends in the course of this collaboration.

A reception combined with an author's soirée was given at the Prague headquarters of the Czech Writers' Union, all in the context of a truly exceptional hospitality. A distinguished audience gathered. Vitezslav Nezval, the most celebrated Czech poet of that time, was also present.

I had translated more than a dozen of Nezval's poems into Hungarian, including five or six of his ballads. He sat in the front row, next to me; a tall heavy-set man, he stepped forward, and with some effort, onto the podium which served as a stage. By way of opening the evening's program, he read an eight-line poem of mine which he had translated from my works into Czech, evidently as a matter of friendly reciprocation for this occasion. On his way down from the podium, he handed me his manuscript; we shook hands-and even embraced, adding warmth to the ceremony.

Amidst lively applause, the program continued with speeches. None of the speakers missed mentioning that the two peoples-the Czechoslovaks and the Hungarians-whose rulers had so often incited conflicts between them during the recent centuries, have now at last found each other, and from now on will march together as brothers along the path of democracy toward socialism. Hence this day, too, is a feast of joy. It should serve as an example. We should remember it with enthusiasm.

It behooved me to answer. Nezval himself took my arm and led me to the podium, prodding me in French (the language we had conversed in) not to demur and say at least a few words.

Relations between the Czech and the Hungarian people had indeed been almost brotherly in the more distant past. We had had rulers in common, religious movements in common. Yet, to speak of fraternity, or even of friendship between us, would be at this junction of history wishful thinking rather than a statement of facts. This was what I said in reply to the speakers before me. And I added: whoever is sincere about such a friendly wish, must also speak sincerely: is it possible for the wish to come true - and if so, when? And even though we cannot become loving brothers right away, can we at some time in the future become at least good neighbors? In all sincerity, I went on, I can be no bearer of good news for the time being. Hungary's relations with all her neighbors are marked for over a hundred years not by friendship, but by suspicion and by ever more tragic consequences of hostility. No different are Czechoslovakia's relationships with almost all of her neighbors. Considering the psychology of history, it may take at least another hundred years to dissolve the accumulated bad feelings. It takes a long time for nations to recover from the wounds of the mind. We should face these facts of life squarely. Thus at least we can prepare ourselves, if only for a discussion of our problems, for a discussion of what should be our role as intellectuals to bring about a humane atmosphere, so that we may live at least as human beings, in security and trust.

My words were polite, circumspect - more so, perhaps than I have recorded them here. Yet the audience was shocked. And while I spoke the shock turned into chaos. Some people started to loudly exchange their opinions. Nezval intervened, came up to the podium, stood next to me and interpreted, explaining in Czech my French sentences.

He wanted to address the audience. With frowns on his brow, with a stiff expression on his face, he sought the right words. Then, as if to compress all his thoughts into one action, he shook my hands hard, and embraced me tightly. It was dramatic, stage-like, but moving nevertheless. Romantic historical plays are made of such gestures, and they can be moving too.

The tension was relieved. The soirée wound up in a gay mood, with frequent toasts during the reception. Could it be that all of us there were ignorant - hosts and guests alike - of events that happened right that evening which rendered any yearning for friendship between us hopeless, perhaps for even longer than a hundred years to come? Even those who did know of the expulsions and deportations of Hungarians taking place in Czechoslovakia at that time, and of the atmosphere of Inquisition created by these events, probably ascribed these happenings only to bourgeois political shortsightedness, dismissing them, hopefully as a last lawless act of the era of bourgeois politics.

Everyone called me "comrade." Great portraits hung on the walls, of the Marx and Engels, and of the more recent pioneer fighters for international socialism, now at last triumphant.

My elaborately prepared visit included a tour of the country, and in the spirit of exuberant hospitality, we were accompanied by an interpreter and a guide. But in Slovakia, in bilingual Slovak-Hungarian areas, or in those regions where Hungarians were still the majority, we needed no guide or interpreter. My wife and I walked the streets of towns, and small towns which we would have known sight unseen from the pages of our Hungarian history and literature.

One morning, we walked in one of the legendary towns of the "Kuruc" period (when Slovaks and Hungarians fought together against the Habsburgs in the 17th and 18th centuries). It was early, before noon, there were few people on the streets. Suddenly, out of one of the arcaded as gates of a house a loudly yet kindly scolding, kerchiefed older woman dragged onto the street a stubborn little boy, probably her grandson. She did not mince words. It was the harsh vernacular of the Hungarian folklore, mixing grandmotherly sternness with almost sweet kindness: "You stinker, I wish the flames of hell would consume you!" "Do you want me to tie your heels behind you right now?"

I too had heard these incredible threats (that I will have my heels tied behind me) once upon a time as a little boy, but never since. My a curiosity was aroused, I turned around, as if into the past, expecting what other familiar phrases from my childhood may reach my ears.

But as she noticed me, the grandmother instantly switched from Hungarian to Slovak, without changing the passion of her speech. Moreover, as if the pitch of her voice had even risen a bit (for me, the suspicious stranger, to hear more clearly that she was speaking Slovak-and not Hungarian).

I moved on, without turning around again, out of the old woman's and the little boy's hearing range-or, as they might have felt, firing, range. I felt oppressed. Somehow the incident evoked literally the notion of firing range in me. These simple people (the young one still stumbling and the old one already shuffling along), had evidently been frightened by my presence. My wife tarried a while longer around them, then joined me saying that the dialogue between generations resumed in muffled Hungarian, with unabated passion, much less loudly.

This grotesque yet terribly sad episode, revealing repressed layers of everyday existence under terror, was a memorable experience of my study tour, a kind of "live history" lesson. Many more were to follow, on-the-spot personal experiences which, in sufficient numbers, can amount to reliable data, more authentic than statistics. Writers, men of letters and of spirit, collect such data, willy-nilly.

The episodes and data have multiplied over the years. Living with a sensitive mind in the region of the Danube River, and of the Carpathian Mountains, one is bound to feel their impact. And the impact was upsetting for all the people of that region speaking so many different languages.

Experience and data: they rarely meet in our understanding of the real world. They are prone to race against each other; and sentiments some-times overtake logic, or the other way round.

One of the great merits of Kálmán Janics' book is that he lines up his data and then reaches his conclusions invariably by rules of a logical order. Hence, the book can expect to elicit the right reactions, regardless of the readers' partisan feelings. Dr. Janics strives to show us the truth for the benefit of all of us. His first and last words are inspired by the spirit of reconciliation. As if he would say: we all belong to the same world. Indeed, the future of mankind depends on it whether we realize soon enough the meaning of this simple truth. Dr. Janics, a greatly respected professional, is the kind of social scientist whose background is in the natural sciences. Along with his work in sociology, he is a physician. This has a lot to do with both his mastery of the subject and the independence of his judgment. He can delve as penetratingly into centuries-old archival materials as into the everyday present. The doctor's sentences suggest that he keeps his writing instruments clean too. He feels his responsibility when he opens the outer skin. He pays attention-and he expects patience from his patient even when he touches the quick. And he has confidence in curability. Does he recklessly tear up wounds? Not at all. After care. fully treating them with antiseptics, he cuts the wounds and cleans them.

The author invites us to share with him his responsibility. He invites us to work with him, to follow his example, to make the voice of sincerity reach farther and farther, to make it sound loud and full.

Too much bad news about Hungarians living in Rumania has for too long diverted our attention from the Hungarians' plight in Czechoslovakia. Of course, to spread information on the Hungarians' situation in Transylvania in itself was an arduous and risky task, with Hungarian conditions in our own country being what they were. But hard as it was for us, it was a matter of conscience. Also, it was a task requiring a great deal of tact.

We, the "outs" in Hungary, were pitted against the "ins", the powerless against the powerful, and our task was to convince them of the rightness of our cause. It was a battle of principles in which truth was our sole weapon. At the beginning, only a few Hungarian intellectuals joined us in our struggle, and even they were blamed or scolded by many of their colleagues. Why to make waves, they argued, in the relatively calm waters? Under such conditions in our own country, no wonder that whenever urgent me action on behalf of the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia was deemed necessary, even men of good will became worried and asked: why to increase his tensions? Why to open a second front in our own bitter intellectual struggles at home?

Our own controversies strengthened in me the conviction that multi-sided problems call for multi-sided examinations. Let's see first the details. (I prefer not to say ''front." I do now wish to use here this fashionable expression of ours, not even as a metaphor.) Then let's find out the connections between the details. Thus we may be able to get to the roots, to the base, of our problems. Thus we may be able to start building a system of ideas in the light of which solutions can be sought-solutions that are to based on calm thinking and can lead us to lasting peace. Only a just order his thus arrived at in the realm of ideas may guarantee a climate of good spirit and the peace of the mind. We writers are foremost responsible for creating such a peaceful atmosphere. And we Hungarians, wherever in the world we may live, because of our own very grave problems, are particularly called upon to work for peace. Not only as Hungarians, but also as Europeans. And while serving our own people, we serve humanity. This is our creed. And since our concern is justice, we are both justified and obliged to call the world's attention to the fate of our people. We make our case into an affair of the world, and we appeal to the world for its judgment, for its decision.

The world of today, uninformed as it is about us, may be shocked to learn about our case that the Hungarians are the most dispersed ethnic unit in Central Europe, both in absolute and relative figures.

The facts are as follows: According to the last prewar Hungarian census, the peace treaties after World War I transferred 1,660,000 Hungarians to Rumania, 896,000 Hungarians to Czechoslovakia, and 577,000 Hungarians of to Yugoslavia. Altogether three million people, almost one-third of all Hungarians then living in the Danube region. It was done by a dictate, not by true treaties of peace respecting the rights of the people. There were no plebiscites.

What is the number of these so-called Hungarian minorities today? Was there any natural increase in Hungarian minority population? Why is theft growth not proportionate to the increase of the majority populations? These are tricky questions, "many-sided" problems, for a variety of reasons.

The census became unreliable. Simply because it cannot be carried out properly. The available statistics beg for more data.

It becomes ever more difficult to determine how many Hungarians live beyond the borders of Hungary proper today. In places where national affiliation entails advantages and disadvantages, demography no longer belongs among the objective sciences. Current estimates based on data other than the census would bring the number of minority Hungarians closer to four million (which in itself is far from the proportionate increase of the majorities), but the data of the bureaucrats still speak of only three million, the same as well over half a century ago.

And would it alleviate at all the pain of millions of people involved in this battle of figures if statistics were scrupulously correct? To spell out the logical conclusion of our line of thought: Is it possible to measure human feelings with some sort of arithmetic's of morality? Is it possible to measure statistically individual suffering?

The problem of Hungarians treated as second-class citizens because of their mother tongue is becoming an evermore burning issue. Not only for the Hungarian minorities, but for all Hungarians. There are about fifteen million Hungarians in the world today, and they are bound together by lively family ties as well as by close historical and cultural ties. Thus the number of suffering Hungarians is immeasurably greater than the minority statistics of bureaucrats would indicate. The human body jerks at the pricking of the smallest needle. So does the healthy body of a nation when subjected to humiliation, no matter how small is the tissue that ties the members together. In Central and Eastern Europe, ever since the beginning of the last century, the mother tongue has been reacting as the most sensitive skin does. And by now, it is a skin in a state of permanent inflammation. It reacts with utmost sensitivity even to pricks which would have once remained unnoticed.

Ever since their humiliation after World War I, the ethnic community of Hungarians was in an inflamed state of protest. They wanted at the very least to loosen their shackles. Their struggle from the very beginning was in defense of their natural rights as human beings. This is clearly demonstrated by their first rise in protest against their humiliation. It drove them into the camp of extreme internationalism: Communist Hungary's war in the spring and summer of 1919, fought on two fronts (against Czechoslovakia and Rumania) is cited in all Marxist history books as a manifestation of revolutionary patriotism.

A pure cause can become, alas, the victim of dirty political games. Relying on the power of the big imperialism's of Western Europe, the smaller imperialism's of Central and Easter Europe, drew up a cordon sanitaire around the Hungarians. They meant to cripple, and eventually to annihilate their Hungarian rivals. The Horthy regime installed its own imperialism in the shadow of neighboring small imperialism's. It also tried (in vain) to reach an understanding with the big imperialism's which supported Hungary's rival neighbors in the economically crippled cordon sanitaire Finally, Hungary's counterrevolutionary regime joined up with the Fascist imperialist powers poised against the rival small and big imperialistic powers. Thus the justice of the Hungarian people became discredited by the policies of the Hungarian ruling classes.

Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority