Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority

1947: THE YEAR OF THE POPULATION EXCHANGE

Slovak nationalist hysteria had shown by 1947 signs of running out of steam. The impact of international moral censure of Slovak persecution of the Hungarians, too, had slowly been felt. Also the Yugoslav example of following a policy of reconciliation with the Hungarians could not have passed unnoticed. Hungarian rule over South Slovakia during the wartime years and the relatively tolerant Hungarian policy toward the Slovak national minority of that territory could not be compared to the military and political brutalities committed during the war in the Hungarian-occupied Voivodina province of Yugoslavia; yet, Tito's regime, after a brief reign of terror, followed no such policy of retribution as Czechoslovakia did against the Hungarian national minority. The Czechoslovak press responded to signs of rapprochement between Yugoslavia and Hungary with a mixture of embarrassment and irritation. For instance, Obzory, organ of the Czech People's Party wrote in January 1947:

We criticized Yugoslavia because it did not coordinate its policies with ours vis-à-vis Hungary, although Hungary's aggressive tone against the democratic Czechoslovak Republic has not ceased to this day. We also pointed out that Hungarian-Yugoslav flirting has repercussions in the West, which is being exploited against us. In vain are we the nation of Masaryk, we are being denounced for dealing more brutally with the Hungarian minority than Tito's Yugoslavia, a country not exactly renowned for coddling its citizens . . . The Russian-language Novaja Vengrija, published in Budapest, carried a statement by [Hungarian] Foreign Minister János Gyöngyösi in connection with the Hungarian-Yugoslav agreement on population exchange and river traffic . . . The framework of this accord makes provisions for a voluntary exchange of 40,000 people, under no pressure of force whatsoever. Maybe the Hungarians are hoping not entirely without reason that this measure adopted by Yugoslavia will become a model for other Slav states, such as Czechoslovakia.¹

At the same time, the Czechoslovak press also voiced its disappointment over the failure to mobilize all the American Slovaks in support of the measures directed against the Hungarian minority. According to the Slovak paper, Rol'nicka Nedel'a, among the Slovaks in America "only the left supports the [anti-minority] Kosice government program of Czechoslovakia."²

In Czechoslovakia, too, the popular fever favoring deportations of national minorities was diminishing, if only because by the end of 1946 the deportation of the Germans had practically ended. Thus, in the wake of forcing the implementation of the principle of the homogeneous Slav "nation-state," new tasks of rebuilding confronted both the public and the leaders of the nation. First of all, there was the problem of settling the lands left vacant by deportations; to place, that is, under Slav control the former Sudeten German industry now struggling with a lack of man-power. Also, it became a necessity to make the public forget as soon as possible the aftermath of radical solutions by expulsion, which was not always pleasant to Czech observers. Obzory quoted a German broadcast from Berlin on the post-expulsion situation of the Sudeten Germans, sounding far from pleasant to Czech ears:

With the last two transports, which arrived in the Soviet zone of occupation on November 30, 1946, the resettlement of the Germans from Czechoslovakia is completed. Of the 2,900,000 Germans one million arrived in the Soviet zone . . . Along with the forcibly resettled came 45,000 German anti-Fascists, who although they received authorization to remain in Czechoslovakia, preferred to leave bringing their belongings along. These re-settlers will become the initiators and founders of new branches of industry; moreover, they will solidify the anti-Fascist character of the society, both in industry and administration.³

In the wake of efforts to liquidate the Hungarian minority, the Hungarians seemed not quite out of place in Czechoslovakia. Yet no one was willing to take the responsibility for drawing sensible conclusions from the absurdity of the situation. Neither individuals nor organizations had the courage to propose new solutions. Only privately could one hear ironic remarks regarding the handling of the Hungarian issue resulting in a dead end.

There were some who still insisted that efforts at a total expulsion of the Hungarians should be continued. The Government, however, opted for going ahead with the execution of limited expulsions as provided by the population exchange agreement and the peace treaty. Almost simultaneously with the ending of deportations, the press began a propaganda campaign in favor of carrying out without delay the population exchanges between Hungarian and Czechoslovakia. And the tone of this propaganda was as hostile as ever against Hungary and the Hungarians. Setting the ultra-chauvinist tone of the campaign, Práca, the Slovak daily of the trade unions, wrote in late February 1947: "In Paris they signed the peace treaty with Hungary, but this treaty does not at all compel Hungary to carry out the population exchange agreement . . . Is it possible that even after signing the peace treaty with Hungary, hundreds of our compatriots [in Hungary] should die of hunger, because of the cold winter, or from the bullets of Hungarian gendarmes, only because they applied for transfer [to Slovakia] ?"⁴

Thus the press tried to sustain the anti-Hungarian nationalist mood by stories about the death of hundreds of Slovaks in Hungary and about volleys fired at the Slovaks by Hungarian gendarmes. At the same time, the Slovak press expected the Hungarian peasants of Slovakia to cultivate their lands conscientiously, to produce even under the most hopeless conditions. In the third year of total lawlessness, the agriculture of the Hungarian-populated regions had become completely paralyzed. In the spring of 1947, the former rich wheat fields of Southern Slovakia presented the sorry spectacle of fields laying fallow. The Bratislava Pravda discussed the bankrupt state of agriculture in the Hungarian regions of Slovakia:

Last week members of the Slovak National (council visited the counties of Szepsi and Királyhelmec . . . The farmers of Hungarian nationality. as could be readily ascertained. had made no preparations for sowing. They use no fertilizer, the wheat has been ground and eaten long ago there is nothing left to sow in the spring. The catastrophic lack of seed is accompanied by new difficulties. . . the estates confiscated from the Hungarians have not yet been distributed . . . the Hungarian farmers of South Slovakia do not care to cultivate the productive lands. hence the proposal of the Minister of Agriculture is perfectly justified that he owners of the non-productive lands be severely punished.⁵

The Hungarian Government was eager to ease the plight of he Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia. Uppermost in the mind of Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyöngyösi was the fate of the Hungarians deported to the Czech lands. He arrived in Prague in mid-March 1947, to discuss the matter with Czechoslovak State Secretary Clemetitis. According to information leaked out to the press, the fleeting led nowhere. Gyöngyösi proposed that the Hungarians mobilized for labor service be allowed to return home. The Czechoslovaks termed this "interference in domestic affairs," and negotiations with the Hungarians were broken off.⁶

Later in March, a 30-member Hungarian government delegation, headed by Special Envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary Pál Sebestyén, arrived in Bratislava in an attempt to find a way out of a deadlocked situation. It was announced that Foreign Minister Gyöngyösi would arrive later. The negotiations with the Czechoslovak Government delegation headed by State Secretary Clementis, began on March 24 in nearby Pudmerice, in the castle of the Slovak Writers' Association. The results of the conference came to be known as the Bratislava Agreement.

The Hungarian delegation found itself ill a difficult position with its hands tied by agreements for the exchange of populations, while threatened by the possibility of resumed deportations. Surrender was the only choice it bad to end the deadlock. No official communiqué was issued on the Bratislava Agreement. The events that followed indicated however that the Hungarians consented to begin the population exchange as soon as possible, regardless of the predicament of other Hungarians, in particular of he deportees or of certain moot issues, such as the matter of masses of Hungarians indiscriminately pronounced "war criminals" by the Slovak Peoples' Courts.

At the Pudmerice meeting, the Czechoslovak delegation was unwilling to discuss as a matter of principle the fate of those Hungarians who were not included in the population exchange agreement. In particular, they consistently characterized the Hungarian appraisal of the deportations as "interference in internal affairs. "The press eagerly supported this point of view. According to Práca. "The Hungarians again include proposals whereby they interfere in our internal affairs, although they know full well in Budapest that we cannot discuss the mobilization of Slovakia's Hungarian population for labor service. "The paper also underlined Czechoslovakia's tight to became a "nation-state," stressing that "there will be no minorities among us and we will sign no accord for their defense,"⁸

The execution of population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary began shortly after the Bratislava Agreement in late March. But the atmosphere between the two nations remained as hostile as ever. It is worth quoting to this effect a speech Andrej _iak, a Slovak deputy, delivered around this time in the National Assembly:

The pure Slav character of our Republic is at least as important to the Slovaks as it is to the Czechs. Total Slav character, however, can only be achieved with the total expulsion of the Hungarians from Slovakia, just as we had done it with the Germans. The question arises [in this matter] whether our foreign policy had not failed to take the necessary steps even before the termination of the war. "Whether everything had been done on the part of our government to encourage the Great Powers to solve the Hungarian problem at the Potsdam conference, . . . Our government is willing to observe all agreements in the spirit of justice and honor. However, due to their character and to the morality of their diplomacy, the Hungarians are incapable of keeping their word, they have no honor. "Thus, due to the despicable character of our negotiating partners, our brothers in Hungary are perishing and dying . . . The real face of the false Hungarian has revealed itself. Taking advantage of the international political conjuncture, the Hungarians have deliberately obstructed the execution of the agreement . . . Our blood curdles in our veins, we clench our fists, when we think of it, that for a year now the democratic Czechoslovak Republic has been held incheck by a country which had been defeated unconditionally as a German satellite, a country which is the prototype of feudalism, gentryism and political baseness.⁹

The backing down of the Hungarian Government at the Pudmerice meeting signaled the end of the Hungarian policy of procrastination. The Hungarian surrender became common knowledge by the beginning of April. It also became obvious from a complete reorganization of the Hungarian Resettlement Committee in Budapest. The Slovak press, hailed the turn of events with satisfaction: "The end of the career of Mr. Jócsik" [Lajos Jócsik, Hungarian State Secretary in charge of resettlement] , thus did the headline of the Bratislava Èas inform the public of the expected new course. 'He [Jócsik] wanted to prevent the success of the Hungarian. Czechoslovak negotiations . . . According to Kossuth Népe the cause of his resignation was that his office was impotent from the start and was unable to fulfill the basic requirements for the resettlement of Hungarians from Slovakia."

Èas went on denouncing Mr. Jócsik, (incidentally, a well-known Hungarian progressive intellectual in interior Czechoslovakia): "The agency of Jócsik carried out its public activities with official support from the highest circles of government since July of last year. This was the agency which rejected the applications of Slovaks asking for resettlement from Hungary. The Czechoslovak Government protested several times against the practices of this agency but without any results. The employees of Jócsik continued to persecute our brothers; moreover, they became even more aggressive. It was clear that the Hungarians do not want to carry out the population exchange agreement, but use all sorts of excuses for making it imperative."'¹⁰

A final agreement on the execution of the population exchange-according to a Èas report dated May 29, 1947-was completed and signed by Clementis and Gyöngyösi at the end of May at Trenèianská Teplice. Although the Trenèianská Teplice document was merely a technical matter, the Èas report tried to arouse sanguine expectations as if the question of expelling a further 200,000 Hungarians-a claim Czechoslovakia was pressing unsuccessfully at the Paris peace conference-had also been resolved. Said the Èas report: "They also agreed to continue negotiations on the matter of a further 200,000 Hungarians, following ratification of the peace treaty by the national assemblies of both countries." The Slovak paper concealed the fact that the peace treaty relegated the Czechoslovak claim to bilateral negotiations without any obligation on Hungary's part to endorse the plan of expelling an additional 200,000 Hungarians from Czechoslovakia.

The Czechoslovak press, however, was right when hinting at a change in the Hungarian policy toward the Hungarian minorities. Èeskoslovensky Vychod was right in saying: "Foreign Minister Gyöngyösi had to change his course. Otherwise the Czechoslovak-Hungarian negotiations' . would have remained impossible. Even so the negotiations proceeded haltingly, and there was a danger that they might collapse again. Still, it was possible to clear the most serious obstacles. The activities of the [Hungarian] Social Democrats [on the verge of being absorbed into the Communist Party] contributed most to this success

Ever since the end of World War II, Hungary's concern for the Hungarian minorities in the neighboring states has been branded as "irredentism," a term which the Danubian victors over defeated Hungary turned into a synonym of "Fascism." This new concept was fully accepted by the postwar Hungarian Communist regime following the collapse of the Coalition Government in the spring of 1947. It became a guiding principle in dealing with Hungarian minorities, and it remains basically valid to this day. Essentially it is a surrender to the nationalism of the neighboring states by supporting, through passive cooperation, the forcible assimilation of the Hungarian minorities, presently amounting to over one-fourth of the entire Hungarian nation.

In the context of Hungarian-Slovak relations, "irredentism" has been a constant charge of the Czechoslovak press against János Gyöngyösi, Foreign Minister of the Hungarian Coalition Government. He was specifically charged with "a renewal of Hungarian irredentism" during the last stages of Hungarian-Slovak negotiations on population exchange in the spring of 1947. The target of Slovak press attack was Gyöngyösi's statement to Swiss journalists in which he said:

The circumstance that the peace treaty contains no measures for the protection of the rights of the Hungarian population in Czechoslovakia or in Rumania is most painful for Hungary. Since more than one-fourth of the Hungarian nation lives in the neighboring states, it is the obligation of the government to ensure basic human rights and true civil equality for these minorities. It should be in the best interest of the neighboring states to arrive at the true co-operation which the Hungarian government is striving for . . . The fact that the peace treaty make it possible for Hungary to join the United Nations is an encouraging sign. We must hope that this circumstance will eventually lead to a mitigation of the provisions of the peace treaty.

In Slovak eyes, even this conciliatory statement by the Hungarian Foreign Minister, emphasizing merely human rights of the Hungarian minorities, and not Hungary's territorial claims, served as a proof of sinful "endeavors of frredenttsm."¹²

The actual resettlement of the Hungarians from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, according to the March Bratislava Agreement, began in early April 1947. The Slovak press sounded triumphant:

The preparations for the expulsion of the Hungarians began on April 8, 1947. 45 Hungarian families had been selected for resettlement from Nagymácséd, and 7 from Nagyfödémes in the county of Galánta; and a further 12 families from Tergenye in the county of Léva. On Friday, in the evening of the 11th, the first transport was ready to leave. Two trains were available; the first one numbered 7236, left on April 12 in the wee hours of the morning. Everyone was relieved: Finally!"¹³

Thus began the expulsion legally, on the basis of an agreement between the countries. By June 11, 177 Hungarians were forcibly resettled from their thousand-year old homes.¹⁴ The Slovak press, however, was not satisfied with the speed and scope of expulsions. Národná Obroda urged mass expulsions with confiscation's of all "war criminals," who 'participated in the expulsion of several thousand Slovaks from Southern Slovakia [after the Vienna Award of 1938 which transferred that territory to Hungary] into truncated Slovakia."¹⁵ As I noted earlier, the number of Slovaks expelled under the Horthy regime from the territories awarded to Hungary in 1938 did not exceed 5,000. On the other hand, the number of minority Hungarians indiscriminately pronounced "war criminals" by the Slovak People's courts fluctuated around 100,000.

Paradoxically, the mass migrations forcibly imposed by victorious Czechoslovakia both on Hungarians (expelled from Slovakia to Hungary) and Slovaks (resettled from Hungary to Slovakia) has met with less than universal satisfaction among the Czechoslovaks. Thus, the Slovak press took notice of a "whispering campaign" which denounced the Slovaks resettled from Hungary to Slovakia as being "basically also Hungarians or adventurers."¹⁶

Before long, more and more reports reflecting disillusionment with the population exchange appeared in the Czechoslovak press. Èas censured "the greediness of certain resettled Slovaks who, while they arrived almost completely penniless, came up right away with impossible demands."¹⁷ Nás Národ published an even more sweeping criticism:

The further the resettlement action proceeds, the more the initial impetus loses its strength. Many of the settlers are dissatisfied and overly demanding, although their demands are unjustified . . . It is inadmissible that a year after a person has applied for Slovak nationality he still continues to speak Hungarian and shows no inclination to learn the Slovak language. It is amazing that not only as far as language is concerned, but as regards their feelings as welt, the settlers continue to jive under the spell of Budapest. They are Slovaks on paper only. Such persons do not fulfill our expectations, and will not consolidate the southern areas, but will remain harmful or destructive elements.

The mixed Slovak reactions to the population exchange were noted in the Czech press as well:

A source of pain for present-day Slovakia is the so-called returnees from Hungary . . . Unfortunately, about most of them, it cannot be said that they are Slovaks. The Slovaks themselves are not pleased with them, either from an ethnic or from a moral point of view. These are people mostly without Slovak national consciousness, often they do not even know the [Slovak] language. For instance, the miners who came to Handlová from Hungary demanded Hungarian schools for their children . . .¹⁹

Janics: Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority