Toward a New Central Europe

COVENANT OF THE PEOPLES IN THE CARPATHIAN
AND DANUBIAN BASINS

EUGENE PADANYI-GULYAS

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven: a time to break down, and a time to
build up; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather
stones together." Ecclesiastes, 3

"A state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation."
- Edmund Burke

IN searching for future conditions for a peaceful and happy symbiosis 1) of the peoples in the Carpathian and Danubian Basin we first have to evaluate the bond that ties all the inhabitants of this region to their Creator and which makes them cooperate in his plan as they were taught by Christ.

The resources upon which economy and power are based-such as coal, iron, oil, uranium and gold, as well as the number of populace- enjoy such high regard in our day that is seems unrealistic to attribute any importance to the relationship between man and his Creator within the framework of a political study. It is, however, a fact that the history of this region has been much more strongly influenced by this relationship than by anything else. Venceslas, Stephen and several of his descendants have gained the respect of their people, as saints of their churches. John Huss was burned at the stake because of his faith. Prince Apafy like Joshua, had offered himself and his household for the service of the Lord; and in his land, in Transylvania, freedom of religion was guaranteed by law, for the first time in history. The freedom fight of Rakoczi in 1703-1711 was fought by Hungarian, German, Ruthenian, Slovak and Rumanian insurgents under flags bearing the inscription "pro Deo et Libertate." Croatian and Austrian troops under the leadership of Nicholas Zrinyi and Frater Capistran, along with Hungarians, died in their battles against the Turks with "God" and "Jesus" on their lips. All these, the peoples of this region considered

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more important than those natural resources which were otherwise at their disposal. That the situation evolved the way it did is to be attributed to the teaching of Christ. The various interpretations of these throughout the centuries, and the intellectual battles resulting from them, prove that these peoples, amidst all hardships, always considered themselves the tools of their Creator in accomplishing their tasks in their historic workshop. Their poets, writers and preachers gave expression from time to time to an unmistakable awareness of their calling. We do not think that this belongs only to the past. Gun smoke was still hovering over the barricades when the Hungarian workers of Csepel, in October, 1956, demanded freedom of education and religious instruction for their children. The desire to discover the laws of the Creator has not ceased but has become deeper among these peoples.

Such recent ramifications of the Mediterranean-based Christian culture as those of our contemporaries Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Julian Huxley who raised sociology from futile experimentation into the ranks of a true science, raise new hope that the peoples of the Danube Region who have always responded vigorously to contemporary intellectual movements will start a new Golden Age through a modern interpretation of the two thousand year old Christian truths. If, for instance, it were possible to accept as a basic tenet that no people desires to further itself at the expense of another-and this was expressed by more than one emigrant 2) -then an example of the practical political application of the Second Commandment would be achieved. The consequences of this can easily be seen. The spirit of solidarity would lead the way, instead of deportation, forced displacement of populations, genocide, destruction of historical monuments and falsification of history, and instead of jealousy, envy, hatred and revenge, the constructive forces of cooperation and magnanimity would restore all the destruction witnessed and suffered by all peoples during the last decades.

The other basis of their symbiosis-and this is still within the spiritual realm-consists of the unity of the civilization of this region. This is easily noticed if we compare this area, for instance, with that to the east of the Carpathians. The literacy, educational, communications and legal systems, social institutions, the traditions of commerce, the refreshing impact of the influx of ideas from the continent's historical movements such as the Renaissance and the Reformation can be traced and found to be different from the characteristics of the areas east of the Carpathians. The standard of living is generally similar within this area and remarkably higher in comparison to the regions east of the Carpathians.

It is obvious this civilization could hardly have become so homogeneous, without the aid of its geographical unity. One glance at a geophysical map that is free of present political boundaries will explain

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the unprejudiced scientific opinion according to which the Carpathian Basin with the immediately connected Danubian Valley regions is one of the most ideal geographical entities in the world. Those who neglect or belittle the significance of these circumstances do not give good service to the cause of future symbiosis because this Godgiven geographical unity is one of the most highly prized possessions of these peoples. Even the advance of technology does not reduce the significance of the Carpathians that encircle this area and affect its climate, commerce and defense. The rivers and their valleys do not create boundaries, but a network of life streams giving direction to a whole system of movements of civilization. The urbanization, the balance between industry and agriculture and the distribution of commercial and cultural centers is the product of the developing and directing work of centuries. The best proof of this is the growing individuailty of certain areas which has become common knowledge. Without letting ourselves stray into sentimental areas-whose sociological significance, however, is not to be underestimated, and admitting that emotions can be stony political facts-it is worth while to recall what prestige the almost endless list of products from the Liptocheese to the Kecskemet apricots enjoyed, and in some cases still enjoy, which through the natural interchange of goods have become accepted as popular assets within the whole region. 3) It is inconceivable to the sober mind, how the Czech textile industry could be promoted by excluding the Hungarian market and by making all Hungarians mistrustful towards anything coming from Prague. The swine husbandry of Serbia and Bacska and its relationship to the Austrian and Hungarian markets was a constant subject of agricultural debate during the first quarter of the century. It is not likely that the consumption within Yugoslavia ever replaced these excluded markets. It is not our object to penetrate into the details of production, distribution and foreign trade. We merely wish to state that those tendencies, which contrary to rational thought, dissolved the commercial unity of this region and complicated it by creating an unnatural development of ill-planned new industry, ill-conceived traffic regulations and artificially established price controls; are all diametrically opposed to contemporary efforts in world economy, the aim of which is the planned joining of larger producing and consuming areas and emancipation and increase of their trade and exchange by doing away with customs barriers. In this evolving new world, the peoples of the Carpathian and Danube Basin regions can hardly afford the luxury of mutual isolationism. The restoration of broken ties would probably cause fewer headaches and require the settling of less significant disagreements than the coal regions of the Ruhr, the Saar region, the Benelux, the Common Market or the Cyprus problems, and these are all of the past.

It is unnecessary to take much time to discuss the dangers to this

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area from the outside. Even the weakening Austro-Hungarian empire was able to maintain a fifty-year-long period of peace through its united defense which successfully resisted all aggressions. As soon as this united defense ceased in the wake of discord among the respective nations, the whole region became easy prey first to German National Socialists and then to Russian Communist aggrandizement. The bitter experiences still remind us of the bloody reality of those catastrophic mistakes of which millions of innocents became victims. Still, we have to mention briefly, that those military and economic advantages which certain groups of this region enjoyed through the temporary domination of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism are hardly proportionate to the sacrifices which they had to make in losing their independence. Our Slovak neighbors have repeatedly reproached the Czechs, publicly, as have the Croatians the Serbians because of their disappointment over their expectations of Slavic brotherhood. That the founders of Czechoslovakia have never considered the wants of the Ruthenians was proven characteristically when Benes himself threw all of the Carpathian Ruthenians - together with the Hungarian and German populace-to the Soviets in 1945. At that time, 27 years after the proclamation of the Wilson Doctrine, it was not popular any more to speak of self-determination-a fact which does not lessen at all the monstrosity of this notorious example of political horse-trade per formed by unconscientious politicians, dealing with the lives of innocent peoples.

Hindsight is easier than foresight-yet the former is not without value. All peoples may accept the words of one of the Rumanian immigrants:4) "We have been blind. Our lack of foresight, determination and bravery drove us first into the arms of Hitler's Germany and then of Stalin's Russia." If the Austrians, Hungarians, Rumanians, Croatians, Serbians, Ruthenians and Czechs had, in 1937, in place of questionable speculations, thought fast, entered into an alliance and announced that they would, in case of conflict among the major powers, follow a course of mutual neutrality, and their willingness to defend their neutrality with arms; furthermore, even if they had announced this in 1939 without Austrians and Czechs who had already lost their independence-the history of the last decades of this region would have been shaped differently and the horrors of World War II would have been reduced.

Although we have to trust that the feasibility of solving the conflicts between the major powers by war is becoming more and more questionable, we should not forget that which happened yesterday can still happen tomorrow. What we passed up in 1937 and 1939, we have to compensate for as soon as the power to decide is in our hands. No major power or international guarantee exists which would make the combined defense of our own peace and security superfluous. One of the most solid foundations for the happy and peaceful

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symbiosis of those peoples is the necessity of their common defense against mutually threatening external dangers.

The awareness of the danger of outside attack finds itself rooted in deep historical layers. The peoples of this region all experienced together the Turkish threat in the 15th-17th centuries which was troubling all Europe and which was stopped here at the expense of a century and a half of occupation of a major part of the region. It was under Islamic pressure that significant groups of our peoples north and west of the Balkans established ties with one another. And it was due to the many lives lost during the Turkish wars that resettlement followed in the opposite direction, sending a part of the German population as settlers from west to east. This sequence of partly involuntary and partly planned movement of population colored and blended the anthropological features of this region into what they are today. Complicated as it was, the ethnographic character of the region created a thorny problem for scholars. Although significant islands quite clearly reserved their characteristics, generally, they are pretty well fused. The part of the population which belonged to the middle and upper strata of education-which could study their ancestry with some interest - could rarely brag of being of pure strain. Many of those bearing well-sounding Hungarian names were held as small children on the knees of grandparents bearing German Serbian, Croatian, etc., names. We shall not even guess what these other names contained on their own background. Bearers of pure German names could often point to more Hungarian ancestors than the other way around. All this mixing continued through the centuries without any planned effort or organized restraint and without noticeable detriment. The distant observer can hardly shake off the impression that the historic experiences of their common fate formed the background for this process. Not much was said about it. It was natural. It was not restricted to the memories of catastrophes. Not long ago one of the representatives of the Slovak people referred to "the joy which we had in common in 1848."5) It is a fact, however, that the warning: "The Tartars are coming" has been passed down from mothers to children for six centuries after the Mongolian invasion in this region. It was their descendants who threw in 1956 "Molotov cocktails" at the Soviet tanks to seal with new blood, new sacrifices, and with the memories of new catastrophes, the common fate of future generations.

The functions of the Covenant

It is an historical fact that in the last ten centuries only the Hungarians were able to maintain a stable and permanent constitutional system in this region. This has been a sore point with the Slovak and Croatian peoples who lived in this region and were more or less

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organized even before the Hungarians established their home there in 896 AD under the leadership of Arpad. Whereupon the Hungarians recall the realm of Attila which extended over this territory until 453 AD and with whom the Hungarians claim relationship and whose descendants, the Szeklers, have been permanent residents of Transylvania ever since. Such arguments and proofs of priority lose their importance in view of the historical vistas opened by modern research. Placing the region in this perspective, it would be difficult for any of its peoples to mistake themselves for "the chosen people." The earliest remains of the Homo Mousteriensis 6) of the Ice Age were found in the Subalyuk and Krapina caves. Since the earliest findings of human life within the Carpathian Basin, there have been discovered on Mount Avas a pastoral people called the Protocampigniens; then, after the Mediterranean and the Homo Nordicus types, the findings of the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages all prove that within this region in very early times there developed a cultural center which due to the conditions created by the relative isolation of the basin was able to attain certain independence and develop new human values. These are the words of historians, not of the politicians. Their foundation consists of such facts which could hardly be influenced by political consideration. But if we seek, today, a brief but correct definition of the real function of the peoples of the Carpathian and Danubian Basins, we could hardly find one better than this: They want to preserve their independence resulting from their relative geographical and ethnic seclusion, so that they can create new human values, and add new colors to life evolving on our globe.

This function is in complete harmony with the law of evolution. All such political and sociological movements which hinder or stop the independence and the development of new human values in this region are antievolutionary and, therefore, cannot be lasting. Regardless of the color or symbol of the political interests which attempt to rob the people of this region from the achievement of their function as indicated by science and historical facts, they must with united strength rise against them if they do not want to perish.

Viewed from this angle, functional disorders must arise if a given political system-though maintaining the geographical unity of this region-hinders the individual development of its ethnic elements. Trouble is also created if the ethnic development of relatively large groups of the respective people is assured, but the region itself is subdivided by artificial political boundaries, which increases the number of minority groups and hinders their development. The ethnic map of the Carpathian Basin and similar areas of mixed populace cannot in truth be drawn up by covering certain areas by particular colors signifying nationalities. Any such map would necessarily be untruthful. Finally, trouble is paramount if the geographical unity of the region is disrupted, the free development of the ethnic groups

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is hindered and, on top of it, the whole disjointed and upset area is forced to serve the interests of outside powers.

The history of the past four or five generations produced clinical examples of the above functional disorders and the results developed accordingly: in place of progress there has been decline; in place of happiness, misery reigns over the entire area.

Until this trouble is eliminated, the Carpathian and Danubian Basins cannot fulfill their function. The unity of this region has to be reestablished and the free functioning of its ethnic energies must be guaranteed by a new covenant. The ethnic and linguistic differences are not a hindrance, but an advantage; for if they are permitted to develop in peace and in free competition, they will promote evolutionary humanism.7) As a result, new human values will come forth. The advantages of this mutual influence have repeatedly occurred in history But our duty is not only the ennobling of the human values of this region but also showing good examples for our unsettled globe, which has similar problems in many places. The so-called "big powers" often hinder development because of their selfish interests and because they are able to defend these interests with their overpowering strength, even at the expense of the goals of humanity. The period of international politics based on the so-called "balance of power" and on colonization is over. It is impossible to bring back the days of Ghengis Khan, Attila, Alexander the Great, the various Caesars, emperors, "Fuhrers" and dictators. The unrelenting forces of the rapid societal and technological development of the world today doom to failure all experiments aimed at dominating the world ideologically, economically or militarily. Oppression and exploitation become senseless and are replaced by solidarity and cooperation for the common human goals. Those world powers which at present feel capable of fulfilling their wants at all costs are understandably less inclined to accept the theory of solidarity and cooperation in the false belief that they cannot receive, only give. However, such international political applications of the give-and-take theory are also outdated. The states that solve the problems of ethnically mixed population by means of federation, though not significant in numbers, offer more valuable aid by their example to solve world problems than those nations operating strictly through power. The balancing role of the healthy, vigorous and respected middle powers is striking and the experienced people of the Carpathian Basin are definitely lacking in those world forums in which at present, the extremists' voices are so overpowering and aggressiveness often squeezes out inexperience and naivite.

Historical research 8) has also determined that the Carpathian Basin had developed into a station for the migration from Asia Minor across the Balkans to the North during the Bronze Age. At the end of the Neolithic Age the traces of migration from north to south were

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discovered through which the first Greek tribes arrived from somewhere in Central Europe to the Balkans. From a central location that developed in this region spread far to the north and south Europe's richest bronze art, sending knives, daggers, swords, helmets, richly ornamented jewelry and dishes through its commerce even into Italy. The jewelry of princes and kings were made of gold from the rich mines of this region. During the Iron Age, around 1200 BC, the first Pre-Scythian horseback riders settled in the Big and Little Plains of Hungary and the Viennese Basin bringing with them a mobile equestrian, nomadic culture developed in the East. At the same time, the mountain shepherds of the Caucasians settled in the Highlands. The archaeologists are confronted with the same findings of this period in Italy as in the Carpathian Basin, from where at this time the Dorians are being pushed to the south to destroy the Mycenalan culture of the Bronze Age and, through their later descendants, someday to build Rome. Along with the Scythians of the East, the Celts of the West also arrived in the Basin. When the Roman Empire conquered Pannonia, it found Illyr, Celtic, Sarmatic, Jazig and Germanic peoples in peaceful coexistence pursuing their trades. The following ten centuries are recorded as the history of Hungary, but it also includes the fact that this country until recently protected the Saxons who lived in Transylvania as a nation. When the wheel of fate turned, Transylvania became the bridge through which the new Rumanian state entered into the Western community. 9) Being a part of Hungary for ten centuries did not force the Slovak or Croatian people to lose their ethnic individualities or their ambition for national independence. What advantages each of the nationalities had within Hungary is still to be examined and written in an unbiased era. Today's observer of political events can merely state that had this region been patterned after modern American democracy only for one century, it would hardly have been possible for any of the nationalities to preserve their individual language or national culture. Neither Joseph II, nor Chancellor Metternich can be blamed if the populace of the whole region did not become German speaking. Vienna did her best. The "camarilla" is not responsible for the failure.

The function of the Carpathian Basin remains basically the same as that taught by history: the highway of peoples and migrations; the bridge between East and West, North and South; the international trading post; the ancient center of commerce. It is the meeting place of ideological trends, first to be reached by the Renaissance and early by the Reformation whose followers lived there in freedom alongside Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox followers of Christ. These peoples react to the ideas of the American and French revolutions in the same way that iron filings do to a magnet. The experimentation of the social revolution which began in the 19th century caused this area to be regarded as its constant proving ground which it remains

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to this day. George Washington's cavalry was organized by a Hungarian Hussar colonel and the civilization of the United States was built with the help of millions of immigrants from this region. Their grateful descendants were first to raise a statue to George Washington in a foreign country 10) and the name of Woodrow Wilson was not less known to these school children than to those in the United States. The principle of peoples' self-determination smashes historical boundaries even though never really put into practice by plebiscites and the peoples of this region express their enthusiasm together and suffer together with all the enthusiastic and suffering peoples of this troubled world which has shrunk due to today s means of communication and transportation. Those human values that came about in the relative seclusion of this region have now been tempered in the forges of two world wars and the persecutions following them. Under the blows of the hammers of the Slavs of the East and the Germans of the West a kind of man whose historical workshop is the Carpathian and Danube Basin was forged.

Viewed from a distance, however, it becomes clear that even iron will melt if the flame is hot enough. If the people of this region wish to remain useful members of the human community they will have to reach that period of peaceful creativity and constructive cooperation without which the more fortunate Western civilizations could never have developed and become strong. The tendency of the Slavs and Germans to aspire to power through racial theories may be restrained by growing international order. But it is left to the peoples of the Basin to break these waves by united efforts and build sturdy dikes in the interest of their own well-being and world peace.

The fulfillment of the functions indicated by the past and present obliges us to reach urgent conclusions and deeds.

Toward a New Central Europe