Hungarian Minorities Remain Issue in Eastern Europe

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In the April 6 parliamentary elections in Hungary, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) right-of-centre government was returned to power, with 44.5 per cent of the popular vote, good for 133 of 199 seats in the Hungarian parliament.

Gabor Vona’s ultra-nationalist party Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), with its anti-Roma and anti-Semitic views, increased its strength, winning 24 seats on almost 21 per cent of the vote.

The left-wing five-party Unity Alliance received 26 per cent of the vote, and 37 seats.

Fidesz and Jobbik are irredentist parties. What does that mean? It goes all the way back to the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the First World War, when Hungary lost more than two-thirds of its territory and population. Right-wing Hungarians have been trying to get some of it back ever since.

The Hungarians and Austrian Germans, the two ruling nations within the multinational state, ended up on the losing side in the First World War, and the Habsburg-ruled empire was dismantled. A host of new states emerged, carved out of the defeated dual monarchy.

By the Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920, the peace agreement forced upon the defeated Hungarians, much of their part of the empire was parceled out to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.

It left Hungary with 93,073 square kilometres, only a little more than 30 per cent of the 325,411 square kilometres that had constituted the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary within Austria-Hungary.

As well, 3.2 million of the ethnically Magyar (Hungarian) population of 10.7 million would find themselves outside its shrunken borders.

Every territory lost by Hungary did have a majority of non-Hungarians, but almost one-third of the population in these regions remained Hungarians -- a significant minority.

They now faced a difficult situation because they were instantly converted from being a ruling elite to a “minority” in a new country-- and now ruled over by peoples not too fond of their former masters.

Transylvania, which was part of the Hungarian homeland but which had been settled by large numbers of Romanian immigrants in recent centuries, was turned over in its entirety to Romania, despite the fact that it contained 1.6 million Magyar inhabitants.

Between the two world wars, an aggrieved Hungary harbored designs on its neighbours, seeking to regain its former lands. The country’s flag flew permanently at half-mast to remind its citizens of the loss of territory.

In the Second World War, Hungary joined the Nazi-led Axis powers to regain its lost territories, and it did temporarily acquire parts of Slovakia, Yugoslavia and, most importantly, northern Transylvania. But the war was lost and these territories reverted to their previous rulers.

Because of Hungary’s past behavior, its neighbors perceive any act of concern over the fate of its diaspora as a sign of nascent irredentism.

In 2010 Orban’s government passed a law declaring June 4 a “Day of National Unity” of Hungarians all over the world, in remembrance of the Treaty of Trianon, while Jobbik dreams of a Greater Hungary.

Hungary’s decision in 2010 to allow ethnic Hungarians living abroad to apply for dual citizenship sparked an angry response from neighbouring Slovakia, home to roughly 500,000 ethnic Hungarians, about a tenth of the country's population.

A Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP) has asked for the creation of an ethnic Hungarian-majority county there.

In August 2013 Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned a statement made by Jobbik’s Vona, who asserted that Hungary should seek autonomy for the Hungarian-populated Székely Land in Transylvanian Romania.

Altogether there are 1,227,623 ethnic Hungarians in Romania, most of them in Transylvania, where they constitute 18 per cent of the population.

Serbia is home to some 300,000 Hungarians, mainly in the northern Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, where they make up 15 per cent of the population.

The Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (VMSZ) has proposed the creation of a new administrative unit in the northern part of the province, the Hungarian Regional Autonomy, which would have a Hungarian majority.

Though Hungarian irredentists remain an ideological force, most of Hungary’s 9.8 million people understand that, as members of both the European Union and NATO, altering borders is a non-starter.