Hungarian Heritage Review, 1990 (19. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1990-01-01 / 1. szám
THE “JUSTICE FOR HUNGARY” OCEAN FLIGHT: THE TRIANON SYNDROME IN IMMIGRANT HUNGARIAN SOCIETY PART I :- by -Dr. N. F. Drcisziger It has been argued that the politics of interwar Hungary were dominated by the treaty that was imposed on the country in the wake of the First World War. This peace settlement, known as the Treaty of Trianon, disposed of Hungary’s fate with severity unequalled in modern European history. It reduced the country to less than thirty percent of its former territory containing not much more than a third of its population. One of the pretexts for Hungary’s trunkation was the principle of self-determination of nations, yet the settlement’s provisions were not put to the test of plebiscites. In fact, the treaty violated the self-determination of close to 3.5 million Magyars who were placed under alien rule. Hungary’s dismemberment in the wake of the First World War has had a lasting effect on the Hungarian national psyche. “The shock of Trianon,” argued Professor S.B. Várdy is one of his recent publication, “was so pervasive and so keenly felt that the syndrome it produced can only be compared to a malignant national disease.” The role of the “Trianon syndrome” in modern Hungarian development has not been analysed in adequate detail and at sufficient depth until recently. In Hungary, conditions for a scholarly examination of this problem rarely existed. In the emotion-filled atmosphere of the interwar and war years, such examination was well-nigh impossible, and the shock of the harsh peace settlement paralysed even those Hungarian historians who, through emigration, had managed to distance themselves from the everyday influences of East Central European political life. After 1945, the examination of the issue became difficult for another reason: Hungary’s postwar regimes persistently discouraged the discussion of Trianon and its consequences on Hungarian national life. For obvious reasons, the scholarly analysis of this issue was also frowned upon in the neighboring East Central European states, especially in those with large Hungarian minorities. As a result, the study of the “Trianon syndrome” has been left to a handful of students of Hungarian history in the West, and quite recently, to a few historians in Hungary who, defying decades-old traditions, began to write on this controversial issue. Notwithstanding the difficulties studying this question, the literature on it has grown sufficiently, especially in recent times, to warrant some overall conclusions. In summing up these conclusions, it would probably not be unreasonable to say that historians have seen the Trianon syndrome as a negative factor in Hungarian national life, a neurosis that tends to incapacitate Hungarian diplomacy and to retard the pace of domestic political and social reform. The purpose of this essay is to carry the examination of the Trianon syndrome further, and to analyse its impact on a part of Hungarian society beyond the confines of East Central Europe, on the large Hungarian community in North America, with special reference to the Hungarian ethnic group in Canada. In many ways this will be a pioneering group in Canada. In many ways this will be a pioneering attempt, and its conclusions will be, by necessity, provisional. But they will suggest that it may well be the impact of the Trianon syndrome on Hungarian immigrant communities in the various parts of the New World was similar to what it was on society in the mother country: it gave immigrant politics a narrow focus, and, as a result, it contributed to the impoverishment of immigrant community life. It did so particularly during a time when Hungarian ethnic life in North America, and especially in Canada, reached one of its peaks of development: the late 1920s and the very early 1930s. As the “Justice for Hungary” ocean flight was one of the outstanding episodes of that period, our examination will inevitably focus on that event and its historical context. I Though ostensibly a joint effort of the Hungarian immigrant communities of the United States and Canada, so much was contributed (mainly in terms of effort) to the success of the “Justice for Hungary” flight by members of the latter, that it seems appropriate to begin this study with an outline of Hungarian-Canadian society in the years leading up to the ocean crossing in 1931. A further reason-continued next page JANUARY 1990 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW 25
