Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1999 (16. évfolyam, 55-57. szám)
1999 / 55-57. szám
communities in East Central Europe. Their coverage is compact, precise, and effectively documented with excellent maps, tables and figures. The English translation is clear and elegant. Finally, the timing is just right, as inter-ethnic hostilities and conflicts in the region again occupy center stage. Although Hungarian minorities have not been at the center of most of these conflicts, they play a key role in efforts to stabilize the region. As the people with the most to lose they have been at the forefront of democratization and economic reform. As Kocsis and Kocsis-Hodosi point out in their overview introductory chapter, Hungarian minorities constitute the second most numerous minority people in Europe, second only to the Russians. In two states (Slovakia and Romania) they constitute the largest minorities, while in Yugoslavia they are second only to the Albanians. In total numbers the over three million Hungarians in minority status provide a larger population cluster than the population in 87 different countries in the world, including states like Mongolia and Libya. The book focuses on the Carpathian basin where almost all of these Hungarians are located. To historians this will come as no surprise, since historical Hungary included the entire Carpathian basin until the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Kocsis and Kocsis-Hodosi weave together the demographic profile with the territorial and topographic land base. The result is a fast-paced historical synthesis of the settlement of the central part of Central Europe. In addition to the fifty-three supplemental black and white maps and figures, and the thirty-six excellent population tables, the book includes a multi-colored ethnographic map of the Carpathian basin and most of East Central Europe south to the Greek, Macedonian, and Turkish borders. Even by itself this ethnographic map is worth the price of the book. The organization of the book is also logical and well-conceived. After the overview in chapter one, it devotes a separate chapter to each region of the Carpathian basin under the control of the successor states to historic Hungary. Chapter 2 is devoted to Slovakia, and the subsequent chapters to Transcarpathia (Ukraine), Transylvania (Romania), Vojvodina (Yugoslavia) Croatia, Transmura region (Slovenia), and Burgenland (Austria). The book also includes a "Geographical Register” (pp. 205-241) for the names in the languages of the dominant peoples who inhabit these lands today as well as the historic Hungarian place names. The register is divided to coincide with the chapters covering each region. Furthermore, the names appear in "relief names”,"historical regions," as well as settlement names, according to the Hungarian alphabetical order. Here I would like to point out that this section would be more useful to the international scholarly community if the alphabetization would be reversed. Thus, in Transylvania the current Romanian names should be alphabetized and the historic Hungarian names should follow. Of course for scholars in Hungary the present set-up is more convenient, but this information should be more accessible to scholars in the United Kingdom or the United States since this is the English version of the book. This minor point aside, I highly recommend this book to all foreign policy specialists in government and academia, who have to deal with East Central Europe and inter-ethnic relations. It should be on the shelves of all research and university libraries that deal with this region and it should be in the hands of all human rights activists who wish to inform the rest of the world about the fate of Hungarians in Transylvania, Vojvodina, or Slovakia. a.l. BOOKS (Continued) Lakatos, Géza. AS I SAW IT, München, Germany and Englewood, N|: Aurora Books, Universe Publishing Co., 1981, translated into English 1993. Pp. 1-300. Although As 1 Saw It deals with a period in Hungarian history that has already been extensively recorded by others, the writer of this first-hand account of WWI1 treachery and intrigue at the highest levels approaches the subject from two different and important perspectives. The first is that of a high army commander in the confidence of Regent Horthy and the second is that of prime minister of his country. With the aid of copious personal records and references to official communiqués and memos, colonel general Lakatos brings to his account a compelling authority and objectivity. The fact that he was there, moving in the highest circles and privy to the most secret machinations of government and war would be sufficient in itself to authenticate his fact-filled treatise. But Géza Lakatos was no mere spectator, he was not just a witness to the events which were sweeping his country. He was a prime participant in the decision making which steered his homeland through the last agonizing days of its involvement in the conflict. In his few short weeks as prime minister, he was responsible, with the Regent for his government's efforts to extricate Hungary from its entanglement with the Third Reich and for orchestrating the Regent's desperate attempts to negotiate an armistice. Lakatos' straightforward acknowledgment of his own errors of judgment in approaching these daunting tasks serves to enhance the credibility of his account. The early chapters deal with military events on the Russian front as Lakatos, Colonel-General of the Hungarian army in the field, saw them. He describes in detail his constant wrestling with shortages of trained men and adequate weaponry while his military decisions were repeatedly challenged by his distrustful allies. But as onerous as were his responsibilities in those difficult days, they did not compare with those that Regent Horthy placed squarely on his shoulders when his country’s darkest days were upon them. If a panel of historians were to be asked which hundred days could be described as the most calamitous in all of Hungary’s trials in WWII, the fateful weeks in 1944 which led up to Horthy’s October 15th bid for an armistice would arguably rank near the top of their listings. During that time, Hungary was already suffering the indignity and oppression of German occupation; the Russian hordes had already swarmed across her borders and were advancing toward Budapest on a broad front, and Hungarians were by then so divided among themselves that even at cabinet level, no man knew who could really be trusted. It was this melange of ruin that vitéz Colonel-General Geza Lakatos was called upon to grapple with when on August 26th the Regent appointed him Prime Minister. That he was at all able to influence the tide of events that had overtaken his country in those dark days is a considerable tribute to his steadfastness and perseverance. While there was little he could do at this late stage of the war to alter the inexorable course of military events, it is to his credit that in the few short weeks of his premiership he managed to achieve some stability in government and significantly loosen the constraints and interference that the occupying German forces had imposed on his countrymen. He was also successful in preventing further humiliation and deportation of lews, both Hungarian citizens and those under Hungarian protection. While As 1 Saw It will intrigue historians and non-specialists alike, the former will find much to augment their understanding of the (Continued on page 9) 8 NO. 55-57, SPRING/SUMMER/AUTUMN 1999, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER
