Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)

Interethnic spaces

A village on the ethnic periphery 123

Table 3: Slovaks and other (non-Hungarian) nationalities in the village

Year

1919

1930

1941

1991

2000.

Dec.*

Population

959

10551053

844

878

Slovaks

12

135

15

173

218

Other

16

12

11

9

7

♦These data do not indicate the nationality of the persons but their use of language (data collected during our survey).

Unfortunately, the national census data from the years 1950, 1961, 1970 and 1980 only report the size of the overall population and the proportion of Hungarians. However, the difference between the two numbers does not equal the number of Slovaks since it omits the presence of other nationalities. For this reason, it is very difficult to have a precise view of the population changes from the statistical data, in particular with regard to the proportion of Slovaks and of other nationalities. We can only state with certainty that the first significant change in the ethnic structure of the community occurred in the 1920s. This is peculiar, since the villagers do not recollect any memory of persons settling in the village, or of the arrival of any foreign, outsider officials. The probable explanation for this phenomenon can be that many inhabitants declared Slovak nationality. This is proved also by the fact that in the census after 1938 (when the village was reannexed to Hungary; census data from 1941) the proportion of Hungarians in the village almost precisely returns to the previous state. In the decades after the “Re-Slovakisation”12, the proportion of the Slovaks in the village presumably stabilised above the level of the 1920s.

In the years after the end of the Second World War, the population number was not affected by resettlements, deportations and exchange of population, since the entire village Re-Slovakised and no family was resettled within the framework of the population exchange project. There were two or three families who ran away from the village; however, they did so mainly because they possessed Hungarian citizenship.