Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
László Öllös: Time for Hungarian-Slovak Dialogue (Conclusion)
László Ollós subjects have become a stable part of political life in Slovakia as well as in Hungary, and this is not likely to change too soon. Another problem awaiting solution is the Forum of Hungarian Deputies of the Carpathian Basin. Last but not least, the Hungarian side must ask itself a question of how the Slovak public perceives the fruits of its policies. On the other hand, even the previously unseen cooperation between the government and the opposition in Hungary cannot camouflage the fact that for two decades since the social change of 1989, Hungary’s political leaders along with political representatives of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia have been unable to come up with solutions to problems of the Hungarian minority that would stand a chance to succeed. Consequently, they have been unable to raise mutual Slovak-Hungarian relations from the level of virtual cold war into a level of such peace that could be understood and embraced by the majority of both nations. Looking back, even the referendum on double citizenship seems as the bottom of one crisis process rather than the pinnacle of one development stage. The Hungarian national thought still does not seem to have overcome this crisis. Already at the Monor negotiations, the most important streams of the Hungarian underground tried to reach a consensus over rejecting the communist regime and helping ethnic Hungarians abroad. But the Monor agreement did not last even until the first free elections.2 From this point on, the issue of ethnic Hungarians became part of internal political and power struggle, particularly during election campaigns; in other words, it became a tool to defeat political opponents. One of prevailing strategies of the post-Monor period was that of force. It was based on an assumption that it was possible to force neighbouring countries to granting autonomy for ethnic Hungarians living on their territories, recognizing their language as an official language and providing them with everything else ethnic minorities need to survive. Advocates of this strategy believed they did not need to take into account the public opinion in neighbouring countries because for them the principal path to success was not persuasion but (political) pressure. They argued that aggressive anti-Hungarian sentiment was the fundamental element of neighbouring nations’ national consciousness and as such it could not be uprooted; therefore, one must create conditions to apply pressure in order to achieve the desired objective. But if the Hungarians’ image in neighbouring nations is truly full of anxiety and unchangeable aggressiveness, then a pressure from abroad may only be successful only if the threat it implies is greater than the imaginary threat posed by ethnic Hungarians themselves; in other words, if the exter-248
