Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Annex
Annex - Kálmán Petőcz processes within the Hungarian Kingdom, whereas the Hungarian minority emerged on the territory of Czechoslovakia (i.e. Slovakia) by the means of a political decision. This fundamental difference naturally affects the degree of ethnic identity, internal organization, settlement structure as well as (emotional) relation of ethnic communities and their members to the state/ Generally speaking, minority enclaves formed as part of internal migration are more susceptible to assimilation in the long term. The degree of their members’ self-identification with the majority culture gradually increases through the acculturation process and growing number of mixed marriages; ultimately, they leave their natural ethnic habitat in search of jobs in large towns and the life in Diaspora catalyzes the process of altering their ethnic identity. A good example is the situation of Slovaks living in the Czech Republic. While expert estimates put their total number between 300,000 and 400,000, only 192,000 of them claimed Slovak origin in the most recent population census. Organization of Slovaks in the Czech Republic is not overly sophisticated, as they do not demand any special minority rights and their ethnic life takes place virtually on the level of societies. Under these circumstances, it is highly probable that they will be fully assimilated within several decades, although the history of Slovaks in the Czech Republic reaches only two to three generations back as opposed to six to eight generations, which is the case of ethnic Slovaks inhabiting Hungary’s Lowlands.6 Despite that, the situation of Slovaks in the Czech Republic does not seem to attract almost any attention among Slovakia’s political leaders or civil society subjects. In the Slovak environment, sharing an opinion that Slovak inhabitants of the Hungarian Kingdom were harshly oppressed and did not have any rights has become almost part of ‘good education’. But does this assertion correspond to historical reality? Following the Austro-Hungarian settlement of 1867, it became the principal goal of Hungary’s minority policy to create the so-called Hungarian (political) nation (Natio Hungarica or magyar politikai nemzet). This goal would be attained through greater emphasis on teaching the state language in minority schools and using it in official contact (the concept of state language was introduced by the Minority Act of 1868). In the field of education, this showed through the fact that while there were 1,716 primary schools in 1880 that used Slovak as the language of instruction (i.e. the entire curriculum was taught in Slovak), their number dropped to 365 by 1913. Most of them were transformed into bilingual (i.e. Hungarian-Slovak) schools whose total number increased from 597 in 1880 to 1,224 in 1900.7 The year 1880 is important also because it was the law of 1879 that stipulated the obligation of teaching Hungarian language and literature as a 288
