Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Annex
Most Frequent Stereotypes Concerning Slovak-Hungarian Relations... subject in all minority schools. After 1907, applicable authorities’ pressure on pupils’ obtaining good command of the state language intensified also in Slovak primary schools. One of the principal goals of Apponyi’s laws was to make foreign-language children obtain good command of the state language by the time of completing the fourth grade of primary schools. (By the way, this goal did not differ essentially from the principal goal of contemporary Slovakia’s policy in the field of minority education.) Bilingual schools, especially those located in language borderline towns, were gradually changed into Hungarian. Purely Slovak schools survived only in homogeneous rural communities in northern Hungary (i.e. contemporary Slovakia) but they did exist nevertheless. It is difficult to imagine further development of an ethnic community without intelligentsia that has been educated in the given language. In order to educate this intelligentsia, a sufficiently developed system of secondary (or higher) education is inevitable. The first three Slovak secondary grammar schools established between 1862 and 1869 were closed down due to political reasons in 1875. One should also note that the total number of secondary schools in this period was substantially lower than today. Another measure that may be viewed as insensitive by modem standards was passing a law in 1898 which stipulated that all municipalities on Hungarian territory must have official names in state language (this countered previously applied practice). As a result, Hungarian names were ‘assigned’ even to villages that had never had traditional Hungarian names or any direct connection to the Hungarian nation or culture. Once again, one should note that the practice in modem Slovakia did not essentially differ from that applied by the Hungarian Kingdom. In 1948, the government administratively assigned Slovak names even to municipalities that never before had Slovak names. Particularly insensitive was a decision to name some of these municipalities after important members of the Slovak National Revival Movement and other historical figures who did not have any connection to them, for instance Štúrovo, Hurbanovo, Kolárovo (lawmakers even enacted a grammatical error here, since the wellknown writer and public figure Ján Kollár was written with double T), Sládkovičovo, Gabčíkovo, Hamuljakovo, Matúškovo or Tešedíkovo. Even today, it is against the law to post signs featuring these municipalities’ Hungarian names although ethnic Hungarians make up much more than law-stipulated 20% of their total population. Still, it is only fair to draw a conclusion that Slovak inhabitants of the Hungarian Kingdom were unable to lead full-fledged ethnic life after 1867 and especially after 1898 as the central government rejected legitimate poli289
