Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Annex
Annex — Kálmán Petőcz departure of this sizeable group, a similar wound caused by forced repatriation of approximately 90,000 ethnic Hungarians from Slovakia healed slowly but surely. It was due to greater compactness and homogeneity of the Hungarian enclave in southern Slovakia, its better organization, greater identity awareness supported by closeness of the ‘kin state’ and abolition of certain implications of Beneš decrees (e.g. denial of all civil and political rights) by Czechoslovak authorities after 1948. 3. Most Slovaks seem psychologically unable to accept the argument that comparing the status of ethnic Slovaks in Hungary to the status of non- Hungarian minority communities in Slovakia would be methodologically a more correct approach than comparing it to the situation of the Hungarian minority. Still, we believe that this argument is worth considering, not only due to the already mentioned fact that non-Hungarian national minorities are guaranteed parliamentary representation neither in Slovakia nor in Hungary but also due to a number of other reasons. Slovak politicians as well as journalists relatively often quote a statement by Hungary’s former ombudsman for national minorities Jenő Kaltenbach in July 2009 who said that the assimilation process of Hungary’s national minorities in the second half of the 20lh century was practically irreversible; little do they realize that a similar phenomenon took place in Slovakia as well. For instance, the country’s Jewish and German community came on the verge of extinction, partly due to external circumstances (e.g. the Holocaust or evacuation of Germans based on the Potsdam Agreement) and partly due to activities of both countries’ ruling elites (e.g. anti-Semitic laws in Slovakia and in Hungary or spontaneous expulsion of Germans based on Beneš decrees after World War II). But even if we take a look at other national minorities, there is no essential difference in terms of the pace of their assimilation in both countries. Before World War II, over 95,000 Ruthenians and Ukrainians lived on the territory that is now Slovakia; by 2001, their number dropped to 35,000, i.e. barely over one third of the number recorded some 60 years before. The same goes for the Polish minority; the total number of ethnic Poles in Slovakia declined from 7,023 in 1930 to 2,602 in 2001, i.e. to approximately one third. Besides, one should note that Ruthenians and Ukrainians always inhabited a relatively compact territory in the northeast pocket of Slovakia, much unlike ethnic Slovaks in Hungary who - except two relatively compact enclaves around Békéscsaba and in the Pilis Hills - lived scattered across northern and southeast Hungary. There were only two relevant national minorities, namely Germans and Slovaks, living in post-Trianon Hungary. According to the population cen-292
