The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1982 (9. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1982-07-01 / 7. szám
July, 1982 THE EIGHTH HUNGARIAN TRIBE Page 5 DR. ANTHONY J. LELBACH: THE SOUTHERN HUNGARIAN QUESTION Presented at the Hungarian Eighth Tribe Foundation Heritage Conference, August 22, 1981 Ligonier, Pennsylvania Southern Hungary is the common name of the territories which were attached to the newly created state of Yugoslavia after the First World War at the Peace Treaty of Trianon. These territories were never part of Yugoslavia all through Hungary’s thousand year history. Neither the Bácska, Bánát nor Baranya have ever heen a separate province. They always were component part of Hungary. They were not even an administrative unit, except for a short period in the 18th century, when the Bánát was under Austrian military rule. When the Hungarian constitutional independence was reestablished this short-lived military separation ceased. All these territories were settled by Hungarian tribes in 896, after the occupation of the Carpathian Pasin. The most recent excavations in the area of Mohács and central Bácska revealed that these regions were densely populated by Avars, a people closely related to the Hungarians. The Serbian and Croation migration into Southern Hungary started at the beginning of the 17th century, as the Ottoman Empire gradually enslaved the entire Balkan area. The massive Serbian refugee group of 40,000 families arrived in 1690 under the leadership of Arsen Csarnojevió, the Serbian patriarch of Ipek. Originally, the Serbians were supposed to return to their Balkan homeland as soon as the military situation permitted. With the time elapsing, King Leopold gave them extensive privileges — among others — to remain under their own militarv and Serbian-orthodox church leadership. During and after the Rákóczy uprising against the Habsburgs Vienna wanted a population which could be used against the Hungarians in case of a new conflict. Consequently the courts surpressed the return of the Hungarian population and colonized the Southern Hungarian territories with Germans, Slovaks. Ruthenians, with Serbs and Rumanians steadily migrating from the Balkans. The Hungarians were permitted to penetrate into Bácska only along the Tisza river. The Bánát was opened before the Hungarian settlers only at the end of the 18th century. Due to the tolerance of the Hungarian laws and customs all these people retained their mother tongue, developed their own culture, and in the case of the Serb and Rumanians their own autonomous churches. Hungary was politically a uniform body by virtue of the constitutional face in the soul of the nation. Racial particularism was unknown in the political field. In Hungary, there was no constitutional provincialism. The state existed as a uniform organization. The racial and liguistic independence of the non-Hugarians was never infringed. For centuries this freedom existed as were subconsciously unprotected by laws, since these were unnecessary. The Hungarian nation never attempted to stifle the cultural development of the alien races, on the contrary, fostered it benevolently. According to the Belgrade University professor Stanojevic the selfconscious, modern nationalism of Serbia was bom among the Serbs of Southern Hungary. According to him Újvidék was regarded as the Serbian Athens, from where the nascent Serbian culture radiated to the Serbs living outside Hungary. The Serbian middle school, founded in Újvidék in 1816, was the cradle of the whole intelligentsia of the Serbs in Hungary and on the Balkans. Without exception the first steps toward the creation of Serbian culture were made not in the territory of Serbia, but in Hungary.. The first Serbian cultural and literary society, the “Matica” was founded in Újvidék, which extended its influence over the whole of Serbia. The first Serbian political program also was drawn up in Hungary, in Nagybecskerek in 1868. These facts speak for themselves-. When racial self-consciousness began to awaken the trouble arrived. The dark shadow of the Russian Pan-slav propaganda and aspiration on the Bálkán Peninsula and in the Danube basin became visible. The Serbs soon understood these aspirations. The pro-Russians Serbian radicals were led by Nikola Pasic, the leader of the party. It claimed for Serbia the southern territories of Hungary. Svetozar Markovié, one of the inspirers of their program had proclaimed that the liberation and union of all southern Slavs can only be attained through the destruction of Austro-Hungary. As Austro-Hungary never declared the existence of the Monarchy to be incompatible with that of Serbia, the Serbs together with the Russians are carrying the responsibility for having prepared the war, since they sought to extend the frontiers of Serbia by force of arms in peacetime, and planned to overthrow the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The aspiration of Russia dates from as early as 1905, when Russia was freed from its preoccupation in the Far-Eastern theater of war. It first hoisted its flag
