The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1985 (12. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1985-09-01 / 9. szám
PAUL BODY: HUNGARIAN COMMUNITY LIFE IN REVIEW Hungarians in Transylvania and Slovakia According to estimates, about one third of all Hungarians live outside the present boundaries of Hungary. Hungarians share a very special concern for those of their countrymen who live in Transylvania and Slovakia, subject to conditions of political and national oppression. Hungarians in America have special reasons for such concern. In many cases, their ancestors emigrated from Transylvania or Slovakia. They still have relatives and family members there. They cherish the vital traditions of their homelands, now endangered by overt national oppression. Only recently have reliable studies been published that give accurate descriptions of the recent history and present conditions of Hungarians in Transylvania and Slovakia. These studies include two basic, indispensible books of Professor Stephen Kertesz, in which the author relates, in part on the basis of personal experience, how Hungarian peace negotiators attempted to improve the position of Hungarians in Transylvania and Slovakia after World War II. They are: Between Russia and the West - Hungary and the Illusions of Peacemaking, 1945-1947 (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984 and The Last European Peace Conference: Paris 1946 - Conflict of Values (University Press of America, 1985). Another important work is Transylvania: The Roots of Ethnic Conflict (Kent State University Press, 1983), and present status of Transylvania in a very careful manner. The book of Kalman Janies, Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority, 1945-1948 (Columbia University Press, 1982), with an introduction by Gyula Illyés and adapted from the Hungarian by Stephen Borsody, presents a detailed account of the very difficult post-war period for Hungarians in Slovakia. It should be added and gratefully acknowledged that the work of Janies and Transylvania were published with the extraordinary financial and organizatonal assistance of the Hungarian Communion of Friends (Magyar Barati Közösség). The study, The last European Peace Conference, by Stephen Kertesz is an unusually important work and fortunately written in a very readable, enjoyable style. It concerns the events and policies affecting the postwar fate of Hungary and of Hungarians in Slovakia and Transylvania. Stephen Kertesz was Secretary-General of the Hungarian Peace Delegation to Paris in 1946. In that role he directed the negotiations seeking to strengthen the international position of Hungary and of Hungarian minorities - in Rumania and Czechoslovakia. One of the very important points made by the author is that the post-war fate of the East European nations was decided not at the peace conference, but during the Second World War by the persistent, forcefully executed policies of the Soviet Union to obtain military control and exclude Western influence from Eastern Europe. There was no corresponding policy on the part of the Western powers. So by the time of the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Soviet forces in fact controlled Hungary, Poland and Rumania, and the Allies simply ratified that fact. Dr. Kertesz sums up this development: “Yalta as a whole was the logical result of the wartime policy of the Western powers, their military weakness at the outset, and neglect of postwar problems in wartime diplomacy. Whether this or that was decided at Yalta or elsewhere in the closing period of the war was of little consequence in view of the absence of Anglo- Page 8 American determination to reestablish a reasonable European system and check Soviet expansion.” In a separate chapter, Stephen Kertesz relates how the Hungarian Peace Delegation proposed a constructive international organizaton of Eastern Europe, including regional economic cooperation and the protection of national minorities. Another objective of the Hungarian Delegation was to obtain revision of the Hungarian-Rumanian boundary by attaching to Hungary at least 4,000 square kilometers with about half a million people. This proposal was supported by the United States, but was defeated as a result of Soviet opposition. The most interesting and important issue discussed by the author concerns the demand of Czechoslovakia for the expulsion of 200,000 Hungarians and their resettlement in Hungary. The Hungarian delegation, under the courageous leadership of Stephen Kertesz, forcefully opposed this demand and successfully obtained the support of the United States and other Western countries for the Hungarian position. As a result of this support, the Czechoslovak proposal was defeated and the expulsion of Hungarians from their ancestral homeland did not take place. John C. Campbell, a member of the US delegation, commented on this issue as follows: “On these questions, with my colleagues Philip Mosely and Fred Merrill, I was in close contact with Stephen Kertesz and with Aladar Szegedy-Maszak, the Hungarian Minister to the United States. We consulted.. .and it was right, I thought at the time and I still think now, for the United States to support the Hungarian position on those issues. We were trying to save whatever chance there might be for the democratic elements in Hungary to prevail or at least to survive in their country, and there were questions of principle involved in the question of the expulsion of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia. We stood, as Hungary stood, for the principle that there is no collective guilt, and no collective punishment, for those of a particular ethnic group for whatever reason.” Stephen Kertesz makes the following interesting observation: “The peace delegation of Hungary opposed, and after a hard struggle, defeated the Czechoslavak proposal aiming at the expulsion of 200,000 Hungarians. This was the only instance at the Paris Conference in which a state under the occupation of the Red Army openly opposed a move sponsored by the USSR and asked for Western political support. This opposition, however, would have been futile without the energetic support of the United States delegation.” Transylvania: The Roots of Ethnic Conflict, edited by John F. Cadzow, Andrew Ludanyi and Louis J. Elteto, is one of the most important works to appear on the past and present of the ethnic conflicts in Transylvania. The fourteen chapters were written by recognized specialists who have done extensive pior research in their respective fields. They have attempted to present the historical development manner. In the section, Leslie Domonkos, Louis Elteto and Bela Király relate the early phase of national development, prior to the 18th century. In the second section, Joseph Held, Paul Body, István Deák, Edsel Walter Stroup and S.B. Vardy, discuss, with some disagreement, the first major conflicts between Hungarians and Rumanians, in 1784, and in the Revolution of 1848. In the third section, Peter Pastor, Stephen Fischer-G alati and Stephen Eighth Hungarian Tribe
