William Penn Life, 1990 (25. évfolyam, 2-10. szám)

1990-03-01 / 3. szám

March 1990, William Penn Life, Page 3

Hungarian human rights

Part Five: Hungarians in Yugoslavia

By Andrew Ludanyi

Present-day Yugoslavia is a multinational state composed of six distinct "republics” and two "autonomous provinces.” Most of the Hungarian inhabitants of the country are located in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. The remainder can be found in the republics of Croatia and Slovenia. How did they get there?

The three settlements have distinct histories, some going back all the way to Arpad’s conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 896 A.D., while the remainder are relatively newer settlements.

However, all the settlements predate the establishment of Yugoslavia, which came into being only in 1918, following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the last year of World War I. The regions of Yugoslavia that have Hungarian inhabitants are the regions that were detached from historic Hungary by the war and the Treaty of Trianon (1920).

While Yugoslavia is now constantly in the news, very little has been written about its Hungarian inhabitants. Recent news coverage has focused mainly on the fate of the Albanians in Kosovo Province. There are a number of reasons for this. First, there has been constant unrest in Kosovo, while there has been relative calm in the Vojvodina. Second, the magnitude of the problem in Kosovo seems greater to the ruling Serbs and therefore they have focused most of their attention to this "problem.”

In Kosovo Albanians constitute 90 percent of the population while in the Vojvodina Hungarians constitute 20 percent of the population. In both cases the autonomous provinces are situated along the international borders with Albania and Hungary respectively. This means that the inhabitants could potentially secede from Yugoslavia.

To avoid this eventuality every Yugoslav government has attempted to strengthen the Serbian sector of the population through the use of settlement incentives, deportations and other steps.

In the Vojvodina these policies have "succeeded” and have transformed the ethnic profile of the region since 1945 from one-third Hungarian, one-third German and one-third South Slav to three-fifths Serb, one-fifth other South Slav and one-fifth Hungarian by the end of the 1980’s. While the dilution has taken place, the remaining Hungarians are still mostly located in a cluster on the Hungarian-Yugoslav border.

In Kosovo, on the other hand, the attempts to Serbianize the region have been frustrated by the high birthrate of the Albanians. (Also, there were no Germans in Kosovo that the Serbs could deport following World War II.)

At any rate, the Hungarian population in the Vojvodina, according to the "official” count, is around 350,000, while in Croatia it is about 60,000 and in Slovenia around 15,000. (The unofficial estimates provide ca. 500,000 as the total Hungarian population in Yugoslavia.)

The heaviest concentrations are along the Tisza River in the Bacska (Backa), while significant settlements are also located in the former Bansag (Banat),

the Baranya (Darda) Triangle and the Muraköz in Slovenia. These settlements face different problems and different government policies that range from tolerant pluralism in Slovenia, to benign neglect in Croatia, to an ever increasing intolerant assimilationist policy in the Vojvodina.

The differences in the treatment of the Hungarians in the various parts of Yugoslavia reflects the different cultural and political expectations of the three dominant South Slavic peoples: the Serbs, the Croats and the Slovenes.

It also reflects the fears Serbs have regarding their Hungarian subjects and the resistance the latter show toward greater integration into the Serbian Republic as opposed to the Yugoslav Federation.

Finally, the recent events in the rest of Eastern Europe, including the economic and political crises, have created uncertainty and insecurity among the Serbs, which in turn has led to a emphasis on an inward-looking nationalism.

Historically, the territory of presentday Yugoslavia was carved out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Turkish Empire. This explains the major cultural and emotional division of the political system. The Northwest (Slovenia, Croatia and Vojvodina) is largely Roman Catholic and Central European while the Southeast is Orthodox or Moslem and Balkan.

The difference becomes evident to any traveler driving north to south in Yugoslavia: the signs in the streets, on the roads and in the cities are in Latin script in the northwest and in Cyrillic everywhere else.

This cultural and emotional division parallels an economic division between the well-to-do and the poor parts of the country. While Slovenia and Croatia are the most advanced and productive members of the federation and the Vojvodina is close behind (at least in agricultural production), Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo are generally less productive, and in the case of the latter three, are also very poor.

In this fashion the frictions produced by different cultural and religious orientations find reinforcement in economic jealousies, unemployment rates, and dramatic differences in personal incomes between the western and northern and eastern and southern regions of the country. This has been aggravated by a large foreign debt and a staggering inflation rate.

The Hungarians are located in the wellto-do regions of Yugoslavia, but in most instances they tend to belong to the disadvantaged social and economic sectors. Furthermore, because they were annexed to the new South Slav state against their will in 1918, they have also had to contend with discrimination as a minority nationality.

On occasion more enlightened policies were adopted in response to changing political developments both on the domestic and the international scene. When it became apparent that the conception of a "Greater Serbia” would not survive World War II, the Yugoslav Communist Party, under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito, promised a new, more tolerant multi-ethnic political order based on "proletarian internationalism.”

The re-established Yugoslavia following World War II was thus held together by Tito’s adoption of Soviet-style federalism, supplemented by a new myth of unity provided by the Partisan traditions of World War II, and the all-pervasive role of the Yugoslav Communist Party (later renamed the League of Communists of Yugoslavia).

While Tito lived, he provided a personal and dynamic link between these three cohesive factors. However, once he was no longer on the scene, the three factors came more into question, particularly since Yugoslavia’s economic situation has become acute.

Under Tito a precarious balance was maintained among the different ruling nationalities (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes) as well as the other inhabitants of the land, including all the non-Slavic nationalities, like the Albanians and the Hungarians.

For the Hungarians this meant more cultural and educational rights than what they had in the interwar period. In fact, aside from a period of intense persecution following World War II, their condition began to improve significantly in the second half of the 1950’s until the early 1970’s.

Since then they have been under more and more pressure in the Vojvodina to assimilate, to abandon their own culture and replace it with a "Yugoslav” (i.e., Serb) cultural commitment. This pressure, until recently, was not government sanctioned — it was pressure generated by a society that was Serb-dominated.

Now, on the threshold of the 1990’s the Hungarians once again face control and assimilationist pressures, even from "official” Serb leadership in Belgrade.

In the spring of 1989 the constitution of the Serbian Republic was amended to reduce the autonomy of both Kosovo and Vojvodina. Parallel to this development many leaders in the latter provinces were replaced by Serb nationalists or token representatives of the Albanians and Hungarians respectively.

Slobodan Milosevic is now using Serbian nationalism to consolidate his own position of power among Serbs and Montenegrins within Yugoslavia. This revival of a "Greater Serbian” mentality continues to gain ground with Milosevic’s political ambitions.

The newly centralized politics in Serbia is encroaching on the educational and cultural institutions of Hungarians. There are now plans to merge the Hungarian Department at the University of Novi Sad with some other departments and to eliminate the Hungarian Institute in its present form. (The Hungarian Department just celebrated its 30th anniversary, and the Hungarian Institute its 20th in 1989.)

This seems too much like the beginnings of a replay of the Rumanian nightmare. Just when the rest of Eastern Europe seems to be heading toward more democracy and the protection of human rights, Yugoslavia cannot afford to move in the opposite direction. Such policies can only lead to polarization, fragmentation, and disaster.

For American-Hungarians this again provides opportunities to exert their influence. They can help to monitor events in the Vojvodina by keeping in contact with leaders and teachers of the threatened Hungarian institutions. They can keep their representatives informed about these developments.

Again, we urge the readers of the William Penn Life to get involved. If you feel you would like to write letters in support of the human rights of Hungarians, or if you would like to participate in a human rights workshop for a weekend in June, please write to the editors.

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