Hungarian American Coalition News, 2004 (13. évfolyam, 1-3. szám)

2004 / 2. szám

The Shadow of Trianon (continued from page 1)

With the expansion of the European Union in May 2004 to include 10 East Central European countries, the Hungarian nation - divided among seven states in Central Europe - is again at a crossroads. While most ethnic Hungarians are citizens of countries that now belong to the EU, a substantial part of the Hungarian nation remains outside of the Union and faces new challenges in retaining its ethnic identity.

The article by Mr. Miklós Duray, is based on a speech he delivered on March 21 in the Hungarian city of Pécs. Mr. Duray is a human rights activist and one of the leading political figures of the Hungarian community of Slovakia. While resisting the communist dictatorship in the 1980’s, he was twice imprisoned by the authorities for his advocacy of the rights of the Hungarian minority.

Duray article (continued from page 1)

Everything changed, however, with the Treaty of Trianon1 at the end of the First World War. The dismemberment of Hungary, in willful disregard of the principle of national self-determination, interrupted the renewal of the Hungarian state and nation. More brutally than any previous catastrophe of history, the dismemberment of Hungary cast us as aliens in the middle of- Europe and pitted us against our neighboring nations.

Was it we who distanced ourselves from the more fortunate half of Europe? Or was it they who pulled away from us? Clearly, the Versailles and Trianon treaties were not our doing, but rather that of the Western powers: it was the Western half of Europe that kicked us away; we did not turn our backs on them.

According to the historical view concocted by the British-French and Czecho-Slovak-Romanian nations, the near-fatal division of Europe during the 20th century began after World War II. In fact, however, the Eastern half of the continent, part and parcel of a universal European culture, was torn from the West after the First World War by the treaties of Versailles and Trianon. It was then that the Eastern half of Europe became, in accordance with French interests, the new eastern military springboard of the West: a new buffer zone exposing the nations of the region to out-of-the-area designs and pitting them against each other.

And it was not only the West that used Eastern Europe for its own ends. We became the military springboard of Russian and, later, Soviet interests

against the West. Caught between the powers on either side, we became victims first of Nazism, then of Communism. It was only this latest vulnerability - that is, Communist rule - which began after World War II, and which was formalized by the Yalta agreement.

The European Union was born in the Western, the "‘fortunate ” half of Europe. Hungary, despite an unfortunate history, was part of this Western tradition until the end of the First World War and the Treaty of Trianon. Trianon - a creation of the West - was the signal event which divided Europe.

After World War II, the European community was born of the West ’s recognition of the failure of the Versailles treaties, a failure starkly evident in the descending Iron Curtain. Today, an expanded EU revokes the artificial split between Western and Eastern Europe dating from 1945.

But tensions remain in the Carpathian basin as a result of the artificial division of the Hungarian nation. The expansion of the EU to include most of the Hungarian nation offers opportunities and structures to undo many of the destructive and artificial divisions created by Trianon, to reunite the disparate segments of the Hungarian nation, and to promote constructive links among all the nations of the Carpathian basin.

1 The Treaty of Trianon was concluded in 1920 between the victorious powers and Hungary after the First World War. According to its punitive terms, the state of Hungary lost three-quarters of its land area and two-thirds of its multi-ethnic population. Due to the new borders and the newly created states of Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, several million ethnic Hungarians became national minorities without having moved from the land of their birth.

2 - Hungarian American Coalition - June 2004