Magyar News, 2002. szeptember-2003. augusztus (13. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2003-07-01 / 11-12. szám
by Béla Lipták On the 4th of June, 1920, one of the crudest treaties of human history was signed. Never before had a peace, imposed by violence, been more brutal in its bias, madder in its destructiveness, more forgetful of the lessons of history and better calculated to create future upheavals. The treaty cut mercilessly into the flesh of compact Hungarian populations. Hundreds of towns were separated from their suburbs; villages were split in two; communities were deprived of their parish churches or cemeteries; townships were cut off from their railroad stations and their water supplies. A 1000-year-old European country was made into an invalid as its territory was reduced by 71%. In the process, 35% of all Hungarians were turned into foreigners within the towns built by their fathers, as the borders were redrawn around them. In this way, the Hungarians became Europe's largest minority. In comparison, the leader of the central powers: Germany lost only 9.5% of its territory. The outrage of this mockery of justice is illustrated by the fact that even Austria lined up at the carcass and received some parts of the dismembered Hungarian Kingdom. From the fragments of Hungary, the unnatural successor states of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and greater Rumania were created. These artificial entities forced Croats to live with Serbs and Czechs to live with Slovaks, demonstrating both the arrogance and the ignorance of Trianon's architects. These successor states were not only geographic monstrosities but also economic absurdities and therefore their self-destruction was just a matter of time. As of this writing two of the three successor states have already disintegrated. One of the purposes of this writing is to suggest a plan to construct a healthy federation from the disintegrated pieces and to achieve that transformation without violence. Self-Determination Through Plebiscites The very foundation of the 14 Wilsonian Principles was that people have an unalienable right to determine their own destiny. Yet at Trianon the application of self-determination and the use of plebiscites in drawing the new borders was totally disregarded. When the recommendations of one of the delegates to the Peace Conference, those of Field Marshall Ian Smith, to hold plebiscites in Transylvania, Slovakia, Ruthenia, Croatia and Slavonia were rejected, he was correct in declaring: A plebiscite refused is a plebiscite taken. By not allowing plebiscites, the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the redistribution of her 48 million citizens resulted in the creation of 16 million oppressed ethnic minorities. These were not emigrants who voluntarily left their old country, but people who never in their life moved from their home towns and became foreigners, just because Clémenceau and Benes decided to redraw the borders around them. When the Wends and Slovenes of the Muraköz protested their separation from Hungary, when the Ruthenians expressed their desire to remain part of the kingdom, which they shared for a thousand years, when the Swabians of the Banat protested their annexation into Romania and Yugoslavia (Vojvodina), the answer of Clémenceau was always the same: no, no and no. There was only one exception to the arbitrary drawing of the new borders (mostly by Eduard Benes), there was only a single case where President WilsonVs principle of self-determination prevailed: It was in the case of the city of Sopron, which was allowed to hold a plebiscite and voted by a majority of 65% to remain part of Hungary and not to join Austria. The “Guilt” of Hungary ?? Hungary was dismembered because she could not defend herself and because her greedy neighbors decided to help themselves to the unprotected carcass. Naturally, the architects of Trianon could not admit this and therefore invented the theory of Hungary's Guilt, claiming that 1) She started the First World War and 2) She was a historical German ally and as such a destabilizing force in Europe. Neither were true. It was the Serb para-governmental organization, Narodna Obrana, which, with the encouragement of Russia and with the goal of a Greater Serbia, assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914 and it was the Premier of Hungary, who alone in the Austro- Hungarian Council of Ministers, voted against a war of retaliation against Serbia. As to the claim of being a natural German ally, history proves just the opposite. Whenever Hungary was independent, she acted as a keystone of balance between the Germanic and Slavic peoples and prevented attempts at both Pan-Germanic and Pan- Slavic expansions. In the first 500 years of her existence, starting with the battle of Lechfeld in 955, Hungary fought to block the spread of German influence towards the East and created stability by filling the power vacuum of the region. When under Germanic (Austrian) occupation between 1688 and 1867, she twice rose against the Germans Page 1 This map shows Hungary s original borders, and the shaded areas are the territories that Trianon gave to other countries
