Popély Gyula: Népfogyatkozás – A csehszlovákiai magyarság a népszámlálások tükrében 1918-1945
Resumé
190 On each occasion of censuses in Czechoslovakia, several measures taken against the national minorities also had negative effects on the numerical trends of Hungarian minorities. From all this, the author draws the final conclusion that the Czechoslovakian censuses furnished strong evidence of the effectiveness of the assimilation-oriented Czechoslovakian policy aimed at supplanting the Hungarian national minority, and of the effective use and exploitation of various statistical juggleries — thus for instance the ousting of several thousands of Hungarians with unsettled citizenship by classing them into the category of foreign citizens. Although enlarging upon the censuses of 1921 and 1930, the author also gives an account — briefly though — of the Slovakian and Hungarian conscriptions of 1938, as well as of the censuses taken in 1940 and 1941 respectively. A detailed exploration or analysis of demographic changes after 1945 fell out of the compasses of the study. In this respect, the study is restricted only to outline the developmental tendency that has determined the changes in the number of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia since 1945 up to now. Censuses carried through in Czechoslovakia between 1950 and 1980 give evidence of the fact that the once more or less uniform and homogeneous Hungarian ethnic group — block as it were — is no longer extant since the Hungarian language area — owing to the resettlement of the indigenous Hungarian population, to the forced or voluntary removal of Hungarians and to the settlement of new Slovakian elements linked up with the assimilation as regards both the language and the national consciousness — is in the process of slackening.
