Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
László Öllös: Time for Hungarian-Slovak Dialogue (Conclusion)
László Ollós nation. This necessity is realized by only a handful of individuals who fail to spread the idea of change further.3 Only precious moments of sincere political cooperation have produced such joint Slovak-Hungarian declarations that featured important elements of national reconciliation." Of course, there have been attempts. In early 1990s, the issue of both countries’ national future was discussed at many intellectual meetings. Unfortunately, these meetings and conferences could at best abrade the edges of antagonistic notions of nation but not change them essentially because these opinion exchanges failed to spark a general public debate. Consequently, these intellectuals and their views became isolated; even if some upholders of such views by chance made it to executive positions, they were soon steamrolled by advocates of harder or softer models of Slovak-Hungarian national hostility. While these former intellectuals showed more tolerance and made various concessions with respect to members of ethnic minorities, their presence in executive power structures did not bring about an essential change. Coalition governments in Slovakia avoided an open public debate on fundamental issues of Slovak-Hungarian relations even when they comprised ethnic Hungarians’ representatives. So it happened that the issue of mutual relations was appropriated by advocates of national exclusiveness who began to harp on about Hungarians’ two-facedness, their historical sins, the Trianon trauma that determines their nature and actions, the assimilation of Slovaks in Hungary and their oppression in southern Slovakia, secret attempts to change state borders and called on the Slovak nation to come together and oust ethnic Hungarians along with more tolerant Slovaks - who were traitors in their eyes - from power. The state must be defended no matter what! It seems that those who decided to rule the country jointly with ethnic Hungarians chose a wrong strategy. First, they refused to address the issue of ethnic Hungarians and let those who prefer authoritarianism to constitutional democracy and Russian and Chinese allies - let alone Milosevic and some Muslim dictators - to Euro-Atlantic integration to take advantage. Later, when these politicians were forced to nail their colours to the mast, it turned out that - except rather isolated exceptions - they also viewed Hungary and Hungarians as a source of danger. In other words, they refused to take the bull by the horns not because they would not want to but because they knew they could not live up to the task. In 2007, most of these politicians helped pass a parliament’s resolution drafted by the SNS on the unalterable status of Beneš decrees. A year later, during the parliamentary debate on Kosovo independence, most speakers 250
