Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
László Öllös: Time for Hungarian-Slovak Dialogue (Conclusion)
László Öllös Of course, one cannot rule out that the status quo will linger on and that Hungary along with ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries will remain unable to force these countries to guarantee conditions for their ethnic Hungarians’ equal development and continue to do very little to change neighbouring nations’ systems of values. In other words, the Hungarian Government will continue to provide the inevitable aid and cultural support, pursue diplomatic efforts to prevent most serious wrongs, strengthen cross-border ties and lobby for implementation and/or perfection of international human rights standards, knowing that even a combination of all these efforts is insufficient to preserve ethnic Hungarians’ national identity in the long term. On the other hand, Hungary and ethnic Hungarians could attempt to accomplish something completely new: in their respective countries, they could try to trigger the kind of public debate whose absence prevents the change in the system of values without which mutual relations between the Hungarians and their neighbours will never improve. In order to achieve that, it is inevitable to reject especially the national culture of total moral relativism - which was dubbed Balkan or Eastern but has recently been emulated also in the Western world,14 feeding back its traditional eastern source - that views application of all available means as nationally justifiable. Political leaders must abandon the conviction that the pivotal element of the national interest is expansion at the expense of others and that the overriding principle of the national interest, i.e. dominance, stands above all other values. As any other value that has been formulated as an antithesis to universal human values, this value includes an inherent conflict of various formulations and, of course, their formulators. In this particular case, it is the mutual conflict between supreme values of the Romanians, the Slovaks, the Serbs, the Ukrainians, and of course the Hungarians. This conflict is further complicated by conflicts of differently formulated national values and their authors within particular national communities. Without universal moral principles and without a consensus based on their universal acceptance, force will remain the only method of settling disputes. It is force that will have to arbitrate conflicts between Hungary and its neighbours; not only that, the institution of force will also be applied to settle disputes between differently formulated national interests - or better yet - between interests proclaimed national in particular states by some parties without other parties’ approval. We have to ask ourselves some vital questions: What might be the share of majority nations in neighbouring countries that are prepared to embrace national reconciliation? What population groups or demographic categories 260
