Simont Attila - Tóth László: Kis lépések nagy politikusa. Szent-Ivány József, a politikus é művelődésszervez (Somorja, 2016)

XIV. Személynévmutató

iparos Párt (Hungarian National Smallholders', Agrarians' and Tradesmen's Party), which had its constituency mainly among the Protestant population of southern Slovakia.

As chairman of the party he made an effort to pull the Hungarian politics in Slovakia together, at least its civilian component. During the entire period from 1920 to 1938, he was a member of the Czechoslovak Parliament. He was the main initiator of publishing the most important Hungarian-language newspaper in Czechoslovakia, the Prágai Magyar Hírlap, on the content of which he had a serious impact for many years. While he had always insisted on the self-determination right of the Hungarian minority and severely attacked the Czechoslovak measures aimed at creating a nation state, he was among the first Hungarian politicians in Slovakia who had distanced themselves from irredentism and unilateral policy of grievance.

After he founded the Magyar Nemzeti Párt (Hungarian National Party) in 1925, he tried, similarly to the Sudeten German activist parties, to move closer to the Prague government. The substance of his new policy which he called national realpolitik, should have lied in the fact that reasonable compromises reached with the Czechoslovak government could help the Hungarian community's economic and social strengthening, and, at the same time, would ensure a greater say for Hungarians in the state affairs. This policy, however, ended in failure, in no small way due to the fact that the Czechoslovak politics was not willing to give up its nation state plans.

At the end of the 1920s, Szent-lvány's previously unchallenged position in his own party weakened to some extent, while his disease also contributed to the fact that he withdrew from the front lines of political life for some time. During these years he devoted much time to the construction of spa in Liptovský Ján, and also to different aspects of the Hungarian culture in Slovakia. Among others, he brought together the forum of Hungarian writers in Slovakia called Szentiváni Kúria three times—their assemblies took place at the Szentiváni Mansion. He had coped as well with the role of a prosaist.

After 1932, in his political communication he placed a stronger emphasis on the importance of national and social ideas than before. At that time, however, his gradual exclusion from the first line of political life had already begun, a process that was finally completed in 1936, by the formation of the Egyesült Magyar Párt (Unified Hungarian Party). Despite the fact that his name was still there on the list of the party board, the leadership at that time already was in Andor Jaross's and János Esterházy's hands. As a consequence, he mostly stayed in Budapest and his impact on the Hungarian politics in Slovakia drastically decreased.

The First Vienna Award in the autumn of 1938, however, offered him a new chance. He was one of the deputies of the arbitration area who were called to the Budapest Parliament, but he had not played a larger part there either. His life ended in December 1941 by a sudden heart attack.

246