Századok – 2002

Tanulmányok - A Sajti Enikő: Impériumváltás; magyarellenes megtorlások; kitelepítések és a konszolidáció feltételeinek kialakulása a Délvidéken 1944–1947 V/1061

1114 A. SAJTI ENIKŐ an Ellmost complete, premodern restructuring of Hungarian society under the influence of a long series of agressive interventions by successive administrations. The last section of the study deals with an exceptional moment in the history of Hungarian-Yugoslav relations: the year 1947, when the relationship improved to a hitherto unheard extent. Its positive influence on the minority Hungarians was not only clearly realised by the contemporaries but also overemphasised. The new framework of ethnic survival gradually emerged, and the official expectations of the socialist Yugoslavia became fixed. The new communist regime treated the problem of minorities as a strictly domestic affair, and Belgrade never failed to make clear to the Hungarian government that no intervention from Budapest was tolerated. The role of the Hungarian foreign policy was to act as a loud speaker for Belgrade, such as in the case of the tour of the newly appointed Hungarian ambassador among the Hungarian minority in June 1947, which is thoroughly analysed by the author. The fidelity to the state traditionally required from the minority was now replaced by the demand of a political and ideological identification with the communist regime, completed by a collective amnesia with regard to the retaliations. It was upon such conditions that the Hungarians could receive schools, establish their own cultural organisations, theatres, and be granted by the state the means of political representation on the various levels of the political administration. Another important factor determining the minority policies of Yugoslavia was the similarity of the social regime in the two countries. The author closes her study with the conclusion that the international political campaign launched by the Soviet Union against Yugoslavia suddenly turned Hungary from a good neighbour into an enemy country, which naturally further increased the defencelessness of the Hungarian minority against the government of Belgrade. Yet on the long run this new situation paradoxically widened the political space within which the Hungarian minority could operate.