Székely Nép, 1999 (31-32. évfolyam, 43-44. szám)

1999-03-01 / 43. szám

small nations and the minorities would be the enemies of the integration efforts. They are not fighting for the maintenance of the frontiers, but they want to participate in the great unions of the world as their own masters, preserving their language and culture and national identities, and not merely as appendices to other nations, as minorities with restricted secondary citizenship. They see their equality guaranteed only if the majority nation gives them the legal status of autonomy, and if they do not have to fight for their rights within the greater continental unity.

In Central Europe the process of self-determination did not develop in a uniform method. In different countries and different regions the conditions, the means and the fight took different shapes. Among the Baltic nations, Lithuania was the fust to establish its own independence. It wasn't easy, because the occupying Russian armies were ready to use force against the will of the people. The situation was complicated by the fact that the collapse of the Soviet system started to fray exactly in this area. The Russian military interests indicated that they should remain in Lithuania, which seemed to be respected even by the Western powers. The only continental route to Eastern Prussia, that was conquered by the Russians following the Second World War, led through Lithuania. It should be noted that this province with its capital, Königsberg, an ancient German territory, following the evacuation of the entire population, was built into the most important Soviet military base. Since this military base can be reached only through the sea, with a detour of almost a thousand miles long, in case of war, it would be completely defenseless. Even though in America the occupation of Lithuania in 1940 and subsequently in 1944 was depicted for decades as the craziest example of Soviet colonization, and the Lithuanians, with the Estonians and Latvians, were regarded as captive nations, it was imaginable that America, in order to maintain the military balance, would not support the liberation fight of the Lithuanians.

In spite of this, the "Lithuanian time" has arrived and the small nation, numbering only three million, achieved independence. Russia was forced to accept this fact, and now the Russian trains must be locked and sealed as they run through Lithuania. The Lithuanian people, in spite of the indifference of the world, achieved victory against a mighty power.

Once the canvas is broken, it is easier to tear it apart: the blood of the Lithuanian freedom fighters secured the liberty of the Estonians and Latvians.

"South-Slav time," this is the symbol by which we can characterize the collapse of Yugoslavia, leading to the independence of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia. Slovenia succeeded rather quickly, within a couple of weeks, and

through a few military squirmishes to declare its own Republic. The Slovenians lived mostly under Austrian tutelage and were independent only briefly during their entire history, yet the idea of self-determination, national identity, and the desire to live in their own country was never fading. The two million Slovene nation, even under Tito's federal Yugoslavia, maintained its own identity, language and cultural independence.

As an independent state, Slovenia became the most developed and most democratic "post-Yugoslav" state, and earned the respect and acknowledgment of the international community.

The Croatian national fight for independence, which lasted longer and demanded greater sacrifices, was of a different character. Among others, it was Serb artillery that destroyed two ancient Hungarian settlements, Korogy and Szentlaszlo, in Syrmia. The Croalians, an ancient state-creating nation, while in personal union with the Royal Hungarian Kingdom for centuries, have never lost their identity, their regional and spiritual liberty. These characteristics make it rather easy to rebuild their devastated economy, destroyed cities and independent state.

Bosnia and the Bosnian nation represent a different story, since it is basically a Serbian speaking people, which is kept together by its Islamic religion. They never had their own state, and would live at the most in various forms of autonomy under Turkish, Austrian or Great-Serb guardianship. Yet exactly the Bosnian example shows us clearly that only the people themselves can define their ethnic identity and establish their own place among the nations and not the outsiders. This is the first time in history that the Bosnian state surfaced as a federal association of internal Islamic, Serbian and Croatian republics.

The new state was bought about by the great powers, primarily by the political will and military might of the United States, which guarantees its survival. The relationship of the great powers in regard to the small nations took a visible change, which could be seen above all in the attitude of the United States toward the "South-Slav" problem. While this attitude could be characterized as suspicious and non-trusting during the Slovenian liberation fight, it was transformed during the Bosnian crisis, when the United Slates itself forced the solution, and in Kosovo, where the Western World is ready to use military power in order to secure the autonomy of the Kosovars. What is the explanation for this great change? For the successors of Wilson, it seems to us, the main issue was the preservation of peace and tranquility, even at the price of the total

suspension of the autonomy and national liberty of the small nations and ethnic groups. Slowly, they had to understand that the peace and tranquility of the region and of the West cannot be maintained by "restraining" the minorities and small nations, but rather by accepting once again and following consequently the Wilsonian principles in pursuit of the goal, possibly through peaceful means.

The World has changed!

But before the advent of the "Kosovo time," I have to talk about the "Slovak time," that means the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. This was the most peaceful separation, without one single bullet. Probably the Czech wisdom contributed to the peaceful independence of Slovakia, who comforted themselves in Prague by the thought that they were the beneficiaries of this move. The Czech humanists were surprised that the Slovaks would opt for the simple poverty of independence, rather than the rich federation.

The question arises in the heart of every Hungarian, how is it possible that in the midst of these great transformations, state-creations, and autonomy-struggles, the greatest looser of the Trianon treaty is simply excluded. On the top of it, the Hungarian nation - including the motherland - is now dismembered in eight separate independent countries. In spite of the fact that every Hungarian minority expressed its desire for its own autonomy, only the Hungarians in Voivodina came before international attention. The Hungarian government declared its demand that, in parallel with the autonomy of Kosovo, the autonomy of Voivodina, which was abolished by the Milosevich regime, should also be reinstated for the Hungarian minority.

Is it possible for the newly independent nations and states to live in peace in the future by defrauding the Hungarians? One of the curses of Trianon is also the fact that while our neighbors have to content with one or two minority problems, we have to fight with different versions of our minority issues in seven countries.

The Hungarian minority of Slovakia is probably in the gravest situation since it was stripped of the most basic human rights in 1945, and the "government program of Kassa," the edict of President Benes, has not been withdrawn to this very day. It was a tragic historical event when the anti-Hungarian orders were attached to the deportation of the Sudeten-Germans, for which Prague enjoyed the support of both the Western and Eastern victors. Following the collapse of the dictatorship, the so-called velvet revolution, the Hungarians had to fight even for such elementary human rights, which in Transylvania, at least on paper, were guar-Page 3