Hungarians in Slovakia are the largest ethnic minority of the country, numbering 520,528 people or 9.7% of population (2001 census). They are concentrated mostly in the southern part of the country, near the border with Hungary. Averaged on district level, they form the majority in two districts: Komárno and Dunajská Streda.
After the defeat of the Central Powers in the Western Front in 1918, the Treaty of Trianon was signed between the winning Entente powers and Hungary in 1920, at the Paris Peace Conference. In consideration of the strategic and economic interests of their new ally Czechoslovakia, the victorious allies set the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border further south than the Slovak-Hungarian language border. Consequently, the newly created state annexed areas that were overwhelmingly ethnic Hungarian.[4]
When Czechoslovakia was established, many Slovak-language schools were established in Slovak lands, while some Hungarian-language schools in chiefly Hungarian regions remained Hungarian and some German schools in largely German regions remained German. The Hungarians, for example, had 31 kindergartens, 806 elementary schools, 46 secondary schools, and 576 Hungarian libraries at schools in the 1930s. A Department of Hungarian literature was created at the Charles University of Prague. The number of Hungarian elementary schools increased from 720 in 1923/1924 to the above number 806.[5] The Hungarian University in Bratislava was closed after the Czechoslovak occupation of the town.
According to the 1910 census conducted in Austria–Hungary, there were 884,309 ethnic Hungarians, constituting 30.2% of the population, in what is now Slovakia. The Czechoslovak census of 1930 recorded 571,952 Hungarians. (In the 2001 census, by contrast, the percentage of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia was 9.7%, a decrease of two thirds in percentage but not in absolute number, which remained roughly the same.)
All censuses from the period are disputed, and some give conflicting data. For example, according to the Czechoslovak censuses, 15-20% of the population in Košice was Hungarian. During the parliamentary elections, however, the ethnic Hungarian parties received 35-45% of the total votes (excluding those Hungarians who voted for the Communists or the Social Democrats).[6] The fact that a high percentage of bilingual, mixed "Slovak-Hungarian" persons could claim both Slovak and Hungarian ethnicity complicated matters.
Some authors interpreted the difference between the 1910 census and the 1930 census as follows: the decrease between 1918 and 1924 of 106,000 people was due to those who were expelled from Czechoslovakia or fled to Hungary after World War I, when the state authorities refused to grant Czechoslovak citizenship to a disproportionate number of Hungarians. Later, when they added 'Jewish' as a separate ethnicity, there was an apparent decrease in the number and percentage of Hungarians (some of whom were Jews and self-identified as such.)[4] Slovak sources acknowledge that many Hungarian teachers and civil clerks were forced to leave Czechoslovakia or left for Hungary voluntarily. The numbers are confusing but the censuses do show a rapid decline in the number of Hungarians. Two famous examples of people forced to leave were the families of Béla Hamvas[7] and Albert Szent-Györgyi. The numerous refugees (including even more from the newly created Romania) necessitated the construction of new housing projects in Budapest (Mária-Valéria telep, Pongrácz-telep), which gave shelter to refugees numbering at least in the tens of thousands.[8]
In 1945, at the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia was recreated. Some politicians intended to completely remove the ethnic German and Hungarian minorities from the territory of Czechoslovakia via expulsion or ethnic cleansing. Many citizens considered both minorities collectively to be "war criminals", because representatives from those two minorities had supported redrawing the borders of Czechoslovakia before World War II, via the Munich Agreement and the first Vienna Award.[5] In addition, Czechs were suspicious of ethnic German political activity before the war. They also believed that the presence of so many ethnic Germans had encouraged Nazi Germany in its pan-German visions. In 1945, President Edvard Beneš revoked the citizenship of ethnic Germans and Hungarians by decree #33, except for those with an active anti-fascist past (see Beneš Decrees).
Immediately at the end of World War II, some 30,000 Hungarians left the formerly Hungarian re-annexed territories of southern Slovakia (see Vienna Awards). While Czechoslovakia expelled ethnic Germans, the Allies prevented a unilateral expulsion of Hungarians. They did agree to a forced population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, one which was initially rejected by Hungary. This population exchange proceeded by an agreement whereby 55,487; 74,407; 76,604 or 89,660 Hungarians from Slovakia were exchanged for 60,000; 71,787; or 73,200 Slovaks from Hungary (the exact number depends on the source.)[4][9][10][11] Slovaks leaving Hungary moved voluntarily, but Czechoslovakia forced Hungarians out of their nation.[12]
After expulsion of the Germans, Czechoslovakia found it had a labor shortage, especially of farmers in the Sudetenland. As a result, the Czechoslovak government deported more than 44,129 Hungarians from Slovakia to the Sudetenland for forced labor[13][14] between 1945 and 1948.[14] Some 2,489 were resettled voluntarily and received houses, good pay and citizenship in return. Later on, from November 19, 1946 to September 30, 1946, the government resettled the remaining 41,666 by force, with the Police and Army transporting them like "livestock" in rail cars. The Hungarians were required to work as indentured laborers, often offered in village markets to the new Czech settlers of the Sudetenland.
These conditions eased slowly. After a few years, the resettled Hungarians started to return to their homes in Slovakia. By 1948 some 18,536 had returned, causing conflicts over the ownership of their original houses, since Slovak colonists had often taken them over. By 1950 the majority of indentured Hungarians had returned to Slovakia. The status of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia was resolved, and the government again gave citizenship to ethnic Hungarians.
Materials from Russian archives prove how insistent the Czechoslovak government was on destroying the Hungarian minority in Slovakia.[15] Hungary gave the Slovaks equal rights and demanded that Czechoslovakia offer equivalent rights to Hungarians within its borders.[16]
In the spring and summer of 1945, the Czech government in exile approved a series of decrees that stripped Hungarians of property and all civil rights.[17] In 1946 in Czechoslovakia, the process of "Reslovakization" was implemented with the objective of eliminating the Magyar nationality.[18] It basically required the acceptance of Slovak nationality.[18] Ethnic Hungarians were pressured to have their nationality officially changed to Slovak, otherwise they were dropped from the pension, social and healthcare system.[19] Since Hungarians in Slovakia were temporarily deprived of many rights at that time (see Beneš decrees), as many as some 400,000 (sources differ) Hungarians applied for, and 344,609 Hungarians received, a re-Slovakization certificate and thereby Czechoslovak citizenship.
After Eduard Beneš was out of office, the next Czechoslovak government issued decree No. 76/1948 on April 13, 1948, allowing those Hungarians still living in Czechoslovakia, to reinstate Czechoslovak citizenship.[18] A year later, Hungarians were allowed to send their children to Hungarian-language schools, which reopened for the first time since 1945.[18] Most re-Slovakized Hungarians gradually readopted their Hungarian nationality. As a result, the re-Slovakization commission ceased operations in December 1948.
Despite promises to settle the issue of the Hungarians in Slovakia, in 1948 Czech and Slovak ruling circles still maintained the hope that they could deport the Hungarians from Slovakia.[20] According to a 1948 poll conducted among the Slovak population, 55% were for resettlement (deportation) of the Hungarians, 24% said "don't know", and 21% were against.[21] Under slogans related to the struggle with "class enemies", the process of dispersing dense Hungarian settlements continued in 1948 and 1949.[21] By October 1949, the government prepared to deport 600 Hungarian families.[21] Those Hungarians remaining in Slovakia were subjected to heavy pressure to assimilate,[21] including the forced enrollment of Hungarian children in Slovak schools.[21]
In the 1950 census the number of Hungarians in Slovakia decreased by 240,000 in comparison to 1930. By 1961 census it increased by 164,244 to 518,776. The low number in the 1950 census is likely due to the re-Slovakization; the higher number in the 1961 census is due to the fact that the re-Slovakization was cancelled .
The number of Hungarians in Slovakia increased from 518,782 in 1961 to 567,296 in 1991. The number of self-identified Hungarians in Slovakia decreased between 1991 and 2001, due in part to low birth rates, emigration and introduction of new ethnic categories, such as the Roma. Also, between 1961 and 1991 Hungarians had a significantly lower birth rate than the Slovak majority (which in the meantime had increased from about 3.5 million to 4.5 million), contributing to the drop in the Hungarian percentage of the population.
After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Czechia and Slovakia separated peacefully in the Velvet Divorce of 1993. Following the independence of Slovakia, the situation of the Hungarian minority worsened, especially under the reign of Slovak Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar (1993-March 1994 and December 1994-1998).
An official language law required the use of the Slovak language not only in official communications but also in everyday commerce, in the administration of religious bodies, and even in the realm of what is normally considered private interaction, for example, communications between patient and physician. On January 23, 2007, the local broadcasting committee shut down BBC's radio broadcasting for using English, and cited the language law as the reason.[22]
Especially in Slovakia's ethnic Hungarian areas,[23] critics have attacked the administrative division of Slovakia as a case of gerrymandering, designed so that in all eight regions, Hungarians are in the minority. Under the 1996 law of reorganization, only two districts (Dunajská Streda and Komárno) have a Hungarian-majority population. While also done to maximize the success of the party HZDS, the gerrymandering in ethnic Hungarian areas worked to minimize the Hungarians' voting power.[23] In all eight regions, Hungarians are in the minority, though five regions have Hungarian populations within the 10 to 30 per cent range. The Slovak government established new territorial districts from north to south, dividing the Hungarian community into five administrative units, where they became a minority in each administrative unit. The Hungarian community saw a substantial loss of political influence in this gerrymandering.[24]
On March 12, 1997, the Undersecretary of Education sent a circular to the heads of the school districts, ordering that in Hungarian-language schools, the Slovak language should be taught exclusively by native speakers. The same requirement for native Slovak-language speakers applied to teaching of geography and history in non-Slovak schools. In 1998 this measure was repealed by the Mikuláš Dzurinda government.
On April 10, 2008 the Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP) voted with the governing Smer and SNS supporting the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon.[25] This is the result of an alleged political bargain[26]: Robert Fico promised to change the Slovak education law that would have drastically limited the Hungarian minority's usage of their native language in education facilities.[27] The two Slovak opposition parties saw this as a betrayal,[26] because originally the whole Slovak opposition had planned to boycott the vote to protest a new press code that limited the freedom of the press in Slovakia.[28]
The 1992 Slovak constitution is derived from the concept of the Slovak nation state.[32] The preamble of the Constitution, however, cites Slovaks and ethnic minorities as the constituency. Moreover, the rights of the diverse minorities are protected by the Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, and various other legally binding documents. The Party of the Hungarian Coalition is represented in Parliament and was part of the government coalition from 1998 to 2006.
The Constitution also declares that Slovak is the state language on the territory of the Slovak Republic. Make this rules concrete, the 1995 Language Law declares that the State language has a priority over other languages applied on the whole territory of the Slovak Republic. The 2009 amendment of the language law retricts the use of minority languages, and extend the obligatory use of the state language, e.g. in communities where the number of minority speaker is less than 20% of the population. Under the 2009 amendment a fine up to 5000 euros may be imposed on those committing a misdemeanour in relation to the use of the state language.
In 1995, a so-called Basic Treaty was signed between Hungary and Slovakia, regarded by the US and leading European powers as a pre-condition for these countries to join NATO and the EU. In the basic treaty the Hungary and Slovakia undertook a wide range of legal obligations among others the acceptance of recommendation 1201 of the European Council which in its article 11 states that 'in the regions where they are in a majority the persons belonging to a national minority shall have the right to have at their disposal appropriate local or autonomous authorities or to have a special status, matching the specific historical and territorial situation and in accordance with the domestic legislation of the state.'
After the regions of Slovakia became autonomous in 2002(?), the SMK was able to take power in the Nitra Region. It became part of the ruling coalition in several other regions. Since the new administrative system was put in place in 1996, the SMK has asked for the creation of a Hungarian-majority Komárno county. Although a territorial unit of the same name existed before 1918, the borders proposed by the SMK are significantly different. The proposed region would encompass a long slice of southern Slovakia, with the explicit aim to create an administrative unit with an ethnic Hungarian majority. Hungarian minority politicians and intellectuals are convinced that such an administrative unit is essential for the long-term survival of the Hungarian minority. The Slovak government has so far refused to change the boundaries of the administrative units, and ethnic Hungarians continue as minorities in each.
According to Sabrina P. Ramet, professor of international studies at the University of Washington, who refers to situation under Vladimír Mečiar's administration between 1994 and 1998:[33]
In Central and eastern Europe, there are at least nine zones afflicted by ethnic hatred and intolerance...the greatest potential for hostilities can be identified eith problems of discrimination against the Hungarian minority in southern Slovakia and Romanian Transylvania. In both cases, national regimes have discriminated against local ethnic Hungarians, depriving them of the right to use their native language for official business; taking step to reduce the use of Hungarian as a language of instruction in local schools, and, in the Slovak case, removing Hungarian street signs from villages populated entirely by Hungarians, replacing them with Slovak-language signs. Slovak authorities even went so far to pass a law requiring that Hungarian woman marrying a Hungarian man add the suffix "-ova" to her name, as is the custom among Slovaks. Hungarians have rebelled against the prospect of such amalgams as "Nagyova", "Bartokova", "Kodályova", and "Petöfiova".
The coalition formed after the parliamentary elections in 2006 saw the Slovak National Party headed by Ján Slota (frequently described as ultra-nationalist,[34][35] right-wing extremist[34][36]) become a member of the ruling coalition, led by the allegedly social-democratic Smer party. After its signing of a coalition treaty with far-right extremist party SNS, the Smer's Social-Democratic self-identification was questioned.
In August 2006, a few incidents motivated by ethnic hatred caused diplomatic tensions between Slovakia and Hungary. Mainstream Hungarian and Slovak media blamed Slota's anti-Hungarian statements from the early summer for the worsening ethnic relations. The Party of European Socialists, with which the Smer is affiliated, regards SNS as a party of the racist far-right. It reacted to news of the coalition by expressing grave concern. The PES suspended Smer's membership on 12 October 2006 and decided to review the situation in June 2007. The decision was then extended until February 2008, when Smer's candidacy was readmitted by PES. On 27 September 2007, the Slovak parliament reconfirmed the Beneš decrees, appearing to legitimize the historic accusation of collective guilt and deportation of Hungarians and Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II.[37]
In May 2010, the newly-appointed second Viktor Orbán's cabinet in Hungary initiated a bill on dual citizenship, granting Hungarian passports to members of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, purportedly aimed at offsetting the harmful effects of the Treaty of Trianon, and raising a huge controversy between Hungary and Slovakia. Though János Martonyi, the new foreign minister, visited his Slovak colleague to discuss the dual citizenship, Robert Fico however stated that since Fidesz and the new government did not want to negotiate on the issue, this would be a question of national security. Ján Slota Slovak government member for the Slovak National Party, fears that Hungary wants to attack Slovakia and considered the situation as a "beginning of a war conflict". The designate Prime Minister Viktor Orbán laid down firmly that he considers Slovak hysteria as part of the campaign. As a response to change in Hungarian citizenship law, the National Council of the Slovak Republic approved on May 26, 2010 a law stating that if a Slovak citizen applies for citizenship of another country then he/she will lose his/her Slovak one.
On September 1, 2009 more than ten thousand Hungarians held demonstrations to protest against the so-called language law that limits the use of minority languages in Slovakia.[38] The law calls for fines of up to £4,380 for institution "misusing the Slovak language[39] There were demonstrations in Dunajská Streda, Slovakia (Hungarian: Dunaszerdahely), in Budapest, Hungary and in Brussels, Belgium.
Some 585 schools in Slovakia, kindergartens inclusive, use the Hungarian language as the main language of education. Nearly 200 schools use both Slovak and Hungarian. In 2004, the J. Selye University of Komárno was the first state-financed Hungarian-language university to be opened outside Hungary.
Note: only towns are listed here, villages and rural municipalities are not.
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