The Genesis of a Lasting Quarrel in Central Europe

Ignác Romsics: The Dismantling of Historic Hungary: the Peace Treaty
of Trianon, 1920. Translated by Mario D. Fenyo.
New York, Columbia University Press, 2002, 201 pp.

Compared to other trouble spots, Central Europe today is a tranquil place, nevertheless we should keep in mind that both world wars broke out here and were caused partly by the national aspirations and border disputes so typical of this region. More than 80 years ago a peace settlement tried to reorganise Central Europe along ethnic lines, but that caused more problems than it solved. Bálint Vázsonyi, the recently deceased concert pianist and political writer (the great-nephew of Vilmos Vázsonyi, the first Hungarian cabinet minister who was a practising member of the Jewish community) wrote an essay about the 1920 Hungarian Peace Treaty, calling it a "bad treaty that won't go away."1 Indeed, that is the problem with that old piece of international law, and that explains the appearance of another book (following scores of earlier publications) on the subject.
Though even the average well-educated person is unaware of it, most readers of this journal are aware that the Hungarians, a nation looking back to eleven centuries in Central Europe, received a devastating and unjustified blow in the aftermath of the First World War. Ignoring President Wilson's principle of self-determination, the victors partitioned the historic Kingdom of Hungary by arbitrarily assigning 3.5 million ethnic Hungarians, a third of the nation, and two-thirds of the country's total territory to the newly-created or enlarged states of Czechoslovakia, Romania and "The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes." Ignác Romsics, a highly acclaimed and prolific Hungarian historian, a frequent contributor to these pages, in a rather short and therefore easily digestible book recapitulates the process that led to that uniquely unfair yet lasting settlement, which has many unfortunate repercussions even today.
By now practically every document pertaining to the making of this treaty has been studied by professional historians, there is a vast literature both on the narrow subject and on its larger background, nevertheless the book can be recommended to all those interested in Central Europe. Romsics begins with a description of the national tensions in the ethnic mosaic of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, and tells of the dreams concerning its future of Pan-Slavists, the die-hard Habsburg centralists, nationalists of various colour and degree, and idealist intellectuals on the Left and Right. It is vain to ask whether the Empire had any chance for survival, but in view of the fact that Winston Churchill proved right, independence indeed brought terrible sufferings to its inhabitants and their descendants (Bosnians included!),2 an attempt to give an answer is justified. Romsics's answer is a cautious "no":

the empire was subjected to centrifugal forces propelled by nationalism which neither the Austrian nor the Hungarian leadership could counteract effectively. It cannot be ascertained that the federal solution, advocated by many of the contemporaries, would have been an effective counteraction (p. 18.)

The present writer, who has devoted much study and thought to the subject, is of a somewhat more positive opinion: the First World War was not inevitable, and without that, if reasonable politicians in Hungary (like Prime Minister Tisza) would have prevailed over the Radical Right and the Radical Left, the dualist structure might have given way to federalism in both halves of the Empire, meeting many of the legitimate demands of the national minorities.
The chapter on war aims reveals the strength and depth of the forces that were bent on destroying the Empire and replacing it with new states based on one dominant language or another. These forces were external rather than internal: French plans for a post-war Europe dominated by France, helped by a group of client states in the back of Germany, and Russian plans of creating a large sphere of influence in central and southeastern Europe. The mini-imperialism of the Czechs, Romanians and Serbs fitted well into the aims of both Great Powers. The book shows that it was not easy to overcome the reluctance of the British (and later that of the Americans) to embark upon such a drastic change in the power structure (today we would say "security architecture") of Europe, but the Russian revolution and the failure of a separate peace with Austria followed by the latter's total subordination to Germany led to the decisions made in late Spring, 1918, to embrace the programme of the exiled politicians (the Czech Masaryk and BenesŠ, the Polish Zaleski, the Croat Supilo, the Slovak Stefanik, etc.) and their British and French friends (R.W. Seton-Watson, W. Steed, L. Leger, E. Denis). Romsics raises the issue of how much support this programme enjoyed among the respective populations. Taking the number of deserters and POWs ready to enter the volunteer Czech, Romanian etc. legions organised by the Entente, he concludes that a considerable, perhaps an overwhelming part of the so-called "subject peoples" of the Monarchy welcomed the chance for independence. I do not question that, but one must also add the influence of war weariness, the possibility to escape from POW camps, and mainly the wish to be on the winning rather than on the losing side and receiving generous frontiers, which nobody had dreamed of. But, granted that caveat, one can only agree with the author that

the decisions of the Great Powers would not have taken the direction they did had the Austro-Hungarian Empire not been multinational, or if the leaders of the nationalities had declared in favour of preserving the Monarchy and Hungary, as the Czechs and the Croatians had done in 1848-49 (p. 51.)

Important as the decisions made in the Allied capitals and War Councils, later at the Paris Peace Conference, were the new borders were settled basically on the spot by the French-led Serbian, Romanian and Czechoslovak armies, which by the end of 1918 occupied almost all the territories demanded. For Hungarians the debate that will never end is whether it would have been possible to resist those armies and thus to prevent the occupation and subsequent cession of territories where about 3,5 million ethnic Hungarians lived who refused to become citizens of the newly created Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia or of the greatly enlarged Romania. The answer hinges on how one assesses the personality and policies of Count Mihály Károlyi, the pro-Entente new leader of Hungary and his Radical and Social Democratic allies. Romsics describes the illusions, the hesitations and the actual decisions of the revolutionary government, also the anarchy caused by the soldiers infected with the promises of the Bolsheviks, but refrains from coming to any judgement. Perhaps he deliberately left that to Horace Rumbold, the British Minister [not Ambassador, as stated] to Berne, who, speaking about a certain step of Károlyi, wrote that it "is so naďve as to strengthen the impression that Count Károlyi is not really fitted for the role he has assumed." (p. 60) Romsics gives a realistic picture of the weakness of the Hungarian armed forces and the re-luctance of the population to continue the war. He should have given reasons for the contrast between the defeatist mood in Budapest and the aggressive optimism of the Czechs, Southern Slavs and Romanians.

The reader can follow how the new borders were drawn up: in principle during the discussions of the Supreme Council (composed by the Heads of Delegations and the Foreign Ministers of the five Great Powers), and in practice by the junior diplomats who made up the territorial committees. The pattern was typical: the American experts proposed frontiers as close to the ethnic lines as possible (where it was possible to draw such a line), the British were wavering between a sense of fairness and the drive to punish the vanquished and reward the smaller allies, the Italians generally inconsistent except where their "sacro egoismo" was involved, while the French gave all possible support to the often extravagant claims of the emerging successor states. The most important argument for the latter was military and economic strategy, particularly the existence of railway lines in the most disputed areas. Eventually that decided the fate of close to two million Hungarians, who were separated from the compact bloc of Hungarians, despite their protests against the denial of the principle of self-determination. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that the most outrageous claims, like the creation of a "Corridor" in Western Hungary between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the incorporation of the Börzsöny, Mátra and Bükk hills into Czechoslovakia, or the cession of Baja and Pécs to Yugoslavia, were turned down by the Great Powers, despite the many false figures presented to the Conference by the Czech KramarŠ and BenesŠ or by the Romanian Prime Minister, Ion[el] Bra×tianu. Romsics reiterates the view held by most modern historians (as opposed to the traditional belief in inter-war Hungary) that the proclamation of a Hungarian Soviet Republic on March 21, 1919 and its subsequent policies did not influence the territorial decisions of the Peace Conference. The evidence for that is only circumstantial. In fact it looks quite probable that on a few debated points, like the fate of the Csallóköz (the large Hungarian-inhabited island of the Danube), that of the Baranya Triangle, the Muraköz, and the village of Ligetfalu on the right bank of the Danube facing Pozsony/Bratislava, "the danger of Bolshevism" and the conduct of the the Hungarian Bolshevik leadership did influence the verdict taken against Hungary. The decision to accept the Austrian claim to a strip of Western Hungary (eventually known as the Burgenland) had undoubtedly much to do with Bolshevism having
captured Hungary. (The Austrians supported their claim, made on ethnic grounds, with the need to stop the spreading of Bolshevism.)

Foreign, particularly British, influence on the fate of Hungary did not stop with the drawing up of the new borders. Following the collapse of Béla Kun's Bolshevik regime, and during the weeks of Romanian occupation, there were chaotic conditions in the country, unbridled plunder by the Romanian army, self-proclaimed but powerless governments in Budapest, and the Red Terror replaced by White terror in the countryside occupied by the small "National" army led by Admiral Horthy. Sir George Clerk, a British diplomat, played a major role in consolidating conditions and installing a widely representative government. That opened the way to inviting a Hungarian delegation to Paris to be presented with the terms of peace. In Budapest expectations ran high, and the documentation prepared by a highly capable staff under the future Prime Minister Count Pál Teleki was indeed impressive. In Paris, however, few cared to study it and it did not influence the terms in any way. Despite the eloquence of Count Apponyi, the Head of the Hungarian delegation that arrived in Paris on 7 January, 1920, and the many notes, the terms presented by the victors were as harsh as agreed almost a year earlier. The Hungarian call for plebiscites on the territories to be detached was of no avail, and for good reasons. In addition to the 3,5 million Hungarians, a good many non-Hungarians (Germans, Slovaks, even some Romanians and Serbs) would have most likely voted against being torn off from Hungary, severing traditional economic connections. The only person who paid attention to the Hungarian arguments was Lloyd George, the British Liberal Prime Minister. He spoke out against so many Hungarians being detached from their country and proposed the revision of the borders planned, but his subordinates foiled the only serious attempt to mitigate the terms to be imposed upon Hungary. A few weeks later a new French team at the Quai d'Orsay, headed by Maurice Paléologue, in combination with some French business circles, played with the idea of revising the Hungarian borders after the signing of treaty, provided Hungary were ready to join the client states of France and were willing to give France a paramount influence over the Hungarian economy. Nothing came out of this scheme, so Hungary had no alternative but signing the treaty, probably the most unfair one in modern history, on 4 June at the Grand Trianon Palace at Versailles.
The Hungarians had their last hope in providing military help to the Polish Army fighting the Red Army near Warsaw, and, in exchange, to receive back some Hungarian-inhabited areas from Romania. Britain and France, however, turned the offer down on July 27–28. The formation of an alliance between Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania, known as the Little Entente, made any Hungarian plan for border change practically hopeless, at least as long as there was no Great Power to support the revision of the territorial clauses of the Treaty. Hungary had no alternative but to ratify the Treaty in November, 1920. Soon the victors also ratified it. The fact that it was only passed after extensive debates in the British Parliament, against a large number of votes in both Houses, and that in France 74 members also voted "no" (against 478 "yes") is telling. It shows that many European politicians thought that the treatment of Hungary was clearly unjust and did not serve the cause of peace. Nevertheless, when the commissions charg-ed with the delineation of the actual border on the spot recommended minor rectifications in favour of Hungary, the Conference of Ambassadors and the League of Nations turned most of them down. The only alteration in favour of Hungary, awarding the town of Sopron and its vicinity to Hungary, after a plebiscite held on 13 December 1921, was due to the military action of Hungarian irregulars, whose resistance induced the Allies to opt for the compromise of asking the people for their preference.

For those who do not have the time to read even this short, concise book but nevertheless want to understand why Central Europe is still full of ethnic tensions, the Epilogue (with telling tables) and the maps provide ample explanation. All the national problems of the old Habsburg Empire survived, in an aggravated form. The ill-treatment of national minorities provided an inviting pretext for intervention to Hitler, border change and war. Romsics ends the story here, more exactly with the restoration of the Trianon borders in the 1947 Treaty of Paris. But there is a sad follow-up, which shows that the legacy of the 1920 treaty continues to poison the political air in the successor states of historic Hungary.
Despite or because of decades of mistreatment, the Hungarians torn from Hungary (and their descendants) have never ceased to regard themselves as part of the Hungarian nation. The imposition of Communism following the Second World War worsened their lot considerably. Close to half a million were expelled from Czechoslovakia and Romania to the rump state of Hungary. Those who were allowed to remain in the land of their ancestors faced the expropriation of their properties and the banning of their schools and associations. They suffered under double oppression: while everyone suffered under the iron hand of dictatorship, anti-minority policies and practices added to the plight of the Hungarians, who could not even protest as all political expression was stifled. Improvements have been painfully slow even after the fall of the Communist regimes. For example, only a fraction of the Hungarian communal or private assets has been restored to the previous owners since 1989. Even today the Hungarians in the seven neighbouring countries around Hungary feel that their very existence is in jeopardy. The policy of uprooting, expelling, discriminating, and occasionally outright killing, combined with "socialist industrialisation" and deliberate colonisation (transfering a large number of non-Hungarians to territories traditionally inhabited mainly by Hungarians and thus changing the ethnic composition of the area), has considerably reduced the number and, to a larger extent, the proportion of the Hungarian minorities in all the states neighbouring Hungary. Since 1910 the number of ethnic Hungarians in the areas detached from Hungary has declined from 3.3 million to 2.6 million. Their proportion has drastically fallen from 30 to 11 percent of the population in Slovakia; from 32 to 20 percent in Romanian Transylvania; from 28 to 16 percent in Vojvodina (Serbia); and from 31 to 12 percent in Subcarpathia (Ukraine). The ethnic composition of the cities has changed even more dramatically, as graphically demonstrated by the case of the capital of Transylvania, Kolozsvár. In 1910, 82 per cent of the city's population was Hungarian and 14 per cent Romanian. Today it is called Cluj-Napoca, where - due to the relocations and other methods of deposed dictator Ceaus¸escu and the notorious present-day mayor Funar - Hungarians comprise only 18 percent of the population.
These figures reveal a sophisticated form of ethnic cleansing. The aim, policies and tendencies of intolerant majority elites inevitably generate constant tension and conflict. There has been, however, an unforeseen but fortunate result of the partition of the Hungarian nation into eight units. Hungarians beyond the borders are strong adherents of the Euro-Atlantic orientation of their countries and substantially contribute to the stability of their own country and of the whole region. They have never resorted to violence; they struggle for their civil rights, indeed for their survival, solely by political means. They deserve recognition and support not only for moral but also for practical reasons.
The problems arising out of the Trianon Treaty are not unique to Hungary. The ill-treatment of national minorities is a world-wide phenomenon. The principles, the model and the framework for solving the problem are at hand and easily ac-complished given a little good will and considerable foresight. In the western half of Europe, decentralisation, devolution,
local democracy and territorial autonomy are everyday practices. A report drawn up by Andreas Gross, a Swiss parliamentarian, and passed by the Assembly of the Council of Europe on July 24, 2003, points out that

most present-day conflicts no longer occur between states but within states... Autonomy allows a group which is a minority within a state to exercise its rights, while providing certain guarantees of the state's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In the interests of stability and fairness the various European institutions should urge every state, including Hungary's neighbours, to end all forms of discrimination against their national minorities. If that does not happen, there will be endless tension between the majority nation and the national minority, and also with the kin state of the minority. It is in the interest of all the states of Europe, and it is a special responsibility of the powers that drew up the peace treaty signed in 1920 at Trianon, including the United States, to ensure that the Hungarian minorities will at last be able to breathe freely and feel they have a future in their native land, where their forebears have lived for well over a millennium.

Notes
1 The Washington Times, June 4, 2000.
2 "There is not one of the peoples or provinces that constituted the Empire of the Habsburgs to whom gaining their independence has not brought the tortures which ancient poets and theologians had reserved for the dammed." Sir Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm (London, 1948), 14.

Géza Jeszenszky
is a historian specialising in Hungary's relations with the English-speaking world. He was Foreign Minister between 1990-94 and Ambassador to the United States, 1998-2002.

The Genesis of a Lasting Quarrel in Central Europe