“Who can separate / What the sky has joined together, / Slovak and Hungarian / Who can separate?”
It is almost unbelievable that these lines were written by a leading figure of the Slovak nationalist movement of the 19th century, Jozef Miloslav Hurban , who had led volunteer units against the army and tried to turn the population in the Slovakian counties against Kossuth but a decade earlier. The poem is a testimony to an intense rapprochement between the Slovak and Hungarian intellectual and political elites, the like of which is rare in the shared history of the two nations.
This encounter, which was both lifelong and full of important lessons, took place in 1860/61, after the fall of Bach’s neo-absolutism, when reconciliation with the nationalities became one of the most important topics of political discourse in the reviving Hungarian public life. The leading thinkers of the Hungarian liberal elite – József Eötvös, Zsigmond Kemény, Ferenc Deák – learning from the negative experiences of 1848/49, were open to dialogue and the reconciliation of ‘misunderstandings’ with representatives of non-Hungarian nationalities, which filled many Slovak-minded politicians and intellectuals with confidence.
Historian József Demmel points out in his book “The Pan-Slavs in the Castle” that it was precisely this change of course that encouraged a part of the Slovak-speaking nobility, who considered themselves part of the Hungarian political elite, to (temporarily) commit themselves to the aspirations of the Slovak national movement. The most notable example of this was the Slovak National Assembly held in Turócszentmárton on 6 and 7 June 1861, where the noble civil servants of Turóc County played an active role, getting involved even in the drafting of the memorandum summarising Slovak national demands that was adopted there. Among them, the most enthusiastic and one of the most competent speakers of the two-day congress, József Justh, a member of the Parliament with considerable political experience, stood out, who in one of his speeches – completely uniquely in the Hungarian political discourse of the 19th century – acknowledged the existence of an independent Slovak nation. He did not even reject the idea of an autonomous Slovak district outright, although he did not openly support it.
Among the active participants of the meeting – or, as some sources say, the “congress of the Slovaks” – we find Simon Révay, the archbishop of Turóc county, who spoke only a little Slovak, but who nevertheless spoke several times. He had also proposed the establishment of a joint Slovak-Hungarian casino (casinos being the main social scene of the time) in Turóc county. The National Assembly finally appointed him to head the delegation which was given the task of presenting a memorandum to the Diet in Pest, including a demand for Slovak territorial autonomy. The delegation included Márton Szentiványi, the bailiff of Liptó, and József Justh, who enthusiastically accepted the invitation.
However, after the political elite in Pest firmly rejected the Slovak national claims, and even unofficially organised a petition campaign to get the counties and jurisdictions concerned to distance themselves from the memorandum, Révay, Szentiványi and Juszth also backed out. The latter declined the invitation, citing a – rather excuse-looking – headache, which provided ample ammunition for the satirical Slovak daily Černokňažník.
Demmel points out that the idea of the Slovak-speaking nobles was not so much the reconciliation of two nations considered equal, but rather the reintegration of a separatist, but with reasonable concessions, ethnically organized group into the Hungarian political nation. This also explains why, although they openly distanced themselves from the idea of an autonomous Slovak district, they were prepared to put forward this demand before the National Assembly – paradoxically, in order to preserve the integrity of the country. Their enthusiasm, however, lasted only until the political elite in Pest made it clear to them that they considered this attempt at reintegration to be a mistake.
The question may arise why even the liberal elite distanced itself so vehemently from the idea of national autonomy. Eötvös and Deák believed that, since ethnic groups were mixed in the country, self-government could not be granted to a given ethnic group in any part of the country without the risk of oppressing other ethnic groups in the same region. The solution to the nationality question was therefore not seen in collective rights or in territorial and administrative autonomy, but primarily in ensuring that all citizens individually enjoyed the widest possible rights to use their language, from education to religious practices and official contacts. This idea is also reflected in the 1868 Nationality Act of József Eötvös, Minister of Culture, which was passed after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867), and although it was considered to be very progressive in the Europe of the time, it did not take into account the actual needs of non-Hungarian nationalities. In the mid-1870s, with the increasing tendency towards Magyarisation, the Hungarian political elite did not even take the guarantee of linguistic and cultural rights seriously, and as a result the Slovaks were deprived of their ‘Matica slovenská’ cultural organisation and the Slovak-language grammar schools – the achievements of the 1861 Memorandum movement.
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