“Look at it like this, it’s convex,
look at it like that, it’s concave,
For one it’s terribly amusing,
For another it’s so sad.”
(Frigyes Karinthy: The Tragedy of the Homunculus)
The manifold contradictions of a nationalist view of history was revealed at the turn of the millennium during the preparation of the joint Slovak-Hungarian history textbook.
For a long time, there were but fruitless debates about the extent to which Mátyás Bél/Matej Bel could be considered Hungarian or Slovak; about the Hungarian or Slovak identity of Sándor Petőfi, the “most Hungarian” poet, whose mother was Slovak; whether Lajos Kossuth/L’udovit Kosut, or his uncle Juraj Kosut/György Kossuth, one of the organisers of the anti-Hungarian Slovak nationalist movement, was a good Hungarian and a bad Slovak, or a bad Hungarian and a good Slovak; to what extent Pressburg/Pozsony/Bratislava can be considered a German, Hungarian or Slovak city; or to which state’s history the workers who built the Andrássy Avenue and the Parliament in Budapest belong, considering that most of them were Slovak speakers.
It was obvious that a purely nationalist perspective could only lead to a complementary relationship, in which the dominant factor is not belonging but opposition.
On the one hand, it could not be disputed that for more than a thousand years our history had been shared, creating an intertwining and common destiny between Hungarians and Slovaks. On the other hand, however, different views of history saw this common past in completely different light. In Hungarian history books, the heroes of Slovak history were mostly portrayed as anti-state rebels or prison inmates, while the nation-building heroes of the Hungarians were mostly portrayed as oppressors in Slovak history books.
The debates surrounding the common history textbook were similar to the situation when after the breakdown of a long marriage former spouses try to agree on how to divide up their shared goods. Wounds are still fresh, the good shared memories have now been buried, self-pity and finger-pointing for losses are the basic characteristics of this stage. After a divorce, it is natural to have an identity crisis and to search for a new identity: both parties have to redefine themselves and their own changed faces.
From this point of view, a particular asymmetry has developed between the two countries’ view of history, which is now beginning to even out – largely to the detriment of us, the Hungarians. Hungarian history books essentially consider everyone who lived as a Hungarian citizen in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary to be Hungarian, and ethnicity is considered a cultural characteristic on the basis of the so-called “Hungarus” concept. In contrast, Slovaks have for a long time concentrated only on the history of the Slovak ethnic group, leaving the pages of our common history blank: the glory of the Great Moravian Empire laid the foundations for Slovak history, but afterwards the “barbarian Hungarians” oppressed the Slovaks, who were only awakened from their millennia-long slumber in the second half of the 19th century by the so-called “national revivalists”.
After the establishment of the independent Slovak state, however, the Slovaks began to colonise and take possession of the previously blank pages of common history: the history of the present territory of the Slovak state is increasingly being written about in history books, as illustrated by the sport-diplomatic debate on the affiliation of Zoltán Halmay and Sándor Prokopp . Zoltán Halmay won the 1904 Olympic title in swimming and Sándor Prokopp won the 1912 Olympic title in shooting for the Kingdom of Hungary (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy), so naturally they were included in the Hungarian Olympic glory list, while to a certain extent they were also considered by the Austrians as their own. After the turn of the millennium, however, the Slovak Olympic Committee decided that Halmay and Prokopp, who were born in what is now Slovakia, should also be included in the Slovak Hall of Fame (at which point, one could indeed go on to claim that Prokopp, born in the German-speaking Zipser (cipszer) community, could well have been a candidate for German honours, but that is not the point here.)
Territorial dispossession thus means that over the last decade, more and more elements of our common history – previously considered Hungarian – have become Slovak by virtue of having occurred or being located on the territory of present-day Slovakia. Nowadays, there have been further rearrangements in this area, the essence of which is that the Slovak side is taking full possession of the parts of common history that are relevant to it: in addition to ethnicity and territorial entitlement, there is also a ‘reassignment’ of statehood in relation to common history. If, for example, one hears in Bratislava that it is city where “our kings” were crowned, this is historically correct. But when my foreign friends talk enthusiastically about the beautiful ceremony whereby the Slovak kings were crowned and how interesting the Slovak crown is, then… I can no longer be so happy about this spectacle.
I believe that these processes can only be tackled by joint effort. We Hungarians may have a more difficult task these days, because we are stubbornly clinging to our past ideals.
In the meantime, however, our common past is slipping away. Like the Slovaks, the other neighbouring countries have begun to appropriate centuries of shared coexistence. Those whom we used to regard as Hungarians in the past can now be read about in the textbooks of neighbouring countries as Croatian, Romanian or Serbian heroes, who in many cases we cannot even identify because of the transcriptions of their names.
At the same time, for me, the aftermath of the Trianon peace treaty is difficult to come to terms with not only because we lost territories, important pieces of our past, but also because I lost the natural ways of relating to my Ruthenian and Slovak ancestors. I would like to continue to preserve the community in which my ancestors of different ethnicities can get on well together.
Common past: knowledge to dispel historical misconceptions – supporting the work of Slovak and Hungarian history teachers through print and online publications, professional conferences. A project of the Association of History Teachers and the Hungarian-language newspaper of the Denník N news portal.
Funded by the European Union. The information and statements contained herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the European Union or the Tempus Public Foundation. Neither the European Union nor the funding authority can be held responsible for them.
