Following the publication of his comprehensive History of the Slovaks (1993), László Szarka has now returned to his main area of research: 19th-century Slovak history. The topic of this recently published work is the relation between the ethnic minority policy of successive Hungarian governments during the period of Dualism and Slovak national development.
The book deserves a hearty welcome. Szarka attempts to portray a Hungarian nationalism brimming with power and self-confidence in the wake of the 1867 Compromise and the ideal of the nation-state with its tendency towards cultural and linguistic homogenization, as well as administrative and political unity, in conjunction with the government's ethnic minorities policy which sought to implement these aims. Preoccupied with Trianon and the often tragic consequences endured by Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries, Hungarian public opinion tends to overlook the suffering inflicted upon non-Magyar ethnic groups by the Hungarian political elite throughout the 19th century. Alongside his own research, Szarka makes good use of both Hungarian and Slovak historiography: as he himself points out, without speaking the languages of its neighbours, Hungarian historians, not to mention the general public, have difficulty integrating the important findings of Romanian and Slovak historiography (the reviewer herself is forced to admit that she has to rely on publications in German). His scrupulous approach allows Szarka to offer his readers an objective account and a moderate assessment.
The main strength of the book lies in its presentation of the changing instruments employed by Hungarian ethnic minorities policy from the beginning of Dualism to its end, i.e. the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. In addition, Szarka furnishes the theoretical background to the many debates on ethnic minorities policy, including the various shades of meaning given to the notion of a "homogenous and indivisible Hungarian political nation". [...] The closing of Slovak-language schools and the policy of increasing the number of state-run elementary schools while reducing the number of denominational schools at the turn of the century, and related measures perpetrated by county and other administrative authorities, election fraud, a campaign for the "Magyarisation" (adoption of Hungarian-sounding names) of place-names during the Bánffy era, not to mention libel actions, court proceedings against leaders of ethnic minority movements and their imprisonment. Direct government action was combined with official support for associations and societies for the dissemination of Hungarian language and culture. Nevertheless, Szarka rightly emphasizes that the large-scale assimilation of urban Slovaks occurred mainly because of the formation of modern industrial and social structures and was not primarily the result of government-initiated assimilation schemes.
Collaterally with the Hungarian government's agenda - determined as it was by the ideal of a politically, administratively and, as far as possible, culturally homogenous nation-state - Szarka describes in detail the programme of the Slovak national movement. His description starts with the resolutions of the Slovak National Assembly held in Turócszentmárton in 1861, which formulated demands for autonomy in public administration and the formation of their own Slovak public administrative apparatus. In combination with the agendas of the other non-Hungarian ethnic groups living on the territory of pre-Trianon Hungary, what was in effect being called for was the division of Hungary into administrative districts along ethnic lines; in other words, some sort of federation. This remained the ideal of the Slovak national movement throughout the period, although in the early decades of Dualism, hit hard by the state's restrictions on the use of minority languages, it took something of a back seat.
Szarka returns several times to the notion that "autonomy for the regions inhabited by ethnic minorities would have offered the soundest guarantee of the revival of "the historic Hungarian state" (p. 72). He emphasizes that such autonomy would not have been restricted to public administration, but would also have entailed economic and social structures peculiar to these regions. Unfortunately, he fails to explain exactly what he means by this. Moreover, he leaves the reader in some doubt as to whether internal federalization would have been able to resolve the conflicts between ethnic minorities and to stabilize the country's political structure. In a striking passage he declares: "a policy of regional development taking into consideration the cultural and language interests of the Slovaks could have reduced or even entirely eliminated separatist tendencies" (p. 12), whereas elsewhere he talks about "the - at least temporary - consolidation of pre-Trianon Hungary" (p. 72, italics Á.D.). He is right, of course, to emphasize the short-sightedness of a "fatalistic" attitude to the ethnic minorities issue, as if Trianon were inevitable: the splitting up of so-called "historic Hungary" (p. 7). At the same time, the hopes surrounding federalization must not be exaggerated. The modern nationalist ideal of the nation-state was a challenge facing all multi-national empires. The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the disintegration of the Russian Empire and, much later, of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of the Trianon created the multi-ethnic states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. All this shows that the idea of the nation-state was, as it indeed is, coming true in the region. As Szarka puts it, the emancipation of the small nations in the Danube basin took the form of nation-states rather than federal formations (p. 74). But we might add that this was the characteristic trend elsewhere, too.
[...]
Moreover, it should be emphasised - as indeed Szarka could have done with reference to the resolution of the 1861 Slovak National Assembly in Turócszentmárton - that, as far as their basic principles were concerned, "ethnic minority nationalisms" were no more tolerant than the nationalism of the Hungarian majority. According to Szarka, 19th-20th century initiatives granting equal rights to ethnic minorities "were generally the outcome of some sort of political reversal, and because they passed largely unnoticed, then as now the notion of equal rights for ethnic groups, an ethnic minority ideal par excellence was for a long time regarded as an illusion'" (p. 45). As regards the proposed Slovak ethnic minority areas, the Turócszentmárton agenda recognised only Slovaks and assimilated Slovaks - so-called "degenerate sons" - who were to be returned to the bosom of the Slovak nation. The resolution demanded the exclusive use of the Slovak language in the designated area "in both civil and religious matters" and that Slovak be made the "exclusive language of education in schools". In this way, other ethnic minorities living in such areas would have received the same treatment suffered by the Slovaks. Minority nationalism, which was to become the nationalism of the majority in Romania and Slovakia, was intolerant long before the Trianon Peace Treaty came into effect. The call for linguistic and cultural homogenization assisted by national political unity (whether in the form of administrative and political autonomy within the framework of a particular state or an independent state) was typical of 19th and early 20th-century nationalisms, which differed only in their strength, not in their purposes. While the Hungarian elite which dominated government, the economy and society at times sought over-zealously and over-confidently - although motivated at least partly by their "existential concern for the community", according to István Bibó - to mould Hungary's pre-Trianon multinational structure into a homogenous Hungarian nation-state, minority nationalisms could only dream of doing the same themselves. Such latent intolerance may partly explain why even József Eötvös, who fully supported the demands of non-Hungarian ethnic groups as regards culture and language use, was so opposed to any form of administrative federalism on a national basis, although his own program guaranteed the widest possible use of minority languages, even in the sphere of administration.
[...]