The Nationality Policy of the Hungarian People’s Republic in the Winter of 1918-1919. The «Switzerland of the East» and the option of a negotiated peace under the government of Mihály Károlyi Текст научной статьи по специальности «Политологические науки»

ТЕРРИТОРИЯ ИСТОРИИ

UDC 94

Laszlo Szarka

The Nationality Policy of the Hungarian People's Republic in the Winter of 1918-1919

The «Switzerland of the East» and the option of a negotiated peace under the government of Mihaly Karolyi

Abstract. The author analyses the transformation of Central Europe into a nation-state that took place at the background of the First World War and the Versailles Treaty. The subject of his research are the plans and propositions of the Hungarian delegation based on the ideas of the prominent Hungarian thinkers of the time as Oszkar Jaszi, Istvan Tisza, Gyula Szekfu as well as the steps undertaken by the government of Mihaly Karoly aimed at securing the interests of a Hungarian nation. After analysing the cases of Romania and Czechoslovakia, he concludes that Jaszi's plan of helvetisation at the end of 1918, which aimed at dividing part of the national minority areas in Hungary into autonomous cantons, and in the case of larger and more compact national areas into federal governmental territories, was ultimately doomed to fail. In the absence of international legal recognition, international support from great powers, and sufficient military strength, up to the Peace Conference, the Hungarian government was unable to enforce the negotiated temporary state on the non-Hungarian national communities that were eager to establish nation states. As a result, delimitation decisions adapted to the geopolitical and strategic arguments of the Entente became decisive. The idea of a Switzerland of the East for the two crucial non-Hungarian nations of the country, the Romanians and the Slovaks, did not prove to be an equally important proposal compared to the more preferable option of Greater Romania and Czechoslovakia respectively. In addition, the complex state model, changing from day to day and difficult to comprehend,

© Laszlo Szarka - PhD, Doc. Rubicon Institute-Budapest; Univerzita J. Selyeho-Komarno. E-mail: szarka.laszlo@abtk.hu

• proved utterly unsuitable for pacification in the chaotic and conflictual post-war situation,

^ because cantons on ethnic grounds would have been more likely to create new conflicts.

o Nevertheless, despite the political defeat, Jaszi's nationality policy cannot be considered as

^ the trigger or the cause of the collapse of the historic Kingdom of Hungary in 1918. The nationality and peace policy of the Hungarian People's Republic of Karolyi, which had existed

cl for barely six months, was completely disregarded by the victorious powers because of the

h rejection of neighbouring nations and the military action of the Soviet Republic.

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h Key words: Central Europe, nationality policy, self-determination, federalisation, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Transylvania

The transformation of Central Europe into a nation-state has received a relatively prominent place in the vast international historic literature of the Great War and the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles. National historiographies, international conferences, projects, exhibitions and volumes of essays and studies have dealt with the causes and consequences of the disintegration process following the defeat and disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918. The principle of national self-determination, which at the end of the World War was embodied in the implementation of the idea developed by US President Woodrow Wilson and V. I. Lenin, played a particularly important role in the emergence of new nation states in the region, all of which had a multi-ethnic structure, and in the enlargement of Romania and Serbia.

Following the bizarre defeat of the two dominant system-maintaining powers of Central Europe opposing one another in the war — first the Tsarist Russian Empire, which formed the eastern wing of the Entente, and then the German Empire of Wilhelm II, which united the central powers — the Habsburg monarchy, left alone and destined to defeat, lost its former geostrategic importance.

It is no coincidence that the Habsburg monarchy, home to 11 national societies, saw a surge of nationalist aspirations as early as the war years. The unifying and associative ideas of related ethnic groups living within the Monarchy and in its neighbourhood were to a large extent reflected in the plans and movements to found a state in Greater Poland, Greater Romania, 2 Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In contrast to this, Austrian and Hungarian o reform ideas were formulated, which sought to federalize Central Europe and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, to create a new type of coexistence frame- < work for the nations of the region, in the face of the belated efforts of the last Habsburg ruler, Charles I, to achieve peace and federalization. At the same time, a German project for the unification and internal restructuring of the region, Friedrich Naumann's highly publicised Mitteleuropa, was also published.

On the Austrian side, the most thorough draft was prepared by Karl Renner, a leading Austrian social-democratic politician, who published his work in 1918 on the application of the principle of national self-determination to Austria, based on personal autonomies. On the Hungarian side, it is worth highlighting the work of Oszkar Jaszi, Hungarian sociologist and Minister of Nationalities in the Karolyi government, which came to power in Budapest with the Aster Revolution of 31 October 1918, which was published in 1918 in both Hungarian and German editions. Jaszi, as a renowned expert on the nationality question in Central Europe and President of the Civic Radical Party, proposed the creation of a monarchical formation of the United States on the Danube, consisting of five member states — Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Illyria and Poland — instead of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. Through this he saw a way to salvage the centuries-old supranational integration framework for Central Europe.

Naturally, the opposing powers also formulated their war aims policy, which was outlined in the peace plans of the American, British, French, Russian, German and Austrian governments from 1916 onwards. While the Americans and British initially tended to support a federal reorganisation, the final American, French and British documents drawn up for the peace conference favoured the previously recognised Polish, Czechoslovak, Yugoslav and Greater Romanian nation states. Wilson's peace plans, which were radically transformed from the summer of 1918, were also successfully pushed to the background in Paris. In order to strengthen the territorial, economic and military strength of the ethnically based nation states, the peace conference supported the new states, which were formed by pseudo-federal associations with strategic and geographically enlarged borders. This was largely in order to create on the one hand an anti-Soviet-Russian cordon sanitaire, and an anti-German Zwischen-Europa buffer zone on the other.

In our brief overview, we will examine why peace based on the agreement of the disintegrating nations of the Monarchy became impossible, why the formally established spirit of the Middle-European Union, founded in November 1918, advocated by the founding president of Czechoslovakia, T. G. Masaryk with the American representatives of the nations of the region, failed to materialize. Why the effort of the government of the Hungarian 2 People's Republic, created after the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy, o was unsuccessful, to establish — through mutual negotiations — an East-Swiss confederal model for the nations of the historic Kingdom of Hungary in the period up to the decision of the Peace Conference. The reason why it ¡^ was illusory for the government of the Hungarian People's Republic under Karolyi to think that this emphatically provisional solution could have been an alternative for the Peace Conference.

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* The new situation that arose as a result of the armistice in Padova on 3

^ November 1918 and the armistice in Belgrade 10 days later cannot therefore ° be considered a historical situation without precedent. Just as the formation ^ of small national states cannot be seen almost exclusively as a geopolitical and s geostrategic reordering subordinated to the interests of the victorious great ° powers. The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy and within it the multi-ethnic £ Kingdom of Hungary can only be understood in its depths if the aspirations h for self-determination of the national movements of the region are included in the analysis.

The antecedents and causes of the collapse of the historic Kingdom of Hungary in October-November 1918 can hardly be identified only with the mistakes and omissions of the Hungarian politicians of the time. In addition to the failed nationality policy of the 1848 Hungarian Civil Revolution and the negative memory of the conflicts of the 1848-49 national civil war, the Hungarian political hegemony of the dualist system, national autonomies and the failure to introduce universal suffrage, the Greater Romanian, Czechoslovak, Serb-Croat and Union movements also emerged. In the years of the First World War, Istvan Tisza took steps to pacify the nationalist movements through a kind of political pact, but these compromises proved insufficient to achieve a lasting settlement. Thus, the Karolyi government, which came to power at the end of the war, inherited an unsolvable situation in terms of nationality policy, seeking a solution in the search for an alliance with the Entente and the establishment of autonomy for the nationalities that made up half of Hungary's population — the Romanians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croats, Serbs and Germans.

The Karolyi government, which came to power on 31 October 1918, hoped that Hungary would denounce the Austro-Hungarian dualism with the Austri-ans and do everything possible to convince President Wilson and his European allies that the stability of Central Europe could not be assured without the survival of a strong Hungary. That is why they tried in Budapest to insist on the territorial integrity of the historic country during the transitional period until the Peace Conference, and that is why they did everything possible to create a new constitutional framework for all Hungarian nationalities during this provisional period, which would have been acceptable to them as well.

It is well known that Istvan Tisza himself condemned the dead-end nationalism and assimilationist aspirations of the Hungarian nationality policy of the dualism era. It is true that he himself made a major contribution to the fact that, by excluding the introduction of universal suffrage and blocking progress towards national autonomy, the country's non-Hungarian national communities, from the years before the World War, increasingly sought ways of national emancipation through external combinations that threatened the country's integrity. Jaszi himself, in his retrospective analysis of his brief

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* three-month role as Minister of Nationalities in Vienna, concluded that the ^ integrity of historic Hungary was irreversibly lost with the loss of the war, and ° that it was no longer possible to prevent the separation of nationalities after ^ the end of the war.

s It would be difficult to accuse anyone of consciously preparing for the

° fall of the Monarchy, since everyone from the monarch to the Hungarian £ governments and opposition until the days of the defeat in the war saw the h integrity of the Monarchy and Hungary within it as the common goal. Gyula Szekfu, the leading Hungarian historian of the Horthy era, who was Hungary's ambassador to Moscow for a short period after 1945, saw that the real tragedy of the historical cataclysm of late 1918 was precisely that there was no domestic or foreign policy base or certainty on which the Hungarians could rely. Nevertheless, Szekfu found a scapegoat in Karolyi, even though he clearly saw that the Hungarian Aster Revolution of October 1918 was only a small part, a small sliver of the general European turmoil — national and social revolutions — that affected all belligerent countries to a greater or lesser extent. Obviously, the question of the communist takeover in March 1919 falls under a completely different assessment, and here Karolyi's partial responsibility can indeed be raised.

Hereinafter, examining the search for a way out of Hungarian nationality politics, and the alternatives of a negotiated, consensual peace with the nationalities of Hungary, we look for answers to two specific questions. Why did Oszkar Jaszi, Minister of Nationalities in the Karolyi government, think that by adopting elements of the Swiss model, he would succeed in putting Hungarian national minority relations on a new basis? In the Romanian-Hungarian negotiations in Arad and the Hungarian-Slovak negotiations in Budapest at the end of November 1918, as well as in the Ruthenian, German and Slovak ethnic laws, how did he envision and for what goals did he try to push through the cantonisation and ethnic federalisation of the country.

As I have already briefly mentioned, the theoretical foundations of Jaszi's nationality policy were laid before the outbreak of the Revolution, in October 1918, in his The Future of Hungary. He published this simultaneously in Hungarian and German in his work The Fall of Dualism, the United States on the Danube. Despite the persistence in Hungarian and international literature of the false claim that Jaszi did not foresee the federalisation by nationality of Hungary during his ministerial term, the ninth chapter of the work, entitled Hungary and Democratic Federalism, analysed in detail the benefits and risks of federal transformation. He clearly supported the system of national autonomies and the democratic federalisation of Hungary. Refuting the counterargument that a system of democratic federalism would overthrow Hungarian rule in Hungary and result in the occupation of nationalities, Jaszi clearly declared

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that democratic Hungarian nationality policy could not aim to prolong the ^ obsession of the Hungarian political elite of the dualism period, a policy that ° sought to maintain Hungarian hegemony at all costs. This would have been s a total impasse, mainly because for the non-Hungarian nationalities, which s made up half of the population of the Kingdom of Hungary, the maintenance ° of Hungarian hegemony — since 1848 — was not acceptable as a starting point £ for negotiations.

h This premise of Jaszi's nationality policy, however, has hardly become a

subject of discussion, although without comparing the Hungarian nationality policy prior to 1918 with the practices of the Karolyi government between November 1918 and March 1919, and without evaluating both in the context of the nationality radicalisation of 1918, it is impossible to realistically assess the nationality policy of the Hungarian People's Republic. The federal transformation of the whole Monarchy can only be achieved through the full démocratisation of all its members, and of Hungary in particular, Jâszi stressed in his draft on the future of Hungary. Democracy alone would necessarily make impossible the present form of Hungarian supremacy, which pursues a policy of violent assimilation: without far-reaching recognition of the rights of national minorities, a truly democratic Hungary is unthinkable. However, this direction of development, far from implying a growth of centrifugal tendencies, on the contrary, would bring about their definitive dismantling, a real, intense and spontaneous cooperation between Hungarians and nationalities, instead of the present system of silent hatred which is renewing the silent trade of primitive peoples between Hungarians and nationalities.

The Karolyi government's national minority policy had three main objectives: first, to introduce universal suffrage and extend national minority rights to the widest possible range of minorities. Second, it sought to cantonise and helvetise the country's compact national minority regions by establishing regional non-Hungarian national governments in the majority-nationality areas, following the Swiss model. Based on the idea of Switzerland of the East, it tried to balance the neighbouring countries' aspirations, the vast territorial claims against Hungary all around, which were internationally recognised by the victorious powers and supported at the Peace Conference, to reach agreement with them on disputed territorial and other issues, and to keep together, as much as possible, the nationalities of the country inclined to cooperation and the Hungarian majority areas, despite the military occupations.

The Manifesto to the Nationalities of Hungary, signed by the Prime Minister and published in the Budapest newspapers on 24 November 1918, summarised all these efforts as follows: 'Brothers and sisters, (...) Do not hurt Hungary, because it is no longer the Hungary that hurt you. This is a new country, the country of the free people's republic, where all people have equal rights. Rather,

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make peace with this new country and ally yourselves so closely with it that we ^ may enrich and learn together, working well together, so that the Czech Republic, ° Romania, Yugoslavia and Hungary may be as one country. s The fact is that Jászi's new concept of nationality policy offered minimal

s chances of achieving the goals set, given the conditions of the de facto estab-° lishment of a new Central European state order by the victorious powers in the £ last years of the World War, the almost complete international isolation of the h country, the constant military intervention of neighbouring countries and the radicalisation of nationalist movements. Just as it is also certain that the affiliation of the Ruthenians, Saxons and Swabians, who were temporarily willing to come to an agreement, was not determined by the efforts of the Hungarian government, but by the new situation that arose as a result of the military occupations of neighbouring states and the decisions of the Peace Conference.

Hungarian-Romanian negotiations on the future of Transylvania

The first major challenge of the Karolyi government, which determined its entire future nationality policy, took place on November 9, 1918, when, after the promising Hungarian-Romanian-Saxon cooperation agreement of November 3, the US government issued a statement of support for Romania's territorial claims in Transylvania. In the light of this the Romanian National Council (RNC) has made an ultimatum to the Hungarian government. In it, the RNC announced referring to the acceleration of events, invoking the right of peoples to self-determination and the spread of disturbances and attacks on property: ...we must now take over full governing power over the Romanian-inhabited areas of Hungary and Transylvania. These provinces include the following counties: Torontal, Temes, Krasso-Szoreny, Arad, Bihar, Szatmar, Maramaros, Besztercze-Naszod, Szolnok-Doboka, Szilagy, Kolozs, Maros-Torda, Torda-Aranyos, Alsofeher, Kiskukullo, Nagykukullo, Hunyad, Szeben, Brasso, Fogaras, Haromszek, Udvarhely and Csik counties, as well as the Romanian areas of Bekes, Csanad and Ugocsa counties. The Romanian claim thus extended to the four Hungarian-majority Szekely counties and the three Hungarian-majority counties of Eastern Hungary, which was an unacceptable overclaim for Karolyi and the entire Hungarian political elite.

At its meeting of 12 November 1918, the Hungarian government decided to ask the head of the Ministry of Nationalities to lead a government delega- o tion to the headquarters of the RNC in Arad to attempt to reach an agreement on a temporary settlement of the situation in Transylvania and Eastern Hungary until the decision of the peace conference. Accordingly, the first proposal of Jaszi made at the Arad negotiations essentially called for the establishment of a transitional situation in the Transylvanian and East Hungarian counties until the decision of the Peace Conference.

The establishment of such a provisional order was the aim that could ^ have created a modus vivendi. And that is in the light of the Wilsonian prin-° ciple of the right of peoples to self-determination. ... we fully recognise this ^ right, which is offered to you by the Hungarian National Council and the Hungar-s ian government, but at the same time we emphasise that we defend the right of ° self-determination granted to the Romanian nation to the fullest extent and with £ the utmost determination for all the peoples living in these territories, i.e. for the h Hungarians, Germans, Saxons, etc., — formulated Jaszi the Hungarian government's counter-proposal.

At the same time, the Minister of Nationalities of the Karolyi government rejected in the firmest manner possible the RNC's claim to non-Romanian majority areas as not in line with Wilsonian principles. ... according to the statistics (...), the territory in question is inhabited by 6,841,000 people, of whom approximately 2,939,000 are Romanians and approximately 3,900,000 are non-Romanians, i.e., Hungarians, Germans, Saxons and other native speakers. Such an exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination, therefore, we would consider a violation of Wilsonian principles." The right to self-determination claimed by the RNC was considered by Jaszi to be recognised only for the majority Romanian territories. On the basis of the majority principle, he did not consider the same right to be denied to the other nationalities of the country, of course not even to the Hungarians: "I repeat: the right to self-determination for the Romanian-inhabited or Romanian-majority areas, but just as much for the areas occupied by other nations, whether homogeneously or in majority," the Hungarian minister said during his negotiations in Arad. For these Romanian-speaking or majority territories, we are ready to offer the right to self-determination that you have outlined. There is no obstacle for the Hungarian government to transfer the administration of these territories in perpetuity and for your national council to take over the administration of these territories and the management of all administrative and other tasks in these areas."

The first solution proposed by Jaszi, based on the Swiss state model, was to place local affairs under national control, while in federal-state matters the starting point was the handling of matters of common interest in cooperation with the central government and on the basis of common principles. The Swiss model would have become truly tangible in the creation of the national cantons of Transylvania and Eastern Hungary. In the establishment of the new order and in the honest implementation of the Wilsonian principle, which does not seek to replace the old oppression with a new oppression, and which we absolutely insist on and to which I believe you will insist on, we cannot start out from the old division of the counties, which was at that time made in a quite artificial manner precisely against you. (...) I would therefore recommend that, by abandoning the present framework of the counties, we should establish, on the basis of districts or

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even smaller units, preferably compact and homogeneous national blocs, which should form their own organs on the basis of the Swiss model, and that these organs should be brought together in a larger unit for all those matters which we decide by common consent.

Jaszi, presenting his cantonal plan for Transylvania, drew the attention of the RNC representatives to the fact that, despite the mosaic-like nationality composition of Transylvania, even in national cantons that could be formed in this way, a significant number of minority populations would remain, whose rights should also be mutually guaranteed, in the form of a system of mutual protection of minorities covering all areas. Jaszi regarded the plan as the only possible practical realisation of the Wilsonian principles in Transylvania and Eastern Hungary, assuming mutual agreement. He indicated that to reject it was in fact to reject Wilsonianism. Two days after the Hungarian armistice talks in Belgrade on 6 November 1918, Jaszi did not hesitate to warn the members of the RNC of the dangers of the expected Romanian military intervention and military action by the victorious powers in general.

He reminded the members of the Romanian delegation, led by Iuliu Maniu and Vasile Goldis, that "the peace treaty that will come is not in the hands of Foch and the other generals, who, as we have just seen in Belgrade, are no different from the reproachful Hindenburgs and Ludendorffs, but will be concluded by the European Soviet Republic, the Council of Workers and Soldiers. The promises which certain powers have made to Czech and other imperialisms will not be heeded by this European republic. Another sign of this future trend is the fact that just yesterday the Hungarian Government accredited as Ambassador of the Russian Soviet Republic to Hungary the representative of the Russian Soviet Republic, Rakovsky, who is most familiar with the situation in Romania and the situation of the Romanian people in Hungary. They will decide the peace, not the reproachful imperialists. In this respect, too, I ask you to agree to our offer, based on absolutely pure and loyal principles, so that we can at least reach peace negotiations and stop tearing our unfortunate peoples apart. For this statement, Jaszi was widely condemned, like Karolyi, and there are still many, who criticise him as the instigator of the Commune.

On the next day of the Arad negotiations, Jaszi, recognizing the purpose of the Romanian objections of the first day, rejecting the idea of the separation of the territory of the counties inhabited by the Hungarian and Transylvanian o Romanians from the Hungarian state as contradictory to the Wilsonian principle of self-determination, put another, more ambitious idea on the table < instead of the Transylvanian cantonal plan. He stressed that the creation of ¡^ new states, however consistent with the general direction of European development, was the exclusive responsibility of the International Peace Conference.

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Under the circumstances, the Karolyi government rejected both plans for ^ a separate Romanian state in Transylvania and the unification with the Kingly dom of Romania. The former because an unviable, distorted statehood would ^ be formed in the independent Transylvanian Romanian territories, which had s been carved out of Hungary. He described Romania as the most feudal and ° corrupt state of contemporary Europe, to which the Hungarian, German and £ Serbian minorities should not be made servants. Jaszi summarised the Romanian h rejection as a result of the different interpretations of the right to self-determination of nations by the Hungarian government and Romanian politicians in Transylvania. According to the Karolyi government, this right would have meant a "Switzerland of the East" in trilingual Transylvania, while according to Maniu's Romanian concept, ignoring the right to self-determination of the counties with Hungarian majority, it would have amounted to a "narrow Romanian nationalist empire".

Afterwards, the head of the Hungarian delegation read out a new 11-point draft to the Romanian National Council delegation, proposing a transitional governmental solution to maintain public order and peace. As part of this, the Romanian National Council would have gained the right to take over the administration of the Romanian-majority districts and towns. It would have been able to participate in the Hungarian government through a Romanian government delegate in all matters of foreign affairs, economic and financial affairs, public utilities and transport in the Romanian government territory. In the area controlled by the Romanian National Council, new laws could only be passed with the consent of the Romanian government. The rights of the Romanian minorities in the non-Romanian majority areas of Transylvania and Eastern Hungary and the rights of the non-Romanian minorities in the Romanian majority areas were to be mutually guaranteed under the Nationality Law No. 44 of 1868. The RNC waives the use of the military forces of the Kingdom of Romania in order to guarantee the security of property.

The Hungarian government and the RNC would have established a joint government commission and a five-member peace commission to establish a new Transylvanian government and settle disputes. This Romanian government, offered by Jaszi, would have bound the two parties until the peace negotiations were concluded and would have had no influence on the positions taken in the peace talks. At the same time, the operation of the Transylvanian interim status would, according to the Jaszi proposal, be placed "under the protection of the national honour of both parties, while calling for the control of the educated nations".

Maniu, referring to the Romania's unlimited right to self-determination, announced immediately after reading the draft that "Romania will also have the right to declare total secession. In any case, Romania, a nation that considers

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itself sovereign, wants to take executive power into its own hands". Following the ^ break in the evening, the Hungarian-Romanian negotiations in Arad concluded ° with the reading of the RNC's rejection of the proposal.

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s The Slovak negotiations in Budapest

° After the Arad negotiations, which proved to be a complete failure, the

£ Karolyi government tried to achieve progress in the Slovak and Ruthenian reh gions of Upper Hungary, especially considering that the Belgrade Convention had granted it in principle and temporarily greater flexibility in these regions. As early as 3 November, Jaszi wrote to Matus Dula, President of the Slovak National Council (SNC), and several Slovak politicians he had previously met, in order to establish personal contacts with Slovak leaders as soon as possible.

In November, the French military mission in Budapest, led by Lieutenant Colonel Vix, temporarily recognised the Belgrade military convention concluded with Hungary in Belgrade on 13 November. It validated the operation of the Hungarian administration in the Slovak territory of Upper Hungary. For this reason, on behalf of the Czechoslovak government in Prague, Slovak politician Milan Hodza, with a mandate limited to Czechoslovak Hungarian delimitation and liquidation issues, initiated negotiations with the Karolyi government in Budapest from 25 November.

Karolyi and Jaszi, who received Hodza, assured the Prague government delegate that the Hungarian government was willing to offer the Slovak National Council, based in Turciansky Svaty Martin, governmental powers in the Slovak majority district, the so-called Slovak Imperium, as it had proposed to the Romanians, and thus proposed extensive political autonomy for the compact Slovak areas. However, the Slovak territory offered would have excluded Presporok (the city was renamed Bratislava in February 1919) and Kosice, as well as several mixed Hungarian-Slovak districts.

On 29 November, Hodza sent a telegram inviting a six-member delegation of the SNC led by Matus Dula to Budapest for direct talks on the Hungarian government's draft. In doing so, Hodza clearly overstepped his authority, which he explained to Prague from the start as a way of buying time for Lieutenant-Colonel Vix to clarify in Paris the interpretation of Article 17 of the Belgrade Convention on the Slovak territories promised to Czechoslovakia. At its preliminary consultation on 29 November, the Slovak delegation unanimously agreed that under no circumstances would it accept the autonomy offered by Jaszi without first consulting the Czechoslovak government in Prague, led by Karel Kramar.

The Slovak negotiations in Budapest on 30 November followed a similar pattern to those in Arad. Hodza made it clear from the beginning, and repeated this publicly in the Budapest press on several occasions, that the Slovak issues

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would only be settled with the Hungarian government in the framework of a transitional settlement, and that the right to self-determination of Slovaks, who had considered themselves Czechoslovak citizens since 14 August 1918 (since the recognition of the foreign Czechoslovak government by France), could not be the subject of negotiations. The head of the SNC delegation, Matus Dula, expressed the same opinion. Hodza, who wanted to buy time until the arrival of the Czechoslovak legions expected from Italy, made it clear in the draft proposal, which was prepared in contrast to Jaszi's, that they wanted to see the solution of Slovak autonomy only within the framework of the Czechoslovak state and that they wanted to negotiate with the Hungarian government only on military and economic liquidation issues.

Despite the fact that Jaszi and the whole Hungarian government interpreted the agreement with Hodza and the SNC delegation as having gone further than the agreement with the Romanians in Arad, the outcome was the same: the Czechoslovak government in Prague controlled the Budapest negotiations from the beginning, Hodza was disavowed, and Dula issued a statement of dissociation from Jaszi's drafts on behalf of the SNC. By this time, the Hungarian government was also faced with the fact that the offer of a Slovak governmental territory limited to districts with an ethnic majority of fifty percent was proving to be as little as the limited autonomy that Jaszi was already finding it difficult to defend against his own fellow ministers. The adoption of the concept of the Slovak provincial parliament, for example, left him in a minority in the government.

The only tangible outcome of the Slovak negotiations was the demarcation agreement signed between Minister of War Albert Bartha and Milan Hodza, in which the Hungarian government committed itself to withdraw Hungarian military forces to a line more or less coinciding with the Hungarian-Slovak language border. The demarcation line, however, was not considered a valid agreement by the French High Command in the Balkans, nor by the French Foreign Minister and the Czechoslovak government, and Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Eduard Benes, who was permanently residing in Paris, managed to get a French note drawn up at the end of November, which later established the demarcation line along the Danube-Ipoly border.

The two cantonal plans o

Jaszi's negotiations with Romania and Slovakia did not lead to any substantive results. By the end of November, the legal department of the min- < istry headed by Bodog Somlo, on the basis of dozens of proposals and drafts received by the ministry and the minister's constantly supplementing and amending plans, had prepared a cantonization plan for the whole territory of Hungary. Among the documents of the Ministry of Nationalities is the vari-

ant that was filed on 2 December 1918, which tried to systematise the idea of helvetisation for the whole territory of the country.

According to the introduction to the draft, Hungary is to be divided into "districts, or if preferred into cantons for our Slovak-Romanians". Of the 14 districts (cantons), seven would have been Hungarian: the cantons of Bratislava, Marosvasarhely (or Cluj-Napoca), Szeged, Debrecen, Budapest, Gyor and Pecs. Of the other seven, the district of the north-western and northern counties and the eastern Slovak counties to be created with a seat in Kosice would have been Slovak, the Berehove canton Ruthenian, the Dej and Deva cantons Romanian, Sibiu Saxon and Timisoara mixed German-Serbian-Bunjevci-Hun-garian. An even more complex cantonal plan was drawn up by Miksa Strobl, who was not part of the Ministry of Nationalities. The draft map entitled "New Hungary as the Switzerland of the East", published in the Christmas 1918 issue of New Hungary, proposed the creation of six "metropolitan cantons" (Bratislava, Kosice, Debrecen, Budapest, Szeged and Cluj) in addition to the 12 nationality cantons and eight Hungarian cantons. By November-December 1918, however, these plans had lost any sense of political reality.

Laws on ethnic minorities

Concurrently, preparations began for the Ruthenian, German and Slovak nationality laws, which were intended to codify the territorial autonomies that had been envisaged during the negotiations. Ethno-regional self-governments were modelled on the Swiss cantons, which are responsible for all regional matters within their own jurisdiction, while at the same time dealing with matters of general state interest in collaboration with the central government.

The Hungarian government, after intensive organizational and preparatory work, and having won the support of the Hungarian-backed, Hungaro-phile Ruthenians led by Agoston Volosin, Hiador Sztripszky, Agost Stefan and Oreszt Szabo, adopted the People's Law No. X of 1918 on the autonomy of Ruska-Kraina on 23 December, based on the national program of the Ruthenian Grand Assembly held in Budapest on 10 December. Under the leadership of Oreszt Szabo, the establishment of the autonomous administration — the Ruthenian National Assembly, the Ruska-Kraina ministry and government began. A similar structure was provided for in the German Law No. VI of 1919 and the People's Law No. XXX of 1919 on the Municipality of the Slovak Lands o (Slovenska krajina).

In the midst of mounting criticism from the right-wing nationalist opposition in Hungary and the combined attacks from neighbouring countries seeking to create ready-made facts with military occupations, Jaszi saw his own position in the government as increasingly hopeless. After submitting his request for resignation twice in December 1918, which Karolyi refused to ac-

cept, he tried to appeal to the leaders of neighbouring countries that were in-^ creasingly hostile towards Hungary in early 1919. Only Czechoslovak President ° Masaryk offered any possibility of doing so. "I would like to persuade President ^ Masaryk," he wrote in an open letter published in the Hungarian press, "to stop s paying attention to the dying and start paying attention to the living Hungarian ° democracy. And above all, I would like to explain to him that there is only one way £ in which this dying Hungarian reaction can possibly be revived, now or in ten or h twenty years' time; if the Entente, instead of taking notice of, understanding and supporting our sincerely democratic aspirations, is fomenting, day after day, with its conquering rhetoric, the despair in the hearts of a nation of ten million people. In the heart of a nation that, having freed itself from its masters guilty of war and oppression, has embarked with fresh impetus and full determination on the path of democracy and pacifism'.

The constitutional concept, which was theoretically gradually becoming clearer in Jaszi's Ministry of Nationality, pointed towards a complex, symmetrical federal state formation in the optimal case. Within this, two of the three nationalities governed by the People's Law, the Ruthenians and the Slovaks, would have been granted extensive territorial autonomy. Presumably, the Romanian and Slovak "imperium" offered in the nationality negotiations could ideally have become a federal constituent part of the Hungarian People's Republic, based on the principles of democratic federalism advocated by Jaszi. Autonomous ethnic territories, mixed-ethnic regions with self-government by districts, and federative member republics could have formed a democratic Hungary, if this fatally delayed and hopeless alternative had not been opposed by the South Slavic, Czechoslovak and Romanian states already recognised by the Entente. And from November 1918 onwards, these three neighbouring countries occupied an increasing part of the territories of the Hungarian People's Republic in southern and northern Hungary, Transylvania and eastern Hungary, in order to put the decision-makers of the Peace Conference in a fait accompli position.

Jaszi's plan of helvetisation at the end of 1918, which aimed at dividing part of the national minority areas in Hungary into autonomous cantons, and in the case of larger and more compact national areas into federal governmental territories, was ultimately doomed to fail for three reasons. In the absence of international legal recognition, international support from great powers, and sufficient military strength, up to the Peace Conference, the Hungarian government was unable to enforce the negotiated temporary state on the non-Hungarian national communities that were eager to establish nation states. Nevertheless, as the people's laws on Ruthenian and Slovakian autonomy and their aftermath indicated, if the losing states, including Hungary, had been invited to the Paris Peace Conference, these national autonomies could probably have been used to argue for the ethnic principle when the new borders of Hungary were being

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drawn. After the idealistic vision of a negotiated peace was finally taken off the table at the peace conference that commenced on 19 January 1919, abandoning the planned preparatory conference, the drafting of the German peace treaty took precedence. Instead, delimitation decisions adapted to the geopolitical and strategic arguments of the Entente became decisive.

The idea of a Switzerland of the East for the two crucial non-Hungarian nations of the country, the Romanians and the Slovaks, did not prove to be an equally important proposal compared to the more preferable option of Greater Romania and Czechoslovakia respectively. In addition, the complex state model, changing from day to day and difficult to comprehend, proved utterly unsuitable for pacification in the chaotic and conflictual post-war situation, because cantons on ethnic grounds would have been more likely to create new conflicts. Furthermore, when Hungary's new borders were being drawn, the Peace Conference did not authorise a plebiscite in any case, which the Károlyi government considered an important demand of the Hungarian peace preparations begun under Jászi's leadership.

Despite the political defeat, Jászi's nationality policy cannot be considered as the trigger or the cause of the collapse of the historic Kingdom of Hungary in 1918. In fact, in the first two months after the defeat in the World War, at the end of 1918, it was the only viable political alternative in the face of the country's collapse. The much slower military option of active national defence, which Jászi himself had already advocated in the second half of December 1918, proved to be just as unfeasible as the socialist alternative envisaged by the Social Democratic Party. Not to mention the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which came to power on 21 March 1919, whose military actions on behalf of the Peace Conference made the question of the Hungarian borders, which had been established by then, irreversible. The situation was similar in the case of the Kingdom of Hungary, which was restored in 1920 under the leadership of Governor Miklós Horty, when in January 1920 Albert Apponyi, the head of the Hungarian delegation sent to accept the Treaty of Trianon, failed to get referendums called in the disputed territories. The nationality and peace policy of the Hungarian People's Republic of Károlyi, which had existed for barely six months, was completely disregarded by the victorious powers because of the rejection of neighbouring nations and the military action of the Soviet Republic.

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НАЦИОНАЛЬНАЯ ПОЛИТИКА ВЕНГЕРСКОЙ НАРОДНОЙ РЕСПУБЛИКИ ЗИМОЙ 1918-1919 гг. «Восточная Швейцария» и вариант мира при правительстве Михая Каройи

Ласло Сарка К.и.н., доц., Rubicon Institute — Будапешт, Венгрия; Университет им. Яноша Шейе, Комарно, Словакия

Аннотация. Автор анализирует трансформацию Центральной Европы в национальные государства, произошедшую на фоне завершения Первой мировой войны и разработки Версальского договора. Предметом его исследования являются планы и предложения венгерской делегации, основанные на идеях таких выдающихся венгерских мыслителей того времени, как Оскар Ясси, Иштван Тиса, Дьюла Секфю, а также шаги, предпринятые правительством Михая Кароли, направленные на обеспечение интересов венгерской нации. Проанализировав примеры Румынии и Чехословакии, он приходит к выводу, что план гельветизации О.Ясси в конце 1918 года, который был направлен на разделение части территорий национальных меньшинств в Венгрии на автономные кантоны, а в случае более крупных и компактных национальных районов - на территории федеральных округов, в случае реализации, был бы обреченн на провал. В отсутствие международного правового признания, международной поддержки со стороны великих держав и достаточной военной мощи вплоть до Мирной конференции венгерское правительство не смогло согласовать переходный план с невенгерским национальным общинами, которые стремились созданию национальных государств. В результате возобладали решения о разграничении, адаптированные к геополитическим и стратегическим аргументам Антанты. Идея Восточной Швейцарии для двух важнейших невенгерских народов страны, румын и словаков, оказалась не столь важным предложением по сравнению с более предпочтительным вариантом Великой Румынии и Чехословакии соответственно. Кроме того, сложная государственная модель, меняющаяся изо дня в день и трудная для понимания, оказалась совершенно непригодной для умиротворения в хаотичной и конфликтной послевоенной ситуации, поскольку кантоны, сформированные по этническому признаку с большей вероятностью спровоцировали бы новые конфликты. Тем не менее, несмотря на политическое поражение, национальная политика Язи не может рассматриваться как спусковой механизм или причина распада исторического Королевства Венгрия в 1918 году. Национальная и мир- ° ная политика Венгерской Народной Республики Каройи, просуществовавшей всего шесть месяцев, была полностью проигнорирована державами-победительницами из-за неприятия <

соседних народов и военных действий Советской Республики.

Ключевые слова: Центральная Европа, национальная политика, самоопределение, федерализация, Венгрия, Словакия, Чехословакия, Румыния, Трансильвания.

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