Hungarians constitute the largest minority in Slovakia. According to the 2021 Slovak census, 422,065 people (or 7.75% of the population) declared themselves Hungarian. An additional 34,089 people declared a combination of Hungarian and other nationalities. Altogether 456,154 people stated that Hungarian was their mother tongue.
Hungarians in Slovakia are predominantly concentrated in the southern part of the country, near the border with Hungary. They form the majority in two districts, Komárno and Dunajská Streda.
History
The First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)
Origins of the Hungarian minority After the defeat of the Central Powers on the Western Front in 1918, the Treaty of Trianon was signed between the winning Entente powers and Hungary in 1920 at the Paris Peace Conference. The treaty greatly reduced the Kingdom of Hungary's borders, including ceding all of Upper Hungary to Czechoslovakia, in which Slovaks made up the dominant ethnicity. In consideration of the strategic and economic interests of their new ally, Czechoslovakia, the victorious allies set the Czechoslovak–Hungarian border further south than the Slovak–Hungarian language border. Consequently, the newly created state contained areas that were overwhelmingly ethnic Hungarian.
Demographics
According to the 1910 census conducted in Austria-Hungary, there were 884,309 ethnic Hungarians, constituting 30.2% of the population in what is now Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine. The Czechoslovak census of 1930 recorded 571,952 Hungarians. In the 2001 census, by contrast, the percentage of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia was 9.7%, a decrease of two-thirds in percentage but not in absolute number, which remained roughly the same.
Between 1880 and 1910, the Hungarian population increased by 55.9%, while Slovak population increased by only 5.5% though Slovaks had a higher birth rate at the same time. The level of differences does not explain this process by emigration (higher among Slovaks) or by population moves and natural assimilation during industrialization. In 16 northern counties, the Hungarian population rose by 427,238, while the majority Slovak population rose only by 95,603. The number of "Hungarians who can speak Slovak" unusually increased in a time when Hungarians really had no motivation to learn it – by 103,445 in southern Slovakia in absolute numbers, by 100% in Pozsony, Nyitra, Komárom, Bars and Zemplén County and more than 3 times in Košice. After the creation of Czechoslovakia, people could declare their nationality more freely.
Furthermore, censuses from the Kingdom of Hungary and Czechoslovakia differed in their view on the nationality of the Jewish population.History, the development of the contact situation and demographic data. gramma.sk Czechoslovakia allowed Jews to declare a separate Jewish nationality, while Jews were counted mostly as Hungarians in the past. In 1921, 70,529 people declared Jewish nationality.
The population of larger towns like Košice or Bratislava were historically bilingual or trilingual, and some might declare the most-popular or the most-beneficial nationality at a particular time. According to the Czechoslovak censuses, 15–20% of the population in Košice was Hungarian, but during the parliamentary elections, the "ethnic" Hungarian parties received 35–45% of the total votes (excluding those Hungarians who voted for the Communists or the Social Democrats).kovacs-4.qxd However, such comparisons are not fully reliable, because "ethnic" Hungarian parties did not necessarily present themselves to Slovak population as "ethnic", and also had Slovak subsidiaries.
Hungarian state employees who refused to take an oath of allegiance had to decide between retirement and moving to Hungary. The same applied to Hungarians who did not receive Czechoslovak citizenship, who were forced to leave or simply did not self-identify with the new state. Two examples of people forced to leave were the families of Béla HamvasHamvasBéla.org and Albert Szent-Györgyi. The numerous refugees (including even more from Romania) necessitated the construction of new housing projects in Budapest (Mária-Valéria telep, Pongrácz-telep), which gave shelter to refugees numbering at least in the tens of thousands.Magyarország a XX. században / Szociálpolitika. oszk.hu
Education At the beginning of the school year 1918–19, Slovakia had 3,642 elementary schools. Only 141 schools taught in Slovak, 186 in Slovak and Hungarian and 3,298 in Hungarian. After system reform, Czechoslovakia provided an educational network for the region. Due to the lack of qualified personnel among Slovaks – a lack of schools above elementary level, banned grammar schools and no Slovak teacher institutes – Hungarian teachers were replaced in large numbers by Czechs. Some Hungarian teachers resolved their existential question by moving to Hungary. According to government regulation from 28 August 1919, Hungarian teachers were permitted to teach only if they took an oath of allegiance to Czechoslovakia.
In the early years of Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian minority in Slovakia had a complete education network, except for canceled colleges. The Czechoslovak Ministry of Education derived its policy from international agreements signed after the end of World War I. In the area inhabited by the Hungarian minority, Czechoslovakia preserved untouched the network of Hungarian municipal or denominational schools. However, these older schools inherited from Austria-Hungary were frequently crowded, under-funded, and less attractive than new, well-equipped Slovak schools built by the state. In the school year 1920–21, the Hungarian minority had 721 elementary schools, which only decreased by one in the next 3 years. Hungarians had also 18 higher "burgher" schools, 4 grammar schools and 1 teacher institute. In the school year 1926–27, there were 27 denominational schools which can also be classified as minority schools, because none of them taught in Slovak. Hungarian representatives criticized the mainly reduced number of secondary schools.
In the 1930s, Hungarians had 31 kindergartens, 806 elementary schools, 46 secondary schools, and 576 Hungarian libraries at schools. A department of Hungarian literature was created at the Charles University of Prague.Marko, Martinický: Slovensko-maďarské vzťahy. 1995
Hungarian Elisabeth Science University, founded in 1912 and teaching since 1914 (with interruptions during war), was replaced by Comenius University to fulfil demands for qualified experts in Slovakia. Hungarian professors had refused to take an oath of allegiance and the original school was closed by government decree; as in other cases, teachers were replaced by Czech professors. Comenius University remained the only university in inter-war Slovakia.
Culture
The Hungarian minority participated in a press boom in Czechoslovakia between wars. Before the creation of Czechoslovakia, 220 periodicals were issued in the territory of Slovakia, 38 of them in Slovak. During the interwar period, the number of Slovak and Czech periodicals in Slovakia increased to more than 1,050, while the number of periodicals in minority languages (mostly Hungarian) increased almost to 640 (only a small portion of these were published through the entire interwar period).
The Czechoslovak state preserved and financially supported two Hungarian professional theatre companies in Slovakia, and an additional one in Carpathian Ruthenia. Hungarian cultural life was maintained in regional cultural associations like Jókai Society, Toldy Group or Kazinczy Group. In 1931, the Hungarian Scientific, Literary and Artistic Society in Czechoslovakia (Masaryk's Academy) was founded on the initiative of the Czechoslovak president. Hungarian culture and literature was covered by journals like Magyar Minerva, Magyar Irás, Új Szó and Magyar Figyelő. The last of these had the goal to develop Czech–Slovak–Hungarian literary relationships and a common Czechoslovak consciousness. Hungarian books were published by several literary societies and Hungarian publishers, though not in great number.
Policy
The democratization of Czechoslovakia extended political rights of the Hungarian population in comparison to the Kingdom of Hungary before 1918. Czechoslovakia introduced universal suffrage, while full women's suffrage was not achieved in Hungary until 1945. The first Czechoslovak parliamentary elections had 90% voter-turnout in Slovakia. After the Treaty of Trianon, the Hungarian minority lost illusions about a "temporary state" and had to adapt to a new situation. Hungarian political structures in Czechoslovakia were formed relatively late and finalized their formation only in the mid-1920s. The political policy of the Hungarian minority can be categorized by their attitude to the Czechoslovak state and peace treaties into three main directions: activists, communists, and negativists.
Hungarian "activists" saw their future in cohabitation and cooperation with the majority population. They had a pro-Czechoslovak orientation and supported the government. In the early 1920s, they founded separate political parties and were later active in Hungarian sections of Czechoslovak state-wide parties. The pro-Czechoslovak Hungarian National Party (not to be confused with a different Hungarian National Party formed later) participated in the parliamentary elections of 1920, but failed. In 1922, the Czechoslovak government proposed correction of some injustices against minorities in exchange for absolute loyalty and recognition of the Czechoslovak state. Success of activism culminated in the mid-1920s. In 1925, the Hungarian National Party participated in the adoption of several important laws, including those regulating state citizenship. In 1926, the party unsuccessfully held negotiations about participation in government. Left-wing Hungarian activists were active in the Hungarian-German Social Democratic Party and later in the Hungarian Social Democratic Labour Party. Hungarian social democrats failed in competition with communists but were active as a Hungarian section of the Czechoslovak Social Democracy Party (ČSDD). In 1923, Hungarian activists with agrarian orientation founded the Republican Association of Hungarian Peasants and Smallholders but this party failed similarly to the Hungarian-minority's Provincial Peasant Party. Like social-democrats, Hungarian agrarians created a separate section within the state-wide Agrarian Party (A3C). Hungarian activism had a stable direction but was not able to become dominant power due to various reasons like land reform or revisionist policies of the Hungarian government.
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) had above-average support among the Hungarian minority. In 1925, party received 37.5% in Kráľovský Chlmec district and 29.7% in Komárno district, compared to the Slovak average of 12–13%.
Hungarian "negativists" were organized in opposition parties represented by right-wing Provincial Christian-Socialist Party (OKSZP) and Hungarian National Party (MNP) (not to be confused with Hungarian National Party above). The OKSZP was supported mainly by the Roman Catholic population, and the MNP by Protestants. The parties differed also by their views on collaboration with the government coalition, the MNP considered collaboration in some periods while the OKSZP was in steadfast opposition and tried to cross ethnic boundaries to gain support from the Slovak population. This attempt was partially successful and the OKSZP had 78 Slovak sections and a Slovak-language journal. Attempts to create a coalition of Hungarian opposition parties with the largest Slovak opposition party – Hlinka's Slovak People's Party (HSĽS) – were unsuccessful due to fear of Hungarian revisionist policy and potential discredit after the affair of Vojtech Tuka who was uncovered as a Hungarian spy.