For Mr. Slota's information

2008.11.27
Elküdve az összes szlovákiai parlamenti képviselőnek angolul

Slovaks - Hungarians

For Mr. Slota's information

More than one thousand and one hundred years ago the Magyars arrived in the Carpathian Basin. The chronicle speaks of seven tribes, but for all intents and purposes it could have been twenty. The Slavic tribes preceded us by a short head. The Magyar tribes found a sparse population of Slavs, Germanics, Romans, and, mostly, our relative Avars. Throughout the years immigrants joined these fragments of peoples and cohered into the Hungarian nation.

Slovak history was similar. In the course of one thousand and one hundred years Czech, Moravian, Polish, Slovene, Croat, Serb, pseudo-Hussite, German, Ruthene, and Ukrainian people flocked into the Carpathian Basin and slowly became nations with literary languages. All of this happened under “terrible Hungarian oppression” under the government's nose. During the same time the English divested the Welsh, Scottish and Irish people - not to mention the Norwegians, Danes, Corwallians and Frisians - of their statehood and language. So sweeping was their success that since 1936 only ten percent of independent Ireland's population properly speaks their ancestral language. The Scots and Welsh fared no better.

The “Big French Revolution” (Liberty-Fraternity-Equality) “invented” the previously unknown “nation-state”. Then and for many years after, the Gauls were a minority in France. The Germans, Corsicans, Basques, Occitanians, Normans, Italians, Bretons and others comprised over half of the population. This did not concern the revolutionary government. In fact, they sought to “improve” the situation, even with the use of force.
They banned all non-French speaking schools, with bloody consequences. The Bretons revolted against tyranny and fought for their language, schools, and church for years.
The pack of thieves sent to put down the revolt were recruited from the mobs, and under the leadership of General Turreau they slaughtered whole towns and cities. The city of Vendee, whose entire population was wiped out under terrible circumstances, cannot be erased from the stones. If anyone is interested in this, do a Google search on Turreau or Vendee. Consider taking a sedative beforehand…

Mr. Slota! If we had done this with your people, your complaint and request for an apology would be well founded. But we did not do this to your people. In the few decades before the First World War the government did indeed make pathetically futile attempts to oppress the few Slovak leaders who were gradually gaining self-consciousness and falling for pan-Slavism. These attempts, however, are dwarfed by Czechoslovakia's and independent Slovakia's wild, illegal, and inhumane anti-Hungarian measures carried out by fire and sword.

The myth of “Hungarian oppression” has been under constant development since Trianon. Today, news has it that every Hungarian teacher slapped every student who did not speak Hungarian. The ideologues of Matica and the ultra-right wing parties explain and support all anti-Hungarian measures by retelling the “thousand year suffering” nursery story. Today, the unceasingly voiced accusations—the gendarme line-fire near Rózsahegy , the closing of the small Slovak high school, the “stealing” of the Slovak patriarchal double cross crest—have been branded into not only the Slovak, but also the western public's mind.

Let us quote a few sentences (Paris, 1920) from a highly authentic Slovak leader, Pater Hlinka (whose words quoted below would most preferably be denied by many) on Slovak-Czech relations: “But in three months, indeed, after only three weeks, the veil was lifted. In this short time we have suffered more from the high-handed Czechs than we did from the Magyars in a thousand years. Now we know: Extra Hungariam non est vita (outside of Hungary there is no life for us). Remember these words, time will prove their truth. Benes is an ambitious knave.” (SUITORS AND SUPPLIANTS” by Stephen BONSAL, US diplomat).
You recently canonized Pater Hlinka, but you probably do not realize, or do not want to realize, that in the end, Hlinka wanted to remain under the Hungarian crown with complete autonomy given to a few northern, Slovak-populated counties.
If you are interested in more of what Hlinka had to say, we would gladly send you the complete passage.

Besides falsifying the history of Hungarian-Slovak coexistence, more can be said at the expense of the Slovak extremists who thrive on hating Hungarians.
1. The incorporation of Hungarian populated territories after 1918, which is contrary to every international, human, and collective right. What is the worth of a people's right to self-determination, which they claim only for themselves and do not even consider for others?
2. The Benes Decrees are still alive today. They are a functional part of the Slovak (and Czech) constitution. They were the means by which the Hungarians were stripped of their rights. Further, they provided the foundation for the confiscation of the Hungarians' individual and collective properties. Your parliament has ossified this shame of Europe for the greater glory of human rights.
3. Forced population exchange.
4. Inhumane relocation of approximately forty thousand Hungarians to the Sudeten region.
5. Murders that greatly outnumber the famous gendarme line-fire casualties trumpeted throughout the world.
a. Pozsonyligetfalu: the slaughter of 90 unarmed young soldiers returning home
b. The slaughter of part of Dobsina's population (approximately 120 people) on the other side of the Czech border
c. How exactly was the forced expulsion of the majority of Pozsony's Hungarian population to Pozsonyligetfalu? According to the report of the camp doctor there was an extraordinarily high rate of infant mortality in the internment camp due to poor provisions. Who lived in the internment camp?
And now you want to get rid of Hungarian language signs in Pozsony because “the percentage of Hungarians is less than 20%.” Modestly hiding the fact that you are fully responsible for creating this situation
6. How many Hungarians schools did you close since 1919? Can you still count that number?
7. How many hectares of land and other real estate did you steal from the Hungarians?
8. You reorganized the historical county system, which developed in the course of a millennium according to geographical circumstances. You changed the county system only to divest the Hungarians of their political influence!
9. Throughout the centuries the Hungarian Catholic church had numerous Slovak bishops and even archbishops. How many ethnic Hungarian bishops do the Hungarians of Slovakia have today? In case you don't know, let me tell you: Not one!
1O You have even rearranged the Episcopal borders to eliminate the Hungarian majority in historical ones..

Perhaps it is time for us to face the historical myths built on hatred of Hungarians. Established Hungarian historiography never recognized the tradition of our Hun origins. You, however, unflinchingly reclaim “Svatopluk's heritage.” Of course this will slowly but surely come to an end due to the work of foreign and honest Slovak historians. Perhaps it would not be redundant for some of your Matica-bred historians to read the German Martin Eggers book: “Das Grossmärishe Reich - Realitäte, oder Fiction?” And then there are the military reports and tax documents of Charles the Great's Kingdom in Aachen… You would be scratching your ears…

We Hungarians and Slovaks have a thousand years of common history. Our kings were your kings as well. Under the Holy Crown you had the same rights as anyone in the Carpathian Basin. Just don't try to demand modern rights for the feudal era, because those were quite the same in all of Europe. If we were serfs, you were also; if we were free, you were also free. If your landowners treated you harshly, so they treated us. You have no cause to complain.

During my trips to Slovakia I experienced numerous, thought-provoking manifestations of antagonism. Based on my past experiences, they were incomprehensible. We have antagonistic feelings only towards the Soviets and Romanians, Serbs, but that antagonism does not play out in individual relations. I have had coworkers from these groups. Often we sat together at lunch, but it never occurred to us to give either verbal or physical expression to our mutual antipathy. This, however, was exactly what I experienced in northern Slovakia.
We never had any problems with the Slovak person. The primitive politician, teacher, and journalist who makes a living by hating Hungarians has caused much, almost irreversible, damage to the traditional relations between the two peoples. If this could ever be turned around, both people would have much to gain. Sooner or later, even the most vehement Slovak will realize that our peoples are dependent on each other in both the political and economic realms. If the Slovaks abandon their forceful Hungarian-exterminating experiment and give them complete autonomy, they would gain an eternal friendship. State borders slowly fade, but - according to the laws of biology - ethnic borders stay on for centuries.
Regarding membership in NATO and the EU: a chauvinistic people that denies the most basic human and self-governing rights from a minority shoved into its claws has no business in these organizations. In times when Great Britain frees most of Ireland and gives more-or-less autonomy to Scotland and Wales, or Spain to the Basques and Catalans, Italy to South Tyrol and - horribile dictu - the French to Corsica, the independence of Kosovo, where is Slovakia heading toward? On what grounds does it consider itself to be immune to these changes? Especially when it has sovereignty over regions populated not long ago by only Hungarians.

Let me pose only one question to those people in Hungary (including those in the Foreign Ministry) who at all costs pay attention to the “sensitivities” of the successor states: When did the Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs ever pay attention to our sensitivities? We suffered the most grievances in the whole of Europe in 1920 and again in 1947. The time has come to talk back to the West. They have become overly accustomed to the servility of our Soviet-trained foreign officers and leftist politicians. They command only those who will listen. We must not take their bluff seriously.

That, however, I can promise, that even without the cooperation of the government, we will do everything in our power to blunt your senseless acts of racial hatred.
Corvinus Library