Popély Gyula (Abara, 1945) is a historian, university professor. He obtained his diploma from Comenius University in Pozsony / Bratislava, and has been a lecturer at Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary since 2000. Between 1978 and 1989, he worked in the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of the Hungarian Minority in Czechoslovakia, and after 1990 he was one of the shapers of Hungarian politics in (Czecho)Slovakia. As a historian, his work focuses on the development of the fate of the Hungarian population in (Czecho)Slovakia. Here is an interview with him, by Kolek Zsolt https://ma7.sk/
The goal was a purely Slovak state, without Hungarians – interview with Popély Gyula
“When was the deportation of the Hungarians from Czechoslovakia first proposed, and how did the victorious Allied powers relate to the plans of the (Czecho)Slovak politicians? Which groups of the Hungarian population were targeted most by the authorities, and how was the implementation of the population exchange agreement, concluded eighty years ago, forced upon Hungary? We asked historian Popély Gyula.
After the Second World War, the (Czecho)Slovak authorities made it clear that they envisioned an ethnically homogeneous state. When was the idea of getting rid of the Hungarian community in Czechoslovakia first raised?
This aspiration, whether stated or unstated, had been present in Czech and Slovak politics since the establishment of Czechoslovakia. From the very beginning, they saw national minorities as a threat, since at the time of the state’s founding, the population of German, Hungarian, Rusyn and Polish nationality was almost equal in proportion to the Czech and Slovak population.
From the establishment of Czechoslovakia onwards, they continuously strove to change these proportions, either by assimilating the nationalities or by intimidating the recalcitrant population. Immediately after the change of regime, even before the Treaty of Trianon was signed, more than one hundred thousand Hungarians had already been driven from their homeland. This intention persisted throughout the entire interwar period; the state sought to use its power to achieve the departure of the non-Slovak population.
Tiso’s Slovakia also maintained these goals. In 1943, following Italy’s withdrawal from the war, Slovak diplomacy considered the time ripe—after Hungary had lost its great-power patron—to regain, with the help of the Germans, not only the territories lost as a result of the First Vienna Award, but also to get rid of the Hungarians in (Czecho)Slovakia. The Slovak Interior Minister, Alexander Mach, stated that those Hungarians who were willing to become Slavs could stay, while the rest would be driven out of the country with the help of Hitler and the Wehrmacht.
So the idea of reslovakization was also formulated earlier, and it just had to be pulled out of the drawer after 1945?
Exactly, reslovakization had already sprung from the minds of Slovak politicians in 1943, only back then it was on a National Socialist basis. Later, they decorated it with class-struggle, communist claptrap, but the essence remained the same: to get rid of the Hungarians at all costs. In other words, those who cannot be assimilated must be driven away.
In 1944–1945, the (Czecho)Slovak politicians believed that this was a historical opportunity, perhaps never to return, to achieve their goals. Czechoslovakia had high hopes for the Potsdam Conference meeting in the summer of 1945, so they submitted a memorandum to the Council of Foreign Ministers, in which they proposed that, similarly to the Germans, the Hungarians should also be expelled from the country.
How did the victorious Allied powers relate to the Czechoslovak proposal?
The Soviet Union supported linking the Hungarian and German questions, that is, that every Hungarian was just as guilty as the Germans, and that their complete unilateral expulsion should be ordered. The Anglo-Saxon powers, however, voted against the Soviets, so the decision was made that the Czechoslovak and Hungarian governments should agree on a population exchange. Although Hungary was reluctant to begin negotiations, as a defeated state it had no room for maneuver, and moreover, the Hungarians in (Czecho)Slovakia virtually became hostages. The deportations had already begun in the summer of 1945. In the first wave, ten thousand Hungarian men—this time not yet entire families—were taken to the Czech lands for forced labor.
The Hungarians in (Czecho)Slovakia could not count on any international protection, and Budapest could therefore do nothing to defend them. In order to prevent mass deportations, the Hungarian side began negotiations on the population exchange in December 1945.
The consultations, however, broke down after three days, because the Czechoslovak side had put completely unacceptable proposals on the table.
At this point, we are already past the promulgation of the notorious presidential decrees, which imposed collective deprivation of rights on the Hungarian population. Was this, in fact, a response to the Potsdam Conference’s rejecting resolution?
President of the Republic Edvard Beneš was consistently waiting for the unilateral expulsion of the Hungarians to be approved in Potsdam. The Potsdam Conference concluded on August 2nd; by then, Decree No. 33 had already been prepared, which rendered the Hungarians in (Czecho)Slovakia stateless and deprived them of all their rights. This practically meant that they were outlaws, and anything could be done to them.
It should be noted that during this time in Slovakia, there was a peculiar public law situation; the Slovak National Council also adopted anti-Hungarian measures in parallel, which in many cases would have gone even further than the presidential decrees.
For example, they also ordered Hungarians to wear a green ribbon, similar to the yellow star that Jews had been forced to wear earlier. The implementation of this decree did not ultimately take place. However, Hungarian public employees were dismissed and deprived of their pension entitlements. Many of them literally starved. The authorities’ goal with this was deterrence; they wanted to achieve that Hungarians would flee voluntarily to Hungary.
Little is mentioned about it in the academic literature, but in 1944–1945, among the Czechoslovak leaders, the idea was also raised that during the Red Army’s advance, the entire population of certain Hungarian villages should be murdered, in order to instill fear among the Hungarians and compel them to flee. The fact that this did not occur was due to the development of the front line: the Soviet army did not advance from north to south, towards Hungary, but rather the front moved in the opposite direction. In any case, it can be stated that the ethnic cleansing against the Hungarians was prepared with the greatest premeditation.
You mentioned that the negotiations broke off in December 1945, but on February 27 they finally signed the agreement. What did the Czechoslovak side demand that made Budapest subsequently try to back out of the agreement?
The bilateral population exchange was theoretically to take place on a parity basis. That is, as many Slovaks as voluntarily relocated from Hungary, that many Hungarians could be designated for resettlement by the Czechoslovak authorities. However, the Slovak goals went much further than this; contemporary newspapers wrote that the Trianon borders must become ethnic borders.
This is why the Czechoslovak government insisted that the population exchange agreement include the provision that Czechoslovakia, beyond the parity, have the right to unilaterally expel Hungarians declared war criminals. The Hungarian delegation accepted this in the belief that it would affect at most a few hundred or thousand people. However, the agreement did not define who qualified as a war criminal, so the Czechoslovak authorities could declare anyone a war criminal at their own discretion, without a court verdict.
The authorities calculated that with the mutual population exchange they would get rid of two hundred thousand Hungarians – this was obviously an overly optimistic expectation, given how many Slovaks lived in Hungary –, they would unilaterally expel another two hundred thousand as war criminals, and they would somehow deal with the remaining Hungarians, for example by dispersing them throughout the country.
Let me give you an example: my home village, Abara, located in the Nagymihály district, is a settlement of 600 souls, where the authorities designated 208 people as war criminals. In the end, not a single one of them was expelled; the matter had subsided by the time the expulsion would have reached them. Seeing this, the Hungarian side declared that although they had signed the agreement, they would not implement it.
However, the Hungarian community in (Czecho)Slovakia remained a hostage in the hands of the Czechoslovak side, and a new wave of deportations began. This time, entire families were herded in cattle wagons to the Czech lands and Moravia for slave labor. With this, they forced Hungary to start the population exchange, but they managed to moderate the eighth clause; Czechoslovakia could not “produce” war criminals by the hundred thousand.
Over time, the excesses of the Czechoslovak authorities were curbed by the Soviet Union. As the Cold War deepened between the great powers and the specter of another world war threatened, Moscow no longer looked favorably upon conflicts between countries within its sphere of interest, and therefore acted to moderate the situation.
One can read several different statistics regarding the population exchange. How many Hungarians from (Czecho)Slovakia actually had to leave their homeland?
The number of the so-called “those from the motherland,” Hungarians who relocated from the mother country after November 2, 1938, can be estimated at 30-40 thousand, who fled to Trianon Hungary after the front had passed, leaving behind all their movable and immovable property. A further 6-8 thousand – teachers, engineers, officials – who were left without jobs in Czechoslovakia, also relocated voluntarily.
The number of those relocated within the framework of the population exchange can be estimated at 80-85 thousand. Ultimately, fewer people came over from Hungary; 85-86 thousand applied, but only about 70 thousand actually moved. One-third of the “Slovaks” who relocated were more like adventurers who came over in the hope of a better living, not because they were convinced Slovaks.
Those who relocated most often left behind modest mud huts and moved into the stone houses of the deported Hungarians from (Czecho)Slovakia, who never received any compensation for their lost property; the Csorbató Agreement concluded in 1949 considered the matter closed. Among the relocated Hungarians from (Czecho)Slovakia, even those who could move into the homes of deported Swabians were better off.
You referred to the fact that immediately after the war, the Czechoslovak authorities forced several thousand Hungarian intellectuals to leave. During the population exchange, which social groups were targeted?
The authorities’ goal was to decapitate, and thereby break, the Hungarian community in (Czecho)Slovakia. This is why wealthy farmers were designated for resettlement, as alongside the intelligentsia, priests and teachers, they constituted the backbone of the Hungarian population. Among those deported, there was a disproportionately large number of Calvinists, because the authorities considered the Calvinist church to be a Hungarian national church, and believed that Hungarian Catholics could be more easily assimilated.
It is also worth noting that the deportations primarily affected the compact Hungarian ethnic areas: Mátyusföld, Csallóköz, and the Danubian region. The authorities’ goal was obviously to loosen up the Hungarian ethnic territory as much as possible.
There was already a tried and tested recipe for this from earlier times, since after Trianon they had fragmented the Hungarian ethnic blocs with settler villages.
In recent weeks, regrettably, the Beneš decrees have once again received greater attention due to the amendment to the Criminal Code adopted in the Pozsony / Bratislava parliament. Can the cross of the past be cast off in some way, or will these events cast a shadow over the relationship of these two interdependent Central European peoples for a long time to come?
We all know that the truth sets you free. We seek the truth, but there are politicians who are afraid of the truth. They obscure things wherever possible, because the truth coming to light can only harm the retrospective judgment of the inhuman and unlawful acts committed in the past.
We openly undertake intellectual confrontation with anyone in the pursuit of truth. However, very few among those who have ill intentions towards us take up this challenge. This is regrettable, but we can only respond to this by always keeping our hand outstretched for a handshake.
We hope that our opponents will eventually tire of this hatred. Unfortunately, it now seems they are quite persistent in this regard.
