Czechoslovak-Hungarian population exchange
Encyclopedia
The Czechoslovak-Hungarian population exchange was the exchange of inhabitants between Czechoslovakia
and Hungary
after World War II
. Around 45,000 Hungarians were deported from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, while around 72,000 Slovaks transferred from Hungary to Czechoslovakia.
, Czechoslovakia was recreated and Czechoslovak politicians aimed to completely remove the German
and Hungarian minorities from their territory through ethnic cleansing
.Ethnic cleansing is a term that has come to be used broadly to describe all activities designed to force the removal of specific ethnicities from specific territories. Both minorities were considered "war criminals" because of the actions of individuals such as Konrad Henlein
and János Esterházy
, and their two mother countries, in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia before the war, through the Munich Agreement
and the Vienna Awards
.
During the last years of the war, Edvard Beneš
, the leader of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile
, worked toward resolving the minority problem of Czechoslovakia through the transfer or assimilation of these minorities, as he considered them the biggest obstacle in the way of re-shaping postwar Czechoslovakia into a nation-state. The idea that the Hungarian minority
in Slovakia must be removed dominated Czechoslovak national policy for an extended period.
Klement Gottwald
, leader of the Czechoslovakian communists
had set up a rival Czechoslovak government in Moscow
. In April 1945 Gottwald and Beneš met in Kosice
and together they created the new Czechoslovak government, the National Front
– a mixture of Soviet-supported Communists and non-Communists – and announced the "Kosicky vladny program" ("Kosice Government Program"). At this time, all political groups in Czechoslovakia, including the previous government in-exile and the new government, agreed that the country should be formed into a nation state. It was in this atmosphere that the Kosice Government Program – under the supervision of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party – was created.
The Hungarian question is mainly dealt with in Chapters VIII, XI and XV out of the 16 chapters of the program. Chapter VIII deprived the Hungarian and German inhabitants of their citizenship. Chapter XI declared the confiscation of Hungarian landed property while chapter XV ordered to close nationality schools. From chapters VIII and IX, adopted by the cabinet council on April 5, 1945:
According to the Constitution promulgated on May 9, 1948:
The key parts of this policy were written by high-ranking members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, such as Klement Gottwald
, Bohumír Šmeral
, Jan Šverma
and Vaclav Kopecky. Gustáv Husák
commented:
Because the German and Hungarian minorities were pre-war Czechoslovak citizens, Beneš had to adopt decrees that deprived them of their citizenship. In 1945, he revoked the citizenship of Germans and Hungarians by decree #33, except those with an active anti-fascist past (see Beneš Decrees
), and Czechoslovakia maintained that the peace agreement must include a provision stating that
plan depended on the acquiescence of the victors in World War II. In 1943, before the end of the war, Beneš already received the necessary approval of the United States
, Great Britain
and the Soviet Union
to transfer the German and Hungarian population out of Czechoslovakia, but at the end of the war, when the American and British leaders saw the specifics of Beneš's plan, they did not support it. The plan, however, fit well with Joseph Stalin
's Central Europe
an policy, and on March 21, 1945, Vyacheslav Molotov
informed Beneš that the Soviet Union would support him. Zdeněk Fierlinger
informed the Czechoslovak government that "Stalin has an utterly positive standpoint on our demands in the matter of the transfer. He will allow us to carry out the transfer to Germany
and Hungary, and, to a certain extent, also to Austria
"
The Potsdam Agreement
subsequently approved the deportation of Germans from Czechoslovakia, but the removal of the complete Hungarian population proved to be more difficult, and finally failed to be approved. The Czechoslovak government attempted to apply the Potsdam Agreement on the Hungarian population as well, but the Western powers rejected this conception, and also refused to put the Czechoslovak demands into the peace treaty with Hungary. The Hungarian government protested the planned expulsion of the Hungarian population from Czechoslovakia and requested intervention from the Allies. When the Czechoslovak government realized that they had lost the support of the Western powers, who advised and supported negotiations with Hungary, they turned to an internal solution, and decided to eliminate the Hungarian minority through Slovakization and Slovak colonization.
Decree #071/1945 ("Presidential edict concerning forced labor services of persons who had lost Czechoslovak citizenship; September 19, 1945") and #88/1945 ("Decree of the President on the General obligation to Work (abrogated by law No. 65/1965)") authorized the Czechoslovak administration to draft people into labour service for one year. Under the disguise of "labor recruiting", the deportation of Hungarians from South Slovakia began to the recently vacated Czech borderlands
, and their properties were confiscated. The transit trains were labelled as "voluntary agricultural workers". In fact, the real goal was to alter the ethnic composition of South Slovakia. These "labor recruitings" were named by Czech historian Karel Kaplan
as "internal colonisations", and according to him their "political aim... was to transfer a part of the Hungarian minority away from the Hungarian border and to destroy it as a compact territorial unit. This colonisation also had an immediate industrial golal – to provide the depopulated areas with a workforce".
Between July and August 1946 under the slogan "Slovak agricultural labour assisting the Czech lands" more Hungarians were deported to Bohemia
. Eventually 40,000-45,000-50,000 Hungarians were deported to Czech territories recently cleared of Sudeten Germans
, and their properties confiscated by the state. According to the Slovak National Archives
, 41,666 Hungarians had been deported from southern Slovakia.
Hungarians who stayed in Slovakia became the targets of the extremely strong Slovak assimilation efforts.
, and a warning from Hungary about the potential reannexation of the solidly Hungarian areas, something it had achieved in 1938 in the First Vienna Award
, but which was annulled on February 10, 1947 by the Treaty of Paris
. After this, Czechoslovakia pressed for a bilateral population exchange to remove Hungarians and increase its Slovak population, changing the ethnic makeup of the country. This plan was initially rejected by Hungary, however, one of the unconcealed purposes of the deportation of the Hungarians to the Czech lands was to pressure Hungary to agree. Soon, Hungary realized that the Allies are not actually much interested in the fate of the Hungarian minority, and that they would not halt the deportations; the peace treaty signed on 1947 did not include any provision concerning the protection of minorities. In this circumstances, Hungary finally signed the bilateral agreement with Czechoslovakia in Budapest
, on February 27, 1946. The signatories were Vladimír Clementis
, Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia and János Gyöngyösi
, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary.
The Hungarian government considered the agreement to be a major fiasco. The Czechoslovak government planned the removal of 250,000 Hungarian people from South Slovakia to Hungary, but according to different estimations 45,000 or 120,000 – generally well-to-do businessmen, tradesmen, farmers and intellectuals – had been transferred under the bilateral exchange, while 71,787 or 73,200 Slovaks from Hungary – the exact number depends on source consulted – were resettled in South Slovakia. Slovaks leaving Hungary moved voluntarily, but Hungarians leaving Czechoslovakia were forcibly deported and their properties taken away. Thirty thousand Hungarians, who arrived to the country in 1938, hence were not Czechoslovak citizens before, left the territories that were re-annexed by Hungary in 1938 (see Vienna Awards
) and then re-attached to Czechoslovakia after World War II. This was due to their being dropped from the pension, social, and healthcare system. In all, 89,660 Hungarians arrived in Hungary from Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1949. Due to dissatisfication with their new properties, half of the Slovaks who joined the relocation program moved back to Hungary.
, Hungarian politician Viktor Orbán
demanded the repeal of the Beneš Decrees, but the European Parliament
asserted that "the decrees did not constitute an insurmountable obstacle to accession." Slovak politician Monika Beňová-Flašiková accused the Hungarian politicians of pushing revanchist
policies which could destabilize Europe. Later, the Hungarian members of the Slovak parliament
requested compensation and a symbolic apology to the victims of the expulsions. As an answer, the Slovak government adopted a resolution in September 2007 declaring the Beneš Decrees inalterable.
According to The Minorities at Risk Project:
However, some Slovak sources they claim that:
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
and Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Around 45,000 Hungarians were deported from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, while around 72,000 Slovaks transferred from Hungary to Czechoslovakia.
Post-war Czechoslovakia
In 1945, at the end of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Czechoslovakia was recreated and Czechoslovak politicians aimed to completely remove the German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
and Hungarian minorities from their territory through ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
.Ethnic cleansing is a term that has come to be used broadly to describe all activities designed to force the removal of specific ethnicities from specific territories. Both minorities were considered "war criminals" because of the actions of individuals such as Konrad Henlein
Konrad Henlein
Konrad Ernst Eduard Henlein was a leading pro-Nazi ethnic German politician in Czechoslovakia and leader of Sudeten German separatists...
and János Esterházy
János Esterházy
Count János Esterházy a member of the House of Esterházy was the most prominent ethnic Hungarian politician in former Czechoslovakia...
, and their two mother countries, in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia before the war, through the Munich Agreement
Munich Agreement
The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...
and the Vienna Awards
Vienna Awards
The Vienna Awards are two arbitral awards by which arbiters of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sought to enforce peacefully the claims of Hungary on territory it had lost in 1920 when it signed the Treaty of Trianon...
.
During the last years of the war, Edvard Beneš
Edvard Beneš
Edvard Beneš was a leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second President of Czechoslovakia. He was known to be a skilled diplomat.- Youth :...
, the leader of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile
Czechoslovak government-in-exile
The Czechoslovak government-in-exile was an informal title conferred upon the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee, initially by British diplomatic recognition. The name came to be used by other World War II Allies as they subsequently recognized it...
, worked toward resolving the minority problem of Czechoslovakia through the transfer or assimilation of these minorities, as he considered them the biggest obstacle in the way of re-shaping postwar Czechoslovakia into a nation-state. The idea that the Hungarian minority
Hungarians in Slovakia
Hungarians in Slovakia are the largest ethnic minority of the country, numbering 520,528 people or 9.7% of population . They are concentrated mostly in the southern part of the country, near the border with Hungary...
in Slovakia must be removed dominated Czechoslovak national policy for an extended period.
Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald was a Czechoslovakian Communist politician, longtime leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , prime minister and president of Czechoslovakia.-Early life:...
, leader of the Czechoslovakian communists
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....
had set up a rival Czechoslovak government in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. In April 1945 Gottwald and Beneš met in Kosice
Košice
Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary...
and together they created the new Czechoslovak government, the National Front
National Front (Czechoslovakia)
The National Front was the coalition of parties which headed the re-established Czechoslovakian government from 1945 to 1948. During the Communist era in Czechoslovakia it was the vehicle for control of all political and social activity by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia...
– a mixture of Soviet-supported Communists and non-Communists – and announced the "Kosicky vladny program" ("Kosice Government Program"). At this time, all political groups in Czechoslovakia, including the previous government in-exile and the new government, agreed that the country should be formed into a nation state. It was in this atmosphere that the Kosice Government Program – under the supervision of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party – was created.
"As to the Czechoslovak citizens of German and Hungarian nationality, who were Czechoslovak citizens prior to the Munich Pact in 1938, their citizenship will be confirmed and their eventual return to the Republic may be permitted only in the following categories: for anti-Nazis and anti-Fascists who fought against Henlein and Hungarian irredentism, who fought for Czechoslovakia, and who after the Munich Pact and after March 15 were persecuted for their loyalty to Czechoslovakia.... The Czechoslovak citizenship of the other Czechoslovak German and Hungarian citizens will be cancelled. Although they may again express a choice for Czechoslovakia, public authorities will retain the right of individual decision."
According to the Constitution promulgated on May 9, 1948:
"We have decided now that our liberated State shall be a national state, rid of all hostile elements, living in brotherly harmony with the family of Slav States and in friendship with all peace-loving nations of the world. (§ 9) [...] The Czechoslovak Republic is a unitary State of two Slav nations possessing equal rights, the Czechs and the Slovaks." (Article II/1 )
The key parts of this policy were written by high-ranking members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, such as Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald
Klement Gottwald was a Czechoslovakian Communist politician, longtime leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , prime minister and president of Czechoslovakia.-Early life:...
, Bohumír Šmeral
Bohumír Šmeral
Bohumír Šmeral was a Czech politician, leader of the social democracy and one of founders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.-Early life:...
, Jan Šverma
Jan Šverma
Jan Šverma was a Czechoslovak political activist, considered a national hero during the communist regime....
and Vaclav Kopecky. Gustáv Husák
Gustáv Husák
Gustáv Husák was a Slovak politician, president of Czechoslovakia and a long-term Communist leader of Czechoslovakia and of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia...
commented:
"The past seven tormenting years have changed our opinion and the opinion of the majority of the world on the minority politics. This is the fourth lesson we are drawing from the fall of 1938, a lesson pointing to the historic crime of the Hungarian and German minorities in the destruction of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, a lesson showing the sufferings of the population of Czechoslovakia, a lesson on the inevitability of expelling and exchanging the minority populations in the interest of the European peace and the peaceful coexistence of the nations."
Because the German and Hungarian minorities were pre-war Czechoslovak citizens, Beneš had to adopt decrees that deprived them of their citizenship. In 1945, he revoked the citizenship of Germans and Hungarians by decree #33, except those with an active anti-fascist past (see Beneš Decrees
Beneš decrees
Decrees of the President of the Republic , more commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws that were drafted by the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II and issued by President...
), and Czechoslovakia maintained that the peace agreement must include a provision stating that
"Hungarians whose Czechoslovak citizenship will now be revoked will be recognized by Hungary as Hungarian citizens and will be settled on its territory, and Hungary will bear responsibility for these individuals from the moment they cross Hungary's border and will provide for them."
Deportation of Hungarians
The resettlement of about 700,000 Hungarians was envisaged at Kosice and subsequently reaffirmed by the National Front, however, the success of the deportationDeportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
plan depended on the acquiescence of the victors in World War II. In 1943, before the end of the war, Beneš already received the necessary approval of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
to transfer the German and Hungarian population out of Czechoslovakia, but at the end of the war, when the American and British leaders saw the specifics of Beneš's plan, they did not support it. The plan, however, fit well with Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
an policy, and on March 21, 1945, Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
informed Beneš that the Soviet Union would support him. Zdeněk Fierlinger
Zdenek Fierlinger
Zdeněk Fierlinger was Czech politician. He served as the Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1944 to 1946, first in the London-based exiled government and later in liberated Czechoslovakia...
informed the Czechoslovak government that "Stalin has an utterly positive standpoint on our demands in the matter of the transfer. He will allow us to carry out the transfer to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Hungary, and, to a certain extent, also to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
"
The Potsdam Agreement
Potsdam Agreement
The Potsdam Agreement was the Allied plan of tripartite military occupation and reconstruction of Germany—referring to the German Reich with its pre-war 1937 borders including the former eastern territories—and the entire European Theatre of War territory...
subsequently approved the deportation of Germans from Czechoslovakia, but the removal of the complete Hungarian population proved to be more difficult, and finally failed to be approved. The Czechoslovak government attempted to apply the Potsdam Agreement on the Hungarian population as well, but the Western powers rejected this conception, and also refused to put the Czechoslovak demands into the peace treaty with Hungary. The Hungarian government protested the planned expulsion of the Hungarian population from Czechoslovakia and requested intervention from the Allies. When the Czechoslovak government realized that they had lost the support of the Western powers, who advised and supported negotiations with Hungary, they turned to an internal solution, and decided to eliminate the Hungarian minority through Slovakization and Slovak colonization.
Decree #071/1945 ("Presidential edict concerning forced labor services of persons who had lost Czechoslovak citizenship; September 19, 1945") and #88/1945 ("Decree of the President on the General obligation to Work (abrogated by law No. 65/1965)") authorized the Czechoslovak administration to draft people into labour service for one year. Under the disguise of "labor recruiting", the deportation of Hungarians from South Slovakia began to the recently vacated Czech borderlands
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
, and their properties were confiscated. The transit trains were labelled as "voluntary agricultural workers". In fact, the real goal was to alter the ethnic composition of South Slovakia. These "labor recruitings" were named by Czech historian Karel Kaplan
Karel Kaplan
Karel Kaplan is a Czech historian, who specialized in the World War II and post World War II periods in Czechoslovakia. Kaplan is regarded as one of the most noted historians of Czech communism from 1945 to 1968...
as "internal colonisations", and according to him their "political aim... was to transfer a part of the Hungarian minority away from the Hungarian border and to destroy it as a compact territorial unit. This colonisation also had an immediate industrial golal – to provide the depopulated areas with a workforce".
Between July and August 1946 under the slogan "Slovak agricultural labour assisting the Czech lands" more Hungarians were deported to Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
. Eventually 40,000-45,000-50,000 Hungarians were deported to Czech territories recently cleared of Sudeten Germans
Sudeten Germans
- Importance of Sudeten Germans :Czechoslovakia was inhabited by over 3 million ethnic Germans, comprising about 23 percent of the population of the republic and about 29.5% of Bohemia and Moravia....
, and their properties confiscated by the state. According to the Slovak National Archives
Slovak National Archives
The Slovak National Archives were created in 1928. They are under the authority of the Minister of the Interior. They are located in Bratislava, Slovakia.Interesting facts...
, 41,666 Hungarians had been deported from southern Slovakia.
Hungarians who stayed in Slovakia became the targets of the extremely strong Slovak assimilation efforts.
Hungarian-Slovak population exchanges
The Czechoslovak leadership pressed for the deportation of all Hungarians; however, the Allies prevented a unilateral expulsion, and instead advised them to solve the minority problem through negotiations. As a result, the Czechoslovak government resettled more than 40,000 Hungarians to the Czech borderlands, provoking a protest from the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and a warning from Hungary about the potential reannexation of the solidly Hungarian areas, something it had achieved in 1938 in the First Vienna Award
First Vienna Award
The First Vienna Award was the result of the First Vienna Arbitration, which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace on November 2, 1938. The Arbitration and Award were direct consequences of the Munich Agreement...
, but which was annulled on February 10, 1947 by the Treaty of Paris
Paris Peace Treaties, 1947
The Paris Peace Conference resulted in the Paris Peace Treaties signed on February 10, 1947. The victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland .The...
. After this, Czechoslovakia pressed for a bilateral population exchange to remove Hungarians and increase its Slovak population, changing the ethnic makeup of the country. This plan was initially rejected by Hungary, however, one of the unconcealed purposes of the deportation of the Hungarians to the Czech lands was to pressure Hungary to agree. Soon, Hungary realized that the Allies are not actually much interested in the fate of the Hungarian minority, and that they would not halt the deportations; the peace treaty signed on 1947 did not include any provision concerning the protection of minorities. In this circumstances, Hungary finally signed the bilateral agreement with Czechoslovakia in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, on February 27, 1946. The signatories were Vladimír Clementis
Vladimír Clementis
Vladimír "Vlado" Clementis was a Slovak minister, politician, lawyer, publicist, literary critic, author and a prominent member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. He married Lída Pátková, a daughter of a branch director of Czech Hypothec Bank in Bratislava, in March 1933. He became a Communist...
, Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia and János Gyöngyösi
János Gyöngyösi
János Gyöngyösi was a Hungarian politician, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1944 and 1947. He fought in the First World War. After the war he worked as a journalist and finished his studies in the Budapest University...
, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary.
The Hungarian government considered the agreement to be a major fiasco. The Czechoslovak government planned the removal of 250,000 Hungarian people from South Slovakia to Hungary, but according to different estimations 45,000 or 120,000 – generally well-to-do businessmen, tradesmen, farmers and intellectuals – had been transferred under the bilateral exchange, while 71,787 or 73,200 Slovaks from Hungary – the exact number depends on source consulted – were resettled in South Slovakia. Slovaks leaving Hungary moved voluntarily, but Hungarians leaving Czechoslovakia were forcibly deported and their properties taken away. Thirty thousand Hungarians, who arrived to the country in 1938, hence were not Czechoslovak citizens before, left the territories that were re-annexed by Hungary in 1938 (see Vienna Awards
Vienna Awards
The Vienna Awards are two arbitral awards by which arbiters of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sought to enforce peacefully the claims of Hungary on territory it had lost in 1920 when it signed the Treaty of Trianon...
) and then re-attached to Czechoslovakia after World War II. This was due to their being dropped from the pension, social, and healthcare system. In all, 89,660 Hungarians arrived in Hungary from Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1949. Due to dissatisfication with their new properties, half of the Slovaks who joined the relocation program moved back to Hungary.
| Appointed for the bilateral Czechoslovak-Hungarian population transfer | Number of persons |
|---|---|
| under article V. of the contract | 105,047 (27,718 families) |
| under article VIII. of the contract | 65,200 (23,552 families) |
| De facto transferred | Number of persons |
| under article V. of the contract | 45,475 |
| as war criminals, article VIII. of the contract | 2,905 |
| "R" transport (regimists) | 1,034 |
| before the contract came into effect | 11,837 |
| from the liberation until the inauguration of the Czechoslovak administration | 10,196 |
| after the contract came into effect, but beyond from it | 11,057 |
| after the contract came into effect | 1,083 |
| from Rusovce Rusovce Rusovce castle")) is a borough in southern Bratislava on the right bank of the Danube river, close to the Hungarian border.- History :In the 1st century, there was a Roman settlement named Gerulata in today's Rusovce area. The first preserved written reference to the settlement is from 1208. It... |
73 |
| voluntarily | 6,000 |
| Total | 89,660 |
Current views
In 2002 before Slovakia and Hungary joined the European Union in 20042004 enlargement of the European Union
The 2004 enlargement of the European Union was the largest single expansion of the European Union , both in terms of territory, number of states and population, however not in terms of gross domestic product...
, Hungarian politician Viktor Orbán
Viktor Orbán
Viktor Orbán is a Hungarian populist and conservative politician and current Prime Minister of Hungary...
demanded the repeal of the Beneš Decrees, but the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
asserted that "the decrees did not constitute an insurmountable obstacle to accession." Slovak politician Monika Beňová-Flašiková accused the Hungarian politicians of pushing revanchist
Revanchism
Revanchism is a term used since the 1870s to describe a political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses incurred by a country, often following a war or social movement. Revanchism draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought and is often motivated by economic or...
policies which could destabilize Europe. Later, the Hungarian members of the Slovak parliament
Politics of Slovakia
Politics of Slovakia takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, with a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in the parliament and it can be exerced in some cases also by the government or directly by citizens. Executive power is exercised by the...
requested compensation and a symbolic apology to the victims of the expulsions. As an answer, the Slovak government adopted a resolution in September 2007 declaring the Beneš Decrees inalterable.
According to The Minorities at Risk Project:
However, some Slovak sources they claim that:
- the federalisation was only notional (see, e.g., Slovak Socialist RepublicSlovak Socialist RepublicFrom 1969 to 1990, the Slovak Socialist Republic was the official name of that part of Czechoslovakia that is Slovakia today. The name was used from 1 January 1969 until March 1990....
) - no change to the minority laws occurred with respect to the year 1968
- during this time the number of Hungarian language schools and Hungarian-speaking people increased in Slovakia