The 20th Century
As a consequence of the aggravating agrarian
crisis around 1890 in Hungary hundreds of thousands of people emigrated from
the area of the former monarchy to the U.S. and to various European countries.
Between 1899 and 1913 about 25000 people left Vas County. Most of them coming
from the district Szentgotthárd (6000). In this very region the biggest
emigration wave took place in 1901. From Alsószölnök
approximately a hundred inhabitants emigrated to the U.S. The First World War
interrupted emigration overseas, which gained a new upturn around 1920. Due to
mass emigration, the American Congress decided to introduce an immigration
quota in 1921. For Hungary this quota amounted to 5638 people. Thus also the
destinations of those willing to emigrate changed. Canada, Argentina,
Uruguay and Brazil became the new destinations for the
emigrants of Vas County. In 1869, about 4000 people were
living in the Slovene villages within the Raba Region. Until 1910 the
population figure decreased by 8 per cent. In 1910, the U.S.
kept about 5000 Slovene-speaking immigrants, who had emigrated from the former
Hungarian kingdom. The Slovene-speaking Hungarians settled mainly in the
state of Pennsylvania and in Chicago and Bethlehem. In these two cities the newspapers “Szlobodne
Rejcsi/Free Words” and “Amerikanski Szlovenczov glász/The
Voice of the Slovenes in America”
were published. The emigrants returning to the Raba Region from the U.S.
purchased land, renovated their houses and kept distributing their American newspapers.
In order to be able to afford a ticket for the crossing to the U.S., the
emigrants had to work up to several months. Numerous emigrants left their homes
without valid travel documents and immigrated to their countries of destination
illegally or they made available passport with the aid of non-existing
destinations. To earn the necessary funds more quickly, the wives followed
their husbands, who had emigrated already some years before. However, since the
reason for many men to emigrate were their wives themselves, from 1926 on they
only received a passport when they could prove that they would take care of
their wives who had been left at home. Around 1923/24 a great deal of the Slovenes who had emigrated returned
to their homeland in the Raba Region. They did not stay abroad for a
long time because they planned to establish a life on better terms.
The First World War
The Slovenes from the Raba Region participated as Hungarian soldiers in the
First World War. Memorials in Apátistvánfalva, Alsószölnök
and Rábatótfalu commemorate the numerous dead soldiers of this
war. After the end of the First World War state power in the Slovene Raba
Region changed six times within ten months. Until October 1918 this region
belonged to Habsburg. From November 1918 until March 1919 it was part of the
Republic Károly-Hungary. In
early 1919 the Slovene Raba Region was even under Jurišič’s power
for one week. Also the White Guardsmen usurped this area for a couple of days. From
March 1919 until August 1919 it was part of the Hungarian
Soviet Republic
and in August 1919 it came under the control of the kingdom
Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia and with the peace treaty of Trianon in June 4, 1920
the Slovene communes definitively remained a part of Hungary. The Károly
government (1918-1919) promised the Slovenes in Zala County and Vas County
cultural autonomy. However, mainly the Catholic Slovenes preferred belonging to
their mother country Slovenia.
After
“Trianon”
The borders between the kingdoms Hungary
and Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia were finally regulated by the so-called peace
treaty of Trianon, in Trianon castle not far from Paris on June 4, 1920. The water shed
of the two rivers Raba and Mura was considered as the borderline within Vas
County. The localities in the surroundings of Szentgotthárd remained
further on Hungarian rule. Through fusions the nine communes of the Raba Region
(Alsószölnök, Apátistvánfalva, Felsőszölnök, Orfalu, Permise,
Rábatótfalu, Ritkaháza, Szakonyfalu and
Újbalázsfalva) became six municipalities.
Újbalázsfalva was associated to Apátistvánfalva,
Rábatótfalu to Szentgotthárd, and Permise and
Ritkaháza were united as Kétvölgy. This so-called “vendvidék”
was consequently disunited: in the Mura Region (Prekmurje), which is a part of Slovenia and in the Raba Region (Porabje)
belonging to Hungary.
This separation introduced a new historical epoch for the Slovenes
living in the Hungarian Raba Region. From this moment forth the Mura Region and
the Raba Region developed separately and differently in terms of economy,
politics, culture and ethnicity. At the border triangle near Felsőszölnök
a pyramidal column bearing the emblems of Austria,
Hungary and Yugoslavia and
the date of the ratification of the peace treaty of Trianon was erected. Between
the two world wars, at the end of May, the Slovene-speaking students held an
annual memorial celebration commemorating the dead heroes of the First World
War at this very stone column. After
the drawing of the “Iron Curtain” after the Second World War this
stone column was no longer accessible. Since June 4, 1989 the border is open
again and from this date forth deputies of the three ethnic groups hold annual
meetings at this stone column, which symbolises the history of this region.
The “Windish question”
During the invasion of the German troops in Yugoslavia on April 6 1941 also
Hungary, as an ally of Hitler-Germany, joined Germany. In return for this help,
Hungary retrieved the Serbian Bácska, the Croatian Baranya and
Medjimurje and the Slovene Mura Region. These regions were affiliated to
Yugoslavia after the peace treaty of Trianon in 1920. One wanted to prove to
the inhabitants of the Mura Region that they were not Slovenes but descended
from the Celts. Sándor
Mikola (1871-1945), a maths and physics teacher coming from the Slovene Mura
Region claimed during the times of the peace of Trianon that the term “vend”
did not mean “Slovene”. With his opus “A Vendség
múltja és jelene/The past and present of
the Wends” he propagated this perception. By means of the theory
of Sándor Mikola Hungarian policy tried to regain the Slovene Mura
Region at that time. However, also after the Second World War the Mura Region
remained a part of Yugoslavia (Slovenia) and the Raba Region a part of Hungary.
The double identity
Between March 18 and March 23, 1946 all the ethnicities living on Hungarian
national territory were registered. Since the Slovenes from the Raba
Region were afraid of being migrated to Yugoslavia they avowed themselves
Hungarians but with Slovene mother tongue in this registration. They decided in favor of the “double
identity". The message, which was published in the newspaper “Szabad
Nép/Free People”, saying that the Slovenes from the Raba Region
had to avow themselves Slovenes to avoid being displaced had a big influence on
their decision in favour of the double identity. What is more, this newspaper
announced that if the Slovenes avowed themselves Hungarians they had to settle
for complete assimilation into Hungarian culture. According to the newspaper “Szabad
Vas megye/Free Vas County” the deputies from Hungary
and Yugoslavia
were also discussing the resettlement and substitution of the respective
south-Slavic and Hungarian population within the two countries at the Parisian
peace talks. Within three years approximately 40000 people were to
change their residences. Luckily, this resettlement did not take place. During the resettlement policy of
the inhabitants of German origin from Hungary 200 people in
Felsoszölnök were on a list destined for resettlement. However,
these people were deleted from the list due to their mixed marriages with
Slovenes or because of their lack of knowledge of the German language. In
Alsószölnök in 1941 325 people avowed being of German origin. The “Volksbund” (union
of people of German origin) had 360 members among whom there were also numerous
Slovenes. In Alsószölnök also existed a not to be
neglected number of inhabitants of German origin. Some Slovenes joined the local German “Volksbund”
during the Second World War, because the people union promised them an
auspicious work in Germany.
In 1946 the Hungarian government displaced 103 people from
Alsószölnök.
Land
partitioning, immigration and resettlement policy
In the villages of the Slovene Raba Region approximately two thirds of
the farmed land still remained privat property also after 1945. From the 85
families who asserted their claims to land 29 were assigned land. The
instructions for mandatory natural tolls and for food ration cards, which were
decreed after the Second World War during the years 1946 and 1956, derogated
also the Slovene peasants from the Raba Region. The peasants had to hand in a
part of their harvest to the state. These terms were often absurd. In parts the
debit of the natural tolls were that high that the harvest of some peasant
families having many children did not suffice to satisfy their own needs, and
that these families were obliged to (re)purchase the harvest in civil stores
with food ration cards or money. What is more, the instructions were not always
adjusted to the given agricultural orientation of the peasants. Even though the peasants were more
often working as chicken breeders, the national toll ordinance dealing with
fowl breeding instructed that also ducks and geese had to be delivered. In
1948 the relations between Hungary and Yugoslavia worsened. In August 1951 the
council announced that Slovene-speaking peasants in the borderland of
Yugoslavia could not give a more worthily answer to Tito's cooperation with the
west than increasing the quota of the mandatory natural tolls. As a consequence
of the bad economic circumstances approximately 28 per cent of the Slovene
inhabitants left the Raba Region between 1949 and 1960. The Slovene peasant families, the so-called “kulák”
(= richer peasants) were put in labour camps to Hortobágy in the Puszta.
Also after 1953 many of these resettled peasant families were not allowed to
return to their home villages but they could migrate to areas which were only
about 60 to 80 km away. To some extent this is the reason why also
Slovene-speaking families settled down in some parts of Vas County.
The Slovene Raba Region was untroubled by acts of violence in the course
of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. On October 23, 1956 when the uprising broke out in Budapest, 83 soldiers of the border patrol
regiment of Alsószölnök left their frontier posts and sided
with the revolutionaries. The border sections to Austria and Yugoslavia,
which were provided with barbed wire, were dismantled by the Hungarian
government already in summer 1956. One of the main destinations of many Hungarian refugees was the Austrian
border near Alsószölnök leading to the neighbouring Austrian
Neumarkt.
The “Iron
Curtain”
The term “Iron Curtain” was mentioned by Winston Churchill during a
speech in Fulton (USA) on May 5, 1946. He said that an “Iron Curtain”
was hanging down on Europe from the Baltic Sea (Stettin) to the Adria (Trieste). This “Iron
Curtain” sealed the Raba Region off Yugoslavia
and Austria
from the second half of the 1940s until the early 1990s. In the beginning the “Iron
Curtain” consisted of wire obstacles, mine fields, foot print detection
sectors, and on the Hungarian side there were guards. In terms of border
control the government of Kádár affected the Slovene population
in the Raba Region most. Additionally, special alarm installations were used to
secure the border, and per instruction the peasants were forced to keep their
land, the limit of which was the border, free for border security. If an inhabitant of the Raba Region
had relatives or friends living in neighbouring Yugoslavia,
then they were considered unreliable and they ran the risk of being migrated to
Yugoslavia.
In between the two world wars not much attention was drawn to the fate
of the different ethnic groups in Hungary. The isolation due to the “Iron Curtain” caused a great loss in
terms of the educational level and the migration of the Slovenes from the Raba
Region. In the 1960s, a certain industrial development, which affected also the
Raba Region, started because of the foundation of a blacksmith's store and a
weaving mill in Szentgotthárd. The Slovene population group found work
in the aforementioned enterprises. In the beginning, they commuted to
work from their villages to Szentgotthárd daily, later on a lot of them
settled down in the Hungarian-speaking city Szentgotthárd. The migration
to Hungarian-speaking cities compromised the continuity of the Slovene identity
within the Raba Region enormously. The then-socialist enonomic and social
system allowed hardly any separate initiative in order to preserve Slovene
peculiarity within the Raba Region. Only the constitutional amendment in 1972
amitted the Slovene minority and other minorities in Hungary, of at least a
formal protection and use of their language. As from 1979 the radio of Győr
broadcasted a programme in Slovene language 25 minutes per week, and in 1986
the museum of Szentgotthárd was named after
Pável Ágoston, a linguist and ethnographer of Slovene origin. Pável
Ágoston (1886-1946) dealt with the science of the Slovene language,
amongst others with the development of the language within the Mura Region.
Political change and the Slovenes within
the Raba Region
The peaceful change in Hungary
in the 1990s resulted in a constitutional and pluralistic state, a state with
parliamentary democracy, with a free market economy and a new social system. It
enabled also the minorities to develop and to rediscover their cultural
identity. In 1990, the Slovene
association dealing with Szentgotthárd, which has been publishing the
small newspaper “Porabje” in Slovene every two weeks since 1991,
was founded in Felsőszölnök. In
addition, Hungarian TV has been broadcasting a programme called “Slovenski
utrinki/Slovene Mosaics” for the Slovene population group in Hungary for 25
minutes every two weeks since 1992. The rich tradition of the Hungarian
Slovenes is being looked after by a culture group that is integrated in the
association of the Hungarian Slovenes. The association of the Slovenes also
adds a great deal to the preservation of the Slovene language within the Raba
Region. In 1993, the Hungarian
Parliament introduced a law for the minorities and ethnic groups living in Hungary, which
acknowledges 13 different minorities on Hungarian soil. Due to the regulation
about the autonomy of the ethnic minorities embodied in this very law, self-administrations,
which acted for the interests of the Slovene population group, were created in
the elections of 1994/95 within six of seven Slovene-speaking settlements. Furthermore,
due to the election results of 1998, the Hungarian Slovenes could establish
another three self-administrations in Szombathely,
Mosonmagyaróvár and in Budapest.
The headquarters of the self-administration of all the Slovenes living in Hungary are
situated in Felsőszölnök. Such
Slovene associations exist in Budapest and Szombathely as well. In
Szentgotthárd, the Slovene culture and information centre and a
consulate of the Republic Slovenia were inaugurated in 1998. Since June 23,
2000 a radio station in Szentgotthárd has been broadcasting daily programmes
in Slovene language.
The relations to Slovenia
The bilateral agreements between the republics of Slovenia
and Hungary and the laws,
which had been introduced by Hungary
in the last couple of decades, enable the promotion and preservation of the
relations between Slovenes within the Raba Region and the mother country Slovenia. Particular
significance inheres in the law dealing with the rights of ethnic minorities in
Hungary, in the bilateral agreement between Hungary and Slovenia about the
securing of the rights of the Slovene population group in Hungary and the
Hungarian population group in Slovenia, in the cooperation treaties about
education, culture and science. The
resolution made by the Slovene parliament with the neighbouring states Austria, Italy,
Croatia and Hungary, in
which Slovenes live as ethnic groups, bears a great significance for the
Slovenes within the Raba Region. This resolution grants the Slovenes
from the Raba Region a lot of support, which can be political, cultural,
linguistic, informal or scientific and financial. The Mura and Raba Region, which had been
separated by the “Iron Curtain” for decades, can return to their
common roots again. The opening of the border crossings Martinje-Felsőszölnök and Čepinci-Kétvölgy
and the railroad connection Zalalövo-Hodoš accounted a great deal for
this aim. In the last couple of years, the relations between the Slovene
population groups in Italy, Austria and Hungary were intensified. Numerous
culture and sport events enabled these Slovene population groups beyond the
Slovene national borders to exchange views and to get to know each other
better. One has found out that, apart from the different developments of this
Slovene ethnic group, the basic questions about identity and continuity are
very similar.
Translated from German into English: Joël Gerber
The German text is based on: “A
Magyarországi Szlovének"/The Hungarian Slovenes”,
Mária Mukics, Press Publica, (2003)
"www.hu-embassy.si/Index_files/hu_files/magyar_files/Munda.htm"