Autonomies in Hungary and Europe A COMPARATIVE STUDY By Jozsa Hevizi The Regional and Ecclesiastic Autonomy of the Minorities and Nationality Groups CORVINUS SOCIETY 2004 Second Enlarged Edition Title of the First Edition: Regional and Ecclesiastical Autonomy in Historic Hungary Reviewed by: Dr. Ildiko Lipcsey Dr. Lajos Arday Translated By Thomas J. DeKornfeld Thanks to my mother for help, and to Szabolcs Magyarody, whose initiative was written this work. English Text Reviewed and Edited By Helen D. Hiltabidle Wrapper: Perhacs Laszlone Back, maps: dr. Ottofi Rudolf Art by Marta Buda PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES ISBNxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Library of Congress Catalog Card Number xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Table of Contents Foreword 5 The Justification of Autonomy 7 Regional Autonomy in the Kingdom of Hungary (1000-1920) 11 The Szekelys (and Csangos) 12 The Csango-Hungarians living in Moldavia 16 The Pechenegs 17 The Cumans and Jazygians 18 The Transylvanian Saxons 22 The Szepesseg (Zips) Saxons 25 The Croats 26 Ecclesiastic Autonomy 32 The Romanians 38 The Serbs 42 The Slovaks 50 The Ruthenians 57 The Greeks 63 The Armenians 65 The Germans and Swabians 67 European Minority Policies and Practices in the Past 68 France 69 Bretagne 70 Alsace 71 Corsica 72 Spain 74 Belgium 77 Switzerland 79 Italy 81 South Tyrol 81 Sweden 83 Norway 84 Finland 85 Russia 88 Jews 88 Baltic Nations 88 Byelorussians and Ukrainians 89 Smaller nationalities 89 Crimean Tartars 90 Hungarians and Ruthenians in the Karpatalja 97 Poland 99 Post-Trianon Hungary 103 The Czech Republic and Slovakia 114 3 The Karpatalja Hungarians and Ruthenians in Czechoslovakia 119 Romania 126 Yugoslavia and Serbia 140 Civil Rights Battle for Territorial Autonomy in Great Britain 150 Ireland 151 Northern Ireland (Six Counties of Ulster) 156 Scotland 160 Wales 164 Autonomy and the Politics of National Security 169 Methods of Assimilation and their Sociological Consequences 169 The Conditions Required for the Self-Preservation of an Ethnic Group and for its Internal Development 172 How Autonomies Were Achieved in the 19th century 173 The Europe of Autonomous Minorities - the Pre-requisite for a Peaceful Europe 175 Legislative Act XLIV/1868 - “On Equal Rights For the Nationalities” 180 Bibliography 184 4 Foreword It gave me great pleasure that the work entitled “The Regional and Ecclesiastic Autonomy in Historic Hungary” was published and was granted the status of a textbook. This is a reference manual not only in the field of textbook literature but it is just as much a ref­ erence manual for us who labor in the regions wrested from the historic Hungary, trying to reestablish our mutilated ecclesiastic and national autonomy in a contemporary guise. I render thanks to God and to the author for the unexpected ideological, historical and theoretical help, coming from an unexpected source and at an unexpected time. It will contribute greatly to the better and “more fundamental” buttressing of our endeavors and of our ideas of autonomy. February 29, 1996 Laszlo Tokes Episcopal Office of the Kiralyhagomellek Reformed Synod 5 The Justification of Autonomy According to Aristotle, in a democracy “supreme power belongs to the people” which in theory means that the power is exerted by the entire people and not just by one of its subgroups or segments. In spite of this, the democracies of the classic era did not grant citizenship to foreigners (the metoikos in Greece) and the status of the ethnic minorities did not change appreciably through the centuries. According to the eminent 20th century Protestant thinker and teacher, Sandor Karacsony, “World history is the history of a single endeavor, the attempts of individuals to become independent from other individuals. The only thing that happened political­ ly throughout history was that every period endeavored to curtail the overly developed autonomy of one man while furthering the diminished or yet undeveloped autonomy of another man.” He was of the opinion that in the process of maturing of individuals the same principle was manifested as in the social and political development of nations, namely a striving for autonomy. Although the national states evolved only in the 19th century, nations and ethnic groups have struggled from the beginning of history for their administrative, economic and cultural (religious and linguistic) autonomy essential for the preservation of their identity. Ever since the union with Wales, Scotland and Ireland was established, England endeavored to abolish the administrative independence of these regions and to achieve linguistic assimilation. Religious matters were also part of this endeavor and only the Scottish Presbyterians maintained some independence. The Act of Union between England and Wales, promulgated in 1536, banned the use of the Welsh language in legal matters. In 1616, James I issued an edict banning the use of Gaelic in Scotland. The Education Act of 1870 banned the use of Welsh in the schools. After the annex­ ation of Wales, Scotland and Ireland to England only scattered remnants of autonomy remained. Following the Anglo-Welsh Union of 1536, Wales became entirely integrated into England but its autonomous cultural heritage was maintained to this day. The Union of Scotland and England (1707) did not lead to complete assimilation since Scotland’s reli­ gious autonomy was left intact. Thus the continuation of the Scottish Kirk was assured and the Scottish legal and legislative practices were also preserved. At the time of the religious wars in France in the 16th century, the victory of the Catholics over the Huguenots was accompanied by the central government doing away with the regional parliaments and with the regional separatism represented by them. Francis I (1515-1547) made French the official state language in 1539 and this process was completed when the French Revolution banned the use of Breton, Basque, German, Italian and Flemish. The great philosophers and politicians of the French Revolution believed that enact­ ing human and civic rights and promulgating individual rights would lead to democracy. Today we can see that such a law can come to life only by a compromise that attempts to balance complicated group interests and the mechanisms to integrate such divergent 7 interests. Unfortunately, political life demonstrates that those in power tend to represent the interests of some group, e.g.- the economic lobbies. If we raise the question whether interest groups on all sides, employer, worker (union) and government are listened to, we must admit that traditionally only the inter­ ests of the groups organized on an economic or social basis are considered worthy of consideration, while the ethnic issues or an approach on ethnic bases cannot be inte­ grated into the system. It may be a solution if ethnic considerations were the basis on which regional or territorial autono­ my would be established. This has recently been shown to be correct in a number of Western-European countries. When, as a result of the 1789 French Revolution, everybody became a citizen and the inequalities in the judicial system, in taxation and in other areas all disappeared, the elim­ ination of privileges of the nobility and clergy was accompanied by the disappearance of the manifestations of regional interests. In lieu of a society consisting of groups with widely varying privileges, a society was established where all individuals had the same privileges and the same obligations. By terminating a naturally evolved regional organi­ zation, possibly indicating ethnic divisions, a consistently modern administrative system was established. It was in this way that the modern bourgeois state eliminated the inequalities between individuals, while at the same time it also eliminated the possibility of a collective protection of the interests of regional ethnic minority groups. In Hungary, the Habsburg government allowed the establishment of an ecclesiastic auton­ omy that, in turn, could establish a certain framework for cultural and economic self-rule. Thus, the modern state has replaced caste privileges with individual rights but failed to recognize that individual rights could be exercised only inadequately when the ethnic minorities could not protect themselves and their particular interests vis-a-vis the nation­ al majority. The citizen had become a taxpayer but in exchange for his taxes he does not enjoy those rights that are enjoyed by those belonging to the majority ethnic group holding the power. The majority enjoyed collective rights not available to those belonging to the minority. The interests of the members of the minority group coincided with those of the majority only to a limited extent and, so far as use of the mother tongue, education and preservation of their national identity were concerned, minorities functioned as a sepa­ rate community of interest. The concept of nation and nationality has not been clearly defined in the technical lit­ erature even today. These concepts are fundamentally a function of the perspective and treatment with which minorities and their problems have been handled in various coun­ tries or are being handled today. The minorities’ historic origin may differ and they may be the descendants of the original inhabitants, settlers or later immigrants. We consider those communities as descendants of the original inhabitants who are linked to their region by their historic past, but who differ from the majority of the population by their ethnic or religious traditions and by their way of life. Two subsets may be identified: one consists of individuals who are ethnically and linguistically identical with the majority population of a neighboring country (separated from this majority by some arbitrary deci­ sion following a war). The other consists of minority groups who have no homeland. The term ethnicity means the totality of the characteristics or attributes of a certain people or group of peoples. In practice a number of groups are called ethnic, and the term may refer to a linguistic-cultural nation, a national community or a racial minority. By a minority, we mean an ethnic element that represents a smaller group vis-a-vis the majority constituting the country. The minority wishes to live in harmony with its moth­ er country beyond the frontier (Nationality minority). Some authors consider a national­ ity to be a group separated from its mother country and representing a minority in their present country, or an ethnic group without a motherland, but one that could develop 8 into an independent nation. By nation, these authors mean a historically established, per­ sistent human community whose members are united by a common culture, language and characteristic emotional structure even though boundaries and differing economic systems may stand between them. In the Kingdom of Hungary, where foreign invasions constituted a constant and con­ tinuing threat (Cuman, Tartar, Turkish, etc.), the medieval monarchs settled the various newly arrived communities, granting them a variety of privileges. The privileges granted depended to some extent upon the role the new arrivals were going to play in the eco­ nomic life of the nation or in the defense of the frontiers. The Szekelys, Pechenegs, Cumans, Jazygians, Saxons and Croats were given territorial autonomy (corresponding in English political life to “home rule”). The regional autonomy given in exchange for mili­ tary service had various forms, such as the Szekely and Saxon areas where lower level administrators were elected locally, the Saxon “universitas” and the Cumanian and Jazygian regions. Such forms allowed these nationalities to establish their own adminis­ trative systems and, within these frameworks, defend their own interests. In the feudal system, the Saxons had such a complete autonomy that they could not be viewed as a national minority by today’s standards, in the Hungary of that day, or in the Transylvanian Principality. Their privileges were first curtailed by Joseph II but it was the bourgeois state, standing on the principle of individual equality, that did away with their separate status in 1868. The national group, enjoying feudal independence and equality before the law, became a nationality threatened in its ethnic identity. The Croats enjoyed the most complete autonomy, since the Hungarian kings viewed Croatia for many centuries as a sister state. In the 16-17th century, the Romanians and Serbs lived outside the borders of Hungary in vassal states under Turkish dominion. When they migrated to Hungary in great numbers or were resettled within the borders of Hungary, they were given only ecclesiastic autonomy. Even Leopold I considered these settlements to be temporary expedients because he hoped that the Turkish domination of the Balkans would be terminated shortly. The Ruthenian population in the northeastern part of the country was always exceed­ ingly poor and, living with the Hungarian serfs, struggled against the local landowners. Their national consciousness developed only in the 19th century, similarly to the Slovaks in whom this process began with a fight for an independent Slovak language, distinctly different from Czech. In the 18th century, the 30-40 thousand gypsies and the 80,000 Jews enjoyed a very special situation. Endeavors to settle the gypsies with some privileges proved unsuc­ cessful. The great wave of Jewish settlement took place at the turn of the century and by this time their number had increased to 542,000. This was due largely to the Act of Emancipation of 1867 and to the Act of Legal Equality of 1895.1 The forms of autonomy, evolved in Hungary and Switzerland by the end of the 19th century, were the result of a long historic evolution and differed from the standard European practices. It seems worthwhile, therefore, to examine the path taken by European minorities and the differing way in which this issue was handled in Hungary. Among the European examples, the path of the Scottish, Welsh and Irish minorities toward autonomy will be highlighted. The struggle for autonomy reached completion only recently and the process illus­ trates that while general European political practice recognized only individual, and not collective, rights, this framework made it possible for autonomy to be achieved, albeit only by a fight for civil rights lasting for decades. 1 Istvan Soos: In Magyarok a Karpat medenceben, henceforth MOK (Hungarians in the Carpathia basin). Collected and edited by Ferenc Glatz, Pallas Publishing House, Bp. 1988, p. 197. 9