Table Of ContentAutonomies
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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