Minority consequences of the Treaty of Trianon
The Treaty of Trianon, signed after World War 1 on 4 June 1920, sanctioned the division of the multi-ethnic Kingdom of Hungary on the basis of ethnic principles. Although the idea of national self-determinationwas one of the ideological pillars of the Paris peace system, the great powers generally only took into account the national, economic and strategic interests of neighbouring countries when they were drawing up Hungary’s new borders – at the expense of Hungary. As a consequence, a large Hungarian population came under the jurisdiction of Hungary’s neighbours, and a significant part of them – almost half of the Hungarian minorities – directly along the new Hungarian borders. Thus, in 1920, of the more than 10 million Hungarian-speaking inhabitants, only 6.73 million Hungarians remained in Hungary, while 1.66 million lived in the territories annexed to Romania, 1.07 million in the parts annexed to Czechoslovakia, 0.56 million in the territory annexed to Yugoslavia and 26,000 in the area annexed to Austria (according to the 1910 census). At the same time, it is also a fact that the former Hungarian nationalities were allowed to create their own states or to merge with their fellow nations. Although the victorious great powers attempted to ensure equal rights for minorities through the Minority Treaties and the League of Nations, the countries that defined themselves as nation states generally did not respect the principles of minority protection. Thus, Hungarian communities have also suffered numerous grievances and discrimination. There were also administrative attempts to weaken the Hungarian minorities: by dissimilating already Hungarianised groups (e.g. Jews, Germans, etc.), by delaying the regularisation of citizenship, etc. By the mid-1920s, nearly half a million Hungarians had moved to Hungary, and subsequent censuses showed a steady decline in the proportion of Hungarians outside of Hungary. While in 1910, 48% of the total population of the Carpathian Basin was Hungarian-speaking (10.05 million people), in 2001 their proportion in the same area was only 40% (11.82 million people in total). In addition, during the 20th century, there was an unfavourable social stratification in the Hungarian communitiesof neighbouring countries, and in most of the Hungarian-majority towns, the Hungarians became a minority.