Trianon

Today is the 91st anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, by the terms of which Hungary lost more than two-thirds of its territory and well over 3 million Hungarians found themselves citizens of another state without their consent. This event continues to mark the Hungarian identity to this day. A year ago, a conference was held in Budapest to discuss the topic. This was my contribution. (A magyar változat a honlapomon érhető el: www.schopflingyorgy.hu).

This Europe of ours is enormously varied, perspectives are different and it can be hard work trying to understand one another’s problems and have them understood.

Here is the Trianon issue, which we’ve been discussing these two days. For the average person in France, the Trianon palace has no particular significance. As against this, for Hungarians Trianon is a memory, a symbol, indeed a brand that suffuses Hungarian consciousness, one that acts as an insurmountable obstacle, as an evil spirit that haunts us.

For the outside world, this is a Hungarian phobia, often enough an infantile, ridiculous psychosis, that – so it is believed – Hungarians should leave behind them and give up this really rather suspect grubbing about in the remote past. And more, there is an implicit, sometimes explicit suspicion that Trianon is the code-word for frontier revision, that those who pronounce Trianon are dreaming of reattaching the lost territories.

Even while there is virtually no one who has these dreams, ill-intentioned outsiders do not accept the denial. And this raises the question, why not? Why does this mutual misunderstanding live on?

On both sides there are half conscious, sometimes wholly unconscious assumptions. Outsiders find it hard to accept that Trianon should still count 90 years on – what belongs to the past should stay there, what has this to do with the shared European present? From the Hungarian side what hurts is the failure to understand that Trianon is a trauma.

It’s this trauma that I like to discuss. These thoughts came to me, as it happens, while reading Milan Kundera’s book Une rencontre, written in French. Kundera describes his encounter with the literature of Martinique and the still vivid experience of slavery. What did slavery actually mean? For the Africans forcibly removed from Africa, it meant and means helplessness, defencelessness and humiliation. In a word the total loss of agency.

What happened to Hungary in 1920 was not slavery, not for one moment – I don’t in any way want to be misunderstood here – but it incontrovertibly meant being deprived of agency for the Hungarian state and nation. The parallel is clear. This is the trauma of Trianon.

This trauma could have vanished had the new frontiers of the country paid attention to the identity, belonging and wishes of the population. This did not happen. Every subsequent attempt to bring about a reordering on the basis of national belonging failed. Hence the trauma of Trianon was repeatedly reproduced, essentially because large numbers of Hungarians live beyond the frontiers of Hungary. And these Hungarians insist on their identity as Hungarians and on the land where they were born.

Let me add that Hungary is not alone when it comes to traumas. Verdun was like this for the French for a long time and when I lived in Britain, the terrible ordeal of the First World War was repeatedly aired on television.

So, what is to be done, que faire? What is desirable? In a word, catharsis, overcoming Trianon. This, however, needs several processes. There should be a solemn recognition by the West that Hungary suffered a historic injustice at Trianon. And at the same time, Hungary’s neighbours should accept that the Hungarians who live there will always be Hungarian and be treated in accordingly. This means that they should enjoy civic rights fully equal to those of the majority nation; that they should feel themselves as being equal to those of us in Hungary; and that Europe - the neighbouring states and Hungary itself included - should accept them as an organic part of Europe's diversity, because only by this means will the Europe of "unity in diversity" develop further.
Sch.Gy