The Image of the Treaty of Trianon in Slovak Historiography

Abstract

The past used to be evaluated differently. The victors usually point out positive sides of the events and the losers typically the negative sides. The peace treaties of the 20^th century brought huge territorial changes. In the age of centralized national states to become a citizen of another state means more considerable changes in life of people than ever before.

The peace treaties after World War I rewrote the map of Central Europe. They created new states which had never existed before. During those stormy times, Hungary suffered the greatest losses. The territory of the country was reduced from 282,870 km² to 92,952 km², of which Czechoslovakia gained 61,646 km². The number of inhabitants fell from 18,264,533 to 7,615,117 of which Czechoslovakia gained 3,517,568 persons including 1,066,685 Hungarians. The historical Upper Hungary was renamed to Slovakia and became the part of Czechoslovakia. The process of peacemaking reminded war, even so after the armistice between the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the Czechoslovak Legion Army broke out a war.

These events the Hungarian and Slovak historians estimate completely different. While the Hungarian side focuses mainly on losses, contradictions inside the Czechoslovak diplomatic argument as well as the incorrect interpretation of facts, the Slovak historians are doing the same but from their own point of view: they accuse the Hungarian policy about national minorities, denied the truth of data of census about national minorities, and also criticise the Hungarian efforts to maintain the borders. The general aim of all historical oeuvres is to justify the Czech political acts during the formation of Czechoslovakia with the current frontiers.

This paper constitutes an attempt to present the actual view on the Peace Treaty of Trianon by Slovak historians included in recently published books. I attempted to summarize the main group of opinions represented by the academics; books written by authors who are widely acknowledged historians as well as by historians representing the “nationalistic” approach. The paper primly deals with the Slovak opinion. The Hungarian view is resumed in the last part of the article.