The Day of National Cohesion

This Thursday, Hungary marks the centenary of what many people regard as a national tragedy. It was on June 4, 1920 that the Allied Powers, the winners of World War I, and Hungary, as one of the defeated countries, signed a treaty at the Trianon Palace in Versailles, outside Paris, resulting Hungary losing about two-thirds of its pre-war territory.

The principal beneficiaries gaining territories were the Kingdom of Romania, the Czechoslovak Republic, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and the First Austrian Republic.

The new Kingdom of Hungary had a population of 7.6 million, compared to the pre-war kingdom's population of 20.9 million. The areas that were allocated to neighboring countries had a majority of non-Hungarians: the total population of those areas, that is over 13 million people, included some 3.3 million Hungarians who now found themselves in a minority status.

In his speech at the ceremonial session of parliament, Hungarian President János Áder was of the view that “not a single Hungarian could come to terms with the loss, the humiliation, the codified illegality.” Referring to the ethnic Hungarian minorities in the neighboring countries, he was of the opinion that “we give respect to our neighbors, but we ask them that they respect us and the Hungarians living in their countries. We give respect to the ethnic communities living in Hungary and would like them to look on us with respect. We have to work for each other and not against one another. What the major powers spoiled, we should rectify. If we can do this, then we can lift the curse of Trianon.”

Dr. Thomas Lorman of University College London (UCL), a specialist in the history of Central Europe, was quoted on euronews as saying that the legacy of Trianon has been "subsumed into a series of myths". He added that “those traumas: the trauma of a large number of Hungarians becoming a minority in a region that treated its minorities badly, the economic breakup of the country, the damage to its prestige, going from being a large country to a small country; all of this, combined with multiple other traumas: the trauma of the loss of World War I and the tremendous loss of lives and material resources, and the problems that the region faced, going back decades and even centuries; all of this came together to leave a bitter legacy."