Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

espondents (25.5%) were able to mention events that had adversely
influenced inter-ethnic relations. They listed among such
events, for example, claims made by the Hungarian side, conflicts
over Hungarian national policies, Hungarians’ intolerance, the policies
of the Hungarian Coalition Party (the SMK), the founding of a
Hungarian university, Hungarians’ expansionism, i.e. events linked
to the present rather than the past. As far as historical events were
concerned, they mentioned the Vienna Arbitration and the period of
forced assimilation towards the end of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire as the most significant injustices.
For the purposes of this article, we have selected a question about
the ‘Beneš decrees’ – a term used, although somewhat inexactly, to
describe what we consider to be a whole set of measures taken
against the Hungarian minority, without regard to whether these were
issued by Edvard Beneš, by Parliament or by the Slovak National
Council, or followed on from international legal treaties or resolutions.
The issue of the Beneš decrees is further complicated by the fact
that expert interpretations of them are complex. To be precise, the
decrees promulgated by President Edvard Beneš did not relate solely
to issues concerning Germans and Hungarians, but also tackled
many other problems in the running of Czechoslovak society.
Because we were aware of this aspect of the Beneš decrees, we
formulated response variables reflecting how they are treated in
Slovakia and perceived by Slovak society.
The questions were distributed to respondents of various nationalities,
but in this article we will focus only on Slovaks and Hungarians.
We asked: ‘What is the opinion of most members of your
minority on the Beneš decrees?’
We offered the respondents various statements directly or indirectly
connected with this set of issues. The question aimed to discover
the prevailing opinion of members of the given minority about the
Beneš decrees and the Vienna Arbitration. They could respond positively
or negatively to the statements given in the questionnaire. For
the purposes of this article, we are focusing on only two statements:
1. Slovaks should apologise to Hungarians and Germans for the
Beneš decrees.
2. Hungarians should apologise to Slovaks for the 1938 Vienna
Arbitration.
195 Štefan Šutaj