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

These diametrically differing responses from Slovak and Hungarian
respondents suggest that their responses to these questions are
clearly influenced by their ethnicity. This very marked fact implies
that there is still a long way to go towards convergence of opinions
on this set of issues, and that the key to tackling this lies in
perceiving history from a standpoint other than the ethnic one.
One of the more important factors influencing the responses was
the respondents’ age. Dividing them into age categories enabled us
to analyse the issue from an inter-generational point of view. In this
case, we considered whether individual age categories of respondents
were in any way influenced by the times in which they lived.
For example, the generation aged over 55 had lived most of its active
life during the period when the Communist regime was in
power, or in the wartime or post-war period, while the group of respondents
aged under 34 had lived most of their active life after
1989, and so they were influenced by other attitudes, whether at
school, in society or in their families. The results of this research
implied to us that, when it came to these historically loaded questions,
the age of the respondents played a significant role. This is
illustrated in the following table.
Table 1
Age-specific opinions of respondents of Hungarian nationality about the Beneš
decrees. Data in %.
Age Categories
Legend:
1 2
Yes No Yes No
Under 34 82.93 17.07 10.26 89.74
35-44 71.43 28.57 23.53 76.49
45-55 46.51 53.49 20.93 79.07
Over 55 88.89 11.11 25.00 75.00
1 – Slovaks should apologise to Hungarians and Germans for the Beneš
decrees.
2 – Hungarians should apologise to Slovaks for the 1938 Vienna Arbitration.
197 Štefan Šutaj