announcement of the decision
3. Evaluation of the First Vienna Award
At 11 p.m. on 2 November, Tiso made a speech on Pozsony radio, in which he evaluated the boundary line as follows: “The German-Italian arbitration did not decide on the basis of the ethnic situation. There is nothing to do, just to bow our heads and work. But nobody can prevent us from announcing before the whole world that the Slovak nation has suffered a tragic insult.”31
27 Újpétery 1974, p. 83.
28 Szegedy-Maszák 1996, p. 228.
29 Deák 2002, p. 34.
30 Fodor 2001, p. 154.
31 Deák 2002, p. 35.
The following day the Slovak press assessed the decision as a “cruel wound inflicted by Vienna”.32 Typical Slovak press coverage ran along these lines: “The unfavourable decision of Germany and Italy in Vienna deprived Slovakia of a large portion of land and a great percentage of Slovak population. It’s unlikely that the wounds will ever heal. The Vienna Award will burn on our nation’s body as a permanent scar.”33
In summary, it can be said that the autonomous Slovak government (the leaders of the Slovak Republic from March 1939) and public opinion firmly rejected the First Vienna Award from the outset. As a result, tensions in the Slovak-Hungarian relationship escalated after 2 November.
Naturally, the Hungarian side was in a state of euphoria. On the day when the decision was announced – i.e. on 2 November – Hungarian Prime Minister Béla Imrédy made a short speech on the radio. In that speech, he praised the success of the Hungarian diplomatic efforts and expressed his thanks to Germany, Italy and Poland for supporting the Hungarian objectives. After the end of the speech, a celebrating crowd gathered in the streets of Budapest, which primarily concentrated in front of the Italian, German and Polish embassies.
In the course of following days the papers were filled with enthusiastic articles. The radio, newsreels and propaganda films all celebrated the First Vienna Award in a similar tone.
The Hungarian army started to occupy the territory on 4 November and finished the transfer on 11 November. Evacuation and occupation of the territory took place without any serious military confrontation. Regent Miklós Horthy participated – on his white horse – in the transfer in person:
he led the Hungarian troops across the Komárom Bridge on 6 November and he marched into Kassa at the head of the soldiers on 11 November.34 He describes this event in his memoirs as follows: “Everyone who – like me – saw the touching and instinctive outbreaks of joy in both cities, and saw people fall into each other’s arms or fall down on their knees along the road, and cry for
32 For more details on the topic, see Oleknik 2010, pp. 99–110.
33 Gabzdilová 2010, pp. 59–70.
34 Bencsik 2001, p. 200.
joy, understood that a real liberation was taking place – and moreover without war and bloodshed.”35
On 13 November 1938, Act No. XXXIV of 1938 on the reunification of the territories of Upper Hungary returned to Hungary – proposed by Béla Imrédy and Kálmán Kánya – was promulgated. János Esterházy – who had been the main leader of the Hungarian minority in Upper Hungary for many years – announced that he would stay in Slovakia to represent the Hungarian minority remaining under the jurisdiction of the autonomous Slovak State.36
The First Vienna Award
Legend: 1. National borders demarcated in 1920; 2. Provincial border of Carpathian Ruthenia; 3. Territories with Hungarian majority; 4. Border defined in judgment of Vienna Award. Source: Author’s compilation. Cseh-Morvaország = Bohemia and Moravia; Lengyelország = Poland; Németország = Germany; Magyarország
= Hungary; Szlovákia = Slovakia; Románia = Romania; Kárpátalja = Carpathian Ruthenia; Bécs = Vienna; Pozsony = Bratislava; Nagyszombat = Trnava; Nyitra
= Nitra; Trencsén = Trenčín; Zsolna = Žilina; Zólyom = Zvolen; Rózsahegy = Ružomberok; Rimaszombat = Rimavská Sobota; Losonc = Lučenec; Jolsva = Jelšava; Rozsnyó = Rožňava; Lőcse = Levoča; Eperjes = Prešov; Kassa = Košice;
Tőketerebes = Trebišov; Ungvár = Uzhgorod (Ужгород); Munkács = Mukachevo 35 Horthy 1990, p. 221.
36 Molnár 2010, pp. 113–114.
(Мукачево); Huszt = Khust (Хуст); Komárom = Komárno; Máramarossziget = Sighetu Marmației; Szatmárnémeti = Satu Mare
Turning to the numbers, Hungary received an area of 12,109 km2 from the territory attached to Czechoslovakia in 1920. The population of the reattached territory was 869,000, of which 752,000 people (86.5%) were Hungarian.37 With the Vienna Award, 117,000 non-Hungarians (Slovak, Ruthenian, German) were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Hungarian State, while 320,000 Hungarians still remained on the other side of the Hungarian-Slovak border, that is, in Slovakia.38 The Hungarians who remained under the jurisdiction of the Slovak State continued to live their lives in an expressly hostile atmosphere.39
It should be pointed out here that the Hungarian academic literature discussing the Vienna Award uses two different pieces of data concerning the size of reattached population. Some of the academic writers talk about 869,000 people based on Rónai’s data set, while others specify 1,040,000 people (of which 879,000 were Hungarians).40 This difference arises from the fact that Rónai calculated the number of residents returning to Hungary based on the 1930 Czechoslovak census, while the other group of historians calculated those returning relying on the 1941 census in Hungary.
László Vizi points out in his book that the First Vienna Award was not achieved as a result of a Slovak-Hungarian compromise, but reflected the will of Germany and Italy, and was not accompanied by the guarantee of France and Great Britain. This made the results of the decision doubtful in the long term.41
We agree with Attila Simon, who thinks that the First Vienna Award is one of the main events that has traumatised Slovak-Hungarian relations up to this day.42 The decision not only divides public opinion, but also Slovak and Hungarian historiography. Slovak historiography considers the decision as an
37 Rónai 1989, p. 177.
38 Ibid.
39 For more details, see Kovács 1993, pp. 127–155 and Kamanec n.d., pp. 39–47.
40 See Vizi 2016, p. 81.
41 Vizi 2016, p. 80.
42 Simon 2010, pp. 71–83.
offense which resulted in the return of Hungarian oppression. This approach is typically represented by Ladislav Deák and his work.43
During the socialist era (1945–1990), Hungarian historiography tried to conceal the significance of the Vienna Award. In the period after 1990 one important piece of work was published on the Vienna Award: the detailed, thorough and excellent book of Gergely Sallai in 2002. Nowadays, Hungarian historiography assesses the Vienna Award in two ways: one of the trends considers it as historical justice, while the other school tries to relativise it in the spirit of some sort of pseudo-objectivity. The operation of the trend trying to conceal the importance of the First Vienna Award is well illustrated by the book of László Szarka on the history of the Czechoslovak State, published in 2016,44 in which the Komárom negotiations are discussed in a mere two short paragraphs,45 while the content of the Vienna Award is practically ignored in the text.
The author of this study believes that the First Vienna Award was the exact and objective implementation of the demarcation of the border on an ethnographic basis. Furthermore, it can be stated that the Slovak-Hungarian frontier of the First Vienna Award was much fairer in every respect – but particularly in terms of the application of the ethnographic principle – than the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border demarcated by Trianon. The First Vienna Award drew a fair border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
43 See one of his typical studies: Deák 1988.
44 Szarka 2016.
45 Szarka 2016, bottom of page 219 and top of page 220.
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