Béla Pomogáts
After Sarajevo
Hungarians and Serbs - Past and Present
A Short History
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Between 1867 and the end of the Great War, the three ethnic groups lived in the area later to be called the Vojvodina in more or less balanced proportions. According to the last Hungarian census, (1910), of a total population of about 1.5 million, 457,000 (30 per cent) were Hungarian, 384,000 (25.6 per cent) Serbian, and 323,000 (21.6 per cent) German. Other smaller ethnic groups were 56,000 Slovaks (3.8 per cent), 74,000 Romanians (4.9 per cent), and 13,000 Ruthenians (0.9 per cent). Of the towns, Szabadka (Subotica) with a population of 100,000 and, primarily, the northern Bácska towns had a Hungarian majority. Serbs dominated the southern part of the region, whereas Germans were dispersed over the whole area.
Following the Treaty of Trianon, the ethnic make-up of the Vojvodina underwent dramatic changes. Large numbers of South Slavs - Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins - were settled in the area in the inter-war period. The end of the Second World War saw a huge influx again, and the population grew to over 2 million, within which the Serbs quadrupled in number, while the number of Hungarians fell to nearly half the 1910 figure. In 1991, before the Yugoslav war, their number was 340,000; it has since diminished again by several thousand. The Germans have been practically wiped off the map of the Vojvodina. At the end of the Second World War, when the Wehrmacht withdrew from Yugoslav territories, almost all the Vojvodina Germans fled with the retreating troops, and those remaining behind were largely massacred by Tito's partisans.
Despite historical conflicts, some traditions of co-existence between peoples, cultures and religions evolved in this area of mixed ethnicity (Hungarians have been Roman Catholic or Calvinist, the Germans Roman Catholic, the Serbs Greek Orthodox). Co-ordinating respective interests, and a routine of co-existence among Hungarians, Serbs, Germans and Romanians used to be general in the historical southern territories. Similar ways of life, whether peasant, middle-class or professional, led to communal, neighbourhood and trade connections between the various ethnic groups. In peacetime conditions, such connections created strong social bonds. After the fighting ceased in 1849, up to the Great War, a degree of tolerance and cooperation among the co-habitant ethnic groups and their educated layers defined everyday social life. This is testified in literature, by the works of Dániel Papp, Ferenc Herczeg, Izidor Milkó and Elek Gozsdu writing in Hungarian, or by Zmaj Jovan Jovanovic, Jakov Ignjatovic and Vejko Petrovic writing in Serbian.
Whenever these traditions, so promising and always supporting the cultural (and mental) integration of the Central European region, were in jeopardy, the invariable cause was political nationalism. Especially at the neuralgic points of history, in times of war, political nationalism has destroyed much that everyday life and cultural development produced. Hungarian and Serbian political strategists have ordinarily prepared their plans in opposition to each other and refused to avail themselves of the advantages of a structured coordination of interests that everyday life in the community, rural or urban, has shaped. There were exceptions, naturally. The noted politician and advocate of Hungarian sovereignty, Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, published a book entitled Helyünk és sorsunk Európában (Our Place and Future in Europe) in 1941, not long before the German invasion of Yugoslavia, a book which was banned at the time, and has not been reprinted to this day. In it, he argued in favour of a strategic alliance between Hungarians and South Slavs. This proposal served to underpin historically and politically the Hungarian-Yugoslav treaty of friendship made under the premiership of Count Pál Teleki. The treaty was swept aside by history, just as were its initiators - Count Teleki committed suicide three days before the German invasion in protest against Hungarian participation in it, and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky was executed in 1944 by the Hungarian henchmen of the Nazis.
After the failure of Bajcsy-Zsilinszky's grand plan and Prime Minister Teleki's ominous suicide, the Hungarian army marched into the Bácska. Although this seemed a retribution for the injustices of Trianon at the time, the move meant that Hungary had involved itself even deeper on Hitler's side, and this greatly contributed to Hungary eventually finishing the war amongst the losers. There were massacres at Újvidék and Zsablya, when Hungarian troops shot some five thousand civilians in alleged retribution for Serb partisan actions; this was exposed in the Hungarian Parliament by Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and the Regent, Admiral Horthy, intervened. This, in turn, was followed by the Bácska bloodbath perpetrated by Tito's partisans; tens of thousands of Hungarians fell victim to the campaign of vengeance for the Újvidék massacre. The horrific story of partisan revenge has not been fully told to this day.
Hungarians have examined all this, as is indicated by two works by the distinguished novelist Tibor Cseres, Hideg napok (Cold Days) and Vérbosszú Bácskában (Blood Vengeance in Bácska) - an outstanding film, by András Kovács, was based on the first. It took a degree of courage to publish Cold Days, since a section of the public could never forgive the writer for having shed light on a shameful chapter in Hungarian history. As far as I know there is nothing in Serbian about the 1944 massacres. Authentic information of the actual events and the extent of the massacres is just as difficult to come by as an appropriate commemoration of the victims.
Tito and his supporters, after massacring not only Hungarians but also Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians, simply turned over a new leaf and forbade any public mention of the blood-stained past. No mention was made of the tens of thousands of Serbs in the Krajina either, who had been massacred by Ante Pavelic's Ustasha.
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The Hungarians in the Vojvodina
The Vojvodina Hungarians were not able to isolate themselves from the tragic disintegration of the Yugoslav federal state. This is not only because they had to share with the Serbs and other Vojvodina inhabitants the destitution caused by war and the embargo. They were called up and sent to a war that was none of their business, in which they could only lose. It happened in the Baranya that Hungarians conscripted by the Serbian and the Croatian armies had to kill one another. Tens of thousands of Hungarian youngsters fled the Vojvodina to escape this fate and may never return to their homeland. They will probably add to the Hungarian diaspora and will be lost to the nation for good, as one generation passes into another.
Europe has been taught the meaning of "ethnic cleansing" by the Yugoslav war. It sounds a technical term, but the reality is butchering people, laying towns waste, burning villages, raping women and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. A silent and bloodless "ethnic cleansing" has taken place in the Hungarian populated parts of the Vojvodina. The number of native Hungarians has diminished by almost a hundred thousand, due to intimidation, the restrictions the Belgrade language law imposed on the use of their native language (further exacerbated by local petty chieftains), and the fact that Hungarian youngsters have been forced to emigrate. They have come to Hungary or dispersed all over the world, and they include a large number of the educated - writers, artists, teachers, engineers and doctors.
Already depleted and on the brink of collapse, the Vojvodina Hungarians then had to face a mass exodus of Serbs from the Croatian Krajina, some one hundred thousand in number. This influx has brought to the surface severe ethnic, political and moral issues. This mass of refugees, destitute, humiliated, and driven out of their homeland by force of arms, deserves sympathy and support. Their arrival in the Bácska and the Banat, however, was accompanied by the forced occupation of houses, extorted house sales, atrocities and abuse on the part of the authorities, the police, and individuals. The refugees were understandably desperate, and some thought that they should revenge themselves for the wrongs they had suffered in their homeland on the Hungarians and Croats who were that much better off.
All this has evoked the terrible memories among Hungarians of the late autumn of 1944, the indiscriminate atrocities perpetrated by the Serbian execution squads. Unless the Vojvodina Hungarians are effectively protected by the Belgrade government, an even greater number of refugees may be heading for Hungary than earlier and could cause severe problems for the Hungarian economy and society, which are unprepared for such an eventuality. As already pointed out, at the end of the Great War the Vojvodina was populated by three peoples in largely equal proportions - Hungarians, Germans and South Slavs (Serbs, Croats and Bunevatz [Catholic Serbs]). The Greater Serbian colonization, followed by the expulsion of Germans in 1944, the massacre of Hungarians and the massive settlement of non-Hungarians over several decades, has radically distorted these proportions. In present circumstances, the current ethnic make-up of the region may again change considerably, and Hungarians, still over three hundred thousand in number, may find themselves dispersed and diminished to an insignificant minority.
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Béla Pomogáts
is a literary historian and critic. He has published extensively on Hungarian writing outside the country's borders. He is President of the Hungarian Writers' Federation.
