Nándor Dreisziger
Oscar Jászi:
Prophet and
Danubian Federalist
György Litván. A Twentieth-Century Prophet: Oscar Jászi 1875-1957. Budapest, Central European University Press, 2005. Cloth. 570 pages. $59.95. Hungarian edition: Jászi Oszkár. Budapest, Osiris, 2003. Millenniumi Magyar Történelem, Életrajzok. Cloth. 509 pages.
Oscar Jászi (1875-1957) is best known for
his lifelong devotion to the idea of the
confederation of the peoples of the Danube
Valley. He was also an ardent believer in
the advancement of the technical and social
sciences, democracy, education and human
rights. As far as political convictions are
concerned, he can be best described as liberal, unlike the majority of his contemporaries who gravitated to either left- or
right-wing radicalism. What makes Jászi
especially attractive to a Hungarian biographer is that, for all the years he lived in
exile, he remained loyal to his native land-
though certainly not to the regimes that
ruled it. Furthermore there is abundant
information about him, a fact that makes
the crafting of an extensively documented and exhaustive work an achievable though
undoubtedly a time-consuming enterprise.
György Litván is the most qualified person to write a biography of Jászi. He has
edited and arranged for reprinting several
volumes of Jászi's writings1 and published a
great number of articles on him. Litván's
preface points out that Jászi's refusal to
endorse either the radical (or reactionary)
right or the radical left earned him the enmity
of the regimes that ruled Hungary most of
his lifetime. In pre-1918 Hungary he was
seen as a troublesome critic of the establishment and its policies. In inter-war Hungary,
Jászi, by then living in exile, was regarded as
a dangerous progressive; during Hungary's
Communist era, he was seen as an agent of
American imperialism. From 1920 to 1944 Jászi avoided visiting his homeland, because
the regime of Admiral Horthy considered
him a dangerous progressive; after 1948 he
couldn't visit because Communist dictator
Mátyás Rákosi deemed him an opponent of
"true" (i.e. Soviet-style) socialism.
Oscar Jászi was born into a family of
assimilated Jews. His father had a medical practice in Nagykároly (today's Carei,
Romania), from where he looked after
patients of various ethnicities in the surrounding countryside. The young Oscar
often accompanied his father on his visits
to the villages around Nagykároly. Despite
this early exposure to the realities of life in
the multi-ethnic Kingdom of Hungary, in
the first three decades of his life, Jászi did
not develop a keen interest in nationality
problems- his attention was devoted to
the promotion of reformist ideas. By about
1900, he had become prominent among
Hungary's radical academics. He and other
similarly-motivated young intellectuals
launched the sociological journal Huszadik
Század [Twentieth Century] and established the Társadalomtudományi Társaság
[Society for Social Studies]. A few years
later Jászi did turn his attention to the
nationality issue, contemporary Hungary's
most intractable problem.
Once Jászi realized the importance of
the issue, he undertook a systematic examination of it. He studied the nationalities
policies of Hungary's revolutionary regime
of 1848-49 and familiarised himself with the
writings of reform-minded Austrians on the
problem. In the years following he visited
many of his country's non-Magyar inhabited regions and established contacts with
minority intellectuals. In 1909, he published
his A nemzetiségi kérdés és Magyarország
jövője (The Nationality Question and
Hungary's Future). Jászi had come to believe
that nationality groups should have the
right to express their cultures in their own
way. Attempts at the forceful assimilation
of ethnic groups were wrong and could be
counter-productive. The giving of equal
rights to members of the nationalities as
individuals was not sufficient. Nationality
groups were entitled to collective rights,
including the right to have their own
schools, courts and access to government
services in their own language.
In 1912, Jászi's A nemzeti államok
kialakulása és a nemzetiségi kérdés (The
Development of Nation-states and the
Nationality Question) appeared. It was the
earliest and most significant Hungarian
contribution to the theoretical literature on
nation-states and national minorities. Its
basic ideas can be summed up as follows.
The awakening of an ethnic identity, a feeling of belonging to a cultural group, is a
natural part of the historical development
for all peoples. The process leads to the
emergence of nation-states, but the ultimate result of this process is not the
nation-state itself, but the creation of a
large federation of states. Nationalism,
then, is a constructive force in human evo-
lution which leads to internationalism. The
process of evolution from nationalism to
internationalism can be derailed when
nationalistic emotions are exploited and
are used to foster the oppression of one
ethnic group by another. According to
Jászi, this often happens in backward,
economically underdeveloped countries,
where unenlightened leaders implement
policies designed to thwart the aspiration
of minorities for cultural emancipation.
The result is ethnic conflict.
Such conflicts, according to Jászi, do
not need to develop into warfare. They can
be solved through industrialisation and
democratisation, as well as the establishment of large federations of democratic
nations. He had earlier suggested the
immediate solution: schools, courts and
government services for the minorities, in
their own languages. Not surprisingly,
given the existence of strident nationalism
in Hungary at the time, Jászi's recommen-
dations were rejected.
The First World War wrought great
changes in Jászi's political outlook. He
responded to the outbreak of hostilities in
1914 by withdrawing from public activities.
Out of his despair surfaced the hope that
from the ashes of war a better world would
emerge. He first put his faith in German liberalism and the hope for the reorganization
of Central Europe along Friedrich Neumann's plans for a Mitteleuropa. The
increasing subordination of German politics to the military after 1916 dampened
Jászi's enthusiasm for a post-war world
dominated by Germany. Until 1917 he wor-
ried about the possible expansion of autocratic Russia. After the February Revolution,
however, he looked to the new Russia to
lead Europe to progress and unity.
In the meantime, Jászi continued to
criticise his own country's government,
especially for the deteriorating relations
between Budapest and the nationality
regions of Hungary. He also began working
on a blueprint for a post-war Central
Europe. These were later outlined in his
book, A monarchia jövője, a dualizmus
bukása, és a dunai egyesült államok (The
Future of the Monarchy, the Failure of
Dualism and the Danubian United States).
The work was published only at the war's
end. In it Jászi outlined his plan for the confederation of the five nations living in East
Central Europe. Like the Dual Monarchy it
was to replace, this "Pentarchy" was to be a
customs union and was to have a federal
army as well as a united foreign policy.
After Hungary's wartime government
collapsed in late October of 1918, a left-of-
centre coalition assumed power under the
leadership of the reformist politician
Count Mihály Károlyi. Soon, Jászi was put
in charge of nationality policies. His task
was to reorganize Hungary before the cen-
trifugal forces of minority nationalism tore
the country asunder.
Jászi undertook his Herculean assign-
ment with determination. He no doubt
looked upon the prospect of the disintegra-
tion of Hungary into its component ethnic
units with exasperation. He never intended
to dismantle the multi-ethnic Kingdom of
Hungary, only to reorganise it by giving
collective rights and cultural autonomy to
the nationalities.
By November the chances of creating a
Pentarchy along the lines of Jászi's earlier
plans had become nonexistent. All Jászi
could hope for was to reorganise Hungary
along ethnic lines. His efforts were in vain.
Only with the country's small Ruthenian
minority did he reach an agreement that,
had events not intervened, would have
granted Subcarpathia self-government
within Hungary. Jászi's negotiations with
Hungary's Slovaks and Romanians met with
failure. Accordingly, instead of a democratic
"Eastern Switzerland" emerging in the
Middle Danube Basin from the ruins of war,
there arose an agglomeration of small inde-
pendent states. Their existence was sanc-
tioned through the post-war peace treaties,
especially by the Treaty of Trianon of June,
1920. It dismembered the historic Kingdom
of Hungary and mandated the transfer of
two-thirds of its territories to the "successor
states" of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and
Yugoslavia. Ironically, these three new
states were just as, if not more, multi-ethnic
than the old Hungarian Kingdom had been.
In Hungary itself, in March 1919, the regime of Károlyi gave way to the Republic
of Councils under the Communist leader
Béla Kun. Jászi left the country in May and
began his long exile, first in Austria and
then in the United States. Throughout his
life in exile, he continued to devote his time and energies to the cause of the establishment of a Danubian confederation.
Disappointed in the Western democracies' imposition of a "wrong and short-
sighted" peace settlement on Hungary, early
during his exile Jászi put his faith in the gov-
ernments of the Little Entente countries
(Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia)
and strove to build good relations with their
leaders. "He conceived this alliance," wrote Litván in 1991, "as a long term necessity in...
seeking rapprochement with the successor
states, in the integration of Hungary in a
new democratic environment and ... in
[bringing about] a Danubian Confederation."
At first Jászi was encouraged by his
successes. Soon, however, his relations with
governmental circles in the Little Entente
states soured. By 1923 Jászi had realised the
futility of expecting help from the regimes in
Prague, Belgrade and Bucharest for a democratic reorganisation of the Middle Danube
Valley. As a result, he decided to abandon
emigré political activities and to settle in
the United States. He arrived there in
September, 1925- he had been offered an
academic post at Oberlin College, in Ohio.
At Oberlin Jászi taught, published and
continued advocating reforms for Central
Europe. It was during the early years of his
stay that he produced his The Dissolution of
the Habsburg Monarchy. Although this book
was ostensibly a scholarly undertaking, it
also served political purposes. It cautioned
the statesmen of East Central Europe
against policies of undue centralisation,
bureaucratisation and the pursuit of state
autarchy. It also called for civic education
and the fostering of tolerance among
peoples. Jászi demanded that all nationalities be assured cultural autonomy and
advised the international community to
remedy some of the blatant injustices of the
post-war peace settlement. He warned the
statesmen of the Little Entente that if their
countries did not heed the lessons of the
collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy, they
would suffer the same fate.
In 1934 Jászi visited Eastern Europe and concluded that the nationalities problem
had not been solved there. Even in
Czechoslovakia he found "a growing spirit
of nationalism." In Romania, the situation
was "alarming". Still, the situation there
was not as bad as it was in Yugoslavia:
under the royal dictatorship, minorities
were denied even the opportunity of complaining about their treatment. Jászi saw
no solution to these problems in the immediate future. Without "fundamental reforms", Jászi concluded, a "new war will
come." After it would come "the revolu-
tion" with its "kolkhozes" and not a "free
system of federalism" but the "dictatorship
of the proletariat". "Not Europe but Asia
will then rule in this part of the world..." In
1936 Jászi had plans to return to Eastern
Europe for another fact-finding mission,
but by late 1937 he had come to the conclusion that he should not go. For the next
few years he would watch the unfolding of
events there with growing dismay.
The outbreak of the Second World War
caused Jászi to fling himself into political
action; he even headed one of the several
political organizations of Hungarian emigrés in America. During the early years of
the war, he had hoped that the conflict
might lead to changes in Danubian Europe
and that these changes would result in the implementation of his ideas. The outcome, however, brought new disappointments for Jászi. Not only was his hope of a federal reorganisation of East Central Europe not realised after the war, but democratic and other reforms were stifled there with the imposition of Soviet-style communism.
Translated by
Nándor Dreisziger
went to Canada from Hungary in 1956. Since 1970, he has been teaching Canadian and European history at the Royal Military College of Canada. His research interests include the history of North America in wartime, Hungary before and during the Second World War and Hungarians in North America.
