The national-minority and religious situation of Hungarians living on the territory of the Yugoslav state from 1920 to the present

Abstract

During the peace conference that concluded World War I, 22,286 km2 of Hungary’s territory was carved out and annexed to the new state that was then created, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was called Yugoslavia from 1929. This study is about Hungarians living in a territory adjacent to the Hungarian border, called Vojvodina. This region has been inhabited from the end of the Ottoman period to the present day by multi-ethnic peoples of different cultures and religions. At the time of the 1910 census the region had 1.5 million in-habitants, a third of whom were Hungarian and a fifth German by ethnicity. There were also Serbs, Romanians, Slovaks and other peoples. The Germans were expelled from the country at the end of the World War II and were replaced by Serbs and Montenegrins, continuously settled by the Yugoslav state. At the 1961 census, half a million Hungarians still lived in the whole of Yugoslavia, 87% of them in Vojvodina.

After World War I, Hungarians in the Yugoslav state were in a national-minority situa-tion. From then on, they faced the challenge of having their previously unified state and national identity torn apart. For them, the church and its ceremonial rites remained as the arena for experiencing national identity and group identity. This may also explain the Hungarians’ insistence on their religion. Despite the religious persecution, the churches visited by Hungarians were packed to overflowing. The people found support in the priests and the priests in the people. Meanwhile, the Serbs living with them — after 1945 — had fully accepted the state ideology and had also turned away from religion. For the Hungarians, the same did not begin to happen until the early to mid-1970s, and that was because people’s lives were already im-proving economically.

After 1920, Hungarian-owned industrial-financial companies were nationalised and agricultural reform was implemented, but Hungarians were excluded from this reform. Half of the Hungarian population then became landless agricultural wage labourers. The agricultural reform also severely affected both the Hungarian Catholic and Protestant churches, which were then prevented from fulfilling their cultural, social and educational functions.

In 1941, 55% of the territories annexed in 1920 were returned to Hungary.

During World War II, there were two major reprisals in the area, mostly against civilians. The first was in 1942, when the victims were Serbs and Jews, estimated at 4,000. The second was between 1944 and 1945, and the victims were Hungarians. According to Serbian sources, the number was 5,000; according to Hungarian sources, 20,000. The Serbian partisans intended the operation on the Hungarians as a reprisal, but also as genocide.

After World War II, the atheist, communist state pursued a harsh anti-clerical policy: church buildings were nationalised, religious education was banned in schools and church attendance was forbidden.

The Serbian authorities used the Hungarian-language press against religion and Hun-garians who did not sympathise with the communist ideology. From 1945 onwards, the Hungarian nation was considered a guilty nation, and they had to pay the price, which they were told through the Hungarian press. They were rarely allowed to hold high office, even mid-ranking positions, and if they did, they had to prove their total loyalty to the Yugoslav state, political identification and maximum loyalty. At the individual and communal level, this developed in such a way that, from the massacre of Hungarians in 1944/45 until 1990, self-censorship was established and ingrained in Hungarians. Writers, journalists, researchers and teachers always knew what they were allowed to write and say, but those who accidentally “forgot” to do so were punished and their careers were made impossible. After the Serbs lost the fratricidal Yugoslav war they had started, they began to pursue a more conciliatory policy towards the Hungarians living there, and sought to establish good neighbourly relations with Hungary. The compromise was reached. In the meantime, the number of Hungarians had dwindled considerably: at the last census in 2022, ten percent of the population in Vojvodina declared themselves Hungarian, which was 184,000 persons. The population decline was accompanied by secularisation. The number of people in churches with Hungarian services has decreased. In contrast, today the Serbian Orthodox Church is enjoying a renaissance, which can be explained by the fact that many Serbs believe that they lost Kosovo because they had abandoned God.