Shortly before dawn on Monday, April 9, 1990, I was awakened by an ear-splitting clanging and bone-rattling jolts. My overnight train from Budapest had stopped at Chop, at the junction of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the USSR. There, its wheels and axles were changed to fit the wider-gauge Soviet tracks. Leaving my compartment for a first breath of Ukrainian air, I peered out through a grimy window in the passageway and saw a uniformed official barking out orders to his subordinates. Or so I surmised. For his language sounded alien, barbaric, even a bit frightening. It was, of course, Hungarian. I imagined what it must have been like to be a Galician villager during World War I with armed Honvéd soldiers threatening you in an utterly incomprehensible Central Asian tongue.
When the pastoral Magyars crossed the Carpathians and settled in the Danube Basin in the ninth century, they discovered that their language was “outlandish” to the peoples surrounding them. As Philip Longworth put it, Magyar was “a linguistic wedge driven into the heart of Slavonic Europe.” (“The Making of Eastern Europe,” 2nd ed. 1997, p. 309). Moreover, as an agglutinative language, it forms bewilderingly long words, peppered with accent marks and both long and short umlauts. The Hungarians’ linguistic isolation may have contributed to a sense of insecurity.
Hungary grew to be a formidable kingdom, ruling Transcarpathia and even claiming the title of Galicia and Lodomeria (Volhynia) in 1189. Joined dynastically with the Habsburgs in 1526, it became a nearly equal partner with Austria after the latter’s defeat in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. But after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in the wake of World War I, the Treaty of Trianon, the 100th anniversary of which Hungarians mourn this year, deprived them of more than two-thirds of their lands.
Today, the once dominant Hungarians are ethnic minorities on their former territories in Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Ukraine. Budapest supports them through diplomatic as well as socio-economic and cultural assistance. In Ukrainian Transcarpathia (Zakarpattia), Hungarians retain extensive linguistic autonomy. Under an education reform law approved by Parliament on September 5, 2017, and signed on September 25 by then-president Petro Poroshenko, they are entitled to have Hungarian as a language of instruction in primary public education (that is, through the fourth grade). From middle school on, however, it is to be Ukrainian. University exams are given in Ukrainian. Proponents of these rules point out that they help minorities integrate with the national culture and become eligible for public-sector jobs.
Although the 2017 law conforms to ordinary international practice, the Hungarian government has repeatedly criticized it, demanding a return to Hungarian as the language of instruction in state schools in Zakarpattia beyond the primary level. In retaliation against the law, a Hungarian consular official even started issuing passports to ethnic Hungarians in the Transcarpathian town of Berehove (Beregszáz). This caused a diplomatic spat between Kyiv and Budapest. (Marton Dunai, “Hungary, Ukraine clash over Kiev’s new language law,” Reuters, October 12, 2017.) Furthermore, since 2017 Hungary has been the sole NATO member to block Ukrainian integration through the NATO-Ukraine Commission. (Creede Newton, “ ‘High Treason’: Hungary, Ukraine in dispute over language laws,” Al Jazeera, October 5, 2018.) Moreover, Budapest has threatened to block Ukraine’s aspirations to integrate with the European Union. Its friendship with Russia is sometimes considered a significant factor in this policy.
Last year’s new Ukrainian language law has also become a point of contention. In 2012, the Yanukovych administration had approved a law granting minorities extensive language rights in regions where they represented more than 10 percent of the population. On April 25, 2019, however, Parliament approved a law “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as a State Language.” Although provisions to protect minority languages would be retained, Hungary was displeased. (“Hungary: Ukrainian language law is unacceptable,” UAWire, April 29, 2019.) A new statute on secondary-school education adopted last January, confirming Ukrainian as the chief language of instruction but allowing flexibility in its application, likewise drew fire from Budapest.
Recently, however, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has resumed a more diplomatic approach. For its part, Ukraine has sought to comply with the recommendations of the European Parliament’s Venice Commission on Democracy through Law. But Hungary continues to object to certain provisions of Ukrainian legislation. (Dmytro Tuzhansky, “Piat’ prychyn dlia Uhorshchyny: chomu ta yak Budapesht zminiuye taktyky shchodo Ukrayiny,” Yevropeiska Pravda, February 18, 2020)
Fears that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy might prove more amenable to Hungarian demands than his predecessor seemed vindicated when, in June of this year, the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories announced a project to redraw district boundaries in Ukraine’s regions (oblasts). In Zakarpattia, 30 districts were reduced to five. In the expanded Berehiv district, ethnic Hungarians will dominate.
Ukraine must balance the reigning European ideology of multiculturalism with the urgent task of nation- and state-building, including language and education. Once the coronavirus crisis is over and appropriate draft agreements are prepared, Prime Minister Orbán is set to meet with President Zelenskyy in Kyiv (Vladimir Socor, Eurasia Daily Monitor, “Ukraine and Hungary move to settle differences over national minority legislation,” reprinted in The Ukrainian Weekly, June 19). Whether Hungary will temper its demands remains to be seen.
The Viennese journalist Jörg Mauthe tells the story of how, on the eve of World War I, Austria-Hungary built a dreadnought at Trieste that was to be named after Field Marshal Radetzky. The Hungarians protested, insisting on a Hungarian name. Finally Emperor Franz Josef relented. The ship could be christened with whatever the Hungarian word was for “Most Irreconcilable.” Unfortunately for the Hungarians, this word was “Legmegengesztelhetetlenebbek.” Flummoxed, they agreed to the Latin “Viribus unitis” (“With United Forces”) – which just happened to be the personal motto of the Habsburgs. (Mauthe, “How to Be a Viennese,” 1966, pp. 58-60)
Let us hope Ukraine’s leaders prove as wily as the good old kaiser and put those “most irreconcilable” Hungarians in their place.
Andrew Sorokowski can be reached at [email protected].