“Reminiscent of Fascist Methods”: The Western International Community and Postwar Minority Politics in Czechoslovakia and Hungary

After the Second World War, the Czechoslovak government declared the state’s Hungarian minority collectively guilty of treason against the republic and embarked on a campaign to expel, harass, and forcibly alter the nationality of Hungarian speakers. But, in an era of retributive justice and overwhelming displacement in Europe, these measures barely registered as noteworthy to those outside the tiny borderland region of southern Slovakia. How could these individuals convince outsiders to care? This paper investigates efforts to publicize the everyday persecutions and hardships of Hungarians living in Czechoslovakia after World War II. It links levels of analysis by revealing the ways in which micro-level issues on the ground in southern Slovakia were conveyed to the Hungarian government, which in turn crafted and disseminated a very specific narrative to expansive international audiences. Even after Hungary’s regime change to state socialism in 1948, emigre politicians in the United States continued to lobby on behalf of Czechoslovak Hungarians, now increasingly cut off behind the Iron Curtain. I argue that Hungarian statesmen sought to equate contemporary Czechoslovak policies with Nazi ideology and methods in the hope of delegitimizing the postwar Czechoslovak government and prompting international action on behalf of the Hungarian minority. In the delicate atmosphere of postwar geopolitics, these efforts were only marginally successful, but they reveal a concerted effort on the part of the Hungarian government (and those who considered themselves more legitimate representatives of the Hungarian nation after state socialist takeover) to act as a watchdog for Hungarian-speaking minorities in Central Europe and cultivate strong and active diplomatic ties with western states.