The development of a workers’ political movement was held up, as in Austria, by rivalries between different schools of thought, and between personalities, but in December 1890 a Social Democrat Party was founded, which adopted bodily the Hainfeld Programme just evolved by the Austrian sister party. The Hungarians also adopted the Austrian tactics of close association with the Trade Unions – in their case, so close that behind every official union was set up an unofficial ‘shadow’ or ‘free’ union, which performed the political functions of the union, including the collection, administration and distribution of strike funds. Every member of an official union was at the same time, and automatically, member of its ‘free’ union, and in most cases also of the Social Democrat Party.
By the end of the century both the Party and the Unions were firmly established, and constituted nuclei which might one day expand into important movements. Their actual membership was, however, almost insignificant, and it was impossible for the Socialists even to think of Parliamentary representation until the advent – of which there was as yet no sign – of suffrage reform. Moreover, while there were now some signs that the social conscience of Hungary’s rulers was beginning to awaken to the deplorable condition of the industrial workers, and certain modest reforms were being put through in the field of social legislation, the Social Democrat Party was regarded by the regime with extreme hostility and repugnance, not only as threatening profits, but partly also owing to the international character of its programme and the non-Magyar composition of its leadership, which, after the incubation period, when it had been mainly Swabian, had become almost entirely Jewish.
The element of psychological hostility was absent from the regime’s attitude towards agricultural labour; a certain feeling existed in the countryside, among both parties, of membership of the same stock and attachment to the same traditions. On the other hand, the demands of the agricultural proletariat were a direct challenge to the landlords’ own pockets, so that the regime was even more strongly opposed to attempts by this class to organize, than to those made by the industrial workers. For nearly twenty-five years after the Compromise it was completely successful. Then, round 1890, trouble broke out, similar to that in Galicia and occasioned by the same cause, that the landlords were progressively reducing the harvesters’ share in kind. Now the agricultural labourers on many estates revolted, and in 1891 and again in 1894 there were demonstrations which the military dispersed with bloodshed. The political opposition to the landlords was complicated by the appearance of a strange figure named István Várkonyi, a horse-dealer from Csegled, who first joined the Social Democrat Party, then seceded from it and founded his own party of ‘Independent Socialists’, the doctrines of which (which he took over largely from Dr Eugen Heinrich Schmitt) were an individual mixture of mystical Christianity, anarchism and revolutionary socialism. Both Várkonyi and the orthodox Social Democrats developed a lively agitation, and in 1897 the labourers carried out a large-scale strike. That year and the next the unrest was very widespread, and there were clashes with the authorities in many parts of Hungary.
The strike was not unsuccessful. Harvest wages were forced up by 40–50%, and in many places a particularly resented institution, the ‘robot labour’, was abolished.67 The next year the Government introduced a law commonly known as the ‘Slavery Law’ which made the contracts of agricultural and day labourers68 an official obligation, which was undertaken before the authorities, and once made, could not be broken by the labourer except in case of sickness, military service or danger to life. A worker not appearing voluntarily at his work, failing to begin work or failing to bring the implements, etc., stipulated in the contract, became liable to two months’ imprisonment. He might be escorted back to his work by gendarmes. Further, all combinations among agricultural workers were declared null and void, and incitement either to combination or to strike became punishable offences. In return, the employer was bound to keep his contract, the truck system was abolished, and certain welfare measures made obligatory.
It is fair to say that the Government now enacted several measures designed to eliminate the worst abuses under which the agricultural labourers were suffering,69 and even attempted, here and there, to relieve the rural congestion by founding agrarian colonies. The congestion was also being relieved, more effectively, by emigration, which had now set in on a large scale, and to a lesser extent, by the increased pace of industrialization. The 1890s probably constituted a nadir, both in respect of land distribution, and of wages and conditions of labour. If, however, conditions did not worsen after that date, such improvement as they showed was little more than minimal, and there was no relaxation of the political pressure. Várkonyi’s movement had been dissolved in 1898. The authorities discouraged any social democratic agitation by all means in their power, and partly for this reason, partly, it must be admitted, for others – the country-folk did not take well to it – it made little impression. In 1900 another dissident Socialist movement, calling itself the ‘Reorganized Social Democrat Party’, tried to woo the agricultural labourers and dwarf-holders, but it, too, attracted little support, except in the Serb and Roumanian districts, where it contrived to combine national with social agitation.
So far, then, the regime had held its own, at least to the extent of making no political concessions, against the dispossessed classes, but the accumulated explosive stuff was now so formidable as to make it highly doubtful whether it would be able to hold its position indefinitely. Meanwhile, the national question had reached a stage which, as in Austria, was much more dangerous still.
III THE NATIONALITIES PROBLEM
The development of the ‘nationalities problem’, i.e., that of the relationship between the peoples inhabiting the Kingdom of Hungary,70 was quite different from that of the national problem in Cis-Leithania. The difference did not lie so much in the law, for the Hungarian Law of 1868 laid down the principle of inter-national equality just as the Austrian Paragraph XIX did, and Austrian usage made concessions to ‘the practical requirements of administration and justice’ like those for which the Hungarian instrument specifically allowed.71 Nor, pace all German-Austrians who ever wrote, did it lie in national psychology, for the German Austrians, and for that matter, the other peoples of Cis-Leithania, were no more naturally tolerant than the Magyars. But the sheer forces of history and demography had driven all these peoples to a certain measure of mutual concession, whereas the Magyar and Magyar-minded ruling class in Hungary had never in history regarded their State as either a-national or multi-national, and they did not do so now. They could not feel that the primacy allowed by the Law to their language was simply a pragmatic concession to administrative efficiency, and that the State was no more ‘theirs’ than it was the Slovaks’ or the Roumanians’. They were even convinced – and the conduct of the nationalities in and after 1848 had deepened that conviction – that the very existence of Hungary depended on the maintenance of its Magyar character.
While Deák and Eötvös were alive and politically active, their influence was still strong enough to compel a certain moderation, and at least the main provisions of the Law were observed. But the pot was simmering even then,72 and a big change for the worse set in when the Ministry of the Interior was taken over by Tisza, with his belief in the practicability (and if practicable, it was certainly desirable) of Magyarizing at least a large part of the Slovaks. Thereafter no Hungarian regime ever thought of Hungary except in terms of Magyar supremacy; they differed only in their views of how far down it was necessary to go with the process of Magyarization, and in the degree of vigour and purpose with which they pursued the aim. And the general trend was always in the same direction, although its graph was not that of a uniform slant; periods when the slope was gradual alternated with others when it was more abrupt, the most marked among the latter, in our period, being when Tisza first took office; the time of the Bosnian crisis, when the Government felt the need to placate public opinion for its unpopular acquiesce
nce in the occupation; the millenary celebrations, with their evocation of a fever of national self-confidence; and the years when Hungarian policy was dictated by the violent and brutal Bánffy, who defended his support of the Compromise as the only way to enable Hungary to develop into ‘an unitary Magyar national State, the centre of gravity of the future Magyar-Austrian Monarchy’.
It is, of course, unsafe to generalize superlatives in describing any situation, and this one is no exception. During the worst of these periods, and to the end, there were some officials (more than is generally admitted) who continued to treat the non-Magyar public with whom they had to deal sensibly and paternally, but even they did so as the representatives of a Magyar State. Others made it a patriotic virtue to behave worse even than the recognized practice laid down. The conduct of administration and justice were Magyarized, down to the lowest level, not only in all internal transactions, but, largely, in the outer services: notices to the public, even in purely non-Magyar districts, were in Magyar only, as were all proceedings in the Courts; a defendant could employ an interpreter, but had to pay for his services. The Magyar national culture was treated as the only one deserving respect, or even legitimate, in Hungary; the others were, at best, tolerated contemptuously, but attempts to cultivate them, above the humblest level, even where specifically authorized by the Nationalities Law, were regarded as potentially or actually treasonable; always discouraged, and whenever a quarter-plausible excuse could be thought up, forbidden. The smear of treason attached even more to any attempt to give political expression to the philosophical assumption of the Law itself: the possibility of a Hungarian patriotism not identified with Magyarism. Every administrative device, including manipulations of the franchise itself (which was more restricted in Transylvania, the chief danger area, than in Inner Hungary), was employed to stifle any such movement. For the extremists, the only ultimately satisfactory solution was, as it had been in the 1840s, that the country should become entirely Magyar. Some measures adopted were pure eye-wash, designed to produce an appearance of achieved reality, not to achieve it. Such was the Magyarization of all place-names, even of villages founded, and inhabited since their foundation, exclusively by non-Magyars, and the official ostracization even of ancient and familiar alternatives to them, such as Pressburg, Oedenburg or Steinamanger. Such, too, was the encouragement (to which, in the case of State employees, pressure was sometimes added) officially given to the adoption of Magyar family names, for which the fee charged was at first five florins (10s.), and later, only thirty krajcar (1s.). This was not useless from the point of view of the national prestige; we have had it dinned into us ad nauseam that the great poet Petöfi began life as Petrovicz,73 but many people today credit the Magyar genius with the achievements of László, Fraknói, Munkácsy, Vambéry, Toldy, Molnár, Marczali and a hundred others whose ancestors, or themselves in their youths, bore very different-sounding names. But determined efforts were made also actually to transform non-Magyars into Magyars, not only by the negative method of denying a man advancement in the official or even the social world unless he Magyarized, but through the educational system. The Nationalities Law itself laid down that the language of Pest University should be Magyar, which meant that knowledge of the language was a precondition for the degree which admitted its holder to the senior branches of the Civil Service, or to many professions. On the lower levels, the hands of the authorities were somewhat fettered by the fact that the educational system was so largely in the hands of the Churches, whose autonomy the Nationalities Law affirmed, and some tradition-bred quirk of national psychology forbade open violation of this provision of the Law. In fact, the non-Magyar confessional secondary schools were subjected only to the reasonable requirement, enacted in 1883, that Magyar language and literature should be compulsory subjects of instruction in their two top forms. But the Orthodox Churches possessed only a handful of such schools, and permission to add to their number was repeatedly refused. The authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, and of the Lutheran (outside Transylvania), not to mention the Calvinists, were themselves Magyars, and saw to it that all instruction in their secondary schools should be in Magyar. Further, from the 1870s onward the State itself began founding schools, and these were largely used as instruments of Magyarization, being deliberately sited in non-Magyar or mixed districts, but with Magyar as the exclusive language of instruction. The Hungarian Statistical Annual for 1906–7 listed 205 gymnasia and Realschulen; in 189 of these the language of instruction was Magyar; in eight, German; in six, Roumanian, and in one, Italian, while one was mixed Magyar and Roumanian. There were 89 training colleges, one of which was Roumanian, two mixed Hungarian-Roumanian, two German, and one Serb, the rest Magyar; and 400 burgher schools, of which 386 were Magyar, five German, four Roumanian, three Serb and two Italian. The Slovaks and Ruthenes had no establishments of their own at all above the primary level, the three Slovak gymnasia founded in the 1860s having been closed a decade later (together with the Slovak Cultural Institute, the Slovenská Matica) on the pretext that they had been teaching Pan-Slavism. About 4,400 of the 6,750 Germans attending secondary schools in 1906 were going to Magyar schools, as were all the Slovaks and Ruthenes, 1,400 of the 3,900 Roumanians and 750 of the 1,100 Serbs and Croats. In elementary education, where the law prescribed instruction in the mother tongue, little had been required of non-Magyar autonomous churches except that a Law of 1879 had made the teaching of the Magyar language compulsory in their schools and ordered teachers to qualify themselves to give this instruction; but as teachers were appointed for life and the State could not insist on their dismissal, the law largely remained on paper. But here, again, the Catholics and Lutherans outside Transylvania pressed the teaching of Magyar, not so exclusively as in the secondary schools, but still far beyond its due, and the State again stepped in with its own schools, which in fact were often very popular where they were founded, since, as the State paid for them, the commune got its children’s schooling free. In 1906, according to the same source, there were in Hungary proper 16,618 primary schools, of which 2,153 were State, 1,460 communal, 12,705 confessional and 300 private. The language of instruction in 12,223 of them, including all the State schools, was Magyar; in 492, German; in 737, Slovak; in 2,760, Roumanian; in 107, Ruthene; in 270, Serb or Croat; in 10, Italian, and in 19, another. About 475,000 pupils of mother tongue other than Magyar were attending Magyar primary schools, including 180,000 Slovak and 185,000 German children; only 70,000 Slovak and 52,000 German children were attending primary schools in their own language.
Finally, an Act, passed in 1891, for the compulsory establishment throughout the country of Kindergartens and homes for children whose parents were unable to give them proper care was largely utilized for purposes of Magyarization; the Magyar language was used in them almost exclusively and children were often taken from Nationality districts and put in Magyar homes. According to figures given by one reliable authority, in 1914 93·4% of the University teachers, 91·5% of the secondary, and 81·9% of the elementary, were linguistic Magyars.74
It should not be supposed that all these efforts were wasted. By the end of the century the State apparatus of the Kingdom – a much larger one than thirty years before – was almost exclusively Magyar in feeling, and by far the greater part of it, also Magyar in speech: according to the same authority, 95·6% of the State officials, 92·9% of the County officials, and 9·68% of the judges and public prosecutors were linguistic Magyars. Social, business and professional life showed the same picture: 89·1% of the lawyers, 89·1% of the physicians, 63·7% of the clergy. Business was overwhelmingly in the hands of Magyar-speaking persons: figures for joint-stock companies in 1915, based on the language used by the boards or ‘the names of the leading men’, showed that 97·4% of these companies, with 99·3% of the share capital and 99·5% of the total assets, were in the hands of linguistic Magyars. Only 1·1% of the companies belonged to Roumanians, 0·9% to Slovaks, 0·5% to Transyl-vanian Saxons and 0·1% to Se
rbs. Magyar-speaking were 2,228 out of 2,884 owners of plants employing more than twenty persons. Most of the factory-owners and leading figures of the joint-stock companies (and their shareholders) were Magyar-speaking Jews, but the linguistic predominance of Magyar extended down well beyond the leading figures: 83% of the senior black-coated employees, 63% of the skilled workers and 71% of the artisans employing apprentices. Only 237 out of the 1,657 owners of 1,000 hold or more gave a language other than Magyar as their usual one.
Magyarization had made astonishing progress in most of the towns. Between 1880 and 1890 alone, the Magyar-speaking population of Hungary’s twenty-five largest towns had grown by 29% and that of the 101 smaller towns by 16%; the progress in the following decade had been even greater. Budapest, which had been three-quarters German in 1848, was 79·8% Magyar-speaking in 1900, by which date its population had trebled. Pécs, Sopron, Pozsony, Kassa, Arad, Temesvár had undergone similar transformations.
The figures for the country as a whole, including the rural communes, were not so sensational, but the proportion of the total population giving Magyar as its mother tongue had risen from the 40–42% at which the estimates of the 1840s and 1850s had placed it to 46·65% in 1880, 48·61% in 1890, 51·4% in 1900: in 1910 it was to be 54·9%. In 1900 there were 8·6 million linguistic Magyars (over 10 millions in 1910) against under 5 millions shown by the earlier censuses, 6·4 in 1880, 7·35 in 1890. The percentages of all the linguistic groups (except that of ‘others’) had sunk, and their increases in absolute figures had usually been small. It should further be emphasized that, contrary to so much that has been written, practically all this increase in the Magyar element was real in almost every sense of the term. The censuses (which did not attempt to define the individual’s ‘national feeling’ or ‘nationality’ but only his ‘maternal language’75) were usually honestly compiled (if there were occasional abuses, they were very few) and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the man who put himself down as ‘Magyar by mother tongue’ regarded himself, or at least wished others to regard him, as a Magyar.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 115
