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Hungarian Foreign Policy and the Magyar Minorities: New Foreign Policy Priorities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Alfred A. Reisch
Alfred A. Reisch*
Affiliation:
RFE/RL Research Institute, Munich
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Extract

In the wake of the 1989 revolutions in East Central Europe, two parallel developments took place in rapid succession. On the one hand, strong national sentiments accompanied by a desire to set up independent nation states emerged in the countries neighboring Hungary. At the same time, the ethnic Magyar minorities, long excluded from participation in the political life of those countries, gained the ability to establish their political movements, to enter candidates in local and national elections, and to elect their own deputies in the national parliaments and local governments. On the other hand, the fate of the Magyar minorities and the guaranteeing of their rights became one of the central elements of Hungary's foreign policy in bilateral relations with its neighbors. Budapest also embarked on a major effort to make the minority problem an international issue and to achieve some form of international legal codification for minority rights. These simultaneous and, in part, contradictory developments and goals placed several dilemmas before Hungarian policy-makers that, three years later, have yet to be resolved.

Type
II Hungary and Hungarian Minorities
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 445 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR, Inc. 

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References

Notes

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2. “The Foreign Policy Projection of Minority Policy” in The Program of National Renewal (Lajosmizse, 1990), pp. 184–185; Antall's statement to MTI, 20 April, 1991; and Uj Magyarország, 29 June, 1992.Google Scholar

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40. See Duray's interviews in Magyar Nemzet, 2 March, 1993; and in Uj Magyarország, 27 February, 1993; along with his speech at Coexistence's fourth national congress in Köztársaság, 5 March, 1993. See also Heti Magyarország and Pesti Hirlap , 4 March, 1993.Google Scholar

41. RFE/RL Correspondent's Report (Prague), 27 April, 1993. Also Meciar's address on Slovakia's Television, 25 April, 1993; and Slovakia's Parliament Chairman Ivan Gasparovic's interview in Uj Magyarország, 9 April, 1993.Google Scholar

42. Croatia, On, see Népszabadság, 17 March, 1993; MTI, 26 March, 1993 and 23 April, 1993; and Uj Magyarország, 26 April, 1993. On the accord with Slovenia, Uj Magyarország , 7 November, 1992.Google Scholar

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44. See the interviews with DCHV Chairman András Ágoston in Köztársaság, 22 January, 1993, Pesti Hirlap, 16 January, 1993, and Uj Magyarország, 19 December, 1992. Also Magyar Hirlap, 24 December, 1992, and 9 January, 1993; Die Welt , 23 January, 1993; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 February, 1993; and Le Figaro, 10 March, 1993.Google Scholar

45. See Antall on Radio Budapest, 3 January, 1993; Jeszenszky's interviews in Magyar Hirlap, 15 June, 1992, and to AP, 6 April, 1993; and Hungarian UN Ambassador Andre Erdös to RFE/RL Correspondent (New York), 7 April, 1993. For Hungary's course during the Yugoslav crisis, see Kapu, January, 1993.Google Scholar

46. See the interviews with Zsolt Németh, an Alliance of Young Democrats deputy, in Népszabadság, 31 October, 1991; and with Kiss, Gy. Csaba, the Director of the Central European Institute, in Magyar Nemzet, 12 September, 1991.Google Scholar

47. Éger, György, “Short History of Burgenland's Magyars,” (Budapest, 1991).Google Scholar

48. See Jeszenszky's speech at the UN General Assembly's 47th session, MTI, 6 October, 1992; and his interviews in Népszabadság, 25 June, 1992, and Uj Magyarország, 15 June, 1992.Google Scholar