In 1937, the greatest debate of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania erupted. Sándor Makkai, the bishop of the Transylvanian Reformed Church District and one of the leading figures of Transylvanism, packed up and moved to Hungary because, as he stated in his article “It Is Not Possible”: “…I cannot imagine any arrangement of minority life worthy of man, because I consider the minority ‘category’ itself unworthy of any man and spiritually impossible.” His final conclusion: “The minority fate is not a political impossibility, or at least not only that, but a moral one.”
The consequence of the article published in Hitel, in today’s terms, would be described as follows: the Transylvanian Hungarian public exploded, the question of “possible-not possible” went viral, or, if you like, this became the #metoo campaign of the Transylvanian Hungarian intelligentsia. Everyone commented, and only very few agreed with Makkai. We don’t have the space or time to substantively summarize the debate, nor to follow its second wave in 1987, or its supplement in the early nineties. Those who stayed roughly formulated their arguments along two life practices: “it’s possible because it’s necessary” and “as it’s possible”. For a hundred years, the Transylvanian Hungarians have been defining themselves along these two guiding principles.
Let’s ask two relevant questions.
Is it possible to live as a national minority? It’s possible, but it’s not good. Makkai is right that the category itself is unworthy of man. But it’s accurate. That’s why we haven’t succeeded in replacing it with ‘national community’, no matter how desirable it would have been. The category of national community is positive, suggesting a complete whole, while the category of national minority indicates a lack. It contains the frustration that a member of the national minority feels in their homeland when they watch how the new majority plunders and squanders the heritage that became ingrained over centuries. And, beyond your individual fate in this, it can be quite infuriating.
Is there a European solution to this? No. In EU law, indigenous national minorities have no rights. In other words: there’s simply no conceptual matrix in which they could interpret this issue, consequently, in the European Union, it’s legally impossible for an indigenous national minority to become a national community. Politically, it’s possible, of course. This is also what Europe was about in the second half of the last century. For example, the Basques, Catalans, Irish fought their way to becoming national communities. But from any perspective, violence is not a European solution. Or even if historically it is (because it is), I don’t think we’d like to transfer it to the 21st century’s toolkit of legal and advocacy enforcement.
Is there another solution? There is. Human rights are not absolute rights. They are declarative, meaning – not so long ago – we agreed that from now on, this and this counts as a fundamental human right, we declared it, so to speak. There’s absolutely no obstacle in principle to doing the same for indigenous European national minorities.
There’s no will for it in Brussels.
As a counterpoint to this, the Hungarian strategy was formulated, the essence of which is: we lived as a majority for a thousand years, we’ve been living as a minority in the successor states for a hundred years – but regardless of the current cartographic reality, we’ve been guarding the Carpathian homeland as a Hungarian community for eleven hundred years.
Because being Hungarian is good.
Notes:
The text refers to the situation of Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries, particularly in Transylvania (now part of Romania), following the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, which redrew Hungary’s borders after World War I.
Sándor Makkai: A significant Hungarian writer and Reformed bishop in Transylvania in the early 20th century.
Transylvanism: A cultural and political ideology that emphasized the unique multicultural character of Transylvania.
“It Is Not Possible” (“Nem lehet”): A controversial essay by Makkai that sparked debate about the viability of minority existence.
Hitel: An important Hungarian literary and social journal in Transylvania in the 1930s.
The debate of “possible-not possible” (“lehet-nem lehet”): A fundamental discourse in Hungarian minority intellectual circles about the sustainability of minority existence.
Historical timeline:
“We lived as a majority for a thousand years”: Refers to the Hungarian Kingdom’s existence from approximately 1000 AD to 1920.
“We’ve been living as a minority in the successor states for a hundred years”: Refers to the period since the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.
Linguistic note:
“Carpathian homeland” (Kárpát-haza): A term used to refer to the historical territory of Hungary, including areas now belonging to neighboring countries.
Homeland Dictionary 