Between State and Nation: Diaspora Politics and Kin-state Nationalism in Hungary

Between State and Nation 9780230107038_01_prexvi.indd i 9/6/2010 9:55:56 AM 9780230107038_01_prexvi.indd ii 9/6/20...

Author: Myra A. Waterbury

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Between State and Nation

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Between State and Nation Diaspora Politics and Kin-State Nationalism in Hungary

Myra A. Waterbury

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between state and nation Copyright © Myra A. Waterbury, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10703–8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Waterbury, Myra A. Between state and nation : diaspora politics and kin-state nationalism in Hungary / Myra A. Waterbury. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–10703–8 (alk. paper) 1. Nationalism—Hungary. 2. Hungarians—Europe, Eastern—Politics and government. 3. Hungary—Politics and government—1989– 4. Transnationalism—Case studies. I. Title. DB919.W34 2011 320.5409439—dc22 2010017026 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company First edition: December 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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To Elias, with love.

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Contents

List of Tables

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Acronyms and Abbreviations

xv

1 Introduction: Why and How Kin-States Engage Populations Abroad 2 Kin-State Nationalism and Governing Legitimacy 3 Kin-State Nationalism, Diaspora Politics, and Political Competition 4 Kin-State Engagement and European Integration 5 The Politics of Diaspora Policy Reform: From Dual Citizenship to Economic Development 6 Conclusion: Kin-State Nationalism and Diaspora Politics in Eastern Europe

1 25 53 89 117 143

Notes

169

Selected Bibliography

203

Index

215

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List of Tables

2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 5.1

Nationalities in Hungary before and after Trianon Ethnic Hungarian population in four surrounding countries Attitudes toward Hungarians beyond the border Attitudes toward diaspora policy and border revision, May 1994 Hungarian state budget devoted to diaspora support programs, 1996–2001 Attitudes toward Status Law and diaspora support policy, April 2001 Attitudes toward Status Law and Orbán-Nastase agreement, January 2002 Hungarian state funding for diaspora support programs, 2007–2008

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31 57 69 69 85 114 115 140

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Acknowledgments

As with any project of this scope, there are many more people to thank than can be given credit here. This book would not exist without support and feedback from mentors, friends, and colleagues at crucial points in its development. As a graduate student at the New School for Social Research, I was fortunate to have rich intellectual and personal relationships with my academic mentors and committee members. I thank Aristide Zolberg for his crucial role in shaping my academic interests and approach to studying politics. It has been a great privilege to work with him, for him, and to get to know him on a personal level. I can only aspire to the depth of analysis, the breadth of knowledge, and the transcendence of disciplinary boundaries that he embodies. Mala Htun made me a better writer and a better political scientist. She taught me to be bold in my claims, yet conscious of their implications. Andrew Arato always made himself available to talk with me about Hungarian politics when Budapest seemed very far away. Special appreciation goes to Zsuzsa Csergo˝ for her invaluable support and friendship throughout this process. She cheerfully read many drafts of the manuscript over the years and used her critical eye to both challenge and expand how I thought about my case and my analytical framework. Zsuzsa has also been a great advisor and mentor during my academic career, and I thank her for taking me under her wing. I owe thanks to my graduate school colleagues Fred Cocozzelli and Irina Liczek, and the attendees of the 2005 Junior Scholars’ Training Seminar of the East European Studies Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for their questions, comments, and suggestions in the early stages of this project. My colleagues in the Political Science Department at Ohio University gave me the space, support, and camaraderie I needed to finish the book while teaching and adjusting to the demands of a new job. I particularly thank Patricia Weitsman, Andrew Ross, Jim Mosher,

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Acknowledgments

Maria Fanis, Taka Suzuki, and Hector Perla for their astute comments on various parts of the manuscript. Also at Ohio University, Gabriela Plocka provided valuable research assistance in the final stages of preparing the manuscript. Panel discussions, workshops, and conversations with Irina Culic, Stephen Saideman, Fiona Adamson, Rainer Bauböck, Francesco Ragazzi, Maria Koinova, Stephen Deets, Sherrill Stroschein, and Stefan Wolff helped shape and sharpen my arguments. Anonymous reviewers of this manuscript and earlier articles offered helpful suggestions for revision. The arguments I developed in two previously published articles— “Internal Exclusion, External Inclusion: Diaspora Politics and PartyBuilding Strategies in Post-Communist Hungary,” East European Politics and Societies 19, no. 4 (Summer 2006): 483–515, and “Uncertain Norms, Unintended Consequences: The Effects of European Union Integration on Kin-state Politics in Eastern Europe,” Ethnopolitics 7, 2/3 (June 2008): 217–238—can be found in somewhat updated form in chapters 3 and 4. Portions of these two articles appear in both chapters. My research in Hungary was made possible by the generous logistical, financial, and intellectual support of a number of organizations and individuals. A David L. Boren Graduate Fellowship from the National Security Education Program funded my advanced language training and fieldwork in Hungary from 2002–2003. I am indebted to Attila Pók and the Europa Institute in Budapest for hosting me in a comfortable and stimulating environment as a visiting scholar there in 2003. The Ohio University International Travel Fund and support from the Political Science Department made possible a follow-up research trip in 2007. While in Budapest, many individuals generously took the time to share their thoughts and research with me, deepening my understanding of Hungarian politics and giving me access to contacts and information I would never have found otherwise. Special thanks goes to Zoltán Kántor, Judit Tóth, Antal Örkény, András Bozóki, Endre Sik, Tamás Papp, Gábor Halmai, Attila Melegh, Erika Törzsök, Michael Stewart, Zsolt Enyedi, and the employees of the Hungarian Parliamentary Library and Information Center. I thank Katalin Budai, for assistance in untangling me from various linguistic snares and transcribing interviews, and Carol Rounds of Columbia University, for making me believe that Hungarian was actually a learnable language. My final, and perhaps most important, debt of gratitude goes to those who were a constant source of emotional support throughout this process. Shelley Hurt has been a tremendous friend throughout the years. Her intellectual rigor, generosity of spirit, and willingness to read

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multiple drafts of my work helped me through innumerable roadblocks and crises of faith. Rebekah Klein-Pejšová was, as always, an inspiration, both personally and intellectually. Jami Taylor and Michelle Frasher provided friendship, sympathy, and much-needed fun and distraction in the final years of writing. I am forever grateful to my mother, Diana, for unconditionally supporting me in every way possible through this journey, and thank my father, Daniel, for feeding my curiosity and encouraging my intellectual pursuits. Finally, with love and gratitude I thank my husband, Elias Martinez, and dedicate this book to him. He deserves that and so much more for keeping me sane and staying by my side every step of the way.

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CEFTA EMNT

Central European Free Trade Area Erdély Magyar Nemzeti Tanács—Hungarian National Council of Transylvania EP European Parliament EU European Union Fidesz Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége—Federation of Young Democrats FKGP Független Kisgazdapárt—Independent Smallholders’ Party HTMH Határon Túli Magyarok Hivatala—Government Office of Hungarian Minorities Abroad HTMSZF Határon Túli Magyar Szervezetek Fóruma—Forum of External Hungarian Organizations HUF Hungarian Forint HVIM Hatvannégy Vármegye Ifjúsági Mozgalom—64 Counties Youth Movement HZDS Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko—Movement for a Democratic Slovakia Jobbik Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom—Movement for a Better Hungary KDNP Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt—Christian Democratic People’s Party KMKF Kárpát-medencei Képviselo˝k Fóruma—Forum of Representatives of the Carpathian Basin KMKSZ Kárpátaljai Magyar Kulturális Szövetség—Ukrainian Hungarian Cultural Federation in Transcarpathia MÁÉRT Magyar Állandó Értekezlet—Hungarian Standing Conference MDF Magyar Demokrata Fórum—Hungarian Democratic Forum

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MIÉP MKDM MKP MPP MPSZ MSZMP MSZP MVSZ NATO NIT OMH OSCE REF RMDSZ SNS SZDSZ SZNT TESZK VMDK


Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja—Hungarian Truth and Life Party Magyar Kereszténydemokrata Mozgalom—Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement Magyar Koalíció Pártja—Hungarian Coalition Party Magyar Polgári Párt—Hungarian Civic Party Magyar Polgári Szövetség—Hungarian Civic Union Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt—Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party Magyar Szocialista Párt—Hungarian Socialist Party Magyarok Világszövetsége—World Federation of Hungarians North Atlantic Treaty Organization Népies Irodalmi Társaság—Popular Literary Association Országos Menekültügyi Hivatal—National Refugee Affairs Office Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Regionális Egyezteto˝ Fórum—Regional Coordinating Forum Romániai Magyar Demokrata Szövetség—Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania Slovenská národná strana—Slovak National Party Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége—Alliance of Free Democrats Szekler Nemzeti Tanács—Szekler National Council Társadalmi Egyesületek Szövetsége Központjának—Central Office of the Alliance of Social Associations Vajdasági Magyarok Demokratikus Közössége—Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Why and How Kin-States Engage Populations Abroad

T

he disjuncture between state boundaries and the territorial distribution of national populations created through war and the dissolution of empires and multinational states has been a cause of conflict and interethnic tension for the last century throughout Central and Eastern Europe. During the first half of the twentieth century, the transfer of populations and irredentist attempts to redraw territorial borders were the main avenues used to bring together the boundaries of the state with the boundaries of the nation. The German invasion of Silesia and the Sudetenland and Hungary’s war-time alliance with the Nazi regime, for example, were justified by the desire to protect and reclaim territories and populations lost to other states in the post–World War I peace settlement. As the communist world collapsed in the early 1990s, the relationship between states in Eastern Europe and the populations of ethnic kin that remained “stranded” across the border as citizens of new or existing neighboring states again became a crucial issue. The liberalization of politics and the end of Soviet domination created new opportunities for states to engage their transborder ethnic groups. At the same time, the logic of nationbuilding and the proliferation of newly independent states increased tensions over the status and treatment of national minority groups throughout the region. With the troubling history of irredentism and violence over the distribution of people and borders in Eastern Europe, many analysts expected the renewed focus on ethnic diasporas to be a recipe for war and conflict. Yet, for the most part, this has not occurred. Although some

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states in post-communist Europe have struggled to define their relationship with ethnic kin beyond the border and have caused tensions while doing so, their role as “kin-states” has not led to more direct conflict with neighboring countries.1 Engagement with ethnic kin abroad has not translated into irredentist attempts to redraw internationally accepted borders or repatriate large numbers of ethnic kin. Since the fall of communism, we have in fact witnessed a new paradigm in which contemporary state policies concerning populations across the border in Eastern Europe are increasingly framed by the language of rights and citizenship, and the institutionalization of cultural, political, and economic ties rather than active policies to change borders or reclaim populations. Short of causing outright war, however, the actions taken by states in Eastern Europe on behalf of external kin populations have important consequences for regional stability, interethnic relations and minority integration, domestic political development, and the project of European Union (EU) integration. Kin-state policies raise fundamental questions about loyalty and identity, membership and belonging, and the boundaries between the political and the cultural community.2 Transborder ethnic groups—or ethnic diasporas—reside in and possess the citizenship of states in which they may not be regarded as full members of the majority nation. At the same time, they maintain important cultural, economic, social, and even membership ties to an external state and nation.3 These ties can stoke fears of minority fifth columnism and disloyalty to the state of residence, hampering the political and social integration of transborder minorities. Forms of extraterritorial membership, such as voting rights, dual nationality, or special benefits granted by the kin-state, can violate a state’s sovereignty and destabilize regional relations as political elites manipulate ethnic ties to justify nationalist claims and their own political agendas. They can also be used as a tactic of aggression or interference in a neighbor’s domestic politics, as demonstrated by Russia’s granting of citizenship to South Ossetians in Georgia prior to its military intervention there in the summer of 2008. For the kin-state, its relationship to an external minority population can have a significant impact on the construction of national identity, the dynamics of political contestation, and foreign and domestic policymaking. In turn, diaspora members’ ability to assert themselves as independent political actors and their flexibility of identity and mobility is directly affected by the choices of kin-state policymakers. Finally, kin-state engagement has proven to be a challenge to the project of EU expansion by creating rifts between new member states, providing a justification for nationalist Euro-skepticism and

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uncovering weaknesses in Europe’s evolving minority rights and common-border regimes. With these stakes in mind, this book examines why and how states in Eastern Europe choose to engage coethnic populations abroad. Without the immediate justifications of war, regaining recently lost territory, or expansionist ambitions, what drives states to engage their ethnic diasporas across the border? Why do some states expend economic and diplomatic capital, risk interstate tension, and open themselves to new and unpredictable claims on its resources by extending special rights, benefits, and the protection of its institutions to residents and citizens of other states? And what shapes the type and intensity of extraterritorial policies used by kin-states? Focusing primarily on the critical case of Hungary and its relationship to the nearly three million ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, this book shows that it is not the ties of ethnicity, but elite political competition within a newly liberalized post-communist party system that both drives increased engagement with ethnic kin abroad, and constrains its most dangerous forms. Changes in external conditions—such as realignments of power in interstate relations and EU membership—then shape the content of and opportunities for engagement. The Puzzle of Hungarian Kin-State Engagement On December 5, 2004, Hungary held a referendum on whether the government should offer nonresident dual citizenship to the nearly three million ethnic Hungarians in neighboring Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Serbia, and Croatia.4 Nonresident dual citizenship would have allowed ethnic Hungarians who did not live in Hungary to travel to the mother country at will, bypassing the visa restrictions imposed on those traveling from a non-EU country to a member state like Hungary. In the months leading up to the referendum, supporters of the initiative ran a dynamic public relations campaign complete with colorful posters designed to play on voters’ feelings of ethnic affinity, historical obligation, and pride in the nation. One showed pictures of smiling children (presumably ethnic Hungarians), urging the voters not to “forsake” them and others who had the misfortune to be born in a territory that Hungary once controlled, but was now part of another state. Another showed fraillooking pensioners, bringing to mind one’s own grandparents, telling passersby, “I would never leave the land of my birth, but I am Hungarian!” Even Béla Bartók, Hungary’s most celebrated composer,

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another reminded, would not have been a Hungarian citizen today due to the circumstances of his birth on the wrong side of the border. Over a picture of clasped hands, voters were asked to “join together for the nation” and give less fortunate ethnic Hungarians a “passport to Europe” by supporting dual citizenship.5 The message of this campaign was clear: it was the moral and patriotic duty of the Hungarian voters to grant this new form of membership and opportunity for mobility to their ethnic kin stranded in neighboring states. There were many reasons to expect that Hungarians would respond positively to these calls for national unity extending across the borders. The concept of the Hungarian “nation” (nemzet) explicitly refers to not only those who share ties of language, culture, and history within the borders of the state, but encompasses those outside the borders as well. Historically, Hungary’s engagement with its ethnic kin in Eastern Europe has been a highly symbolic and emotionally charged issue, contextualized by Hungary’s interwar irredentism and tensions with neighboring governments over the treatment of the scattered ethnic Hungarian communities. Since the 1920 Treaty of Trianon redistributed two-thirds of Hungary’s former lands and one-third of its Hungarian-speaking population, family attachments, memories of lost greatness, and the writings of poets and national populists have kept alive the idea of the Hungarian nation as one “body,” artificially separated by borders. In the post-communist era, this connection was even reflected in Hungary’s revised constitution, an amended paragraph of which states: “The Republic of Hungary bears responsibility for the fate of Hungarians living outside its borders and shall promote and foster their relations with Hungary.”6 Yet, for all the publicity and supposed attachment of the Hungarian public to this issue, the results of the referendum told a somewhat different story. Only 37 percent of eligible voters turned out for the referendum, and of those, support for the dual citizenship agenda was only slightly more than 51 percent. The low turnout invalidated the results, as the law requires that 25 percent of eligible voters support or reject the initiative. The lack of participation might have been expected. But as one ethnic Hungarian from Romania—who had already become a citizen of Hungary—explained to me, many like him experienced shock and even hurt that so many people (49 percent) bothered to come out to vote against the initiative.7 Even though he would not have benefited personally, my friend could not help but feel some disappointment and surprise at the seeming indifference of the Hungarian voters to their ethnic

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brethren. If Hungary cared so deeply about the plight of its ethnic kin, why would so many Hungarians look unfavorably on further solidifying the extraterritorial membership of coethnics in other states? This outcome is even more puzzling if we look back to other moments in the years since the end of communism when Hungary seemed more than eager to fulfill its constitutional obligation as a kin-state and protector of the transborder nation. For example, in June of 1990, József Antall, Hungary’s first democratically elected post-communist prime minister, uttered the now infamous statement that “in spirit, I consider myself to be the prime minister of 15 million Hungarians.” This number pointedly included both the 10 million citizens of Hungary, as well as the approximately 5 million ethnic Hungarians living outside of the borders, the majority of which—around 3–3.5 million—were citizens of countries surrounding Hungary. This rhetoric made neighboring governments and outside observers nervous as they tried to gauge the intentions of Hungary’s governing elites in the early days of transition. There were concerns that Hungary’s renewed interest in its regional diaspora would lead to a resurgence of the type of aggressive nationalism and irredentism that drove Hungary to ally with Nazi Germany during World War II. Then, in June of 2001—only three-and-a-half years before the dual citizenship referendum—the Hungarian parliament passed the “Status Law,”8 a controversial piece of legislation that granted special benefits and subsidies to the ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring countries. The law provided ethnic identity cards to Hungarian-identifying citizens of neighboring states, and gave them privileged access to the Hungarian labor market and social-welfare system. Given the state sovereignty issues raised by the Status Law, Hungary’s legislation again caused concern among the governments of neighboring states and EU officials. After a decade of relatively stable political and economic consolidation and improving interethnic relations, Hungary was seemingly willing to jeopardize its relatively good standing with its neighbors and the European community in order to grant special benefits to ethnic Hungarians who were citizens of other states. So, how can we reconcile a Hungary that many feared would become dominated by extreme nationalism and irredentism in the early 1990s with a Hungary in 2004 that refused to grant its coethnics preferential citizenship? How can we explain both the moments when Hungary’s kin-state engagement increased, and the apparent failure of kin-state nationalism to mobilize political support at other times? With its history of irredentism and conflict with neighboring countries, and with one of

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the largest regional diasporas in the region spread over six neighboring countries, Hungary is a crucial case for understanding the dynamics of diaspora politics in Eastern Europe. As the following sections demonstrate, untangling the puzzles of Hungary’s approach to its ethnic diaspora provides important insights into why and how states engage populations of ethnic kin across the border and the potential consequences of that engagement. Why and How Kin-States Engage Hungary’s experience as a kin-state demonstrates that nationalism as a political project and tool of elite competition has not disappeared while former communist states have undergone transitions to democracy or become members of the EU.9 Yet, the case of Hungary also shows us that such nationalist projects do not always succeed in mobilizing political support, nor do they necessarily lead to outright conflict with neighboring states. We should not, therefore, see states like Hungary as driven solely by a moral sense of ethnic affiliation or by a resurgence of nationalism unleashed after the collapse of communism, nor should we see kin-state elites as passive actors stirred only by feelings of national affiliation or by demands made on them by those abroad. In contrast, I argue that the diaspora policies of kin-states serve a specific political and strategic purpose. Shifts toward increased kin-state engagement are driven in large part by the interests and perceptions of political elites, who desire access to three sets of resources represented by ethnic diasporas: the extraction of material resources for economic gain; the utilization of those abroad as a culturolinguistic resource to be used in defining the boundaries of national identity; and as political resources to help create or maintain legitimacy and support for kin-state elites. Populations abroad are often sources of important material resources through remittances they send back to the homeland state, diaspora-led investment, or by offering the homeland state expanding markets for its exports, cultural output, and even a temporary labor pool. Most migrantsending countries, like the Philippines, Turkey, and many Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Southeastern European countries, rely heavily on the emigrant diaspora working in richer economies to contribute to the country’s GDP.10 Economic interests play less of a role in nonmigrant diaspora situations, particularly when the homeland state is more economically developed than those beyond the border. However, the promise of possible future economic gains can be used as a justification for

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activist policies in kin-states as well. For example, in Hungary, the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring states have been described as a potential resource for businesses in need of labor, and this is used as a selling point for government policies toward coethnics.11 Other states, such as Russia and Japan, may seek to fill a growing demographic deficit or have a need for easily assimilable labor migration, which could make diaspora engagement an attractive prospect. In fact, it could be argued that Spain and Italy have both invented a diaspora for this purpose by offering citizenship to the descendants of Spanish and Italian migrants in Latin America.12 External kin are also strategically important because of their culturolinguistic function, particularly their role in state-building, national identity construction, and cultural reproduction. Ethnic diasporas can serve prominently in the construction of national myths, which are used to legitimize nationalist political agendas, and the modes of inclusion and exclusion that designate who will have access to political power and the resources of the state.13 External populations are often incorporated into narratives identifying forces threatening the survival of the cultural or linguistic nation, broadly defined as extending beyond existing state borders. Csergo˝ and Goldgeier have called this drive to include ethnic kin in neighboring states as part of the newly constituted national community “transsovereign nationalism,” which applies to states in which the “national center creates institutions that maintain and reproduce the nation across existing state borders.”14 The continued existence of a group beyond the border that maintains its cultural identity and connections to the kin-state by resisting assimilationist pressures offers a defense against fears of cultural dilution and is a source of national pride. In addition, such populations keep the influence of the homeland language and culture alive in territories that were once under the control of the kin-state, recalling historically significant moments of past greatness. Maintaining the loyalty of those beyond the border to their mother country, and thereby securing access to those communities and their resources, can be a vital “part of the process of nation-building and maintaining elite dominance at home.”15 Threats to these groups, therefore, are framed as threats to the unity, status, and survival of the nation embodied by the homeland or kin-state. This type of resource has been particularly important for Hungary, a small, linguistically isolated country that, at one time, had control over a much larger piece of territory. Political liberalization through institutional or regime change subjects control over the state-diaspora relationship to more intense political

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contestation. Emerging political actors have little governing experience, and may also have few organizational resources or a track record of ideological positioning. Reframing a discourse of the nation and national identity that invokes those beyond the border can provide a unique source of legitimacy for these new political actors. They can position themselves as “nationalizing elites” or as saviors of the nation who can now right the wrongs of the past.16 As others have shown, nationalist invocations of this type can be a powerful tool during a turbulent political transition period in demobilizing opposition and stoking fear. Elites use alleged threats to the transborder nation to focus attention outward and make citizens feel that their security and well-being is intimately connected to the protection of the nation as whole.17 In addition, emerging elites can utilize diaspora populations as potential constituents, who can affect domestic political outcomes through transborder media connections or eventually through gaining the right to vote or special representation within the government. At times of political transformation, the diaspora “may come to be considered by a new regime as the key population for domestic transformation.”18 Reaching out to those abroad and establishing cross-border ties based on ethnic kinship is a way for governments and political parties to redefine the bases of their legitimacy, particularly at times of economic or political crisis, or when the sovereignty of the state is weakened.19 By engaging populations abroad, elites can appropriate diaspora resources to bolster their domestic political legitimacy, organizational capacity, and ideological positioning. In the case of Hungary, right-wing elites utilized ties with ethnic Hungarians in neighboring states and a rhetoric of loyalty to the cultural nation extending across the borders in order to further their own political goals. Engagement with the diaspora issue first provided these elites with access to organizational resources that tapped into networks linking Hungary and ethnic kin across the border. Building upon the rich symbolic value of the ethnic Hungarian issue, elites used domestic legislation and foreign policy to craft new crossborder political, economic, and cultural connections to the diaspora and to co-opt existing ties and organizations, which gave party elites more opportunities for organizational expansion. These elites also developed an ethnically based political discourse based on the promotion and protection of the transborder nation, which situated the state’s relationship with the diaspora at the center of debates over identity and governing legitimacy. This strategy put political opponents on the defensive and proved useful in deflecting criticism of other economic, social, or foreign

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policy decisions. Only when Hungarian party elites were able and willing to use the diaspora issue as a political tool did engagement with ethnic Hungarian communities increase significantly. Changes in external conditions—such as realignments of power in interstate relations, shifting economic and geopolitical alliances, and host-state policies—shape the political calculations of kin-state elites by either constraining or expanding their access to external populations and the resources they represent. In this way, external factors can trigger increased kin-state engagement and may push kin-state policymakers to take more unilateral and conflict-producing actions as a result. For example, if kin-state elites see that new integrationist or assimilationist policies are being put into place by host states, they may respond by trying to “pull” the diaspora back to its orientation with the ethnic homeland through transnational networks and feelings of loyalty to the nation.20 In other cases, the lessening influence of a regional hegemon may make diaspora resources available in a way they had not been before, as occurred when the end of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe opened new opportunities for cross-border engagement. Or, the creation and implementation of new rules governing cross-border mobility (visa regimes, laws on temporary or long-term migration, labor contracts, etc.) can potentially disrupt the functioning of networks linking kin-states and those abroad, leading to the search for new ways to access diaspora resources. For example, as Hungary’s EU accession became more certain, the realization grew that the country would soon be the eastern border of the Schengen visa regime. This meant that many ethnic Hungarians would be left on the wrong side of a new “Iron Curtain” as the Schengen chapter of the accession treaty would have prevented Romanian, Ukrainian, and Serbian citizens from crossing the border into Hungary without a visa. This prompted a search for new ways for Hungary to maintain cross-border ties, culminating in the controversial decision to give members of the regional diaspora ethnic identity cards through the Status Law. Kin-states have better access to the resources represented by ethnic diasporas when they are able to craft and, to the extent possible, control ties with those abroad and their organizations. Institutionalized engagement with populations abroad is therefore often tied to co-optation of cross-border networks by kin-state elites. In the case of Hungary, party elites have vied to co-opt diaspora leaders and to create clientelistic relationships that extend across the border. The leaders of the most successful right-wing party used the tools of patronage and clientelism to

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develop its power base and establish its structure of alliances and institutions. Similarly, in Mexico various administrations attempted to shape the message and the loyalties of organized Mexican migrant communities in the United States.21 State-led programs in the 1980s “signaled the state’s attempt to construct transmigrants and their organizations as one more in a series of corporate groups that the Mexican state could co-opt by engaging them in corporatist and clientelist relations.”22 Middle Eastern states, such as Tunisia and Morocco, also used counsels and expatriate affairs offices as instruments of coercion and control in order to satisfy their own security objectives.23 States utilize a combination of extraterritorial domestic and foreign policy tools in order to extend their sovereignty beyond state borders and maintain cross-border ties of loyalty and membership. In the postirredentist paradigm, states have a toolkit of policies from which to choose, which offer less costly and more efficient ways for kin-state elites to “augment state power” than territorial revision.24 The policy tools used to shape relations with populations abroad include (1) seeking to improve the status of minorities in neighboring countries through diplomatic advocacy or treaty protections; (2) funding external kin community organizations and developing educational, cultural, political and entrepreneurial institutions in those communities; (3) offering full or limited forms of political citizenship, such as voting rights, special forms of representation, dual citizenship, or dual nationality; (4) offering full or limited forms of social citizenship through welfare state and labor market access and direct subsidies to diaspora members; and (5) extending the benefits of cultural and symbolic membership through rhetorical inclusion, ethnic identity cards, and transborder cultural exchanges. Different combinations of policies are employed to keep the diaspora connected to the kin-state by tying the maintenance of identity to specific benefits and privileges. To be successful, however, the state must balance its desire to control the relationship with external populations as much as possible with the needs and demands of the diaspora communities. Having addressed what motivates kin-state action and the tools of that engagement, we turn to the final piece of the puzzle: What explains variations in outcome within a single case; for example, moments when appeals to kin-state nationalism fail or there is change in the level and type of engagement? In contrast to other analyses that look only at moments when appeals to kin-state nationalism lead to aggressive action and tension with neighbors,25 I explain moments when ethnic

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entrepreneurship on this issue fails to mobilize sustained political support. One factor that explains variation is the development of political competition, which provides incentives for nationalist elites to politicize the state-diaspora relationship, yet also constrains more extreme policies by subjecting them to open political debate. While some kin-state elites are likely to benefit disproportionately from pushing more involved engagement with ethnic kin abroad, other party elites will attempt to recast the state’s relationship with those beyond the border as a risky proposition and limit opportunities for transborder ethnic ties to influence domestic political contestation. The more intense the political competition, the higher the stakes in the policy debates over how to shape the state-diaspora relationship. The second variable is the unique nature of diaspora politics itself. The push and pull of elite contestation is complicated by the duality of diaspora: the tension between the desire of kin-state elites to capture diaspora resources and the fears of what may be jeopardized by incorporating diaspora members more fully into the national political community. Despite the potential benefits of kin-state engagement, external populations represent a host of negative aspects as well, which often manifest in representations of those abroad as “traitors” who have abandoned their homeland, exiles who have left behind ongoing political or economic struggles, or painful blights on the national psyche. When those beyond the border enter the kin-state temporarily or as permanent residents, they are often perceived as tainted by their unique experiences, and therefore as too different to be reintegrated successfully into the kinstate. Diaspora members are then seen as competitors with those who stayed behind for government subsidies, for jobs, and even for political influence.26 The expansion of the kin-state political community to include members of external populations through initiatives such as dual citizenship, special forms of political representation, or extraterritorial voting can also meet resistance from elites uncertain of how it will affect their political calculations. Debates over diaspora policy increase in intensity as those abroad are given access to membership in the political community of the kin-state and new policies expand the boundaries of political membership beyond the state borders, thereby jeopardizing the “coherence of the citizenry.”27 Elite rhetoric of ethnic kinship or national belonging, therefore, does not always reflect the broad acceptance of a particular national project. The final variable that influences the content of kin-state engagement is the role of external actors. The stances of international or regional

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actors and norms on minority rights and third-party intervention influence what type of relationship states can have with those abroad, what types of policy tools can be used to create transborder networks, and how effective those policies will be. In essence, the regional or international context shapes the limits of what is possible for kin-state action. External actors create norms and expectations about how states may engage in transnational practices—usually urging kin-states toward moderate action through bilateral negotiation and diplomatic advocacy on behalf of ethnic kin in other states—and provide incentives and disincentives for compliance to those norms. Incentives for compliance may include improved diplomatic relations and membership in regional political, military, or trade alliances. Disincentives may include the possibility of conflict with the diaspora’s state of residence, or sanction by the international community for violating the principles of sovereignty or ethnic discrimination. In the case of Eastern Europe, the main external actor that affects the behavior of states and influences the adoption of norms is the EU and its affiliated institutions (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Council of Europe, etc.). In assessing the extent to which the “carrot” of EU membership shaped the behavior and policies of kinstates, we see that the process of EU integration shaped Hungary’s diaspora policies and its domestic politics more generally, but not always in the direction of decreased kin-state engagement. In the early 1990s, the possibility of EU membership played a progressively more important role in constraining the most extreme voices on the diaspora issue. The desire for EU membership was a major factor in Hungary signing treaties with neighboring Slovakia and Romania in 1995 and 1996, despite the objections of diaspora leaders and right-wing opposition members that the treaties did not sufficiently protect the rights of the ethnic Hungarian populations in those countries. However, the role of the EU in Hungarian kin-state politics was not as simple as mandating compliance to a set of acceptable norms or behaviors in trade for membership. Once Hungary’s accession was imminent, the apparent loss of control the state would have over its relations with its ethnic diaspora after it joined the EU served as a foil for nationalist discourse and a justification for preemptive kin-state action in the form of the Status Law. The instrumental logic of party politics, ambiguity about diaspora engagement and integration, and the risks involved in crafting legislation on behalf of external populations in a changing regional environment combine to create highly partisan disagreements over the direction of

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kin-state policymaking. Hungary’s kin-state engagement has been dominated by recurring debates around four broad areas of policy. The first area of policy debate concerns the question of autonomy and minority rights. Policymakers disagree on how strongly Hungary should push for ethnic Hungarian communities to achieve autonomy within their states of residence, what kind of autonomy should be pursued, and whether only a collective rights framework can assure cultural reproduction in the diaspora communities.28 The parties on the left of the political spectrum tend to support a more limited form of autonomy—either cultural or administrative—which would give minority communities control over key issue areas (such as education and media) or over specific cultural institutions (such as schools and churches). They are less supportive of attempts to force the issue of territorial autonomy—control over a specific area of the country where minorities are concentrated—given the neighboring governments’ intense resistance to the idea. They have also been more cautious about making autonomy the main strategic goal of ethnic Hungarian political organization and Hungarian state diplomatic efforts. This reluctance to put autonomy above all other issues reflects fears of worsening regional relations over an unobtainable goal, such as territorial autonomy, and the concern that demands for increased autonomy would make it more difficult for ethnic Hungarian political parties to become viable coalition partners in their own states. The political Right in Hungary is much stronger in its support for all three types of autonomy, and has backed even controversial efforts by some ethnic Hungarian political leaders to push the autonomy issue on to domestic agendas in neighboring countries.29 For the Right, autonomy and a strong collective-rights framework institutionalized through bilateral treaties and international or regional bodies should be the primary aim of political and diplomatic efforts on both sides of the borders and is seen as the best way to ensure ethnic Hungarian cultural reproduction. The autonomy debate gained new life throughout the region in the first half of 2008, when Central and East European governments were forced to decide whether or not to recognize Kosovo’s independence and support the Ahtisaari Plan, which included autonomy provisions for the ethnic Serbs who remained in Kosovo. The second contested issue surrounds Hungary’s foreign policy and diplomatic strategy regarding the neighboring countries and their Hungarian minority populations. Left and right-wing policymakers disagree over how closely Hungary should tie regional relations to the minority-rights issue, how Hungary should respond to perceived restrictions

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of minority rights in the neighboring countries, and how Hungary should use its position as an EU member state (and before that, as an aspirant member) to protect the transborder nation. Since the end of communism, all governments in Hungary have agreed “to support Hungarian minorities living beyond the border and provide the best possible conditions for them in their place of residence” as one of the three official pillars of Hungarian foreign policy.30 Left-wing governments, however, have tended to deprioritize the diaspora pillar to shore up the other two: regional relations and EU membership. As a result, they have endured intense criticism by the Right for their perceived inability and unwillingness to advocate forcefully enough for minority-rights issues. This criticism intensified during bilateral treaty negotiations, votes on the EU accession of neighboring states, and at times of tense interstate relations, such as the recent diplomatic row with Slovakia over the passage of a controversial language law there in 2008.31 Left-wing leaders have responded by arguing that Hungary cannot expend its limited diplomatic capital over every perceived insult to the Hungarian nation, and that the best way to guarantee improvements in the lives of ethnic Hungarians is through peaceful relations and cooperation with the neighboring governments, ideally within the framework of the EU. The third issue area involves the relationship between Hungarian state actors and ethnic Hungarian leaders and organizations in the neighboring countries. Right-wing political parties have benefited more from strong cross-border ties to ethnic Hungarian elites with whom they share organizational resources, policy agendas, and political ambitions. The Right, therefore, has pushed more to provide members of the diaspora leadership access to the policymaking process, both formally through consultative bodies and informally through coordinated media events and statements. Right-wing governments have also played a larger role in attempting to shape the political organization of the ethnic Hungarian communities by supporting allies in leadership struggles and helping to create new organizations to rival existing groups and parties. The Left, on the other hand, tends to have less vocal support from across the border. Left-wing parties have done more to restrict the access of diaspora members in the hopes of depoliticizing the policymaking process to shield themselves from criticism. Representatives of left-wing governments have argued that the Right’s cross-border clientelism creates unhealthy dependencies on Hungary and jeopardizes the progress of minority rights and political integration within and between the states involved.

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The fourth area of debate concerns the issue of whether Hungary should grant special legal status or ethnic citizenship to its coethnics in neighboring states. As the controversy over the dual citizenship referendum demonstrates, offering diaspora members preferential access to entry and the state’s political community is a powerful gesture that brings out many fears and uncertainties for voters and policymakers. Nonresident dual citizenship has been particularly controversial because it creates a form of membership that can translate into real benefits and mobility, but does not require diaspora members to relocate. The potential consequences are, therefore, hard to determine in advance. The Left, fearing a shift in the domestic political balance if more diaspora members were to become voters, has tended to argue against granting ethnic citizenship as a collective right. Left-wing parties have instead supported the easing of citizenship and naturalization requirements for ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries based on individual application and residency status. During the months leading up to the 2004 dual citizenship referendum, the left-wing governing coalition campaigned against it by playing upon the public’s fear of a “wave” of ethnic Hungarian migration, and concerns about the political and economic consequences for Hungary if it were to grant coethnics citizenship. Such arguments proved to have traction within the Hungarian electorate, which has indicated “a continued readiness to exclude ethnic Hungarians from the benefits of Hungarian citizenship.”32 In contrast, the Right in Hungary has generally supported nonresident dual citizenship, particularly since the imposition of the Schengen borders, but also fears that ethnic citizenship will lead to the emptying of Hungary’s historic lands through migration. Broader Implications This book and the arguments it puts forth make a number of unique contributions to current understandings of kin-state engagement and diaspora politics in Eastern Europe. One contribution is its method of analysis: an empirically rich case study of kin-state action and policymaking based on extensive primary language fieldwork. Hungary is often included as a key case for comparative examinations of post-communist irredentism and the security threats that potentially arise from kin-state action.33 Hungary’s diaspora policies have also been used as a causal or intervening variable to explain minority politics outcomes in other states.34 Yet, given the widely recognized importance of the issue and the

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particular case of Hungary, there is a surprising lack of case-study work in this area.35 The case-study approach allows us to go beyond the broad correlations derived from large-N studies to construct an analytical framework that shows more concretely how the three main variables posited as important to kin-state intervention—ethnic ties, domestic politics, and external threats and opportunities—operate independently and in interaction with each other. By tracing multiple observations from different points in time and through different policy debates, this book is able to draw comparisons within a single case study to offer empirical observations “about the processes linking these variables to outcomes.”36 In much of the international relations literature on kin-states and third-party intervention, ethnic ties are treated as enduring causal factors in domestic politics and foreign policy decision-making. For example, Lake and Rothchild have argued that “alliances between transnational kin groups” escalate conflict, and that policymakers are “propelled by feelings of solidarity with their ethnic kin.”37 Similarly, Moore and Davis have argued that “ethnic ties among peoples across state borders . . . act as unstated alliances among those people,” which then compel action.38 While ethnic solidarity across borders provides the context and the justification for kin-state policymaking, thinking of ethnic affinity as the driver of action overstates its causal significance. The relative strength of ethnic ties should remain more or less static over time, and are most often treated as such in the literature, so they cannot account for changing stances, policies, and levels of kin-state engagement. As others have pointed out, explanations of kin-state action that rely heavily on the power of ethnic solidarity “underestimate the importance of domestic politics in relation to transnational ethnic affinities.”39 Instrumentalist arguments posit that it is not the ethnic ties themselves, but the desire to manipulate and mobilize feelings of ethnic solidarity for some other purpose—usually either to rally political support or to deflect attention from failures of governance—that drives kin-state action. Kin-state elites can “build constituencies for attaining or maintaining political power” by becoming the more fervid and committed representatives and protectors of the nation extending across borders.40 Another approach is to look at how elites operate within a competitive political environment, what Carment and James have called a “high degree of institutional constraint.”41 The assumption made here is that elites respond to a demand from below for the state to protect and promote ethnic diaspora communities, and so elites must comply in order to be

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seen as “good nationalists” and legitimate leaders. But in more accountable, competitive political environments, where the populace also has broader expectations of effective governance and economic stability from its leaders, elites are constrained in their ability to play the nationalist card. Fears of jeopardizing economic gains through conflict with neighbors and letting in “outsiders” by pursuing irredentist policies can stop elites from pursuing more aggressive types of kin-state engagement.42 My analysis of kin-state action both confirms and draws heavily on these latter two arguments, yet I also add to them in a number of ways. First, the usual story of ethnic entrepreneurship—either responding to or seeking to manipulate feelings of solidarity—has to be modified somewhat to capture the role of kin-state nationalism in domestic political contestation. The independent power of transborder ethnic ties to mobilize voters has proven to be relatively weak in post-communist Hungary. In fact, perceived radicalism or overemphasis of the ethnic kin issue often provokes a backlash, both from voters, and from those in the diaspora policy world, who fear the potential negative consequences of radicalism in Hungary for the ethnic kin communities in the neighboring countries. To the purely instrumentalist argument, then, it is necessary to add a constructivist understanding of the unique nature of kin-state nationalism: its symbolic content and how it fits together (or not) with other relevant political debates and emerging cleavages. Instead of focusing primarily on internal homogeneity, kin-state nationalism seeks limited sovereignty over noncitizens, the stakeholders of the policies that emerge from it are located outside of the electorate, and policies of diaspora engagement create cross-border networks that bring both risks and benefits to the kin-state. Yet, as I argued previously, kinstate nationalism can also resonate symbolically and emotionally with many domestic constituents as a way to understand the kin-state’s history, cultural influence and survival, and its relationship to its neighbors and projects of regional integration. Because of its contradictory nature, invoking kin-state nationalism does not offer elites a large number of votes directly, but it can become an integral part of a winning package of issues and cleavages. Whether or not a particular set of elites can successfully leverage the ethnic kin issue is contingent on the larger economic and political context, and on the strategic choices made by players in an uncertain, yet competitive, political environment. Second, the “diaspora as resource” argument developed here expands our understanding of what motivates kin-state action by applying the language of realist international relations theory to diaspora politics in a

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new way. Realist arguments about kin-state action have so far been limited to discussions of conflict over the traditional spoils of war (territory and population), relative strength constraints on irredentist war, or credible commitments of deterrence by external actors.43 By looking beyond the paradigm of war and focusing on the construction of a broader set of diaspora policies within a single case, I am able to show how nonirredentist forms of engagement provide a new category of resources for kin-states and their elites: those that emerge over time from the development and maintenance of cross-border political, economic, and cultural networks. In the post-irredentist paradigm it is the networks themselves—not just a vague feeling of solidarity and kinship— that provide the resources pursued by active kin-states. These diaspora resources can then be used for a wide variety of purposes, from undermining the state-building projects of neighboring states, to strengthening state and nation-building projects in the kin-state, to bolstering the organizational capacities of political parties. The case of Hungary also helps provide a more complete account of the effects of EU integration on kin-state policies in Eastern Europe. The literature on diaspora politics in the region has tended to either downplay the role of external actors, and the EU in particular,44 or become stuck in a debate over whether or not EU conditionality constrained the actions of potentially aggressive kin-state elites.45 Only a handful of recent studies analyzes EU integration as a diffuse and complex process; one which has different degrees of influence at various stages of accession, and the ability to both constrain nationalism in some contexts and to increase its salience in others.46 The analysis provided here builds on this work to show the variable effects of EU integration over time. EU norms, preferences, and conditionality have shaped, but not determined, Hungary’s kin-state engagement. Its influence on diaspora politics has varied according to the strategies and interests of the governing elites and the specific stage of Hungary’s accession, from early applicant, to advanced candidate, to full member state. Before proceeding to the outline of the book, I would like to briefly comment on my use of the term “diaspora.” Traditionally, a diaspora was defined by a group’s migrant origins or the far-reaching dispersal of an ethnic community to multiple points, reflecting classical cases of diaspora such as the Jewish or Armenian ones. This narrow definition seemingly excluded cases of transborder ethnic groups created from shifting borders or the dissolution of states and empires. This book utilizes a broader definition of diaspora, one which focuses less on the

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nature of the dispersal and more on the boundedness of the minority group abroad and its connections to the homeland. A good working definition comes from Shain and Barth, who describe a diaspora as “a people with a common origin who reside, more or less on a permanent basis, outside the borders of their ethnic or religious homeland—whether that homeland is real or symbolic, independent or under foreign control.”47 There are now a number of studies that use the term “diaspora politics” to describe situations like Hungary’s relationship to its ethnic kin communities in neighboring countries, making this terminological choice somewhat less controversial.48 However, it is important to acknowledge that the use of diaspora in this context would not be accepted by most scholars or policymakers within Hungary and the neighboring states. Diaspora in Hungary, Poland, and other kin-states is most commonly invoked when discussing political and economic migrants who settled in the United States, Western Europe, and elsewhere outside of the region—and historic territory—of the mother country.49 Ethnic kin communities in neighboring states are not considered diasporas because the diaspora condition is equated with weakened bonds of ethnic and linguistic affinity and the triumph of assimilationist pressures on the national community. Diaspora as dispersion (szórvány) is used to refer to ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries who do not live in ethnic enclaves, but are dispersed in scattered settlements.50 Hungarians living as diaspora are, therefore, those in a “state of abandonment.”51 In contrast, more concentrated ethnic communities beyond the border are reachable and critical components of the national project. Calling them diaspora would indicate that they were “lost” to the nation. By this logic, even those ethnic Hungarians who leave their ethnic kin communities and emigrate to Hungary are considered part of the “intensification of diasporization due to assimilation and out-migration.”52 In light of this, I use the term diaspora self-consciously as an externally imposed analytical category and not as a descriptive category adopted by the subjects of this study. I do so in order to link the new paradigm of kin-state engagement discussed herein to the interdisciplinary work being done on state-led transnationalism and diaspora politics in migrant-sending states. The broader literature on diaspora politics helps us to understand the larger universe of policies from which states like Hungary are now drawing as they struggle to shape ties to their external kin. It also usefully demonstrates the contingent and instrumental nature of state policymaking toward external populations by tracing

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the processes through which policymakers increase their level of engagement with those abroad over time. In recognition of the structural similarities between the interests and policies of both kin-states and migrant-sending states, this book employs the term diaspora politics, as well as kin-state politics, to indicate the process of engaging external populations and the output of that engagement.53 “Diaspora politics” represents a stance that focuses on the intentionality of treating an external group as if they were a bounded, distinct group with ties of loyalty and affiliation to a potential homeland or kin-state.54 Plan of the Book As I described above, Hungary’s policy stances toward ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine have not remained static and are not easily predicted by the supposed strength of Hungarian nationalism. The contours of its kin-state policies since 1989 clearly show that Budapest has not always been responsive to demands from diaspora leaders or changes in their home country status. Important changes in policy that increased Hungary’s kin-state commitments, such as the Status Law, occurred at times of relative stability in the region. And at other crucial moments in time, the Hungarian public rejected the project of kin-state nationalism and preferential citizenship and focused inward on other domestic issues. Between the five democratic election cycles held in post-communist Hungary, the relationship between Hungary and the ethnic kin communities was consistently redefined, the priority given to the ethnic Hungarian issue shifted, and the access of diaspora leaders to the Hungarian government lessened and increased. In order to solve the puzzles presented by the case of Hungary, we must uncover the factors that shaped how Hungary chose to define its relationship with its external kin in neighboring countries at different points in time. First, we need to determine the motives behind Hungary’s kin-state engagement. What explains the resonance and political utility of kin-state nationalism in Hungarian domestic politics? Second, we have to understand why Hungary’s often nationalist rhetoric did not translate into more extreme actions on behalf of its ethnic kin or into sustained political support for an increase in Hungary’s kin-state engagement. Finally, we have to explain the specific policy choices that Hungary made and how its kin-state policies evolved as its new democracy stabilized and it moved forward toward EU integration.

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What combination of political interests and external constraints determined the policy tools different governing elites used to fulfill the state’s obligations to protect the cultural nation? If we look back in history, we can see how nationalism as a political project has been used by Hungarian political elites as a source of legitimation, and how the protection of the transborder nation became tied to governing legitimacy in Hungary. Hungary’s intense, and often controversial, relationship with its coethnics in neighboring countries did not arise simply out of a resurgence of nationalism or feelings of ethnic affiliation after the fall of communism. On the contrary, Hungary’s national identity—and its connection to the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries—has a historical record of malleability, its content and structure changing in response to external shocks and the political strategies of ruling elites vying to maintain power and privilege. The eventual incorporation of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries into the dominant conception of the nation—and their role in Hungarian domestic politics as a potential source of legitimacy and contestation—must be seen as part of a larger historical process of state and nation-building. Chapter 2 provides the outline of that process from the days of the Hapsburg Empire to the last days of communism. It traces how and why Hungarian nationalism changed over time to encompass those beyond the border, and how that process structured the relationship between the Hungarian state, domestic political actors, and regional coethnic communities. Chapter 3 then explores the circumstances under which kin-state nationalism emerged as a political issue after the end of communism, and how it was used as a political resource by different political actors with varying degrees of success. The Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) became the head of the first post-communist government and used the ethnic Hungarian issue, and other cultural and symbolic issues, as a crucial part of its governing strategy. The new context of competitive party politics allowed for the increasing politicization of the diaspora issue within Hungary as a marker of ideological strength and influence beyond the state’s physical borders. The MDF, however, failed to maintain political support during its one term in office in large part because of its focus on ethnic Hungarians beyond the border over other pressing domestic economic and governance issues. In contrast, an emerging party, the Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz), was subsequently able to become the vanguard of the main right-wing political bloc in part by utilizing the issue of ethnic Hungarians

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in neighboring countries as an important ideological and organizational resource. Once in power after 1998, Fidesz offered a new discursive framing of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, characterizing them as an important source of legitimacy, pride, and survival for Hungary. The pinnacle of this new approach was the Status Law, which was a way to embed Fidesz’s conception of the borderless nation in legislation and to maintain the political loyalty of the ethnic Hungarians. To explain the failure of the MDF and the relative success of Fidesz in utilizing diaspora politics, I look at the differences in strategy, discourse, and timing between the two parties. I argue that “success” was determined by the ability of political actors to connect diaspora politics to other domestic political issues and ideological debates, and by their degree of political learning in an evolving institutional environment. The contours of Hungary’s kin-state policies, however—and the Status Law in particular—cannot be fully understood outside of the context of Hungary’s EU integration. Chapter 4 addresses the impact of the accession process, focusing on the development of the Status Law, and the interplay between the domestic political strategies driving kinstate action and European actors in their attempts to shape norms and political behavior. The controversy over Hungary’s 2001 Status Law shows that the accession process did not diminish the salience of kin-state politics in Hungary, and in some ways, even increased it. The lure of membership could not overcome the entrenched political interests of the elites most invested in maintaining and controlling relations with the ethnic Hungarian communities. At the same time, a lack of clarity by European actors and institutions in the norms and defined incentives and disincentives relating to minority-rights protection and acceptable kinstate action allowed Hungarian elites to push the boundaries beyond what many established and potential member states considered to be acceptable. Chapter 5 then brings together domestic and international variables to explain the transformation in substance, form, and intensity that Hungary’s approach to its regional ethnonational diaspora underwent between 2004 and 2007. After 2002, a coalition of left-wing parties came to power, and used the opportunity to weaken the Right’s ideological and institutional “ownership” of the diaspora issue. By 2005, the government had embarked on a surprisingly extensive restructuring of the institutions forming the support system for Hungarians beyond the border and instituted a package of new policy initiatives. Hungary’s engagement with its

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ethnic diaspora shifted to a focus on individual opportunity rather than collective rights, regional economic development instead of targeted cultural subsidies, and depoliticized, centralized institutions for diaspora policy governance to replace the old informal, clientelistic cross-border networks. The chapter explores how a changing political environment and the reality of EU membership for Hungary and neighboring Slovakia and Romania resulted in a new round of diaspora policy reform that would move the country further away from the legacy of irredentism. Chapter 6 concludes the book by summarizing its main findings and discussing the implications of recent developments in kin-state politics for issues of security, nationalism, the political integration of national minorities, and the future of EU integration. The final chapter also provides a brief comparative examination of the dynamics of diaspora policymaking within Eastern Europe, focusing primarily on the cases of Poland and Romania. The comparative discussion highlights variations and similarities among cases in the region, and explores more fully the consequences of the shift from irredentism to diaspora politics.

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CHAPTER 2

Kin-State Nationalism and Governing Legitimacy

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his chapter explores the changing content and structure of Hungarian nationalism as it has developed over time, providing the historical and analytical background necessary to fully understand the contours of diaspora policy in post-communist Hungary. By the content of nationalism, I refer to how membership in the nation is defined and the political project of nationalism is represented. Here we see the historical processes through which Hungarian nationalism developed into an ethnic conception and came to encompass those of Hungarian ethnicity beyond the borders of the state as an integral part of the national project. The structure of nationalism refers to the instrumental political uses of nationalist projects: who is driving these projects and for what purposes? Political elites attempt to embed a particular definition of national membership in order to define the political community—and hence, the basis of political legitimacy—in a way that benefits their position. By including an external population under the scope of governance and political responsibility, the focus of legitimacy shifts from the political community of the state to the cultural community beyond state boundaries. Defining membership in this way focuses political discourse and attention on an ethnically narrow understanding of belonging, thereby excluding those within the state who do not fit that definition and narrowing the possibilities for dissent and contestation. By exploring these two facets of nationalism, we can understand both the drive for the Hungarian state to express itself as a kin-state and the fault lines of debate and contestation over how best to fulfill that role. The story of Hungarian nationalism as told here begins in the preTrianon decades, from the days of the Hapsburg monarchy to the end

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of World War I (1790–1920). At this time, Hungarian national identity was not defined primarily in ethnic or culturo-linguistic terms, nor was a unified, contiguous Hungarian nation-state long in the making by the time state and nation were split in two. Until the later decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Hungarian nationalism was more political than culturo-linguistic, more territorial than ethnic, and driven more by the political calculations of the ruling noble classes than by the bonds of ethnic affiliation. It was not until the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire during World War I and the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, which dismembered the empire, that Hungarian nationalism began to wed ethnic nationalism and political legitimacy to the fate of those self-identified Hungarians who were now beyond the borders of the state. After Trianon, the ruling classes underwent a crisis of legitimacy. In order to justify maintaining its political position after the loss of twothirds of pre-Trianon Hungary, the conservative, right-wing government focused on a project of revisionism and national unity. These pursuits caused the government to repress internal dissent and engage in extraterritorial practices designed to control and co-opt the transborder networks developing between Hungary and its coethnics in the lost territories. The need of the ruling elite to maintain the status quo of class privilege, combined with the traumatic dismemberment of Hungary during this period, created the link between governing legitimacy in Hungary—particular for the Right—and the ability to protect the transborder Hungarian nation and its preservation as a unique cultural and linguistic community. This period and the cross-border networks it generated also marked the beginning of a complicated relationship between Hungarian state elites and the diaspora leadership. As border revision became more of an unlikely outcome in the late 1920s and 1930s, the independent development of ethnic Hungarian communities deepened, causing their interests to diverge in significant ways from those of the Hungarian state and its representatives. This created tension with Hungarian state elites, who hoped to control the material resources flowing across the border and the political development of the diaspora communities to better serve their own political agendas and keep the lost territories firmly under Hungary’s supervision. The period of Communist Party rule after World War II temporarily reframed Hungary’s previous revisionism and nationalism as an ideological threat to the project of socialist internationalism. Governing legitimacy would now be based on the modernizing egalitarianism of communism

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under the control of the Soviet Union. However, in the later decades of communism, the strategic environment changed, forcing Communist Party elites to search for new sources of legitimacy. The ethnic Hungarian issue emerged as a focal point for alliances between reform communists and nationalist intellectuals in the opposition during the 1980s, which gave the communists additional social legitimacy and the dissidents increased capacity for organization and influence. Therefore, it was not nationalist mobilization that drove Hungary’s increased engagement with the regional diaspora after 1989, but strategic political concerns within the context of the decreasing influence of Soviet and Communist Party control. The historical narrative highlights the political processes through which kin-state nationalism eventually became a viable, if inconsistent, source of elite political legitimation and a party-building resource in the post-communist era of democratic political contestation, particularly for right-wing political actors. Nation and Nationalism in the Hapsburg Era At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the boundaries of the Hungarian nation were defined primarily by voluntary culturo-linguistic assimilation, political allegiance, and class under the dominant feudal structure rather than by ancestry, mother tongue, or other ascriptive qualities. In the multiethnic lands of the Eastern half of the Hapsburg monarchy, “membership of the nation was not necessarily fixed at birth.”1 Until 1844, when Hungarian was made the official language of administration and governance in the Hungarian part of the empire, Latin was the national language, with German—the language of the Hapsburgs—the second most common language of those in the ruling economic and political classes. After the French Revolution sparked the rise of linguistic and cultural nationalism, voluntary assimilation and cultural Magyarization, including language acquisition and changing one’s surname, became viable paths to incorporation into the Hungarian protostate.2 This was a path chosen by large numbers of upwardly mobile members of various minority groups, particularly Germans and Jews.3 At the end of the eighteenth century, only 29 percent of the population in the Hungarian lands identified as Magyars, but, primarily through voluntary assimilation, that number increased by 15 percent between 1790 and 1850.4 Class also mattered more than ethnicity at this time. Feudal law in Hungary distinguished between nobles and nonnobles, but did not differentiate between Magyars and non-Magyars.5 As one Hungarian

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author described the heavily feudal society before 1830: “[T]he multilingual masses lived together in perfect harmony and peace. They all were equally drudges, laboring to maintain the nobility—5 percent of the population—in self-satisfied exuberance.”6 Hungarian nationalism, when it emerged as a political project in the first decades of the nineteenth century, began as primarily liberal in nature and oriented toward securing Hungarian independence from the control of Austria and the Hapsburgs. At this time, Hungary was “little more than a glorified Austrian colony.”7 Liberal modernizers and intellectuals, such as István Széchenyi, Lájos Kossuth, and Sándor Peto˝fi, many of them Magyarized members of other nationalities, began to agitate for Magyar political and cultural control of the Hungarian lands under Austrian dominance.8 The desire for Hungarian self-determination and political freedom culminated in the 1848 Hungarian Revolution against the Hapsburgs, which ultimately failed due to the overwhelming Austrian military force. Despite the failure of the 1848 revolution to achieve its objective, the Hungarian nationalist movement was not abandoned. In 1867, after the defeat of Austria in the Prussian War, the weakened Hapsburgs agreed to a compromise solution, which created the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, giving substantial political, economic, administrative, and cultural autonomy over the Eastern half of the territory to the Magyars. The dual monarchy marked the beginning of a modern Hungarian state, but the Magyar nationalism that drove the movement for independence ran up against the reality that ethnic Magyars were not a majority of the population in the territory of Hungary.9 The liberal nationalist thought of 1848, which had envisioned an enlightened Magyar-dominated state that granted equal rights to all ethnic and linguistic minorities, was soon replaced by a more exclusionary and chauvinistic form of Hungarian nationalism. Once Hungarian independence had been more or less achieved through the dual monarchy, this was seen as the legitimization of Magyar nationalism and its goals of elevating Hungarian language and culture as the national standard. Hungarian chauvinists now expected and demanded Magyarization from the subject nationalities, based on the “supposed superiority of the Magyar culture.”10 The empowerment of minority cultures was seen as a threat to the newly acquired unified political control of the Magyar elite. While the Nationalities Law of 1868 paid lip service to the country’s multiethnic character, the new Hungary was to be a “single political nation; the indivisible Hungarian nation . . . and the

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country’s official language Hungarian.”11 In 1875, the government of Prime Minister Tisza intensified the program of forced Magyarization, closing Slovak and Romanian-language schools and limiting minority cultural activities. This disrupted the previous trend of voluntary Magyarization, causing the rate of assimilation to slow greatly after 1850 to only 9 percent. Not surprisingly, this form of Magyar nationalism also spawned counternationalisms among the other minority groups. Even the more liberal nationalism of 1848 spurred some national minority groups to fight on the side of the Austrians, calculating that their chances of autonomy would be better met in a large, multiethnic empire rather than in a more independent Hungary. In the decades following the 1867 compromise, minority elites, forced to choose between assimilation or exclusion, turned to their own indigenous nationalist groups or sent their children away for mother-tongue instruction and training as the new generation of minority nationalists that would fight for independence against the dominance of the Hungarian state.12 As the content of Hungarian nationalism in the decades leading up to World War I became increasingly ethnic and exclusionary, nationalism as a political project was used to maintain the structure of class hierarchy. By defining the boundaries of national belonging more narrowly and demanding political and cultural Magyarization, the ruling class of lower nobility sought to tightly control access to power, privilege, and opportunity, thereby preventing the development of an indigenous democratic middle class.13 While serfdom had been abolished by the late 1800s, the nobility used nationalism to restrict the franchise by allowing very little political representation to the minorities, or to the peasant and lower classes, who were less interested in loyalty to the Hungarian nation than in land reform and economic rights.14 As the historian Joseph Rothschild described this period: “The bulk of even the ethnically Magyar population was refused enfranchisement with the chauvinistic argument that any extension whatsoever of political participation would endanger Magyar supremacy. The rhetoric of ‘national survival’ was thus used as a fig leaf for social and political privilege.”15 By defining themselves as the true representatives and protectors of the Hungarian nation, the ruling nobility attempted to merge loyalty to the nation with loyalty to their political position. The calculated nationalist position of the Hungarian nobility was temporarily bolstered both by the hierarchical authority enforced by the Hapsburgs, and by the racialized conceptions of identity hierarchies that were in

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vogue at the turn of the century. Magyar cultural superiority joined ideas of racial superiority and anti-Semitism to help justify the privileged political position of the Hungarian nobility.16 Trianon and Its Aftermath World War I brought about the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and with the Treaty of Trianon, a much diminished Hungarian state incongruously matched to the cultural and psychological borders of the larger Hungarian nation. The scattered populations of Hungarianspeaking minorities in states bordering present-day Hungary came about as a direct consequence of the events of World War I and the peace settlement crafted at the end of the war by the victorious “Great Powers”: France, Britain, and the United States. The peace treaty signed at Trianon on June 4, 1920, made official the transfer of two-thirds of Hungary’s lands and one-third of its Hungarian-speaking population to neighboring Romania, newly created Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and Austria. These dramatic events reinforced and intensified the ethnicization and chauvinism of the existing elite-driven Hungarian nationalism, but also introduced a new dimension: the link between governing legitimacy and the project of protecting and reclaiming those parts of the nation now beyond the borders of the state. In the years following Trianon, the existence of a transborder nation became the catalyst for the merging of the Hungarian political and cultural community as part of a conservative, right-wing ideology of revisionism and irredentism. The regime sought to maintain control over those parts of the nation no longer under its direct control by creating cross-border networks of cultural and political support. Only by keeping the communities beyond the border loyal to the Hungarian nation-state, rather than to their new states of citizenship, could the regime viably stake its claim of legitimacy on the project of revisionism. The loss of the monarchy and the diminished status of Hungary after the war had a tremendous impact on the content of nationalism and the politics of interwar Hungary. As Table 2.1 shows, one significant consequence of the war was that Trianon made Hungary into a relatively ethnically homogenous nation-state.17 The treaty ratified Hungary’s de facto loss of 71.4 percent of its prewar territory and 63.6 percent of its total prewar population, which included 3.5 million “ethnic” Hungarians. Many of the lost territories included the border areas with the highest concentration of multiethnic populations, leaving the more Magyarized

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Table 2.1 Nationalities in Hungary before and after Trianon (percentage of total population)

Hungarians (Magyars) Germans Slovaks Romanians Others*

1910

1920

1930

54.5 10.4 10.7 16.1 8.3

89.5 6.9 1.8 0.3 1.5

92.1 5.5 1.2 0.2 1.0

* Ruthenes, Serbs, Croats, others Sources: B. C. Wallis, “Distribution of Nationalities in Hungary,” The Geographical Journal 47, no. 3 (March 1916): 183; Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 192.

urban centers in the new Hungarian state. In addition, approximately 426,000 mostly Hungarian-speaking refugees—from lands now part of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia—flooded into Hungary at the end of the war, more than half of which had settled there between 1918–1919.18 The resulting homogeneity legitimized an ethnic conception of the Hungarian nation. However, this nationalism did not reflect the triumphant claim of national self-determination, but the tragic loss of Hungary’s preeminent cultural, political, and territorial position in the region.19 Trianon represented the moment of the nation’s greatest weakness in failing to protect its ethnolinguistic members and to achieve border revision in the face of geopolitical realities that put Hungary at the mercy of Western states and its newly independent neighbors. Hungary also suffered significant losses to its industrial and agricultural capacity due to Trianon, including 58 percent of its railroads, 60 percent of its roads, 84 percent of its timber, and 43 percent of its arable land.20 In addition, Hungary was isolated diplomatically at a time when it most needed allies. The Little Entente, a political and military alliance between Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania established in 1920–1921 and supported by France, was particularly effective in blocking Hungary’s attempts at revising the Trianon terms in the years immediately following the peace conference.21 Trianon quickly became a symbol of suffering, loss, and humiliation for Hungarian society, yet the revisionist form of nationalism that emerged from this situation served as a vehicle for maintaining elite political control. The monarchy had ended, stripping the ruling nobility of one major source of authority, and the dire economic and social

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conditions in Hungary opened the door to political instability and challenges to the status quo. The political forces of the aristocracy and gentry had to fight to maintain their positions of authority and privilege against the threat of socialism and its supporters among the laboring classes.22 In order to maintain the power of the ruling elite in the face of these conditions, “it was necessary to reorient the attention of the Magyars from the concept of the state to the concept of the nation.”23 As a large part of the nation was now scattered among a number of new states bordering Hungary, nationalism as revisionism became the most obvious path for enforcing unity and preventing more democratic politics from emerging. After the chaos of a revolution and two counterrevolutions between 1918 and 1920, near-dictatorial authority was given to Admiral Horthy and a series of right-wing leaders who pledged to see the borders of “historic” Hungary restored.24 The 24-year regime of Admiral Miklós Horthy, who was appointed regent and supreme military commander of Hungary on March 1, 1920, was characterized by the dominance of a conservative nationalist ideology fueled by irredentism and a desire to maintain the existing polarized social order against the threat of communism. In its pursuit of irredentism and revisionism, the Horthy Right had a powerful emotional issue through which it could consolidate power and enforce unity by creating “a sense of common suffering.”25 The content of this revisionist nationalism brought together common themes of Hungary’s national mythology that were useful in bolstering the ruling elite’s position: the fight for justice in the face of the state’s betrayal and subjugation by foreign powers, the claim of Magyar superiority and entitlement of Hungary as a “civilizing force in the region and protector of the Christian West,”26 and, most importantly, the necessity of action and absolute unity in the face of the Hungarian nation’s potential “death” by drowning in a “sea of Slavs.”27 The trauma of Trianon was compared to the suffering of Christ on the cross, as Hungary was judged by the false and unfaithful, then crucified, humiliated, and abandoned, with the hope of eventual resurrection.28 Nationalist historians created revisionist histories to justify Hungary’s territorial claims to the lost regions, thereby ensuring that “[w]hole generations of youngsters grew up having only historic Hungary’s borders etched into their minds and fully convinced that Trianon Hungary was but a temporary phenomenon that was bound to disappear like an evil nightmare.”29 Secret societies and national defense leagues

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flourished, as well as nonsecret irredentist organizations, such as the Hungarian Territorial Integrity League and Hungarian Revisionist League, and pseudo-academic bodies and research institutes committed to producing irredentist propaganda. The literature generated by these organizations attempted to justify Hungary’s historical and demographic claims to the territories, highlight any mistreatment of the ethnic Hungarians, and portray Hungarians as the superior, and therefore rightful, guardians of Transylvania, southern Slovakia, and the Vojvodina region of Yugoslavia.30 Trianon had also shattered the link between nation and territory for the Hungarians, undermining the idea of Hungary’s “civilizing mission” in the Danubian region. With this traumatic dislocation, the cultural, as well as territorial and economic survival of Hungary was said to be at stake. This was especially true for Hungarian reactions to the loss of Transylvania, a mixed-ethnic and linguistic region, which had a “mythical significance” for both Hungary and Romania.31 Transylvania was considered the “cradle” of Hungarian civilization, “the real eastern border of Hungarian culture,” and the Transylvanian rural Hungarian populations “as the makers and carriers of ‘real,’ ‘archaic,’ and ‘authentic’ Hungarian culture.”32 The tools used by the Hungarian regime to promote its revisionist project included propaganda justifying its claims of restoration, and attempts at diplomacy, which extended to any potential ally willing to help Hungary reclaim its lost territories, either peacefully or through force of arms. To carry out these policies, Horthy appointed a series of prime ministers, whose political pedigrees ran the spectrum of national conservatism. István Bethlen, “a scion of an old Transylvanian family of ruling princes,”33 was appointed prime minister in 1921. His main preoccupation was the restoration of order and the borders of “historic” Hungary, but he worked mostly toward revision through peaceful means. He lobbied other states through Hungary’s seat in the League of Nations and used all available diplomatic channels to press Hungary’s claim to the annexed territories.34 Not surprisingly, Bethlen and other Hungarian refugees became fervent and politically active supporters of the regime and its revisionist goals: one-third of the parliamentary representatives elected between 1922 and 1926 were from prewar Hungarian territories.35 Bethlen was followed by Gyula Gömbös, who was instrumental in moving Hungary closer to Germany during the 1930s as the lack of progress via diplomatic channels pushed the political climate toward an extreme right ideology more in line with national socialism.36

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The government also began to engage in extraterritorial practices designed to extend Hungary’s sovereignty into the territories now beyond the border and maintain political control and loyalty in the ethnic Hungarian communities. During this period, the regime developed the first substantial cross-border forms of subsidies and support for ethnic Hungarian cultural, educational, and media institutions as well as more informal political ties between elites within and beyond Hungary’s borders. Direct support for its coethnics entailed a fair amount of risk, as Hungarian leaders had to balance their desire to fight the assimilation of ethnic Hungarians and maintain their influence in the annexed territories with the campaign to garner international support for revision of the Trianon borders. Tensions in the region were high, and any indication that Hungary was interfering in the annexed territories would have further jeopardized Hungary’s diplomatic position. This led them to funnel state-driven support for ethnic Hungarian schools, churches, cultural institutions, and political bodies through social organizations created to shield the Hungarian government from accusations of interference and irredentism.37 Hungary’s “mother country” support both in the “Eastern Campaign”— the term used in Budapest government circles for support given to Hungarian institutions in the territories that had been annexed to Romania—and in Czechoslovakia was quite extensive in its goals and organization.38 The first component of cross-border aid was the effort to gather social, economic, and demographic data on the ethnic Hungarian communities. This data was crucial to Hungary’s various claims for border revision, from providing the demographic basis for self-determination claims, to justifying claims of cultural superiority, to documenting minority-rights abuses against the ethnic Hungarians. Informationgathering fueled propaganda for both internal and external consumption, providing a steady stream of publications regarding the situation in the annexed territories.39 The budgets of almost all of the major associations providing funding to the ethnic Hungarian communities dedicated a sizable percentage to “external propaganda,” press bureaus, and printing costs. For example, from 1923 to 1924 the Central Office of the Alliance of Social Associations (TESZK) in Budapest dedicated 18.36 million Korona to propaganda and printing, over three times more than for any other expense.40 The second component was support for the educational, social, and cultural survival of the stranded ethnic Hungarian communities. Special consideration was given to university students fleeing the annexed

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territories. The students represented the future of the ethnic Hungarian leadership in those areas and the development of a young, unified intelligentsia, shaped by the trauma of Trianon and loyal to Budapest and the cause of revision. Hungarian universities gave special preference to these well-educated refugees, and the National Refugee Affairs Office (OMH) created a separate office to provide the students with financial assistance and housing. The initial hope was that the students would return to their communities as the next generation of leaders, but many stayed in Hungary when it became clear that border revision was not imminent. This prompted a shift by Hungarian state leaders to discourage members of the intellectual class in Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia from leaving their communities, and instead encourage them to earn their diplomas in their home territories.41 Hungary feared the abandonment of the annexed territories by cultural leaders and intellectuals, which would have led to more rapid assimilation and the weakening of Hungary’s territorial claims. This change in strategy was part of a general turn in the mid-to-late 1920s from post-Trianon refugee management to actively seeking ways to guarantee the cultural survival of the ethnic Hungarians; to not only preserve, but improve the position and influence of Hungarians in the annexed territories in preparation for their eventual return to Hungary. This strategy included the creation of a new network of Hungarian-language schools and university faculties independent from the old church-based school system that had been taken over and “Romanianized” and support for Hungarian-language journals, media, and theater.42 The third component of the cross-border support system was political support through direct cooperation between bodies of the Hungarian government and Hungarian political organizations in the neighboring countries. Official social organizations based in Budapest, such as the Rákóczy Alliance, the TESZK, and later the Popular Literary Association (NIT), provided funding and logistical support for ethnic Hungarian political parties and organizations, such as the Hungarian Alliance and the Hungarian People’s Party.43 In addition, an informal network of cross-border political ties was cultivated. The building and strengthening of clientelistic networks was vital in keeping alive the political influence of Budapest and Hungarian state policy focused on the annexed territories. Influential refugees from the annexed territories, such as the aristocratic Bethlen and loyal members of the former Hungarian civil service, played a large role in the development of cross-border political and economic ties. These informal networks were often able to bypass

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the elaborate system of social organizations created to shield high-profile members of the Hungarian state from accusations of interference. If necessary, they could appeal directly to the Prime Minister’s Office for additional aid or organizational help.44 Significant amounts of support were likely provided through informal requests, making the actual amount of interwar subsidies and personnel overlap difficult to estimate. As border revision through regular diplomatic channels became more of an unlikely outcome in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the ethnic Hungarian communities began to develop their own independent organizations, creating some tension with the leadership in Budapest. Leaders like Bethlen and Gömbös strove to keep a “vertical relationship” between Budapest and the annexed territories, and were suspicious of movements such as “Transylvanism” that advocated interethnic cooperation in the region or a lower level of reliance on direction from Hungary. Tensions arose as the regional offices of the aid organizations desired a larger role in determining budget allocations and data collection to more closely reflect the situation on the ground. The Budapest leadership did not support these efforts. They spoke the same language in Budapest and in the annexed territories, but their social and political realities had diverged significantly since 1918. The Hungarians beyond the border were now citizens of other states, and members of ethnically mixed areas. The leadership in Budapest ignored these divisions, as they were not helpful to Hungary’s larger goal of justifying territorial revision and redeeming the pre-Trianon nation. Any movement toward disunity endangered Hungary’s revisionist claims. Despite these tensions, since the people put in place to run the regional offices owed their position to the goodwill of the Hungarian state leadership, they generally recognized and accepted those in Budapest as the “competent authorities” and deferred to their will.45 As they have in the post-communist era, networks of interdependence developed out of the institutionalized cross-border support systems connecting Budapest and communities beyond the border. Kin-state elites ensured a certain degree of cooperation for their political interests through their patronage, and external elites benefited by becoming recognized leaders and providers of financial and organizational resources from the kin-state in their own communities. Eventually, it became clear that none of Hungary’s revisionist policies, either through diplomacy or extraterritorial networks, would

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sway the Great Powers to revise the territorial settlement, leading to a disastrous intensification of Hungary’s irredentist politics and association with Nazi Germany. Hungary’s alliance with the Axis powers of fascist Italy and Germany in the late 1930s “followed logically (or psychologically) from the original commitment to subordinate every other consideration to the cause of revisionism, and to use that commitment as a pretext to stifle domestic reform.”46 As a result of this alliance, Hungary initially succeeded in bringing its territorial goals to fruition. The first Vienna Award by the Axis powers on November 2, 1938, returned the Hungarian-inhabited areas of Czechoslovakia. The second Vienna Award of August 30, 1940, gave Hungary back twofifths of its Trianon loss to Romania. However, in that year, Hungary also had to pay the price for its alliance with Nazi Germany by allowing German troops free passage through Hungary. While Hungary had until that point refrained from an open and unfettered alliance with the Axis powers, Hitler’s invasion of Yugoslavia via Hungary irrevocably tied the country to the fate of Germany.47 By November 1944, Horthy’s regime had been replaced by Ferenc Szálasi and his fascist Arrow Cross movement with the backing of German arms, and Hungary began to cooperate fully with the German occupation of Hungary and the concomitant liquidation of Hungary’s Jewish population. Nationalism and Internationalism during Communism Hungary’s pursuit of revisionism eventually ended in a second defeat and the reannexation of its pre-Trianon territories at the end of World War II. This time it was the Soviet Union, which had fought against the German army and so was able to dictate the terms of peace, that denied Hungary its wartime territorial acquisitions. Both as a reward to a pro-Soviet regime in Romania and as punishment against Hungary’s alliance with the Axis powers, the Soviet representatives resisted any modification of the Trianon borders and insured that Romania was awarded control over Transylvania.48 Through the Peace of Paris, Hungary was forced to accept the permanence of the Trianon borders as well as population exchanges that brought tens of thousands of ethnic Hungarians from Czechoslovakia and Romania into Hungary. Within four months of the signing of the peace treaty confirming Hungary’s second partition in February 1947, the semidemocratic coalition

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government collapsed, paving the way for the installation of a Sovietbacked communist regime in 1948. Under communism, the content and role of nationalism in Hungary again shifted. Nationalism as a project of revisionism and maintenance of class hierarchy was discredited by the Communist Party leaders as the “primary ideological enemy.”49 In contrast to the interwar period, the new domestic and external environment recast the tenuous situation of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries as a challenge to the stability of the regime. In interstate relations, the situation of the Hungarians beyond the border was treated as an internal matter of the states in which the ethnic Hungarians lived. This policy of official silence—or “programmed amnesia”50 about the discrimination and assimilation facing Hungary’s coethnics in neighboring countries— emerged from the trauma of two world wars and the desire of the postwar leadership to free Hungary from the nationalism and irredentism that had nearly destroyed the country. The Hungarians in the lost territories were seen as burdens of Hungary’s recent history; symbols of the country’s darkest moments and greatest failures of leadership and ideology. Nationalism had led only to divisive ethnocentrism and war for Hungary.51 The domination of the region by the Soviet Union also constrained Hungary’s relationship with the Hungarian minority communities during this time. The brand of socialism coming out of the Soviet Union and permeating through much of the Eastern bloc insisted on an alternative framework to nationalism through its focus on “internationalism.” Internationalist thought predicted that the spread of socialist ideology throughout the world would result in the falling away of inequality and class divisions. Eventually, ethnic and religious differences would disappear as well. Until that time, each country would be responsible for integrating its minorities into the socialist system, providing them with adequate cultural rights and negating the need for third-party intervention. For the Leninist and Stalinist thought that shaped Soviet nationalities policy in the early decades of the communist bloc, nationalism was a tool that could be used to gain support for proletarian uprisings, but ultimately was incompatible with socialism. Because of its recent history of defeat and humiliation resulting from nationalism and irredentism, the Hungarian leadership was more determined than most communist regimes in the region to embrace internationalism and to see the hold of national traditions fall away.52 The concept of patriotism turned toward socialism and loyalty to the

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Soviet Union, the ideological and military “liberator” of Hungary from the grip of German and Italian fascism. The first communist government under Mátyás Rákosi fervently upheld the internationalist ideology, moving quickly to socialize the army, change the coat of arms, and suppress a variety of national symbols.53 However, the idea of the larger transborder nation never lost its symbolic importance as a source of governing legitimacy or its potential to be used as a strategic elite resource, even within the new institutional context of communist one-party rule and the regional domination of the Soviet Union. Cross-border connections to the ethnic Hungarian communities became part of unofficial cultural and intellectual life, making them an essential resource for dissident intellectuals opposing the regime. The regional aspect of the Hungarian minority situation in communist Yugoslavia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia also made it a focus of geopolitical maneuvering, as Hungary and the other “satellite” states vied for positions of power within the Soviet sphere of influence. And, when facing challenges to the regime’s legitimacy at times of economic decline, the Communist Party leadership in Hungary tried to bolster its position in part by engaging the question of the transborder nation more forcefully, culminating in a major shift in nation policy from the late 1970s into the 1980s. The political purges in the years following Stalin’s death in 1953 first opened the door for the reemergence of nationalism, primarily as a project of liberation from foreign dominance. During the period of deStalinization—a process that intensified after Khrushchev’s speech at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956— the loosening of repression led to unrest throughout the Soviet bloc, most notoriously in Hungary, Poland, and East Germany. Notably, the discourse framing these uprisings took issue with the tight control of the Soviet Union over the states’ national economies, political lives, and cultural spheres. The search for nationally unique forms of socialism and some degree of independence from Moscow were common themes also shared by the Poznan revolt in Poland and the short-lived uprising in East Germany.54 In the case of Hungary, Imre Nagy, who was installed by the Soviets to replace Rákosi, took his mandate for reform further than the Soviet leadership had intended by ending forced collectivization, freeing political prisoners, and loosening restrictions on intellectuals and writers. Nagy embraced the goal of raising the “self-esteem of the nation” by leaving behind some of the earlier self-accusation and refusal to talk

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about the recent past. He openly admired Tito’s brand of socialism in Yugoslavia, which stressed the desire to maintain state sovereignty within the Soviet sphere of influence.55 After infighting within the Soviet leadership resulted in the ousting of Nagy’s sponsors (primarily Malenkov and Beria), Rákosi was reinstated as prime minister in March 1955 and Nagy was expelled from his position and the party for “rightist deviation.” In October 1956, supporters of a rally in Budapest demanded the return of Nagy, as well as a more substantive process of de-Stalinization that would rehabilitate Hungarian political prisoners, guarantee more intellectual freedom, remove statues of Stalin, and reinstate Hungarian national symbols and holidays. Nagy, who was a loyal Muscovite socialist and therefore a somewhat reluctant leader, attempted to control the trajectory of the revolution. Ultimately, though, he responded to demands from the demonstrating crowds by withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops, and extolling a Hungarian brand of socialism that would develop the country’s national symbols, unique culture, and economic and political autonomy. The issue of Hungary’s relationship to the post-Trianon diaspora was not a significant one during the uprising, although there was mention of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries at various demonstrations. Primarily, it was “another factor that alienated the Hungarian population from the Rákosi regime.”56 Despite promises from the United States and its allies that they would support any revolts against the Soviet Union, Hungary’s uprising went undefended and on November 4, 1956, Soviet troops invaded Budapest and eventually crushed the revolution. Demonstrating that the antagonisms of the recent past were still present, all of the neighboring states with large Hungarian minorities supported the invasion by the Soviet Union rather than risk the reemergence of an independent and “national” Hungary.57 After Soviet tanks restored order in Budapest, János Kádár was installed as leader of Hungary’s communist government. Kádár’s position was extremely tenuous. He had supported many of the goals of the revolution and had vowed to defend Hungary against any invasion by Soviet troops.58 Yet, by the force of Soviet military strength, he was charged with building a regime that would both satisfy Moscow and deter any further upheaval. In this new context, nationalism was branded as “the principle ideological threat” to Kádár’s ability to maintain order in the face of occupying Soviet troops and quash the renaissance of national sentiment that had preceded it. Not only had

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the “national” character of the 1956 uprising brought Soviet tanks to Hungary’s capital, it gave rise to fears in the neighboring countries that Hungarian irredentism was still a force to be contained. In order to quell these fears, Kádár traveled to Romania in 1958 and officially renounced any Hungarian revisionism of the post-war borders. He attempted to assure the leaders of Romania and Czechoslovakia that his government harbored no irredentist designs, and in fact was content to treat the situation of the Hungarian minorities in their countries as their own internal affair.59 This was followed by a 1959 party resolution entitled “On Bourgeois Nationalism and Socialist Patriotism,” which called for a purging of all forms of ethnocentrism in Hungarian politics and society. The official rhetoric of socialist brotherhood was a pointed contrast to the experience of the ethnic Hungarians in the neighboring countries, who suffered a reduction in their rights as punishment for supporting the events in Hungary during the uprising. Support in the ethnic Hungarians communities for the goals of the 1956 revolution was taken as a sign by the Romanian and Czechoslovak leadership that they would never willingly become loyal members of their states and relinquish their ties to Hungary. This narrative justified campaigns to constrict what little autonomy the ethnic Hungarians had enjoyed and to increase assimilationist pressures.60 The Kádár government maintained its official silence in the face of these developments. However, not long after the events of 1956, the regime sought to formulate stronger bases of support with the Hungarian people to counteract the widespread perception that it was an illegitimate regime. The Kádár regime offered a compromise in which a lack of ideological loyalty to Soviet-style communism was overlooked in return for cooperation in improving the Hungarian economy and keeping overt dissent to a minimum. The phrase that came to describe the post-1956 bargain was the famous dictum “whoever is not against us is with us.” The regime sought the “passive tolerance” of the polity by allowing freedom of movement to the West, toleration of religious practice, the publishing of some samizdat, and participation in the black market. By 1968, this policy extended to the economic sphere with the creation of the New Economic Mechanism, which aimed at increased decentralization, competition, and entrepreneurship in the economy.61 In its search for domestic legitimacy, the regime also came to tolerate, in a limited way, the return of the nation as a subject of public discourse and official Party support. For example, in 1958, the regime

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took steps to allow back into the fold some of the populist writers who had previously been criticized for their “overaccentuation” of national characteristics.62 The increased toleration of some independent press and samizdat writings by the regime as part of Kádár’s post-1956 compromise allowed a number of well-known writers and intellectuals to focus on the plight of the Hungarian diaspora communities in the region. The presence of a semitolerated dissident intelligentsia was useful to the Kádár regime in balancing demands from Moscow for resources and in maintaining stability by providing an unofficial outlet for “national” concerns. As the regime retreated somewhat from its control over the public sphere, cultural elites played an increasingly prominent role by forging ties with their counterparts across the border and keeping the issue of their mistreatment alive in public discourse. Starting in the late 1960s, these nationally oriented cultural elites presented limited public expressions of concern for the situation of the ethnic Hungarians and discussions of their literature and other cultural output, including at a Congress of the Patriotic People’s Front (PPF) in April 1968.63 This gradual openness toward nationalist expressions of public culture and scholarship did not translate easily into an open engagement with the diaspora question. The Hungarian communists understood that in order to maintain the relative successes of “Kádárization,” they would have to abide by the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union, which meant that the regime was unable to comment publicly on the situation of ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries.64 However, by the 1970s, a shift in interstate relations within the Soviet bloc put Hungary in a stronger position in relation to the former “Little Entente” states. The Soviet Union increasingly had its own crises to worry about, including involvement in conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Afghanistan, a failing economy, and increasing unrest in the Eastern bloc. The Prague Spring in 1968 forced the Soviet Union to end another rebellion in its backyard by force, and the Yugoslav and Romanian regimes were increasingly disdainful of Soviet interests, making their own alliances and independent foreign policy decisions. The tables had turned since the end of World War II, when Hungary was punished by the Soviets for fighting with the Germans and, afterward, for giving little electoral support to the Communist Party.65 Now Romania, the former “favored son,” was in a position to be isolated by Moscow, and Hungary, the ill-treated “bad” child and reluctant communist satellite, had become an obedient and willing friend.

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As Hungary’s geopolitical position shifted and the Soviet Union began to retreat from its micromanagement of the region, the communist regime took advantage of the opportunity to criticize the minority policies of Romania and Czechoslovakia. In this new geopolitical context, the Hungarian leadership could bolster its weakening legitimacy, claim some independence from a declining Soviet Union, and gain traction internationally by commenting on the neighboring communist states’ mistreatment of their minorities. This shift changed the calculus of Hungary’s diplomatic actions and the Hungarian leadership used this opportunity to engage the diaspora question in a number of ways. The first was through some cautious attempts at diplomatic advocacy on behalf of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries. The Foreign Affairs ministry became somewhat bolder in its statements criticizing the minority-rights practices of its fellow communist states and more forthright in presenting Hungary as an advocate for ethnic Hungarians in the region.66 It attempted backchannel negotiations with representatives of the Romanian and Czechoslovak regimes, but met with little success. Second, the regime looked to quell internal criticisms and present itself internationally as a model for the protection and promotion of the rights of national minorities within its borders. Beginning in 1968, Hungarian policymakers worked to revise cultural and educational policy to offer more control to minority communities, in some cases doubling or tripling the number of minority language schools.67 In 1972, Hungary’s constitution was revised to include guaranteed protections for the use of minority languages and the “preservation and practice of their own culture.”68 Facing enormous resistance to its diplomatic efforts, the Hungarian government touted the policy of “reciprocity” as its best attempt at improving the situation in the diaspora communities.69 Hungarian leaders later embarked on a modest campaign to convince the neighboring regimes that minorities should be seen not as sources of contention or potential disloyalty but as “bridges of understanding” between states. Kádár himself outlined this idea in a 1977 interview with a German newspaper, stating: “It is our desire that national minorities—in Hungary as well as in the neighboring countries—should create a bridge between countries and peoples . . . Hungarian minorities should be free to express their love and attachment to the mother country, the ancestral homeland—always within the limits of loyalty and permissibility.”70 However, these attempts at soft diplomacy were ineffective. Even bilateral discussions with Romania in 1977, which

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included discussions of the ethnic Hungarian situation, a joint communiqué praising the important role of national minorities as bridges between states and societies, and the reopening of consulates did not result in much progress.71 Only during the later decades of communism did changing domestic and international conditions spur the regime to go much farther than it had before to stake a claim as protector of the transborder nation. Most significantly, the post-1956 social contract began to fail due to the country’s staggering debt and a global recession, and fractures deepened within the Communist Party. As a result, the old-guard communists came under increasing internal pressure to reform and the younger generation of Party elites began to search for allies among the influential cultural circles of writers and intellectuals. Reformers such as Imre Pozsgay realized the potential gain to be had in emphasizing nationalist themes of “traditional culture,” the “Hungarian nation,” and “patriotism” more frequently in their public discourse.72 The internal critics of the regime eventually came to use the ethnic Hungarian issue as a way to ally with members of the dissident intelligentsia. The plight of the Hungarians beyond the border was of particular importance to the populist writers and intellectuals, which constituted one half of the long-standing division between Hungarian intellectuals, with the liberal-democratic and post-Marxist urbanists on the other side.73 Populists represented the voice of the rural, peasant, “authentic” Hungarian nation, and their writings were steeped in nostalgia for Hungary’s lost territories and greatness. Well-known populist writers and poets like Gyula Illyés, whose December 1977 article in the newspaper Magyar Nemzet was one of the first to comment, even if indirectly, on the persecution of Transylvanian Hungarians, used their moral authority to criticize events in Romania and Czechoslovakia.74 Although the populists were, at the least, ambivalent about communism, in general they had “made their peace with the regime,”75 with many of their prominent authors signing loyalty agreements that would keep them within the Party and its various semiofficial organs, such as the Writers’ Union and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The populists’ brand of dissent, focusing as it did on issues of national consciousness and the plight of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, together with their relative acceptance of the communist regime, put them in a unique position to ally with Party reformers. Their appeals on behalf of the ethnic Hungarians gained more traction with the regime as the issue became a bridge to a political and strategic understanding with

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reform-minded Communist Party elites. The reformers, in turn, looked to gain legitimacy by giving in to some of the populist demands regarding the strengthening of Hungarian national culture within and beyond the border. The alliance with the populists and increasing engagement with the ethnic Hungarian issue was beneficial in deflecting other forms of criticism against the regime. It focused opposition criticism beyond the Kádár regime to the discriminatory actions of neighboring governments and helped to keep the focus of opposition criticism away from regime change, which was increasingly becoming the focus of the liberal, urbanist dissidents. While early on, the urbanist intellectuals were seen as a small group of “clannish” and ineffectual elites, by the mid-1980s, they were considered much more of a threat to the preeminence of the Party. The Agitprop bureau had earlier “dismissed the populists as a singleissue literary lobby preoccupied with the human rights of Hungarian ethnic minorities.”76 In contrast, the “bourgeois radicals” among the urban intellectuals had numerous contacts with the West, made pointed critiques of existing socialism, gained increasing intellectual influence through samizdat, and offered open support of Solidarity in Poland and other internationally recognized dissident movements. By embracing the ethnic Hungarian issue more readily than the old guard Kádárists, the reformers were able to take advantage of the urbanist-populist division by privileging one set of nonparty actors over another, thereby undermining attempts by the intellectual opposition to come together as a unified front.77 This alliance also benefited the populists by allowing them to broaden their organizational capacity just as the transition from oneparty rule to some sort of political pluralism was beginning in earnest. By having the tacit support, and not just toleration, of influential Party elites, the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF)—the political wing of the populist opposition formed in 1987—was able to hold meetings, such as the one held at the Jurta theater on the ethnic Hungarian situation that drew a crowd of almost 800, and to organize a large demonstration on June 17, 1988, in support of Hungarian minority rights in Transylvania.78 The MDF also arranged for the publication of the English-language “Report on the Situation of the Hungarian Minority in Romania” in 1988.79 The ability of the populists to maintain credibility with the outgoing regime as well as their popular support through a long history of concern for the cross-border Hungarians carried over into the transition period. They became major players in the Roundtable

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talks of 1989 and the “negotiated revolution” away from communist control. Using the momentum from the events of the late 1980s, the MDF eventually came to lead the first post-communist government elected in 1990. While the populists maintained their position as the major nonParty voice on the diaspora issue, the urban intellectuals also began to connect the lack of ethnic Hungarian rights and the failure of the Soviet bloc countries to prevent minority-rights abuses with the nondemocratic nature of the communist regimes. Particularly as the injustices suffered by Hungarians in Ceausescu’s Romania worsened, the urbanist intellectuals dealt with minority issues in the region more frequently and openly. In the late 1980s, the ethnic Hungarian issue played an increasingly important role in all segments of the anticommunist opposition, joined by younger intellectuals who were against the oppressive policies of the neighboring governments and wanted to help publicize the human rights abuses of the communist regimes.80 In a “Program of Action in Favor of Hungarian Minorities Abroad” released by the urbanists and their political organization, the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), they criticized the regime for its failure to prevent anti-Hungarian policies and for falling into an unproductive cycle by “pursuing a short-sighted anti-Romanian foreign policy.” Finally, they argued: “Settlement of the minority issue requires democracy, broader regional integration, and closer reconciliation between nations.”81 They stressed that these conditions could only arise after a regime change that would institute a market economy, freedom of the press, speech, and travel, and the opening of physical and political borders. Driven by the increasing role played by cultural elites and opposition groups, and the regime’s search for legitimacy in the face of falling living standards, the last half of the 1980s saw a dramatic shift away from the Party’s cautious and indirect approach to the diaspora question. Those now shaping Party policy began to adopt and validate much of the populist agenda in terms of its commitment to the Hungarian diaspora issue. For example, in 1984, 19 populist intellectuals wrote a letter to the Party requesting permission to start the Gábor Bethlen Foundation (for private aid to diaspora communities), to publish a journal and a volume on the history of Transylvania, start television programming for the ethnic Hungarians across the border, and asking for a senior government position on ethnic minority affairs.82 In the end, they got everything they asked for except the government

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post. By 1985, the Hungarian Studies Center (Magyarságkutató Intezét) was established and in 1986 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences published a three-volume history of Transylvania (Erdély Törtenete), which was strongly denounced as biased and nationalistic by the Romanian regime.83 By 1987, Hungary’s foreign policy regarding the ethnic Hungarian situation also began to “emerge from the decades of silence.”84 Mátyás Szu˝rös, the Party’s foreign affairs secretary, began to clearly state Hungary’s intention to maintain a relationship with the Hungarian diaspora in the region and to admit the failures of socialist internationalism in securing minority rights. In a 1987 article, he wrote: “Hungary’s specific national interests include the maintenance of contact with Hungarians living beyond the frontiers and the representation of their interests . . . Socialism will not automatically solve this problem.”85 Then came Szu˝rös’s much-acclaimed radio interview in January 1988, in which he proclaimed: “The Hungarians living outside our borders . . . constitute part of the Hungarian nation. They have every right to expect Hungary to feel responsibility for their fate and to speak up for them when they are objects of discrimination.” A Hungarianlanguage Radio Free Europe broadcast stated at the time that Szu˝rös’s declaration “signaled a radical change in policy . . . For the first time in 40 years a clear stance was articulated by the Hungarian state in relation to the Romanian Hungarians.”86 Party elites from the reform wing discussed the limits and possibilities of what Hungary could do to affect positive change in the diaspora communities, while still refuting any border revision. The new policy was most clearly represented by the Magyar Nemzet article in February of 1988 written by Imre Szokai and Csaba Tabajdi, young and increasingly influential members of the Party’s Foreign Affairs division. In the article, entitled “Our current policy and the nationality question,” Szokai and Tabajdi left behind the previously inviolate idea that the treatment of Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries was the “internal affair” of those states, and instead characterized Hungary as the mother nation and protector of a reluctant and threatened regional diaspora, unnaturally separated from one another by shifting borders. The physical borders would be respected as the division between states, but no longer as the division between the Hungarian nation. They emphasized: “Although the Hungarians beyond the border became citizens of other countries, they didn’t break away from the nation. Even if the borders left them, the mother country did not.”87

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By March of 1989, with a positive vote by Hungary and abstentions by the Soviet Union and East Germany, the UN Commission on Human Rights voted to condemn Romania’s rights violations, making it the first time that a communist state voted against another communist state in the UN body.88 At the same time, the “guiding hand” of Moscow was retreating even more from its management of the region. The coming to power of Gorbachev and the reforms of glasnost and perestroika took away Hungary’s main external constraint, as well as its chief source of mediation in dealings with the neighboring governments. Finally, the refugee crisis brought the plight of the ethnic Hungarians across the border directly to the regime’s doorstep. Throughout 1987 and 1988 thousands of mostly ethnic Hungarian refugees—up to 20,000—crossed the border into Hungary from Romania as economic and social conditions there worsened. At first, Hungarian officials tried to stem the tide by encouraging the refugees to return home, making it possible for them—in violation of Warsaw Pact norms—to cross the border into Austria while refusing to issue residence permits. However, in the face of protests against plans to return the refugees, the Communist Party was forced to grant them asylum and provide more long-term accommodations.89 On March 17, 1988, the government voted to set up a 300 million HUF (US$60 million) resettlement fund to provide shelter, education, and health care to the refugees.90 By October 1989, Hungary had also signed an agreement with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the implementation of international aid for refugees fleeing Romania.91 The involvement of the UN in Hungary’s refugee crisis signaled the further internationalization of the Hungarian diaspora issue and shaped the increasing engagement of the Hungarian government with the coethnic communities beyond the border. The Communist Party under Miklós Németh (Kádár’s successor) also began to deal legislatively and diplomatically with the diaspora issue. The strengthened position of reformers in the Foreign Affairs Committee drove the Party to try and rectify the regime’s earlier inaction and acquire some legitimacy on the national question. Early in 1989, the Németh government created a College of National Minorities of the Council of Ministers, which oversaw both internal and external minority affairs, building in part on a previously unmet demand by the MDF populists that the regime create a cabinet post for Hungarian minority affairs.92 Then in October of 1989, the government amended the constitution through Act XXXI, which,

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among other things, had the following addition: “The Republic of Hungary bears responsibility for the fate of Hungarians living outside its borders and shall promote and foster their relations with Hungary.”93 Conclusion: Framing Post-Communist Kin-State Nationalism This brief exploration of the changing content and structure of Hungarian nationalism and the development of the cross-border relationship between Hungary and its regional diaspora provides the context for understanding how and why the transborder nation question came to play a significant role in Hungary’s post-communist political field. The traumatic redrawing of Hungary’s borders in 1920 and the revisionist authoritarianism of the interwar period forged a connection between governing legitimacy and the state’s ability to ensure the cultural survival of the Hungarian nation, now scattered among multiple states throughout the region. This connection has formed one important thread in Hungary’s post-communist politics. The dominance of right-wing politics during the interwar era has made it a touchstone for post-communist right-wing elites, who have sought to ally themselves ideologically with key figures and events from this period. During the communist regime, multiple conceptions of nationalism and legitimacy developed as the state and society was forced to deal with the legacy of irredentism, the trauma of two world wars, and the realities of Soviet control and socialist internationalism. Nationalism and direct engagement with the transborder nation was seen as a threat to stability, modernization, and economic and social progress. Yet, as domestic and international factors came together to push the regime toward a more interventionist diaspora policy beginning in the late 1970s, the perception of the diaspora issue by state elites gradually shifted from a liability to an essential marker of cultural survival and political legitimacy. As this perception shifted, the discourse and debates around the diaspora served as conduits for the further liberalization of politics, helping to erode the political and ideological monopoly of the Communist Party. This shift by political elites was supported by the positions of an increasingly influential and organized intellectual opposition. On the right, populist intellectuals defended an organic conception of the nation, understanding the nation as a body, artificially separated by borders. As one populist writer explained: “We must realize that the nation breathes together, and if any part of

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it is in trouble, it affects the whole, which develops a fever from it.”94 On the left, there was pressure to bring the plight of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries before the international public as a symbol of the lack of human and minority-rights protection in the communist world. Structurally, the populist-reform communist alliance around nationalist themes played an important role in strengthening the reform wing, which was then able to bring the Communist Party to the table during the negotiated transition away from one-party rule and ensured that they would be able to reconstitute themselves as a viable post-communist political party. Through this alliance, the reform communists gained additional political legitimacy and the dissidents increased capacity to organize. With the support of reformers within the Communist regime, the conservative populist opposition organized under the MDF was able to be publicly visible without fear of persecution. The ethnic Hungarian issue, therefore, played an important strategic role in determining which groups would benefit more from the opening of the political system after 1989. Given the events and strategic environment present in the last decades of communism, we can see why transborder nationalism emerged as one potential source of legitimacy and political organization after 1989. The new context of competitive party politics allowed for the increasing politicization of the diaspora issue within Hungary as a marker of ideological strength and influence beyond the state’s physical borders. However, concern for the ethnic Hungarians across the border as part of a package of nationalist politics would prove to be a difficult theme around which to build sustained political mobilization. The opening up of political competition constrained more extremist diaspora policies in the early 1990s by subjecting them to broad-based elite consensus and debate. Other forms of governing legitimacy also emerged as viable during the difficult transition to democracy and a capitalist economy. In addition, the push to commit resources and focus policy on members of the cultural community who were separate from the political community created a backlash against the project of transborder nationalism. As often happens when a state attempts to more deeply integrate diaspora communities into the scope of its sovereignty, the “stakeholders” of the political community may resist tying their political and economic fortunes to members of other political communities, regardless of the cultural or linguistic ties they share.

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Regional governments may forcefully resist the infringement on their sovereignty. And those beyond the border also have political agency and interests, which may conflict with the nationalist projects of homeland state elites in important ways. Therefore, while diaspora politics offers unique benefits in terms of deflecting criticism and narrowing the space for dissent, the narrative that emerges in the following chapters also demonstrates the risks of engaging populations abroad and the variables that constrain the ability of kin-state nationalism to succeed as a political project.

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CHAPTER 3

Kin-State Nationalism, Diaspora Politics, and Political Competition

A

fter Hungary began its transition to democracy in 1989, domestic political actors attempted to utilize the ethnic diaspora issue as a political resource. Two center-right parties in particular, MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum) and Fidesz (Federation of Young Democrats), promoted the protection and maintenance of the transborder nation as one of the central issues driving their policy orientation, partybuilding strategies, and coalitional choices. Yet, whereas the MDF’s use of kin-state nationalism ended in devastating defeat for the party in 1994, Fidesz was able to maneuver into position as the vanguard of the political right in Hungary by 1998 in part by embracing the ethnic diaspora issue. This chapter seeks to explain why kin-state politics became more politicized and seemingly more salient as a mobilizational resource as Hungary’s democratic politics moved closer to consolidation and the process of EU integration. The emergence of the ethnic diaspora issue as a central component of Hungary’s new democratic politics after 1989 was not the result of a postcommunist resurgence of nationalism, but was tied to the specific context of Hungary’s transition and the reorganization of politics throughout the region. In the early 1990s, Hungary faced the challenges of a transition to democracy, a market economy, and a sovereign and independent foreign policy brought about by the end of Communist Party rule and Soviet dominance in the region. These new conditions had a significant impact on Hungary’s policies toward the ethnic Hungarian communities in the neighboring countries. For the first time since the creation of the crossborder Hungarian diaspora in 1920, the parameters of Hungary’s relationship to the ethnic Hungarian communities were subject to democratic debate and the vagaries of party politics.

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The victory of the populist, center-right MDF in the first free parliamentary elections in 1990 ensured that the plight of the ethnic Hungarian communities would be an ideologically charged, highpriority issue for the new government. The MDF used nationalist rhetoric, and particularly a strong stance on the ethnic diaspora issue, to hold together its center-right coalition government and deflect criticism from opposition parties. However, despite the government’s invocation of kin-state nationalism, democratic politics served to moderate Hungary’s kin-state politics during the early years of transition. Competitive politics in Hungary opened up space for various political interests to present alternative visions for how they could best improve their coethnics’ quality of life without sacrificing the gains of Hungary’s economic and political transition. This debate served to undermine the ideological ownership of the diaspora issue by right-wing elites in Hungary. Partly as a result of the MDF’s overreliance on symbolic politics, its public support fell dramatically, and the governing party made a poor showing in the 1994 parliamentary elections. In the aftermath of the MDF’s collapse, Fidesz, a party which had barely made it over the 5 percent parliamentary threshold in 1994, began to reframe the ethnic-kin question as central to fundamental political debates within Hungary and utilized the issue as a critical ideological and organizational resource. Fidesz was able to succeed where MDF had failed because the party connected diaspora politics to other domestic political cleavages and to a discourse that portrayed Hungary’s relationship with the diaspora communities as a resource, not a burden, for the country. In addition, Fidesz had the opportunity to undergo a political learning process that allowed the party to make beneficially strategic decisions in an evolving institutional environment. Changes in Hungary’s political cleavage structure, the nature of party competition, and the emerging bipolarity of the party system by the mid-to-late 1990s provided Fidesz with a political environment that was conducive to a party-building strategy supported by this new brand of kin-state nationalism. Using this strategy, Fidesz was able to rebuild the rightwing bloc in Hungary and gain control of the government after the 1998 elections. The surprising lesson of the story told here is not that appeals to kin-state nationalism and ethnic group affiliation emerged as the basis for political organization and legitimation, but that the strength and longevity of such appeals proved to be fairly weak in the face of postcommunist political and economic transformation. Competitive politics

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Nationalism, Diaspora Politics, and Competition

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provided incentives for the politicization of the ethnic diaspora issue, yet also constrained more radical forms of kin-state nationalism. Engaging in ethnic outbidding through politicizing diaspora policy could only succeed under optimal conditions of well-played decisions by political actors, and even those successes proved to be fleeting in the end: Fidesz and the refashioned right-wing bloc emerged victorious in the 1998 elections, but was unable to sustain its political dominance into the second decade of Hungary’s democratic transition. Domestic Politics and Diaspora Policy in the Early 1990s Hungary’s democratic elections in March 1990 came out of a relatively staid negotiated transition from one-party dominance, differing significantly from Romania’s violent clashes, Czechoslovakia’s popular Velvet Revolution, or Poland’s labor-driven Solidarity movement. Once the internal fighting within the Communist Party ended and the ascendancy of the reformers began in earnest, the collapse of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) proceeded rapidly and decisively in the first half of 1989. The outspoken commentaries in previous years by highprofile reform communists on the fate of ethnic Hungarians, the need for political reform, and the increasingly dire economic situation set the stage for a nonviolent decentralization of power. As part of this sea change, in February of 1989, the Party officially characterized the 1956 “counterrevolution” as a “popular uprising” for the first time, undermining the Party’s long-standing narrative that the violent crushing of the revolution and the imposition of the Kádár regime were justified and necessary. On April 12, 1989, Kádár appeared for the last time before the Central Committee, and three weeks later, he was stripped of his largely ceremonial position as Communist Party president. In June of 1989 the Communist Party entered into roundtable negotiations with the opposition groups, represented primarily by the MDF, the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and Fidesz. Tripartite talks among the Communist Party, the parties and organizations of the opposition, and a number of designated policy lobbies and social groups began on June 13, 1989, and ended with an agreement on September 18, 1989. Free parliamentary elections in Hungary were then held on March 25, 1990, followed by a second round on April 8, 1990. Benefiting from their visibility during the Roundtable process, the MDF and SZDSZ received the most votes in the first round: 24.71 percent and 21.38 percent, respectively. The second round delivered a victory

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for the MDF (41.2 percent), which was able to form a center-right government in coalition with the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) and the Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKGP). The results of the election attested to the MDF’s high profile during the transition period and its promise of a moderate approach to governance, signified by the party’s campaign slogan “Calm Force.” The figure of party leader József Antall, whose conservative and statesmen-like bearing projected stability, strengthened this image.1 Hungary’s negotiated transition resulted in fairly well-developed party organizations emerging in the early 1990s. The translation of the populist-urbanist divide into democratic politics enabled the Hungarian party system to quickly coalesce around liberal and conservative poles, initially represented by the SZDSZ and the MDF. The two former dissident groups were familiar with each other and worked to form a governing pact, which was meant to ensure governability despite the MDF coalition’s slim parliamentary majority. As part of the pact, SZDSZ agreed to a strong cabinet government and in return was allowed to nominate one of its own for the presidency (Arpád Göncz) and for deputy speaker of parliament. In addition, the Communist Party did not collapse or reconstitute itself as a nationalist party, as happened in Romania and Serbia.2 Instead, the MSZMP rapidly reformed itself into the center-left Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), and became an important part of the opposition bloc between 1990 and 1994. Within this broader political context, the uncertain situation of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries emerged as an area of concern for both the general public and policymakers across all political parties. The end of communist control brought instability to the region, particularly in multinational states, where territorially concentrated and institutionally organized ethnic groups vied to maintain or improve their positions within this new environment. Particularly in the first years of transition, the situation of national minority groups in these states worsened as nationalizing elites used exclusionary policies to define their power base and economic crises exacerbated interethnic tensions.3 In March 1990, hopes for improvement in the situation of the Romanian Hungarians were lessened after interethnic clashes in mixed areas such as Târgu-Mures¸. On March 20, only five days before Hungary’s elections, a rally of 50,000 people was held in support of the Hungarian minority in Romania after news of the clashes and the sacking of the regional headquarters of the main Hungarian political organization, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ)

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became public.4 Elsewhere, majority and minority groups had to renegotiate the parameters of accommodation within the context of independence gained after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ukraine became an independent state, and the Czecho-Slovak federation dissolved peacefully at the beginning of 1993, creating two independent states. While there were many instances of interethnic cooperation in these new and nationalizing states, controversies over restricting bilingual signage and minority language education in areas with significant Hungarian communities spurred the Hungarian minority leadership to publicly reach out to Hungary for assistance.5 In the most extreme case of former Yugoslavia, the dissolution of a multinational state led to war, ethnic cleansing, and the very real concern that Hungary’s coethnics in the Vojvodina province of northern Serbia were in serious jeopardy. Even before the war, ethnic Hungarian leaders in Serbia feared that their minority population was too geographically dispersed, lacked a strong intelligentsia, and had been assimilating at an unacceptably high rate.6 Once Serbia was at war with newly independent Croatia in 1991, Hungarian leaders worried about the safety of the community. The rolling back of cultural and linguistic autonomy in other parts of Serbia, such as Kosovo, the ethnic fighting escalating in BosniaHerzegovina, and the interventionist justifications for Serbia’s incursions into independent Croatia made the ethnic Hungarians’ situation increasingly tenuous. In addition, Hungarian leaders feared that the war and the threat of being forcibly drafted into the military conflict would rapidly accelerate the demographic decline of the traditionally Hungarian regions of former Yugoslavia. Speaking before the United Nations (UN) in October 1991, Prime Minister Antall stated that Hungary was Table 3.1 Ethnic Hungarian population in four surrounding countries (percentage of total population; voluntary declaration based on census data) Out of total population Slovakia Ukraine Romania Serbia

1989–1991

10.7 0.4 7.1 4.4

2001–2002

9.7 0.3 6.7 3.9

In areas of ethnic concentration

1989–1991

2001–2002

Southern districts Transcarpathia Transylvania Vojvodina

20.2 12.5 20.8 16.9

18.6 12.1 19.6 14.3

Sources: Károly Kocsis, “Changing Ethnic Patterns in the Carpatho-Pannonian Region, 1989–2002” Minorities Research 7 (2005), http://epa.oszk.hu/00400/00463/00007/pdf/008_kocsis.pdf; Government of Hungary, Office of the Prime Minister, Department of Nation Policy Matters, Jelentés a külhoni magyarság helyzetéro˝l (Budapest: 2008), http://www.nemzetpolitika.gov.hu.

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watching the tragedy in Yugoslavia “with special concern for the half million Hungarians there” and with trepidation about adding to the existing 30,000 refugees that Hungary had absorbed since the late 1980s.7 The struggles facing the ethnic Hungarian communities were widely reported in the Hungarian media. As a result, official concern for the fate of the ethnic Hungarians mirrored public opinion, which demonstrated a relatively positive reaction to ethnic Hungarians from neighboring countries, even as the refugee issue raised fears of an unsustainable influx of migrants from those communities. Of those polled in 1989 and early 1990, 85 percent agreed that Hungary should assist coethnics in neighboring states because “they need our help” and 70 percent agreed because “they increase feelings of Hungarianness.” Only 12 percent felt that the ethnic Hungarians across the border were “not real Hungarians.”8 In addition, 78.34 percent of respondents in a survey conducted after the 1990 elections indicated that whether or not a party “represents the best interests of magyarság [all Hungarians]” influenced their party vote.9 The dangers faced by the ethnic Hungarian communities and the public attention to them prompted the parties to call for government action to address threats to the diaspora’s cultural survival, and by extension, threats to regional stability. In these early years of the transition, there was a good deal of moderation and policy consensus among both government and opposition party elites regarding the state’s “responsibility for the fate of ethnic Hungarians.” All six of the parties elected to parliament in 1990 agreed that Hungary should move decisively beyond the failed policies of the communist regime by actively helping the ethnic Hungarian minorities to fight assimilation and discrimination. For example, a parliamentary declaration dated May 24, 1990, connected the solving of the minority-rights question to the viability of peace and democracy in the region and was widely supported by all the major political parties. This demonstrated that “every party, or nearly every party in this country regards [the Hungarian national minorities living in neighboring countries] as a fundamental issue.”10 The parliamentary parties also supported the creation of official institutions that would promote and maintain social and cultural ties with the diaspora communities. These included Duna TV, a special station dedicated to broadcasting in Hungarian diaspora communities established by governmental resolution in October of 1992,11 and the Government Office of Hungarian Minorities Abroad (HTMH), which replaced the Secretariat

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for Hungarian Minority Affairs in May of 1992.12 Two publicly funded foundations, the Illyés Foundation and the László Teleki Foundation, were also created during this time. The Illyés Foundation was one of the first major clearinghouses for educational, cultural, and entrepreneurial grants to the ethnic Hungarian communities and the Teleki Foundation was created to oversee academic research and information gathering on the regional diaspora. While there was some tension surrounding Prime Minister Antall’s patronage in staffing these institutions, their goals and mandates were widely supported. Delegates from the liberal and conservative sides offered similar proscriptions for what legal guarantees the ethnic Hungarians needed to prosper in their “native” land or “homeland” (a szülőföldön), meaning in their states of residence. They agreed that the ethnic Hungarian communities required some guarantees of autonomous decision-making, particularly over their cultural and educational lives. At his first international press conference, Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky stated: “[O]f essential importance is the protection and development of the identity of the national minorities, legal guarantees of their collective and individual rights . . . and the satisfying of claims in the areas of mother-tongue usage, education, cultural life, religious practice, and media.”13 Representatives of the major opposition parties agreed that guarantees of cultural and linguistic rights, as well as some version of cultural autonomy in the diaspora communities, should be actively promoted, but emphasized that they could not support any form of autonomy that would lead to the changing of borders.14 Policymakers were also in agreement on the idea that the ethnic Hungarians should remain within their existing territorial boundaries, rather than become permanent refugees or automatic citizens of Hungary. The final point of consensus was that diplomatic advocacy and integration into regional organizations were the most important avenues through which Hungary could achieve its goals of improving conditions for the regional diaspora communities and making state borders more permeable. In a 1991 speech at the UN, Prime Minister Antall laid out Hungary’s commitment to “active protection” of minority rights, which he hoped to support and justify by the development of more stringent language and enforcement mechanisms in international agreements. Antall argued that the Western world “was not prepared for the wave of secession in post-communist Europe” and did not have solutions to the new problems that arose in the region. The only solution was a “common international commitment to the active protection” of

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minority rights, which included an accounting of violations of minority rights “no matter in which state the violation occurs.”15 Policymakers also agreed that the state’s ability to help its coethnics would be strengthened once Hungary was more closely integrated into existing supranational and regional organizations, particularly NATO and the EU, which would significantly bolster its foreign policy clout. While the possibility of EU membership was only in its earliest stages, policymakers began to talk more about conforming national minority policy to the “European system of norms being created” in the hopes of furthering the accession process.16 The Politicization of Diaspora Policy Despite this early consensus and general agreement on many of the basic principles behind Hungary’s evolving diaspora policy, political discourse became increasingly dominated by symbolic politics and invocations of kin-state nationalism as the MDF and its coalition partners struggled to meet the challenges of governance and party consolidation. The MDFled government faced the difficult tasks of reforming Hungary’s economy, developing a free press and other institutions of democratic society, and navigating Hungary’s newly sovereign foreign policy through regional upheaval and Western integration. By most accounts, the MDF government was ill prepared to deal with many of these challenges. The MDF was an inexperienced party led by writers and historians; a “heterogeneous, democratizing populist movement, which had only an extraordinarily fuzzy conception about the functioning of a consolidated democracy.”17 While Hungary’s economic situation was better off in some ways than that of its neighbors to the east, the country had experienced a significant drop in its standard of living. Between 1989 and 1992, Hungary’s GDP declined by 18 percent, its standard of living fell by about 10 percent, inflation rose to 35 percent by 1991 and unemployment to 8 percent, and it had the highest per capita external debt in East Central Europe. The MDF’s commitment to creating a “Christian Hungarian middle class,” the pro-agriculturalist agenda of its Smallholders’ coalition partners, and its inexperience in governance made it reluctant to fully embrace privatization of the economy and its opening up to foreign investment.18 As opposition criticism of MDF policies grew stronger, the governing coalition responded by turning to nationalist rhetoric and attempting to further politicize and claim ideological ownership of the diaspora issue.

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The MDF’s nationalism focused on the resurrection of an idealized vision of a Christian, national Hungary, which was supported by a strong middle class, moral values, and a sense of destiny and “historical continuity” for the Hungarian nation. For the MDF, historical continuity meant looking back to the pre–communist era, particularly to the prosperous fin de siecle days of the Austro-Hungarian empire and to the semiauthoritarian interwar period, when Hungary’s sense of identity was supposedly stronger.19 The end of the communist regime presented an opportunity to reclaim some of that lost pride and feeling of national belonging, particularly as the seventieth anniversary of Trianon fell right at the beginning of Antall’s tenure as prime minister, prompting speeches and a parliamentary declaration signed by all parties.20 Significantly, Antall chose the Trianon anniversary to make the controversial statement that “in spirit, I consider myself to be the prime minister of 15 million Hungarians,” a figure that included the ten million Hungarians in Hungary as well as those who were citizens of the neighboring states.21 MDF leaders also called for the restoration of Trianon memorials, such as the “Irredenta statue,”22 and the rehabilitation of controversial interwar figures, such as Admiral Horthy. In 1993, Antall led a successful campaign to have Horthy’s body moved from a cemetery in Portugal and reburied in Budapest. Critics argued that Horthy represented the apex of Hungarian irredentism and the disastrous nationalism that led to the country’s involvement in World War II. Antall, however, countered that Horthy was “a Hungarian patriot” who wished to be buried on Hungarian soil.23 The Forum’s appeal to kin-state nationalism came not only from the populists’ deeply felt commitment to the ethnic Hungarian issue but also played an important strategic role for the party. The MDF’s history of commitment to the plight of the ethnic Hungarians was certainly an advantage in ensuring its electoral victory and support in the early years of its administration. The MDF gained recognition from its organizing efforts on behalf of those beyond the border in the 1980s and the issue helped to define the movement and later the party’s character and ideological orientation. As the head of the governing coalition, MDF elites saw control over the evolving relationship with the ethnic Hungarians abroad as a means for defining domestic political debates about postcommunist Hungary’s identity and role in the region. The Forum attempted to generate ideological and organizational strength and to discredit its critics with its position on questions of the nation and the coethnics in neighboring countries. For example, MDF leaders suggested that the liberal SZDSZ was not “national” enough or sufficiently

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concerned with the fate of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries. The SZDSZ was forced to defend itself against accusations that it was “unnational” (nemzetietlen), “antinational” (nemzetellenes), and “cosmopolitan,” the latter often a catchword for inauthentically Hungarian and/or Jewish.24 The Antall administration also attempted to utilize the new structures being created for cross-border support and diaspora advocacy to stake the MDF’s claim as the party most committed to the larger, transborder nation. The MDF used meetings of the global Hungarian diaspora organization, the World Federation of Hungarians (MVSZ), to solidify support for the MDF’s agenda. Prime Minister Antall was invited to give a keynote speech at the August 1992 MVSZ meeting in Budapest, where he enthusiastically embraced his role as the prime minister of all Hungarians.25 In contrast, the SZDSZ was criticized for not attending the gathering as an organized party. The well-known populist writer Sándor Csoóri was the president of the MVSZ at that time, and gave strong support to the Antall administration. New institutions created to support the ethnic Hungarian communities, such as the HTMH and Duna Television, further bolstered Antall’s position. Soon after the MVSZ congress, Csoóri was appointed the first president of the board of Duna Television. The HTMH became a gateway for favored members of the regional diaspora to come to Budapest, where they could more directly influence Hungarian policy.26 While the HTMH lacked an independent budget, it was responsible for a number of crucial functions in the formation of diaspora policy, including maintaining and coordinating contacts with the ethnic Hungarian communities, policy analysis, generating reports, defining priorities, and providing parliamentary committees with information. The Forum also renewed and strengthened ties with like-minded elites across the border in the ethnic Hungarian communities, using these cross-border ties to help shape policy and ideological debates on both sides of the border. Political and financial support for ethnic Hungarian political parties offered Hungarian state elites additional resources in consolidating their ideological power base. By supporting diaspora elites who shared its policy goals and ideological bent, the MDF helped to create a sympathetic clientele across the border and ensured that “the leadership of the minority organizations remained largely conservative.”27 In addition, endorsements and statements of criticism or support from diaspora leaders received wide coverage in the Hungarian state media. For example, Bishop László Tőkés, the honorary

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chairman of the RMDSZ, published an open letter in Hungary’s largest daily newspaper right before the 1994 parliamentary election criticizing the MSZP candidate Gyula Horn for his comments on diaspora policy and lauding the MDF’s record.28 The MDF supported diaspora leaders who had previous connections with the populist movement and took a harder stance on bilateral negotiations with neighboring governments and guarantees of minority rights and autonomy.29 Transborder political support included financial subsidies to political parties and their cultural organizations, coordination of political activities, and assistance with electoral strategy. In Slovakia, for example, it was widely reported that intervention from Budapest influenced the decision of the three major Slovak Hungarian parties to enter Slovakia’s 1994 elections as a coalition, helping the ethnic Hungarians to gain significant parliamentary representation for the first time.30 The importance of the ethnic Hungarian issue for the governing party was also reflected in the government’s foreign policy decisions. Prime Minister Antall and his foreign policy team consistently tied progress in diplomatic relations to specific minority-rights guarantees that would benefit the Hungarian diaspora. The two goals would proceed together, or not at all. Hungary’s position was made clear by Foreign Affairs Minister Géza Jeszenszky when he stated in 1990: “In regard to the development of bilateral relations, the decisive issue—if not the issue of sole significance—is the situation of the national minorities.”31 In this vein, members of the Antall government consistently linked Hungary’s commitment to renouncing border aggression to neighboring states’ policies toward their Hungarian minorities. For example, Antall stated in a 1992 speech that “the renunciation of aggressive methods of changing borders means that we expect guarantees that Hungarians, as a minority and from a human rights point of view, are treated well in those territories.”32 Statements such as this allowed critics and outside observers to plausibly see the Antall government as holding open the possibility for forceful intervention on behalf of the ethnic Hungarians. The conditions MDF leaders placed on the renunciation of revisionist intentions, together with the nationalist stances of Hungary’s counterparts in Romania and Slovakia, essentially assured that the treaty processes with Romania and Slovakia would not progress while they were in office. Also problematic were the government’s imprudent comments on the potential malleability of the post-war borders. As early as August 1990, Antall described the new states created after World War I as “artificial political formations” and Foreign

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Minister Jeszenszky discussed the possibility of revisiting the border settlements enshrined in the Trianon and Paris peace treaties.33 During the wave of secessionist and independence movements throughout the region and in light of German reunification—which had erased one major component of the post–World War II border settlement—this seemed like a faintly plausible scenario. Also controversial were Antall’s remarks in July 1991 that the Trianon and Paris peace treaties only regulated the borders of a unified federal Yugoslavia: The peace treaties do not automatically regard the territory of the Vojvodina as a part of Serbia. Should a new entity or new entities of international law emerge during the settlement of Yugoslavia’s internal crisis, it would become necessary to settle the territorial issues of the Vojvodina within the current boundaries of Yugoslavia, in the spirit of the Helsinki Final Act.34

Hungary also attempted to use its new membership in European and other Western organizations to pressure Romania and Slovakia into allowing more rights and opportunities for the ethnic Hungarians. In 1993, Hungary argued that Slovakia’s admission into the Council of Europe, which Hungary had been a member of since 1990, should be postponed until Slovakia took “reassuring steps” toward meeting the demands of the state’s Hungarian community.35 Similarly, Hungary had rejected Romania’s request to join the Central European Free Trade Area (CEFTA) and abstained on the vote for Romania’s Council of Europe membership.36 Members of the Antall government also implied that Romania and Slovakia would have a difficult time becoming members of NATO unless they satisfied Hungarian demands on the minorityrights issue.37 While Hungary’s attempts to use its position as an early member of these organizations to influence the minority policies of the neighboring states was a legitimate use of diplomatic leverage, Hungary’s position was not strong enough to push an uncomfortable agenda of collective rights and minority autonomy onto its European partners at a time when stability and border agreements were Europe’s main priorities. In addition, as Vachudova has argued, the opportunity for membership into these organizations and the path to accession was not yet concrete enough to result in reforms that would force politicians in countries such as Slovakia and Romania to give up their rent-seeking and minoritybaiting behavior.38 Therefore, Hungary’s efforts were largely fruitless beyond creating additional tensions with the neighboring governments.

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The Failure of Kin-State Nationalism The MDF’s political strategy and invocation of kin-state nationalism ultimately had little impact, and did not lead to the hardening of nationalist politics during the early years of Hungary’s transition. Instead, the MDF’s strong engagement with diaspora politics and its reliance on cultural and historical symbolism provoked a backlash that cost the party its position as the head of the governing party and the political Right in Hungary. The process of democratization in Hungary proved to be a moderating, rather than destabilizing, force in the face of elite invocations of nationalism. The rapid formation of well-developed party organizations created an environment out of which relatively robust political competition could emerge. In addition, the MDF failed to build a broad base of support for its conception of national priorities, and to tie the diaspora issue to other economic, social, and regional issues that voters considered important. This presented the opposition parties with an opportunity to negatively frame the government’s investment in the diaspora issue. The best defense that parties such as SZDSZ and MSZP had against the politicization of diaspora policy was to make the debate as substantive as possible. The SZDSZ and MSZP took advantage of the upcoming 1994 parliamentary elections to show that they could offer an approach to the diaspora question that would help the ethnic Hungarians without jeopardizing Hungary’s other economic and political interests. The opposition parties played upon the fear of instability that the MDF’s rhetoric had created. As one of the more economically and politically advanced transition countries, Hungary was considered a top candidate for membership in NATO and the EU. Spokespeople for these organizations gave fairly clear signals that Hungary needed to clear up its relations with neighboring states in order to be accepted. Irredentist policies or an influx of ethnic Hungarian refugees would have jeopardized Hungary’s prospects for economic recovery as well as its membership in supranational organizations.39 Opposition parties made the argument that MDF’s nationalist foreign policy would cause Hungary to lose the relative stability it had gained through the transition process. Opposition leaders also expressed concern that the government’s foreign policy stance and interference via informal cross-border political networks was ultimately harmful to the social and political integration of the ethnic Hungarian communities in their states of residence.40

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One SZDSZ representative outlined the difference between his party and the MDF on this question: Naturally, in many essential questions we don’t agree with the policy of the government regarding the external Hungarians. The government’s policy which declares that our relations with neighboring countries must be subsumed to the principles of the treatment of minorities was unfortunate . . . To completely restrict relations to this area is not useful! In addition, it creates counterproductive backlashes.41

In referring to “backlashes,” Szent-Iványi was making the often-heard argument that an overly aggressive foreign policy served only to strengthen the hand of anti-Hungarian nationalists in the neighboring countries and to weaken the position of democratic forces. This was a serious concern: as a consequence of the political support and clientbuilding coming from Hungary, the winners and losers in political struggles within ethnic Hungarian communities became more determined by the configuration of power in Budapest. Cross-border clientelism had the potential to radicalize demands for autonomy and limit the ability of ethnic Hungarian political parties to work toward political accommodation in their own states.42 In Romania, the RMDSZ was able to win 7.2 percent of the parliamentary vote in 1990, which gave the Hungarians 29 parliamentary deputies and 12 senators.43 This fairly impressive showing demonstrated that the ethnic Hungarian vote could be a valuable asset in forming an opposition coalition to challenge the entrenched position of Ion Iliescu, a former member of Ceaucescu’s government. Hungary’s direct or indirect influence over political outcomes, however, heightened largely baseless fears over the loyalties of the ethnic Hungarians and added to interethnic tensions. Ethnic Hungarian organizations that relied too heavily on patronage from Budapest also suffered their own internal rifts and faced the possibility that their stature would diminish if a new government came to power in Hungary. As one observer noted, “Antall’s favoritism . . . led to splits and scandals in the minority movements, especially over money.”44 Some of these splits included a rift in the Ukrainian Hungarian Cultural Federation in Transcarpathia (KMKSZ) between an MDF-supported candidate and a local candidate for election and accusations of corruption within the RMDSZ.45 The MDF also suffered from an increasing lack of unity, which seemed to distract the party from its stewardship of Hungary’s

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political and economic transition and brought increasing domestic and international criticism of the government. For example, the Antall government had to reign in members of its own party as it sought to normalize relations with Ukraine. In preparation for the creation of a bilateral treaty with Hungary, the Ukraine government agreed to general language that would satisfy many of the Hungarian government’s demands for the diaspora. However, in Hungary, the ratification process for the treaty met with difficulty. Some right-wing members of parliament objected that Ukraine’s willingness to provide guarantees on administrative and cultural autonomy for the ethnic Hungarians was contingent on Hungary renouncing any claims to border revisions on Ukrainian territory.46 Ultimately, Antall could only push the treaty through parliament with the support of the opposition parties.47 Antall’s leadership within the party was then challenged by the antiSemitic and exclusionary nationalist wing of the MDF, represented by István Csurka. Csurka had been a populist writer and opposition member, and was now the most vocal member of the extreme right wing of the party. Csurka began to challenge Antall’s leadership of the government, most famously in his 1992 pamphlet “Some thoughts on the first two years of the regime change and the MDF’s new program.”48 In it, Csurka criticized the MDF leadership for working with the SZDSZ because they represented the “hegemony of Hungarian Jewry” in Hungarian political and intellectual life, and referred to the possible emergence of border revision and a new Hungarian Lebensraum [élettér] in the region. Regional and international observers reacted strongly to the expansionist and anti-Semitic tone of the pamphlet. The U.S. Representative Tom Lantos (of Hungarian origin) visited Budapest soon after Csurka’s pamphlet was published and warned that “if Csurka’s ideas come to prevail among Hungary’s leading politicians, its relationship with the United States may see dramatic changes with adverse effects on several fields of life from tourism to investment.”49 Lantos’ trip was then followed by an open session in the U.S. Congress to discuss the pamphlet and its consequences for Hungarian-U.S. relations. The Csurka rift was a major topic of the January 1993 MDF party congress, during which Antall managed to maintain his leadership. Afterward, Antall sought to downplay the differences with Csurka after the congress, hinting at a possible reconciliation between the factions.50 The opposition latched on to this development, criticizing the Antall government for accommodating the extremists “for the sake of political stability.”51 Csurka eventually

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broke off to create his own far-right party, the Hungarian Truth and Life Party (MIÉP). The combination of the government’s reliance on symbolic politics, the opposition’s growing criticisms, and the high-profile negative publicity brought by extremist elements close to the governing party resulted in falling approval ratings for the MDF. The government’s focus on coethnics who were not citizens of Hungary began to alienate many domestic constituents, who would have preferred to see that concern turned inward to Hungary’s own economic and social problems. As the campaign for the 1994 parliamentary elections began in earnest, public opinion in Hungary increasingly rebelled against the MDF’s symbolic politics, and particularly against the privileging of the diaspora situation over other more pressing issues. Polling data demonstrated that while the MDF was considered the party most likely “to improve the situation of ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries,” the government’s overall support had deteriorated significantly, as had public support for an intense engagement with the diaspora issue.52 In April 1994, immediately before the elections, Antall’s positive job performance was only at 38.6 percent, with 61.5 percent of those polled characterizing his government’s performance as weak or very weak.53 Of the electorate surveyed, 75 percent felt that the economic situation was “very unfavorable” to their family, 65 percent agreed that nationalism endangered the development of the country, and only 40.5 percent thought Hungary should seek “peaceful reunification” with its lost territories. Only 48.9 percent felt that the goal of improving the situation of ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries was personally important to them.54 As Table 3.2 shows, positive assessments in Hungary of the ethnic Hungarians from the neighboring countries fell consistently between 1989 and 1993, while negative assessments increased.55 Also reflecting the increasing ambivalence about ethnic Hungarians from the region, in a 1995 cross-country study Hungary had one of the lowest percentages of people agreeing that “co-nationals” should get citizenship more easily than other foreigners.56 The eventual defeat of the MDF government and the electoral success of a left-wing coalition led by the MSZP in 1994 clearly demonstrated the limits of kin-state nationalism as a political project during the transition. Before the election, the MSZP was seen as the least likely to “strengthen national feelings” and only 10.7 percent thought the Socialists were likely to improve the situation of ethnic Hungarians abroad.57 Yet, the MSZP was considered the party most likely to “lessen

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Table 3.2 Attitudes toward Hungarians beyond the border (percentage of respondents agreeing with statement: “Hungarians beyond the border . . .”) Positive Need our help Strengthen national feelings Help with population decrease

1989

1993

1999

85 68 38

67 32 24

38 23 21

32 26 12

41 52 25

43 50 22

Negative Are traitors Take our jobs Are not real Hungarians

Source: Sik and Simonovits, “Jelentés az MTA Kisebbségkutató Intézet Nemzetközi Migráció és Menekültügyi Kutatások Központja által készített közvelemény-kutatássorozat három hullámának eredményeiro˝l.”

Table 3.3

Attitudes toward diaspora policy and border revision, May 1994

Nationalism threatens development Govt. should pay more attention to those in Hungary than beyond border Discussing border revision leads to war Hungary should pursue peaceful reunification of former territories Developments in neighboring countries justify peaceful border revision Hungary should act to regain former territories Changing current borders desirable

Agree

Disagree

70.2 87.5

29.9 12.5

88.5 39.6 19.8 19.0 24.6

11.6 60.4 80.2 81.0 75.4

Source: H. D. Klingemann and Gábor Tóka, “1994 Hungarian Election—Post-Election Study 1994” (codebook, Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung, University of Cologne, ZA Study 3057), http://www. gesis.org/.

the economic burdens of transition” and to “reduce unemployment.” On all three issues that potential voters ranked as the most important problems facing the country—unemployment (39.7 percent), the general economic situation (24.3 percent), and standard of living and social policy (11.9 percent)—the MSZP was perceived to be the most effective party.58 Given the results of the election, in which the MDF only won 11.74 percent of the vote, we can conclude that the voters did not consider diaspora policy and the politics of the nation to be crucial issues at that time. Hungary had a potentially viable postcommunist economy which desperately needed reform and an electorate that had previously enjoyed a fairly high standard of living and was

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increasingly concerned about the economic future. The Antall government had failed to draw attention away from the country’s lack of economic progress with its use of symbolic politics and its focus on foreign policy. The death of the prime minister on December 12, 1993, due to a long-term illness reinforced the image of the party as unfit to deal with the immediate economic and social problems facing the country. Tellingly, much of the eulogizing at Antall’s funeral emphasized his commitment to “the problems of the fate of the nation . . . which he placed among the foremost concerns of his political work.”59 After his death, Péter Boross took over as prime minister, but did little to turn around the direction of the government, ensuring ethnic Hungarian leaders that his diaspora policy would not deviate from that of his deceased predecessor.60 The Return of Kin-State Nationalism After Hungary’s second peaceful democratic election in 1994, it appeared that the political influence of the populist Right and its rhetoric of symbolic politics was on the wane. The parties on the Right, represented primarily by the MDF, which now had few parliamentary seats left, were in a state of collapse and disorganization. In contrast, the new MSZP-led government had a strong majority and an apparent mandate to implement a change in tone and policy direction. The left-wing coalition promised a more technocratic and less ideologically driven approach to Hungary’s ailing economy and foreign policy, which appealed to voters wary of the MDF’s overemphasis of the diaspora issue and its often inflammatory foreign policy rhetoric toward neighboring governments. Four years later, however, the situation was much different. The Socialists lost a hard-fought election in 1998 to a new right-wing coalition, led by Fidesz. The elite consensus around Hungary’s diaspora policy, which had served to balance and moderate the effects of nationalist rhetoric during the MDF government, eventually disintegrated and domestic politics became increasingly polarized. Between 1994 and 1998, the politics surrounding diaspora policy became a highly contentious and central point of opposition to the MSZP government. In just four short years, the political Right in Hungary was remade and the political and rhetorical focus on Hungary’s ethnic kin and questions of the nation renewed. As the remainder of this chapter shows, the rebuilding of the Right and the intensification of Hungary’s relationship with the ethnic

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Hungarians beyond the borders were inextricably linked. Both processes were driven by the party-building strategy of Fidesz. Fidesz, which began in 1988 as a youthful and liberal anticommunist protest party, was able to undermine the Left’s control of Hungary’s government and “national” politics in part by taking on kin-state politics as a defining issue for its political development. Engagement with the Hungarian diaspora issue represented a partial solution to the ideological and organizational barriers that the party faced in challenging more entrenched political forces. The powerful symbolism of the ethnic Hungarian issue gave Fidesz the historically grounded ideological content that it had previously lacked, and provided it with a way to win control over the boundaries of national inclusion and exclusion during the election campaign in 1998. It also provided the party with a much-needed network of cross-border ties, solidified Fidesz’s institutional embeddedness, and offered a stylistic as well as ideological alternative to both the reconstituted Hungarian Socialists and the failed “old” right parties. Fidesz’s approach to the diaspora issue was, therefore, instrumental in the party’s strategy to remake itself as the vanguard of a broad right-wing party bloc in an emerging bipolar party system. Fidesz was more successful than the MDF in utilizing the diaspora issue as a political resource for a number of reasons. First, Fidesz reoriented the party to the Right as a strategic reaction to the opening of an ideological niche after the collapse of the MDF and the electoral alliance of the SZDSZ and MSZP.61 MDF, on the other hand, had simply relied on existing ideological commitments that had benefited the party in the 1980s, but was not suited to the demands of governing a transitioning democracy. Fidesz also benefited from a “late-comer’s advantage” and the opportunity to undergo a political learning process. Fidesz was able to tailor its ideological message to emerging cleavages and social concerns, and to reorient its partybuilding strategy to the changing institutional and political landscape. Ideologically, Fidesz was able to turn the diaspora issue from a source of distraction away from important transition projects to a proxy issue that mirrored more salient political debates. Institutionally, Fidesz reoriented itself as a party of the conservative Right and structured alliances with other right-wing parties around that new identity, thereby guaranteeing its ability to meet the new 5 percent electoral threshold and take advantage of the opportunities for second-round strategic voting.

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Diaspora Politics and Party-Building Strategy The MSZP offered a program of “modernization combined with social responsibility,” which gave the Socialists a decisive win with 32.99 percent of the vote in 1994.62 After the second round results, Hungary’s complex electoral rules, which allot more seats to the winner than is proportional to ensure governability, awarded the MSZP 54.14 percent of parliamentary seats. The SZDSZ, which again came in second place with 17.87 percent of the vote, engaged in a heated internal debate over whether to enter into coalition negotiations with the former communists. In the end, the chance to govern won out over reservations about the MSZP and only 25 percent of the voting membership opposed the coalition. The coalition gave the MSZP-led government a much stronger parliamentary majority—more than two-thirds—than the MDF had enjoyed. The potential opposition was also relatively small and fragmented: the parties of the former governing coalition, MDF, FKGP and KDNP, only controlled 22.28 percent of seats, with the unaffiliated Fidesz barely crossing the parliamentary threshold with 5.18 percent. After a second, constitutionally mandated free election and a peaceful change of governing blocs, Hungary’s democracy appeared to be reaching consolidation. In marked contrast to the ideological and historically oriented symbolic politics of the MDF government, the MSZP administration was governed by a “technocratic elite” focused on modernizing and reforming Hungary’s economy and institutional structures. In terms of diaspora policy, this new governing philosophy translated into a much different approach by the Socialists. As stated in its electoral program and coalition agreement, the MSZP government considered “the assertion of their [Hungarians beyond the borders] rights as a special area of Hungary’s foreign policy relations, also as an important domestic political task, and a part of national solidarity.”63 However, the new government distinguished its diaspora policy from that of its predecessor by attempting to formulize previously informal cross-border connections, and repositioning the diaspora issue as a less prominent component of its foreign policy priorities. MSZP policymakers began to formalize aid for the regional diaspora communities by creating new, government-funded foundations or by giving official government status to existing ones. Foundations such as the New Handshake (Új Kézfogás), which provided money to ethnic Hungarian small businesses, and the János Arany Foundation, which gave scholarships to Hungarian scientists and scholars, were given official

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status and, more importantly, line items in the state budget.64 The MSZP-dominated parliament passed acts relating to personal and corporate income tax, which allowed taxpayers to allocate a percentage of their taxes to support diaspora-related foundations.65 In addition to the tax money, the MSZP government secured a slight increase in overall funding in the 1995 budget for diaspora subsidies, despite the serious economic belt-tightening instituted by the new economic reforms.66 The MSZP government then moved to reshape key aspects of Hungary’s approach to the diaspora situation. The MSZP set up “a professional and interest-aggregating forum for the parliamentary parties and for the experts, where issues related to the Hungarians beyond the borders can be discussed . . . to assure national consensus.”67 This forum materialized as the Hungarian-Hungarian summit (magyar-magyar csúcs), which was held in Budapest on July 4–5, 1996.68 Prime Minster Horn also considered abolishing the HTMH and returning it to Csaba Tabajdi’s control under the Minority Affairs Secretariat. He eventually backed down after protest from within and outside his party, but moved the office from the Foreign Ministry to the Prime Minister’s Office. This move signaled his concern that the diaspora issue should be separated from the foreign affairs ministry, so as not to distract from other foreign policy goals.69 In contrast to the Antall government, the Horn government’s main foreign policy ambition was to be “closely connected to the advanced countries and be integrated in the Euro-Atlantic organizations.”70 At the top of the list was EU membership, which held out the best possibility for Hungary’s economic, political, and military security. As the 1993 Security and Cooperation Conference had made clear, the signing of bilateral treaties and renunciation of border revision were necessary prerequisites to initiating the accession process. All other goals would be subsumed to the immediate goal of proving Hungary worthy of membership. At the same time, Fidesz was moving into position as the main opposition party and working to rebuild the political Right in Hungary. In the early 1990s, Fidesz’s main distinguishing characteristics were its youth (the original party charter capped membership to those 35 and under), and its unflagging anticommunism. However, neither of these attributes gave the party a long-term ideological basis on which to build a distinct party platform, especially while the traditional liberal and conservative ideologies were already represented by the more well-known SZDSZ and MDF. Complicating matters was the successful reconstitution of the former Communist Party into the social democratic MSZP. The MSZP’s

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evolution into the most formidable opposition party and a potential coalition partner for parties on the ideological Left further encroached upon Fidesz’s position as an anticommunist, left-wing party in opposition to the conservative MDF. During the early transition period, Fidesz had embraced the liberal democratic principles of free market, free speech, and a more civic, universalistic identity. In these early years of democratic transition, Fidesz often worked together with the liberal SZDSZ faction, which was its partner in a formal opposition alliance. Fidesz parliamentarians routinely criticized the Antall government’s appeals to nationalism and the greater Hungarian nation. Fidesz’s party president Viktor Orbán spoke out against the MDF’s ideological return to the past in front of parliament in 1992, and Zoltán Rockenbauer, who would later become a minister in Orbán’s cabinet, argued in 1991 that Antall’s nationalistic foreign policy was based on a “pre-modern doctrine of ideologism” that made Hungary seem like a “war-like troublemaker in front of both the neighbors and the West.”71 By 1992, however, Fidesz underwent an identity crisis and experienced intense internal battles over the party’s ideological position, alliances, and organizational style. Disagreements over strategy and ideology led to internal riffs between Orbán and his main rival within the party, Gábor Fodor, which came to a head during Fidesz’s 1993 party congress. At the Congress, Orbán succeeded in changing the previously informal structure of autonomous local cells and leaders into a much more more centralized and “pyramidal” organization, with himself in place as party president.72 Orbán’s victory pushed out the more conciliatory wing of the party led by Fodor, who had long advocated a closer alliance with SZDSZ and a greater emphasis on social and economic issues.73 Another major change was the shift in Fidesz’s ideological stance, reflected in the addition of “committed to the nation” to the 1993 party platform, beginning the party’s move toward a stance more attuned to a conservative political ideology. The party’s under-35 criteria for membership was also abandoned, signaling the party’s desire to move away from its origins as a youthful protest party. Party leaders hoped that this ideological shift, together with a more professionalized party structure, would allow Fidesz to construct its own “unique political image” and become a credible and independent political force.74 Fidesz also struggled with its limited organizational capacity, which stemmed from the party’s unique origins as a protest movement created by a small, informal elite. The party lacked an extensive, state-wide

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organization that could help overcome its narrow electoral base, modest infrastructure, and lack of connections in the world of media and business elites. By the mid-1990s, Fidesz had one of the lowest percentages of party membership, the lowest number of regional and local offices, and the lowest number of total members.75 Following the 1994 election, Fidesz had been forced to staff each county office with only one employee and relied on a small, centralized group of core officials to carry out almost all party functions. In fact, Fidesz had been known as the “answering machine party” because it had offices with answering machines, but no networks of supporters to answer the phones.76 All this contrasted with the organizational style of the old Socialist elite, which relied on less formal rules, a weaker executive, and a vast network of personal connections and local organizations. While the MSZP also had a small membership base, it had nearly twice as many nation-wide offices as any other party and an extensive mid-level bureaucratic infrastructure. Finally, Fidesz was somewhat disadvantaged by its outsider status, having had little connection to historically salient political divisions and parties. This difference was apparent as all the other parties of the Center-Right—FKGP, KDNP, and MDF—were part of “an interrupted historical trend in the country” that harkened back to parties and movements of the interwar period or to intellectual trends that survived Communism intact.77 Fidesz had to compete with the historical legitimacy of these other parties and with the parties to the far right of Fidesz, such as MIÉP, which were known for their strong and often extreme language of nationalism, revisionism, and Hungary’s rightful place in history. Fidesz met this challenge by transforming itself from a “neoliberal conservative” party focused on individualism and free market policies to a “traditional conservative” party more skeptical of economic reforms and committed to the principles of family, nation, religion, and culture.78 The diaspora issue was part of a package of issues that offered Fidesz a party-building strategy that would compensate for its lack of organization and ideological identification, as well as a path to the reconstitution of a strong right-wing bloc in Hungarian politics. During its time in opposition, Fidesz was able to turn ethnocultural themes—and in particular, the situation of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries—into a politically galvanizing proxy issue that skillfully mirrored a number of increasingly salient cleavages. Most important were those tied to the regime divide: former communists

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versus anticommunists, the economic winners versus the losers of the economic transition, and those looking outward toward the West and the EU versus those with more protectionist orientations who wanted to maintain distinctly “Hungarian” interests in the region. As the MSZP-SZDSZ government embarked upon liberalizing economic reforms, Fidesz was able to reconstitute the nationalist-populist camp in part by “channeling minor cleavages into a major one,” thereby creating a “mosaic cleavage party” that used nationalist rhetoric to attract a diverse electorate.79 Using this strategy, Fidesz began to attack the MSZP’s economic reforms by tying the Socialists’ modernization project to a betrayal of the country’s morality, national culture, and middle-class values. By 1995, the effects of the economic belt-tightening instituted by the socalled Bokros package (named for the economic minister at the time) were being strongly felt, particularly by those segments of the population that had benefited from the security of socialism: pensioners, rural populations, and middle-class families that relied on social benefits such as the maternity and childcare subsidies.80 To reflect its image as the protector of middle-class values, the party changed its name to Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party (Fidesz-MPP) during its 1995 party congress and adopted a new discourse of representing a broad rightwing “civic” or “bourgeois” Hungary. The civic ideology made connections to existing historical narratives, in which the property and values of the nation had to be protected against upper-class elites who would exploit national resources and the middle-class for their own gain. In the post-communist context, this was clearly understood as a repudiation of the continued influence and economic enrichment of the nomenklatura class as well as of the neoliberal economic policies embraced by MSZP and SZDSZ reformers. In addition, the civic narrative connected Fidesz’s brand of right-wing ideology with an antielitist, social-welfare program that resonated with popular discontent and distanced the party from the MDF’s backward-looking nationalism.81 Party leaders criticized the MSZP government for failing to provide moral leadership, arguing that its reform policies were “criminal” because they had “consumed, squandered and discredited the opportunities, hopes and challenges which the miracle of the regime change signified—or would have signified—for the nation.”82 The party’s leaders also brought together an argument about the positive role that the ethnic Hungarian diaspora could play in ensuring Hungary’s independence and strength, and the possibility of a more genuinely “Hungarian”

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path of democratic transition: one that rejected the emotional and cultural emptiness of communism and protected social and human rights, as well as the values and traditions of the “middle class.” This message resonated with a population that identified less and less with “national feelings” in general,83 but was increasingly concerned about the short- and long-term effects of free market reforms in the economy.84 The idea of a civic, middle-class Hungary endangered by the Socialists’ policies also framed Fidesz-MPP’s critique of the government’s diaspora policy. MSZP was accused of selling out the Hungarian nation and squandering the rights and opportunities of millions of Hungarians in order to please the West and continue with its neoliberal reforms. The perfect context for these critiques came as the Horn government went forward with its plans to normalize relations with the neighboring governments of Slovakia and Romania. The contentious plenary debates in the Hungarian parliament over the treaties exposed the MSZP government to intense criticism and began to erode the elite consensus on diaspora policy. During debate over the basic agreement with Slovakia, Horn’s actions were called “treason”85 and the treaty itself, “Hungary’s third Trianon.”86 The Treaty with Romania then became problematic because of Romania’s reluctance to include the language of the Council of Europe’s standards on the treatment of minorities. In particular, the Council of Europe’s Recommendation 1201 was seen by Romania as allowing for collective rights and territorial autonomy and so became a point of contention. In the end, the treaty was signed with a stipulation interpreting the Recommendation as not granting the right to autonomous territorial arrangements based on ethnicity.87 Foreign Minister László Kovács and other representatives of the MSZP government pointed to the inclusion of Recommendation 1201 in the treaty as providing “enforceable guarantees” of minority rights for the ethnic Hungarians. They tried to make the case that Hungary could work more efficiently on behalf of the diaspora within the framework of the treaty and the bilateral commissions that it generated.88 The Socialist government faced considerable opposition in Parliament and in the diaspora communities, however, when they argued that, “the entire system of relations cannot be a hostage to the national minority issue.”89 Fidesz-MPP took advantage of these tensions. The party moved quickly to form alliances with other right parties that had spoken out against the Socialists’ economic reforms and lack of “national content.”

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The year 1995 began with the government’s formation of a Six-Party Consultative Committee of Minorities Beyond the Border, which cooperated on parliamentary declarations, budgetary decisions, and participation in European forums regarding the Hungarian diaspora.90 Within a few months, this broad-based consultation was dead. On September 7, 1995, members of Fidesz-MPP, the MDF, and the KDNP held a press conference where they presented an itemized critique of the MSZP’s approach to the diaspora issue and announced their new institutionalized cooperation to oppose the government’s policies. The criticisms enumerated at the press conference came down to three main points. First, they faulted the MSZP-SZDSZ government for subordinating the interests of the Hungarian diaspora to the goals of Euro-Atlantic integration and a more conciliatory foreign policy. While Prime Minister Horn lauded the fact that the signing of the Basic Treaties meant that “Europe is with us,”91 his detractors saw the treaties and his refusal to allow diaspora representatives to sit at the bargaining table as a sign of weakness and misplaced priorities. “Under the magic spell” of Euro-Atlantic integration into NATO and the EU, the MSZP government had forgotten about its responsibility to its coethnics in neighboring countries.92 Instead of dealing with the reality of ethnic tensions in the region, the government “hides the problems of the Hungarians in neighboring countries under a bushel in front of its Western partners.”93 Second, the Socialists’ overarching concern with economic reform and stability for the Hungarian state led their critics to argue that the heirs of the Communist Party were not sufficiently concerned with “national” interests. They were stuck instead in the “late-Kádár era mentality,” which only served the interests of the state and the political interests of the Socialist party while giving short shrift to protecting the interests of the Hungarian nation.94 The third critique was that the government’s foreign policy approach to the diaspora situation was not only ineffectual, but had made the situation worse for the ethnic Hungarians in the region. Fidesz-MPP criticized the Socialists for being “overly cautious” in its advocacy of ethnic Hungarian causes, such as autonomy and property restitution, and for its “unsuccessul and inadequate representation of national interests.”95 The three-party declaration characterized the MSZP’s diaspora policy as indecisive and improvisational, driven by incorrect assessments of the regional diaspora situation and hypocrisy and cynical indifference to their fate.96

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These criticisms were bolstered by deteriorating political conditions for ethnic Hungarians in the neighboring countries between 1994 and the beginning of 1996. In Slovakia, the nationalist government led by Vladimir Mecˇiar intensified its legislative campaign to further “nationalize” the state. The government passed the State Language Act in 1995, which made Slovak the official language, excluding the use of Hungarian as a national language, and in March 1996, passed the Administrative-Territorial Re-Districting Act, which limited local selfgovernment in majority-Hungarian communities in southern Slovakia.97 In 1996, Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) repeatedly threatened to pull out of the Basic Treaty over statements made in Hungary supporting autonomy for the ethnic Hungarians, such as the declaration signed at the Hungarian-Hungarian summit in July.98 It was 1998 before the implementation agreement was signed. In Romania, the nationalist Iliescu government remained in power until the elections in November 1996. Under Iliescu’s leadership, the Romanian government passed similar nationalizing legislation, including a 1995 education law, which restricted the guarantee of mothertongue education for national minorities and penalized university students for attending classes in Hungarian.99 These moves by the neighboring governments gave the right-wing parties ammunition to argue that the MSZP had sold its soul in the treaty process without addressing the basic needs for cultural protection of the ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia and Romania. Countering this criticism, other analysts argued that Hungary had secured the best deal possible in the Basic Agreements, given the conditions on the ground in the neighboring countries.100 By the end of 1996, conditions had changed for the better at least in Romania as the RMDSZ joined the new governing coalition formed against Iliescu and his allies. The situation in Slovakia, however, would not improve significantly until 1998, when the three largest Hungarian parties joined the governing coalition that finally defeated Mecˇiar.101 The Right’s intensifying criticism of the Socialists and the controversy surrounding the signing of the Basic Treaties also provided an opportunity for Fidesz to form alliances with members of the diaspora communities dissatisfied with the MSZP’s stance toward them. There was already widespread dissatisfaction in the ethnic Hungarian communities over their lack of voice in the Basic Treaty process. The MSZP faced widespread criticism for its “politics of opportunism” in shutting out the ethnic Hungarian leadership from the process.102 In July of

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1996, the government had courted diaspora leaders as partners in policymaking during the Hungarian-Hungarian summit, but in August it went ahead with treaty negotiations with Romania without the consultation of those same leaders. Calls for the Horn government to include a delegation of diaspora leaders at the treaty negotiations were also refused, angering many of the most outspoken ethnic Hungarian elites who did not trust Horn to protect their interests the way the Antall government had.103 The government’s most vocal domestic critics— primarily Fidesz-MPP and the FKGP—“found an almost natural alliance with the disaffected ‘radicals’ of the ethnic Hungarian communities, [i]n the spirit of the motto, ‘whoever criticizes the government is our friend’.”104 Early in 1996, Fidesz made its association with more radical members of the RMDSZ a central part of the new network of intellectual and political clubs, societies, associations, and salons that the party sponsored. Bishop László Tőkés was invited to participate in the opening of Fidesz’s foreign policy club, where he stated his agreement with Fidesz’s approach to the diaspora issue and criticized the Socialists during a press conference held with Orbán and other Fidesz leaders.105 Through this partnership, Fidesz became the medium through which diaspora leaders would complain about their treatment by the MSZP government. Orbán assured the leaders of Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian community of his support for their plight and disdain for the treaties, which he argued “had pushed the national minorities into a trap.”106 Fidesz’s leader even began to campaign in the diaspora communities, giving fiery speeches and meeting with cultural and religious leaders. He promised that his government, if elected, would support their demands for autonomy, put a higher priority on diaspora concerns in Hungarian domestic and foreign policy, and offer ethnic Hungarian leaders more direct access to decision-making processes affecting diaspora policies in Hungary.107 Finally, the Fidesz delegates to the July 1996 HungarianHungarian summit made up the main group that allied itself with radical ethnic Hungarian leaders to pass a controversial and untenable declaration calling for autonomy as the “essential issue” in dealing with the diaspora question.108 A telling sign that the MSZP government was feeling the pressure of these criticisms was its willingness to sign the declaration, despite some objections to such a strong statement of support for not only cultural, but territorial and administrative autonomy.109 The declaration was seen by critics as a needlessly antagonistic move. It gave little practical help to the diaspora, but “encouraged

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unrealizable expectations across the border” that Hungary could somehow force an acceptance of territorial autonomy on to the unwilling neighboring states.110 Political Learning and Right-Wing Consolidation While the MDF had experienced fragmentation in its own ranks during its time in office, Fidesz in opposition was able to consolidate power by taking advantage of the peculiarities of Hungary’s electoral system and using its unique ideological stance to forge a strong right-wing coalition. Latecomers to power after a transition or those willing to reshape their strategy and ideology after early rounds of elections benefit from a political learning process through which they can gauge how they fit into developing cleavages and understand how new institutional rules may affect their chances for electoral success. As Dawisha and Deets argue, “It is only through elections that parties can really learn what positions correspond to their rational interests.”111 One of the important lessons that Fidesz learned was that it would need to work strategically to consolidate power by combining group interests “into packages large enough to overcome institutional thresholds of power.”112 For Fidesz, a growing engagement with nationalist themes and the ethnic diaspora issue helped the party make the most of its oppositional role and solidify its position on the Right of the political spectrum. Fidesz-MPP acted strategically to position itself as the center of an emerging center-right bloc. The Young Democrats integrated and outmaneuvered its rivals, provided a viable alternative to the left-wing bloc represented by MSZP and SZDSZ, and concentrated its ideological and organizational base. Fidesz-MPP was able to overcome its early rivals through a combination of co-optation and cooperation. In 1995, the FKGP and its fiery leader, József Torgyán, became the most visible and popular opposition party based largely on its vocal criticisms of the government’s privatizing reforms.113 By the end of 1996, however, Fidesz-MPP had begun to edge out the FKGP as the most popular opposition party. Torgyán had become too controversial a figure outside of his main supporters, mostly the rural poor and others hurt by the economic reforms, turning would-be supporters off with radical rhetoric reminiscent of the previous government’s unpopular nationalism. Fidesz leaders worked during this period to split off factions from the MDF and the KDNP. The party lured the more moderate members with membership in Fidesz’s “Civic Alliance” and promises of electoral

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cooperation, which served to further radicalize and isolate the FKGP. Fidesz also showed its willingness to cooperate with the Smallholders’ on certain issues, such as the fate of the ethnic Hungarians and the question of foreign ownership of land, which both parties opposed.114 By 1997 and the run-up to the 1998 parliamentary elections, FideszMPP had clearly won the struggle for dominance on the right of the political spectrum. Another factor leading to the eventual electoral victory of Fidesz was the emergence of a bipolar political field in Hungary, a trend that Fidesz leaders were highly conscious of in planning their long-term strategy. In part, this bipolarity was a consequence of the increasing ideological polarization of Hungarian politics. Polling data shows that between 1993 and 1997, the number of potential voters who identified strongly with either a liberal or conservative position grew significantly. Specifically, the percentage of party supporters who were undecided about their ideological affiliation decreased, particularly among SZDSZ, MSZP, and FKGP supporters.115 In addition, the number of Fidesz supporters who identified as “conservative” rose from 11 to 25 percent, and those identifying as liberal dropped from 69 to 58 percent. Across all parties, the total percentage of voters identifying as conservative grew over time, whereas those identifying as “liberal” fell among supporters for all but two parties, MSZP and FKGP. This suggests that the ideologically unaffiliated middle had shrunk during this four-year period. Political parties were becoming more readily identified with specific ideological camps, and the refashioned conservative camp had made significant progress in its base of support. The developing bipolar political field was also a consequence of Hungary’s electoral system. In the run-up to the 1998 elections, FideszMPP took strategic advantage of the institutional incentives for electoral consolidation that were built into Hungary’s mixed electoral system. Hungary’s electoral system combined elements of proportional representation with majoritarian structures to ensure governability. The tworound elections using single-member districts encouraged larger parties to cooperate instead of splitting the vote, particularly in the second round. Fidesz-MPP managed to maneuver the support of the FKGP after the first round of elections, convincing the FKGP to withdraw their candidates in order to strengthen Fidesz’s chances in the second round. This ensured that Fidesz-MPP did well enough in the single-member districts to benefit from the disproportional distribution of mandates. As the single-member district results translate votes most directly into seats,

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a good showing there increases the lead of the largest party, giving them a larger majority than straight proportional representation would allow. In 1998, Fidesz gained more seats in parliament, and was thus able to form a government in coalition with the Smallholders’ Party, even though the MSZP won the most votes in the multimember election for closed party lists. For the smaller parties, the need to overcome the 5 percent threshold gave them an incentive to get their candidates on the party lists of larger parties for the multimember constituencies structured by closed party lists. This type of calculation brought the MDF into a preelectoral agreement with Fidesz-MPP. Reframing the Discourse Once in control of the governing coalition, Fidesz reinvigorated a discussion of diaspora policy by offering a form of kin-state nationalism that could make Hungarians feel good about being Hungarian and their unique cultural and linguistic status. In combating the “specter of national death,” Orbán stated his intent to combat the nation’s “inferiority complex” and lack of education about the ethnic Hungarian communities, earning his diaspora policies a large measure of respect from activist and advocacy communities that had felt somewhat ignored during the MSZP government.116 The presentation of a new policy agenda regarding the diaspora also came less from the need to correct the tragedies of the past than had Antall’s rhetoric. Instead, Orbán emphasized the advantages of a closer relationship with the diaspora communities in moving forward a “Hungarian” agenda that would secure Hungary’s place in Europe and its cultural survival within and beyond the border. Fidesz also offered a new approach to the diaspora issue by treating the diaspora not as a “problem” or “burden” that had to be dealt with, but as a positive attribute for Hungary and the entire region.117 Fidesz policymakers made a point to emphasize the importance that culturally autonomous diaspora communities integrated into the larger Hungarian nation could play in Hungary’s future. In 2001, Orbán invoked not only the symbolic importance of the ethnic diaspora, but their ability to increase Hungary’s strength and standing in the world as well: There were times when it was the Hungarians beyond the borders who kept our souls alive. My hope is that one day Hungarians in Hungary will look at territories beyond the borders and Hungarians there not as those who have to be helped but those who are the great power reserves

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for the Hungarian economy and the Hungarian community in the Carpathian basin . . . [Material support for the Hungarians beyond the border] is not help but investment, since in the long term, it is obvious that the power of a ten-million-strong Hungarian community is far exceeded by the power of the Carpathian Basin’s Hungarian community of 14 million people.118

The Fidesz government was also eager to combat criticisms that the renewed emphasis on the diaspora question would jeopardize Hungary’s EU accession. A member of Orbán’s Foreign Ministry argued in a 1999 article that “the Hungarians beyond the border are not a burden that hinders our integration, but just the opposite: with the appropriate policy, [the Hungarians beyond the border] can be an asset.”119 The ethnic Hungarians were often referred to as the most peaceful of the region’s national minorities, the “standard bearers of democracy and political stability” for the entire region.120 Fidesz also offered a more public and diversified approach to the question of cross-border support. In so doing, the party brought together Hungarian social policy and diaspora policy, promoting “feel good” policies such as support for Hungarian-language education that had already existed, but were hidden away as part of other bills or in the works of publicly funded foundations. For many Hungarians within and beyond the border actively working to improve the situation of the diaspora communities, the Antall government’s approach to the diaspora issue, while generally correct, had been too “ideological and rhetorical” to be of much use. In contrast, Orbán and Fidesz were seen as offering a more “pragmatic” and proactive approach.121 Guaranteeing funding within the Hungarian state budget for the development of a private Hungarian-language university (Sapientia) in Transylvania was the type of concrete project for which Fidesz was praised. In addition, the Fidesz government increased total funding in the state budget for programs supporting the Hungarians beyond the border by 26 percent in its first year in office, and maintained a higher level of budgetary support during the next two years (see Table 3.4). Finally, the Orbán government wasted little time in tapping into existing transnational networks by changing the nature of governmental offices and nonprofit organizations in Hungary that dealt with diaspora policies and subsidies. New personnel were installed in the ministries dealing with minority and ethnic Hungarian affairs, and on the boards of trustees of the largest public foundations that administered grant

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Table 3.4 Hungarian state budget devoted to diaspora support programs, 1996–2001 (includes funding for HTMH and MVSZ)

Amount (millions HUF) Percentage change

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2233 –

1900 –15%

2149 13%

2707 26%

2649 2%

2764 4%

Source: Yearly budget of Republic of Hungary. Numbers compiled by the Hungarian Parliament Library Information Center, in Pálné Haraszti, ed., Háttérinformációk-Dokumentumok: A Szomszédos államokban élo˝ magyarokról. II. Kötet—Kormányprogramok és kormánypolitika 1990–to˝l [Background informationdocuments: About the Hungarians living in neighboring countries. Volume II: Government programs and policy from 1990] (Budapest: Orszaggyu˝lési Könyvtár Képviselo˝ Tájékoztatási Osztály, 2001), 527.

money to the diaspora communities, such as the János Apáczai Foundation, which had a budget of 1.2 billion HUF per year.122 In addition, the Fidesz government moved the HTMH back from the Prime Minister’s Office to that of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. This signaled the office’s new status as a top priority of Hungarian foreign policy and the latitude being given to Zsolt Németh, Fidesz’s foreign affairs state secretary and a long-time passionate activist for ethnic Hungarian support and autonomy.123 The Fidesz administration also tied the ethnic Hungarian communities more closely to the Hungarian government by institutionalizing contacts with diaspora leaders into a semiofficial organization, the Hungarian Standing Conference (MÁÉRT), that would serve as a consultative body of global Hungarians. The establishment of MÁÉRT created six expert committees made up of representatives from Hungary and the diaspora communities that would send reports to the Hungarian Parliament and coordinate recommendations for diaspora policy.124 As Miklós Duray, honorary chairman of the Party of the Hungarian Coalition in Slovakia (MKP), noted, this meant that “we are, to an extent, incorporated into the processes and even in the legislation of Hungary, at least in principle.”125 Through this move, Fidesz made good on its promise to give ethnic Hungarian organizations more access to Hungarian state decision-making by creating this forum that would serve, in the words of Zsolt Németh, as “a kind of integration deal between Hungary and Hungarians beyond the borders.”126 Conclusion Hungary’s transition to democracy brought about mixed, and somewhat contradictory, outcomes in the state’s approach to dealing with the

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ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries. On the one hand, the populist MDF’s victory in the first free elections and the early development of an elite-driven politics dominated by ideological and cultural cleavages created an environment in which questions of spiritual and cultural survival flourished. The MDF, with its core membership of conservative writers and historians, knew the language of symbolic politics well and used it to frame its priorities and deflect criticism. Hungary’s relationship to the cross-border diaspora was central to the government’s normative commitments and political strategy in both the domestic and foreign policy realm. Yet, as the change of government in 1994 demonstrated, while an intense engagement with the situation of the ethnic Hungarians helped the MDF government in its early organization and strategic positioning, it eventually failed to embed the party deeply into post-communist Hungary’s domestic political field. The roots of revisionist intentions and a sustained, societal commitment to prioritize support for ethnic Hungarians over other pressing issues both proved to be quite shallow in post-communist Hungary. Beginning in 1994, however, Fidesz’s ideological and organizational strategy to consolidate power and provide a viable alternative to the MSZP utilized the politics surrounding the diaspora issue as one of its main tools. Even though the MSZP government had a mandate to deprioritize the ethnic Hungarian issue, Fidesz saw the potential in reviving diaspora politics as part of its repackaging of right-wing ideology. As discussed in Chapter 2, the discourse of protecting Hungary’s transborder nation and the culturo-linguistic heritage that it represents offered kin-state elites one mode of governing legitimacy. Yet this strategy is not without its costs, as the MDF government found out. In evaluating the variance in levels of success between two right-wing parties in Hungary at two different points in time, it becomes clear that the trajectories of the parties were not driven by a dramatically changing electorate becoming more open to nationalist appeals. Instead, this chapter shows that the later-developing Fidesz had the opportunity to learn and adapt its ideological and rhetorical messages to larger concerns of the electorate, allowing for more strategic responses to institutional incentives within the electoral system. The Fidesz leadership was able to reshape its party’s “master frame” into a message that connected to a forward-looking vision of future prosperity, not to the tragedy of past events. The ethnic diaspora issue in Hungary acted as a proxy issue for other cleavages and interests that could not be easily expressed because of socioeconomic or political constraints. Fidesz was able to successfully

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use the issue to tie together a number of electoral concerns, thereby allowing for the emergence of a right-wing “mosaic” or “catch-all” party in a developing bipolar moment. In Chapter 4, we see the policy consequences of this path. Combined with the new uncertainties of regional relations and cross-border mobility created by Hungary’s impending EU accession, Fidesz’s intense engagement with the diaspora issue would lead to the state’s most controversial piece of cross-border legislation: the passage in 2001 of the “Status Law.”

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CHAPTER 4

Kin-State Engagement and European Integration

B

y 1998, there seemed to be little need for a major shift in Hungary’s kin-state policy: ethnic Hungarian political parties had become members of governing coalitions in Romania and Slovakia; there were signs of improved interethnic relations throughout the region, despite continuing battles over property restitution and minority language education; Hungary’s EU accession was progressing smoothly, owing in part to the signing of Basic Treaties with its neighbors; and Hungary had become a member of NATO, with Romania and Slovakia not far behind. Yet, at the end of Hungary’s first post-communist decade, there was a significant intensification of Hungary’s diaspora policy, resulting in controversy and tension with European institutions and regional governments. Two factors in particular drove this policy shift. The first variable was the growing realization that Hungary’s impending EU accession might constrain its relationship with the ethnic Hungarian communities. By threatening to restrict entry to Hungary from many of the neighboring countries, the emergence of the Schengen visa regime as a requirement of EU membership became the catalyst for a rethinking of Hungary’s legal relationship with its regional diaspora. The Schengen chapter of the EU accession treaty would have prevented Romanian, Ukrainian, and Serbian citizens from crossing the border into Hungary without a visa. Hungary’s eventual position as the eastern border of the EU, therefore, meant that many of its coethnics would be left on the wrong side of a new “Iron Curtain.” The restrictive visa regime was a frightening prospect to members of the regional diaspora, who feared being cut off from the “motherland,” and a worrisome prospect for Hungarian elites as well.

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The second factor was the coming to power of the Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz) in the 1998 election. Fidesz had brought together the fragments of the Hungarian Right and consolidated its power as an opposition party in the previous government, in part by using the diaspora issue as a tool to further its ideological and party-building goals. Once in power, the new government’s desire to maintain strong cross-border networks in this uncertain policy environment resulted in the crafting of the “Status Law” in 2001. The controversial legislation granted special benefits, subsidies, and access to the Hungarian labor market and social-welfare system to the approximately three million ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, and Ukraine. By institutionalizing Hungary’s relationship with its nearby ethnic diaspora communities through this wide-ranging framework law, the Status Law represented a markedly more intense, unilateral, and high-profile approach to the Hungarian minority issue than had been seen previously in the post-communist decade. Although the timing of the Status Law was driven by the need to respond to the Schengen dilemma, the details of the legislation and its extension into a form of extraterritorial citizenship was the result of domestic political competition over the diaspora question. The Fidesz-led government sought to use the Status Law to embed its conception of transborder nationalism and to solidify its nationalist credentials. The Socialist opposition party, meanwhile, felt it could not oppose the legislation, and so added provisions that reflected its vision of cross-border support. Ultimately, the Status Law failed to provide a way around Schengen or to overcome the various domestic political interests and policy expectations it embodied and the geopolitical realities that constrained its full implementation. The story of the Status Law demonstrates a dynamic and variable relationship between external norms and institutions and domestic political actors and their strategic interests. The Schengen issue forced Hungarian policymakers to live up to the promises of their campaign rhetoric regarding the importance of maintaining the transborder nation. Rather than simply accept the reality of Schengen and trade cross-border mobility for a smooth transition to membership, the rightwing Hungarian government searched for a uniquely “Hungarian” solution to the border issue while attempting to maintain its networks of clientelism and its consolidation of domestic political power. Given its history of poor relations with the neighboring governments, however, Hungary’s extraterritorial and unilateral legislation provoked negative reactions as it faced accusations of ethnic discrimination and aggressive

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nationalism from Romanian and Slovak leaders. Western European actors were then forced to mediate the conflict and provide a clearer set of guidelines for kin-states like Hungary, which feared losing control of the important political and cultural resources represented by coethnic populations in neighboring countries. The Role of European Norms and Institutions in Shaping Kin-State Engagement Even before the collapse of communism and the Eastern expansion of the EU, evolving norms and frameworks for minority rights and interstate dialogue created space for kin-state claims to emerge, and provided incentives for states to reconnect with their coethnics in other countries. In 1975, the Helsinki human rights process offered a new normative framework that legitimized third-party intervention on behalf of oppressed groups. As described in Chapter 2, the shifting geopolitical conditions in the region and the desire for domestic legitimacy in the 1970s and 1980s created space for the communist regime to somewhat soften its position that the minority question was solely a domestic matter of the neighboring sovereign states. This process of “Europeanizing” the Hungarian diaspora issue intensified as the regime became an active participant in the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, attending the initial conference in 1975 as well as the follow-up conferences. The Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-Operation in Europe, known as the CSCE Final Act or the Helsinki Final Act, was signed in 1975 by 35 European countries, including the Soviet Union and all the Soviet bloc states, except for Albania. Originally initiated by a 1969 Warsaw Pact proposal, its purpose was to create a forum in which East and West Europe could come together and address a number of issues of common concern, including security, economic development, and human rights.1 Although the protection of national minorities was not its sole, or even main, preoccupation, the language of the Final Act did offer some conditions to the previously inviolable state sovereignty principle by establishing “a quasi-right to influence developments in the sphere of human rights.”2 States with significant external minority populations, like Hungary, attached great importance to Principle VII of the accord, which stated that members must “respect the right of persons belonging to such minorities to equality before the law, afford them the full opportunity for the actual enjoyment of human rights and

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fundamental freedoms, and in this matter, protect their legitimate interests.”3 Even the Kádár regime, which was not eager to embrace the overall human rights framework of the Final Act, recognized that the Helsinki closing document gave Hungarian party elites a unique opportunity to “represent and assert” their views on the nationality question. In 1975, Kádár addressed the participants of the initial Helsinki human rights conference, making a public reference for the first time to Hungary’s Trianon losses and pride in its history and culture. Hungary supported the “third basket” of human rights measures that “provided a legal ground for strengthening cultural ties between the homeland and nationals living outside the borders.”4 Hungarian delegates also attended the follow-up conferences over the next decade in places such as Madrid, Ottawa, and Vienna, with “a mandate to speak about the legal standing of national minorities in relation to human rights.”5 By the mid-1980s, the Helsinki framework was seen by party elites concerned with the diaspora issue as one of the few foreign policy resources that Hungary had at its disposal. Using the language of the emerging international human rights framework, the Hungarian delegates argued that advocating on behalf of ethnic Hungarians in the region should not be seen as resurgent nationalism, but as an expression of Hungary’s legitimate concern for the rights of its coethnics in other states. Members of the Hungarian regime were well aware that the growing concern in the international community for human rights had shifted the terms of the debate. Reform communists, in particular, saw that “the emergence of human rights and the assurance of political, ethnic, religious, individual and collective equality has become ever more a requirement in the judgment of world opinion.”6 They wanted to claim some credit for a shift in official policy regarding Hungary’s relationship with the cross-border diaspora and were anticipating the possible effects on their own power structure of Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union. Within this context, the more moderate Party faction embraced, at least in its rhetoric, the democratizing and cooperative goals of the Helsinki process, and advocated a collective rights framework in dealing with the minority question. From Hungary’s perspective, the increasing “democratization of international relations” entailed “a more decisive international role for citizens and peoples, the building of well-functioning institutions . . . and the consistent validation of the self-governing rights of ethnic groups.”7 By linking the thawing of Cold War relations, domestic reform in communist countries, and the expansion of human rights

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to include the rights of minorities, the norms established by the Helsinki framework helped strengthen the position of the reform communists in the 1980s, and framed Hungary’s increasingly public engagement with the regional diaspora communities. Once Hungary began its democratic transition and moved to strengthen its cross-border relations and advocacy role, its representatives realized that EU membership could be quite beneficial for Hungary as a small state with a difficult foreign policy agenda that included protection of the transborder Hungarians. Hungary was one of the first East European countries to try and make contacts with various regional bodies. It was an active member of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and became a member of NATO in 1999. It maintained a fairly high level of trade with the EU (71 percent of exports and 63 percent of imports by 1997) and received significant amounts of FDI from Western Europe.8 Despite its enthusiasm to “return” to Europe, however, the process of EU membership moved rather slowly, often to the frustration of Hungary’s leaders and its public.9 Association treaties were signed by Hungary and Poland in December 1991, but the accession process was put on hold indefinitely after the 1993 meeting of Copenhagen Council laid down formal criteria for membership and announced that enlargement would not proceed until the EU determined it had sufficient capacity to absorb new members. During the first post-communist government headed by the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) there was not much emphasis on preparation for membership beyond making the initial application.10 Preparations for meeting the accession requirements intensified during the 1994–1998 government led by the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). In the mid-1990s, a number of bodies were created to streamline the process, including the European Integration Cabinet, an Integration State Secretariat within the Foreign Affairs Ministry, a coordinating body called the Interministerial Committee for European Integration, a strategic task force on integration that was run out of the Prime Minister’s Office, and European Integration departments that were set up in all other ministries.11 Hungary received a very positive report on its progress toward meeting accession requirements in 1997, which raised languishing public opinion about EU membership and led to the beginning of official membership negotiations in March 1998. The new Fidesz-led government entering office later that year inherited an accession process that was well on its way. Despite some reservations

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and occasional EU-skeptic rhetoric, the Fidesz government was also committed to seeing this process through.12 Soon after the change of government in 1998, however, it became clear that Hungary’s progress toward EU accession would come into tension with its “national” interests. A main concern was that there were no clear “European” solutions to the seemingly intractable Hungarian minority problem, a sentiment that echoed across much of the political spectrum in Hungary. Legal and political analysts in Hungary pointed to the lack of direct minority rights protection in EU law. There was no separate minority rights article in the 2000 EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and in other EU documents, the focus was on nondiscrimination and not on the protection of collective rights or positive interventions to combat assimilationist pressures.13 Minimum standards of minority rights had been laid out as part of the accession criteria, but Hungarian experts criticized the EU’s lack of flexibility in dealing with cross-border ethnic ties and its inability to bind non-complying states to minority rights agreements.14 Policymakers also recognized that there would be little chance for Hungary to assert its kin-state interests in fighting for the rights of ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries after accession.15 The consensus among many advocates, particularly among center-right supporters, was that Hungary had to come up with its own creative solutions to reconcile its “responsibility for the fate of the Hungarians beyond the border” with its desire for EU membership. The Fidesz-led government maintained a “worried, but Europhile conception” of European integration, keeping a pledge made during the 1998 election campaign that it would “stand up” for Hungary’s national interests in the face of demands from Brussels.16 In the spirit of asserting Hungary’s independence despite its petition for supranational integration, Prime Minister Orbán made perhaps his most infamous comment on this subject when he declared: “There is also life outside the European Union.”17 The Orbán government envisioned an EU organized around a Europe of cultural and linguistic regions, not an alliance of sovereign states.18 Fidesz’s vision of a Hungarian nation that transcended borders walked the line of being “EU conform”: it rejected border revisions, but insisted on the primacy of defending the nation against assimilationist pressures. In this context, the implementation of the 1999 Amsterdam Treaty presented a particular challenge to the government’s ability to maintain its vision of a “borderless” Hungarian nation. The Treaty of Amsterdam incorporated the Schengen Convention into the EU framework, making

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it one of the acquis communautaire19 that all member countries would be required to adopt. The Schengen Agreement (first signed by France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands in 1985) eliminated all border controls between the signatory countries and established a single external border. The provisions of the original agreement were codified in the 1990 Schengen Convention, which established uniform practices for policing external borders and set up a system for long-term visas to be controlled by national jurisdiction. Other West European countries signed on between 1990 and 1995, at which time the Schengen provisions came into force, including the use of a set list to determine which country’s nationals could enter the common border with or without a visa. The 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam came into effect in May of 1999, making the Schengen borders a reality. As the Schengen visa regime developed, its border policing effects expanded to include high-tech information gathering and tracking of new entrants, strict control of entry into the external boundaries of the EU, and common visa and asylum policies.20 The inclusion of the Schengen Convention into the acquis communautaire had a particularly large impact on the new EU member states of post-communist Europe. Many of these states, such as Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, were forced to carry the burden of becoming the new Eastern border of the Schengen regime. Even before signing their accession agreements in 2002, these countries had to dedicate time and resources to creating a much tighter and less porous system of border control, a process that included new information systems and legal institutions to deal with claims for asylum and refugee status.21 They became, in essence, the control valves or “buffer zones” for immigration to Western Europe. Their borders represented the line between those post-communist countries deemed worthy of membership and those that were not; a line that in a number of cases separated kin-states from their ethnic diasporas in neighboring countries, making it more difficult to maintain ties to eastern neighbors and their coethnic populations there.22 Impending accession and acceptance of the Schengen requirements introduced a new context and level of uncertainty into the relationship between Hungary and its regional diaspora communities. As the Fidesz foreign minister János Mártonyi stated, “[T]he fact that we are going to be admitted to the EU before our neighbors is a source of conflict.”23 This situation presented a direct challenge to the prior status quo of visa-free travel to Hungary for nationals of all states except the Ukraine.

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In the diaspora communities, a “Schengen panic” arose,24 bringing fears of a “different kind of Iron Curtain” that would cut off ethnic Hungarians in Romania, former Yugoslavia, and the Ukraine from the homeland.25 These developments would provide the justification for creating a new framework of cross-border support and giving ethnic Hungarians from other countries a special legal status in Hungary. Responding to the Schengen Dilemma When Schengen appeared on the horizon, Fidesz-MPP was committed—ideologically, organizationally, and strategically—to finding a solution that would allow it to maintain the political gains it had made by engaging the ethnic Hungarian issue. There were two main aspects to the government’s dilemma. First, it had to find a way to maintain some control over the shape of relations with the diaspora. Specifically, it had to keep its ability to act as an advocate for Hungarians across the border and maintain Budapest’s role as the spiritual and cultural center of the transborder nation. If most of its neighbors were left outside of the EU, Hungary would “find its sovereignty weakened” and “lose its authority over traditional means of ‘caring’ for Hungarians abroad.”26 Yet at the same time, the government had to prevent a wave of ethnic Hungarian immigration in the period leading up to Hungary’s EU accession and implementation of the Schengen visa regime. Political elites were not particularly concerned about an exodus of the ethnic Hungarian communities in Slovakia, whose chances of early accession were improving, but about the large potential numbers from Romania, Ukraine, and Vojvodina in northern Serbia. Second, the Fidesz-MPP government faced increasing pressure from the ethnic Hungarian lobby after 1999. Diaspora leaders had been given fairly high-level access to Hungarian policymakers and had high expectations of the Fidesz-MPP government based on the party’s campaign promises. Orbán and his allies, therefore, had to balance demands from their transborder allies for some kind of legal solution to get around the Schengen problem, such as the allowance of dual or special “ethnic” citizenship, with the reality that there was little support domestically for such a move. The biggest practical concern on both sides of the border about Schengen was that it would enforce hard borders and a hierarchical system of opportunities separating Hungary from many of its coethnics. Without visa-free travel between the mother country and the diaspora communities, it was feared that continuing access to Hungarian-language cultural

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support and pedagogical training, economic development through the informal cross-border labor market, and political support for minority rights would be constrained or would cease altogether, leading eventually to the diaspora’s complete assimilation.27 Schengen also meant that some ethnic Hungarians—such as those in Slovakia—would enjoy a privileged status within the EU, while others would face numerous barriers just to enter the Union temporarily. These barriers were not only symbolic: Hungary had kept the amount of cash that travelers crossing the border had to have on hand artificially low (the equivalent of only about five Euros) in order to ease passage for ethnic Hungarians from poorer countries. The imposition of Schengen would mean high visa fees, prohibitively high minimum per-person subsistence costs, the end of spontaneous or seasonal travel due to the necessity of visa applications and a lack of consular offices, and the risk of permanent expulsion in the case of blacklisting. The consequence of this dual status was potentially a situation in which “Hungarians of certain citizenships can enjoy economic, social and cultural freedom, security and justice, while the rest are deprived of all this.”28 In this climate, there was widespread concern that many ethnic Hungarians from the countries soon to be on the wrong side of the Schengen borders would choose to emigrate to Hungary. Reports from polling done in the affected communities indicated that immigration to Hungary would increase by one-quarter to one-third of ethnic Hungarians if “separation from the mother country threatened.”29 This was cause for concern for a number of reasons. First, public opinion data in Hungary has consistently demonstrated ambiguity toward the Hungarians abroad in concrete terms and increasingly negative attitudes toward those that immigrated or came to perform temporary labor in Hungary. Despite the fact that ethnic Hungarians, particularly from Romania, had been used as a source of easily integratable labor, poll research indicated a lack of popular support for the expansion of citizenship, even to coethnics in neighboring states.30 A second problem with ethnic Hungarian immigration on a large scale was that it would signal the abandonment of the larger national project of the Hungarian Right of maintaining and strengthening the culturo-linguistic influence of Hungary throughout the region. If ethnic Hungarians left their ancestral homes, the dream of preserving pre-Trianon Hungary would be lost for good.31 In this scenario, “the nation would live in defeat in the decades following a retreat behind the Trianon borders.”32 There would be a decrease in opportunities for future generations, and the loss of the “diaspora effect” for

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Hungary: it would no longer have access to a regional and global network of ethnic affiliation to assert Hungary’s interests. Therefore, the principle of creating the conditions for them to prosper and express their identities while “remaining on their native land” remained a primary one in the discussion of how the Fidesz-MPP government should deal with Schengen. In reaction to the Schengen crisis, discussions began to emerge around the issue of granting coethnics in neighboring governments dual or other kinds of special citizenship. The demand for dual citizenship came most prominently from the international diaspora advocacy organization the World Federation of Hungarians (MVSZ) and its president at the time, Sándor Csoóri. In April of 1998, just as the electoral campaign was coming to an end, the MVSZ leadership announced at a press conference that it had adopted dual citizenship for Hungarians beyond the border as one of its political goals and that Hungary should consider it as an option. The MVSZ claimed to represent the growing demand of ethnic Hungarians in the Transylvanian area of Romania and in Ukraine, 65 to 95 percent of whom desired to have dual citizenship as an option to ensure continued access to Hungary. These diaspora members “feel that for a long time they’ve been citizens of another state, but in their souls they are part of the Hungarian nation, so they are citizens of that nation as well.”33 Hungary, in essence, owed it to the ethnic Hungarians to allow them to legally express their allegiance to the motherland. They should no longer be treated as “tourists” in Hungary, but should be given a special legal status that would reflect their connection to the motherland.34 Another argument in favor of dual citizenship was that it would strengthen the foundation of Hungarian identity by instrumentalizing it, making it a powerful tool against assimilation. One supporter of the concept argued that dual citizenship would give Hungarian identity not only symbolic, but practical value in the context of EU integration: If the Schengen borders appeared and the ethnic Hungarians could easily travel into EU territory through dual citizenship, then this would be the first time since Trianon that being Hungarian would have a concrete use. This enhances the feeling of community . . . Those [ethnic Hungarians] wanting to succeed, which in the past have assimilated to the majority nation, can now turn against assimilation.35

In addition, dual citizenship would increase cross-border economic ties and expand Hungary’s ability to represent its interests internationally.

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Despite these fairly powerful arguments for why dual citizenship would be advantageous for Hungary and its national project, there was little domestic support for it. Besides the general reticence toward the political incorporation of diaspora members, there were other, more specific objection. First was the objections by MSZP representatives that such a move would provoke a backlash in the neighboring countries, damaging regional relations and Hungary’s position as a frontrunner for EU membership. Gyula Horn, the former prime minister, said in response to MVSZ’s citizenship proposition that “it would have been equivalent to a declaration of war.”36 As the MSZP foreign minister explained, “A unilateral action of this kind could easily be seen by neighboring countries as an attempt by Hungary arbitrarily to extend its legal authority to millions of their own citizens.”37 The foreign minister under the Fidesz government, János Mártonyi, also echoed these concerns. In March of 1999, he declared dual citizenship political and legal “nonsense” that would only be dangerous for Hungary’s coethnics in the region.38 Given Fidesz’s preelection promises on this issue, there were expectations that the new government would back dual citizenship. But, after coming to power, Fidesz “had to face the fact that this promise could not be realized.”39 While Mártonyi came out clearly against dual citizenship, Orbán and Németh tried to walk a fine line between supporting the idea in theory and arguing that it would not help the ethnic Hungarian situation in any significant way. Fidesz’s noncommittal stance also reflected the split on the dual-citizenship issue among diaspora leaders. The leadership of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), Romania’s main ethnic Hungarian political party, was split between those who wanted something concrete to present to their constituents and others, like Béla Markó, who feared that a nationalist backlash against dual citizenship would hurt the party’s political prospects on the national scene.40 Slovak Hungarian political leaders, such as László Nagy and Miklós Duray, also reacted coolly to the proposal.41 The MVSZ leadership, now sensing the defeat of dual citizenship, came up with a new proposal for the creation of a special kind of ethnic or expatriate (külhoni ) citizenship. The hope was that this proposal would deal directly with many of the objections to the dual citizenship idea. The new citizenship plan would give ethnic Hungarians a limited Hungarian passport, which would grant them the right to enter Hungary to work or attend university, but would not allow them

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to vote, travel to third countries, or permanently settle or naturalize in the mother country. The draft of a proposed piece of legislation to modify the Hungarian constitution and create the conditions for this expatriate citizenship was submitted to parliament by the new MVSZ president, Miklós Patrubány, in August 2000.42 Supporters argued that this limited form of citizenship would solve the Schengen problem and strengthen cross-border relations without risking the depopulation of the diaspora communities.43 However, the draft plan did nothing to mitigate other concerns about presenting diaspora members with Hungarian passports, including the risk of provoking negative reactions from neighboring governments and EU officials. More significantly, at the same time as the MVSZ was developing its citizenship options, the Fidesz government was working with other ethnic Hungarian leaders through the Hungarian Standing Committee (MÁÉRT) framework on the Status Law as a compromise solution to the Schengen dilemma. The Status Law, on the face of it, seemed to have a number of advantages over dual or nonresident citizenship. It incorporated some of the special membership aspects of the various nonresident citizenship plans, but stopped short of giving Hungarian passports to those beyond the border. Instead, it provided ethnic identity cards entitling them to certain benefits and membership in the Hungarian nation. It integrated the diaspora members culturally and socially, but not politically. The Status Law satisfied the requirements of a “Hungarian” approach to the problem of the nation, but it was also not unprecedented. Other states, such as Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, and Romania, had passed or considered similar laws, and Hungarian policymakers saw parallels with German and British legislation regarding populations in post-colonial and postimperial territories, leading the government to believe that the law would be sufficiently “EU conform.” It also gelled with earlier promises made by Fidesz representatives to create “a special law about the ethnic Hungarians beyond the borders” that would provide special travel, education, and health-care benefits.44 What the law did not do, however, was solve the Schengen dilemma in any meaningful way. Although the main stated purpose of the Status Law was to prevent a wave of migration before the implementation of Schengen and allow for continued transborder relations after Hungary’s EU accession, the legislation in the end did little to change the situation for the better. As the Status Law became more complex and more politicized, it came to encompass too wide a range of political interests and

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ambitions, eventually failing under the weight of unmet expectations and diplomatic miscalculations. The Crafting and Expansion of the Status Law The Status Law as initially conceived was to regulate the status of the coethnics after they had entered Hungary. There were two aspects to this special status: one was giving the ethnic Hungarians some specialized benefits, such as pedagogical training for Hungarian-language teachers, discounts on train travel within Hungary, reduced rates to enter cultural institutions, and recognition of their status as members of the culturolinguistic nation through the ethnic identity cards, or “Certificates” (magyar igazolvány) entitling them to those benefits. These benefits could be “enjoyed without special discretion, as almost a subjective right” and only within the territory of Hungary.45 The financial structure of the benefits would be centered around the organization extending the discount or service, and not by giving money from the budget directly to the holders of the Hungarian identity cards. The second aspect was more controversial: It involved creating an institutional framework for cross-border labor migration. The labor permits were first envisioned as a way to ensure that the educated elites from the diaspora communities, which had always had a relatively easy time crossing into Hungary and finding employment fitting their stature, could continue coming to Hungary. However, the justification for the labor permits was soon expanded into an effort to “whiten” the “black” labor market (feketemunka) of ethnic Hungarians, particularly from Romania, who crossed the borders as migrant laborers primarily in the construction industry.46 The Status Law would provide a way to regulate both kinds of labor and, ostensibly, help the ethnic Hungarians working legally and illegally by granting them three-month labor permits (initially envisioned as six months). They would also be allowed to pay into and receive benefits from the Hungarian state welfare and health-care systems while working there. An impetus behind the labor permits was a desire for the government to control and use the easily assimilatable labor resource represented by the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries. Prime Minister Orbán made numerous public statements, both in front of business leaders and parliament, that Hungary would have a growing demographic need for additional labor and that it would be able to fill this need easily with eager workers across the border who shared Hungary’s language and

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culture.47 The desire to formalize the illegal cross-border labor networks, however, was not meant to increase the immigration intentions of the ethnic Hungarians. There was a high political price to be paid for any government that was seen as allowing members of the diaspora to seriously compete with domestic Hungarians for jobs. The government wanted to match ethnic Hungarians desperate for jobs with industries needing cheap labor “without allowing them to settle in Hungary.”48 The limited-time labor permits would allow the Fidesz-led government to control the flow of temporary migrant labor, while taking credit for giving diaspora members a privileged form of entry based on their ethnic background. In addition, the opening up of Hungary’s social welfare system to ethnic Hungarian workers strengthened the impression that the Status Law created a special legal and constitutional category for diaspora members.49 There were two major problems with the labor permit. The first problem was one of efficacy. Almost all Hungarian experts on cross-border migration agreed that the three-month labor permit would not be successful in regulating illegal migration. The transaction costs alone to obtain the permit—the application fee, travel to find a sponsoring job, medical exam, tickets, accommodation—would have been more than many labor migrants made in a three month period. Ethnic Hungarians crossing the border for work would have little or no incentive to legalize their activities under this system.50 And those who did not rely on temporary labor would not necessarily leave home to work for such a brief period, unless they had already planned on migrating to Hungary, thereby “creating a serious danger that the three-month legal employment will make it easier to prepare to settle in Hungary.”51 The second major problem with the labor permit was the fact that it would no longer be valid after Hungary officially joined the EU. There were few illusions, even among the law’s supporters, that the EU would accept this type of ethnically determined labor migration. The head of the Government Office of Hungarians Abroad (HTMH), Tibor Szabó, acknowledged as early as November 2000 that while the “European Commission wouldn’t object to the support being created in the areas of health care, culture, and education . . . barriers could arise in connection with the work permits.”52 As the controversy over the Status Law increased and Hungary’s EU accession agreement drew closer, the Hungarian government was eventually forced to do away with the ethnically based labor permit in a modified version of the law. At the time, however, the labor permits stood as proof that the

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Hungarian government was providing a potential work-around to the visa problem as well as giving those beyond the border special access to Hungary’s welfare system. The framework law then became bloated as its scope expanded to accommodate various demands from diaspora organizations and the agendas of domestic elites across the political spectrum. Numerous political players wanted their vision of “nation” policy to be represented within the legislation. Soon, the law was no longer confined to special rights given to diaspora members within Hungary, but took on an extraterritorial aspect with subsidies for ethnic Hungarians in their countries of residence as well. In the spirit of “keeping them happy at home,” the subsidies would increase the diaspora’s prosperity and ability to fight against cultural and linguistic assimilation in their home states. The MSZP representatives claimed credit for the adoption of these additional benefits, boasting that “[o]n the basis of MSZP recommendations and critiques [the Status Law] has become more and more a law of protecting the independent identity and sustenance of the ethnic Hungarian communities.”53 These subsidies included support for the purchase of books and supplies for Hungarian-language schools, and for other cultural and entrepreneurial projects. Expanding the law in this way gave the MSZP a way to try and show that it was also a “nation-oriented” party, concerned with the long-term survival of the ethnic Hungarian communities, and served as a plausible continuation of the party’s focus on developing the cross-border support system when it ran the government. The addition of these extraterritorial subsidies resonated with members of the diaspora advocacy community on both sides of the borders. In particular, many people saw the Status Law (or the “Benefit Law,” as it was more frequently called now) as an opportunity to streamline and strengthen the state-sponsored mechanisms of support for the diaspora. There was widespread agreement that the system of public foundations and numerous, but scattered, legislative provisions for cross-border support was severely overtaxed and inefficient.54 Over 150 separate legal regulations dealt with the question of cross-border diaspora support and around 33 foundations and institutes were dedicated to funding those endeavors.55 This situation created a “legal jungle” and a serious need for coordination among the granting institutions, which provided yet another justification for a framework law to regulate cross-border subsidies.56 Advocates on both sides of the border also hoped and expected that the Benefit Law would significantly raise the

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amount of annual budgetary support dedicated to cross-border subsidies. With the backing of the domestic opposition parties and high-profile advocates, the law was extended at the beginning of 2000 to include both kin-state-centered benefits (kedvezmények) and cross-border subsidies (támogatások). Policymakers assumed that the structure for this additional support would continue along the line of the previous system of subsidies, which primarily granted funds to diaspora organizations, businesses, and institutions, or gave time-limited scholarships and grants to individuals through a competitive application process. However, Fidesz announced in a “fait accompli” during the 2000 meeting of MÁÉRT that the Status Law would include support for individual ethnic Hungarian families in the neighboring countries.57 In the first official draft of the law, this subsidy amounted to 20,000 HUF (about US$90) per child for families with at least two children attending Hungarianlanguage schools. The money was to be used only for school supplies and uniforms, and not for food or other provisions. This announcement signaled a significant departure from the institution-driven support that had previously characterized the economic help flowing from Budapest to the diaspora communities. Instead of grants to small businesses or to students wanting to study in Hungary that were administered through public foundations or already-established programs run by the Ministry of Education, the Hungarian government would now give subsidies and benefits directly to ethnic Hungarian families and individuals. The individual subsidies became one of the most contentious aspects of the legislation in the view of the neighboring government leaders, who complained that Budapest was trying to exert direct control over their citizens in violation of their states’ sovereignty.58 For Fidesz, the political gains of this approach were clear. Every parliamentary representative would have to stand up and vote on whether to grant or withhold money for Hungarian-language education directly from poor families across the border, and the government would be seen putting money directly into their hands.59 By individualizing the diaspora subsidies, Prime Minister Orbán could claim credit for his government’s generosity. Second, by taking more control of the funding situation, Fidesz and its supporters could promote their view that the subsidies should eventually lead to autonomy for the ethnic Hungarian communities, an issue dear to Fidesz supporters across the border. From this perspective, the Status Law was seen as a “logical step” toward autonomy and the self-governing capacity of the diaspora communities.60

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By giving families incentives to send their children to Hungarianlanguage schools, the importance of Hungarian cultural and educational institutions would increase and eventually lead to the creation of “selffinancing” institutions. In this framework, “the primary goal is not the material support of the Hungarians beyond the border, but to encourage their system of self-organization.”61 The creation of self-financing institutions would also give the government cover in the case that budgetary contributions did not meet previous expectations and the amount of support had to be cut. This was certainly a plausible outcome, given the serious concerns being raised about the costs of the Status Law and its sources of funding. It was estimated that the legislation would cost approximately 9 billion HUF, and it was rather optimistically projected that 5 billion HUF of that would come from pay-ins to the social security system from workers and employers taking advantage of the labor permits.62 In evaluating the impact the Status Law’s expanded scope and family-centered approach, the legislation failed to meet policy expectations. The Status Law raised awareness of the diaspora issue and made it more central in Hungarian public life, but it did not succeed in streamlining the cross-border support process.63 From the perspective of the public foundations created to administer diaspora support, the Status Law had little impact on the organization or coordination of the support system. Some in the diaspora advocacy community argued that it made the situation worse by reducing the foundations’ flexibility to create new programs or end existing ones that were not working.64 Others criticized the Benefit Law for its lack of “comprehensive principles,” which only added to the confusion over the priorities and goals for funding the diaspora.65 The Status Law also did not significantly increase the percentage of Hungary’s GDP dedicated to cross-border support. It remained at about 1 percent, even though more money was being distributed to individual families, rather than institutions, in the diaspora communities. Critics also pointed to the increasing bureaucratic costs of creating the identity card system and administering the new benefits, money that could have been used to strengthen institution-building programs across the border that had already proven successful.66 In general, to many who had been hopeful about the prospects for the Status Law, the practical effects of its provisions were minimal. The most successful part of the law appeared to be the symbolic value of the identity cards, which gave the bearers “official” membership in the Hungarian nation.67 The law, therefore, appeared to be mostly flash and

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little substance; an outcome that was determined to a large extent by the domestic political interests of the actors most involved in its crafting. The Status Law and Domestic Politics While the final draft passed in June 2001 was the result of much collaborative effort and compromise, the Status Law was essentially a “Fidesz-driven process.”68 Fidesz started to outline its conception of the Status Law in 2000, working with the newly founded expert committees on the initial drafts. But as the expectations for the legislation grew, Fidesz asserted more control over the process, giving a declining role to MÁÉRT and giving more leeway to the HTMH, which was run by political appointees recently inserted into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Under the HTMH, negotiations over the bill’s provisions could continue behind closed doors.69 The government was then able to present a draft bill to parliament in the first half of 2001 without the scrutiny of numerous feasibility analyses or consideration of alternative proposals. The MSZP, as the major opposition party, responded by embracing the underlying conception of the Status Law—that it was an opportunity to “protect the independent identity and sustenance of the ethnic Hungarian communities”—but sharply criticized Orbán for promising those beyond the border more than Hungary could deliver. Orbán’s “sensationalist ideas” threw the gauntlet of national integration down to Hungarian policymakers, but conveniently refrained from spelling out how how the state would pay for or organize the new benefits and subsidies.70 The first aspect of the political strategy behind the Status Law was the competition to win the rhetorical and ideological battle over Hungary’s “nation” policy. Given the opposition MSZP’s relatively poor record as a “nation-oriented” party, MSZP representative Csaba Tabajdi tried to argue that diaspora policy “isn’t a question of who loves the Hungarians beyond the border more, but who loves them more effectively.”71 However, Prime Minister Orbán proved able to get a great deal of traction from his framing of the issue. For his government, national reunification became both a justification and the moral basis for Fidesz’s vision of the nation, which came to life in the form of the Status Law. Hungary was unable to undo the wrongs committed against the Hungarian nation at Trianon, but the government could make those borders irrelevant by enabling ethnic Hungarians to withstand the

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pressures of assimilation. Zsolt Németh, speaking for the Fidesz faction, stated during the April 21, 2001, parliamentary debate that “[b]y putting the Status Law before the Parliament, we are facing the twentieth century legacy that today state borders divide a Hungary that was once one unit. We couldn’t choose the borders, but we can rise up and transcend this division.”72 This would be done through direct intervention into their economic, cultural, and political lives. The Hungarians beyond the border were encouraged to stay in their native lands and not immigrate to Hungary, but they would be further connected to Budapest as their spiritual, cultural, and even political center. Orbán and others embraced the idea that they were creating the conditions for the unification that had so long eluded Hungary. However, they were doing so in a way that would not jeopardize Hungary’s domestic or national security by directly challenging the existing border regime. Fidesz’s national policy and the Status Law was “its oath in favor of national reunification stretching over the borders,”73 the starting point of a “cultural federation”74 with Budapest at its center. The final shape of the Status Law also reflected Fidesz’s client-building and co-optation of ethnic Hungarian organizations. The rhetoric of national reunification resonated strongly with Fidesz’s “radical” allies across the border, which Fidesz had actively supported before and after it took control of the government. Fidesz had allied itself with likeminded ethnic Hungarian leaders, in particular those that focused on autonomy demands and had little hope for accommodation from the majority governments. The party and its allies actively opposed the moderate wing, which they argued “pursues a strategy of small steps and legal security attainable through the tools of a constitutional state.”75 Speaking about Fidesz’s relationship to factions with the RMDSZ, one daily newspaper reported: “During the last government cycle, Fidesz openly stuck up for the radicals of RMDSZ, granted serious material support to the organizations, enterprises and foundations of the ‘reformers’—of course against the leadership of the ‘moderates’—and allocated members of the populist wing paid positions from Hungary.”76 Fidesz’s involvement in RMDSZ’s internal politics was a way of attempting to control the discourse and political development of the largest and most well-organized ethnic Hungarian political party.77 By doing so, Fidesz could be assured that a significant portion of the ethnic Hungarians would look to the party as their “patron,” depending on Budapest for their own continued political futures and guaranteeing Fidesz a stream of positive media and organization at election time.

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The creation of recommending organizations to determine eligibility for and distribute the Hungarian certificates was an addition to the Status Law that was widely seen as susceptible to the sort of cross-border clientelism in which Fidesz had engaged. As MSZP representative Csaba Tabajdi argued, “The assembling of the recommending organizations is an opportunity for direct intervention by the Fidesz government. And the Status offices serve the further building of Fidesz’s clients across the border.”78 Originally, the plan was to create new institutions to handle certificate applications in the diaspora communities, which would have likely been staffed by Fidesz loyalists in the neighboring countries. In the end, they decided to use existing organizations that already had a role in the diaspora societies: the ethnic Hungarian churches (Reform Lutheran and Protestant) and established ethnic Hungarian political parties. These recommending organizations would make the crucial determination of “who is Hungarian” a politically loaded and complicated question.79 It had already been determined that the diaspora communities outside of the post-communist sphere did not count within the framework of the Status Law, but there was yet more sorting to be done within the eligible communities. The framework for the recommending institutions was a controversial part of the Status Law process because it gave the churches and certain political organizations enormous discretion in deciding who would have access to the law’s benefits and subsidies. The recommending process added another layer of often heartrending instrumentality to identity choices in the diaspora communities; for example, in the case of an ethnic Romanian father trying to get school subsidies for his two halfHungarian children contemplating a conversion from the Orthodox church in order secure a positive recommendation,80 even as one of the stated goal of the law was to ensure the “free choice of identity.” In the text of the law, language and “feeling Hungarian” were the most important markers of identity for the purposes of the ethnic identity cards, yet these markers were filtered through the subjective interests of the organizations deemed worthy by Budapest to make such determinations. Those appointed to represent Hungarian state interests in these matters were also increasingly reliant on the Fidesz government for their influence and power. One of the more serious domestic criticisms leveled at the Status Law was that it would tie the diaspora communities too closely to Budapest, creating unnecessary tension with neighbors and forms of dependencies and paternalism that did little to help ethnic Hungarians achieve independence or self-sufficiency. Many critics pointed to

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discrepancies between the stated intent of the Status Law and many of the law’s provisions. A main impetus behind the Status Law was to create conditions for ethnic Hungarians to prosper and express their culture and language in their “native” land, meaning the land in which they were born, not Hungary. However, as one Hungarian commentator argued, “the vision formulated in the Status Bill presumes a Hungarian nation united through Budapest and guided by Hungary. The benefits are motherland-centered, the subsidies mainly come through motherland institutions, the motherland spells out and represents minority interests.”81 As the law was initially drafted and passed, many of the most attractive provisions—travel subsidies, discounts, labor permits, and the access to Hungarian health care and social benefits that went with them—were only available to ethnic Hungarians when they traveled to Hungary. Critics and supporters argued that the Status Law benefits might in fact encourage ethnic Hungarians to immigrate to Hungary, although this has largely proven to be an unfounded concern.82 Other critics argued that the Status Law perpetuated a form of paternalism that would disrupt the ability of Hungarians beyond the border to successfully incorporate themselves politically, economically, and socially into their home states.83 In the words of Tamás Bauer, an Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) representative critical of the Status Law, the legislation essentially tells the Hungarians beyond the border that: “[y]our actual home is the Hungarian state, and not the one which you are citizens of. [D]on’t hope for integration into the political communities of the states whose citizens you are . . . You are hoping for something more in the future, although in reality it will never come to fruition.”84 Bauer’s concerns echoed those of some “moderate” diaspora leaders who, while grateful for Hungary’s support, feared their own political positions and futures if their communities were focused only on what they could get from Budapest.85 For those kin-state politicians who had much to gain from being involved in the diaspora issue, there was clearly a built-in incentive to fight the assimilation and even integration of the diasporas into their host states. A less dependent diaspora population would undermine the ability of a party like Fidesz to take advantage of the ideological, organizational, and political resources that come from its close transborder engagement. Fidesz’s engagement with the diaspora issue, and its manifestation in the form of the Status Law, also allowed the party to control the discourse of the nation, and to some extent, the terms of the debate leading up to the April 2002 election. The final stages of debate and voting for

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the Status Law came in mid-2001, conveniently just as the electoral campaign for one of the most polarized and divisive elections in postcommunist Hungary was starting. The ethnic Hungarian issue and the Status Law were, therefore, inevitably part of the campaign. Controlling the discourse of the nation, with Fidesz at the center of that conception, both within Hungary and in the ethnic Hungarian communities, gave the governing party a strong foothold in the right of the political spectrum. Yet, Fidesz had to balance its desire for political credit with the reality that it needed some degree of consensus in order for the Status Law to pass. Fortunately for Fidesz, by June 2001 the legislation had become widely embraced due to the work done by a variety of parliamentary committees: a “yes” vote was all but assured. The Socialists continued to criticize the law based on its economic risks for Hungary, but went out of its way to present the message that it was also a nationfriendly party. The Socialists had little traction on the nation question and feared losing more ground to Fidesz on this issue. Despite the “mistakes and deficiencies of the law” it would support the legislation.86 Only the SZDSZ faction voted against the bill, citing its dangerous unilateralism, its redundancy, and its failure to meet EU standards of regional cooperation.87 Underlying the apparent consensus behind the Status Law was the understanding that while a party was unlikely to win an election based on its stance toward the diaspora, it might be enough to cause a party to lose some voters. Even though the beneficiaries of this legislation were nonvoting noncitizens, policymakers feared being labeled as “traitors” or as not “real” Hungarians. István Csurka, now the leader of MIÉP, invoked this discourse when he commented that certain members of parliament should also have to apply for Hungarian certificates, most likely referring to the dissenting SZDSZ members.88 Regional Relations and European Norms The Status Law was simultaneously unilateral and extraterritorial, and therefore prone to conflict with neighboring countries and institutions of the EU. The Status Law failed to fulfill either of its two most crucial functions: providing a solution to the Schengen dilemma and strengthening the development of independent Hungarian cultural and educational institutions in the diaspora communities. The most controversial of the law’s provisions—the ethnic identity cards and the labor permits—also put Hungary in the unenviable position of having to defend its policy against accusations of “discrimination” and of not

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conforming to EU legislation. This had the effect of diminishing Hungary’s international political capital in pushing for more rights protection and cultural autonomy for the ethnic Hungarian communities. As the Hungarian case shows, such extraterritorial policies can only work multilaterally, by ensuring the cooperation of neighboring countries and the acceptance of regional institutions such as the EU. The Hungarian policymakers who created the Status Law did not simply willfully ignore EU norms in order to pursue their goal of borderless “national reintegration,” as even most nationalist elites did not want to jeopardize Hungary’s EU accession. The normative confusion surrounding relations between kin-states and cross-border minority groups in an integrating Europe was partly responsible for the government misjudging the impact of the legislation. However, Prime Minister Orbán had also engaged in numerous controversies pertaining to regional relations, which created suspicion of his government and cultivated a poor diplomatic climate for the Status Law. For example, Orbán insisted that the Czech Republic denounce the Beneš decrees, which expelled primarily German and Hungarian communities from the lands of Czechoslovakia after World War II. Orbán argued that their complete renunciation should be a precondition of the state’s EU membership and of further normalized relations with Hungary. This brought criticisms that Orbán was too focused on analyzing the past, and that it had no right to try and derail the accession process of other states. The Hungarian prime minister also developed a very public relationship with the Austrian Freedom Party leader Jörg Haider, whose anti-immigrant, EU-skeptic stance, and praise for Austria’s Nazi past made him a pariah in Western Europe after his party joined the coalition government in 2000.89 Finally, Fidesz’s seemingly close working relationship with Hungary’s most successful extreme right-wing party, MIÉP, and the possibility of that party joining Fidesz’s coalition for the 2002 elections made many observers uneasy.90 The Hungarian government then faced problems with the governments of the neighboring countries that would be directly affected by the implementation of the Status Law, specifically Slovakia and Romania. Fidesz and its government felt it was well within its rights to create the Status Law without securing prior agreements with the neighboring governments. According to individuals close to the process, the neighboring states had been well informed about the Status Law and what Hungary was doing before its passage.91 Hungary had not expected a negative reaction, especially since the neighboring countries had previously implemented

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similar benefit laws, although without the unilateral and targeted extraterritorial component.92 Hungary’s foreign policy elites also saw the country as being in a privileged position in relation to its neighbors at this point in time.93 While Hungary was on the fast-track to EU membership, Slovakia and Romania were still awaiting a decision on whether they would be included in the first round of post-communist accession countries. In fact, it was not until 2002 that Romania was taken off the Schengen visa list. The extraterritorial aspect of the Status Law, however, gave the Romanian and Slovak governments a powerful argument that Hungary’s action violated their states’ sovereignty. They responded by refusing to allow the implementation of Hungary’s law on their territory. These governments were both suspicious of Hungary’s intentions and mindful of how a tough position toward Hungary would play to their own domestic constituents. It was also a way for them to assert their power in the diplomatic realm. By most accounts, they played the foreign policy game in this respect very cleverly, to the disadvantage of Hungary.94 They were particularly effective in bringing the arguments regarding sovereignty and discrimination on an ethnic basis before EU institutions. Immediately after the passage of the Status Law in the Hungarian parliament on June 19, 2001, the Romanian prime minister, Adrian Nastase, requested that the Venice Commission (also known as the European Commission for Democracy Through Law) examine “the compatibility of the Act on Hungarians living in neighboring countries . . . with the European norms and principles of contemporary public international law.”95 The Venice Commission report, which came out in October 2001, presented Hungary with both good and bad news. It gave conditional recognition of the right of states like Hungary to intervene on behalf of ethnic kin in other states, as long as it furthered the goal of minority protection. The Commission did voice concern over the discretion given to ethnic Hungarian communities in administering ethnic identity cards and the ethnic basis for the granting of work permits, but stated that “the mere fact that the addressees of a piece of legislation are foreign citizens does not constitute an infringement on the principle of territorial sovereignty.” While this statement generally supported Hungary’s position, the Commission also clearly noted an obvious preference for these minority issues to be worked out through the framework of a new treaties regime, rather than through domestic legislation.96 On the question of whether the extraterritorial aspect of Hungary’s law was acceptable, EU officials

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clearly expressed a preference for the extension of subsidies to be used within the home state only when they were nondiscriminatory and done with the consent of the concerned government. Rolf Ekeus, the former High Commissioner on National Minorities, laid out this position in 2001: The protection of minority rights is the obligation of the State where the minority resides . . . Although a state with a titular majority population may have an interest in persons of the same ethnicity living abroad, this does not entitle or imply, in any way, a right under international law to exercise jurisdiction over these persons. At the same time, it does not preclude a state from granting certain preferences within its jurisdiction, on a non-discriminatory basis. Nor does it preclude persons belonging to a national minority from maintaining unimpeded contacts across frontiers with citizens of other states with whom they share common ethnic or national origins.97

As Ekeus’s statement shows, there was somewhat of a disconnect between Hungary’s assertion of its right to be an agent of minority promotion across borders and the priorities and concerns of EU officials on this matter. Whereas for Hungary, the Status Law was not problematic because “borders are becoming ever more meaningless to individuals and their communities within a unifying Europe,”98 EU officials wanted to “maintain a state system based on sovereignty and citizenship.”99 Backed by the findings of the Venice Commission, Romania, and later Slovakia, moved to negotiate modifications to the Status Law that would allay its concerns and benefit it in the process. In order to successfully implement the Status Law on January 1, 2002, the Fidesz government had to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Romania (also known as the Orbán-Nastase agreement), which gave significant concessions to the neighboring government with little consultation from parliament.100 The Memorandum altered the Status Law in a number of ways that limited the extraterritorial aspects of the legislation: (1) all Romanian citizens would be eligible for the same treatment regarding employment and Hungarian work permits, based on an overall quota system; (2) non-Hungarian dependants of ethnic Hungarians would no longer be eligible for Certificates or benefits; (3) the process of granting the Certificates would be done only in Hungary; (4) the Certificates now contained only basic information, doing away with the prior reference to membership in the Hungarian

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nation; (5) the question of who is Hungarian would be decided by a free declaration of identity; (6) no support to political organizations in Romania would be given without prior approval; and (7) the two states would begin negotiations on the preferential treatment of mutually shared minorities. There was significant criticism leveled at the Orbán government from both the Right and the Left for signing the pact with Romania. Members of the MSZP and SZDSZ harshly criticized the agreement because it circumvented the normal quota system for allowing in foreign (nonHungarian) labor and risked jeopardizing the Hungarian labor market.101 Subsequently, as tables 4.1 and 4.2 show, there was a decrease in public support for the Status Law benefits and an increase in negative opinions about ethnic Hungarians working in Hungary who were registered in polling from November 2001 to the time of the controversy over the agreement with Romania.102 In April of 2001, 52 percent of MSZP voters supported the Status Law and 24 percent strongly disagreed with it. Among all voters, 53 percent supported the law at that time, and 34 percent were undecided.103 By the time of the agreement signing in January of 2002, 65 percent of MSZP voters opposed the Status Law and 67 percent were worried that the agreement would result in a large number of foreigners coming to work in Hungary. In addition, 51 percent of undecided voters were worried about the immigration issue.104 In polls taken around the time of the signing, 50 percent of voters disagreed with the pact, and 18 percent characterized it as a “serious mistake and betrayal Table 4.1 Attitudes toward Status Law and diaspora support policy, April 2001 (percentage of respondents) All respondents

Yes

No

Support funding for cultural & language programs Ethnic kin should get special treatment in Hungary Status Law will help keep ethnic kin at home

92 65 53

6 29 13

By party affiliation

Support Status Law Support funding for cultural & language programs Status Law will help keep ethnic kin at home

Yes Fidesz

MSZP

74 76 60

52 60 47

Source: Socio Balance survey conducted in April 2001. Summary of poll in “A törvény létrejöttének kronológiája,” in A Státustörvény: Dokumentumok, Tanulmányok, Publicisztika, ed. Kántor, 586.

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Table 4.2 Attitudes toward Status Law and Orbán-Nastase agreement, January 2002 (percentage of respondents) Support for Status Law

Approve

Disapprove

All respondents Likely Fidesz voters Likely MSZP voters Undecided voters

53 70 26 43

47 21 65 37

Support for Agreement

Approve

Disapprove

All respondents Likely Fidesz voters Likely MSZP voters Undecided voters

36 63 17 27

50 29 73 52

Concern that agreement lets in foreign workers

Yes

No

Likely Fidesz voters Likely MSZP voters Undecided voters

27 67 51

68 29 36

Source: Hungarian Gallup Institute, “Pártpreferenciák szerint változik as Orbán-Nastase megállapodás megítélése,” January 21, 2002, http://www. gallup.hu/Gallup/release/nastase020121.html.

of Hungarian interests.” Only 36 percent supported the move. Among previous non-voters, 66 percent disagreed with the pact, and among supporters of the Left, 80 percent of SZDSZ voters and 73 percent of MSZP voters disagreed with Fidesz’s action. These numbers represented a general unhappiness among voters on the Left with the Status Law as well as the high degree of ideological polarization in the months leading up to the 2002 parliamentary elections. Conclusion To explain the surprising intensification of Hungary’s ethnic activism at the height of the country’s political, economic, and supranational consolidation, and the creation and eventual failure of the law that embodied that activism, this chapter has identified two main factors. The first is the role of Hungary’s EU accession as both a catalyst for change in Hungary’s diaspora policy and as a limiting factor in the final shape of that policy. The possibilities offered by the widening of the EU and its rhetoric of disappearing borders and new forms of transnational identity

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allowed some Hungarian policymakers to envision a framework for more interventionist forms of ethnic activism than were actually viable. At the same time, the dilemmas for kin-state politics presented by the Schengen borders forced the Fidesz government to meet the high “nation-oriented” expectations of its campaign rhetoric with comparable action. Put another way, Hungary’s access to the diaspora and its resources were threatened by its impending EU membership, but there was no clear normative framework for how Hungary should redefine its relationship and policy approach to coethnics in the region to deal with this challenge. The second factor is the role of diaspora politics and its accompanying nationalist rhetoric as a major component of domestic political strategy. As both this chapter and Chapter 3 demonstrated, Fidesz used the symbolic and cultural content inherent in the diaspora issue in its effort to rebuild and renew the Hungarian Right. Helped by its engagement with the ethnic diaspora issue, Fidesz was able to use the tools of media, domestic legislation, ideology, and transnational networks to carve out a unique space for itself in an open and fluid post-communist political field. The Status Law became the medium for Fidesz’s transborder strategy and the central battleground for competing visions of diaspora policy. Ultimately, the legislation’s scope and provisions expanded beyond practical utility, becoming a bloated, highly symbolic, and, ultimately, widely controversial policy failure. While a significant number of ethnic Hungarians had applied for and received their certificates,105 both the symbolic and practical worth of the benefits promised by the Status Law were diminished by the competing agendas it represented and the compromises made to ensure its implementation. As we will see in the following chapter, these domestic and external factors would soon realign to produce a new set of outcomes: the weakening of the Right as left-wing parties regained control of government, and the remaking of diaspora policy in an attempt to undo Fidesz’s vision of a transborder nation.

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CHAPTER 5

The Politics of Diaspora Policy Reform: From Dual Citizenship to Economic Development

D

uring its term heading the governing coalition, the Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz) successfully utilized the ethnic diaspora issue as part of its domestic political strategy, consolidated the Right to an unprecedented degree, and found a compromise solution to the Schengen dilemma by pushing through the controversial Status Law. In the aftermath of the Status Law controversy, however, Fidesz found its control of the government and the political Right weakened as it went into the 2002 parliamentary election in April. The 2002 elections ushered in a new era in which Fidesz was again in opposition and the salience of nationalist politics appeared to be on the wane. Between 2002–2007, Fidesz lost two elections to the left-wing Hungarian Socialist Party-Alliance of Free Democrats (MSZP-SZDSZ) coalition, the unity of the Right began to fracture, and a Fidesz-backed referendum on granting dual citizenship to the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries failed to pass. Given these developments, it would have been reasonable to expect the MSZP-led government to downplay or simply deprioritize diaspora policy. Yet the new government embarked on a radical restructuring of the institutions forming the support system for Hungarians beyond the border and instituted a package of new policy initiatives. This chapter seeks to explain both the political and policy shifts that occurred around diaspora politics during Hungary’s second post-communist decade. Why, after all of Fidesz’s previous success, did the issue of Hungary’s relationship with its coethnics across the border now fail to galvanize political support for the party? And what were the factors

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that shaped the MSZP-led government’s restructuring of Hungary’s diaspora policy? To answer the first question, I argue that the political environment between 2002 and 2005 shifted in such a way to allow the Left to credibly present an alternative conception of Hungary’s kin-state role and to weaken the Right’s ability to use diaspora policy as a political resource. The tightly contested 2002 parliamentary elections and the failed 2004 referendum on granting nonresident dual citizenship to ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries created this moment of redefinition in Hungarian diaspora politics. At both times, Fidesz engaged in ethnic outbidding by playing to its more nationalist constituents, but this strategy of polarization floundered as a highly motivated left-wing coalition moved to reframe the agenda. The dual citizenship referendum gave the Left a platform from which to criticize Fidesz’s handling of diaspora policy as Hungarian society was forced confront its ambiguity about further integrating those beyond the border into the political community. The new policy was then shaped by the desire of the MSZP-led government to weaken its opponent’s hold on the transborder nation issue and promote its own agenda. The left-wing government capitalized on its victory by dismantling the informal, clientelistic networks linking political elites in Hungary and the ethnic Hungarian communities that the previous right-wing government had built up during its time in office. The Socialists constructed institutions that would centralize and depoliticize cross-border support policy, thereby limiting the Right’s ability to utilize and control cross-border patronage networks and embedding its own vision of cross-border relations. Hungary’s EU membership—and eventually Slovakia’s and Romania’s as well—then provided incentives for an institutional restructuring of cross-border support toward competitive funding and a focus on regional economic development. The focus on economic development allowed the leftwing government to shape diaspora policy to its advantage, selling the reforms as a way to expand markets for Hungarian businesses and for Hungary to compete for regional development funds available from the EU. In contrast to earlier periods, EU membership was now a reality, not merely a goal to be pursued, and as such had more direct influence on the direction and content of policy change. The 2002 Election and Changing Political Strategies After the 2002 elections, Fidesz was relegated to an opposition role as the ability of nationalist politics to sustain political support was again called

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into question. The 2002 election campaign reflected the highly partisan, bipolar political environment that had developed during the Fidesz government. By many accounts, Fidesz’s uncompromising governing and campaign style and its refusal to unequivocally rule out a possible postelection coalition with the radical right-wing Hungarian Truth and Life Party (MIÉP) made the campaign notably divisive and intense. MSZP and SZDSZ played up fears that a vote for the Right would place the country down a path of radical nationalism and centralization of authority that would jeopardize Hungary’s European integration and economic progress. The election was framed as a “war” in a Hungary “divided by cultural and civilizational cleavages.”1 Almost no one had expected Fidesz to lose, based on preelection polling and Prime Minister Orbán’s incumbency and much-noted charisma. But the strategy of division led to an election with a record-breaking turnout in which the Left was highly mobilized and successful in winning enough seats to form a government after a two-round election.2 In particular, the ability of the SZDSZ to mobilize its core and clear the parliamentary threshold, and MIÉP’s and the Smallholders’ inability to do the same, was key in allowing a centerleft governing coalition to form. For Fidesz and the Right, the election loss was an unexpected blow, which led to recriminations, anger, and a search for new political strategies. Observers outside the party blamed Fidesz’s loss on Orbán’s confrontational style and his courting of radical voters, which likely alienated more moderate voters.3 Orbán and his circle, however, apparently understood the loss to be primarily a failure of organization, not of ideological strategy. In fact, the close results of the second-round election in April 2002 suggested to the party elite that the strategy of mobilizing core rightwing voters and wooing would-be radical right voters with nationalist appeals between the first and second rounds had been the right one.4 Fidesz responded to the post-election challenge by splitting the party into two components: one side of the party would be the parliamentary faction, which would focus on criticizing the government and attempting to maintain unity within the right-wing opposition; the other side would be dedicated to building a mass right-wing movement affiliated with, but not directly under the control of, the party and driven by the charismatic leadership of Orbán.5 No longer tied down by leading the parliamentary faction, Orbán and members of his circle were free to focus on building up the Right’s organizational strength, connecting people who had been inspired by Fidesz’s message of nation, community, and family. By creating a network of “Civic Circles,” the party would have access to a mobilized core of right-wing voters. It would also be able to organize and bring into

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the party sphere more middle-of-the-road voters, who would join for the chance to meet people and participate in activities based around a common profession, hobbies, or feelings of disenchantment with the tradeoffs of economic liberalization.6 In creating the Civic Circles, Orbán staked his party’s claim to an ideology and a set of priorities that would combine pride in Hungarian culture and protection of the transborder nation, opposition to the MSZP as corrupt ex-communists, and a moderate economic populism. During a speech on May 7, 2002—soon after the elections—Orbán laid out the idea of this organization, calling on “civic Hungary” to “defend its national interests”: Civic Hungary declared that it would never again be possible to put the largest national minority in Europe into the corner, civic Hungary declared that our future is not in a country of 10 million, but is in a Hungarian nation of 15 million. We will not allow them, because we are strong enough, to give away Hungarian land to foreigners and to cheat the Hungarian farmers. We will not allow them, because we are strong enough, to destroy the Status Law. We won’t let them take from families what was given to them in recent years. . . . Now joining forces is the most important thing since we are the largest group.7

The Civic Circles were meant to embody the spontaneous rising up and independent organization of the “authentic” Hungarian middle class but remain available to Fidesz as a source of political mobilization. Fidesz thus acted as a “broker” between various nonpolitical groups, including church congregations, neighborhood associations, and people personally concerned with the situation of the Hungarians across the border, bringing them into the Fidesz sphere and giving a political structure to their grievances and concerns.8 While the Civic Circles project was a success in terms of organization—at its peak, there were around 11,000 Circles—Fidesz’s position as the head of a strong, unified right-wing movement faced increasing problems. First, despite Orbán’s rhetoric about “defending” the Status Law, in 2003 parliament voted to roll back many of the legislation’s most controversial provisions. Not surprisingly, after the MSZP regained control of the government in 2002, they began negotiations with the neighboring governments, EU officials, and the Hungarian Standing Conference (MÁÉRT) committees to further modify the law to limit controversy, ensure compliance with international norms, and fix some of what the Left had found fault with in the original version. The willingness to rework the law, and

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by doing so, finally procure an agreement on its implementation with Slovakia, was also motivated by Hungary’s official invitation to become an EU member by May 2004 at the December 13, 2002, Copenhagen summit.9 A modified version of the Status Law was narrowly passed by the Hungarian parliament on 23 June, 2003 (196 to 173). The modifications included the withdrawal of special work permits for ethnic Hungarians, the inclusion of anyone studying Hungarian in the subject countries within the scope of the educational language benefits, the granting of subsidies to established organizations rather than individual families, and the abrogation of the 2⫹ child rule for benefit eligibility. Another crucial change to the law included taking out the preamble references to a “united Hungarian nation,” referring instead only to cultural connections between Hungary and its regional diaspora.10 These changes eroded Fidesz’s ability to portray itself as the defender of the Hungarian nation extending across the border. The second major challenge was factionalization and disunity among the parties on the Right, with Fidesz sustaining criticism from both the center and the far-right flank. The defeat of the right-wing coalition in 2002 raised questions for the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) as to whether allying itself so closely to Fidesz was the best strategy for the small party. MDF president Ibolya Dávid and other members of the center-right party, which had just barely made it into parliament, felt that Fidesz had abandoned the center in its courting of more nationalist and extreme-right voters. The wing of the MDF led by Dávid pushed to distance the party from Fidesz and to control its own independent parliamentary faction.11 Other MDF leaders, including the faction leader, István Balsai, felt that a continued alliance with Fidesz was the best chance for the party to maintain political influence. The pro-Fidesz faction, however, lost out and those who opposed a more independent course for MDF left the party, with many defecting to Fidesz.12 Dávid then continued her plan to present the MDF as a more palatable, center-right alternative to Fidesz, with a focus on creating a “normal” political climate, free from corruption, nationalist overtones, and economic populism.13 In June 2004, Dávid published a “Conservative Manifesto” in one of the country’s major newspapers, outlining what was necessary for the “political revitalization of the right wing.” “The Right,” she wrote, “is struggling with a crisis of values.” What the country needed, and what the MDF offered, was a solid, Christian-Democratic conservatism, which adhered to the values of protecting nation and family, but fully supported economic privatization and rejected “all anti-democratic elements from the pre-1945

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tradition,” such as radical nationalism, authoritarian cults of personality, and anti-Semitism.14 On the extreme right as well, new parties and organizations arose to define themselves as alternatives to Fidesz and to challenge its vanguard position. The most high-profile of these was the new party Movement for a Better Hungary, known as Jobbik, created in 2003 under party president Dávid Kovács. Self-described as a “principled, conservative and radically patriotic Christian party,” the Jobbik leadership consciously defined itself in opposition to Fidesz. Kovács presented Jobbik as the party for those Fidesz voters who were not necessarily avid supporters of the party, but who voted for the Young Democrats “for lack of something better.”15 Antall and Orbán, Kovács said, had only been nationalists in rhetoric, whereas his party represented a true defense of Hungarian values and interests. Central to these interests was the situation of the Hungarians “cut off ” from the motherland, who had suffered from the timid policies of the various Hungarian governments since 1989. Jobbik, on the other hand, offered a “12-point plan to topple Trianon.”16 In reaction to these challenges and setbacks, Fidesz backed away somewhat from its focus on nationalist issues and turned more toward emphasizing socioeconomic problems and criticizing the MSZP-SZDSZ government on that basis. A series of government scandals, including the revelation in June 2002 of Prime Minister Medgyessy’s connection to the communist-era secret police, and a lack of progress on a number of reforms, gave Fidesz an opening to reestablish its position by 2004.17 Fidesz representatives tried to take advantage of this situation, emphasizing the party’s role as the defender of those who were the “losers of the regime change” against the threat of globalization and neoliberalism represented by the policies of the MSZP and the SZDSZ.18 Fidesz continued to espouse economic protectionism and nationalism, drawing on fears that the new government’s policies would take away the remaining social safety net of child and family allowances and free education, privatize the healthcare and pension systems, and sell off Hungarian land and businesses to foreign companies. At its party congress in May 2003, Fidesz also changed its organizational structure, moving to incorporate the Civic Circles more formally into the party, and thereby raise party membership. It changed the party name again to Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz-MPSZ—an uncomfortably close match to MSZP) and embraced the idea of a “people’s party.” The move to strengthen the party’s formal organization and establish some discipline over the Circles

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was seen as a way for Fidesz to better control the message and the mobilization of the civic groups. The party leadership wanted to forestall potential radicalism from the Circles, such as anti-EU agitation, which might jeopardize the momentum Fidesz-MPSZ had gained, and did not want to leave those it had mobilized open to co-optation by far-right groups.19 This strategy of focusing on public feelings of “insecurity” and having a more visible party membership yielded some success by 2004. Fidesz-MPSZ’s poll numbers rose and, most tellingly, the party performed well in the country’s first European Parliamentary (EP) elections held in 2004. The election was seen as a protest vote against the MSZPSZDSZ government and a victory for the opposition parties, with Fidesz winning 12 out of 24 available seats and the MDF winning one.20 The resignation of Prime Minister Medgyessy in August 2004 brought additional challenges and opportunities as Ferenc Gyurcsány was installed as the new head of government. Gyurcsány, who some called the “Tony Blair” of Hungarian politics, was a rich, young entrepreneur with ties to the former Communist Youth, who projected a dynamic, Westernized image rivaling Orbán’s own youthful charisma. In the face of this potential renewal for the Left, Fidesz now had to figure out how to protect its improved public standing, yet maintain a connection to both hardcore right-wing supporters, who demanded consistency on nationalist issues, and potential center-right voters, who were attracted to a broader socioeconomic message and were perhaps wary of Fidesz’s tendency to be a “loudmouth, irresponsibly oppositional party.”21 Maintaining this balance became more difficult as the state’s relationship to the Hungarians beyond the border was again thrust into the spotlight with a petition drive for a referendum on granting dual citizenship to Hungarians in the neighboring states. The Dual Citizenship Referendum In the summer of 2003, spurred by the continued lack of EU access of the Ukrainian, Croatian, and Serbian Hungarian communities, the World Congress of Hungarians (MVSZ) again moved to advance the issue of providing coethnics in the region “citizenship without residency.” Without a “nation-friendly” government in place, the MVSZ took the issue straight to the Hungarian electorate, beginning its petition campaign in support of a referendum on the issue in August 2003. After some legal and political wrangling, the dual citizenship question was scheduled for a referendum vote on December 5, 2004, together

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with an opposition-backed question on the government’s planned privatization of hospitals.22 In doing so, the MVSZ put the issue of how Hungary should define its relationship with the diaspora communities back into a heated public debate for the first time since the beginning of 2002, when the Status Law implementation agreement was signed with Romania. The stakes of the referendum campaign were significant for both camps in Hungarian politics. Granting nonresident dual citizenship would have the practical effect of merging the Hungarian cultural nation and the political community, resulting in many intended and unintended consequences. Such a merging could potentially reshape political power in Hungary by changing the size and the composition of the electorate, most likely in favor of Fidesz and other right-wing parties. As Mária Kovács has pointed out, Hungarian law requires only three months residency before a citizen can vote, so even nonresident citizenship-holders could determine the outcome of an election with a relatively short commitment of time. Such an outcome, Kovács argues, “would run counter to the principle of popular sovereignty and democratic self-determination within Hungary itself, putting Hungarian democracy under pressures it may not be able to withstand.”23 There would also be no barriers against the resettlement in Hungary of those granted citizenship, which could result in a significant increase in migration from some of the less economically developed areas of Hungary’s former territories. Given these potential consequences, the question of how Hungary should define its relationship to ethnic kin beyond the border became a source of contestation and debate as the referendum campaign progressed.24 The referendum campaign presented Fidesz-MPSZ with a difficult situation. As outlined above, the party leadership had begun to pull back somewhat from nationalism and a confrontational style, and had succeeded to a significant degree in rehabilitating the party’s image. There was concern among the Fidesz-MPSZ leadership that the citizenship question would drag the party back into a competition over questions of national belonging in which it would be vulnerable to attack by both the new radical right groups and by MSZP’s previously successful stoking of anti-immigration fears. Supporting the campaign would also ally Fidesz-MPSZ with polarizing figures, such as the current president of the MVSZ, Miklós Patrubány, with whom the Fidesz leadership had an uneasy relationship. As one Hungarian analyst described it, the referendum campaign meant for Orbán and his supporters that “they were forced for weeks to suspend their ‘pragmatic populist’ policy and

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to risk the matter of hospital privatization, in order to divide society into honorable and dishonorable Hungarians.”25 In addition, Fidesz’s support for the dual citizenship campaign represented a reversal from the party’s earlier stance, when the party leadership was in power and had opposed the idea of dual citizenship. Fearing the potential domestic political fallout from increased migration to Hungary from the ethnic Hungarian communities and additional backlash from external actors, the Orbán government had assured the European Council and the neighboring governments at the time that Hungary would not seek to make its coethnics citizens. Despite these misgivings, the party had no choice but to support the referendum and throw its weight behind the campaign to get the dual citizenship question on the ballot and have it passed by a majority of voters. Because the MVSZ represented the global Hungarian diaspora, and therefore had little independent political standing in Hungary, the petition drive and campaign could not have succeeded without the strong support of one of the major political parties. Fidesz’s refusal to back the referendum would have essentially doomed it to failure, and Fidesz would have certainly paid a high price in the loss of right-wing and cross-border support. This was particularly true as support for “reunification spanning the national borders” was a key issue for the right-wing voters making up the core of the party’s most stable supporters, many of whom already felt “neglected” by Fidesz’s turn to a “pragmatic people’s party” and the refashioning of its image.26 The referendum campaign also presented a chance to revisit a strategy that had been successful earlier in the party’s development: using the diaspora issue as a proxy for criticism of the government by painting the MSZP-SZDSZ as greedy, cynical, and unfeeling, and reminding the country of the governing coalition’s lax nationalist credentials and ties to “foreign” interests. With these stakes in mind, Fidesz-MPSZ fully engaged in the campaign, combining pragmatism and morality in making its case for the initiative. According to Fidesz spokespeople, dual citizenship for those beyond the border would serve the cause of “national reunification” and provide benefits for Hungary as well, such as making it easier for ethnic Hungarians to fill gaps in the domestic labor force.27 Voting “yes” on the referendum itself would not have any adverse effects: it would simply compel the parliament to work out some kind of legislation, which could include limits on voting rights and other issues of concern. And, they argued, the citizenship measure would not likely change the desire to migrate to Hungary in any significant way: “[I]f someone wants to move

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to Hungary, they will do it even if they don’t have dual citizenship. And if someone doesn’t want to relocate, they won’t do it, even if they have a Hungarian passport in their pocket.” Dual citizenship would in fact give those ethnic Hungarians on the other side of the Schengen borders the reassurance they needed to stay at home by enabling them to maintain a strong relationship with their mother country. Supporting the campaign was the “right” thing to do and a “question of principle”: to portray Hungary’s coethnics as a “burden” would be a “betrayal” and a signal that the Hungarian government considered them to be “unnecessary and superfluous.”28 This last point was clearly meant as a criticism of the governing coalition, which campaigned hard against the initiative. The petition campaign began right as Gyurcsány took control of the government and his party, and was one of the first battles the new prime minister had to fight. Letting Fidesz-MPSZ, and the ever-critical MVSZ, win this issue would have been a blow to the new government and would have kept up the momentum of the Right on one of its signature issues. If the referendum were successful, Parliament would have been obligated to spend the next legislative session working out the details of nonresident dual citizenship, distracting from the governing coalition’s agenda in the run-up to the 2006 parliamentary elections, the first major test of the new prime minister. In opposing the referendum, the MSZP focused on the objections that had earlier been successful bulwarks against the Right’s optimistic rhetoric of national reintegration during and after the Status Law debates: the threat of increased migration and the socioeconomic costs of dual citizenship. The MSZP and its allies argued, first, that granting blanket citizenship to ethnic Hungarians who did not reside in Hungary would increase the likelihood of migration from the poorest ethnic Hungarian communities, particularly those in Serbia and Ukraine. Recent census data from the region showed a significant demographic decline in the regional diaspora communities through resettlement, assimilation, and low population growth. This suggested that dual citizenship would give additional incentives to those ethnic Hungarians who would like to migrate to Hungary, but who were otherwise unlikely to risk the uncertainty of leaving the country where they had concrete legal rights.29 Second, it would be a financial burden on Hungary and ordinary Hungarians, as they would have to compete with new “job seekers” from the neighboring countries, which the Hungarian labor market would have to absorb.30 Another financial cost of nonresident

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dual citizenship, according to the MSZP, was that the Hungarian state would be obliged to provide health care and pensions for ethnic Hungarians who did not live or work in Hungary. This was framed as a serious threat to the ability of the state to provide for its current citizens.31 In campaigning against the referendum initiatives, the MSZP opened itself up to criticism and pitted itself against the diaspora leadership. Fidesz-MPSZ blasted the government for “sacrificing the Hungarians beyond the border for its utilitarian political goals,” using fear, demagoguery, and ethnic tensions to manipulate the voters.32 Even in the ethnic Hungarian communities that would likely not need dual citizenship, such as Romania (scheduled to join the EU in 2007), the official stance was to encourage Hungarian voters to support the initiative. In tension with this solidarity, however, was the “uncomfortable situation” the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) found itself in, as the referendum campaign was occurring at the time of a new government coming to power in Romania.33 The RMDSZ feared isolating itself in the new government if it supported dual citizenship too vocally. Despite support for the initiative by all the ethnic Hungarian parties, the president of Hungary, and many political elites, the Hungarian electorate ultimately reflected a good deal of ambiguity about the dual citizenship issue. Although the majority of those who voted supported the initiative, the results were somewhat surprising in that such a large number of people (49 percent) came out to vote against dual citizenship for their ethnic kin.34 Simple indifference, rather than a pointed desire by some Hungarians to keep the boundaries of the cultural and the political community clearly separate, would have resulted in perhaps an even lower turnout, but given a wider margin to the issue’s supporters. The expectation was that voters who opposed or did not strongly support the initiative would simply stay home. The relatively strong showing against dual citizenship, therefore, looked to many like a victory for the MSZP and SZDSZ, who were able to beat Fidesz-MPSZ in an area of traditional strength for the Right. In the aftermath of the referendum, Fidesz-MPSZ and the MSZP each took away lessons that would influence their strategies moving forward. Although some right-wing critics blamed Fidesz’s earlier pulling back from core nationalist issues during the previous year for the referendum’s defeat, the party leadership took away the lesson that “further stretching of the ‘nation question’ would be counterproductive for

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an electoral victory in 2006.”35 Orbán and Németh both “realized that nationalist rhetoric was pushing the voters too far,” and so moved to put diaspora matters into the background of their agenda in favor of a more economic populist message.36 The MSZP, on the other hand, had won a victory, but one it could not afford to flaunt, given the highly emotional nature of the issue for some segments of society, and the vitriol being directed at the government from angry and disappointed members of the ethnic Hungarian communities. The MSZP-SZDSZ coalition might have taken away the lesson that diaspora policy had become a “twentieth-order issue in domestic politics,” and therefore, could be set aside and essentially ignored.37 Instead, from 2005 to 2007, the government undertook a set of reforms and new initiatives in kinstate policy, radically transforming the institutional structure of crossborder support and policymaking, and placing diaspora matters under the umbrella of economic development policy. The failed dual citizenship referendum, therefore, set the stage for the rolling out of a new diaspora policy by the government. The Impetus for Policy Reform Three main factors motivated policy change by the MSZP-led government in the aftermath of the failed dual citizenship referendum. The first factor was the opportunity to press the governing parties’ advantage against a weakened Fidesz-MPSZ by taking control of diaspora policy and dismantling the networks of cross-border clientelism and patronage that Fidesz and its allies had developed during the previous decade. Realizing that Fidesz-MPSZ would likely steer clear of the issue in the months leading up to the 2006 elections, the MSZP “turned to offense” in its crafting of a new policy.38 The MSZP sought to dilute the symbolic political weight of the diaspora issue by criticizing the previous policy as “nationalist nonsense”39 and embarking on technocratic policy reform based on professionalization and increased transparency. The government also abolished forums for transborder clientelism and criticism of the government, such as MÁÉRT, which it saw as a mouthpiece for right-wing provocateurs who wanted to export Hungarian domestic politics to the diaspora communities.40 The MSZP then restructured the diaspora support system in a way that would disrupt many of the existing cross-border networks and insulate the Hungarian government from more direct involvement by ethnic Hungarian political elites in the policymaking process.

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The MSZP’s new approach to policy, however, wasn’t just a strategy to tear down what had come before, but also to build anew. The political capital gained by the MSZP by the outcome of the referendum—and later by its unprecedented incumbent victory in the 2006 elections— gave the party an opportunity to embed the Left’s conception of diaspora policy. The new policies both reflected needed reforms touted for years by committed activists on the Left, and reinforced the development-oriented, modernizing social policies that were important components of the MSZP’s domestic agenda. During the first MSZPSZDSZ government from 1994 to 1998, left-wing diaspora policymakers had attempted to modernize and institutionalize what they saw as more effective forms of cross-border support. Whatever progress they made at the time was short-lived as Fidesz and its allies soon took control of diaspora policy. This time, however, with Fidesz retreating from the issue and the public seemingly disinterested, reforms would face little domestic resistance.41 Finally, the extent and direction of policy change was also shaped by the context of EU accession in the region. In crafting its new policies, the government was responding to the realities and opportunities offered by EU accession. With Hungary and Slovakia joining the EU in 2004— and Romania in 2007—the MSZP government was able to credibly sell EU integration as at least a partial solution to the diaspora problem in a way it could not during its previous administration. The new policy self-consciously emulated the EU’s competitive funding framework. It was based in large part on making the ethnic Hungarian communities more competitive within the EU economy and improving Hungary’s chances to benefit from EU regional development funds through joint applications with the neighboring countries. The EU structure even had an influence on the conduct of Hungary’s foreign policy and diplomatic advocacy regarding the Hungarians beyond the border. All of these motives for reform—the desire to further weaken the ideological and organizational position of Fidesz-MPSZ, to remake policy in line with the left-wing agenda, and to benefit as much as possible from EU accession—crystallized around a core set of goals. The first goal was to build a more independent and less partisan relationship with the ethnic Hungarian communities and a less antagonistic relationship with their states of residence. The second goal was to dismantle the existing networks of clientelism and cross-border support institutions that were barriers to reform and vulnerable to political manipulation. And finally, the government strove to tie cross-border support policy to

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important pieces of its domestic policy agenda, including economic development and competition for EU funds. Restructuring Hungarian-Hungarian Relations For the policymakers crafting the government’s new policy, there were a number of problems with how the relationship between Hungary and the coethnic communities in the region had developed over time, particularly under the stewardship of Fidesz. The most critical issue was that the existing structure of cross-border financial support was corrupt and overly partisan, and therefore ineffective. As described by Erika Törzsök, who was the chief counselor for Minority and Nation Affairs of the Prime Minister’s Office, the clientelistic networks developed under Fidesz had created a “sick institutional system . . . built not on principles of effectiveness, but on personal political relationships.”42 The lack of transparency of the system was seen as endemic: the boards of public foundations set up to support cross-border endeavors were filled with partisan political appointees. Oversight and assessment of funding programs was lax or nonexistent. The informal networks created incentives for funding decisions made with little regard for program effectiveness, so that favored diaspora elites would receive funds to distribute to their political loyalists within the ethnic Hungarian communities.43 Supporting some of these criticisms, in 2001 the State Accounting Bureau (Állami Számvevo˝szék) found significant irregularities (such as targeted funding never reaching its intended recipient) and conflict of interest abuses in three of the largest public foundations for cross-border diaspora support (New Handshake [Új Kézfogás], Illyés, and Apáczai).44 A 2006 report on support for Hungarian-language education programs also found a number of cases of influence peddling in funding decisions.45 The nontransparency of the system was framed as having serious negative consequences not only for Hungarian domestic politics, but for the political and economic development of the diaspora communities. The lack of accountability and clientelistic nature of the Hungarian cross-border funding system fostered an unhealthy dependence on Hungary and propped up a minority political elite who resisted reform, seeing it as a threat to their influence over funds allocation. As Törzsök described in 2004, the symbiotic relationship between right-wing parties in Hungary and members of the diaspora elite “demoralizes the communities, since they want to lean on support from Hungary and not their own strength, accepting the comfort of dependence.”46 The exporting of

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Hungarian domestic political competition, therefore, created a paternalistic relationship in which the minority communities were unable to create independent, self-financing institutions as part of a long-term strategy for developing minority Hungarian culture and language. Another danger was that Fidesz and its allies, in an attempt to “outbid” the MSZP in its commitment to diaspora support issues, had made empty promises and created overly high expectations, such as with the Status Law, nonresident dual citizenship, and a commitment to securing autonomy for the ethnic Hungarian communities.47 These conflictproducing “improvisations” did nothing to deal with the real problems facing the Hungarians living as minorities, but were “acts of compensation creating transitory illusions which will only lead to ever greater disappointment.”48 In addition, by strengthening the hand of the more radical members of the diaspora communities and focusing attention outward rather than inward, it made reaching political compromises with other political forces in their own states and maintaining political unity more difficult for diaspora political leaders. For example, the promise to secure territorial and political autonomy for the ethnic Hungarian communities was presented as the “main strategic vision”49 by some elites in Hungary, even as it constrained the room for maneuver of the party elites in the ethnic Hungarian communities. Representatives of the ethnic Hungarian political parties in Romania and Slovakia eventually had to trade their demand for territorial autonomy for a place in the coalition governments of those states, a pragmatic political move that led to further splits within the parties between so-called moderates and the radicals backed by Fidesz.50 In crafting a new set of institutions for diaspora policymaking and support, the MSZP-SZDSZ government hoped to reverse these trends. The Gyurcsány government moved to shield much of the decisionmaking and implementation of policy from the influence of diaspora political elites, remove some of the main institutional conduits for crossborder clientelism and patronage, and create more transparency and centralization in the funding process. The first step in this restructuring was the creation of a new body for cross-border funding, called the Homeland Fund (Szülo˝föld Alap). The Homeland Fund would become the central clearing house for competitive funding applications from the diaspora communities in the three main areas of concern: education and job training; culture and religion; and local government, media, and information.51 The law that brought the fund to life was approved by parliament

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in February 2005, began receiving applications later that year, and made its first pay-outs at the beginning of 2006. The governing board of the new body originally consisted of a 15-person council, with seven members directly appointed by the prime minister, and a president and seven additional members appointed on the recommendation of the diaspora organizations involved in MÁÉRT.52 Coming on the heels of the dual citizenship referendum, the Homeland Fund was seen at the time as a way to reconnect disgruntled diaspora leaders with the Socialist-led government and to lessen the influence of older, clientelistic funding networks. According to the government, the Homeland Fund would be an institution “in which cooperation between the Government and the Hungarian organizations abroad will be characterized by transparency, EU-conformity, and accountability.”53 After the MSZP-SZDSZ coalition won the 2006 elections, the emboldened government instituted further reforms, leading one observer to remark that diaspora policy was “the most completely reconstructed policy area besides healthcare reform since the start of the second Gyurcsány government.”54 In the last half of 2006 and into 2007, a second wave of institutional restructuring abolished the Homeland Fund’s governing council, the Government Office of Hungarians Abroad (HTMH), and a number of long-standing public foundations for diaspora funding. The abolishment of the 15-member governing council was framed as a way to simplify the funding process and make it more efficient and transparent by separating the politically charged process of setting funding priorities and goals, in which diaspora representatives would be involved, from the “professionalized” task of policy implementation.55 The governing council was replaced by the Regional Coordinating Forum (REF), a body led by the Prime Minister’s Office designed to bring together diaspora and Hungarian state representatives to determine priorities and goals.56 The REF was also seen as a less-partisan—and more easily controlled—replacement for MÁÉRT, which had its last official meeting on November 12, 2004. Despite repeated demands by the opposition parties and diaspora politicians, the prime minister refused to call any further sessions of MÁÉRT to order, violating the established norm of a meeting at least once a year.57 The government also gave some support to a new forum for Hungarian-Hungarian dialogue initiated by Katalin Szili, the Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament and MSZP representative, called the Forum of Representatives of the Carpathian Basin (KMKF). Until 2008, the forum did not have any official standing in the Hungarian state policymaking process, and could

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only serve consultative functions, a source of frustration for the participants.58 In March of that year, however, the KMKF was made a permanent institution of the Hungarian parliament. In Slovakia, this change caused tension as members of the governing coalition, which included the blatantly anti-Hungarian Slovak National Party (SNS), objected to ethnic Hungarian members of the Slovak parliament participating in an official body of a foreign government.59 Next on the agenda was dissolving the primary domestic body responsible for information-gathering and diaspora policy recommendations—the HTMH—and reorganizing its functions under the direct control of the Prime Minister’s Office. Control over the HTMH had gone back and forth between the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Affairs Ministry from administration to administration. Before its dissolution, the Office had been controlled jointly by both bodies. Seeing this as an untenable situation, and hoping to further centralize diaspora policy, by government decree in December 2006 the functions of the HTMH were split between the newly created Department of Minority and Nation Policy Matters (Kisebbség- és Nemzetpolitikáért Felelo˝s Szakállamtitkárság) in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Homeland Fund Office, which was also tied to the Prime Minister’s Office.60 Finally, with the justification of getting rid of parallel competencies, accounting irregularities, and bureaucratic infighting, the government also abolished the three main public foundations responsible for diaspora support that had been founded in the early to mid1990s: the Illyés, New Handshake, and Apáczai Foundations.61 Their functions would now be coordinated by the Homeland Fund Office as part of regional economic development plans. This institutional restructuring changed the parameters of the Hungarian-Hungarian relationship. Whereas the Fidesz-led government had given diaspora leaders increased access to the Hungarian state policymaking process, the new structures limited their access and role in policymaking. This was first a way to maintain more centralized governing control over the policy process to ensure less organized resistance to the reforms and prevent criticism of the government. It served to keep this area of policy farther away from opposition party influence and the often harsh criticisms of the Left by some diaspora elites. This reorganization also reflected the Gyurcsány administration’s new conception of Hungary’s role in the lives of the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries. Instead of basing Hungary’s nation policy on the “empty slogan” of a “unified Hungarian nation,” Hungary would recognize the unique

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challenges and different circumstances of each individual diaspora community in their respective countries of residence.62 As such, Hungary would forge unique “bilateral relations” with each of the Hungarian minority groups in the neighboring countries, and give up looking for a single solution to the diaspora issue.63 By centralizing the funding and policymaking processes within Hungary while at the same time disaggregating the larger Hungarian-Hungarian forums into smaller, more independent venues, the process could accommodate more actors and give both sides more independent room for maneuver.64 The ethnic Hungarians, they argued, would then have more incentive—and more opportunity— to create their own institutions and negotiate independently with their own governments. The MSZP-SZDSZ government also moved away from contentious, one-size-fits-all solutions based on ethnic affiliation, such as pushing for autonomy or granting citizenship as a collective right. Instead of tying progress on autonomy to Hungary’s relations with the governments of Romania and Slovakia, Hungary would now support the Hungarian minorities’ “quest for autonomy . . . in the spirit of international norms,” waiting for the diaspora communities themselves to take the lead in negotiating with the majority nations of their own states.65 Autonomy was also framed “as a tool, not a goal,” echoing concerns that autonomy for the sake of autonomy was a dangerous game to play, with its potential to lead to Balkans-like violence and chaos.66 What was most important was not angry rhetoric, but improving the quality of life for the ethnic Hungarian communities. Similarly, in the wake of the dual citizenship referendum, the government revisited the issue of naturalization and citizenship for members of the regional diaspora, coming up with a solution that reduced bureaucratic and financial barriers to preferential naturalization without the symbolic flash of collective ethnic rights extending across the border. In January 2006, the government also introduced a type of “national visa,” which allowed ethnic Hungarians in neighboring states (who possess a letter of invitation and proof of residence and financial support in Hungary) to apply for a visa with which they can spend unlimited time in Hungary within a five-year period.67 Both reforms were based on individual application, not collective rights, and they only had legal consequences within the borders of Hungary, making them less controversial in the neighboring countries. In terms of foreign policy, the Hungarian government again deprioritized diaspora advocacy as one of the major pillars. The Prime Minister’s Office moved diaspora policy out of the Foreign Affairs

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Ministry by taking over the functions of the HTMH, and was much more cautious in using Hungary’s international clout to pressure the neighboring governments to accept its demands. For example, Hungary did not use its position as an EU member as of 2004 to hold up Romania’s bid for membership in 2007. The government was harshly criticized by both sides of the political spectrum for not taking advantage of this unique moment to pressure Romania into granting more rights and autonomy to the ethnic Hungarians.68 In addition, instead of criticizing neighboring governments directly, Hungary began to rely on its EP representatives to lodge formal complaints and pass advisory resolutions in cases when ethnic Hungarians experienced violence or discrimination in their respective home countries. When reports began to surface in 2004 of ethnically motivated beatings of Hungarians living in Serbia, the government used its EP representatives to publicize the issue in European forums, and used less public diplomatic contacts to speak directly with members of the Serbian government. In fact, minority rights advocacy became one of the primary responsibilities of Csaba Tabajdi and other members of Hungary’s EP delegation.69 Diaspora Policy as Development Policy After working to change what the MSZP-SZDSZ perceived as the flaws of the previous system of cross-border support, the government then moved to embed a new conception of diaspora support policy, one that would complement the left-wing domestic agenda and respond to the new realities of EU accession. The centerpiece of this new policy was the economic modernization, development, and increased competitiveness of the ethnic Hungarian communities and the region as a whole. The MSZP-led government turned to the modernizing discourse that had been a key component of left-wing identity in Hungary since the communist era, and reframed diaspora policy as an extension of the state’s social and development policy.70 Economic development was seen as the only way to improve the lives of the ethnic Hungarians so that they could remain at home and prosper as a cultural and linguistic community. The key to a vibrant minority community “that can create and maintain its own cultural institutions” is a “minority that is economically strong and/or competitive in the labor market.”71 As Prime Minister Gyurcsány laid out in a 2005 speech, economic inequalities were the main barriers to a lack of solidarity between Hungarians on both sides of the border and between ethnic Hungarian communities and the majority

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nations: “Nation policy is common progress, the creation of our common welfare, the strengthening of solidarity. Whoever wants to unify the nation must . . . endeavor to build new bridges between the poor and the wealthy, the employed and the unemployed, et cetera.”72 Economic prosperity in the diaspora communities and the evening out of regional disparities was also a project that would require cooperation from the neighboring governments, perhaps improving interethnic relations in the region. In her campaign to sell the government’s new approach, Erika Törzsök repeatedly emphasized that “the situation of the ethnic Hungarians beyond the border cannot be solved without the majority nation.”73 The economic improvement of the region could not be limited to just the ethnic Hungarian areas; this would only create more tension and distrust. Expounding on the role of economic interaction in fostering interethnic trust, Törzsök argued that “[o]nly the opening . . . of joint businesses interests, the daily work relationship between people, and growing prosperity restricts actions by extreme nationalists and fundamentalists that endanger the security of the region.”74 In addition, a peaceful “multilingual, multicultural Central Europe” had a much better chance of economic success than a region filled with tensions stemming from “inward-looking” foreign and domestic politics.75 The EU accession of Hungary and many of its neighbors gave added urgency to this new goal of economic development, and provided resources and a potential framework for its accomplishment. With Hungary, Slovakia (and Slovenia) joining the EU in 2004, and Romania acceding in 2007, “over 90 percent of the Hungarians previously split by borders live within the same political and economic conditions.”76 This presented a “historic opportunity” for the peaceful reunification of the Hungarian nation within Europe, which necessitated a “new, differentiated system of relations with the Hungarians in neighboring countries” and cooperation with the states in which they lived.77 Through EU accession, political and economic barriers were breaking down so that “the development opportunities and economic interests of the majorities and the Hungarians living in the various countries coincide.”78 Within the EU framework, funding systems based on ethnicity would have to give way to regional and cross-border cooperative projects focused on making the region more economically competitive within the Common Market. Instead of Hungary and its neighbors separately developing “parallel institutions only a few kilometers from each other” in the border regions, cross-border cooperation could yield advancements in regional trade, the development of the service sector, job retraining, infrastructure

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investment, regional financial organization, and strong bi- and multilingual educational institutions.79 In 2007, the possibility of joint cooperation using EU funds became a reality when a pot of EUR 224 million was made available for regional projects proposed by Hungary and its neighbors for the development of border regions and transnational investment projects for other economically depressed areas that would be used between 2007 and 2013.80 In order to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by Hungary’s development-oriented approach within the context of EU accession, the government tied its diaspora policy to the Second National Development Plan and focused more intensively on regional development and cross-border investment. In addition to the transformation of cross-border cultural and education support through the Homeland Fund, the “new pillar” of the MSZP government’s policy would encourage cross-border economic partnerships and provide specialized development funding with help from EU money.81 The government planned to use its own resources to provide incentives to small and medium-sized enterprises to invest in the border regions where ethnic Hungarians lived.82 By government decree in 2004, it launched a program to “promote economic relations, and enhance the establishment of new business relations and investment” in the diaspora regions.83 It also earmarked 25 billion HUF to be used between 2004 and 2006 for competitive funding projects—based on the EU model of competitive project funding—intended to support Hungarian and diaspora businesses interested in cross-border investment projects and to support local government initiatives. The Hungarian Development Bank also helped to secure credit for Hungary-based businesses to extend into diaspora markets.84 In addition, there were calls for Hungary and Romania to coordinate their NDPs to better organize the regional development funds from the EU, a process that had already begun between Hungary and Slovakia.85 In the spring and early summer of 2007, the government sent representatives out on an intensive information campaign to the regional diaspora communities to sell the new strategy.86 This was very much a public campaign, designed to win over supporters in the ethnic Hungarian communities and capture the spotlight from Fidesz. Potential critics were hard-pressed to deny that the EU had changed the situation dramatically, and that the entire region could benefit from EU regional development funds. If it worked, it could be a win-win situation for most players: Hungary would surely benefit from expanding markets,

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increased competitiveness, and from taking some of the financial and moral burden off of the government by further “Europeanizing” the diaspora situation. The ethnic Hungarian communities, on the other hand, could benefit from additional economic competitiveness through investment opportunities and job training. Despite its public campaign for these changes, the government still faced a number of criticisms about the direction of its reforms. One set of concerns was about how effective and realistic the development plan was. Pál Tamás, a prominent Hungarian sociologist, was widely quoted in the press as being highly skeptical of Hungary’s ability to substantially affect economic change in the diaspora regions. In his estimation, the Hungarian economy was “structurally inadequate” and the state too poor to fulfill its promises of regional development. The only alternative was to channel foreign direct investment from Western European firms through Hungary into the diaspora communities, an outcome that would likely only enrich foreign companies.87 The development-oriented strategy has also been considered a failure by some domestic critics because the logic of regional economic integration seemingly did little to improve interethnic relations within and between Hungary and its neighbors. In particular, tensions rose between Hungary and Slovakia from 2006 to 2009 over virulently nationalist remarks made by a member of the Slovak governing coalition (Jan Slota of the SNS), the blocking of the Hungarian president’s visit to Slovakia for a statue dedication in an ethnic Hungarian community in August 2009, and the passage in the summer of 2009 of amendments to the Slovak Language Law, which were seen as unfairly targeting the public use of Hungarian. Critics asserted that the Hungarian government naively expected “common business interests” to outweigh nationalist politics in the neighboring countries and substitute for a strong diplomatic stance to protect ethnic Hungarian rights.88 Another criticism was that the institutional restructuring and conceptual reprioritization by the MSZP government overlooked the crucial project of identity building in the diaspora communities. During a meeting with local diaspora leaders in Romania, Törzsök was reminded that “the fifteen-year struggle is in large part about speaking Hungarian and preserving Hungarian culture. It’s about our life, and the economic approach is only a tool of this.”89 From the perspective of other activists and analysts, the government had gone too far in dismantling existing cross-border networks and support institutions, many of which had made impressive progress in building up a system of ethnic Hungarian cultural,

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economic, and educational systems throughout the region.90 The personnel changes and institutional reform also cut ties with many of the civil servants in the diaspora policymaking process who originally came from the ethnic Hungarian communities, leaving a significant gap in expertise, local-level knowledge, and contacts.91 The government was criticized for putting too little emphasis on input by diaspora members and expecting too much from outside actors: particularly the governments of Slovakia and Romania, which had been unreliable partners in the past, and the EU, which offered potential benefits to the diaspora communities in the region at some point in the future, but gave little solace to those worried about the imminent decline and scattering of the ethnic Hungarian communities.92 Conclusion In the context of increasingly high-stakes political competition in Hungary, left-wing elites were spurred to transform diaspora policy both to deny their main rivals a source of organizational and ideological strength, and to support their own vision of transborder relations; one in which the diaspora communities were less dependent on Hungary as a constant source of one-way revenue. The institutional changes implemented by the Socialists suggest, as Anna Grzymała-Busse has argued, that robust political competition created incentives for those in power to engage in institution-building designed to preclude future clientelism and rent-seeking by the opposition.93 The MSZP’s agenda was also supported by the high degree of ambiguity shown by the Hungarian voting public toward the project of “national reunification” through incorporating diaspora members more formally into the kin-state political community. The left-wing parties were able to push forward a new agenda to deal with the diaspora situation once nonresident citizenship was rejected by the voters and the strategy of ethnic outbidding had again failed. It is still too early to fully assess what effect, if any, the latest round of policy reform will have on the functioning of kin-state support for the cross-border ethnic communities and the long-term stability and cultural cohesion of Hungary’s external minority population. On one hand, the MSZP government succeeded in centralizing many of the mechanisms for cross-border support, making the tracking and reporting of state aid to the diaspora easier and more transparent. Despite the institutional overhaul and the closing of the HTMH, the overall amount of diaspora funding has also remained relatively steady and

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there is a larger percentage going directly to the diaspora communities. The amount given away by the Homeland Fund in two competitive funding cycles from 2007 to 2008 plus direct support from the Hungarian government to fund “nationally significant” institutions and programs across the border during the same period is comparable to the total funding levels in the final years of the last Fidesz government (see Table 3.4).94 Current state funding levels for relevant diaspora institutions and programs also do not include the single largest expenditure related to cross-border support policy paid for by the Hungarian government: subsidies for primary, secondary, and college students engaged in Hungarian-language study in the neighboring countries. These subsidies were introduced by the Status Law and later extended to nonethnic Hungarian students in the implementation agreement with Romania and subsequent modifications of the law (see Table 5.1). On the other hand, it appears that the Left’s window of opportunity to control the policy agenda has closed. Recent developments in Hungary and throughout the region have again shifted the debate over Hungary’s relationship with its coethnics across the border and made the viability of sustaining these reforms less likely. Since the 2006 election, a new set of government scandals in Hungary, and the increasing strength of radical right-wing groups and frustration over economic recession throughout the region, has led to deepening political polarization, heightened regional tensions, and renewed criticisms of the Left’s approach to diaspora policy. Both Hungary and its neighbors have seen an increase in radicalism, which has made accommodation on minority rights issues difficult and pushed the domestic policy agenda farther to the Right. Radical right-wing parties have become more visible in Hungary, with

Table 5.1 Hungarian state funding for diaspora support programs, 2007–2008 (in millions HUF) Institutions Homeland Fund Cultural support Language education

1989 677

Total

2666

Individuals

4858 4858*

7524**

* 20,000 HUF per student, plus smaller subsidies for books and supplies; 223,649 students in six countries. ** Approximately 24 million USD. Source: Government of Hungary, Jelentés a Külhoni Magyarság Helyzetéro˝l.

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increases in their organizational capacity, media coverage, and electoral standing. At the MSZP party congress in May 2006, Prime Minister Gyurcsány gave what has infamously become known as the “lies” speech, in which he accused successive governments and political parties, including his own, of “lying morning, noon and night” about the real state of the economy in order to win elections. Soon after, the MSZP-led government instituted some austerity measures, including higher taxes. In response, there were mass demonstrations and riots throughout the fall, which were either guided by or capitalized on by Fidesz and a number of developing far-right organizations, such as Jobbik. New organizations also formed in the aftermath of this moment of antigovernment anger, such as the Hungarian Guard (Magyar Garda) and the 64 Counties Youth Movement (HVIM). The Hungarian Guard is a far-right nationalist movement, which uses symbolism that some argue harkens back to interwar-period fascism, and is backed by Jobbik. The HVIM is a radically antigovernment movement that takes its name from the number of counties in pre-Trianon Hungary. Both groups formed in 2007 and gained increasing public recognition in 2008 for public demonstrations and revisionist statements about former Hungarian territories. Jobbik in particular benefited from the upheaval generated by the 2006 scandal and the deteriorating economic situation, winning supporters for its anticorruption, anti-Roma, antiglobalization message, and its strong stance on protecting the Hungarian nation. Jobbik, in fact, won three seats in the June 2009 EP elections, and under a new, more “public friendly” leadership, entered the Hungarian parliament as the third largest party in the April 2010 elections. Given the results of the 2010 elections, in which Fidesz won over 50 percent of the votes and parliamentary mandates, a return to the right-wing agenda on kin-state politics is likely. Fidesz representatives have campaigned on promises that when they return to power, they will revive meetings with MÁÉRT, create a path to dual citizenship for the ethnic Hungarians still outside the Schengen zone, support movements toward autonomy, and develop a stronger diplomatic stance toward the neighboring governments when there are perceived violations of ethnic Hungarian rights. Public opinion polls show increased support for these measures. Unlike the split numbers in the weeks preceding the December 2004 referendum, a poll conducted in October 2009 for the news magazine Heti Válasz indicated that 65 percent of respondents would support dual citizenship for ethnic Hungarians abroad.95 Now the

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Right has another opportunity to remake its vision of diaspora policy after eight years in opposition. Looking ahead, it is clear that diaspora policymaking will continue to be influenced by the increasing use of economic populism, in addition to cultural nationalism, as a key marketing tool of the political Right in Eastern Europe. While some authors have lamented the lack of economic policy debate in post-communist Europe and the attendant exploitation of cultural cleavages by office-seeking elites,96 others have noticed a trend toward the polarization of economic positions.97 This emerging dynamic will likely result in metanarratives that combine aspects of both, which is already evident in the story told in this chapter. The MSZP framed its opposition to dual citizenship for the regional diaspora as too costly for ordinary Hungarian citizens struggling to get ahead, and moved the focus of diaspora policy to regional development programs that could potentially benefit Hungary’s economy as well. Fidesz also became more reliant on an economic message, albeit toward protectionism and economic nationalism, and attempted to wed this idea to its version of diaspora policy as a nationalist project. Far-right political groups, such as Jobbik, have also created a narrative that brings together a protectionist, antiglobalization message with a strong commitment to the ethnic Hungarian issue.98 The economic question will likely displace other concerns in the near future, as Hungary struggles with a serious economic crisis, which recently necessitated a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund. The ensuing resignation of Prime Minister Gyurcsány in March 2009 and his replacement by the former economic minister, Gordon Bajnai, demonstrated a renewed focus on the economy, but this was not enough to save the Socialists from growing popular discontent. The economic situation put in serious doubt the efficacy of the Socialist’s economic development plan, and contributed to growing discontent with the EU project in general and accusations of continuing corruption in the use and distribution of EU funds. As hope dwindles that regional development projects will improve quality of life for Hungarians on both sides of the border in the near future, there is growing skepticism about the EU’s ability to be a potential solution to the challenges facing transborder ethnic diasporas and their kin-states in Eastern Europe.

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CHAPTER 6

Conclusion: Kin-State Nationalism and Diaspora Politics in Eastern Europe

T

his book has shown that diaspora policies are driven primarily by the domestic political strategies of kin-state elites, challenging the notion that ethnic affiliation across borders is the primary driver of state action toward ethnic kin in other states. Kin-state action on behalf of ethnic diasporas, including incendiary remarks and diplomatic retaliation toward neighboring countries, cannot be seen simply as responses to the plight of ethnic kin. As the case of Hungary shows, an evaluation of the situation of coethnics in neighboring states is not an objective assessment made by kin-state politicians, but a subjective construction that maps quite closely to political affiliation. Actions taken by Hungary were often justified by the ties of ethnic kinship, but were driven primarily by domestic political strategy. Chapters 2 through 5 offered multiple episodes demonstrating how elites utilized the state’s relationship with the ethnic Hungarians across the border as a political resource to further their own strategic goals. To recap, during the interwar period in Hungary, irredentist policies served as the raison d’etre of an authoritarian government trying to maintain legitimacy over a defeated and truncated nation. The state developed clientelistic networks extending across the border to bolster its political and territorial claims to authority over the lands and population lost via the Treaty of Trianon. During the communist regime, it was not only Party elites, but dissident elites as well, that were able to harness the diaspora issue as a source of ideological legitimacy and organizational capacity. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the Communist Party’s ability to maintain compliance with its regime was

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threatened by economic problems, the lessened presence of Moscow, and increasing challenges by opposition groups. Reformist Party elites responded in part by allying themselves with the less ideologically critical populist intellectuals over a renewed concern for the ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, prompting a shift from the “decades of silence” imposed by the myth of socialist brotherhood within the Soviet bloc. As a consequence, the populist intellectuals and their semiofficial organization were allowed to flourish in the 1980s, giving them a distinct advantage in organizing and name recognition and helping their political party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), to emerge victorious in the first post-communist election held in 1990. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the context of Hungary’s democratic transition made the MDF’s appeals to feelings of ethnic kinship and transborder nationalism progressively less effective. Hungary’s negotiated transition and the Communist Party’s subsequent ability to quickly reemerge as a major player in the left-wing opposition, together with the other economic and political challenges associated with regime change, allowed a relatively moderate elite consensus to form around diaspora policy in the early 1990s. Then, in the mid-1990s, new actors emerged to reclaim the Right’s ideological ownership of the diaspora issue, shattering the consensus and leading eventually to a more activist policy regarding Hungary’s relationship to it ethnic kin. The Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz) moved to stake its claim to political power in part by taking up the diaspora issue and using its symbolic content and access to transborder networks to bolster its ideological legitimacy and organizational capacity. Fidesz’s strategy was helped by the context of an emerging bipolar political system, which favored the creation of relatively stable political blocs, and by the Socialist government’s decision to impose painful economic reforms. The eventual success of Fidesz’s strategy led to its control of the government from 1998 to 2002 and the institutionalization of the party’s vision of “national reunification across borders” through the controversial Status Law. Then, after the 2002 election, a coalition of left-wing parties came to power, and used the opportunity to weaken Fidesz’s ideological and institutional “ownership” of the diaspora issue. By 2005, the government had embarked on a surprisingly extensive restructuring of the institutions forming the support system for Hungarians beyond the border and instituted a package of new policy initiatives. Shifts in the strategic political environment in Hungary weakened the Right’s

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ability to use diaspora policy as a political resource, and the context of Hungary’s EU membership provided incentives for an institutional restructuring of cross-border support toward competitive funding and a focus on regional economic development. The story told here shows how and why kin-states engage ethnic diasporas and attempt to shape the membership of those abroad in social, economic, and political spheres located between states and transborder ethnic communities. Diaspora policymaking is driven by the desire of kin-states to secure and control access to the resources represented by external populations: economic (labor, markets, demographic replacement); cultural (nation-building and other identity projects that provide political legitimacy); and political (networks, organization, votes). Policymakers utilize domestic and extraterritorial tools to create and maintain transborder networks, which ensure continuing access to those resources. The tools of policymaking range from diplomatic advocacy and cultural support, to special membership rights and benefits granted to diaspora members, to preferential naturalization and citizenship rights. The formulation and implementation of these policies, however, is fraught with tension, contradiction, and potential conflict both domestically and between states. Within the kin-state, diaspora policymaking generates debate over integrating populations beyond the border into the political community, and fear of how the new status accorded to diaspora members will affect political life, economic priorities, and the meaning of identity and belonging. The extraterritorial nature of diaspora policymaking can also lead to interstate tension, as the states containing the external populations worry about challenges to their sovereignty and their own nation-building projects. Despite the apparent strength of ethnic affiliation and national membership, maintaining those ties once they extend across borders is a difficult and risk-prone project, one that must be seen as providing concrete benefits for the homeland state in order to receive popular and institutional support. This model of kin-state action provides important insights into our understanding of nationalism, regional relations, minority political integration, and EU accession in the post-communist decades. The remainder of this final chapter discusses these implications, beginning with a comparative discussion of diaspora politics in Eastern Europe. An examination of kin-state nationalism and diaspora politics in Poland and Romania highlights instructive similarities and differences with the Hungary case, and focuses on the debates and tensions that diaspora policymaking—in particular, extraterritorial citizenship and repatriation

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policies—generate both within the kin-state and between the kin-state and regional actors. The chapter ends with a look toward future trends in diaspora policymaking. Diaspora Politics and Citizenship in Eastern Europe Unlike migrant-sending states, kin-states in Eastern Europe must deal primarily with “accidental diasporas” that emerged as borders shifted, or with other exiled or forcibly displaced communities. As a result, diaspora policymaking in this region has been shaped by strong and emotionally fraught claims to lost territories, histories of aggression and victimization between states, and the instability caused by the creation of new states, new political regimes, and the emergence of competing—and often mutually incompatible—nation-building projects after the end of the Cold War. Given these factors, as I argue in the Introduction, what is surprising is the lack of irredentist violence throughout the region. Yet, the shift to diaspora politics in Eastern Europe does not mean that postirredentist policies are ushering in a world in which peaceful, grassroots transnational networks supplant conflicts over territorial control, identity, and competing state interests. The extension of the national community beyond the borders through citizenship and other forms of extraterritorial membership can reflect not only the more liberal desire to protect and promote part of the ethnic nation that lives as a besieged minority, but can also be used to interfere in the political development of a neighboring country. The lingering dangers of post-irredentism can be seen more clearly in the comparative discussion below. The case of Romania demonstrates how the granting of citizenship to coethnics in neighboring countries can be a powerful tool in a transborder nation-building project that seeks to redefine the political and demographic balance within and between states by instrumentalizing identity and national membership. Similarly, Russia has used citizenship policy as a tool to extend influence into neighboring states outside of the EU zone. A regional comparison also shows that there is significant variation in how and to what extent East European kin-states engage their ethnic kin in neighboring states. The same factors that drive and shape diaspora policymaking in Hungary—the nation-building and legitimizing logic of kin-state nationalism; the dual nature of diaspora engagement as both a resource and a risk for kin-state elites; and the role of EU accession in both moderating and creating new justifications for engaged diaspora policies

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by kin-states—help to explain the outcomes of extraterritorial policymaking in other regional cases as well. The experiences of Poland and Romania show how these factors can combine to produce different types and levels of engagement with ethnic diasporas. Poland is often seen primarily as an emigration state due to the large number of Poles who left during the last century for economic and political reasons, making up the Western diaspora of “Polonia,” the general term for Poles beyond the border. Yet, there are two significant groups of external Poles in the post-Soviet region with which Poland has forged relations since the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. One group comprises Polish exiles, who were forcibly moved from Poland (or former Polish territories) to various parts of the Soviet Union after World War II, with the largest concentration ending up in what became independent Kazakhstan. Close to 14 percent of the Poles outside the border are located in areas of the former Soviet Union due to forced expulsion and exile.1 A second group consists of the sizable Polish communities in neighboring states residing in territory that was once controlled by Poland, making Poland an ethnic kin-state with historical and cultural ties to the Poles across the border in Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus.2 During communism, the state essentially ignored the Poles in the East who entered the diaspora due to statelessness, wars, expulsions, and border changes. Similar to Hungary, it was primarily Polish opposition figures and dissident intellectuals who felt a “sentimental attachment” to the lost territories in the East and a “serious interest in, and fascination with” the peoples in the former centers of Polish cultural life, particularly the coethnic communities in Lithuania.3 The end of communism allowed for a rethinking of the relationship with the Poles across the border and farther to the East. As former opposition leaders took over control of the state, their interest in the regional diaspora translated into the creation of official institutions and mandates for diplomatic advocacy and the strengthening of cross-border ties. In the early 1990s, the government helped to form and supported quasi-governmental bodies, such as the Polish Community Organization and the Foundation to Aid Eastern Poles, and budgeted some money that was to be distributed by those bodies to support the Polish communities in the region.4 The first post-communist foreign minister, Skubiszewski, included the Poles in the East as one of his top three policy priorities, but focused mostly on improving conditions for Poles living in other countries and assuring neighboring governments that Poland did not harbor any

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revisionist intentions in crafting its diaspora policies.5 Despite fears by neighboring governments of possible Polish revanchism and some interstate tensions over unresolved historical issues, Poland went out of its way to maintain mostly positive relations with its neighbors to the East in the early years of post-communism. For example, once Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union, the exclusive language requirements of its new citizenship law and the strong nationalist position of the new government alienated and angered members of the Polish minority. Polish leaders in Lithuania reacted by decrying official discrimination against them, passing autonomy resolutions in district councils dominated by ethnic Poles, and calling on the Polish government to pressure Lithuanian officials to change their policies. The Polish Foreign Ministry urged the neighboring government to respect norms of minority rights, but it did not support the controversial autonomy declarations by its coethnics, nor did it let these tensions derail for long the signing of a declaration of friendship between the two countries. Despite some strong objections from Polish diaspora leaders in Ukraine, a treaty was signed with that country as well in 1992, and Skubiszewski continued his moderate and pragmatic Eastern policy, taking special care not to question any of the post-war borders.6 Relations with Belarus were also strong until 1994, when Lukaschenko took control of the government and began to treat Poland and the Poles living in Belarus as a threat.7 Beyond diplomatic advocacy and support for Polish cultural and educational institutions in the Eastern diaspora, the Polish government resisted any grand gestures toward the Eastern Poles during the first postcommunist decade. The unwillingness of Polish policymakers to jeopardize the country’s political and economic transition on behalf of the Eastern diaspora became apparent in debates over repatriation policy. The question of what to do with Polish exiles and their descendents in various parts of the former Soviet Union first arose around 1991. At that time, it was estimated that there were between one and seven million Soviet citizens with claims to Polish nationality who might take advantage of the opportunity to acquire Polish citizenship and settle in Poland, depending on how broadly access to citizenship was defined in any new legislation. Government officials pointed to “moral, historical and emotional reasons” for the return of Poles who had struggled to keep their language and culture alive in difficult situations not of their own making, and some prominent social actors called on the Polish government to institute legal regulations to organize and support the repatriation and resettlement of Poles, primarily from Kazakhstan.8 But, despite the

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promise that “Poland is open to all Poles who want to return to this country,”9 the Polish government refused to create a framework for repatriation on a mass scale. Government officials repeatedly insisted that the state could not afford to take on the financial obligations of resettling anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 ethnic Poles and their families, particularly as many in the post-Soviet areas were poor, uneducated, and likely lacking in Polish-language skills and cultural knowledge.10 Until 1998, when a new Law on Foreigners came into effect, repatriation occurred only on an individual or per-family basis for those with invitations to settle from local governments and proof of financial means and employment in Poland.11 The Law on Foreigners introduced the right to citizenship for those of Polish descent who had been stripped of their nationality against their will. The initial draft of the bill would have limited repatriation to those with proof of financial means and capped the number of repatriates per year. The final draft, however, was expanded after pressure from the center-right post-Solidarity parties (Solidarity Election Action and Freedom Union) removed the caps on resettlement and the financial barriers. The legislation retained a provision requiring ethnic Poles to obtain a repatriation visa through a consulate, subject to approval by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, leaving a bureaucratic barrier in place to stem a potential tide of immigration.12 Another significant barrier to repatriation was the still-unsettled question of budgetary commitments by the Polish state in helping coethnics resettle and integrate economically and socially into Polish society. News reports began to emerge in 1999 of Kazakh Poles taking advantage of the new right to citizenship, only to find that their standard of living in Poland was no better, or worse, than at home. Many also faced hostile attitudes by Polish citizens who saw the repatriates as purely economic migrants, or as “Russians,” not real Poles.13 In response to this embarrassing situation, the 2000 budget prepared in the fall of 1999 was the first to include a line item specifically for repatriation assistance.14 Then, in the summer of 2000, both houses of parliament passed a Repatriation Bill, which was meant to facilitate the repatriation of exiled Polish citizens and their descendants from the “Asiatic parts” of the former Soviet Union by guaranteeing returning Poles (who had obtained the proper visa) aid from the state, including relocation costs, resettlement and education benefits, and housing assistance.15 Passed under the auspices of a right-wing minority government, the bill went well beyond the mere right to repatriation to provide “a dignified place in the mother country” for those who “paid a high

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price for wishing to hang on to their Polishness.”16 In 2003, the bill was amended to encompass Poles from all parts of the former Soviet Union under the scope of its coverage. However, potential repatriates still had to apply through a consulate and prove their Polish origins. By maintaining a cumbersome external application process and limiting how many diaspora members were eligible for repatriation visas, policymakers significantly lessened the migration impact of the legislation. Immigration rates to Poland, in fact, dropped between 1998, when preferential citizenship for repatriates was first introduced, and 2003, after the more extensive repatriation legislation had been put in effect.17 In 1999, around the same time that Hungarian policymakers were debating the merits of dual citizenship and what would become the Status Law as potential solutions to the Schengen dilemma, similar debates were going on in Poland. That year the governing right-wing coalition introduced a host of measures designed to institutionally define the state’s relationship with ethnic Poles across the border as the country geared up for EU accession. These new policies included an Act on Citizenship, which would have allowed for multiple citizenship, and a bill intended to create a “Charter of the Poles” complete with a “Pole’s Card” (Karta Polaka), which would provide specific benefits and longterm visas to ethnic Poles who could not acquire Polish citizenship and would otherwise be stranded on the wrong side of the Schengen border.18 This subset of ethnic Poles primarily encompassed those in neighboring Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus, but the legislation was open to diaspora members from 11 other former Soviet states as well.19 Similar in many ways to the Hungarian Status Law, the Polish Charter offered ethnic Poles legal recognition of belonging to the Polish nation, in addition to a wide range of rights and benefits when they came to Poland, such as free long-term visas, and access to the labor market, travel discounts, and educational and social services. This “semicitizenship” included a Polish identity card issued by Consulates on the basis of the applicant’s proven connection to the Polish nation through language and cultural knowledge, a written declaration of ethnic identification, up to secondgeneration descent from a Polish national or citizen, or an affidavit of participation in a Polish diaspora organization.20 Both the new citizenship law and the Polish Charter legislation faced resistance as they made their way through parliament, reflecting ambivalence about the Poles to the East and fears of the social, political, and economic impact of their potential migration and integration into

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Poland. During the debates over dual citizenship, supporters appealed to the moral rightness of correcting past injustices, arguing that “Poles who cultivated their Polishness (language, culture, ethnic identity), who were integral parts of the Polish nation due to their ethnicity and social bonds, had the right to hold Polish citizenship regardless of their other current citizenships.” They also promoted multiple citizenships as a way to reinforce the diaspora’s relationship with Poland, leading to greater investments, tourism, and global visibility. Opponents, however, raised fears of dual loyalties and creating uneven tiers of citizenship that would give those in the diaspora more flexibility than native Poles.21 The Polish Charter debate in 2001 was even more intense. Those in favor of semicitizenship for ethnic Poles also invoked the idea of moral obligation based on ethnic kinship, as well as the impending Schengen borders, which, as in Hungary, would make it harder for ethnic Poles in the East to travel to Poland. Only by providing these Poles with a special legal status in Poland could they ensure that those who stayed faithful to their Polish roots would not “be treated in Poland as foreigners anymore.”22 Clearly following party and coalitional lines, those opposed to the legislation cited the prohibitive cost of providing special benefits, the fears of worsening regional relations, the possible risk to Poland’s relations with the EU, and a discomfort with crafting legislation based on ethnic favoritism as their reasons for objection.23 Despite support for the new package of legislation in the Senate and among the diaspora, both the citizenship law and the Charter Bill failed to pass the Sejm at the time. By the end of 2001, a new center-left coalition was in control of the government, and both pieces of diaspora legislation seemed to be dead. The governing coalition led by the Social Democrats was sympathetic to the wishes of the diaspora, but felt that “the financial implications of the Charter . . . would be beyond the resources of the state, while the proposed amendments in the citizenship law would be at variance with the principle of single citizenship accepted in many democratic states.”24 In 2006, however, a new right-wing governing coalition formed, which included the ultraconservative League of Polish Families, and the Charter Bill was revived. By the summer of 2006, the government had drafted a new version of the law, vowing to improve the legal status of Poles living abroad as part of a plan to “build a free Poland for free Poles.”25 Despite some objections to the legislation by the governments in Belarus and Lithuania,26 the Law on the Polish Charter was finally passed in September 2007 and came into effect in 2008.

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Although the Charter legislation eventually passed, the willingness of the Polish government to repeatedly shelve concrete action on legislation dealing with both the Polish exile community and the neighboring coethnics, and the fact that the various governments paid small price for doing so, demonstrates an important difference from the case of Hungary. In general, the idea of the Polish nation extending across the borders does not have the same amount of political and symbolic resonance in Poland as it does in Hungary. As a result, the Eastern diaspora issue in Poland has been less salient as a source of political legitimacy and organization. One reason for this is that the Eastern diaspora is neither central to the conception of the Polish nation nor to the legitimate governance of the Polish state. While historical and cultural influence in the East is part of the Polish mythology, the more dramatic, recent, and salient factor in Polish national narratives is the loss of statehood and independence. By the end of the eighteenth century, Poland as an independent entity had ceased to exist and was only reconstituted as a state at the end of World War I. After regaining its independence, the Polish government was primarily concerned with legitimizing and strengthening its new borders against the aggression of the Germans to the West and the Russians to the East. As part of this state-building logic during communism, the government expurgated the memory of the lands lost in the East from the official historical record. Children learned in school “that the ‘recovered territories’ in the west were a natural Polish inheritance, while the lost lands of the east had been forever alien.”27 The content of Polish nationalism, therefore, reflects a desire for internal homogeneity, rather than external inclusion, and loyalty to the state-building project, rather than the purely cultural nation. In the debate over repatriation, it was clear that the fate of the Polish exile communities in Kazakhstan and elsewhere had some symbolic salience tied to Poland’s history as a state whose people and very existence were used as pawns caught between the interests of more powerful neighbors. Yet, Poland did not have a pressing demographic need for the repatriates, and so policymakers only passed comprehensive legislation on their behalf once the country was on more stable economic footing and legislation could be crafted in such a way as to significantly limit the number of potential migrants. A second, but related, factor is that the diaspora issue has limited importance as part of Polish political cleavages. The situation of the Eastern Poles usually remains secondary to other more important symbolic and cultural issues that dominate political competition—for example, the role of the Catholic Church, lustration, abortion—making it an

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issue “unlikely to translate into popularity and votes.”28 The historical lack of extraterritorial action by the Polish government has also meant that there are few well-developed cross-border networks tying Polish party elites to diaspora leaders and providing access to additional organizational resources. It is not, therefore, common to see the influence of the Eastern Poles and their concerns in Polish domestic politics. Even when some politicians made appearances in Polish communities in Belarus during the 2005 election campaign, this was tied to the specific context of the ongoing tensions regarding the Polish minority there, and was not symptomatic of a larger trend.29 In contrast to Poland, Romania has more emphatically embraced the role of homeland to Romanian speakers and former citizens in Moldova and Ukraine, and has caused more controversy in doing so. Some scholars have posited that because Romanian politics and nationalism is focused on interethnic dynamics within its own borders, it has focused its national project inward and, consequently, not done much in its capacity as a kin-state. For example, Saideman and Ayres have argued that Romania’s “domestic scapegoating” of its internal minorities, primarily the Roma and Hungarians, precluded policymakers from pushing an aggressively irredentist agenda toward Moldova.30 Yet, at the same time as it has pursued nationalizing policies within its borders, Romania has engaged in a project to stake its claim on the populations located in its former territories in neighboring countries. In contrast to the reluctance of both Hungary and Poland to grant citizenship to kin abroad, Romania’s version of post-irredentist diaspora policies has gone beyond other states’ nationality restitution laws by providing broad opportunities for many Moldovans and some Ukrainians to acquire citizenship without the requirement of residency in Romania. Between 1918 and 1940, Romania controlled most of the territory constituting present-day Moldova, the area called Bessarabia. Romania governed this territory after the end of World War I, justifying the addition of Bessarabia to “Greater Romania” with the argument that the majority of those living there were culturally and linguistically Romanian. In 1940, Bessarabia was annexed by the Soviet Union as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, with most of the area becoming the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic and a smaller part going to Ukraine. Losing Bessarabia was a blow to the Romanian regime, but there was little the state could do: by switching sides to support the Allied Powers during the war, Romania was eventually able to regain Transylvania from Hungary, but the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia was not up for negotiation in the

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post-war settlement. After the collapse of the communist government in 1989 the new regime “was eager to resume ties with the Romanian Diaspora and kin-minorities abroad.”31 Soon after Moldova gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, neighboring Romania passed a new citizenship law, which “restored” citizenship to all former Romanian citizens, effectively offering citizenship upon request to about two-thirds of Moldovans. In doing so, nationalists in the Romanian government were attempting to unify what they argued was a larger Romanian cultural and political community that had been artificially separated by the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia. By 1992, the first postcommunist government had also created the Department for Romanians Abroad, which ostensibly would reach out to the global Romanian diaspora, but was far more attentive to the “historical” Romanians in neighboring countries.32 There is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that Romania’s actions regarding populations in neighboring countries were driven in large part by the logic of kin-state nationalism; in this case, using citizenship to construct a transborder nation that does not yet exist.33 First, Romania’s citizenship law conflicted with that of Moldova and Ukraine, neither of which allowed for dual citizenship, and was criticized for undermining their neighbors’ nation-building projects. As more and more Moldovans acquired Romanian citizenship (around 100,000 by 2005), Romania’s actions became a clear challenge to the Moldovan government’s fragile process of establishing its own legitimacy and sense of national identity after independence, and relations between the two countries became strained.34 The 2001 electoral victory of the reconstituted Moldovan Communist Party, which supported an independent Moldovan identity and alliance with Russia, complicated relations with Romania, as Romania continued to question the legitimacy of the Moldovan government and sent mixed signals about its intentions. The new Moldovan leadership felt that its own nation-building project was being undermined by the interests of more powerful neighbors. Second, in contrast to Hungary and Poland’s actions to protect ethnic kin living as minorities from discrimination and assimilation, Romania’s policies were not motivated by a concern over minority rights, since the population in question represented the majority in Moldova. Romania’s actions were meant to address the perceived historical injustices of World War II and the communist period, feeding into “implicit nationalist motivations, which aimed to symbolically undo the effects of the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and to reconstruct the

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interwar national community.”35 Restoration of Romanian citizenship, therefore, also meant the restoration of Greater Romania, using the tools of political membership rather than irredentist violence to challenge the post-war settlement. The Romanian president Traian Basescu demonstrated this position in his controversial statements in 2007, in which he argued that Romanian citizenship should be granted to all Moldovans, because the Republic of Moldova was really a “sea of Romanians.” The president of Moldova at the time—the Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin—reacted by accusing Romania of “using the citizenship issue in order to pave the way for a de facto merger of Moldova . . . and undermining Moldova’s national security.”36 The Moldovan leadership was also upset that Romania refused to sign a bilateral treaty and recognition of borders guarantees because of disagreements over the language used regarding Romania’s special relationship with its former citizens. This tension eventually led the Moldovan government to enact more restrictive citizenship regulations and accelerate its own nation-building project at the expense of cultural ties to Romania. For example, in 2001, the governing Communist Party declared Romanians to be an ethnic minority within Moldova, and in 2007, passed a law excluding dual citizens from holding public office.37 Third, although Romania’s assertion of its kin-state role via extraterritorial citizenship seemed to contradict its strong objections to Hungary’s actions on behalf of ethnic Hungarians in its territory, for Romanian policymakers there was no contradiction: the historical narratives in Romania about Hungary’s relationship to Transylvania versus Romania’s relationship to Bessarabia positioned the two as completely different situations. Whereas Hungary had tried to assert illegitimate control and force cultural assimilation on to a multiethnic area, Romania was the victim of a Soviet land grab that created an artificial barrier between two primarily Romanian-speaking populations. Therefore, Romania had the right to undo that act of historical aggression through its restitution policy, but Hungary’s actions constituted an unjustified challenge to Romania’s sovereignty. The simultaneous assertion of its rights as a kinstate and its resistance to Hungary’s extraterritorial policies also reinforced each other as part of the Romanian nation-building project. The desire to incorporate Moldovans—construed as cultural Romanians— into the Romanian political community had the potential to change the ethnic makeup of Romania by diluting the political impact of ethnic Hungarians and their organizations. Those who acquired Romanian citizenship through restitution had full voting rights, and after a 2003

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referendum, dual citizens were able to run for and hold office in Romania. Finally, the Romanian citizenship legislation and later amendments and ordinances regarding restitution of nationality expanded the pool of potential applicants for Romanian citizenship with little regard for questions of preexisting ethnic affiliations or the concerns of the neighboring governments. The nature of Romania’s restitution regulations appeared structured to not just offer the opportunity for Romanian citizenship to those who felt a particular attachment to the “mother country,” but to provide meaningful inducements for those who otherwise would not identify as Romanian. Unlike Poland and Hungary’s legislation regarding kin-minorities, both of which set a bar of proven cultural or national affiliation, Romania’s law was based on a historical legal relationship between Romania, former citizens, and their descendants, and had fairly low barriers to entry. Early on, restitution came with “repatriation certificates,” which allowed for tax-free transfer of goods across the border, creating black markets on both sides of the border for the certificates and the sale of tax-free items.38 Until 2001, the procedures for acquiring citizenship through restitution were also made progressively simpler. At one point in time, the regulations allowed a Moldovan to apply for and acquire Romanian citizenship by mail or through an intermediary without ever stepping foot inside Romania.39 In addition, applications for restitution rose dramatically starting in 1998, when it became clear that Romania’s application for EU membership would eventually lead to the country’s successful accession. As a result, there was increasing evidence that the moves to acquire Romanian citizenship by Moldovans were “essentially accounts of instrumental strategies of improving life chances.”40 Despite the objections of some Romanian officials, who had argued for additional limitations to the restitution process, Romania’s policies did not move toward restricting the acquisition of citizenship until the restitution law became a point of contention between the EU and Romania at a crucial point in the accession process. In 2001, Romania was in negotiations with the EU to have the state taken off the list of countries needing a visa to pass into the Schengen borders. As part of the visa-free agreement—and to meet the requirements of the Schengen acquis in preparation for full accession in 2007—Romania was expected to limit the flow of non-EU citizens across its border. EU representatives were particularly concerned about Romania’s restitution policy becoming “an uncontrollable gate of access to the Schengen space.”41 As a result of this pressure, between

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December 2001 and 2007 the Romanian government enacted a series of ordinances and amendments to the restitution process that would serve to slow down the granting of citizenship to Moldovans. The amendments increased the conditions necessary for naturalization by restitution, including a language test and a period of residency, and, for a time, prevented new Romanian passport holders from travel outside of Romania for four years. The result was a major backlog in the number of applications, as the bureaucratic hurdles to citizenship increased and additional personnel and infrastructure were not put in place to meet demand.42 As soon as Romania became an EU member state in 2007, however, its policy of large-scale restitution of nationality ramped up again. As it did in other issue areas, Romania wasted little time in asserting its interests as a kin-state and “undo[ing] the commitments undertaken to allow the country’s accession.”43 In February 2007, the Romanian president Basescu directed the government to simplify procedures for granting citizenship to ethnic Romanians and eventually issued an emergency ordinance with that goal, arguing that the complicated procedures in place had caused an unsustainable backlog of around 800,000 citizenship applications.44 The news that Romania planned to continue and, in fact, speed up the citizenship process for ethnic Romanians caused negative reactions from both the Moldovan government and other EU member states. These external actors all feared the implications of a “mass conferral of citizenship” to Moldovans. Newspapers in Western Europe warned of an impending “Moldovan invasion,” and EU officials expressed concern over Moldovans gaining a “backdoor entrance into Western labor markets.”45 Then, in April 2009, President Basescu ordered another round of simplified procedures for granting citizenship to ethnic Romanians in Moldova, followed by another emergency ordinance that extended the restitution applications to third-generation descendants of former Romanian citizens. While in practice, the new regulations would only produce an additional 30,000 naturalizations per year,46 this created new tensions with Moldova and commentators in Romania criticized the government’s action for making Romania look like a “totally unreliable partner” for the EU.47 Critics also addressed the potential socioeconomic costs of a Moldovan influx during a period of high domestic unemployment, but others pointed out that most Moldovans would use their Romanian passports to do what many Romanians seeking work had done: go to Italy or elsewhere in Western Europe. Seen in this way, the Romanian leadership had little to lose in reigniting the citizenship issue: it could appeal to a sense of national loyalty and perhaps gain a few votes in the process, but risk little

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socioeconomic impact to its own domestic constituents from the conferral of citizenship to tens of thousands of Moldovans.48 Romania is not alone in its broad extension of citizenship to populations in neighboring states based on historical affiliation. Other states, including those outside of the EU membership zone, have also both used citizenship policies as a way to extend their sovereignty and influence into neighboring regions, without technically violating the principle of territorial inviolability of internationally recognized borders.49 For example, Russia’s attempt to “redefine the nation by offering extraterritorial citizenship to all those who have a connection—ethnic or historic—to the Russian homeland”50 emerged from a combination of three main interests: protection of the rights of the Russians in the Near Abroad; maintenance of Russian political influence in the former Soviet republics; and combating demographic decline by encouraging the immigration of Russians from neighboring countries. At different times, each of these motives has been used as the justification for dual citizenship and repatriation policies aimed at both Russians and former Soviet citizens in the successor states of the Soviet Union, but these policies have been uneven and relatively moderate. As many analysts have pointed out, successive Russian governments have failed to define a permanent vision of the Russian nation and its relationship with the regional diaspora, leading to an often incoherent policy trajectory.51 In 1993, Russia decided to offer dual citizenship to ethnic Russians in the Soviet successor states, both as a way to protect the interests of Russian speakers in the region, but also because “the large number of people with Russian passports in neighboring states creates additional prerequisites for an increase in Russia’s influence in the future.”52 Without bilateral agreements on the acceptance of dual citizens, the legislation faltered, but quite a few Russians outside the border managed to acquire de facto dual citizenship while Russia looked the other way. In 2001, then President Putin stated that the Kremlin “is interested in the repatriation of Russians living abroad,” primarily as a way to stem Russia’s steep demographic decline, and promised a new citizenship bill to help facilitate naturalization of Russians from the former Soviet states.53 But others in the government feared that violence in Afghanistan would spill over to Central Asia, sparking uncontrolled migration and letting in “undesirables,” such as Chinese, Afghans, and Central Asians.54 Despite Putin’s apparent desire to secure a more open path to naturalization and citizenship for Russians, the new citizenship law passed by the Duma made it harder for Russians and former Soviet citizens to acquire Russian citizenship by adding residency and

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language requirements. The citizenship procedure was simplified only for “stateless” former Soviet citizens who had been unable to acquire citizenship in their state of residence.55 Between 2003 and 2005, Putin was able to regain control of the repatriation debate and pushed through amendments to the citizenship law, which simplified the citizenship procedure for all former Soviet citizens, extending the deadline for application until January 2008, and getting rid of residency, language, and proof of income requirements. By 2006, the Kremlin was calling on “compatriots” to return to mother Russia and created an interagency working group to facilitate the “voluntary resettlement of our compatriots residing abroad.”56 The repatriation effort failed to attract many takers, however, as it was plagued by housing and employment problems and a lack of incentives for repatriates, who were only allowed to settle in certain regions of the country. As of June 2009, only 8800 “compatriots” had resettled in Russia.57 Despite the low rate of repatriation, the liberalization of citizenship for former Soviet citizens had other important implications for Russia’s influence throughout the region. This became clear in light of the Russian military intervention in South Ossetia—a breakaway republic of Georgia—in the summer of 2008. In a 2006 referendum, the majority of the population of South Ossetia supported independence, but the republic lacked recognition as an independent state. The population was, therefore, able to qualify for Russian citizenship as “stateless” former Soviet citizens, or they could apply through the simplified procedures introduced in the 2005 amendments. Furthermore, Russian NGOs collected applications and processed them en masse, so that applicants from Abkhazia and South Ossetia did not even have to cross the border to receive their citizenship papers. By the time of the 2008 violence, up to 90 percent of the population in South Ossetia had acquired Russian citizenship, which Russia used as a justification for its military presence there, ostensibly to protect its citizens from the Georgian army.58 As it had done in the past, Moscow “treated the protection of rights and interests of Russians and Russian-speaking minorities much more as an instrument of securing leadership in the territory of the former Soviet Union rather than a goal in itself.”59 Implications A number of general implications emerge from these various instances of diaspora policymaking in Eastern Europe. The cases presented here

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demonstrate the increasingly diverse forms of kin-state support and action—such as economic, social, and political support, diplomatic advocacy, and various forms of social and political membership—that have little to do with the changing of borders. In many ways, the policies of this new paradigm look no different than the types of diaspora engagement policies increasingly used by states around the world to create and maintain connections with migrant and refugee populations. Unlike territorial revision, policies of diaspora engagement can serve to disentangle the issue of borders and territory from membership in the nation, thereby lessening the likelihood of conflict and war. Contrary to some pessimistic expectations, therefore, we see that kin-state policies, even those originating in states with a history of irredentism, can result in resolvable tensions between states, not necessarily ethnic conflicts “waiting to happen.”60 On the other hand, we see that some of these policies can be used as a form of non-territorial or “virtual” irredentism.61 When kin-state policies are used to shift demographic configurations, challenge competing nation-building projects, or interfere in the politics of other states, then the potential for conflict remains. Attempts to legislate on behalf of populations beyond the borders of the state also have serious implications for the political integration of national minority communities. Diaspora engagement policies, and repatriation and external citizenship, in particular, may hinder integration of ethnic minorities as it provides an easy exit and undermines the development of diaspora political organization within the host state. The networks developed between kin-state and diaspora elites often result in patterns of dependence and patronage, and may give diaspora elites less incentive to make compromises and negotiate with political actors in their own states. Kin-state elites may also forge ties with radicals across the border, emboldening secessionist and autonomist movements in neighboring states.62 Strong political and membership ties between the kin-state and diaspora elites can radicalize demands for accommodation made by the minority diaspora on its host-state government, or radicalize antiminority sentiment in the host state if diaspora members are viewed with suspicion because of their assumed loyalties to the neighboring kinstate.63 On the other hand, cross-border ties can increase diaspora mobility and provide an exit option for radicals that may defuse tensions. For example, as some have argued, Romania’s offer of citizenship eventually weakened any movement toward further Romanian-Moldovan unification, as those Moldovans who identified more with Romania simply used their restored citizenship to relocate to the “mother country.”64 In other

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situations, the opportunity to gain kin-state citizenship may allow diaspora members to maintain ties with the kin-state while they pursue naturalization or political integration in their state of residence. There is evidence that this has been the case for Turks in Germany, who were reluctant to naturalize before Turkey liberalized its laws on external dual citizenship.65 These examples suggest that ethnic citizenship—either through ethnic repatriation and preferential naturalization, external citizenship, or the type of semicitizenship represented by the Status Law and the Polish Charter—is the most powerful, and controversial, type of diaspora engagement policy that has become prevalent in post-communist Europe. Different forms of ethnic citizenship have different effects: repatriation brings the diaspora “home” and solidifies or increases internal homogeneity, while external citizenship extends the sovereignty of the homeland state to diaspora members, even if they reside in other states, thereby creating or strengthening transborder ties of national affiliation. Both types of ethnic citizenship incentivize and instrumentalize identity, trading rights, benefits, and mobility for diaspora members in exchange for loyalty and participation in the political, economic, and identity projects of the kinstate.66 Both are also powerful tools of nation-building, as extending citizenship beyond the state’s territory “reinforces the institutional capacity of the government to realize its economic and political projects.”67 Yet, because crafting diaspora citizenship “entails reconfiguring the bounds of the political community,”68 these policies can create tensions within kinstates as well if they come into conflict with other national goals or the fears and prejudices of domestic constituents. A third implication is that the history and nature of the state-diaspora relationship matters in determining the salience of diaspora politics to nationalist narratives and political legitimacy within the kin-state. As I discussed in Chapter 2, if the content and structure of nationalism encompasses populations beyond the border, then it is more likely that the situation of the transborder nation will demand official attention and play a significant role in domestic political competition. In Poland, a strong connection between the transborder nation and dominant conceptions of the Polish nation was lacking. As a result, it was more difficult to translate diaspora policy into a politically salient cleavage issue, and policy decisions could be deferred without significant cost. In Hungary and Romania, the state’s relationship with those beyond the border was more central to notions of governing legitimacy and historical narratives of nationhood, even if the perceptions of the external populations were

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not always positive. The relative strength of the diaspora’s potential pull on the national imagination, therefore, shaped policy debates and outcomes to some degree in each case by framing both the hopes and the fears about further integrating coethnics into the kin-state political community. However, Hungary’s story also demonstrates that nationalism in the East European region is not a monolithic or necessarily waning phenomenon, but a dynamic form of political and social identification that is utilized in various ways when other paths of political legitimacy are inaccessible.69 Instead of treating nationalism as a fixed or preexisting factor, this study argues that a politically viable nationalism is highly contingent on a convergence of political opportunities, elite interests, and often, external factors.70 Sometimes, this strategy is successful, and at other times it is less so. Nationalist arguments will not always be given much credence by voters, even for such a historically sympathetic cause as protecting the transborder Hungarian nation from assimilation and discrimination. Particularly when it appears that other state interests—such as economic recovery, political stability, and regional integration—may be jeopardized by support for nationalist agendas, voters will be hard-pressed to choose nationalism over pragmatism. Yet, different forms of nationalism have salience in different contexts. The idea of kin-state nationalism may have gained traction among elites as a response to Hungary’s diminished ability to act as a kin-state when it joined the EU, but its relevance may begin to wane once more if the ethnic Hungarian diaspora is contained within the EU borders. On the other hand, if right-wing elites are successful in marrying economic populism with a version of kin-state nationalism during a time of political and economic uncertainty, then the diaspora issue may regain its political salience and kin-state engagement may increase. Finally, the previous chapters and the comparative discussion above further elucidate how external factors, such as changes in regional or international power relations, shape the political calculations of kin-state elites by either constraining or expanding their opportunities to more actively engage in diaspora politics. The internationalization of human rights norms and the new framework of minority protection created by the institutions of European integration have legitimized to some extent the intervention of outside interests regarding the treatment of immigrant communities and national minorities.71 In addition, the ongoing project of regional integration in Europe has raised the stakes for potential kin-states, such as Hungary, that desired membership in those

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regional organizations, and have influenced diaspora policies and domestic politics in different and sometimes unpredictable ways. In the case of Hungary, the role of external actors was first demonstrated by the geopolitical context of post–World War I Europe. The Great Powers emerging at this time gave the interwar regime an avenue to press its revisionist claims via the newly legitimized discourse of national self-determination espoused by the U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations. At the same time, in repeatedly denying those claims, those same powers provided a justification for the “cult of irredentism” that permeated the “victimized” Hungarian state. After World War II, under the domination of the Soviet Union, the Hungarian communist regime’s scope of action regarding any discrimination faced by its coethnics in neighboring countries was tightly constrained by the realities of regional politics. However, by the 1980s, Moscow’s management of interstate relations had lessened, Hungary’s international standing had increased somewhat, and the Helsinki human rights framework seemed to justify third-party intervention on behalf of oppressed national minorities. Together, these external developments gave Hungarian elites the freedom to press the diaspora issue more forcefully, making it available as a new source of domestic legitimacy. For kin-states in post-communist Eastern Europe, the most significant external actor has been the EU, which has an interest in regional stability and the control of population flows across its borders. Rather than understanding the influence of the EU on diaspora policymaking as either unidirectional or driven by the logic of conditionality, the cases presented in this book paint a much more complex picture. On one level, the prospect of EU membership actually increased the incentives for kinstate actors to solidify cross-border ties and increase their policy engagement as they searched for ways to ease diaspora mobility in the face of the Schengen borders. We see this in Hungary’s roll out of the Status Law, in Poland’s consideration and eventual passage of the Polish Charter, and even in Romania’s restitution of citizenship to the majority of Moldovans. Yet, in these same cases, it is undeniable that the prospect of EU membership also helped restrain more radically nationalist approaches to the ethnic-kin situation. Policymakers in Hungary, Poland, and Romania saw the EU membership of their states and the states containing their kin minorities as the best long-term solution to guarantee minority rights and provide opportunities for cross-border mobility. They were also sensitive to the expectations of EU bodies and representatives, who pressured the countries to sign treaties with their neighbors

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and find bilateral solutions that would conform to European norms of sovereignty and identity maintenance. In the case of Romania, pressure from EU actors induced policymakers to slow down and even suspend the large-scale granting of citizenship to populations in Moldova and Ukraine. In terms of the EU effect since these states became members, however, we see a range of outcomes. Romania’s actions in the last few years suggest that after accession there are significant limits in the EU’s ability to shape or constrain extraterritorial policymaking. While EU conditionality had temporarily constrained Romania’s transborder nationbuilding project, once it had gained the prize of membership, the “active leverage” of the EU accession process was no longer in force.72 The Romanian government then resumed and even increased its controversial restitution of nationality program despite objections from other EU member states. In the case of Hungary, on the other hand, EU membership offered the government a new path to diaspora engagement through regional development funds, which had the potential to bring quality of life improvements to the diaspora communities, while at the same time, lessening the influence of right-wing clientelistic networks that extended across the border. The efficacy of this project is now in question, however, due to the financial crises afflicting Hungary and the EU, more generally, and the crushing defeat of the left-wing government in the 2010 election, in which the MSZP won only 19 percent of the vote in the first round. Looking to the Future What are the dynamics that are likely to shape kin-state politics in the future? One development that is particularly relevant for Hungary is the increasing pluralism and independent organization of parties and political groups emerging within the ethnic Hungarian communities. Recent political developments within Hungary, in particular the dual citizenship referendum campaign, the downplaying of the autonomy issue, and the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) government’s more conciliatory tone toward the neighboring governments, have emboldened both the more “moderate” and the more “radical” factions within ethnic Hungarian political organizations. In Romania in 2007, László To˝kés, the long-time Fidesz ally, split off from the main ethnic Hungarian political party there, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), which he accused of becoming too conciliatory, ineffective, and corrupt. To˝kés

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announced that he would run as an independent candidate in the EP election when he was not put on the RMDSZ list. He also became the chairman of the Hungarian National Council of Transylvania (EMNT) and advocated strongly for the goals of the Szekler National Council (SZNT), which has pushed for autonomy in the Szekler region of Romania.73 To˝kés and the RMDSZ leadership eventually agreed to a joint EP list for the 2009 elections, but the RMDSZ’s role as the central ethnic Hungarian political organization was clearly weakened. Also in 2007, another ethnic Hungarian political party with ties to Fidesz registered for official status, the Hungarian Civic Party (MPP), which hopes to present an alternative to the RMDSZ and focuses largely on the question of autonomy. In Slovakia, it was the more “moderate” leaders in the ethnic Hungarian community that formed a new party. In the spring of 2007, a dispute over the leadership of the largest ethnic Hungarian political party, the Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP), resulted in Béla Bugár and a few moderate allies leaving to form their own rival party. The new party, called Most-Híd (“Bridge” in both Slovak and Hungarian), was meant to appeal to all Slovaks, not just to members of the ethnic Hungarian community.74 At the same time, there are signs that the dynamic between ethnic Hungarian leaders and Budapest is shifting. Clientelistic relationships are giving way to more independence by diaspora elites and a focus on their divergent interests and forms of organization, which may diminish the political usefulness of diaspora politics for Hungarian elites in the long run. For example, the abolishment of institutions such as the Hungarian Standing Conference (MÁÉRT) and the Government Office of Hungarians Abroad (HTMH) drove ethnic Hungarian organizations throughout the region to begin meeting independently of Budapest in forums such as the Forum of External Hungarian Organizations (HTMSZF). Smaller regional groups, such as the SZNT, are also growing in influence and seem to have more ability to set agendas with or without support from Hungary. While Hungarian leaders within Hungary and abroad have generally striven to present consensus and a unified position on the international stage, Hungary’s relationship with diaspora leaders and politicians has often been characterized by tension and often conflicting interests.75 Diaspora leaders may have an incentive to differentiate themselves further from political parties in Hungary, particularly as their own countries become EU members, and opportunities to govern in their home countries and at the EP level present themselves.

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A second development is renewed discontent with the realities of EU membership and skepticism of the supranational organization as a framework through which to resolve ongoing tensions over minority rights. In Hungary, the latest wave of disappointment emerged in reaction to the perceived weak response by EU officials to the changes made to the Slovak Language Law, including fines for the “misuse” of languages other than Slovak in certain public settings, which Hungarians across the political spectrum regarded as a “violation of fundamental human and minority rights.”76 The EU and the European Commission have been widely criticized in Hungary as “impotent” for their refusal to officially sanction Slovakia for the law, although EU representatives did eventually pressure the Slovak government to carefully craft the implementation rules of the legislation to avoid potential anti-Hungarian abuses.77 In general, kin-state policymakers feel that the EU has provided little guidance on conflict management in cases of possible minority-rights abuses. In this same vein, the central questions of autonomy and citizenship that dominate many controversies over kin-state action will not likely be solved anytime soon by EU intervention or norm-setting, given the widely divergent interests among the various member states. The controversy in 2008 over the Ahtisaari Plan, the blueprint for Kosovo’s independence, made it clear that the European community could not formulate a unified stance on questions of autonomy and demands for minority secession. Each state was left to determine whether to support the Plan on its own. For some member states, such as Romania, Slovakia, and Spain, the Plan set a dangerous precedent by allowing for the successful secession of a previously autonomous ethnic region belonging to another state. For others, the Plan was a model of fairness for its extensive minority rights protections to deal with the remaining Serb minorities. The issue was met with trepidation in Hungary, where policymakers feared a backlash against ethnic Hungarians in northern Serbia if they supported the Plan, but agreed with its principles and did not want to appear weak. The Hungarian government reacted cautiously and waited until other states bordering Serbia, such as Bulgaria, agreed to recognize Kosovo’s independence before doing the same. Regional and international organization officials have also tended to offer mixed signals about the acceptable limits of kin-state activism. The trend over the last 50 years has been a growing acceptance that state sovereignty as a principle can be breached in cases involving human rights, ethnic discrimination, and conflicts over cultural autonomy. Yet, the role

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of kin-states in pushing a model of minority “promotion,” not just protection, has not been fully accepted and acknowledged. The Status Law controversy was useful in that it set some kind of precedent for the EU’s response to kin-state action. While Hungary’s legislation was not the first of its kind in post-communist Europe, its scrutiny by regional bodies was instructive for both academics and policymakers. The dispute over the legitimacy of the Status Law made clear the EU’s preference for institutional support of diaspora cultural organizations, and more limited forms of kin-state intervention. As a result, institution-based cultural support to augment mother-tongue media, schooling, pedagogical study, and the arts will likely be supported, while there will be less of a focus on the types of individualized extraterritorial subsidies that made earlier versions of the Status Law so controversial. In Hungary, and elsewhere in post-communist Europe, we are still likely to see a focus on kin-state access through special visas, dual nationality, and other membership options. Despite its sensitive nature, citizenship will be used as an instrument of both access and coercion as long as the borders of a broadened Europe are being negotiated and transborder minorities are separated by the Schengen borders. Finally, there continues to be resistance by many neighboring states to the diaspora politics of activist kin-states. The tensions between Hungary and its neighbors show that attempts to legislate lives and livelihood across the border are likely to fail unless kin-states can succeed in lessening the resistance of host states to violations of their sovereignty. Yet, the presence of nationalists in governing coalitions, and ongoing disputes over property restitution, textbooks, and the often tenuous status of cultural autonomy and minority rights protections makes negotiations over acceptable terms of cross-border intervention difficult. As long as these tensions remain and political elites can benefit from diaspora resources, kin-states such as Hungary will continue in their role as minority rights advocates, protectors of the transborder nation, and, occasionally, regional provocateurs.

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Chapter 1 1. The case of Serbian irredentism against Croatia and the ensuing violence following the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia is now generally considered something of an outlier. Looking at other potentially irredentist states—Russia (Near Abroad), Romania (Moldova), Hungary (Romania, Slovakia, Serbia), Germany (Poland, Czech Republic), Poland (Lithuania, Belarus)—we see that military intervention by kin-states is the exception, not the rule. 2. Roger Waldinger and David Fitzgerald, “Transnationalism in Question,” American Journal of Sociology 109, no. 5 (March 2004): 1186. 3. Robert C. Smith, “Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization, the State and The Extra-Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics,” International Migration Review (2003): 304. 4. The question: “Do you think Parliament should pass a law allowing Hungarian citizenship with preferential naturalization to be granted to those, at their request, who claim to have Hungarian nationality, do not live in Hungary, and are not Hungarian citizens, and who prove their Hungarian nationality by means of a ‘Hungarian Identity Card’ issued pursuant to Article 19 of Act 62 of 2001 or in another way to be determined by a law which is to be passed?” Text found at http://www.valasztas.hu/main_en.html. A question on the privatization of hospitals was also on the ballot. 5. World Federation of Hungarians (MVSZ) referendum campaign material. “Ne mondj le róluk!” (2005-9-2-06), “Bartók Béla: Ma nem lehetne magyar allampolgár.” (2005-9-2-12), “Soha nem hagynám el a szülo˝földömet . . . De magyar vagyok!” (2005-9-2-15), in Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 2005-ro˝l, ed. Péter Sándor, László Vass, Ágnes Tolnai (Budapest: Demokrácia Kutatások Magyar Központja Közhasznú Alapítvány, 2006). Jpeg files on accompanying CD-ROM. 6. Constitution of the Republic of Hungary, paragraph 6, article 3. Enacted by Act 31 of 1989, October 23, 1989. 7. Anonymous communication. Also see Mária M. Kovács, “The Politics of Non-resident Dual Citizenship in Hungary,” Citizenship Studies 10, no. 4 (September 2006): 62. 8. Officially known as the Law Concerning Hungarians Living in Neighboring Countries. The vote passed by 92 percent.

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9. This point has been illustrated in other East European contexts. See David Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005); Zsuzsa Csergo˝, Talk of the Nation: Language and Conflict in Romania and Slovakia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007). 10. Kathleen Newland and Erin Patrick, “Beyond Remittances: The Role of Diaspora in Poverty Reduction in their Countries of Origin,” scoping study by the Migration Policy Institute for the Department of International Development ( July 2004), http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/Beyond_Remittances_0704.pdf. 11. Attila Melegh, “Globalization, Nationalism, and Petite Imperialism,” Romanian Journal of Society and Politics 2, no. 1 (2003): 120. 12. Beatriz Padilla, “Latin American Immigration to Southern Europe,” Migration Information Source ( June 2007), http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/ pring.cfm?ID=609. 13. Stuart Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 16–18. 14. Zsuzsa Csergo˝ and James M. Goldgeier, “Nationalist Strategies and European Integration,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 1 (2004): 26. 15. Rachel Sherman, “From State Introversion to State Extension in Mexico: Modes of Emigrant Incorporation, 1900–1997,” Theory and Society 28, no. 6 (1999): 847. 16. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 79–106. The logic of state-building vs. nation-building could also result in a decision to disengage from a previous policy commitment regarding a population abroad, as occurred when the German government phased out many of its policies toward ethnic German Aussiedler in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the decade following reunification, including the promise of automatic German citizenship. 17. V. P. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 7–27. 18. Yossi Shain, “The Mexican-American Diaspora’s Impact on Mexico,” Political Science Quarterly 114, no. 4 (2000): 665. 19. Sherman, “From State Introversion to State Extension in Mexico,” 847. 20. Laurie A. Brand, Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 216–217. 21. Maria Rosa Garcia-Acevedo, “Politics Across Borders: Mexico’s Policies toward Mexicans in the United States,” Journal of the Southwest 45, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 534–544. 22. Luin Goldring, “The Mexican State and Transmigrant Organizations: Negotiating the Boundaries of Membership and Participation,” Latin American Research Review 37, no. 3 (2002): 68. 23. Brand, Citizens Abroad. 24. Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 140.

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25. For example, Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War. 26. Saideman and Ayres explain this backlash against kin-state engagement as a form of “xenophobia.” Stephen M. Saideman and R. William Ayres, For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 2–3. 27. Kim Barry, “Home and Away: The Construction of Citizenship in an Emigration Context,” New York University Law Review 81, no. 11 (April 2006): 24. 28. For more on this debate, see Stephen Deets and Sherrill Stroschein, “Dilemmas of Autonomy and Liberal Pluralism: Examples Involving Hungarians in Central Europe,” Nations and Nationalism 11, no. 2 (2005): 285–305. 29. For example, local referenda on autonomy in the Szekler region of Romania. 30. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Hungary, “Hungary in the World,” http://www.mfa.gov.hu/kum/en/bal/foreign_policy/hungary_in_the_ world/ (accessed March 22, 2010). 31. Lubos Palata, “Slovak Language Law: Slap in the Face,” Transitions Online, July 13, 2009, http://www.tol.cz. 32. György Csepeli and Antal Örkény, “The Changing Facets of Hungarian Nationalism,” Social Research 63 (Spring 1996): 280. 33. For example, Thomas Ambrosio, Irredentism: Ethnic Conflict and International Politics (Westport, London: Praeger, 2001); Saideman & Ayres, For Kin or Country. 34. Most recently in Csergo˝’s Talk of the Nation and Erin Jenne, Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), which both focus on majority-minority relations in states with large Hungarian minorities. 35. A number of books have been published on Russia’s policies toward its diaspora in the Near Abroad. For example, Igor Zevelev, Russia and Its New Diasporas (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001). 36. Peter A. Hall, “Aligning Ontology and Methodology in Comparative Politics,” in Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 394. 37. David A. Lake and Donald S. Rothchild, “Spreading Fear: The Genesis of Transnational Ethnic Conflict,” in The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, Escalation, ed. David A. Lake and Donald S. Rothchild (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 4. 38. Will H. Moore and David R. Davis, “Transnational Ethnic Ties and Foreign Policy,” in Spreading Fear, ed. Lake and Rothchild, 92. 39. David Carment and Patrick James, “Secession and Irredenta in World Politics: The Neglected Interstate Dimension,” in Wars in the Midst of Peace: The International Politics of Ethnic Conflict, ed. David Carment and Patrick James (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), 13. 40. Lake and Rothchild, “Spreading Fear,” 19.

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172 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48.

49.

50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

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Carment and James, “Secession and Irredenta,” 205. Saideman and Ayres, For Kin or Country, 12–23. See discussion in ibid., 33–35. For example, Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 55–76. Saideman and Ayres, For Kin or Country; Ambrosio, Irredentism. Milena Anna Vachudova, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Csergo˝ and Goldgeier, “Nationalist Strategies and European Integration”; Jeffrey Checkel, “Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1999): 83–114. Yossi Shain and Aharon Barth, “Diasporas and International Relations Theory,” International Organization 57, no. 3 (2003): 452. Ilona Kiss and Catherine McGovern, ed., New Diasporas in Hungary, Russia and Ukraine: Legal Regulations and Current Politics (Budapest: Open Society Institute/Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute, 2000); Charles King and Neil J. Melvin, ed., Nations Abroad: Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union (Boulder, CO; Oxford, UK: Westview Press, 1998); Oxana Shevel, “The Post-Communist Diaspora Laws: Beyond the ‘Good Civic versus Bad Ethnic’ Dichotomy,” East European Politics and Societies 24, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 159–187. As Hungarian legal scholar Judit Tóth has written: “[T]he formation of the Hungarian population in the Hungarian basin is not (characteristically) related to the migration of people but to the ‘migration’ of state borders in the twentieth century’ and is therefore not a diaspora.” Judit Tóth, “Connections of Kinminorities to the Kin-state in the Extended Schengen Zone,” in The Hungarian Status Law: Nation-Building and/or Minority Protection, ed. Zoltán Kántor, et al. (Sapporo: Slavic Research Centre, Hokkaido University, 2004), 375. “Editors’ forward” in Perspectives of Diaspora Existence, ed. Balázs Balogh and Zoltán Ilyés (Budapest: Akadámiai Kiadó, 2006), 7. Zoltán Ilyés, “Researching and Interpreting Diaspora: Remarks on Social Science Research into the Diaspora Communities of the Carpathian Basin,” in Perspectives of Diaspora Existence, ed. Balogh and Ilyés, 46. Pál Péter Tóth, “Diasporization and Population Development,” in Perspectives of Diaspora Existence, ed. Balogh and Ilyés, 100. Here I draw on work such as, Smith, “Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process”; and Latha Varadarajan, The Domestic Abroad: Diasporas in International Relations (Cambridge, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2010). See Myra A. Waterbury, “Bridging the Divide: Towards a comparative framework for understanding external kin-state and migrant sending-state diaspora politics,” in Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, ed. Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 131–148, for a fuller discussion of these structural similarities. Rogers Brubaker, “The ‘diaspora’ diaspora,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28, no. 1 (2005): 5–7.

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Chapter 2 1. István Pogány, “Poets, Revolutionaries and Shoemakers: Law and the Construction of National Identity in Central Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century,” Social and Legal Studies 16, no. 1 (2007): 95–112. 2. “Magyar” is the native term for “Hungarian.” It will be used throughout this section to designate Hungarian in the linguistic and cultural sense, as opposed to the territorial sense during the period when the lands of Hungary were part of a multiethnic empire, and not a nation-state. 3. Karen Barkey, “Negotiated Paths to Nationhood: A Comparison of Hungary and Romania in the Early Twentieth Century,” East European Politics and Societies 14, no. 3 (2000): 497–531; Rustem Vambery, “The Tragedy of the Magyars: Revisionism and Nazism,” Foreign Affairs (April 1925): 445–458. 4. Vambery, “The Tragedy of the Magyars,” 477. 5. Ignác Romsics, “Nation and State in Modern Hungarian History,” Hungarian Quarterly 42, no. 164 (Winter 2001), http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/ no164/4.shtml. 6. Vambery, “The Tragedy of the Magyars,” 477. 7. Paul Lendvai, The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 192. 8. For example, the great national poet and martyr of the 1848 revolution, Sándor Peto˝fi, had a Serb background and his parents spoke heavily accented Hungarian. The family name was originally Petrovics, until it was Magyarized into Peto˝fi. See Lendvai, The Hungarians, 220. For more on Kossuth and Széchenyi, see 192–207. 9. In 1867, minorities were 53.4 percent of the population. Pogány, “Poets, Revolutionaries and Shoemakers,” 98. 10. Rustem Vambery, “Nationalism in Hungary,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 232 (1944): 79. 11. Quoted in Romsics, “Nation and State in Modern Hungarian History.” 12. Vambery, “The Tragedy of the Magyars,” 478. 13. Barkey, “Negotiated Paths to Nationhood,” 512. 14. Vambery in “Nationalism in Hungary” writes, for example, that there were two million Slovaks represented by two members of parliament, 79. 15. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1974), 138. 16. Marius Turda, “The Magyar: ‘A Ruling Race’: The Idea of National Superiority in Fin-de-Siecle Hungary,” European Review of History 10, no. 1 (2003): 5–32. 17. András Gero˝, Imagined History: Chapters from the Nineteenth and 20th Century Hungarian Symbolic Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 16. 18. György Ránki, “National Grievances and Right-Wing Radicalism,” in Hungarians and Their Neighbors in Modern Times, 1867–1950, ed. Ferenc Glatz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 141. 19. Barkey, “Negotiated Paths to Nationhood,” 518–519.

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20. Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, 156. 21. Magda Ádam, “Complete Encirclement: The Establishment of the Little Entente,” in Hungarians and Their Neighbors in Modern Times, 1867–1950, ed. Ferenc Glatz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 145. 22. István Deák, “Hungary,” in The European Right: A Historical Profile, ed. Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber (Berkley: University of California Press, 1965), 364. 23. Steven Béla Várdy, “The Impact of Trianon Upon the Hungarian Mind: Irredentism and Hungary’s Path to War,” in Hungary in the Age of Total War (1938–1948), ed. N. F. Dreisziger (New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1998), 36. 24. In October 1918, Mihály Károlyi was put into power after a bloodless revolution to dissolve the monarchy and proclaim Hungary’s status as an independent republic. In March 1919, Károlyi was forced to resign after failing to secure favorable conditions for Hungary during the Paris Peace negotiations and the Communist regime of Béla Kun takes power. During the summer and fall of 1919, Kun’s government falls, and Admiral Horthy and his counterrevolutionary forces enter Budapest and carry out the White Terror against “Bolsheviks.” A new conservative right government takes power in January 1920 and Horthy is made Regent of Hungary on March 1, 1920. 25. Deák, “Hungary,” 372. 26. Romsics, “Nation and State in Modern Hungarian History,” quoting Count Ápponyi, leader of the Hungarian peace delegation at Trianon in his essay Justice for Hungary. 27. Gero˝, Imagined History, 11. 28. Miklós Zeidler, “Irredentism in Everyday Life in Hungary during the Inter-war Period,” Regio: Minorities, Politics, Society 2002: 72. 29. Várdy, “The Impact of Trianon upon the Hungarian Mind,” 39. 30. For example, Andrew Fall, “Hungary’s Claim to the Restoration of Transylvania,” Danubian Review 8, no. 3 (1940). 31. George Schöpflin, “Transylvania: Hungarians Under Romanian Rule,” in The Hungarians: A Divided Nation, ed. Stephen Borsody (New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1988), 119. 32. László Kürti, The Remote Borderland: Transylvania in the Hungarian Imagination (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), 15. 33. Eva S. Balogh, “Hungarian Foreign Policy, 1918–1945,” in The Hungarians, ed. Borsody, 375. 34. Várdy, “The Impact of Trianon upon the Hungarian Mind,” 34. 35. Ránki, “National Grievances and Right-Wing Radicalism,” 141. 36. In fact, Gömbös had been in close contact with the German Nazi party since 1921. Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, 176. 37. Similar covert forms of financial and political support were provided by Germany during this time to ethnic Germans in the East. Rogers Brubaker, “Accidental Diasporas and External “Homelands” in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present” (working paper, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Political Science Series no. 71, 2000), 12, http://works.bepress.com/wrb/10/.

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38. For Romania, Nándor Bárdi, “A Keleti Akció: A romániai magyar intézmények anyaországi támogatása az 1920-as években” [The Eastern Campaign: Mothercountry support for Romanian Hungarian institutions in the 1920s] in Magyarságkutatás, 1995–96, ed. László Diószegi (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 1996), 143–190. For Czechoslovakia, Béla Angyal, “A csehszlovákiai magyarság anyaországi támogatása a két világháború között” [Support Given to the Ethnic Hungarians in Czechoslovakia by Hungary in the Interwar Period] Regio: Kisebbség, Politika, Társadalom 2000, no. 3: 133–177. 39. Piroska Balogh, “Transylvanism: Revision or Regionalism?,” in Geopolitics in the Danube Region: Hungarian Reconciliation Efforts, 1848–1998, ed. Ignác Romsics and Béla K. Király (Budapest; New York: Central European University Press, 1998), 247. 40. Bárdi, “A Keleti Akció,” 164. The korona was the official currency of the Austro-Hungarian empire from 1892 until 1918. 41. Zoltán Pálfy, “The Dislocated Transylvanian Hungarian Student Body and the Process of Nation-Building after 1918,” in Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies, ed. Balázs Trencsényi, et al. (Budapest; Iasi: Regio Books, Editura Polirom, 2001), 181. 42. Bárdi, “A Keleti Akció,” 170–173. 43. Balogh, “Transylvanism,” 247; Angyal, “A csehszlovákiai magyarság anyaországi támogatása a két világháború között,” 168. 44. Bárdi, “A Keleti Akció,” 160–162. 45. Ibid., 175. 46. Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, 166. 47. Balogh, “Hungarian Foreign Policy, 1918–1945,” 62. 48. István Vida, “The Hungarian Question in Paris,” in Hungarians and Their Neighbors in Modern Times, ed. Glatz, 222. 49. Laszlo Deme, “Perceptions and Problems of Hungarian Nationality and National Identity in the Early 1990s,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 12, no. 2 (1998): 308. 50. Andrew Ludanyi, “Programmed Amnesia and Rude Awakening: Hungarian Minorities in International Politics, 1945–1989,” in 20th Century Hungary and the Great Powers, ed. Ignác Romsics (Boulder, CO; Highland Lakes, NJ: Social Science Monographs; Atlantic Research and Publications; New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1995), 307–336. 51. István Deák, “The Past as an Obstacle to Danubian Reconciliation: Introduction,” in The Hungarians, ed. Borsody, 298. 52. Robert R. King, Minorities under Communism: Nationalities as a Source of Tension among Balkan Communist States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 21. 53. Ludanyi, “Programmed Amnesia and Rude Awakening,” 312. 54. King, Minorities under Communism, 76. 55. Pierre Kende, “Communist Hungary and the Hungarian Minorities,” in The Hungarians, ed. Borsody, 283. 56. King, Minorities under Communism, 77.

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57. Ludanyi, “Programmed Amnesia and Rude Awakening,” 312. 58. Kádár famously proclaimed that if Soviet tanks entered Budapest, “I will go into the streets and fight against you with my bare hands.” Quoted in Tibor Méray, Thirteen Days that Shook the Kremlin (New York,: Praeger, 1959), 10. 59. Ignác Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century (Budapest: Corvina, 1999), 404. 60. The Hungarian majority there decreased from 77 to 62 percent. Kürti, The Remote Borderland, 37. 61. Charles Gati, Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 1986), 160–161. 62. Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, 329. 63. King, Minorities under Communism, 119. 64. J. F. Brown, Eastern Europe and Communist Rule (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988), 438. 65. King, Minorities under Communism, 44. 66. For example, see speech by the foreign affairs secretary Mátyás Szu˝rös in a lecture given at the Foreign Affairs Institute of Sweden on October 15, 1986. Abridged version available in Mátyás Szu˝rös, “National and International in Hungarian Foreign Policy,” The New Hungarian Quarterly 28, no. 105 (1987): 17–30. 67. Ludanyi, “Programmed Amnesia and Rude Awakening,” 318. 68. Raphael Vago, The Grandchildren of Trianon: Hungary and the Hungarian Minority in the Communist States (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1989), 150. 69. King, Minorities under Communism, 117. 70. Quoted in Kende, “Communist Hungary and the Hungarian Minorities,” 290. Originally printed in the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau. 71. Schöpflin, “Transylvania,” 138. 72. Rudolf L. To˝kés, Hungary’s Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change, and Political Succession, 1957–1990 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 230. 73. János Kis, “Nation-Building and Beyond,” in Can Liberal Pluralism Be Exported? Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe, ed. Will Kymlicka and Magdalena Opalski (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 234. 74. Gyula Illyés, “Válasz Herdernek és Adynak” [A Reply to Herder and Ady] Magyar Nemzet, December 25, 1977, and January 1, 1978. 75. George Schöpflin, “Opposition and Para-Opposition: Critical Currents in Hungary, 1968–1978,” in Opposition in Eastern Europe, ed. Rudolf L. To˝kés (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 154. 76. To˝kés, Hungary’s Negotiated Revolution, 195. 77. The lack of unity became apparent at the MDF-dominated Lakitelek meeting in 1987. For more on the meeting at Lakitelek, see Sándor Agócs and Endre Medvigy, A Magyarság Esélyei: a tanácskozás hiteles jegyzo˝könyve, Lakitelek, 1987. szept. 27 [Hungary’s Prospects: The Official Record of the Conference, Lakitelek, September 27, 1987] (Lakitelek; Budapest: Antológia; Püski, 1991).

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78. See To˝kés, Hungary’s Negotiated Revolution, 200. 79. Attila Ara-Kovács, Rudolf Joó, and Magyar Demokrata Forum, Report on the Situation of the Hungarian Minority in Rumania: Prepared for the Hungarian Democratic Forum (Budapest: [s.n.], 1988). 80. László Valki, “Hungary: Understanding Western Messages,” in Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, Volume 2: International and Transnational Factors, ed. Jan Zielonka and Alex Pravda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 282. 81. Reprinted in János Kis, Politics in Hungary: For a Democratic Alternative, trans. Gábor J. Follinus (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1989), 211–217. 82. András Balogh, “A Kisebbségpolitikai rendszerváltozás kezdete” [The Beginning of Minority Policy Transformation], in Mérleg és Számvetés Tizenhárom Év Után: A magyarságpolitikai rendszerváltás kezdete [Balance and Reckoning After Thirteen Years: The Beginning of the Transformation in Ethnic Hungarian Policy], ed. Csaba Tabajdi (Budapest: Codex Print Kft., 2001), 20. 83. Ludanyi, “Programmed Amnesia and Rude Awakening,” 321–323. 84. Csaba Tabajdi, “Több évtizedes hallgatás után” [After Many Years of Silence], in Mérleg és Számvetés, ed. Tabajdi, 72. 85. Mátyás Szu˝rös, “Hungary, Europe, and the World,” The New Hungarian Quarterly 28, no. 107 (1987): 25. 86. Radio Free Europe, “Minden magyar tagja a magyar nemzetnek” [Every Hungarian is a Member of the Hungarian Nation], in Mérleg és Számvetés, ed. Tabajdi, 144. 87. Imre Szokai and Csaba Tabajdi, “Mai politikánk és a nemzetiségi kérdés” [Our Current Policy and the Nationality Question], Magyar Nemzet, February 13, 1988, reprinted in Mérleg és Számvetés, ed. Tabajdi, 37. 88. John A. Callcott, “U.N. Human Rights Commission Condemns Romania,” United Press International, March 9, 1989. 89. Kende, “Communist Hungary and the Hungarian Minorities,” 477. 90. Judy Dempsey, “Romania Refugees Find Sanctuary in Hungary,” The Financial Times, May 13, 1988. 91. United Press International, “Hungary Signs Accord with U.N. Refugee Agency,” October 4, 1989, http://www.lexisnexis.com. 92. Resolution No. 1048 of 1989. 93. Judit Tóth, “Diaspora Politics: Programs and Prospects,” in New Diasporas in Hungary, Russia and Ukraine, ed. Kiss and McGovern, 97. 94. Pál Köteles, “Nemzeti stratégiát,” in Mérleg és Számvetés, ed. Tabajdi, 131.

Chapter 3 1. András Körösényi, “The Decay of Communist Rule in Hungary,” in PostCommunist Transition: Emerging Pluralism in Hungary, ed. András Bozóki, András Körösényi, and George Schöpflin (London; New York: Pinter; St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 10.

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2. Anna Grzymała-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past: The Regeneration of Communist Parties in East Central Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3–8. 3. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 83. 4. Alex Bandy, “50,000 Rally in Solidarity With Romania’s Ethnic Hungarians,” Associated Press, March 20, 1990. 5. Zsuzsa Csergo˝, Talk of the Nation: Language and Conflict in Romania and Slovakia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), 39–43. 6. László Szekeres, one of the founding members of the Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (VMDK). See “Hungarian Party in Vojvodina Fights ‘‘One of Greatest Assimilations in Europe,” Budapest home service, December 2, 1990, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, December 7, 1990. 7. János Avar, “Sürgetjük a nemzetközi közösséget a kisebbségi jogok “aktív védelmére”: Antall József az ENSZ-ben” [We Are Urging the International Community toward “Active Protection” of Minority Rights: Antall at the UN], Magyar Nemzet, October 2, 1991. 8. Endre Sik and Bori Simonovits, “Jelentés az MTA Kisebbségkutató Intézet Nemzetközi Migráció és Menekültügyi Kutatások Központja által készített közvelemény-kutatássorozat három hullámának eredményeiro˝l” [Report on the Results of Three Waves of Public Opinion Research Series Prepared by the Center for International Migration and Refugee Research of the Minority Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences], TÁRKI (unpublished ms, October 2002), 12–13. 9. H. D. Klingemann, Tamás Kolosi, and Péter Robert, “Hungarian 1990 PostElection Survey,” (codebook, Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung, University of Cologne, ZA Study 2486), 58, http://www.gesis.org/en/data_ service/eastern_europe/data/codebook/cb2486.pdf. 10. Parliamentary declaration no. 46 of 1990. Quote from György Csóti, an MDF spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Committee. “Foreign Affairs Committee Submission on Minorities,” Budapest home service, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, May 17, 1990. 11. Created by government resolution no. 1057 dated October 7, 1992. Broadcasting began on December 24, 1992. 12. By Government Decree no. 90 of 1992, dated May 29, 1992. In the spring of 1990 the Secretariat for the Hungarians beyond the borders was split off from the National and Ethnic Minority Office by the Antall government. 13. “Jeszenszky Géza külügyminiszter nyilatkozata elso˝ nemzetközi sajtókonferenciája keretében” [Statement of Foreign Affairs Minister Géza Jeszenszky at his First International Press Conference], May 30, 1990. Reprinted in Mérleg és Számvetés, ed. Tabajdi, 368–369. 14. István Szent-Iványi, speaking for the opposition SZDSZ. “Kisebbségi program: Az SZDSZ aláírna” [Minority Program: The SZDSZ Would Sign It], Köztársaság 1 (1993).

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15. Avar, “Sürgetjük a nemzetközi közösséget a kisebbségi jogok “aktív védelmére.” 16. “Jeszenszky Géza külügyminiszter válasza az Országgu˝lés ülésszakán – a magyar nemzeti kisebbségek ügyében elhangzott képviselo˝i interpellációra” [Reply of Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky during the Parliamentary Session—on the Matter of the Hungarian National Minorities], October 30, 1990. Reprinted in Mérleg és Számvetés, ed. Tabajdi, 377–380. 17. András Bozóki, Magyar Panoptikum (Budapest: Kávé Kiadó, 1996), 213. 18. László Valki, “Hungary: Understanding Western Messages,” in Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, Volume 2: International and Transnational Factors, ed. Jan Zielonka and Alex Pravda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 287–290. 19. George Schöpflin, “From Communism to Democracy in Hungary,” in PostCommunist Transition, ed. Bozóki, Körösényi, and Schöpflin, 106. 20. “Az Országgyu˝lés hat pártja parlamenti frakcióinak nyilatkozata a trianoni békeszerzo˝dés aláírása 70. évfordulója alkalmából” [Declaration of the Six Party Factions of Parliament on the Occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the Signing of the Trianon Peace Treaty], June 1, 1990. Reprinted in Mérleg és Számvetés, ed. Tabajdi, 370–371. 21. Speech at the third MDF party congress, “Folytatta munkáját az MDF III. Országos gyu˝lése—Antall József beszéde” [The MDF Continues Its Work]. Reprinted in Háttérinformációk-Dokumentumok: A Szomszédos államokban élo˝ magyarokról. II. Kötet – Kormányprogramok és kormánypolitika 1990-to˝l, ed. Pálné Haraszti (Budapest: Orszaggyu˝lési Könyvtár Képviselo˝ Tájékoztatási Osztály, 2001), 469. 22. “State Secretary for Defence Heads Committee for Re-erection of Trianon Memorial,” Budapest home service, April 2, 1991, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April 5, 1991. 23. “Prime Minister Calls for Reconsideration of Horthy’s Historical Role,” Hungarian Telegraph Agency (MTA), August 23, 1993, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, August 26, 1993. 24. András György Lengyel, “Szent-Iványi István: alaptalan a nemzetietlenség vádja” [István Szent-Iványi: The Accusation of Being Unnational is Baseless], Magyar Hírlap, September 8, 1992. 25. Michael Shields, “Hungary backs its exiles,” The Independent, August 20, 1992. 26. Judith Tóth, “Diaspora Politics: Programs and Prospects,” in New Diasporas in Hungary, Russia and Ukraine: Legal Regulations and Current Politics, ed. Ilona Kiss and Catherine McGovern (Budapest: Open Society Institute/Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute, 2000) 116. 27. Josef Makai, “Away from Confrontation: Budapest Has Moved to Reassure its Neighbors,” Balkan War Report, no. 29 (October/November 1994): 19. 28. “Open Letter from HDUR Leader Toekes to Parties in Hungary on Coming Elections,” Népszabadság, April 28, 1994, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, May 4, 1994.

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29. Allies of the MDF included organizations such as Co-Existence (Egyettülés) and the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM) in Slovakia, a faction of the Carpathian Hungarian Democratic Alliance (KMDSZ) in Ukraine, and the To˝kés wing of RMDSZ in Romania. 30. Silvia Mihalikova, “The Hungarian Minority in Slovakia: Conflict Over Autonomy,” in Managing Diversity in Plural Societies: Minorities, Migration and Nation-Building in Post-Communist Europe, ed. Magda Opalski (Ontario: Forum Eastern Europe, 1998), 155. 31. “Jeszenszky Géza külügyminiszter válasza az Országgu˝lés ülésszakán.” 32. “Premier Antall Assumes ‘Spiritual’ Leadership of Hungarians Beyond the Borders,” Hungarian TV (Budapest) August 16, 1992, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, August 22, 1992. 33. Valki, “Hungary,” 296. 34. Cabinet Chief Endre Marinovich reiterating Antall’s position. MTI Econews, “Cabinet Chief—Press Reactions to Antall’s Statement,” July 9, 1991; Also see Valki, “Hungary,” 298–299. 35. “Hungarian Premier: Slovakia’s Admission to Council of Europe Should Be Postponed,” as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Monitoring Report, June 28, 1993. 36. Margit Bessenyey Williams, “European Integration and Minority Rights: The Case of Hungary and Its Neighbors,” in Norms and Nannies: The Impact of International Organizations on the Central and East European States, ed. Ronald H. Linden (Lanham, Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 238–239. 37. See “MDF Spokesman Explains Party’s Foreign Policy Line,” Hungarian Radio (Budapest), March 25, 1994, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 28, 1994. 38. Milena Anna Vachudova, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 37–59. 39. George Schöpflin, “The Hungarian Exception? The Quiet National Question,” Balkan War Report, no. 29 (October/November 1994): 17. 40. Valki, “Hungary,” 299. 41. “Kisebbségi program: Az SZDSZ aláírna.” 42. Erin Jenne, Ethnic Bargaining: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2–6; 45–48; 95. 43. Janusz Bugajski, Nations in Turmoil: Conflict and Cooperation in Eastern Europe (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 161. 44. Makai, “Away from Confrontation,” 18. 45. Nándor Bárdi, “Cleavages in Cross-Border Magyar Minority Politics, 1989–1998,” Regio: Minorities, Politics, Society 2000: 11. 46. A bilateral treaty on “Good Neighborly Relations” was signed with Ukraine on December 6, 1991, and was preceded by a Declaration of Principles on Guaranteeing the Rights of National Minorities, which was signed on May 31, 1991. The treaty with Ukraine was soon followed by similar agreements with Croatia, Slovenia, and Poland.

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47. Williams, “European Integration and Minority Rights,” 235. 48. István Csurka, “Néhány gondolat a rendszerváltozás elso˝ két esztendeje és az MDF új programja kapcsán,” Magyar Fórum, August 20, 1992. 49. “Tom Lantos Meets the Press in Budapest,” Hungarian News Agency (MTI), as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, September 1, 1992. 50. “Press Conference Indicates Antall-Csurka Reconciliation and Cabinet Reshuffle,” Hungarian Radio (Budapest), January 24, 1993, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, January 27, 1993. 51. SZDSZ representative Balint Magyar, quoted in “HDF National Convention— Opinions,” MTI Hungarian News Agency, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, January 23, 1993. 52. In April 1994, 45.29 percent of those polled considered the MDF most likely to improve the situation of ethnic Hungarians abroad. H. D. Klingemann and Gábor Tóka, “1994 Hungarian Election—Pre-Election Studies 1992–1994,” (codebook, Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung, University of Cologne, ZA Study 3056), 174, http://www.gesis.org/en/data_service/eastern_europe/ data/codebook/cb3056.pdf. 53. Ibid., 31. 54. As a contrast, 91.9 percent felt that increasing pensions and social benefits were important. Ibid., 45, 195. 55. Sik and Simonovits, “Jelentés az MTA Kisebbségkutató Intézet Nemzetközi Migráció és Menekültügyi Kutatások Központja,” 12–13. 56. TÁRKI, “Hungary Study in ISSP (International Social Survey Program) 1995 National Identity Survey Codebook,” (Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung, University of Cologne, May 1998), http://www.social-sciencegesis.de. 57. Klingemann and Tóka, “1994 Hungarian Election—Pre-Election Studies 1992–1994,” 109, 174. 58. Ibid., 203. 59. “Funeral Speech Praises Antall’s Policy towards Hungarians Abroad,” Duna TV (Budapest), as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, December 21, 1993. 60. “Boross Meets Ethnic Hungarian Leaders,” Hungarian News Agency (MTI), as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, February 11, 1994; “Boross on Hungarians Abroad, Farming Subsidies & the Media,” Hungarian Radio (Budapest), as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, December 29, 1993. 61. The idea of niche emergence comes from Jens Rydgren, “Is Extreme RightWing Populism Contagious? Explaining the Emergence of a New Party Family,” European Journal of Political Research 44, no. 3 (2005): 418. 62. Barnabás Rácz and István Kukorelli, “The ‘Second-Generation’ Post-Communist Elections in Hungary in 1994,” Europe-Asia Studies 47, no. 2 (March 1995): 261. 63. Government of Hungary, “The Programme of the Government of the Republic of Hungary, 1994–1998,” ( July 1994): 91.

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64. Government Resolution no. 1021 of 1995 and no. 104 of 1997. 65. Laws no. 136 (CXXXVI) and 81 (LXXXI). 66. Approximately 1 billion, 324 forints. László Lábody and István Íjgyártó, “Kormánypolitika—pártpolitika—határon túli magyarok” [Government Policy— Party Politics—Hungarians beyond the Border], in Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 1995–ro˝l, ed. Sándor Kurtán, Péter Sándor, László Vass (Budapest: Demokrácia Kutatások Magyar Központja Közhasznú Alapítvány: 1996), 356. 67. “The Programme of the Government of the Republic of Hungary,” 93. 68. See “A Magyar-Magyar Csúcstalálkozó Közös Nyilatkozata” [Joint Statement of the Hungarian-Hungarian Summit], in A Státustörvény: Dokumentumok, Tanulmányok, Publicisztika [The Status Law: Documents, Essays, Articles], ed. Zoltán Kántor (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 2002), 159–161. 69. Makai, “Away from Confrontation,” 19. 70. “The Programme of the Government of the Republic of Hungary,” 113. 71. April 13, 1991, edition. Quoted in Mátyás Eörsi, “Egy érzés béklyójában: A státustörvényro˝l” [In the Fetters of a Feeling: About the Status Law], Magyar Narancs, June 28, 2001. Reprinted in A Státustörvény, ed. Kántor, 502–506. 72. Bill Lomax, “The Structure and Organization of Hungary’s Political Parties,” in Party Structure and Organization in East-Central Europe, ed. Paul G. Lewis (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1996), 36. 73. Csilla Kiss, “From Liberalism to Conservatism: The Federation of Young Democrats in Post-Communist Hungary,” East European Politics and Society 16, no. 3 (2003): 743. 74. Tamás Fricz, “The Orbán Government: An Experiment in Regime Stabilization,” in From Totalitarian to Democratic Hungary: Evolution and Transformation, 1990–2000, ed. Mária Schmidt and László Gy. Tóth (Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 2000), 523. 75. In 1994, Fidesz had only 2.6 percent party membership and 37 regional and local party offices. James Toole, “Straddling the East-West Divide: Party Organization and Communist Legacies in East Central Europe,” Europe-Asia Studies, 55, no. 1 ( January 2003): 105–107. 76. This characterization is attributed to József Torgyán, the leader of the Smallholders’ Party. András Bozóki (Professor of Political Science, Central European University), interview with the author, May 6, 2003; Antal Örkény (Professor of Sociology and Director of the Minority Studies program, Eötvös Lorand University), interview with the author, April 16, 2003. 77. Ivan T. Berend, “Jobbra Át! (Right Face) Right-Wing Trends in Post-Communist Hungary,” in Democracy and Right-Wing Politics in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, ed. Joseph Held (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1993), 122. 78. Kenneth Ka-Lok Chan, “Strands of Conservative Politics in Post-Communist Transitions: Adapting to Europeanization and Democratization,” in Party Development and Democratic Change in Post-Communist Europe, ed. Paul G. Lewis (London, Portland: Frank Cass, 2001), 159–161.

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79. Zsolt Enyedi, “The Role of Agency in Cleavage Formation,” European Journal of Political Research 44, no. 5 (2005), 710. 80. The “gyermekgondozási díj” (also known as the “gyed”), which was a childcare benefit given by the state for each child, and the “gyes” (gyermekgondozási segély), a type of maternity benefit, were both rolled back by the Socialist government, causing a great deal of controversy. 81. Brigid Fowler, “Concentrated Orange: Fidesz and the Remaking of the Hungarian Centre-Right, 1994–2002,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 20, no. 3 (2004): 104–105; and Fricz, “The Orbán Government,” 324. 82. József Szájer, “Van más választás: Polgári Magyarország” [There’s Another Choice: Civic Hungary—Speech Made at the 8th Fidesz Congress, April 19, 1997]. Reprinted in József Szájer, Jogállam, Szabadság, Rendszerváltoztatás: Beszédek, Írások, Dokumentumok, 1987–1997 (Budapest: DAC Alapítvány, 1998), 122–123. 83. Between 1993 and 1997, Gallup polling showed an 18 percent decrease (from 73 to 55 percent) in the number of voters identifying with national feelings. Hungarian Gallup Institute, “Értékrendek és szavazótáborok: Nemzet, vallásosság és tolerancia” [Value Systems and Voter Camps: Nation, Religiosity, and Tolerance] http://www.gallup.hu/Gallup/self/polls/nepszava/nepszava3.html. 84. With the exception of SZDSZ supporters (and MSZP, to a much lesser degree), supporters of all parties became less supportive of strengthening privatization reforms between 1993 and 1997. See Hungarian Gallup Institute, “Generációk, értékek, szavazótáborok” [Generations, values, voter camps], http://www.gallup. hu/Gallup/self/polls/nepszava/nepszava2.html. 85. Gyula Horn, Azok a Kilencvenes Évek . . . [Those 1990s . . .] (Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 1999), 36. 86. Quoted in Williams, “European Integration and Minority Rights,” 237. The treaty was finally ratified on June 13, 1995. Slovakia’s parliament took over a year to ratify. 87. Joel Blocker, “Romania/Hungary: Historic Basic Treaty Signed Today” RFE-RL, September 16, 1996. 88. Géza Gecse, “Aláírás után a román-magyar alapszerzo˝désro˝l: Interjú Kovács László külügyminiszterrel” [The Romanian-Hungarian Basic Treaty after Its Signing: Interview with Foreign Minister László Kovács], in Állam és Nemzet a Rendszerváltás Után [State and Nation after the Transition], ed. Géza Gecse (Budapest: Kairosz, 2002), 46–47. 89. “Text of Interview with Hungarian Political State Secretary Csaba Tabajdi by Ferenc Garzo: More Help Instead of Aid—Csaba Tabajdi on National Minority Policy,” Népszava, July 23, 1994, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, July 28, 1994. 90. In Hungarian, Hatpárti Határon Túli Kisebbségi Konzultatív Bizottság. Lábody and Íjgyártó, “Kormánypolitika—pártpolitika—határon túli magyarok,” 357. 91. Horn, Azok a Kilencvenes Évek . . ., 38–40.

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92. Varjú Frigyes, “Pártolandó autonómiatörekvések: Németh Zsolt a liberális és konservatív értékek harmóniájáról, a kormány paternalizmusáról és a határon túli magyarságról” [Supporting Endeavors toward Autonomy: Zsolt Németh on the Harmony of Liberal and Conservative Values, the Paternalism of the Government, and Hungarians beyond the Border], Magyar Nemzet, June 5, 1996. 93. Quoting Fidesz-MPP representative, Zoltán Rockenbauer in Tibor Moldoványi, “Határtalan Érdekeink” [Our Interests Have No Borders], Magyar Nemzet, August 3, 1996. ˝ tényleg csak tíz és fél millió magyar miniszterelnöke: 94. István Bundula, “O Csapody Miklós, az Országgyu˝lés külügyi bizottságának tagja” [He Is Certainly the Prime Minister of Only Ten-and-a-Half Million Hungarians: Miklós Csapody, Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament], Magyar Narancs, August 3, 1995. 95. “Hungarian Minister Rejects Opposition Attack over Romania Policy,” Hungarian News Agency (MTI), August 27, 1997, as provided by BBC Monitoring International Reports, August 29, 1997. 96. Lábody and Íjgyártó, “Kormánypolitika—pártpolitika—határon túli magyarok,” 358. 97. Zsuzsa Csergo˝, “Beyond Ethnic Division: Majority-Minority Debate about the Postcommunist State in Romania and Slovakia,” East European Politics and Societies 16, no. 1 (2002): 17. 98. RFE-RL Daily Report,” Slovakia: National Party to Propose Annulment of Treaty with Hungary,” August 1, 1996. 99. Government Office of Hungarian Minorities Abroad, “Report on the Situation of the Hungarians in Romania,” July 1, 2005, http://www.hhrf.org/htmh/ en/?menuid=0404. 100. Attila Ágh, “A Horn-Kormány hintapolitikája” [The Horn Government’s Politics of Opportunism], Magyar Hírlap, August 26, 1996. 101. Coexistence (Együttélés), the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDH), and the Hungarian Civic Party (MPP). 102. Ágh, “A Horn-Kormány hintapolitikája.” 103. Interview with Miklos Duray in Népszava. Translated in FBIS-EEU, “Duray Criticizes Hungarian Foreign Ministries,” January 5, 1995. 104. Lábody and Íjgyártó, “Kormánypolitika—pártpolitika—határon túli magyarok,” 359. 105. “Transylvanian Bishop’s Reconciliation Proposals Met Coolly in Hungary,” Rompres news agency (Bucharest), as provided by BBC Monitoring Summary of World Broadcasts, February 19, 1996. 106. “Hungarians from Ukraine Feel Betrayed by Budapest Government,” Hungarian Radio, (Budapest), December 6, 1996, as provided by BBC Monitoring Summary of World Broadcasts, December 9, 1996. 107. “Young Democrats and Ethnic Hungarians in Romania Discuss Reconciliation Process,” Duna TV (Budapest), March 5, 1996, as provided by BBC Monitoring Summary of World Broadcasts, March 6, 1996.

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108. “A Magyar-Magyar Csúcstalálkozó Közös Nyilatkozata,” 159. 109. Népszabadság, “Horn: Támogatjuk a kisebbségek jogvédelmét” [Horn: We Support the Legal Protection of Minorities], July 5, 1996. 110. Attila Ara-Kovács, “Státusigények és leheto˝ségek” [Status Claims and Opportunities], Népszava, November 16, 1999. 111. Karen Dawisha and Stephen Deets, “Political Learning in PostCommunist Elections,” East European Politics and Societies 20, no. 4 (2006): 693. 112. Enyedi, “The Role of Agency in Cleavage Formation,” 699. 113. Fowler, “Concentrated Orange,” 87. Another poll conducted between October and November 1995 showed MSZP and FKGP almost tied in support (14.1 and 13.7 percent, respectively) “if the general election was held next Sunday.” Data from TÁRKI, “Hungary Study in ISSP,” 146. 114. Fowler, “Concentrated Orange,” 90. 115. SZDSZ: 14 to 5 percent undecided; FKGP: 43 to 18 percent; MSZP: 24 to 12 percent. Ibid. 116. Tamás Papp (Office Manager, Hungarian Human Rights Foundation), interview with the author, April 24, 2003; Interview with analyst for Department of Strategic Analysis, Government Office for Hungarian Minorities Abroad, April 28, 2003. 117. Interview with advisor to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian Parliament, May 22, 2003. 118. “Hungarian Premier Says Status Law Is ‘National Reunification’ across Borders,” Hungarian Radio, as provided by BBC Monitoring International Reports, October 25, 2001. 119. András Klein, “Néhány gondolat az Orbán-kormány külpolitikájáról” [Some Thoughts about the Orbán Government’s Foreign Policy], Pro Minoritate 7, no. 1 (1999), http://www.hhrf.org/prominoritate/1999/99tel010.htm. 120. Speech by Zsolt Németh in “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája” [Parliamentary Debate about the Draft Law on Hungarians Living in Neighboring Countries], reprinted in A Státustörvény, ed. Kántor, 94–98. 121. Papp, interview. 122. Interview with member of the Secretariat for Minority Affairs, Office of the Prime Minister, May 23, 2003. 123. Interview with analyst for the Department of Strategic Analysis, Government Office for Hungarian Minorities Abroad, April 28, 2003. 124. Zsolt Németh, speaking as the secretary of the Foreign Ministry in front of parliament on March 23, 1999. Session 57, speech 277, http://www.parlament. hu/naplo98/057/n057_277.htm. 125. “Hungarian Forum Discusses Strategy for Ethnic Hungarians,” Duna TV (Budapest), February 21, 1999, as provided by BBC Monitoring International Reports, February 23, 1999. 126. “Ethnic Hungarian Forum Takes Institutional Form,” Hungarian Radio (Budapest), February 21, 1999, as provided by BBC Monitoring International Reports, February 22, 1999.

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Chapter 4 1. Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 27–88. 2. Ferenc Váli, “International Minority Protection from the League of Nations to the United Nations,” in The Hungarians: A Divided Nation, ed. Stephen Borsody (New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1988), 111. 3. Quoted in ibid. 4. Ignác Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century (Budapest: Corvina, 1999), 407. 5. Tabajdi, “Több évtizedes hallgatás után,” [After Many Years of Silence] in Mérleg és Számvetés Tizenhárom Év Után: A magyarságpolitikai rendszerváltás kezdete [Balance and Reckoning After Thirteen Years: The Beginning of the Transformation in Ethnic Hungarian Policy], ed. Csaba Tabajdi (Budapest: Codex Print Kft., 2001), 71–72. 6. Imre Szokai and Csaba Tabajdi, “Mai politikánk és a nemzetiségi kérdés” [Our Current Policy and the Nationality Question], Magyar Nemzet, February 13, 1988, reprinted in Tabajdi, ed., Mérleg és Számvetés Tizenhárom Év Után. 7. Ibid. 8. Attila Ágh, “Europeanization of Policy-Making in East Central Europe: The Hungarian Approach to EU Accession,” Journal of European Public Policy 6, no. 5 (1999): 842. 9. Tibor Navracsics, “A Missing Debate? Hungary and the European Union,” (University of Sussex European Institute Working Paper Series 21, 1997), 13–15, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sei/1-4-10-1.html. 10. Agnes Batory, “The Political Context of EU Accession in Hungary” (working paper, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, European Programme, November 2002), 2–3, http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/ papers/.../3052_hungarian.pdf. 11. Ágh, “Europeanization of Policy-Making in East Central Europe,” 843. 12. Batory, “The Political Context of EU Accession in Hungary,” 4–5. 13. Judith Tóth, “Connections of Kin minorities to the Kin-state in the Extended Schengen Zone,” in The Hungarian Status Law: Nation-Building and/or Minority Protection, ed. Zoltán Kántor, et al. (Sapporo: Slavic Research Centre, Hokkaido University, 2004), 373–374. 14. Interview with advisor to the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and former Vice President of the Government Office for Hungarian Minorities Abroad, May 13, 2003; Interview with public foundation director, May 8, 2003. 15. Péter Kovács, “A schengeni vízumrendszer és a határon túli magyarok” [The Schengen Visa System and the Hungarians Beyond the Border] in Schengen: A magyar-magyar kapcsolatok az uniós vízumrendszer árnyékában [Schengen: Hungarian-Hungarian Relations in the Shadow of the EU Visa System], ed. Judit Tóth (Budapest: Lucidus, 2000), 31–33.

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16. Navracsics, “A Missing Debate?,” 16. 17. “Hungarian Daily Reviews Four Years of EU-Hungarian Relations,” Népszabadság, April 3, 2002, as provided by BBC Monitoring World Reports, April 4, 2002. 18. Zsuzsa Csergo˝ and James M. Goldgeier, “Nationalist Strategies and European Integration,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 1 (2004): 28–29. 19. Acquis communautaire refers to all real and potential rights and obligations of EU membership; the accession acquis is the whole body of EU law and practice. 20. Julia Gelatt, “Schengen and the Free Movement of People Across Borders,” Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute (October 1, 2005), http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/print.cfm?ID=338. 21. Heather Grabbe, “The Sharp Edges of Europe: Security Implications of Extending EU Border Policies Eastwards” (The Institute for Security Studies, Western European Union, Occasional Papers 13, March 2000), 10–11, http:// www.iss.europa.eu/nc/actualites/actualite/browse/62/article/the-sharp-edges-ofeurope-security-implicationsbrof-extending-eu-borders-policies-eastwards/. 22. Giuliano Amato and Judy Batt, “The Long-Term Implications of EU Enlargement: The Nature of the New Border” (report, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute with The Forward Studies Unit, European Commission, April 1999), 56–58. 23. “Hungarian Foreign Minister Explains “Tough” Talks with EU, Regional Policy,” TV1 (Budapest), July 12, 1998, as provided by BBC Monitoring International Reports, July 13, 1998. 24. Judit Tóth, “The Application of Justice and Home Affairs and the Position of Minorities: The Case of Hungarian Minorities,” (Centre for European Policy Studies Policy Brief no. 18, March 2002), 7, http://www.ceps.be/book/ application-justice-and-home-affairs-and-position-minorities-case-hungary. 25. János Hargitai, Fidesz representative and then speaker of the Budget and Economic Affairs Committee of Parliament in “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája” [Parliamentary Debate about the Draft Law on Hungarians Living in Neighboring Countries] in A Státustörvény: Dokumentumok, Tanulmányok, Publicisztika [The Status Law: Documents, Essays, Articles], ed. Zoltán Kántor (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 2002), 87–88. 26. Zsuzsa Csergo˝ and James M. Goldgeier, “Virtual Nationalism,” Foreign Policy no. 125, ( July/August 2001): 77–78. 27. Barna Bodó, “Schengen—The Challenge,” Minorities Research no. 3 (1999), http://www.hhrf.org/kisebbsegkutatas/mr_03/cikk.php?id=1237. 28. “Editor’s forward” in Tóth, ed. Schengen: A magyar-magyar kapcsolatok az uniós vízumrendszer árnyékában, 10. 29. Tibor Szabó, “Az anyaország és a határon túli magyar közösség közötti jogviszony kiépítésének elso˝ lépése” [The First Step in Building a Legal Relationship Between the Mother Country and the Communities of Hungarians Beyond the Border]. Reprinted in Zoltán Kántor, ed., A Státustörvény: Dokumentumok, Tanulmányok, Publicisztika (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 2002), 51–52.

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30. György Csepeli and Antal Örkény, “The Changing Facets of Hungarian Nationalism,” Social Research, no. 63 (1996): 280. 31. Antal Örkény (Professor of Sociology and Director of the Minority Studies program, Eötvös Lorand University), interview with the author, April 16, 2003. 32. Imre Borbély, “Külhoni magyarok—Egy nemzetpolitikai szükségmegoldás” [External Hungarians: A Nation Policy Stop-Gap Measure] Magyar Demokrata no. 37–40 (2000), http://www.demokrata.hu/. 33. “Vita a Ketto˝s Állampolgárságról: Interjú Csoóri Sándorral, a Magyarok Világszövetsége elnökével, 1998 április 12” [Debate about Dual Citizenship: Interview with Sándor Csoóri, the President of the World Federation of Hungarians, April 12, 1998] in Géza Gecse, ed., Állam és Nemzet a Rendszerváltás Után (Budapest: Kairosz, 2002), 75. 34. Fidesz representative László Németh in “A Ketto˝s Állampolgárságról: Kerekasztal, 1998 április 19,” 79–80. 35. István Benyhe, “Ketto˝s állampolgárság a Kárpát-medencében?” [Dual Citizenship in the Carpathian Basin?] Magyar Kisebbség 2–3, no. 16–17 (1999), http:// www.jakabffy.ro/magyarkisebbseg/index.php?action=cimek&lapid=12&cikk=m 990201.htm. 36. Gyula Horn, Azok a Kilencvenes Évek . . . (Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 1999), 366. 37. “Demand of Dual Citizenship for Ethnic Hungarians “Unfeasible”—Foreign Minister,” Hungarian Radio (Budapest), April 6, 1998, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April 7, 1998. 38. “Citizenship by Declaration of Hungarian Origin Political Nonsense—Minister,” MTI News Agency (Budapest), March 22, 1999, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 24, 1999. 39. Erika Törzsök, “Látványpolitika” [A Politics of Appearances], Élet és Irodalom, January 4, 2002. 40. “Ethnic Hungarian Party Branch Criticizes Leadership over Dual Citizenship,” Duna TV (Budapest), April 17, 1998, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April 29, 1998. 41. “Ethnic Hungarians Change Their Minds over Dual Citizenship Demand,” Hungarian Radio (Budapest), April 7, 1998, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April 9, 1998. 42. Miklós Patrubány, “Tervezet a külhoni magyar állampolgárság jogintézményének alkotmányos létrehozása: Patrubány Miklós, a Magyarok Világszövetségének elnökének ajánlása, 2000 augusztus 20” [Plan for the Constitutional Creation of the Legal Institutions of Foreign Hungarian Citizenship: Recommendation of Miklós Patrubány, President of the World Federation of Hungarians, August 20, 2000]. Reprinted in A Státustörvény: Dokumentumok, Tanulmányok, Publicisztika, ed. Kántor, 38–44. 43. Borbély, “Külhoni magyarok.” 44. Gecse, “A Ketto˝s Állampolgárságról: Kerekasztal, 1998 április 19” [About Dual Citizenship: Roundtable, April 18, 1999] in Állam és Nemzet a Rendszerváltás Után [State and Nation after the Transition], ed. Géza Gecse (Budapest: Kairosz, 2002).

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45. Janos Mártonyi in “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája,” 78–79. 46. Jon E. Fox, “National Identities on the Move: Transylvanian Hungarian Labour Migrants in Hungary,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29, no. 3: 461. 47. Speech by Dr. László Pósán of the Foreign Affairs Committee in “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája,” 81–82. 48. Attila Melegh, “Globalization, Nationalism, and Petite Imperialism,” Romanian Journal of Society and Politics 2, no. 1 (2003): 120. 49. János Kis, “The Status Law: Hungary at the Crossroads,” in The Status Law Syndrome, ed. Kántor, et al., 154–156. 50. Judit Tóth (Professor of Law, Szeged University, former government advisor on immigration and minority issues), interview with the author, April 12, 2003. 51. Csaba Tabajdi, “Tájékoztató a szomszédos államokban élo˝ magyarokról szóló törvény tervezetéro˝l” [Information About the Draft Law on Hungarians Living in Neighboring Countries] in A Státustörvény: Dokumentumok, Tanulmányok, Publicisztika, ed. Kántor, 122–123. 52. Szabó, “Az anyaország és a határon túli magyar közösség közötti jogviszony kiépítésének elso˝ lépése,” 48–49. 53. Csaba Tabajdi, “A kedvezménytörvény értékelése” [Evaluation of the Benefit Law] in A Státustörvény: Dokumentumok, Tanulmányok, Publicisztika, ed. Kántor, 126. 54. László Veress, “Határon túli támogatások—elmélet és gyakorlat” [Cross-Border Subsidies—Theory and Practice] in Kántor, A Státustörvény: Elo˝zmények és körülmények [The Status Law: Precedents and consequences], ed. Zoltán Kántor (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 2002), 129–130. 55. Interview with director of public foundation for Hungarian cross-border support, May 8, 2003. 56. Hargitai speech in “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája,” 87. 57. This is how Orbán’s move was described by Csaba Tabajdi, an MSZP parliamentary representative, and the Socialists’ head of minority issues. Quoted in “Hungary: End-of-Year Interview with Premier on All-Hungarian Policy,” Duna TV (Budapest), December 17, 2000, as provided by BBC Monitoring International Reports, December 18, 2000. 58. Adrian Nastase, Protecting Minorities in the Future Europe: Between Political Interest and International Law (Bucharest: Monitorul Oficial, 2002), 47–49. 59. I thank Judit Tóth for her insights on this point. 60. Interview with advisor to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian Parliament, May 22, 2003. 61. Szabó, “Az anyaország és a határon túli magyar közösség közötti jogviszony kiépítésének elso˝ lépése,” 50. 62. Martonyi speech in “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája,” 80. 63. Interview with analyst for the Department of Strategic Analysis, Government Office for Hungarian Minorities Abroad, April 28, 2003. 64. Interview with public foundation director, May 8, 2003.

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65. Judith Tóth, “Pulling the Wool over Hungarians’ Eyes,” Regio: Minorities, Politics, Society (2002): 137. 66. Tabajdi, “Tájékoztató a szomszédos államokban élo˝ magyarokról szóló törvény tervezetéro˝l,” 123–124. Also see Zoltán Kántor, “A státustörvény és a magyar nemzetpolitika” [The Status Law and Hungarian National Politics] Provincia 2, no. 5 (2001), http://kantor.adatbank.transindex.ro/belso.php?k=32& p=2997. 67. Tóth, “Pulling the Wool over Hungarians’ Eyes,” 150. 68. Interview with public foundation director, May 8, 2003. 69. Tóth, “Pulling the Wool over Hungarians’ Eyes,” 133. 70. Tabajdi, “Tájékoztató a szomszédos államokban élo˝ magyarokról szóló törvény tervezetéro˝l,” 121. 71. Speech given on March 23, 1999, session 57, speech 289, http://www.parlament. hu/internet/plsql/ogy_naplo.naplo_fadat_aktus?p_ckl=36&p_uln=57&p_ felsz=274&p_felszig=290&p_aktus=50. 72. “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája,” 96. 73. “Outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Sums up Results, Says Farewell,” TV2 (Budapest), May 15, 2002, as provided by BBC Monitoring International Reports, May 16, 2002. 74. Miklós Bakk, “Egy törvény és jövo˝képei” [A Law and Its Future Prospects] Provincia 2, no. 5 (2001), http://epa.oszk.hu/00200/00266/00012/c000236. html. 75. Ibid. 76. Zoltán Tibori Szabó, “RMDSZ: szakítópróba—Mítosszá válhat a romániai magyarok egységes politikai képviselete” [RMDSZ: Trial Separation—The Romanian Hungarians’ Unified Political Position May Become a Myth] Népszabadság, August 14, 2002. 77. Mátyás Eörsi (Deputy Leader SZDSZ Parliamentary Group), interview with the author, April 9, 2003. 78. Tabajdi, “A kedvezménytörvény értékelése,” 129. 79. See Zoltán Kántor, “Re-institutionalizing the Nation,” Regio: Minorities, Politics, Society 8 (2005): 46–48. 80. From the documentary film by Gábor Ferenczi, “Magyar Igazolvány” [Hungarian Certificate] (Budapest: 2003). 81. Egry, “Státustörvény és nemzetpolitikai stratégiák.” Also see Traian S¸tef, “Magyar igazolvány” [Hungarian certificate] Provincia 2, no. 5 (2001), http:// epa.oszk.hu/00200/00266/00012/c000234.html. 82. Most studies in fact conclude that there was little incentive for laborers to apply for the work permits associated with the Status Law, as it was cheaper and easier to continue working illegally in Hungary. See Antal Örkény, ed., Menni vagy Maradni? Kedvezménytörvény és migrácios várakozások [To Go or to Stay? The Benefit Law and Migration Expectations] (Budapest: MTA, 2003). 83. Törzsök, “Látványpolitika.” 84. Quoted in Kántor, “A státustörvény és a magyar nemzetpolitika.”

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Notes 85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90.

91.

92.

93. 94. 95.

96. 97.

98. 99. 100.

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See Szabó, “RMDSZ: szakítópróba.” Tabajdi, “A kedvezménytörvény értékelése,” 126. Eörsi, interview. Csurka’s speech during the April 21, 2001, general parliamentary debate on the Status Law draft. “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája,” 118–119. Michael J. Jordan, “Despite Austrian Uproar, Hungary Courts Far-Right,” The Christian Science Monitor, February 24, 2000. Miklos Haraszti, “The Real Viktor Orbán,” openDemocracy, May 1, 2002, http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=3&debateId=55&article Id=358. Interview with advisor to the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and former vice president of the Government Office for Hungarian Minorities Abroad, May 13, 2003. For example, Law No. 70/1997 on Expatriate Slovaks and Changing and Complementing Some Laws and Law 150/1998 Regarding the Support Granted to the Romanian Communities from All Over the World. For a good comparison of these and other similar laws see Brigid Fowler, “Fuzzing Citizenship, Nationalizing Political Space: A Framework for Interpreting the Hungarian ‘Status Law’ as a New Form of Kin-State Policy in Central and Eastern Europe,” ESRC One Europe or Several? Working Paper Series 40, no. 2 (2002), http://www.one-europe.ac.uk/pdf/w40fowler.pdf. András Klein, “Néhány gondolat az Orbán-kormány külpolitikájáról,” Pro Minoritate 7, no. 1 (1999), http://www.hhrf.org/prominoritate/1999/99tel010.htm. Tamás Papp (Office Manager, Hungarian Human Rights Foundation), interview with the author, April 24, 2003. Venice Commission, “Report on the Preferential Treatment of National Minorities by their Kin-State,” (Venice Commission at its 48th Plenary Meeting, October 19–20, 2001), 2, http://venice.coe.int/docs/2001/CDLINF(2001)019-e.html. László Sólyom, “What Did the Venice Commission Actually Say?,” in The Status Law Syndrome, ed. Kántor, et al., 365–370. Quoted in Walter Kemp, “Applying the Nationality Principle: Handle with Care,” Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, no. 4 (2002), 12, http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/Focus4-2002_Kemp_Kymlicka.pdf. Speech by Zsolt Németh in “A határon túli magyarokról szóló törvényjavaslat parlamenti vitája,” 97–98. Kemp, “Applying the Nationality Principle: Handle with Care,” 13. “Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Republic of Hungary and the Government of Romania concerning the Law on Hungarians Living in Neighbouring Countries and Issues of Bilateral Co-Operation.” Reprinted in The Hungarian Status Law, ed. Kántor, 546–550. RFE/RL Newsline, “Hungary’s Socialists Slam Status Law Memorandum,” 6, no. 3, Part II (7 January 2002); László Szo˝cs, “Hungary: On the Books” Transitions On Line, 18 December–7 January, 2001, http://www.tol.cz.

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102. Office of Hungarian Minorities Abroad, “Összefoglaló a Balázs Ferenc Intézet által a magyarországi lakosság határon túli magyarsághoz való viszonyról 2001 novemberében végzett szociológiai kutatásról” [Summary of the Sociological Research Conducted in November 2001 about the Relationship of the Hungarian Population to the Hungarians beyond the Border by the Ferenc Balázs Institute], http://www.hhrf.org/htmh/?menuid=040201&news014_id=1081. 103. Poll numbers from Socio Balance survey conducted in April 2001. Summary of poll in “A törvény létrejöttének kronológiája” [A Chronology of How the Law Came About], in A Státustörvény, ed. Kántor, 586. 104. Hungarian Gallup Institute, “Pártpreferenciák szerint változik as Orbán-Nastase megállapodás megítélése” [Opinion of Orbán-Nastase Agreement Fluctuates According to Party Preference], January 21, 2002, http://www.gallup.hu/Gallup/ release/nastase020121.html. 105. Approximately 700,000 people applied for a certificate in Romania alone by 2003.

Chapter 5 1. László Kövér, “The Choice of the 21st Century,” Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 2002-ro˝l, eds. Sándor Kurtán, Péter Sándor, and László Vass (Budapest: Demokrácia Kutatások Magyar Központja Közhasznú Alapítvány, 2003), CD-ROM. 2. Agnes Batory, “Election Briefing No. 1: Europe and the April 2002 Hungarian Parliamentary Elections” (working paper, European Parties Elections and Referendums Network, Royal Institute of International Affairs), 3, http:// www.sussex.ac.uk/sei/documents/paper1hungary.pdf. 3. József Debreceni, “From Heaven to Earth—Viktor Orbán in 2002,” in Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 2002-ro˝l. 4. Gábor Gavra, “A Fidesz és a népszavazás: Vissza a petícióhoz” [Fidesz and the Referendum: Back to the Petition] Magyar Narancs (December 16, 2004). 5. Debreceni, “From Heaven to Earth.” 6. Gábor Halmai, “The Swamps of Neoliberal Hegemony: Polgári Körök in “Transitional” Hungary,” in Crises and Conflicts in Post-Socialist Societies: The Role of Ethnic, Political and Social Identities, ed. S. Fischer and H. Pleines (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2008), 103–114. 7. Viktor Orbán speech, Dísz Tér, Budapest, May 7, 2002, http://polgari-kor.hu. Author’s translation. 8. Gábor Halmai, “Nationalist Frames as “Stimulant Anesthetics”: The Hungarian Case of Right-wing Anti-Liberalism” (master’s thesis, Department of Sociology & Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest, 2004), 41–42. 9. Hungary’s EU membership was overwhelmingly approved in an April 2003 referendum. Turnout, however, was only 46 percent. 10. Parliament of the Hungarian Republic, Act 57 of 2003 on amendments of Act 62 of 2001.

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11. Tibor Löffler, “Flexible Separation,” Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 2002-ro˝l. 12. Former MDF vice-president Csaba Hende even became one of the main leaders of the Civic Circles organization. Ágnes Tolnai, “The Formation of Civic Circles and Their Main Activities in 2002,” Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 2002-ro˝l. 13. “For a normal Hungary” eventually became one of the MDF’s campaign slogans. 14. Ibolya Dávid, “Konservatív Kiáltvány” [Conservative Manifesto] Népszabadság, June 9, 2004). 15. Lájos Pogonyi, “Nem fideszes szemfényvesztés” [It’s Not Fidesz Trickery: Interview with Dávid Kovács] Népszabadság, October 30, 2003. 16. Available at http://www.jobbik.com. 17. András Tóth, “Settling With the Past: The Agent Affair in 2002,” Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 2002-ro˝l. 18. Lájos Pogonyi, “Nem volt világos stratégiánk—mondja Bogár László, an Orbánkormány volt politikai államtitkára” [We Didn’t Have a Clear Strategy—Says László Bogár, the Former Political Secretary for the Orbán Government] Népszabadság, January 4, 2003. 19. Gavra, “A Fidesz és a népszavazás.” 20. Gabriela Ilonszki and Sándor Kurtán, “Hungary 2004,” European Journal of Political Research 44 (2005): 1037. 21. Gavra, “A Fidesz és a népszavazás.” 22. See Chapter 1, note 4, for full text of question on ballot. 23. Maria M. Kovács, “The Politics of Non-Resident Dual Citizenship in Hungary,” Citizenship Studies 10, no. 4 (2006): 62. 24. Zoltán Kántor and Balázs Majtényi, “A Ketto˝s állampolgárság—népszavazás, politikai vita, érvek” [Dual Citizenship—Referendum, Political Debate, Principles], in Romániai Magyar Évkönyv 2004/2005, ed. Bodó Barna (Temesvár: SzórványAlapítvány-Marineasa Kiadó, 2005), http://kantor.adatbank.transindex.ro/belso. php?k=32&p=3535. 25. Gavra, “A Fidesz és a népszavazás.” 26. Ibid. 27. Kántor and Majtényi, “A Ketto˝s állampolgárság.” 28. Zsolt Németh, “Ketto˝s állampolgárság és nemzeti deficit” [Dual Citizenship and National Deficit], Magyar Nemzet, November 11, 2004. 29. Gábor Harrach, “Népszavazás elött” [Before the Referendum], Népszabadság, September 22, 2004. The article posited that without dual citizenship, of the 35–50 percent of the ethnic Hungarians in the various communities who were favorable to resettlement, only about 3–5 percent were determined to do so at any cost. 30. MSZP campaign material: “Ön szerint a magyar munkaero˝piac fel tudja venni az új álláskereso˝k tömeget? A felelo˝s döntés: 2x nem.” (2005-9-2-23) [“Do you think the Hungarian labor market can absorb a swarm of new job seekers? The responsible decision: Vote no.”] From Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve 2005-ro˝l.

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31. Kántor and Majtényi, “A Ketto˝s állampolgárság.” 32. Németh, “Ketto˝s állampolgárság és nemzeti deficit.” 33. László J. Kulcsár and Cristina Bradatan, “Politics without Frontiers: The Impact of Hungarian Domestic Politics on the Minority Question in Romania,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40 (2007): 311. 34. Mária Kovács calculates that 81 percent of the Hungarian electorate either failed to participate or voted “no.” Kovács, “The Politics of Non-resident Dual Citizenship in Hungary,” 59. 35. Gavra, “A Fidesz és a népszavazás.” 36. Zoltán Kántor, “Nemzetpolitika, 2005,” in Magyarország politikai évkönyve 2005-ro˝l, 598–607. 37. This description of diaspora policy in M. László Feren, “Átalakuló nemzetpolitika” [Nation Policy Being Transformed] Magyar Narancs 19, no. 10 (March 8, 2007), quoting a source in the Prime Minister’s Office. 38. Kántor, “Nemzetpolitika, 2005,” 601. 39. Nándor Bárdi, “A Szükség mint esély: Lehetséges-e a magyarságpolitikát szakágazatként elgondolni? (I)” [Necessity as Opportunity: Is it Possible to Imagine Diaspora Policy as a Professional Field? Part I] Kommentár no. 5, 2006: 43. 40. Feren, “Átalakuló nemzetpolitika.” 41. Judit Simon and László Szu˝cs, “Stratégiaváltás és intézményi reform a magyar nemzetpolitikában” [Change of Strategy and Institutional Reform in Hungarian Nation Policy] Erdélyi Riport, May 3, 2007. 42. Quoted in László Mihály, “A tét most a felzárkózás vagy a leszakadás” [The Stakes Now are Joining Together or Falling Behind], Új Magyar Szó, March 22, 2007. 43. Erika Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából” [Escaping from the Prison of Fear] Európai Tükör 9, no. 4–5 ( July–August 2004): 20–21, http://www.mfa. gov.hu/NR/rdonlyres/DAE9710C.../0/eutukor_2004045.pdf. 44. Feren, “Átalakuló nemzetpolitika.” 45. Attila Z. Papp, “Oktatási támogatások a határon túli magyar közösségeknek, 2003–2006,” Educatio 1 (2006), http://www.mtaki.hu/docs/kulkapcsolati_ strategia/papp_z_attila_oktatasi_tamogatasok_educatio_2006.pdf. 46. Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából,” 21. 47. Nándor Bárdi, “Magyar-magyar párbeszéd a támogatáspolitikáról, 2004–2007” [Hungarian-Hungarian Dialogue about Support Policy] Regio: kisebbség, politika, társadalom 18, no. 4 (2007): 133–134, http://epa.oszk.hu/00000/00036/00068/ pdf/128-164.pdf. 48. Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából,” 21–22. 49. Interview with Zsolt Németh, “Ethnic Kin Politics Earns No Votes in Hungary— Opposition Spokesman,” Hungarian TV M2 (Budapest), April 8, 2004, as provided by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April 8, 2004. 50. Bárdi, “Magyar-magyar párbeszéd a támogatáspolitikáról,” 136. 51. Law II/2005, amended April 2005, http://www.szulofold.hu. 52. Kántor, “Nemzetpolitika, 2005,” 600. 53. The Government of Hungary, “Hungary’s Renewed Nation Policy,” http://mfa. gov.hu/kum/en/bal/Archivum/Archives/nation_policy_affairs.htm.

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54. Simon and Szu˝cs, “Stratégiaváltás és intézményi reform a magyar nemzetpolitikában.” 55. Implementation and competitive funding decisions would then be made by the three expert policy panels. See interview with Ferenc Gémesi, state secretary responsible for foreign policy and nation policy of the Prime Minister’s Office in Boróka Parászka, “Határon túli politikán túl, nemzetpolitikán innen” [Beyond the Border, beyond Politics, within Nation Policy] A Hét, July 13, 2006. 56. Transcript of press conference by Ferenc Gémesi on July 12, 2007. “Ferenc Gémesi: megújult a nemzetpolitika” [Ferenc Gémesi: Nemzet Policy Renewed], http://www.nemzetpolitika.gov.hu/id-471-gemesi_ferenc_megujult_a_ nemzetpolitika.html. 57. Kántor, “Nemzetpolitika, 2005,” 602. 58. Budapest Analyses, “Hungarian Organisations beyond the Border Seek Emancipation from Hungary,” no. 59 ( January 31, 2005); Budapest Analyses, “The Nation Policy Concept of Katalin Szili,” no. 168 (October 9, 2007), http://www.budapestanalyses.hu/. 59. Hungarian News Agency (MTI), “Update—Hungary Ready to Review Parl Resolution on Carpathian Basin Hun Deputies,” February 17, 2009, http:// www.lexisnexis.com. 60. Feren, “Átalakuló nemzetpolitika.” 61. Simon and Szu˝cs, “Stratégiaváltás és intézményi reform a magyar nemzetpolitikában.” 62. Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából,” 18–19. 63. Bárdi, “Magyar-magyar párbeszéd a támogatáspolitikáról,” 150. 64. Gémesi, “Megújult a nemzetpolitika.” 65. Government of Hungary, “Hungary’s Renewed Nation Policy.” 66. Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából,” 22. 67. This visa, however, has also been referred to as the “Grandmother Visa,” because it is perceived as mostly useful for older members of the diaspora communities who want to visit their families in Hungary. “Use of Hungary’s ‘National Visas’ for Schengen Entry Explained,” Kossuth Radio (Budapest), October 6, 2005, as provided by BBC Monitoring Europe, October 6, 2005. 68. Mátyás Szu˝rös, “Gyengeség és lagymatagság a nemzetpolitikában” [Weakness and Wishiwashiness in Nation Policy] Magyar Nemzet, August 16, 2004. 69. Kántor, “Nemzetpolitika, 2005,” 601. 70. Bárdi, “Magyar-magyar párbeszéd a támogatáspolitikáról,” 150–152. 71. Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából,” 24. 72. Speech given on January 16, 2005. Quoted in Bárdi, “A Szükség mint esély 1,” 50–51. 73. Quoted in Mihály, “A tét most a felzárkózás vagy a leszakadás.” 74. Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából,” 26. 75. Erika Törzsök, “Színes szo˝ttest: avagy milyen kisebbségpolitikára van szükség?” [What Kind of Minority Policy is Needed?] Élet és Irodalom, 50, no. 20 (May 19, 2006), http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;13442. 76. Gémesi, “Megújult a nemzetpolitika.”

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77. Government of Hungary, “National Responsibility Program,” January 2005, http://www.hhrf.org/htmh/en/?menuid=0401. 78. Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából,” 19. 79. Törzsök, “Színes szo˝ttest.” 80. Boróka Parászka, “A nagy közös lehívás—Magar-román tájékozatlanság és félelmek” [Hungarian-Romanian Ignorance and Fears] Népszabadság, June 9, 2007. 81. Mihály, “A tét most a felzárkózás vagy a leszakadás.” 82. Törzsök, “Kiszabadulva a félelem fogságából,” 24–25. 83. Decree 1128 of 2004. Government of Hungary, “National Responsibility Program.” 84. Feren, “Átalakuló nemzetpolitika.” 85. “Magyar-magyar tervek az uniós fejlesztéspolitikáról” [Hungarian-Hungarian Plans about the EU’s Development Policy] Erdély Ma, March 22, 2007; Tibor Kis, “A határok megszu˝nnek, utak kellenek—Magyar-Szlovák regionális fejlesztési tervek” [Hungarian-Slovak Regional Development Plans] Népszabadság, June 11, 2007. 86. Via a number of “Development Policy Information Days” (Fejlesztéspolitikai információs napok) organized by the National Development Agency and the Department for Nation Policy Matters of the Prime Minister’s Office. See “Erdélyben több helyi fórumon ismertetik a magyar kormány új nemzetpolitikáját” [More Local Forums in Erdély to Acquaint People with the Hungarian Government’s New Nation Policy] Vajdaság Ma, April 25, 2007. 87. Interviewed in Simon and Szu˝cs, “Stratégiaváltás és intézményi reform a magyar nemzetpolitikában.” 88. “Hungary Seen Disadvantaged by “Cumbersome” EU’s Stance on Minority Rights [Commentary by Lajos Keresztes, historian and journalist],” Magyar Nemzet, November 3, 2009, as provided by BBC Monitoring Europe, November 5, 2009. 89. Quoting Sándor Csegzi, the vice mayor of Marosvásarhély in Mihály, “A tét most a felzárkózás vagy a leszakadás.” 90. According to Bárdi, 4000–5000 institutions. “Magyar-magyar párbeszéd a támogatáspolitikáról,” 151. 91. Kántor, “Nemzetpolitika, 2005,” 602. 92. Zoltán A. Biró, associate of the Regional and Anthropological Research Center, quoted in Mihály, “A tét most a felzárkózás vagy a leszakadás.” 93. Anna Grzymała-Busse, Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–3. 94. This shows a 3.5 percent total decrease in funding from 2001 to 2007. However, 2001 numbers reflect funding for the HTMH and MVSZ, neither of which appear in the 2007 numbers. 2007 numbers from Government of Hungary, Office of the Prime Minister, Department of Nation Policy Matters, “Jelentés a Külhoni Magyarság Helyzetéro˝l” [Report on the Situation of External Hungarians] (Budapest: 2008), 129–133, http://nemzetpolitika.gov.hu.

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95. “Six More Months—Opinion Poll for Heti Valasz by Perspective Institute,” Heti Válasz, October 29, 2009, http//:hetivalasz.hu/english_hungary/six-moremonths-opinion-poll-for-heti-valasz-25939/. 96. David Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005) 34–39; Anna GrzymałaBusse and Abby Innes, “Great Expectations: The EU and Domestic Political Competition in East Central Europe,” East European Politics and Societies 17, no. 1 (2003): 64–73. 97. Bela Greskovits, “Economic Woes and Political Disaffection,” East European Politics and Societies 18, no. 4 (October 2007): 40–46. 98. “Magyarország a magyaroké! A Jobbik programja a magyar érdek védelmében, a Nemzetek Európája megteremtéséért” [Hungary for the Hungarians!: The Jobbik Program for the Creation of a Europe of Nations, in the Protection of Hungarian Interests], March 2009, 22–25, http://www.jobbik.hu/sites/jobbik. hu/down/Jobbik-program2009EP.pdf.

Chapter 6 1. Tim Snyder, “The Poles: Western Aspirations, Eastern Minorities,” in Nations Abroad: Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union, ed. Charles King and Neil J. Melvin Boulder. CO; Oxford, UK: Westview Press, 1998), 185. 2. This includes about 230,000 Poles in Lithuania, 200,000 in Ukraine, and between 350,000 and 400,000 in Belarus. 3. Stephen R. Burant, “International Relations in a Regional Context: Poland and its Eastern Neighbours,” Europe-Asia Studies 45, no. 3 (1993): 397. 4. The Polish Senate, the lower house of parliament with little independent legislative power, was designated as the main body in charge of relations with the diaspora and given control of the budget to support Poles abroad. One of the permanent Senate committees deals with Emigration and Contacts with Poles Abroad. Polish Communities Abroad Office, “Involvement of the Senate of the Third Republic of Poland in the Life of Poles Abroad,” http://www.senat.gov. pl/k7eng/historia/e14polonia.pdf. 5. Andre Liebich, “Altneuländer or the Vicissitudes of Citizenship in the New EU States,” (Commission for Migration and Integration Research Working Paper Series, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 2005, no. 5), 12, www.oeaw. ac.at/kmi/bilder/kmi_wp5.pdf. 6. Polish News Bulletin, “Polish-Ukrainian Treaty Protested,” March 25, 1992, http://www.lexisnexis.com. 7. Snyder, “The Poles,” 197. 8. Dariusz Fedor, “Another Repatriation from Soviet Union Possible,” Polish News Bulletin, May 20, 1991, http://www.lexisnexis.com. 9. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka speaking at the Congress of Poles and Polish Communities Abroad, held in Krakow, Poland, August 19, 1992. Quoted in

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10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

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Polish Press Agency, “Congress of Poles and Polish Communities Abroad Open in Cracow,” August 21, 1992, http://www.lexisnexis.com. For example, statements by Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak, Polish Press Agency, “PM Says Mass Repatriation From Kazakhstan Unlikely,” September 25, 1994, and later by Prime Minister Leszek Miller, Polish News Bulletin, “Repatriates Await Citizenship,” May 13, 1997, http://www.lexisnexis.com. From September 1996 to December 1997, 334 families repatriate, the majority from Kazakhstan. Polish News Bulletin, “New Law on Foreigners,” January 13, 1998, http://www. lexisnexis.com. Polish News Agency, “Repatriates Dissatisfied with Conditions in Poland,” April 23, 1999. 10 million złotys, about US$2.4 million. Polish News Agency News Wire, “Budget Envisages 2.4 M USD for Repatriation Process,” September 22, 1999, http://www.lexisnexis.com. Polish News Bulletin, “Sejm Approves Repatriation Bill for Wartime Exiles and Kin,” July 3, 2000, http://www.lexisnexis.com. Ryszard Czarnekci of the Christian-National Union party (ZChN). Quoted in Polish News Agency News Wire, “Sejm Adopts Repatriation Law,” July 20, 2000, http://www.lexisnexis.com. Krystyna Iglicka, “EU Membership Highlights Poland’s Migration Challenges,” Migration Information Source (April 2005), Table 1, http://www.migration information.org/feature/print.cfm?ID=302. Officially known as the Procedure of Recognition of the Membership in the Polish Nation or of Polish Origin Bill. See “Poles Living Abroad: A Pole’s Card for Immigrants?,” The Warsaw Voice, September 20, 1999. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Agata Górny, et al., “Selective Tolerance? Regulations, Practice and Discussions Regarding Dual Citizenship in Poland,” in Dual Citizenship in Europe: From Nationhood to Societal Integration, ed. Thomas Faist (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 147–169. Ibid., 158–163. “Poles Living Abroad.” Górny, et al., “Selective Tolerance?,” 158–160. Longin Pastusiak, “The Senate and the Polish Diaspora,” http://www. sprawymiedzynarodowe.pl/yearbook/2003/pastusiak.html. Speech by Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyn´ski at a Chicago meeting of Poles abroad on September 15, 2006. “Prime Minister Promises to Better the Legal Status of Poles Living Abroad,” http://www.kprm.gov.pl/english/060915-1.htm. For example, the Belarusian foreign minister said that the law could “seriously destabilize interethnic relations in our country, spark tensions in Belarusian society, disrupt its stability, and give rise to mistrust between Belarusian nationals of different descent.” RFE-RL Newsline, “Belarus Worried about ‘Polish Charter’ Law,” February 11, 2008.

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27. Snyder, “The Poles,” 181. 28. Nathaniel Copsey and Aleks Szczerbiak, “The Future of Polish-Ukrainian Relations: Evidence from the June 2004 European Parliament Election Campaign in Poland” (Sussex European Institute Working Paper Series no. 84, May 2005), 21, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sei/documents/wp84.pdf. 29. Wojciech Kosc, “Defending Rights: A Delicate Balance,” Transitions Online, August 18, 2005, http://www.tol.cz. 30. Stephen M. Saideman and R. William Ayres, For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 141. 31. Constantin Iordachi, “Politics of Citizenship in Post-Communist Romania: Legal Traditions, Restitution of Nationality and Multiple Memberships,” in Citizenship Policies in the New Europe, ed. Rainer Baubock, Bernhard Perchning, and Weibke Sievers (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 188. 32. Irina Culic, “Eluding Exit and Entry Controls: Romanian and Moldovan Immigrants in the European Union,” East European Politics and Societies 22, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 165. 33. Eniko˝ Horváth describes the use of dual nationality in this way as the “Russian/ Romanian model” of kinship regulation. In her Mandating Identity, Citizenship, Kinship Laws and Plural Nationality in the European Union (Amsterdam: Kluwer Law International, 2008), 154. 34. Irina Culic, “Dual Citizenship Policies in Central and Eastern Europe” (Institutul Pentru Studierea Problemelor Minortatilor Nationale, Working Papers in Romanian Minority Studies, no. 15, Cluj Napoca, 2009), 18, http:// ispmn.gov.ro/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/culic31.pdf. 35. Iordachi, “Politics of Citizenship in Post-Communist Romania,” 190. 36. Vladimir Socor, “Moldova Refuses Mass Conferral of Romanian Citizenship,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, 4, no. 48 (March 9, 2007). 37. Iordachi, “Politics of Citizenship in Post-Communist Romania,” 203. 38. Christian Iordachi, “Dual Citizenship and Policies Towards Kin Minorities in East-Central Europe,” in The Hungarian Status Law: Nation Building and/or Minority Protection, ed. Kántor, et al. (Sapporo, Japan: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2004), 250. 39. Iordachi, “Politics of Citizenship in Post-Communist Romania,” 197–198. 40. Culic, “Dual Citizenship Policies in Central and Eastern Europe,” 19. 41. Iordachi, “Politics of Citizenship in Post-Communist Romania,” 194. 42. Ibid., 202–204. 43. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “Romania,” in Nations in Transit 2008: Democratization from Central Europe to Eurasia, Freedom House (Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 2008), 466, http://www.freedomhouse.hu/images/fdh_galleries/ NIT2008/NT-Romania-final.pdf. 44. Associated Press, “Romania Swamped with 800,000 Citizenship Applications by Moldovans,” February 28, 2007, http://lexisnexis.com. 45. Ryan Kennedy, “Moldova: An EU Invasion Waiting To Happen,” RFE-RL Newsline, February 1, 2007.

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46. Constantin Iordachi, “Romanian Citizenship Offer to Moldovans: Exaggerated Fears in the European Union” (European Union Democracy Observatory, European University Institute, Florence, May 12, 2009), http://www.eui.eu/ Documents/RSCAS/.../20090511-EUDO-romania.pdf. 47. Commentary by Ovidiu Nahoi, “Beware Citizenship!,” in Adevarul, April 27, 2009, translated in “Romanian Commentary Highlights Risks of Granting Citizenship to Moldovans,” BBC World Monitoring, April 28, 2009. 48. Commentary by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “Big Confusion,” in Romania Libera, April 23, 2009, translated in “Commentary Deplores Romanian Foreign Policy on Moldova; Text of Report by Romanian Newspaper,” BBC World Monitoring, April 28, 2009. 49. Croatia is another interesting example of this. See Francesco Ragazzi, “Annexation without Territory? Diaspora Politics and Irredentism in Post-Dayton Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegonia” (paper presented at the Association for the Study of Nationalities Annual Convention, Columbia University, New York, April 2009). 50. Graham Smith, “Transnational Politics and the Politics of the Russian Diaspora,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 3 (May 1999): 508. 51. Igor Zevelev, Russia and Its New Diasporas (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), 69–74; Smith, “Transnational Politics and the Politics of the Russian Diaspora,” 507; Saideman and Ayres, For Kin or Country, 175–177. 52. Igor Zevelev, “Russia’s Policy toward Compatriots in the Former Soviet Union,” Russia in Global Affairs 1 ( January–March 2008), http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/ numbers/22/1174.html. 53. Timothy Heleniak, “Russia Beckons, But Diaspora Wary,” Migration Information Source (October 1, 2002), http://www.migrationinformation.org/ feature/display.cfm?ID=56. 54. Sergei Blagov, “New Fears Arise over Repatriation of Ethnic Russians,” Asia Times, October 23, 2001. 55. Zevelev, “Russia’s Policy toward Compatriots in the Former Soviet Union.” 56. Igor Torbakov, “Kremlin Calls on Compatriots to Come Back to Mother Russia,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 3, no. 129 (February 19, 2006). 57. Paul Goble, “Moscow’s Program for the Repatriation of Compatriots Collapses,” Window on Eurasia, June 11, 2009. 58. Peter Roudik, “Russia: Legal Aspects of War in Georgia,” The Law Library of Congress, September 2008: 9–11. 59. Zevelev, “Russia’s Policy toward Compatriots in the Former Soviet Union.” 60. Charles King and Neil J. Melvin, “Diaspora Politics: Ethnic Linkages, Foreign Policy, and Security in Eurasia,” International Security 24, no. 3 (1999): 134–137. 61. Zsuzsa Csergo˝ and James M. Goldgeier, “Virtual Nationalism,” Foreign Policy 125 (2001): 76–77. 62. Maria Koinova, “Kinstate Intervention in Ethnic Conflicts: Albania and Turkey Compared,” Ethnopolitics 7, no. 4 (2008): 375–378.

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63. Erin Jenne, Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), 2–10. 64. Iordachi, “Dual Citizenship and Policies towards Kin Minorities in East-Central Europe,” 249–250. 65. See Zeynep Kadirbeyoglu, “Changing Conceptions of Citizenship in Turkey,” in Citizenship Policies in the New Europe, ed. Rainer Baubock, Bernhard Perchning, and Weibke Sievers (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 293–311. 66. Rey Koslowski has called this the “commodification of citizenship.” See “Challenges of International Cooperation in a World of Increasing Dual Nationality,” in Rights and Duties of Dual Nationals: Evolution and Prospects, ed. Kay Heilbronner and David Martin, (The Hague: Kluwer Law, 2003), 157–182. 67. David Fitzgerald, “Rethinking Emigrant Citizenship,” New York University Law Review 81, no. 11 (April 2006): 105. 68. Robert C. Smith, “Diasporic Membership in Historical Perspective: Comparative Insights from the Mexican, Italian and Polish Cases,” International Migration Review 37, no. 4 (2003): 728. 69. See Anna Grzymała-Busse and Abby Innes, “Great Expectations: The EU and Domestic Political Competition in East Central Europe,” East European Politics and Society 17, no. 1 (2003): 64–73; and Zsuzsa Csergo˝ and James M. Goldgeier, “Nationalist Strategies and European Integration,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 1 (2004): 21–37. 70. Another work that focuses primarily on “elite persuasion” as a cause of nationalist conflict is Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), see especially 45–91. 71. For a specific example of this see Venice Commission, “Report on the Preferential Treatment of National Minorities by their Kin-State,” (Venice Commission at its 48th Plenary Meeting, October 19–20, 2001), 2, http://venice.coe.int/ docs/2001/CDL-INF(2001)019-e.html. Erin Jenne also makes this point in her Ethnic Bargaining, 19–37. 72. The concept of “active leverage” comes from Vachudova, Europe Undivided, 105–137. 73. The Szekler region is an area in Romania with a large concentration of Hungarian-speaking people, who have maintained a unique identity and have a history of partial autonomy. 74. Czech News Agency, “New Party Wants to Attract Ethnic Hungarians, Slovaks,” June 9, 2009, http://www.lexisnexis.com. 75. George Schöpflin, “Hungary as Kin State,” in Minority Policy in Eastern and Central Europe: The Link Between Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy and European Integration, ed. Katlijn Malfliet (Leuven: Garant, 1998), 36. 76. Csaba Tabajdi, quoted in Hungarian News Agency (MTI), “EU Lacks Mechanism for Conflict Management, Says Hungarian MEP,” September 15, 2009. 77. “Hungary Seen Disadvantaged by “Cumbersome” EU’s Stance on Minority Rights (Commentary by Lajos Keresztes, historian and journalist),” Magyar Nemzet, November 3, 2009, as provided by BBC Monitoring Europe, November 5, 2009.

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Index

acquis communautaire 95 Ahtisaari Plan 13, 166 Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) diaspora policy reform and 117, 119, 122–23, 125, 127–29, 131–32, 134–35 domestic politics and 55–56 European integration and 109–10, 114–15 Hungarians abroad and 46 nationalism and 61–62, 65–67, 71–74, 76, 78, 81–82 Amsterdam Treaty (1990) 94 Antall, József 5, 56–57, 59, 61–68, 70, 73–74, 80, 84, 122 Arrow Cross movement 37 assimilation diaspora and 19, 109, 126 dual citizenship and 98 EU and 94 labor permits and 101 nationalism and 27, 29, 34–35, 38, 41, 162 policies regarding 9 resistance to 7 Romania and 154–55 Schengen and 97–98 Serbia and 57–58 Status Law and 103, 107 Austro-Hungarian Empire 26, 61 autonomy Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy 28

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cultural 57 decision-making and 59 Fidesz and 85, 104, 107, 141 future as political issue 164 Magyarization and 28–29 minority rights and 63–64 nationalism and 66–67 Poland and 148 political debate regarding 13 Romania and 134–35 Soviet influence and 40–41 Status Law and 111, 131 territorial 77–81 Ayres, R. William 153 Balsai, István 121 Bartók, Béla 3–4 Basescu, Traian 155, 157 Basic Treaty 79–80 Bauer, Tamás 109 Benefit Law 105 Bethlen, István 33, 35–36 Boross, Péter 70 Bugár, Béla 165 Carment, David 16 Ceaucescu, Nicolae 66 center-Right bloc 53–54, 56, 75, 81, 94, 121, 123, 149 Central European Free Trade Area (CEFTA) 64 Central Office of the Alliance of Social Associations (TESZK) 34, 35

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Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) 56, 72, 75, 78, 81 citizenship dual 3–5, 10–11, 15, 98–99, 117–18, 123–28, 131–32, 134, 141–42, 150–51, 154–58, 161, 164 ethnic 15, 96, 161 extraterritorial 90, 112–13, 145–46, 155, 158 nonresident 3, 15, 100, 118, 124, 126, 131, 139 repatriation 145–46, 148–50, 152, 156–61 restitution of 153, 155–57, 163–64, 167 Civic Alliance 81 Civic Circles 119–20, 122 clientelism 9–10, 14, 23, 35, 62, 66, 90, 108, 118, 128–32, 139, 143, 164–65 coethnics assimilation and 34, 38 citizenship and 7, 15 dual citizenship and 123, 125–26, 146 European Union and 89, 91–92, 95–99, 116 internal politics and 68, 78, 117, 130 nationalism and 21 Poland and 147–49, 152 Serbia and 57 Status Law and 101 transborder networks and 26, 48, 54, 57–58, 130, 140, 143, 162–63 treatment by Hungarian government 3, 5, 60, 61 communism 26–27, 32, 50, 53, 91–93, 135, 143, 147–48, 152, 154–55 nationalism and internationalism during 37–49 See also post-communist era

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Communist Party 26–27, 53, 55–56, 73–76, 78, 145 former members in government 72, 120, 122–23 Copenhagen Council 93, 121 Croatia 3, 57, 90, 123 CSCE Final Act. See Helsinki Final Act Csergo˝, Zsuzsa 7 Csoóri, Sándor 62, 98 Csurka, István 67–68, 110 Czechoslovakia 30–31, 34, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43–44, 55, 57, 111 Dávid, Ibolya 121 Davis, David R. 16 Dawisha, Karen 81 Deets, Stephen 81 Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) 56–57, 63, 66, 79–80, 99, 107, 127, 164–65 Department of Minority and Nation Policy Matters (Kisebbség- és Nemzetpolitikáért Felelo˝s Szakállamtitkárság) 133 diaspora policy as development policy 135–39 domestic politics and 55–60 dual citizenship and 123–28 kin-state nationalism and 65–71 overview 53–55 party-building strategy and 72–81 policy reform 128–130 politicization of 60–65 reframing discourse of 83–85 restructuring Hungarian-Hungarian relations 130–35 right-wing consolidation and 81–83 2002 election and 118–23 dual citizenship 123–28 dual monarchy 28 Duna TV 58, 62 Duray, Miklós 85, 99

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Index Eastern Campaign 34 Ekeus, Rolf 113 ethnic identity cards 5, 9–10, 100–101, 105, 108, 110, 112, 152 EU accession treaty 9, 89 European Union (EU) Fidesz and 76, 84, 87 Hungary and 9, 14, 20, 22–23, 50, 63, 65, 73, 89–116, 132, 135–37, 139, 142, 145 kin-state policies and 2–3, 6, 14 membership of Eastern European nations 89–116, 118, 129–30, 162–67 MSZP and 78, 120–21, 123, 129 norms 12, 18 Poland 150–51, 156 Romania and 127, 156–58 Russia and 146 sovereignty and 5 Fidesz (Federation of Young Democrats) diaspora politics and 72–81, 117–31, 133, 137, 140–42, 144 EU norms and 93–96 future of 164–65 labor permits and 102 nationalism and 53–55, 70–71 political coalitions 81–87 rise to power 21–22, 90 Schengen and 96–100 Status Law and 104, 106–10, 111, 113–16 Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party (FideszMPP) 76–78, 80, 81–83, 96, 98 Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union (FideszMPSZ) 122–29 FKGP. See Independent Smallholders’ Party Fodor, Gábor 74 Forum of External Hungarian Organizations (HTMSZF) 165

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Forum of Representatives of the Carpathian Basin (KMKF) 132–33 French Revolution 27 Gábor Bethlen Foundation 46 Georgia 2, 159 Gömbös, Gyula 33, 36 Göncz, Arpád 56 Gorbachev, Mikhail 48, 92 Government Office of Hungarians Abroad (HTMH) 58–59, 62, 73, 85, 102, 106, 132–33, 135, 139, 165 Grzymała-Busse, Anna 139 Gyurcsány, Ferenc 123, 126, 131–33, 135, 141–42 Haider, Jörg 111 Hapsburg monarchy 21, 25, 27–30 Helsinki Final Act 64, 91–92 Hitler, Adolf 37 Homeland Fund (Szülo˝föld Alap) 131–33, 137, 140 Horn, Gyula 63, 73, 77–78, 80, 99 Horthy, Miklós (Admiral) 32–33, 37, 61 HTMH. See Government Office of Hungarians Abroad Hungarian Civic Party (MPP) 76–78, 80, 81–83, 96, 98, 165 Hungarian Coalition Party (MKP) 85, 165 Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) diaspora policy and 53–56, 60–63 ethnic Hungarians and 50 Fidesz and 21–22, 83, 121, 123 fragmentation 81 kin-state nationalism and 65–71 minority affairs and 48 politics and 72–76, 78, 86 post-communist rule 45–46, 93, 144 Hungarian Guard (Magyar Garda) 141

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Index

Hungarian-Hungarian summit (magyar-magyar csúcs) 73, 79–80 Hungarian National Council of Transylvania (EMNT) 165 Hungarian Revolution (1848) 28 Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) changing political strategy 122–23 creation of 56 diaspora policy and 65, 68–70, 72–73, 117–20, 135–39 dual citizenship and 123–28 ethnic Hungarians and 63 Fidesz and 128–30 future of 164 Hungarian-Hungarian relations and 131–35 kin-state nationalism and 70–71 politics and 75–83, 86, 93, 139–42 Schengen and 99 Status Law and 103, 106, 108, 114–15 Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) 55–56 Hungarian Standing Conference (MÁÉRT) 85, 100, 104, 106, 120, 128, 132, 141, 165 Hungarian Truth and Life Party (MIÉP) 68, 75, 110, 111, 119 HZDS. See Movement for a Democratic Slovakia Iliescu, Ion 66, 79 Illyés Foundation 59, 130, 133 Illyés, Gyula 44 immigration 95–97, 102, 107, 109, 111, 114, 124, 149–50, 158, 162 Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKGP) 56, 72, 75, 80–82 Irredenta statue 61 irredentism 1–5, 10, 15, 17–18, 23, 30, 32–34, 37–38, 41, 49, 61, 65, 145, 148, 155, 157, 162, 165

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James, Patrick 16 János Apáczai Foundation 85, 133 János Arany Foundation 72 Jeszenszky, Géza 59, 63–64 Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary) 122, 141–42 Kádár, János 40–43, 45, 48, 55, 78, 92 Kazakhstan 147–49, 152 Khrushchev, Nikita 39 kin-state engagement European norms and 91–96, 110–15 explained 6–15 kin-state nationalism 65–71 puzzle of 3–6 regional relations and 110–15 Schengen dilemma and 96–101 Status Law and 101–10 KMKF. See Forum of Representatives of the Carpathian Basin KMKSZ. See Ukrainian Hungarian Cultural Federation in Transcarpathia Kosovo 13, 57, 166 Kossuth, Lájos 28 Kovács, Dávid 122 Kovács, László 77 Kovács, Mária 124 labor permits 101–2, 105, 109–10 Lake, David 16 Lantos, Tom 67 László Teleki Foundation 59 Little Entente 31, 42 MÁÉRT. See Hungarian Standing Conference Magyarization 27–30, 32 Markó, Béla 99 Mártonyi, János 95, 99 Mecˇiar, Vladimir 79 Medgyessy, Péter 122–23

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Index MIÉP. See Hungarian Truth and Life Party MKP. See Hungarian Coalition Party Moldova 153–60, 163–64 Moore, Will H. 16 Most-Híd (Bridge) Party 165 Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) 79 MPP. See Hungarian Civic Party MSZMP. See Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party MSZP. See Hungarian Socialist Party MVSZ. See World Federation of Hungarians Nagy, Imre 39–40 Nagy, László 99 Nastase, Adrian 112, 113, 115 nation-building 7, 18, 21, 147–48, 156–57, 162–63 “nation” (nemzet) policy 39, 103, 106, 133, 136 National Refugee Affairs Office (OMH) 35 nationalism during communism 37–49 Hapsburg Era and 27–30 post-communist 49–51 Treaty of Trianon and 30–37 Nationalities Law (1868) 28 nationalization 15, 100, 135, 147, 159–60, 163 Nazism 1, 5, 37, 111 Németh, Miklós 48 Németh, Zsolt 85, 99, 107, 128 New Handshake (Új Kézfogás) Foundation 72, 130, 133 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 60, 63–65, 78, 89, 93 Orbán, Viktor diaspora politics and 74, 80, 119–20 dual citizenship and 99, 119–20, 122–25, 128

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219

ethnic Hungarians and 83–84 European integration and 94, 96 rise to power 74 Status Law and 101, 104, 106–7, 111, 113–15 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 93 Patriotic People’s Front (PPF) 42 Patrubány, Miklós 100, 124 Peto˝fi, Sándor 28 Poland Charter Bill (Karta Polaka) 150–52, 161, 163 communist rule and 39 diaspora politics and 19, 23, 55 European Union and 93 kin-state politics and 145, 147–56, 161, 163 Schengen and 95 solidarity 45, 55 Popular Literary Association (NIT) 35 post-communist era diaspora politics and 59–60, 76, 89, 90, 93, 108, 117, 142 European Union and 108, 112, 145, 163 Hungary and 4–5, 20–21, 167 irredentism and 15 kin-state relations and 2, 3, 17, 25, 27, 36, 46, 49–51 MDF and 86, 93, 144 Poland and 147–48, 161 Schengen and 95 Status Law and 108, 116 See also communism post–World War II treaties 37 Pozsgay, Imre 44 Prague Spring 42 Putin, Vladimir 158–59 Rákóczy Alliance 35 Rákosi, Mátyás 39–40

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220

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Index

Regional Coordinating Forum (REF) 132 Repatriation Bill 149 revisionism 10, 26, 30–38, 41, 47, 49, 63, 67, 69, 73, 75, 86, 94, 142, 150, 162, 165 RMDSZ. See Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania Rockenbauer, Zoltán 74 Romania CEFTA and 64 Communist rule and 37, 39, 41–48, 55, 56 diaspora policy reform and 118, 124, 127, 129, 131, 134–40 ethnic Hungarians in 3–4 EU and 9, 23, 89–91, 96–101, 108, 111–14 Hungary and 29, 33–35, 63–64 nationalism and 20, 66, 77, 79–80, 145–47, 153–65 treaties 12 Trianon and 30–31, 37 Rothchild, Donald 16 Rothschild, Joseph 29, 31 Russia citizenship and 146, 158–59 diaspora politics and 7 Georgia and 2 Moldova and 154 Poland and 149, 152 Saideman, Stephen 153 Sapientia University 84 Schengen Agreement 9, 15, 89–90, 94–98, 100, 110, 112, 116, 117, 126, 141, 150–51, 156, 163, 167 SDZSZ. See Alliance of Free Democrats Secretariat for Hungarian Minority Affairs 58–59, 73 Serbia 3, 9, 20, 56–57, 64, 89–90, 96, 123, 126, 135, 166

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64 Counties Youth Movement (HVIM) 141 Skubiszewski, Krzysztof 148 Slota, Jan 138 Slovak National Party (SNS) 133, 138 Slovakia ethnic Hungarians in 3, 20, 131 EU and 12, 14, 23, 112–13, 118, 121, 129, 136–39, 165–66 Hungary and 12, 14, 23, 63–64, 77, 133–34 kin-state policy and 89–91 nationalism and 29, 79 Schengen and 95–97, 99–100 Trianon and 33 South Ossetia 2, 159 sovereignty 2, 5, 7–8, 10, 12, 17, 32, 40, 50–51, 54, 60, 91, 94, 96, 104, 112–13, 124, 145, 155, 158, 161, 164, 166–67 Soviet Union Eastern Europe following rule 1, 9, 53, 57, 144, 163 Helsinki Final Act and 91 nationalism and 38–43, 46, 48, 49 Poland and 147–50, 153–55 political reform and 91–92 rule in Eastern Europe 27 Russia and 158–59 Stalin, Joseph 38–40 State Accounting Bureau (Állami Számvevo˝szék) 130 state-building 7, 18, 154 Status Law citizenship and 150, 161 crafting and expansion of 101–6 defense of 120–21 domestic politics and 22, 87, 106–10 ethnic ID cards and 9 European Union and 167

9/3/2010 8:09:32 PM

Index Fidesz and 22, 87, 90, 100–16, 131, 144 kin-state action and 12, 20 nationalism and 117, 120–21, 124, 126 passage of 5 subsidies for diaspora institutions 140 Szabó, Tibor 102 Szálasi, Ferenc 37 Széchenyi, István 28 Szekler National Council (SZNT) 165 Szent-Iványi, István 66 Szili, Katalin 132 Szokai, Imre 47 Szu˝rös, Mátyás 47 Tabajdi, Csaba 47 Tamás, Pál 138 Tisza, István (Prime Minister) 29 To˝kés, László 62–63 Torgyán, József 81 Törzsök, Erika 130, 136, 138 Transylvania 33, 36, 37, 44–47, 57, 84, 98, 153, 155 treaties Basic Treaty 79–80 post–World War II 37 with Poland 148 with Romania 63, 77, 155 with Slovakia 63 with Ukraine 67 See also Amsterdam Treaty; EU accession treaty

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Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) 94–95 Treaty of Trianon (1920) 4, 26, 30, 143 Ukraine 3, 20, 57, 67, 80, 90, 95, 96, 98, 126, 147–48, 150, 153–54, 164 ethnic Hungarians in 3, 57, 80, 90, 126 Hungary and 67 independence 57 kin-state policy and 20, 95–96, 98 Poland and 147–48, 150 Romania and 153–54, 164 Ukrainian Hungarian Cultural Federation in Transcarpathia (KMKSZ) 66 United Nations (UN) 47, 57, 59 Velvet Revolution 55 Venice Commission 112–13 Vienna Award 37 Voronin, Vladimir 155 Warsaw Pact 40, 48, 91 World Federation of Hungarians (MVSZ) 62, 85, 98–100, 124–27 World War I 1, 26, 29, 30, 63, 152–53, 163 World War II 5, 26, 37, 42, 61, 64, 111, 147, 154, 163 Yugoslavia 30–37, 39–40, 42, 57–58, 64, 96

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