Foreword

The Hungarian nation is busy preparing to celebrate the fact that, in 1996, it will be 1100 since Hungarians first settled in the Carpathian Basin. Where the millennium-centenary celebrations are concerned we cannot speak solely of Hungary, the country, because more than a quarter of the nation, that is to say, approximately three and a half million Hungarians, live outside the country's borders in Rumania, Slovakia, Serbia, the Ukraine and in other neighbouring countries. Since the time of the Paris peace agreements, established after World War I by the prevailing powers, these Hungarians have been turned into marginalized minorities. In addition, more than two-thirds of the land area that used to belong to Hungary was given to surrounding 'national' states which were either created at the time of the agreements or assumed at that time the dimensions of a state.

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The detrimental effects of Trianon are still being felt in the Carpathian Basin today. The repercussions are being felt especially by the Hungarians who have been artificially separated from each other and by Hungarian national communities that have fallen prey to strange nationalistic oppressors. For Hungarian minorities in Rumania, Slovakia and Serbia the effects of Trianon are accumulating like some kind of a haunting and unfinished past and assimilation, expulsion, dropping numbers, loss of territory, constant repression and destruction are becoming the order of the day. Hence the reason that we have to keep on talking about Trianon until the catastrophic consequences of it for our people and our region finally come to an end. Other than adopting an unrealistic revisionistic political approach the only way that we can at present see of escaping from the structural crisis situation created by the unjust and for the Hungarian nation, disastrous Trianon Peace Treaty, is by offering autonomy to the Hungarian national communities. To be more exact, we have in mind a system of different autonomous forms which will guarantee the Hungarians living in the amputated areas in diaspora, or together in large numbers or even, in some places, as absolute majorities that they will be able to preserve their identity and survive the dominance of the nationalistic systems of the majority groups that are forcing them to assimilate and waste away.

In the last 75 years our expansionistic oppressors have not allowed us to 'forget' Trianon. We hope - and to that end we fight a peaceful struggle - that instead of receiving peace edicts that lead to war we will at last be able to arrive at lawful, democratic and just solutions that are consensus based and will bring true peace and safety to our whole region within the 'broad' perimeters of that so long hoped for united Europe. 24th August 1995

Bishop László Tőkés
Honorary Chairman of the RMDSZ