DOCSLIB.ORG

Milan Hodza and Federation in Central and Eastern Europe

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Milan Hodza and Federation in Central and Eastern Europe Milan Hodza and Federation in Central and Eastern Europe. MICHAL MÛDRY-SEBÎK When, at the start of this century, Milan Hodza entered public life, rela- tions among the nationalities in Austria-Hungary were at the peak of tension. The old Emperor Francis Joseph was neither wise nor able enough to create harmony in the conglomeration of nationalities in his empire. Let us just recall what nationalities lived in the monarchy: Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbians, Croatians, Slovenes, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Romanians, Italians, Germans, and Magyars. The ruling element in Austria-proper were the Germans, and in Hungary the Magyars - although in comparison with the non-German and non- Magyar nationalities they were minorities. The Magyars were ob- sessed with the idea of magyarizing the whole non-Magyar majority. They applied such pressures, particularly on the Slovaks, that only the victory of the Allies in World War I rescued them from extinction.1 Milan Hodza, true to the traditions of his forefathers, could not stand idly by.8 As soon as he entered the University of Budapest in 1896, he started to fight to change these conditions. Even as a young student, he understood that the situation could be improved only by introducing universal suffrage, that is, by giving voting rights to the common people, particularly the peasants - by awakening the non-Magyar nationalities from their lethargy, and leading them to close cooperation. Being a 1 "There can be little doubt that the defeat of the Entente in the Great War and the consequent frustration of Czech aspirations would have meant the virtual destruction of Slovak nationality in the course of another generation. It is the knowledge of this fact - that the goal of assimilation was actually in sight - which explains the peculiar bitterness with which the Magyar nationalists regard the post-war situation in Slovakia. The victim was rescued only just in time." (R. W. Seton-Watson: Slovakia Then and Now, page 25. Orbis, Prague, 1931.) 2 Milan Hodza, Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia during the years 1935-1938, was born on February 1, 1878, in Sucany. His father, Andrej Hodza, a Lutheran pastor in Sucany, was also a writer. His uncle, Michal Miloslav Hodza, together with Ludovit Stur and Jozef Miloslav Hurban, was the founder of the literary Slovak language and organizer of a new political and cultural program for Slovaks. 1548 Michal Mudry-Sebik gifted journalist, he focused his articles in the Slovenske listy (Slovak Gazette) in Slovensty dennik (Slovak Daily), and particularly in Slo- vensky tyzdennik (Slovak Weekly) on the aforementioned goals. That is also why, in 1897, he founded at Budapest University a club of non- Magyar students of which he became the chairman. After World War I, it was often pointed out that this club, which was composed of Slovaks, Romanians, and Serbians, was, in a way, the forerunner of the Little Entente.3 At any rate, the student club of non- Magyar nationalities, which was prepared to cooperate with the liberal Magyar and German elements, was to Hodza a sort of nucleus of his later grand design for a Central European federation, a concept to which he devoted much effort during his public career. In modern history, the Central European problem first became press- ing after Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz in 1805. The problem arose again in 1848-49, when Europe was swept by the revolution which flared up in Paris. At the Kromeriz (Kremsier) Diet of 1849, a program was submitted to the Emperor according to which the structure of the empire was to be based on its autonomous nations. But this attempt at federation failed. Another plan was made in the years from 1905 to 1914 in contract to the official Austro-Hungarian policy. The reorgani- zation of the Empire was, to a major extent, planned by the political leaders of Austria-Hungary's national minorities, with the cooperation of the heir-apparent to the throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The young Slovak journalist and politician, Milan Hodza, then a member of the Budapest Parliament (1905-1910), was also engaged in this plan, the aim of which was a constructive solution of the Austro-Hungarian problem. The reform was essentially similar to the proposals of the Kromeriz Diet. The transformation of old Austria-Hungary into a fed- eration could have meant the first step toward building a Central Euro- pean community of nations in a peaceful and evolutionary way. This effort, however, failed when Francis Ferdinand was assasinated in Sara- jevo on June 28, 1914. The fatal shot fired by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist fanatic, triggered World War I. The Central European question was radically solved by World War I. Under the Paris peace treaties, a number of new states were formed on the territory of the former Habsburg monarchy. Some critics of the 3 The Little Entente, a mutual defense arrangement among Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania, based upon the treaty of August 14, 1920, was con- cluded at Belgrade between Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, joined by Rumania in treaties with Czechoslovakia on April 23, and with Yugoslavia on June 7, 1921. Milan Hodza and Federation in Central and Eastern Europe 1549 Paris peace treaties take issue with the dismemberment of old Austria- Hungary. But Milan Hodza was convinced that the principles of nation- al freedom and independence of small nations, on the basis of which the Paris peace treaties had built a new order in Central Europe, were the only possible solution and among the most valuable concepts of modern political history. However, the Allied Powers failed to con- solidate the results of their victory in World War I. They did not im- press on the small nations of Central Europe the need to develop co- operation amongst themselves, eventually leading to a federation. This would have made them equal partners in dealing with their big neigh- bors and a strong factor for security and peace in Europe. Hodza was convinced that the mere existence of such a federation might have meant a great deal. Nazism would hardly have dared to resort to an act of aggression against European collective security. Milan Hodza never wanted to rely exclusively on the security guar- antees of the great powers. As an advocate of cooperative effort, he knew the value of the principle of self-help, particularly in practical politics. And if any nation needed self-help - at home as well as in rela- tions with neighbors - it was the nations of Central Europe. United in a federation, they would certainly have been able to resist any pressure - from the West or from the East. He saw the best security guarantee in close cooperation among the Central European partners, in united Cen- tral European defense. In this, he often differed from Dr. Benes, who preferred to play the role of an intermediary between the great powers. Hodza started from the principle that the national sovereignty of small Central European nations should not mean their isolation, but, rather, a common basis for international contacts and cooperation. He demanded that, in the Central European "micro-statism," states with similar interests or qualities draw closer together in order to form regional components of civilization. He rejected any idea of hegemony in this area, and demanded cooperation with neighbors and with every- one on the basis of equality. In March 1931, a new customs union was formed between Germany and Austria, and, at the same time, Germany offered Romania a preferential customs agreement. For Central Europe, this was a remark- able economic and political act. Milan Hodza saw it as the first serious attempt to bring about a new international situation in Europe, contrary in both substance and principle to the peace treaties. In lectures and magazine articles, he outlined his concept of Central European coopera- tion, and simultaneously expressed a quiet but earnest critique of 1550 Michal Mûdry-Sebik Czechoslovakia's foreign policy of that time. He then laid down these principles: ten million Czechs and Slovaks alone cannot preserve their unconditional sovereignty for long in the vicinity of a great nation. For a thousand years, the immense civilizing and cultural influences of Ger- many affected the whole way of life of Czechs and Slovaks. Therefore, in the thirteenth year of its independence, Czechoslovakia should seri- ously think about how, under these circumstances, she could gain not only formal diplomatic, but also political, economic, and military, guar- antees of her independence. Hodza considered the existing program of the Little Entente inadequate, because it only offered negative protec- tion against Hungarian revisionism. The Little Entente, he thought, should be given a positive program which would lead to the organization of all homogenous or, at least, related forces in Central Europe. All those who where concerned with respecting peace treaties belonged together. "The Little Entente must not be just a diplomatic mechanism; it must have an economic raison d'être and must deal with the question of how to settle its relationship with Poland. It is not true that the Czechs and Slovaks are so far apart from the Poles. If we do not manage to bring together the 96 million people of Central Europe, future genera- tions will blame us if, because of internal political trivialities, we fail to rise to the occasion and strengthen the basis of our existence for the future."4 Milan Hodza was one of the prominent European federalists. His plan for a federation of nations in Central and Eastern Europe between Germany and Russia and between the Baltic and the Black Seas, was, no doubt, a major and valuable contribution to international coopera- tion. Hodza considered a Central European federation an indispensable precondition for the final goal: an all-European federation.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Iron Landscapes
    INTRODUCTION 5 Iron Landscapes I daresay that the railways have raised nations in the same way as schools. —Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Jak pracovat? Přednášky z roku 1898 As Berlin correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1924, the Aus- trian novelist and journalist Joseph Roth (1894–1939) wrote an am- bivalent hymn to modern technology entitled Bekenntnis zum Gleisdreieck (Affirmation of the Triangular Railway Junction). In the form of a religious creed, he invoked the railway junction as the centre of the modern world: I affirm the triangular railway junction. It is an emblem and a focus, a living organism and the fantastic product of a futuristic force. It is a center. All the vital energies of its locus begin and end here, in the same way that the heart is both the point of departure and the des- tination of the blood as it flows through the body’s veins and arteries. It’s the heart of a world whose life is belt drive and clockwork, piston rhythm and siren scream. It is the heart of the world, which spins on its axis a thousand times faster than the alternation of day and night would have us believe; whose continuous and never-ending rotation looks like madness and is the product of mathematical calculation; whose dizzy- ing velocity makes backward-looking sentimentalists fear the ruthless extermination of inner forces and healing balance but actually engen- ders healing warmth and the benediction of movement. Roth’s notion of the railway combined biological and mechanical im- ages. He described the junction as a living being, even the heart of the world.
    [Show full text]
  • Parameters of the Transition from a Cultural to a Political Program By
    Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics Volume 12 Issue 2 DOI 10.2478/jnmlp-2018-0012 Parameters of the Transition from a Cultural to a Political Program by the Czech and Slovak Elites in the Mid-19th Century Vratislav Doubek Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences Abstract This article examines the rise of the nascent intellectual and business bourgeois elites of the Czechs and Slovaks, focusing on the transformation of their cultural program into a political one. The article takes a comparative approach and investigates the relationship of political programs to prepolitical identities, zooming in on the parameters of a broader Czech and Slovak state identity, including the role of the center (Vienna, Pest, Prague, or Pressburg) or language (analyzing both its unifying and divisive roles in bridging the ideas and visions of the emerging local elites). As I argue, in the case of the Czech and Slovak nationalist movements, we can observe a transition from a prepolitical to the political program in the mid-19th century itself. Keywords prepolitical program; political program; nation; nationalism; political elites; Czech; Slovak Introduction Aside from looking at political history, any examination of the politicization of bourgeois elites needs to pay particular attention to the history of ideas and political thought too. Looking at it from a Central European perspective, this approach has a strong tradition, especially in Poland and Hungary, partly also in Slovakia, but not in the Czech lands. This is
    [Show full text]
  • Proquest Dissertations
    u Ottawa L'Universit6 canadienne Canada's university FACULTE DES ETUDES SUPERIEURES 1= FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND ET POSTOCTORALES u Ottawa POSDOCTORAL STUDIES L'University eaiiadienne Canada's university Juraj Hocman AUTEUR DE LA THESE / AUTHOR OF THESIS Ph.D. (History) GRADE/DEGREE Department of History FACULTE, ECOLE, DEPARTEMENT / FACULTY, SCHOOL, DEPARTMENT Slovakia from the Downfall of Communism to its Accession into the European Union, 1989-2004: The Re-Emergence of Political Parties and Democratic Institutions TITRE DE LA THESE / TITLE OF THESIS Mark Stolarik DIRECTEUR (DIRECTRICE) DE LA THESE / THESIS SUPERVISOR CO-DIRECTEUR (CO-DIRECTRICE) DE LA THESE/THESIS CO-SUPERVISOR Carol Skalnik Leff (University of Eda Kranakis Illinois) Sylvie Perrier Vasilis Vourkoutiotis Gary W. Slater Le Doyen de la Faculte des etudes superieures et postdoctorales / Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies SLOVAKIA FROM THE DOWNFALL OF COMMUNISM TO ITS ACCESSION INTO Ti|E EUROPEAN UNION, 1989-2004: THE RE-EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL PARTIES AND DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS by JURAJ HOCMAN Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. in History Faculty of Arts Department of History University of Ottawa © Juraj Hocman, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 2010 Library and Archives Bibliothgque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'6dition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada
    [Show full text]
  • The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
    The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies No. 505 THE CONTEXT OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST VIEW OF SLOVAK LITERATURE 1945-1969 --;' I / Norma Rudinsky Center for Ruman and East European studies university of Pittsburgh Norma Leigh Rudinsky has an A.B. and an M.A. from Slanford University . She has taught in the English Departmenl at Oreg on Stale University In Corvallis since 1964. She is the translator of Seven Slovak Stories by Martin Kuku cin (Slovak Institute, Romel Cleveland) and her new translation, An Incipient Fem in i s t: : Slovak Storles by Timrava from 1896 to 1926, will be published by Slavica Publishers next year . August 1986 ISSN 0889-275X Submissions to The Carl Beck Papers are welcome. Man­ uscripts mu st be in English, double-spaced through­ o u t , and less than 70 pages in length. Ac ceptance is based on anonymous review . Mall submissions to : Edi­ tor, The Carl Beck Papers, Cent.er for Russian and East European Studies, 4E23 Forbes Quadrangle, Uni­ versity of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. , 15260. INTRODUCTION This paper resulted from an attempt to explore factors determining or underlying the "Marxification" of Slovak literature after 1945-- an attempt moti­ vated by a hunch that certain Marxist-Leninist prin­ ciples had provided a different insight into Slovak literature from that provided by the liberal, demo ­ cratic "aesthetic appreciation" s~hool of criticism in prewar Czechoslovakia. The idea that Slovak literary criticism has thrived, relatIvely, since World War II is by no means new and was advanced, for example, by emigr~ critics.
    [Show full text]
  • Iron Landscapes Nation-Building and the Railways in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938
    Iron Landscapes Nation-Building and the Railways in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938 Felix Konrad Jeschke UCL Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 I, Felix Konrad Jeschke, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract In the 1920s and 1930s, Czechoslovakia created a national railway network out of the fragments of the obsolete Habsburg system. The main aim of the construction project was to create a connection from the previously Cisleithanian Bohemian Lands to the previously Hungarian territories of Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia. The study examines how this new network contributed to the discursive development of a Czechoslovak national space. The railways in the twentieth century have been neglected as a research topic, since, unlike in the nineteenth century, they no longer represented the shift to industrial modernity. However, the two trajectories of the railway discourse in the inter-war period still evolved around the notion of modernity. On the one hand, the railways were considered an instrument of national unification capable of overcoming the geographic and ethnic fragmentation of the country. In highly organic imagery, the railway lines between Slovakia and the Bohemian Lands were imagined as the backbone of a healthy nation-state, and thus as material confirmation of a pre-existing unity. At the same time, railway lines never stopped at national borders. Due to their transnational character, they were turned into a symbol of Czechoslovakia’s modern cosmopolitanism. The study shows how these often incongruous goals were negotiated by examining the following themes: the railway plans developed by the geographer Viktor Dvorský, the new railway lines in Slovakia, the national conflict on trains, the new railway stations in Hradec Králové and Uherské Hradiště, the country’s representation in travel writing, and the discourse around a Czechoslovak high-speed train.
    [Show full text]
  • National Self-Determination and Secession: the Slovak Model
    Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law Volume 25 Issue 3 Article 7 1993 National Self-Determination and Secession: The Slovak Model Holly A. Osterland Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/jil Part of the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Holly A. Osterland, National Self-Determination and Secession: The Slovak Model, 25 Case W. Res. J. Int'l L. 655 (1993) Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/jil/vol25/iss3/7 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Journals at Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law by an authorized administrator of Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons. National Self-Determination and Secession: The Slovak Model For there are very few so foolish, that they had not rather governe themselves than be governed by others.' I. INTRODUCTION self-determination2 as a governing principle of internation- Nationalal law enjoyed a brief but colorful period of acceptance in the af- termath of World War I The international order which developed THOMAS HOBBES, TliE LEVIATHAN 211 (C.B. Macpherson ed., 1987). National self-determination has been defined as the right of each "nation" to constitute an independent state and determine its own form of government. ALFRED COBBAN, THE NATION STATE AND NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION 39 (1970). This phrase is used throughout this Note to designate a form of self-determination which would grant the right to secede from a pre-exis- ting sovereign state based on a group's status as a "nation.' The unmodified principle of "self- determination" merely denotes the right of a sovereign state to self-governance, free from inter- vention or subjugation by an alien state, i.e.
    [Show full text]