Bertalan Andrásfalvy

That wisdom, experience of thousands of years, and, time after time, ideologized truth sounded stereotypical in our lives as well: common people of different nations wish to live in peace, and bear no malice against each other. War and hatred are stirred up and declared by the lords, the leaders of nations, the emperors, forcing their people to fight and to hate the others. Basically, the causes of wars are to be found in the endeavour to solve the great conflicts of economical interests aggressively, in a way especially Marxist historiography hammered it into public thinking: from the ages of colonisation until the redistribution of the international market. This is the affair of the exploiting capitalist class, the financial leaders of the world, who do and did have the courage to dress its pure material interests into the clothes of national interests, national pride, national feeling and patriotism. In addition or contrary to this, we, ethnographers, are searching for and classifying facts of interethnic relations of peaceful coexistence, of mutual influence and co-operation, both in material and spiritual grounds of popular life.

The spontaneous, general and incomprehensibly base cruelties of the Yugoslavian War of 1990 once again drew attention to the investigation of this issue: i.e. to learn more about the origins of this "common hatred".

Hundreds and thousands of witnesses and victims can confirm those unbelievable personal recollections that were telling about the way people, who lived peacefully in each other's neighbourhood in good friendship, which had been forged through generations, turned against each other with fierce anger (the term may not be perfectly relevant, since aggression was usually one-sided) in this war. A few examples: In Drávaszög a Hungarian family was chased away by the Serb family from the neighbourhood, who has often been their guests and their employed workers-they worked together, they were neighbours and good friends. In Slavonia, the Hungarian village, Szentlászló, was destroyed ruthlessly by the people of the neighbouring Serb village, with the help of the army and other Serb volunteers, not sparing even the church building. A nation-wide political power and situation set free unsuspected hatred and antipathy and poured it onto the others with horrible inhumanity, as seen from the examples of Vukovar and Gorajde. These massacres can hardly be blamed on certain scapegoats and war-criminals. Here, culture-depending considerations and prejudices, real or imagined offences, nursed and bequeathed through generations, burst out like a geyser from the deepest layers of the soul. Yes, popular culture can also have objectionable characteristics. It is the task of ethnography to reveal and clarify them with scientific methods, and it may even be a more important task than to clarify the facts of peaceful coexistence and interethnic relations. Looking back to the past few centuries, events similar to the Yugoslavian War can be traced in our proper home-region as well, on the south-eastern ridge of Central Europe. Atrocities are known to have occured during and after the First and Second World Wars, during the '48-'49 Revolution, during the period of Hungarian war of independence at the turn of the 17th and 18th century and during and after the war of liberation against the Ottoman Turks.

It is true and can often be proven by names that these cruelties and massacres had instigators and leaders, but all the sufferings could not have been caused only by one or two men alone. The undisputed law can also be applied here: that a certain people can only accept and follow such cultural influence and initiatives, which they are able and mature to adopt. In this way responsibility cannot be blamed on the few leaders. If the willingness to follow, to adopt is present, then that is an integral part of culture and cultural behaviour, so it can be subject to ethnographic research.

There are two sides in clashes between people, in criminal acts: that of the delinquents and that of the victims. Both are responsible for the confrontation, although not equally. Forensic science has a branch that investigates the role and responsibility of the victim-it is called victimology.

The conflict between two nations also has two sides from the aspect of investigation. Essentially, revealing the cultural origins and conditions of a sad and bloody event should be carried out in an unbiased way on both sides.

It seems only natural that every nation remembers the crimes and massacres it suffered more vividly than the crimes it committed, both in literature and historiography and also in popular (folk) tradition. On the other hand, a cultural analysis of the "criminal nation" by the representatives of the offended nation would also be distorted. So the only safe solution for the offended nation would be to carry out its own "victimology", searching for the motives and reasons which generated aggression and violence against them. Theoretically, it can be accomplished, hoping for objectivity.

Unfortunately, in practice none of these sciences have undertaken the task yet, neither history, nor ethnography, neither us and nor even our neighbours. I do not wish to deal with the politically motivated suggestion of guilty conscience, which was shaped according to Marxist schemes; the numerous, and seemingly efficient, methods of self-vilification and "objective" historiography dressed in the disguise of scholarship and the weakness of our Hungarian consciousness that may partially originate from the above mentioned phenomena. However, I cannot entirely evade these questions, despite the fact that in my opinion these issues should be subject to a critical investigation carried out on the level of historical research and education, with the purpose of strengthening the historical consciousness of the youth. Which one is the real face of a nation, more characteristic of its culture: the one it shows during peaceful, friendly coexistence, or the one revealed during periods of hatred, sadly not a rare occurrence, although usually brief? Both can characterise the same people, as the right and wrong sides of their culture. Every human characteristic is double faced: economy may turn into miserliness, carefulness into cowardice, cordiality into prodigality, etc. The right side usually, but not inevitably, turns into the wrong side under compulsion. Generations can have quiet lives without ever experiencing the drastic expression of the dark side of their culture. Even people, individuals can spend their lives without ever experiencing, or ever permitting, their aggressive instincts and characteristics burst out. Conditions and cultural bases of aggressive behaviour and becoming a victim can exist for a long time without expressing themselves, having a chance to life in a historical moment. It is impossible to get to know others without having true self-knowledge; without true self-knowledge, there is no true self-esteem, which makes it impossible to appreciate others. Without self-esteem there is no prospect for th future, neither there is hope for the nation; without appreciating others reconciliation is impossible. That was the reason for composing the following article: "After creating the World, Our merciful Lord imposed the fate and talent of all the human nations. He taught the Gipsy to play the violin, the German to handle the screw. Then he called Moses from the Jews and he ordered: "And you shall write the laws and, when the time comes, you shall crucify my only son, Jesus, with the Pharisee and for that you will suffer many insults and persecutions, but I grant you flows of money and wealth."

He beckoned the Hungarian to come to him and gave him all the toys he had in his hand: "Now take this beautiful pair of spurred boots, twirl your moustache sharp (with this wax), be proud and have a good time with your friends."

The Turk sidled before him: "You won‚t have much brains, but you can vanquish many nations by your sword."

The Serb was given a hoe. The emperors and the boyars were invited to coffee and a pipe: "Your very highnesses shall live in pleasures, in wickedness and obduracy, therefore you will raise churches and monasteries for my glory." At last came the mountain people and they fell on their knees before the Throne of God. The Lord looked at them with pity: "Why were you so late, oh unlucky ones?" "We were late, oh Lord, because we have sheep and ass, we walk slow, we have to fight with steep tracks, deep abysses, we are silent at night and day, only the bells toll. Our women and children live in narrow spaces, between stones and rocks, flashes and thunders frighten us, tumbling streams threaten us. We are begging for wide fields, kind meadows, and smooth waters from you, before Your holy throne." "But you are rather late"-answered the Lord with pity. "You are kind to me, but what can I do? You have to be satisfied with the things you have taken yourselves. In addition I can only give an easy heart to enjoy yourselves. Live in satisfaction! Music and drink you shall be given and your women will be beautiful and lovely." The great Moldavian writer, Sadoveanu starts his novel, "The Hatchet" with this tale. It tells the story of a Romanian woman, who, after waiting in vain for his husband to arrive with the cattle from the Dunamellék, rises and sets off to find his killers.

Undoubtedly, the source of Sadoveanu‚s tale was Romanian folk-tradition. It summarises the opinions of coexisting nations about each other, but lacks the "historical" prejudice educated in schools. Almost a 100 years earlier, a Hungarian parson from Bártfa wrote a drama in Eastern Slovakian dialect, in the mother-tongue of the majority of the inhabitants. He wrote it with educational purpose to protect his Slovak congregation from spirits made of potato. The first act of "Senk palence" starts with a raffish Hungarian rushing into the pub and ordering wine very loudly-in Hungarian. This scene is not hostile towards the Hungarians, but reminds us the starting scene of the Romanian novel.

This "popular" belief has very much been changed through school education during the past 150 years.

In 1988, during the ecumenical youth conference of the world, six people lived in my flat for three days, of whom two were French, two were Slovenian, two Polish and two Slovakian. We always had our dinner together, except for the two Slovaks. When we were saying good-bye to each other, the two young men from the region of Bártfa came to us and told that they were sorry that they hadn‚t had their dinner with us. "When we left Slovakia, our old men warned us that we were travelling into the home country of all the lords, counts and barons who had oppressed and been killing us for a thousand years... but now we see that you (the hosts) are not lords..."

The first Czech chronicler, Cosmas of Prague, regarded the Hungarian Conquest to be God‚s punishment and this idea was also emphasised by the Czech historiographer and politician, F. Palaczky‚s influential historical work, which was published in the middle of the 19th century. Palaczky was reasoning with a certain sentence from the Tactics of the Byzantian emperor, Leo the Wise, that claimed that the Hungarians, in contrast to other nations, were not satisfied with the enemy running away after a lost battle, but they were chasing them until they totally destroyed them.

According to J. M. Vesely, professor of the Angelicum University of Rome, the appearance of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin brought the Great Moravian Empire and the Slavic conversion to a catastrophic end. The Hungarians, like the fighting riders of the apocalyptic times, destroy every living person to take their place and to settle down there. They are the delegates of Asia, such as the Huns and later the Tartars and the Turks. They are also the punishment of God, because the Slavs, and the emperor Svatopluk, chased away the archbishop St. Gorazd of Pannonia, St. Method‚s successor and many of his disciples, who went to the land of the Bulgars to finish the Slavic translation of the Holy Scripts.

That opinion and concept of the Hungarians‚ "relatives" refer back to the writings of Leo the Wise and to the time of the Hungarian Conquest. In 862, the Swabian Annals told about the invasion of the Huns. The Hungarians, who were fighting in Pannonia and Bulgaria in 894 and 895, were called Avars in the Fulda Chronicles. In 906, Regino, the abbot of Prum calls the Hungarians "Szittya" (Scythians). This line has often been repeated during history: Scythians, Avars, Hungarians, Tartars, Turks, Russians; marauders from the East, nomads, savage and uneducated bloodthirsty hordes. In 1996, when the Hungarian minorities wanted to raise a memorial to its one hundred and a thousand years of inhabitance, the leader of one of the great Slovakian parties made a remark in the Slovakian Parliament: For whom??!! For these marauding nomads?!! Contemporary Slovakian text books have been written in the same spirit, which identifies the Hungarians with the nobility. Just a few examples: "The cause for the Rákóczi Revolution was the emperor‚s intention to impose taxes on the nobility. In case of the Czech‚s revolution, their uprising was just, because the Habsburg emperor violated the royal promise of sovereignty. In case of Rákóczi, the revolution was only a means to profit from the Spanish War of Succession; for the interest of the Hungarian nobility." Or: "Slovakia has been a battlefield until the beginning of the 18th century. In addition to the hardships caused by the defensive war against the Turks, the Slovak people suffered because of another burden as well, namely the Hungarian nobility‚s several revolts against the Habsburgs, most of which took place in Slovakia..."

From the Romanian exercise books I only take those points which identify the Hungarians with the nobility.

"In 1699 Transylvania fell under Habsburg rule. In the beginning Romanians thought that the new rule would grant them a better life. As a matter of fact, certain young Romanians had the opportunity to continue their studies in Vienna and in Rome... On the other hand, the German and Hungarian nobility increased the economical exploitation and national oppression, confiscating much land from the Romanians and increasing the number of days of socage. The revolts of Horea, Closca, and Crisan had social and national characteristics. Although the revolts were put down, Joseph II was frightened by the power of Horea‚s revolt and in 1785 serfdom was abolished."

The Romanian text books write the following about the events of 1848: the Hungarian nobility did not want to set the serfs free, and the nobles shot those serfs without mercy, who occupied lands by force. It is well-known that those members of the military and the civil government who were faithful to the Habsburgs, the "Reaction", accordingto the terminology of that age, have already started to incite the Romanians in Transylvania to rebel against the Hungarians in the autumn of 1848. These rebel troops attacked several landowners, the national guard, and they executed all those whom they could capture. In December 1848 there were clashes between the mountain people of Avram Iancu and the Hungarian soldiers and the National Guard in the Transylvanian Ore Mountains. The saddest chapters of the revolution were the massacres of the people of Nagyenyed, Arudbánya, Verespatak and Gyulafehérvár and on the other hand the burning down the home of the mountain people. Now I would like to concentrate on one single element of the Hungarian image, which can be quoted and broadened in several directions. That element is the identification of the Hungarians with the nobility. However unbelievable it is for a sober mind, the concept still exists. Its development has certainly been influenced by distorted, foreign sources, but our historiography is also responsible. Undoubtedly, the Hungarians could feel some pride when they have referred to as a fearful enemy on the West. An example for this is the often-quoted line from a litany: "Oh Lord save us from the arrows of the Hungarians." It is a well-known fact that many people proudly avow our nomad ancestors and their relation to other nomad nations, the Huns of Attila in the first place. However, in our neighbours‚ mind and imagination no glorious or enviable pride can be attached to this, only the image of the wild, savage and uncivilised marauders who unjustly take away others‚ goods by force. It is hard to make our countrymen understand this and it is also true that we also d not think highly of those who have recently become members of one of our ethnicity by giving up their wandering life-style.

I do not wish to destroy again the summarised and distorted image of St. Stephen and the Conquest by well-known scientific arguments. On the other hand, linguistics, archaeology and contemporary written sources proved: the Hungarian conquerors had an advanced agriculture, they knew and grew grape, wine and other fruits; they had extensive plough-lands and artificial watering channels. So they were not nomads who lived only on looted goods. It was not St. Stephen who settled them down with the help of German and Slavic priests and it was not him who introduced Christianity to them. His grandfather was also a Christian and the signs of the cross with the "body of Christ" (Corpus) were found in the graves of those warriors buried during the conquest. Cross-shaped relics are also known from that age. There were eleven crosses among those finds from the age of the conquest, which were exhibited in the National Museum in 1996. Neither it is true that St. Stephen forced the Hungarians to convert to Christianity in order to save us from the annihilating military campaigns of the Christian West. Last year, on St. Stephen‚s day, a well-known politician and historian still claimed in his ceremonial speech that "had we not taken Christianity according to St. Stephen‚s will, we would have met a similar destiny to that of the Huns and Avars." Even the comparison does not work: the Huns created a really great empire, while numerically they made up only a small ruling class, not the whole people of the empire. The Christian West, even in the age of St. Stephen, often attempted to defeat and expel the Hungarians, despite the fact that they were Christians. I do not want to lessen St. Stephen‚s merits, on the contrary, I would like to emphasise that in his personality the idea of the Christian King came to being and in this sense he was without a rival in Europe, both in his age and later.

No, we are not proud of that and we do not emphasise that at that time we sat an example of Christianity and humanity for Europe. Instead, we emphasise that only the sword was worthy of the Hungarians and that the people conquered by their sword became their servants. Historiographers of the last century cited Werbôczy: "The peasant class was made up by those inhabitants who were condemned to servitude after being conquered by the victorious Hungarians. King Coloman eased the burden of slaveryÖ. with the introduction of the socage and the peasant‚s right to use land"-H. wrote. "Voluntary servants, serfs were those who, after voluntarily surrendering to the victorious Hungarians, were left in the usufruct/ use of their goods. They had a better life than those who were forced by arms to complete servitude"-another historiographer, Illés Geroch wrote in Tudományos Gyûjtemény (Scientific Collection). (According to an explanation of his time the word "jobbágy" got its meaning from the nobles, who did not want to take arms to go into the war and said it is better in the bed. They were the serfs depraved of noble privileges. ("jobb" means `better‚ in Hungarian, while "ágy" means `bed‚))

The nobles are the descendants of the Hungarian conquerors-this idea was held by several historiographers from ádám Pálóczi Horváth to Bálint Hóman, Gyula Szekfû and József Deér in such or in a more complicated form.

On the other hand, the nobles made up only about four per cent of the total population of Hungary. Could that four per cent give language to the largest nation of the Carpathian Basin, and also a mediating language to the other people?

Are the majority of Hungarian people the descendants of Magyarised, defeated nations, once overcome by Hungarians? That is suggested by such opinions, according to which the population of Hungarian conquerors was less than 40,000. We ourselves suggest these nonsensical ideas, handing them down through and thus emphasising our neighbours‚ misconceptions. But let us go further! "Since we do not belong to those who do not believe in miracles and who search for the simplest reasons, we can only warn our researchers that the Hungarian race has never been famous for its artistic inclination and for its artistic creations. Even the Magyarised names of our famous contemporary artists prove that not the Turkish-Tartar or the Ural-Altayan, (if you like???), but the sons of the immigrant Aryan people are noted for their artistic talent"-F. Pulszky, one of the most popular publicist of the last century, wrote. This has generated our neighbours‚ oversimplified concepts, according to which Hungarians are not a nation but a small group of nomadic lords who exploited, plundered, oppressed and destroyed the peaceful Carpathic people, mainly the Slavs... According to the Slovaks these Slavic people in the Danube basin were identical with the Slovaks themselves. There was an alternative to the Trianon Resolution, in which Hungary would not have existed any more.

There were some weakly composed paragraphs in the splendid Hungarian Chronicles published last year. It kept alive our neighbours‚ prejudices about the nomad, marauding, uncivilised Hungarians destroying the peaceful Slav-Slovakian inhabitants in order to take their land. Citing from the book: "Similarly to the other nomadic people, they do not know about the private ownership of the land. They live in tents. For them, nothing that belongs to settled lifestyle has real value. They also assign little value to human life. The complete destruction of the enemy, the killing of children and mothers all form natural part of their warfare."

"New habits in forming relationship could develop. Comparing to the nomadic settlement-conditions-speech contacts become more frequent, people talk more often to each other, language becomes more and more sophisticated. Transformations in lifestyle lasted for centuries. Naturally, the people‚s curved leg, thus shaped from riding for centuries, could get used to walking straight after the plough in generations."

Three years have passed since the Hungarian Catholic Church of Romania asked for its confiscated properties, which had been used by the Orthodox Church. The Romanian answer was the following: "Of course, there is a law about it, but you very well know, you were only lords here and everything was built by the blood and sweat of Romanian people."

Where could have they taken, where do they take their arguments from?

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