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Czechoslovakia Hungary and the Slovaks
In Hungary the government gave full sway to Hungarian
nationalism. Only a year after the Compromise of 1867, the
Nationalities Act established Hungarian as the exclusive official
language. Slovak was relegated to private use and was regarded by
the authorities as a peasant dialect. Franchise laws restricted
the right to vote to large property holders (approximately 6
percent of the total population), thus favoring the Hungarian
aristocracy. As a result, Slovaks rarely elected parliamentary
representatives. The Slovaks, nevertheless, formed the Slovak
National Party. Supported by Catholics and Protestants, the
Slovak National Party was conservative and pan-Slavic in
orientation and looked to autocratic Russia for national
liberation. It remained the center of Slovak national life until
the twentieth century.
Fearing the evolution of a full-fledged Slovak national
movement, the Hungarian government attempted to do away with
various aspects of organized Slovak life. In the 1860s, the
Slovaks had founded a private cultural foundation, the Slovak
Matica, which fostered education and encouraged literature and
the arts. At its founding, even the Austrian emperor donated
1,000 florins for the Slovak Matica. In 1875 the Hungarian
government dissolved the Slovak Matica and confiscated its
assets. Similar attacks were made against Slovak education. In
1874 all three Slovak secondary schools were closed, and in 1879
a law made Hungarian mandatory even in church-sponsored village
schools. The Hungarian government attempted to prevent the
formation of an educated, nationally conscious, Slovak elite.
It is remarkable that the Slovak national movement was able
to survive. Most Slovaks continued to live as peasants or
industrial laborers. Poverty prevailed, and on the eve of World
War I about 20 percent of the population of Slovakia had
emigrated to other lands. This emigration aided the national
movement, for it received both moral and financial support from
Slovaks living abroad, particularly in the United States. The
Slovak national movement was aided also by the example of other
nationalities struggling against the Hungarians (particularly the
Romanians) and by contacts with the Czechs.
Data as of August 1987
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