![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ludovika.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/k\u00f6rk\u00e9p1_1.png\")
It is widely known that 1918 was a turning point in the history of the Czech nation as it was no less than the renewal of Czech statehood. Czechoslovakia was one of the most democratic political systems of the Central European region at the time. This also means that for the Czech society and political elite the jubilee in 2018 had major importance, while the 100th anniversary of the Trianon Treaty caused less excitement among academics and in public life. In Slovakia, the situation was quite different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There, the frame within which Slovaks interpreted the Trianon question shifted as a result of a large event on 2 June 2020 when Prime Minister Igor Matovi\u010d received a hundred ethnically Hungarian public figures of Slovakia at the castle of Bratislava. It was for the first time that a Prime Minister of Slovakia declared that historic Hungary was part of the common past and that he understood why Trianon hurt Hungarians. This indicated that Slovak politicians were willing to make the link between Trianon and the long-term survival of the Hungarian minority. It had not been the case earlier. If the question occurred in public politics at all, Trianon meant the departure of Slovaks from Hungary, thus it was framed as a success story, just the oppo- site of the trauma that Hungarians associated with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Various Slovak media channels asked several intellectuals and public figures about the topic. TV channels broadcasted interviews and talks on Trianon and about the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Slovak authors published new books among which we shall primarily mention Roman Holec\u2019s book Trianon, diadal \u00e9s katasztr\u00f3fa [Trianon, victory and catastrophy] written in a reader friendly style and Ondrej Ficeri\u2019s A Trianon ut\u00e1ni Kassa [Kosice after Trianon]. This interest reached so far that an academic research group started working on the Trianon Treaty under the leadership of a professor of legal history Erik \u0160tenpien at the Department of Law of the Pavol Jozef \u0160af\u00e1rik University in Ko\u0161ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outstanding experts, such as L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Szarka, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 V\u00f6r\u00f6s and \u0160tefan \u0160utaj, whose work cannot be labelled ethno-centric or nationalist, had the oppor- tunity to talk of Trianon in prime time on television. On 3 June, the Slovak state television broadcast the discussion programme called Do kri\u017ea, then hosted by \u0160tefan Chrappa and Jaroslav Dani\u0161ka, in which L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Szarka and Roman Holec debated about currently relevant aspects of the Trianon phenomenon. Importantly, Roman Holec mentioned that he believed the Trianon treaty was unjust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, in 2020 there were also some who remembered Trianon as a positive thing for Slovaks. For example, despite the erstwhile cultural associa- tion, Matica Slovensk\u00e1 announced that the anniversary could be an occasion for learning about each other, several of their local branches organized fes- tive events on 4 June. Moreover, one could also encounter explicitly anti-Hungarian interpretations and publications, such as Edita Tarab\u010d\u00e1kov\u00e1\u2019s work bearing the curious title S\u00e9relem \u00e9rte a magyarokat? A val\u00f3di igazs\u00e1g Trianonr\u00f3l [Were there real injustice against Hungarians? The truth about Trianon], for example. Overall, the events reflected that Trianon has not become an issue of primary importance for the majority society of Slovakia, yet it is also clear that there is a growing number of Slovaks who understand the sensitivity of Hungarians (both of those who live in Slovakia and of Hungarians in Hungary).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cCzechoslovakians\u201d and the Memory of \u201cYear 0\u201d 28 October, the day of the declaration of the Czechoslovak Republic in Prague was a national holiday of Slovaks during the interwar period. Fol- lowing the fall of state socialism and the disintegration of Czechoslovakia in 1993, for nearly three decades, it was only the Czechs who officially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":14804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1507],"tags":[4087],"class_list":["post-14955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-european-diaries","tag-history"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.ludovika.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/k\u00f6rk\u00e9p1_1_219.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Szeghy-Gayer Veronika","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ludovika.hu\/en\/author\/szeghy-gayer-veronika\/"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ludovika.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/k\u00f6rk\u00e9p1_2-1024x576.jpg\")
ramme called Do kr\u00ed\u017ea. Source: facebook.com\/dokriza<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n