Slovakization
Slovakization is most often used in relation to Hungarians,[7] who constitute the most prominent minority of Slovakia, but it also affects Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Rusyns (Ruthenians),[8] and Jews, and Romani.
[25] The ethnic border has been sliding downward since the second part of the 19th century, with the beginning of the Slovak nationalist aspirations, and many almost exclusively Hungarian settlements, such as Pusztafödémes (now: Pusté Úľany) became completely Slovakised by the end of the 1910s.
[32] The whole matter is complicated by the fact that there was a high percentage of bilingual and similarly "Slovak-Hungarian" persons who could claim being both Slovak and Hungarian.
[citation needed] There are many examples of Hungarians who were forced to leave their homes from this territory (two famous ones are the families of Béla Hamvas,[34] and of Albert Szent-Györgyi).
[36] Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire there was strong anti-Hungarian sentiment among certain sections of the Czech and Slovak population[37][38][39] and this persisted to some extent in Czechoslovakia once it was formed.
The university was not the only Hungarian graduate school in the territory of contemporary Slovakia, but it had to serve to also all students from Upper Hungary inhabited by Slovak majority.
In 1919, a new Czechoslovak university was founded in parallel and adopted space and limited inventory of unfinished faculty of medicine.
On 3 February 1919, the day before the moving of Vavro Šrobár's government to Bratislava, a strike began which affected key infrastructure and sectors of industry.
The demonstration went out of control and after a physical attack on the Italian commander Riccardo Barreca, a military patrol dispersed the crowd by shooting,[43] leaving 7 dead and 23 wounded.
[44][47] The statue of Maria Theresa in Bratislava was preserved until October 1921 when information about attempts to restore monarchy spread in successor states of Austro-Hungarian Empire.
[44] In the atmosphere of partial mobilization, martial law and fresh memories to invasion by Béla Kun's army, it was brought down using ropes tied to trucks.
Later on, all minorities gained the right to use their languages in municipalities where they constituted at least 20% of the population even in communication with government offices and courts.
According to Béla Angyal, due to gerrymandering and disproportionate distribution of population between Bohemia and Slovakia the Hungarians had little representation in the National Assembly and thus their influence on the politics of Czechoslovakia remained limited.
Due to the proclamation of the "Košice Government Program", the German and Hungarian population living in the reborn Czechoslovakia were subjected to various forms of persecution, including: expulsions, deportations, internments, peoples court procedures, citizenship revocations, property confiscation, condemnation to forced labour camps, and forced changes of ethnicity referred to as "reslovakization."
[51] Since Hungarians in Slovakia were deprived of many rights, and were the target of discrimination, they were pressured into having their ethnicity officially changed to Slovak, otherwise they dropped out of the pension, social, and healthcare system.
An important issue with the slovakization procedure was, that the "reslovakized" Hungarians did not take the forcible change of ethnicity seriously, because it is impossible to force someone to forget his culture and language suddenly.
Nonetheless, the most significant exclusionary factor in Hungarians’ social situation under the socialist regime was most likely their own refusal to integrate into the Czechoslovak system and to learn the language.
[72] Under Communism, the Hungarian minority issue was confined invariably to the position of Slovaks within the Czechoslovak state, and therefore it was ignored in any systematic way.
[73] "The oppression of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia gained momentum with the formation of the Slovak state in 1993, increasing even more sharply since Vladimír Mečiar came to power for the third time in December of 1994."
Under the premiership of Mečiar prone to populism, exclusivist Slovak nationalism, and the use of extralegal measures, independent Slovakia approached authoritarianism.
The proposed region would have encompassed a very long slice of southern Slovakia, with the explicit aim to create an administrative unit with ethnic-Hungarian majority.
[76][77][78] According to Miklós Duray, a politician of the Party of the Hungarian Coalition: "Administrative jurisdictions of Slovakia were geographically modified in a clear case of gerrymandering.
Before the Slovak independence two main issues appeared regarding language: the right to use non-Slovakized versions of women's names and the use of bilingual street signs.
[88] After the parliamentary elections in 2006, the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS) of Ján Slota became a member of the ruling coalition led by Robert Fico.
Mainstream Hungarian and Slovak media blamed Slota's anti-Hungarian statements from the early summer for worsening ethnic relations.
On 27 September 2007 the Beneš decrees were reconfirmed by the Slovak parliament which legitimized the Hungarians and Germans calumniation and deportation from Czechoslovakia after World War II.
SNS went even further and published openly anti-Hungarian posters (see the picture on the right) asserting that Slovakia's on the brim of being conquered by Hungary due to the new Hungarian government's actions.
[110] The concept received criticism in Slovakia pointing out that the term "Old Slovak" cannot be found in any serious publication, simply because it lacks any scientific basis.
[111] Miroslav Kusý, a Slovak political scientist, explained that by adopting such scientifically questionable rhetoric Fico aims to "strengthen national consciousness by falsification of history".
The Slovak pressure on Rusyns in Slovakia increased after 1919 when Czechoslovakia incorporated Transcarpathia to the east of the Uzh River.
