The Czechs in a Nutshell

At first glance, this seems rather strange. Throughout history, the Czechs and Hungarians (today, both countries have 10 million inhabitants) have been allies against common adversaries and even subjects of the same king. Budapest looks like an over-sized, albeit dirtier, version of Prague, the Hungarian language is full of Slavonic loan words (see: Cursing) and both nations are culturally deeply marked by centuries when they where a part of the Danube Empire; for instance, by a common flair for committing suicides.

Yet the Czechs and the Hungarians, in contradiction to the traditionally hearty relations between the Poles and the Hungarians, have never become close. Bar a quite natural reaction against the communist regime’s forced friendship with other “socialist brother countries”, it’s hard to point out a single reason for the lack of common sympathy. Plain rivalry, though, appears to be a big part of the explanation.

First of all, the Czechs are one of many Slav peoples, while the Hungarians (or Magyars, as they say themselves) are a small lot of Finno-Ugric origin. The antagonism between the numerous Slavs and the linguistically and ethnically unique Hungarians profoundly deepened during the 250 years the two nations spent as subjects of the Danube Empire.

While the power apparatus in Vienna clearly distrusted the Czechs and the other Slav peoples in the Empire, the Hungarians were treated with somewhat greater consideration. Not because the Emperor had any specific love for the Hungarians, but, as the author Zsigmond Kémény points out, because Hungary was given the role of protecting the Empire’s multi-national character by dividing its Slavonic and German elements, and thus preventing any of them from becoming the top dog.

Hungary’s position as more equal than the other equal nations was formalized in 1867, when the Empire was split into two parts — the Austrian and the Hungarian — with the river Leitha, near Vienna, as a symbolic border. The fact that Emperor Franz Josef let himself be crowned Hungarian king, but forgot about the Czechs, didn’t make him more popular in Bohemia and Moravia. The magnificent Spanish Hall at Prague’s Hradčany castle, which was refurbished for the crowning ceremony that never took place, became a symbol of Czech jealousy towards the Hungarians.

What’s more, the Hungarians, who had now become full-fledged bosses of the Empire’s eastern part, didn’t waste any time in starting a rather tough magyarization of their Slavonic subjects. This didn’t directly affect the Czechs, who were ruled from Vienna. However, the Slovaks in Felvidék — Upper Hungary — were hit quite discernibly when Budapest decided to abolish the use of Slovak language in schools. Ultimately, the Hungarians backed down, but the way they badgered their Slovak subjects didn’t earn them much praise among the victims’ Czech brethren.

The mischief reached a climax in 1918, when the whole of Slovakia — including the Southern part, which for nine centuries had been densely populated by ethnic Hungarians — was declared a part of the newly-established Czechoslovak republic. When the communist government that seized power in Budapest in the spring of 1919 refused to abandon Felvidék Czechoslovakia launched a military attack on Hungary.

The Czechoslovak armed forces managed to kick the Hungarians out of Slovakia after the Western powers helped them diplomatically, but a three-month-long war was not an ideal starting point for friendly relations between Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Twenty years later, the two countries clashed again when Hungary, after the Munich Agreement, occupied the eastern-most tip of Czechoslovakia (see: Ukrainians), and then the southern part of Slovakia. Hungary had to turn most of the territory back in 1945, but ever since then, the Czechs have shared the Slovaks’ suspicion that the Hungarians are suffering from latent irredentism.

There is also a social aspect that divides the Czechs and the Hungarians. Czech society has traditionally been pronounced egalitarian, with a rather limited nobility and upper class, but with a relatively broad middle class. Hungarian society, on the contrary, was until 1945 characterized by deep class divisions, and the local aristocracy was heavily involved in politics.

This has led to a comical situation. The Czechs, based on the fact that the average standard of living for the last centuries has been higher in industrialized Bohemia than in strongly agricultural Hungary, have regarded the Hungarians as poorer and more backward. The Hungarians, on their side, have regarded the Czechs as poorer and more backward, because their upper classes have been wealthier and more influential than those in Bohemia and Moravia.