The Historical Path of Hungary and the Process of Peaceful Settlement after World War II (1944–1947)
The Historical Path of Hungary and the Process of Peaceful Settlement after World War II (1944–1947)

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the process of peace settlement between the Allies and Hungary in the aftermath of World War II. The purpose of the research paper was to fill some gaps in Bulgarian historiography, where a detailed study of the international legal aspects of the process of concluding the Hungarian peace treaty is lacking. As a result, an analysis is provided of all the key issues affecting the peace settlement process between Hungary, its neighbours and the Allies, in the context of the early stages of the Cold War. The emphasis is placed on the period between the Hungarian armistice of January 20, 1945, and the signature of the peace treaty on February 10, 1947. The analysis of the clauses of the Hungarian peace treaty is supplemented by comparisons to the peace settlement process with Bulgaria and Romania, which largely share Hungary’s fate as defeated countries and former Nazi satellites. The research was conducted by using a large source base and included the accessible online archives of the U.S. State Department, the archive of the Secretariat of Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, the UN archival materials for the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, as well as some documents from the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and available documentary collections. While aware that the work with such source base poses certain limitations on the study, this methodological approach was dictated by a lack of direct physical access to the documentary collections of the US, Russian, British and Hungarian diplomatic documents as well as by lack of knowledge in Hungarian on the part of the author.

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