The Main Elements of Hungary’s Balkan Strategy
The Main Elements of Hungary’s Balkan Strategy

Summary/Abstract: The history of the Balkans is an organic and permanent part of Hungarian history – and vice versa – even though Hungary is not a part of the region, either in the geographical or political sense, but rather its neighbour and shaper. Starting with the beginning of Hungarian statehood up until 1948, for roughly a thousand years, Balkan developments have always determined Hungary’s geopolitical situation in three respects: • as a factor in the Balkan policy of all the great powers past and present; • as a pre-eminent area of Hungarian foreign policy; • as one of the principal elements of Hungarian domestic policy, including demographic and administrative changes. There is a strong cultural mutual feedback effect between the Balkans and Hungary since population exchanges, border modifications, linguistic exchanges and nation-building have often occurred inside the territory of the Hungarian state and its immediate vicinity, with the participation of the Balkan peoples. (Important events of Serbian, Croatian, Romanian, Bosnian and partially even Bulgarian “national awakening” took place in Budapest, and all the aforementioned peoples lived under Hungarian rule for more or less prolonged periods.)

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