Utópiák, eltűnt gondolatok. Adalékok a „felvidéki szellem” történetéhez
Utopias, disappeared thoughts. Additions to the history of the „Felvidék spirit”

Author(s): László Szarka
Subject(s): Cultural history, Ethnic Minorities Studies
Published by: Fórum Kisebbségkutató Intézet
Summary/Abstract: This study, examining the first two decades of the history of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia and its intellectual self-reflection, deals with the concept of the “Felvidék spirit”. The organizing and legitimizing element of the „new Europe” that emerged with the breakup of the empires after the First World War was the nation-state based on national self-determination. Many millions of national and ethnic minorities lived in fundamentally multiethnic nation-states, including Czechoslovakia. Based on Ernest Gellner’s study on nation-state nationalisms, the text focuses the internal ethical tensions of the Czech-Slovak state on the tensions between the assimilation policy of the majority nations, the attempts of the Hungarian minority to self-organize, and the revisionist aspirations of the Hungarian motherland (kin state). The minority elites between the two world wars experienced the insoluble contradictions of this „triadic nexus” and tried to emphasize regional cooperation and intermediary functions.

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