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„Abreu, Laurinda & Sandor, Janos (eds.): Monitoring Health Status of Vulnerable Groups in Europe: Past and Present“. Pécs, 2006, Compostela Group of Universities & Phoenix TN, European Thematic Network on Health and Social Welfare. 332 p. [European Issues]
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The target group of the TANDEM 2016 Survey was the Ukrainian and Hungarian population of the multi-ethnic west Ukrainian region, Transcarpathia. The paper-based survey was carried out from May to August 2016. The survey was bilingual: in 44 settlements respondents answered our questions in Hungarian, in 55 in Ukrainian and in 24 settlements in both languages. The expression “TANDEM” implies that in this survey we put emphasis on the peculiarities of Hungarian-Ukrainian coexistence and the differences of perspectives on the same topics. All together we gathered 1212 questionnaires: 398 adult respondents answered our questions in Hungarian and 814 in Ukrainian according to a representative sample (the sample however was not proportionately stratified regarding the ethnic ratio of settlements).
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This paper analyses the situation of Bulgarian muslims from 1944 to 1971 under communist regime. The policy of Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) to the Bulgarian muslims had changed many times during this period. The ethnic policy was modified from the provisional rights and privileges to the attempts of enforced assimilation. Although few years after World Waw II muslims in Bulgaria participate in social life, had many opportunities for educational and cultural development, since 1956 the government gradually moved away from this approach. Bulgarian communism starts to regard ethnic difference as a destabilizing factor. Before this policy had culminated in 1980s, BCP introduced new measures for enforced assimilation towards gypsies and Bulgarian-muslims (pomaks). In 1971 the new constitution promoted the idea of national homogeneity within Bulgarian ethnic nation.
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The article presents selected issues of minority education in Lower Silesia in the Polish Peoples Republic. This region after World War II not only Poles lived Jews, Ukrainians, Germans, Czechs, Greeks and Macedonians. This complex situation nationalities also had a significant impact on the organization of the education system in this area. It was not enough for him to arrange for children and young Polish, but there was a need to take account of all minorities residing here. The analysis has been subjected to territorial scope, range chronological, quantitative dimension, issues concerning the teaching staff, lack of textbooks for the education of non-Polish language teaching and the problems of the material base. The author tried to show the dynamics of change - in time, in space and taking into account ethnic diversity. In the text there were also reminders of basic laws governing education, and the institutions that dealt with education for minorities.
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The article contains a brief description of the press of national minorities published in the Second Polish Republic and it discusses directions and results of research conducted by historians aft er 1945. A citation analysis was used to evaluate the research achievements in wider terms. Media activity of the national minorities in the years 1918–1939 was quite high. According to the latest data, more than 3500 newspapers and magazines published in languages of individual nations were published in these years. The largest number of the magazines was printed in Yiddish (1715), Ukrainian (1132) and German (683); the Belarusian (188), Lithuanian (190) and Russian (98) magazines were less numerous. However, the ranking was different when we take into account the impact of the press: what stood out was the German press (7.60 of copies for 100 people), then the Jewish press (3.18), with the almost insignificant Ukrainian (0.2) and Belarusian press (0.36). Interest of historians in the press of the minorities was quite high in the entire postwar period. A total of 78 scholars worked in this area. They published 172 works, which were cited 316 times in the scope of the native discourse (press history).
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Finland is one of the most ethnically homogenous countries in Europe.However, we find its plurality in existence of Swedish language in certain minority groups, and defining Finnish and Swedish as national and official languages. Aland is a case in point of minority question as a group of islands in Finland where people almost entirely speak Swedish as a native language.Since the example of the Aland Islands in literature is presented as a successful example of solving the problem of minority question which accomplished both political (state) integration, as well as language (cultural) accommodation;the author investigates and concludes that elements and values such as questions of internationalization, peaceful conflict solving, tolerance tradition and willingness to find practical solutions, exceptional significance of the Aland Islands, asymmetrical solutions, and especially treaty compliance feature Aland Islands as a specific model of minority protection. Conspicuous territorial (political) autonomy and feeling of satisfaction of the minority group led to the situation in which Aland Islands are cited as an example which other minority communities in different countries would follow.
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The aim of this study is to answer the following questions: do asylum seekers and refugees have any rights according to the teachings of Islam, what are those rights and what is the contemporary situation? Study then makes a comparison between rights of asylum seekers and refugees in Islamic law and international law. It is obvious that Muslims are today the largest refugees, their numbers increase day by day, and the majority of them are in an unenviable position. This harsh reality implies that the majority of refugees do not enjoy their rights in many countries. This is mostly because of the fact that the states disregard the realization of their obligations upon the refugees, as well as the ignorance of these rights by refugees and asylum seekers. Those rights are guaranteed to refugees and asylum seekers in both Islamic teachings and in international human rights and documents. In order for the to study yield the expected results, it was necessary to explore the notion of exile in the Qur'an and Sunnah, as well as in the international law, the kind of refuge in the classical period, the causes of displacement in the Islamic and international law, the rights of refugees and the cessation of refugee status in the Islamic and international law.
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Govor mržnje, kao i izazivanje, raspirivanje i širenje mržnje u Bosni i Hercegovinije sveprisutno u proteklih dvadeset godina, kako u dominantnom javnom diskursu,tako i u sferi interneta, online portala i društvenih mreža. Djelo izazivanja, raspirivanjai širenja mržnje prvi put je regulisano u Federativnoj Narodnoj RepubliciJugoslaviji 1945. godine donošenjem Zakona o zabrani izazivanja nacionalne, rasnei vjerske mržnje i razdora. Ubrzo nakon donošenja ovog zakona djelo izazivanjanacionalne, rasne ili vjerske mržnje, netrpeljivosti i razdora regulisano je Krivičnimzakonikom Federativne Narodne Republike Jugoslavije. Krivičnopravna regulacijaovog djela bila je direktna posljedica prepoznavanja njegove štetnosti po društvo ipotrebe da se istakne važnost njegovog sankcionisanja od strane same države.
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For the past 20 years hate speech, as well as inciting, spreading and promoting hatred has been omnipresent in the public discourse, the Internet, online magazines and social networks in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Inciting, spreading and promoting hatred was regulated for the first time in 1945 when the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia adopted the Law Against Incitement to National, Racial and Religious Hatred and Discord. Soon after, the act of incitement to national, racial and religious hatred, hostility and discord was regulated by the Criminal Code of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. Introducing such legislation was made possible by recognising the pernicious effects of these types of crimes on the whole society and the need for official sanctioning by the state.
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During the urban clashes between Kurdish militants and Turkish state forces in 2015-2016, young politicized social media users in Istanbul witnessed and experienced political violence through their engagement with violent words and images on social media, without being anywhere near the armed clashes. These were photographs of militarized nationalist performances of masculinized domination and sexist graffiti, produced by the Turkish Special Forces and circulated in the cyberspace. Based on an ethnographic study among young educated pro-Kurdish viewers and an ethnographically situated textual analysis of the graffiti, this article illustrates the ways images are perceived in the particular cultural and sociopolitical context. It argues that the gendered meanings that relate to the core of the gendered and ethnicized structural violence in Turkey, enhance the affective cybertouchof political violence.
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In the past several years, we could witness a massive mass and social media coverage of Muslims and their migration to Europe. This particular group is an object of stereotypical views and intensive emotional reactions. Despite that, Muslims living in Czech Republic are a relatively unknown and so far unexplored cultural group. Therefore, our study focused on selected faith-related attitudes toward Czech society investigated on a sample of Muslim immigrants living in Czech Republic for minimum of one year. We used a shortened and adjusted version of questionnaire previously used in WZB study (WZV, 2008) in three language mutations – Arabic, Czech, and English. The recruitment of participants was conducted via social networks; in total 143 responses were gathered. The data analysis is based primarily on descriptive statistics. The results show that there is a great variability in the strength of both the Muslim identity of the respondents and their religions believes. Their attitudes toward various topics related to Islam such as wearing headscarfs and other gender-related issues, teaching Islam in schools, or building Mosques also highly vary within the sample. Access to housing is perceived as the main source of discrimintation. Large-scale or longitudinal assessments of Muslim minority are needed to deepen our understanding of the attitudes of the Muslim minority in Czech Republic. We can assume that this topic will be investigated further in other Central European countries.
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This paper intends to give a comprehensive overview about the approach and related measures of the United Nations to address–in a completely different way as it was done previously in the League of Nations-the plight of national, ethnic and religious minorities. The author aims to introduce the development and the transformation of the minority protection mechanisms during the history of the United Nations, always taking into account existing political realities in the world, which cannot be ignored in such a sensitive area. In the interest of the above mentioned aims, the paper goes through the process in a chronological order, leading to the establishment of the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues and of the Forum on Minority Issues, which constitute the two main pillars of the UN minority protection system today.
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Pre-University Language's policy, as a part of the educational system in Kosovo, is integrated in close to 1200 public schools. As Albanian citizens are the most numerous, Albanian is the most represented in the system, but not the only one. Bosnian and Turkish languages are a part of several municipalities and dozens of public schools. While Rom students, mostly, attend classes in Albanian and Bosnian. Serbian as a language in Kosovo can be viewed as a language outside of the system, since students and teachers of Serbian nationality are outside the legal framework of the Kosovo language and education policy, and follow instructions from Serbia. By examining attitudes on language policy, there was evidence that Albanian respondents consider Albanian as a well-represented language in Kosovo and that minority languages have good rights. While respondents of national minorities believe that Albanian is expected to have good rights, while their languages do not have such great rights.
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The purpose of this article is to test the contact hypothesis among self-identifying Bosniak, Croat, Serb, and Bosnian high school seniors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, using the Other-Group Orientation Scale (Roberts et al., 1999). This article finds that attending a ‘non-appropriate’ ethnic school statistically increases tolerance of out-group members, which conforms to the predictions of the contact hypothesis, originally put forth by Allport (1958). This field research also found that secondary schools are largely homogenous in the country, thus preventing high levels of cross-ethnic contact in schools, which was expected. This article represents the first post-war, countrywide quantitative testing of the contact hypothesis.
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Up until the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 the whole of Syrmia belonged to Croatia (the “Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia”). In the newly established state, in accordance with its unitary organisation, all the historical political-territorial creations were soon disbanded and Syrmia became a part of then administrative units, i.e. districts, and subsequently of the Banovina. When the state was reorganised in 1939 and when the Banovina of Croatia was formed, a great part of Syrmia became a part of it. However, the final determination of Syrmia’s affiliation took place immediately upon the end of World War II after the borders of the republics were determined within the new, socialist Yugoslavia. The government of the time tried to present its approach to the demarcation of Croatia and Serbia as an approach based on justice and equal respect for Croatian and Serbian positions; an approach that among other things had to respect the ethnic composition of the “disputed” areas. This paper analyses the ethnic composition of settlements of eastern Syrmia, i.e. the part of eastern Syrmia belonging to Vojvodina and thereby to Serbia. The analysis was conducted on the basis of census data from 1921. This was a census conducted before the tendentious political changes of the ethnic composition of Syrmia which started soon after it had been conducted. On the basis of the acquired insight, it was determined to what extent the new government complied with the proclaimed principles while determining the affiliation of eastern Syrmia or its specific parts.
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In this article, I address an issue of how structures of cultural, national and generational memories are reproduced in the personalized narratives of the past, and how the meta-narratives of the society are adjusted to the needs of a person in constructing the meaning of the past. The article discusses the complex relationship between ideology and biographical memory: which expressions do individuals use in their personal life stories/family histories about life in postwar Lithuania, and how are the narratives structured by the idea of building a new society, which was a central constituent of the Soviet ideology? How was the image of a new society constructed in the Soviet times and which of its structural components are still actualized in personal life stories/family histories of today’s Russian-speaking community, which was the biggest ethnic group in postwar Klaipėda? The article starts with a brief introduction to the idea of this research and explains why it is focused on the Russian-speaking community in Klaipėda. Following an overview of historical studies on the migration of Russian-speaking people in postwar Lithuania gives a social and demographical profile of the context that structured the collective experience and memories. After an explanation of the analytical model and the methodological assumptions, I proceed to the narrative analysis of life stories/family histories told by Russian-speakers and explore how the narratives are structured by the ideology of the Russified Soviet identity and how this discourse is transformed. By investigating these transformations, I try to show the complex relations between direct and indirect experiences, collective memory as an ideological structure and a city as a living space of different social groups. The analysis of the life stories/family histories of the Russian-speaking community of Klaipėda supports the thesis that the family stories told by these people are transformed taking into account the personal and generational interests to display loyalty to their families and naturalized attachments to their place of residence.
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The movies My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) and Something New (2006) interrogate various ethnic and racial traditions and expectations concerning interracial and intercultural relationships from the female perspective. The two romantic comedies illustrate how the female protagonists’ decisions to date and marry men outside their ethnic and racial communities create tension and resistance among their family members and circle of friends, revealing an array of cultural and racial differences. By looking at the subtle ways in which these movies depict the challenges posed by interethnic dating/marriage in terms of gender, race, class, and ethnicity, especially in the female protagonists’ family environment, this essay sets out to explore how the protagonists’ choices to transcend cultural and racial borders may represent a new attempt to assuage the concerns regarding the complexity of interethnic relationships by including the option of individual female choice and agency.
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Background: Ethno cultural processes belong to the most dynamic, most complicated and most important socio-cultural characteristics of each society. An ethnic definition of culture and society is at present, at a time of multiculturalism and de-ethnicity of culture, an effective and used means of description, genesis, and pursuance of political as well as economic management. The socio-cultural environment of Lower-country is an excellent setting to study the processes; in some parts it seems to be quite homogenous (Lower-country culture) whereas in others it is complex and internally differentiated. Objective: The aim of the study is to characterize the Slovak minority living in Croatia and Serbia in the ethno-cultural background of its development, to define the main factors of ethno-cultural progress and the perspectives of their development. At the same time it aims to represent the opinions of the research participants (young Slovak people living in Croatia and Serbia). The study consists of a theoretical as well as a practical part. Method: The theoretical part of the study includes an integrated knowledge of important aspects of the ethno-culture of the Slovak minority, which were gained by long-term ethnological research in the environment. The empirical part focuses on the data gained in field research (2015) within a grant project ‘Verbal-communication behaviour of Slovak youth in Croatia and Serbia in a situational background of intra-ethnic usage of Slovak.’ Based on the quota sampling (age and gender), 170 respondents took part in the research (49 from Croatia and 121 from Serbia). The research sample included: People of Slovak origin, who either declared their Slovak nationality themselves or Slovak was mother tongue of at least one of their parents. People who, in their opinion, spoke Slovak language in everyday life. Two groups of students from various types of high schools and universities (with Slovak lectorship) took part in the research. The students were aged between 15 and 25 with 65 girls and 105 boys participating. To collect the sample data we used a structured questionnaire. The purpose of the method was to study how ethno-cultural aspects influence the awareness of the respondents. We also studied different aspects in the verbal-communication behaviour of the respondents. The role of the aspects in the verbal-communication behaviour of the respondents in Croatia (SCr) and Serbia (SSr) was also studied. The ethno-cultural indicator applied three items and studied the opinions of young generation in regards to the development of: National culture; Slovak mother tongue; National school. Results: In the theoretical part of the study we specified the display of ethnic identity and the functioning of the minority language, and we characterized the remaining cultural traditions of the Slovak minority living in Croatia and Serbia. Until the members of Slovak minorities living in their environment have a relationship to the ethnicity, Slovak language and traditions they will consider them values. While the language and the traditions represent a practical tool for the profit, they will keep, hand over or develop them. The empirical part presents opinions of Slovak youth in both countries. The opinions judged individual aspects of ethno-cultural development of their minority. A basic analysis of opinions on question 13 in the questionnaire was presented from the point of view of both language groups. Question 13 deals with the development of national culture, mother tongue and the national education system. Each value was rated by participants on a 7-point- scale (from 1= not important to 7 = very important). On a seven-point-scale (1 – definitely not, 7 – definitely yes), the respondents rated each item individually. The scale enabled us to use a descriptive analysis (arithmetic mean of the whole sample MSCr-SSr, arithmetic mean of individual subgroups MSCr, MSSr, average values and standard deviation SD) frequency analyses (responses in %, N=number of respondents in subgroups: SCr, SSr) which uses chi-square (χ2 ). After scale modification, three groups of respondents were formed – negative opinions, ambivalent opinions and positive opinions. Having done a normality test, we find out that the respondents‘answers concentrated mostly in one pole of the scale which was why a nonparametric statistic (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for 2 independent groups SCr/SSr) was used. To judge the inner structure of the three items of ethno cultural development of minority, we used the method of factor analysis (extraction method – Principal Component Analysis, rotation Varimex, Varimex normalization) which led to a distinctive 1-factor structure: SCr: with eigenvalue 2.13 with saturation 71%; SSr with eigenvalue 2.52 with saturation 83.92%. The proportion of spread of results explained by 1-factor structure is plausible. To determine the inner consistence of variables we used Crombach alfa coefficient (Cα ). The total value of the reliability coefficient for SCh-SSr170 is Calfa=0.863 which is considered acceptable. Respondents’ answers to the question were highly positive; they support the three aspects of ethno cultural indicator – national culture, Slovak mother tongue and national educational system. While, on average, SCr preferred mostly national culture (M=6.08), with SSr it was the language aspect that reached the highest values (M=6.31). It results from the frequency analysis that the respondents in either group choose 7 (the top point on the scale) with all three items. With SCr, respondents supporting national culture represent the largest percentage. They are followed by items ‘mother tongue‘(75.5%) and ‘national educational system‘(69.4%). For SSr their Slovak mother tongue is most important (92.6%). It is followed by education (88.4%) and national culture (87.6%). Scale modification (negative vs. positive answers) shows that Slovak youth in Croatia and Serbia choose positive variants when evaluating the progress of selected items of ethno cultural development. As for SSr, there is a higher percentage of responses with each item. The ethno culture support with SCr is as following: 69.4% (education), 75.5% (Slovak language), and 83.6% (culture). With SSr we can observe higher percentage: 87.6% (culture), 88.4% (education), and 92.6% (Slovak language).The difference between the preferences of individual aspects is also plausible – with SCr it is the culture aspect, with SSr it is the language aspect which is ranked highest. Conclusion: Slovak language and ethno culture are socio-cultural complexes and phenomena which are typical for the environment and they have been present for a long time. Studying their present shape, state, usage and applicability makes them a cultural potential. The empirical results confirm that Slovak adolescents in Croatia and Serbia express a higher rate of importance in all three selected aspects of ethnocultural development of their minority. Collected data confirm group differences in preference of individual aspects – the cultural aspect dominates with SCr, whereas with SSr it is the language aspect. These can be determined not only by various factors of ethno cultural development of each minority, but also by their specific characteristics (minority size, setting, cultural-social forwardness etc.) and by the ethnic development rate (identity rate, ability to use mother tongue at a communication level, education system, institutionalisation rate etc.) A more detailed study of the processes would offer a deeper insight into the issue.
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The paper is devoted to the status of the Hungarian minority’s teachers in Slovakia after the establishment of the Czechoslovakian Republic (CSR) at the end of 1918. The CSR was a state including several ethnic minorities. Hungarians were the most numerous ethnic minority in the Slovak parts. After the foundation of the CSR, the economic, political, social and ideological situation in the country changed radically. Some of the changes affected inhabitants of Slovakia only indirectly, others interfered with their way of life to a significant degree. One of the areas which underwent a substantial change was education in all types of schools. Practically all aspects of life for inhabitants of Slovakia differed from Czechs; this was a result of their cultural and historic development within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This to a great extent was true in the sphere of education. Whereas the Czech language as a teaching medium was already being used actively in schools before 1918 in the Czech lands and Moravia, in Slovakia, with the exception of some elementary schools run by the Church where education was carried out in the Slovak language, the Hungarian language was exclusively used in all schools. After 1918 education in Slovakia underwent a profound change. In regions with a Slovak majority and also in ethnically mixed areas, schools were “Slovakized”; that is, the Slovak language as a teaching medium was gradually implemented. This measure inevitably impacted negatively on the Hungarian teachers. To operate as a teacher in the CSR required the teachers to adapt to the new situation. It was not only a requirement to be proficient in the Slovak language, but also radically change their ideological attitude. Instead of Hungarian patriotism, which was a necessary condition for being accepted as a teacher in Hungary, teachers, regardless of their nationality, were required to exhibit a positive attitude to the Czechoslovak Republic. Suddenly, Hungarian patriotism was classified by the Czechoslovak state authorities as a hostile ideology and was punished by loss of job. Hungarian pedagogues, who constituted a significant part of the Hungarian intelligentsia, were deeply traumatized by this change. As a professional community whose living was based on the Hungarian language, their very professional existence was threatened. The new school administration, represented by the Ministry of Schools and National Enlightenment in Prague and by the Department of Schools in Bratislava, were fully aware of the ideological influence of teachers upon forming the attitudes of their pupils and students; and in that sense their relationship towards the CSR. Therefore, a hostile attitude to the Republic was not tolerated. The Minister Plenipotentiary for Slovakia repeatedly declared that the forming of the political and civic attitude of the young generation was in the hands of teachers and consequently also the future of the country, and therefore the process of hiring pedagogues had to be paid great attention to. According to the Law no. 64/1918 Zb. z. a n. adopted on December 10th 1918, teachers of state schools of the Hungarian Kingdom, as with other government employees, were retained in their positions on condition of performing a “promise of loyalty” to the Czechoslovak Republic. The teachers and professors were informed that if they were fluent in the Slovak language and performed the required Loyalty Promise to the CSR, they would be allowed to continue to teach. It was classified by the state authorities as a proof of allegiance to the Republic. The requirement of the Loyalty Promise to the CSR was, however, judged by many Hungarian teachers as illegal because the territory of Slovakia was according to international law still a part of Hungary. They were not willing to accept the existing situation and the inclusion of Slovakia into the CSR was considered as temporary; with the hope that the geopolitical situation would reverse back to a status quo ante. As a result many Hungarian teachers remained passive or refused outright to perform the Loyalty Promise to the CSR. The leading exponents of the Ministry of Schools and National Enlightenment in Prague and the Department of Schools in Bratislava were convinced that the functioning of Slovak schools would be possible only in the ideological framework of Czechoslovak patriotism and this could not be realized with the Hungarian teachers. Hungarian pedagogues were judged by government authorities as a priori untrustworthy. This resulted in mass dismissals of Hungarian pedagogues from schools in Slovakia, especially during the first months after the establishment of the CSR. According to records made by the Department of Schools and National Enlightenment in Bratislava, which was authorized to carry out the dismissals, in April 1919, 1,100 Hungarian teachers were dismissed. As well as this, before March 1919 approximately 300 teachers had already been dismissed with no warning. The total numbers of Hungarian teachers dismissed during the period from the end of 1918 till September 21st 1921 reached 2, 397 persons. 129 (5.38 %) teachers were subsequently re-hired. The reasons for the dismissal of Hungarian pedagogues according to the Czechoslovak authorities were: the absence of knowledge of the Slovak language, a reluctance to perform the promise of loyalty and a hostile attitude towards the Czechoslovak Republic. Many Hungarian teachers did not wait to be dismissed and left their posts at schools “voluntarily”. At the beginning of the 1920s, at all schools levels pedagogues were teaching who, regardless of their ethnic extraction, had received or were receiving their education in Hungarian educational institutions. Some of them were able to communicate in Slovak language, but few were proficient in Slovak to such an extent as to be able teach in this language. In that regard Hungarian teachers were at a great disadvantage. At the time of the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic there was a huge lack of teachers able to teach in the Slovak language. The authorities tried to solve the then situation through inviting Czech pedagogues to Slovakia. However, the arrival of Czech teachers was not always welcomed by the Slovak population and largely, and more especially, the Hungarian minority. The Czech teachers were perceived as intruders who had come to Slovakia to rob Hungarian teachers of their jobs, whereas Hungarian teachers were deemed by state authorities as essentially foreigners from the previous empire. Those pedagogues who were members of Hungarian opposition political parties were especially viewed suspiciously by the authorities.
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