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Trianon

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The Crown of St. Stephen of Hungary

Looking back at the treaties that ended the First World War, it appears that the Hungarian half of the Kingdom of Austria-Hungary was made to pay the heavier price for what was essentially the Emperor Franz Joseph’s decision to go to war against the Serbs for assassinating the heir to the throne in Sarajevo. According to Wikipedia:

The treaty regulated the status of the Kingdom of Hungary and defined its borders generally within the ceasefire lines established in November-December 1918 and left Hungary as a landlocked state that included 93,073 square kilometres (35,936 sq mi), 28% of the 325,411 square kilometres (125,642 sq mi) that had constituted the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary (the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy). The truncated kingdom had a population of 7.6 million, 36% compared to the pre-war kingdom’s population of 20.9 million.Though the areas that were allocated to neighbouring countries had a majority of non-Hungarians, in them lived 3.3 million Hungarians – 31% of the Hungarians – who then became minorities.

How Trianon Chopped Hungary to Bits

Pieces of Hungary went to Yugoslavia, Romania (the largest chunk, all of Transylvania), Russia, Czechoslovakia, and even Austria. What did Austria lose for its participation in the war? Essentially, Bohemia (to Czechoslovakia) and the much of the Tirol (to Italy). The new borders of Hungary became to larger of the two green areas in the above map.

I can understand separating out the Slovenians, Croatians, Russians, and Slovaks; but a great injustice was done to the Hungarians of Transylvania, who are treated as second-class citizens of Romania.

The Phantom Lands of Eastern Europe

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Map of Galicia

If you’ve read any of the literature of Eastern Europe, you will see names of provinces and whole countries that you have difficulty in locating on a map. Names like Galicia (not to be confused with the Galicia region of Northwest Spain), Bukovina, Volhynia, Moldavia, Moldova (this one’s currently a country in its own right), Wallachia, and Silesia—just to name a few.

Most are pawns in the endless historical struggles between Russia, Poland, Germany, the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Balkans. Most of the time, they were absorbed into an adjoining larger country (such as Wallachia into Romania), or split between countries (such as Galicia going to Poland, Russia, Austria, or the Ukraine). Only Moldova, the former Moldovan SSR ( Soviet Socialist Republic), is an independent nation today—at least for the time being.

Much of the problem is in the shifting borders affected by the partitions of Poland and the vagaries of fortune of the Ukraine, which was in recent history a political football between Poland, Germany, and Russia.

When one thinks about it, there are only a relatively few countries in the area that have maintained their independence, albeit with constantly shifting borders and political affiliations, over the centuries. Germany and Russia are two examples of relative stability, with just about everyone else being stretched, shrunk, or absorbed multiple times.

Much of the Eastern European emigration to the United States, Canada, and other Western countries is a result of this constant instability. It would be difficult for me to walk down certain streets in Los Angeles without encountering the children of immigrants from these phantom lands of Eastern Europe.