The Slovaks: “the best Hungarians” or “a free nation”?

The Slovaks as portrayed in the Hungarian press from 1914–1918

Abstract

In his study, the author analyses the changing ways in which the Slovak speaking population of the north-western part of the Hungarian Kingdom was represented during the years of the Great War. This period was permeated by the predominant ideology of the Magyar political nation, which presented all the inhabitants of Translitania, including those of non-Magyar ethnicity as Magyars and as the sole nation within the borders of the Hungarian Kingdom. The non-Hungarian population of the Kingdom was subsequently presented to the world in ways that would fit this idea of a unitary Hungarian nation. The present article is based on the analysis of five Magyar regional newspapers in which the author explores the usage of various categories and stereotypes featured in representations of the Slovaks. The author argues that the images of the Slovaks presented to the public before and during the Great War were neither unvarying nor inadvertently distorted (as is usually assumed by historians), but that, on the contrary, they were diverse and contingent upon the prevailing Hungarian nationalist ideology as well as upon developments in the domestic and foreign political arenas.