Greater Hungary (political Concept) - Modern Era

Modern Era

The following table lists areas with Hungarian population in neighboring countries today:

Most people in present-day Hungary reject annexation of neighboring lands though the general public opinion in Hungary is that the Treaty of Trianon was not fair. Territorial revisionist organizations want to change borders and to create Greater Hungary. However, even among these groups there are differences: some want to include only areas with Hungarian ethnic majority, while others want to restore the borders of the pre-Trianon Kingdom of Hungary regardless of ethnic compositions of neighboring countries.

The majority of Hungarians both within Hungary and in neighboring countries accept the Trianon borders as a geopolitical reality and do not strive to alter the status quo, especially not by violent means. However, the fact that one fourth of the world's ethnic Hungarians lives outside the borders of Hungary is not emotionally accepted by most Hungarians. There is a growing opinion among Hungarians that if the Hungarian minorities were granted a certain level of cultural autonomy or self-government, like those in Tyrol for instance, this would be sufficient to preserve the national character of the Hungarian minorities abroad, and would thus remove the emotional anxiety most Hungarians feel about the Hungarian minorities' future. For the host countries, this solution might bear the advantage of creating additional loyalty towards the state, via a local self-government that these minorities can perceive as their own. It is notable that concern for cultural preservation, sometimes even for equal social chances of and legal dealings toward Hungarians grows with increased economic hardships of the given country, no one worries for the cultural preservation of Hungarians living in Slovenia or Austria.

The important difference between emotional attachment of Hungarians to some territories that were not left to Hungary after the Treaty of Trianon and the general acceptance of the current situation as a geopolitical reality is often ignored by some members of the surrounding nations (see Gheorghe Funar, Ján Slota etc.) and manifestations of a mainly cultural affection are often depicted as irredentist tendencies, especially by the right wing parties in Hungary's neighbors. Another typical mistake is to identify Hungarian political parties or cultural organizations that fight for cultural autonomy (some even for regional autonomy, both are accepted forms of self-government in Europe, but the alarm caused by the latter in the political climate caused by history can be considered justified by more types of people in the surrounding countries) as irredentist groups that support border revision.

During the Communist era, Marxist-Leninist ideology and Stalin's theory on nationalities considered nationalism to be a malady of a bourgeois capitalism. In Hungary, the minorities' question disappeared from the political agenda. Communist hegemony guaranteed a facade of inter-ethnic peace while failing to secure a lasting accommodation of minority interests in unitary states.

The fall of Communism aroused the expectations of Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries and left Hungary unprepared to deal with the issue. Hungarian politicians campaigned to formalize the rights of Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries, thus causing anxiety in the region. They secured agreements on the necessity for guaranteeing collective rights and formed new Hungarian minority organizations to promote cultural rights and political participation. In Romania, Slovakia, and Yugoslavia (now Serbia), former Communists secured popular legitimacy by accommodating nationalist tendencies that were hostile to minority rights.

The latest controversy caused by the government of Viktor Orbán is when Hungary took the presidency over the EU in 2011 when the "historical timeline" features was presented - among other cultural, historical and scientific symbols or images of Hungary - an 1848 map of Greater Hungary, when Budapest ruled over large swathes of its neighbors.