Hungarian Slovenes - History

History

The ancestors of modern Slovenes have lived in the western part of the Carpathian basin since at least the 6th century AD; their presence thus dates back to before the Magyars came into the region. They formed the Slavic Balaton Principality and were later incorporated in Arnulf's Kingdom of Carantania which extended to most of modern south-eastern Austria, southern Hungary and northern Croatia. After the Hungarian invasion in the late 9th century, most of the local Slavs were magyarized. Between the 11th and 12th century, the current linguistic and ethnic border between the Hungarian and Slovene people was established.

In the 10th century, the western border of the Kingdom of Hungary was fixed on the river Mura, so the region between the Mura and the Rába rivers, known in Slovene as Slovenska krajina and in Hungarian as Vendvidék, inhabited by Slovenes, remained in Hungary. After World War One, there was a failed attempt by a small group of Hungarian Slovenes to acquire independence (see Slovene March and Mura Republic). In 1919, the majority of the region was annexed to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed to Yugoslavia), and became known under the name of Prekmurje. Only a small portion in the Vas County, in the triangle between the northern border of Slovenia, the Raba river and Austria, remained in Hungary.

In 1920, the number of Slovenes that had remained in Hungary was estimated at around 7,000, but in the next decades many of them emigrated to other Hungarian cities, mostly to Budapest. In 2001, there were around 5,000 Slovenes in Hungary, of whom only around 3,000 remained in their original settlement zone in western Vas county, with others living mostly in larger urban areas.