06/04/2026
Interesting read for today, copied and shared.
My thoughts on the Day of National Unity - commemorating the Trianon Treaty...
Today, I dedicate my posts to this event that has been haunting us, Hungarians and non-Hungarians, for more than a hundred years, and none of us could either swallow it or spit it out ever since.
In 2010, the Hungarian Parliament declared June 4 the Day of Hungarian National Unity. This day is a reminder of the common heritage of all Hungarians, regardless of their citizenship, and that all Hungarians, whether they live within or outside the borders of the mother country, are an integral part of the Hungarian nation.
The day, June 4, was selected to mark the anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920, in the Palace of Trianon at Versailles, France, between the representatives of Hungary and the Allied Powers.
As a result of the treaty, Hungary lost more than two-thirds of its historical territories and two-thirds of its inhabitants, who became overnight citizens of foreign countries, some of them newly formed.
June 4 is a reminder of their existence, a celebration of the unity of all Hungarians, wherever they live. I would include all the Hungarians who were forced to leave for other continents. How many of you are there?
Anyway, this is a hot issue, and deserves attention: for the sake of our non-Hungarian neighbors as well, because they learned about it from a totally different perspective in school.
I would also like to call the attention of the Western European and American people to this part of the history because it is hard to comprehend the modern age in Eastern and Central Europe without scrutinizing this issue a little bit deeper.
Historically, it is essential to be aware of some of the roots of modern ethnic conflicts in Central Europe. Understanding history might help us to overcome barriers.
Let us start our journey in Buda, 1541, when Hungary was torn into three parts, and the Turks occupied 40% of the kingdom. At this time, even the western part of the Kingdom of Hungary was larger than the modern state.
The brutal ethnic changes suffered during the wars against the Ottoman Empire and sometimes against the Habsburgs eventually paved the way to Trianon, 1920.
As it was said, in 1920, the Kingdom of Hungary lost 72% of its territories and 3 million Hungarians found themselves in new countries.
The sad news is that about 50% of those Hungarians, over one million people, have disappeared during the last one hundred years from the surrounding countries.
Every third Hungarian in modern Hungary has family stories about this: quite sad ones.
Stories of deprivation, humiliation, massacres, beatings, legal discrimination, mass deportations, and the systematic forced assimilation, the destruction of Hungarian cultural, educational, and built heritage. In other words, a genocide.
Who knows about this in the West?
However, I firmly believe that historical grievances can be healed based on 21st-century European values. Education in social media is one of the key factors if we want to evade the propaganda of warmongers and extremists.
I have come to an agreement so far with almost all my non-Hungarian readers from the surrounding states that the love of the land can be more important than the language barriers.
But the land includes its history, so let us cherish the legacy of everybody who contributed to its development without the intention of eradicating or falsifying the roles of any of its inhabitants who lived and died in it.
The respect must be mutual and honestly given.
Here you can read my article on some of the ethnic changes that paved the way to Trianon:
https://www.hungarianottomanwars.com/essays/ethnic-changes-in-hungary-due-to-the-ottoman-wars/
Below, there is a map that shows the historical Kingdom of Hungary, where the rate of the Hungarian-speaking population in 1490 was about 75-80%, but it was 25-38% in 1790. Beware, there are no good maps, but I could find this one as an illustration.
Ethnic changes in Hungary due to the Ottoman wars. We know that the time-span of Ottoman-Hungarian wars is roughly between 1368 to 1791. Yet, we consider the "150 years" of the Ottoman occupation between 1541-1699 as the most destructive part of it. The population growth in Ottoman Hungary
