Unexpected links to the familiar, exhumed from the past. According to Claudio Magris’ Danube, a prominent Hungarian diplomat telegrammed Béla Kun, the newly installed Communist leader of a newly independent Hungary, on May 15, 1919, with the following suggestion:

“Propose requesting American Protectorate of Hungary and if possible declare Hungary a State of the American Union stop.”

Kun’s reply, two days later, in French: “Nous avons reçu votre dépêche,” which Magris translates as a laconic “Communication noted.”

The socialist Kun was never likely to take his aristocratic negotiator’s advice. He was rather desperate for support from Lenin’s Russia, which was itself bogged down in civil war. To win public support for his then two-month-old government, Kun turned instead to winning back lost territory.

A key focus was Transylvania, previously a province of Hungary, but which held a Romanian ethnic majority. The Romanian army had already occupied much of the territory, leading in part to the resignation of Hungary’s government and Kun’s rise to power. On June 28, a few days after Baron Szilassy pleaded with Kun to cast his lot with the Americans, the Western powers officially awarded Transylvania to Romania as a part of the Treaty of Versailles.

In reality, the treaty was premature. Hungarian and Romanian forces were still at war. But not for long – Kun’s military collapsed after only few months, and by early August, Romanian forces had occupied Budapest, and Kun himself had fled to the young Soviet Union (where he would ultimately be killed in a Stalinist purge).

Better to have sought American statehood? In a region where political certainties were collapsing along with an empire rooted far deeper in history than were America’s own 150 years of statehood, crazier ideas were being floated.

A vocal segment of today’s right-wing revival in Hungary wants Transylvania and the rest of the former “Greater Hungary” back. It isn’t likely to happen, but it will make relations with Romania and Slovakia tense as long as the right wing is in power.

It’s worth noting that common ground does exist, however. A scholar of pálinka in Hungary, Géza Balázs, notes that the word for the country’s national liquor actually comes from the Slovakian language. And in Romania too, or at least Transylvania, plum spirits are sometimes called pălincă as well as tuica.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 4:52 pm and is filed under history, hungary, romania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.