The number of Hungarians has decreased shockingly since the Peace Treaty of Trianon
Today marks the 103rd anniversary of the Peace Treaty of Trianon, which followed the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WWI. Since Hungary was part of the empire and had been multiethnic for hundreds of years, it lost 2/3rd of its territory. However, despite President Wilson’s majestic principles, 3.3 million Hungarians became citizens of the hostile successor states like Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Ever since, the rate of Hungarians has been decreasing in every region separated from the motherland.
Hungary was not even invited to the peace conference of Versailles. The first time Count Albert Apponyi could express the serious errors resulting in the separation of millions of Hungarians was in January 1920, when the treaty was ready. Even though he held his speech in English, Italian and French, he could not modify the the victors’ will. Since the US delegation went home and London allowed Paris to define the European order, nobody helped Hungary despite their sympathy.
As a result, Hungary lost 2/3rd of its former territories with more than 3.3 million Hungarians, 1/3rd of the nation. On paper, these communities were granted individual and collective rights. However, in practice, the successor states wanted to assimilate them.
Trianon made hundreds of thousands of Hungarians flee the land of their ancestors, and the Paris Peace Treaties following WWII made that even worse. For example, Yugoslavia committed mass murders among the Hungarians of Délvidék, while Czechoslovakia tried everything to deport all Hungarians who they considered a national threat and rejected even citizenship. Thankfully, they were only partly successful. But even between 1985 and 2011, 319 thousand Hungarians living in Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, and Slovakia moved to Hungary.
In the last 103 years, the number of Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs, Ukrainians increased drastically in the former Hungarian territories. Meanwhile, the number of Hungarians stagnated or even fell, which clearly marks shocking population decline.
During the Communist era, nobody could talk about the Hungarians living abroad. Thus, many Hungarians living in Hungary forgot about them. Some even believed the Communist propaganda: the Hungarians living abroad are only Yugoslavians, Romanians, and Slovaks speaking Hungarian. Since 1989/1990, many things have changed. The Orbán government unified the nation by granting Hungarians living abroad double citizenship, the right to vote and giving them a lot of money for development, education, and culture annually.
However, the number of Hungarians is continuously falling in the Carpathian Basin, including the territory of Hungary. József Antall, the first freely elected Hungarian prime minister after the fall of Communism, spoke about himself as the prime minister of 15 million Hungarians. In 1990, the number of Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin was 13 million. More than three decades later, the number of Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin does not reach 11.5 million. That is a 1.5 million decline, mostly concerning the Hungarian communities abroad since Hungary’s population decline was “only” around 600,000 between 1990 and 2023 (from 10.3 million to 9.7 million).
Because of the negative discrimination and the difficulties they face due to using their language or getting high-level education in their mother-tongue, the outflow of the Hungarians continues. But they no longer come to Hungary: they move abroad. In most cases, two or three generations later, the Hungarian heritage is just a memory of the grandparents and great-grandparents.
Source: