The Trianon Treaty (June 4, 1920), its legacies, symbolism and interpretations, still divides countries and societies across the Carpathian basin. In Hungary, this anniversary remains largely intertwined, in both political and public discourse, with imageries of national dismemberment and historical injustice.
By contrast, in neighbouring Slovakia and Romania, the signing of the Trianon Treaty is associated with the acquisition of independent statehood and the liberation of the regions of Transylvania and the Banat, respectively. In addition to the aforementioned states, Serbia and Croatia also comprise former territories of the old Hungarian kingdom where ethnic Hungarian populations reside up to date. This piece provides a brief overview of perceptions of Hungary in Serbia and Croatia, as well as the situation of the ethnic Hungarian minorities in each state, a hundred years after the signing of the Treaty.
Serbian perceptions of Hungary
According to the national census of 2011, around 251,136 ethnic Hungarians resided in the Serbian autonomous province of Vojvodina (13% of the local population). The Alliance of Hungarians in Vojvodina/VMSZ is the largest party that claims to represent ethnic Hungarian interests and has participated in several coalition governments in Serbia since 2000. Although a richly diverse and multi-ethnic region, Vojvodina succeeded in withstanding interethnic friction to a remarkable degree during the outbreak of violent conflicts across the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Moreover, an extensive legal framework safeguards the collective rights of ethnic Hungarians and other minority groups on the provincial and the republican levels of authority.
