Policy Influencing Society after Trianon in Kassa

Pál Koudela: Policy Influencing Society after Trianon in Kassa

Central European Pol. Sci. Review (CEPS). Vol. 14. No. 51. Spring 2013. 62-73 1

POLICY INFLUENCING SOCIETY AFTER

TRIANON IN KASSA Pál Koudela

Abstract

Policy makes such a big influence on society and economy that social structure

economic level can change rapidly. Demographic conditions changes by changing

political circumstances. But something in bourgeoisie, in its values, communities

doesn’t change so easily and in our essay we show the results of our researches of this

phenomena with parallel life spans, network compositions and demographic, political,

economic contexts. The period and place is the First Czechoslovakian Republic but understanding contexts are general.

Keywords: Hungarian Minority, Czechoslovakia, Integration, Minority Policy

Purposes, background, methods

This essay concludes the results of a series of studies

on the question ‘how and how far could changes in macro

dimensions like economy, politics, language, demography

influence micro dimensions like values, norms, social spaces.

In other words the question is how much continuity remains in

the depth of society despite the discontinuity on a macro level

during the given historical period. In this sense the historical

theme is only coincidental and not the aim. Our foremost

consideration was the dynamic approach to society, placing

changes in the foreground.1

On the other hand the historical time and place in itself

was interesting and worth researching. There are excellent

studies on this theme – e.g. Éva Kovács’s researches – but

there are still a lot to learn about the micro society of the era

1 Lepetit, Bernard: Építészet, földrajz, történelem. In: Czoch Gábor - Sonkoly Gábor: Társadalomtörténet másképp. A francia társadalomtörténet új útjai a kilencvenes években. Csokonai Kiadó, Debrecen 39. o.



and obviously there is still much to discover.2 We also want to

contribute to this historical theme.

Changes in cultural values were mainly influenced by

changes in economic, political and as an immediate effect in

demographic circumstances. Hungary suffered severe losses in

the First World War but the Treaty of Trianon stating peace

between the Allies of World War I. and Hungary in 1920

caused even bigger damages on the country. With the newly

stated borders Hungary lost the 72 % of its territory and 64 %

of its population. 3.3 million Hungarian ethnicity got outside

of the new country - 31 % of the left population. Five of the

former Hungarian Kingdom's largest cities were annexed by

the new Border States including Kassa the present Košice in

Slovakia and that time Czechoslovakia. Other beneficiaries

were Romania and Yugoslavia. War reparation payments,

army limitations were also part of the Agreement.3

A new state formed out from the Austro-Hungarian

Empire after the war as the northern border state of Hungary:

Czechoslovakia. The City of Kassa/Košice belonged to this

new Republic with the capital of Prague. But Prague was far in

the west and the country had two different ethnicity: the Czech

and the Slovak - only a quite new philosophical school defined

the two as a whole: the so called "Czechoslovakism". Tomáš

Garrigue Masaryk the first president of the new Republic was

the main philosopher of this idea. The economic and political

superiority of the Czech caused defenselessness in the Slovak

part: Czech factories were founded flowing capital to the

Czech centers, and only a plenipotentiary ministry governed

Slovakia from Pozsony (Bratislava now and after 1920). New

2 Karády Viktor és Mitter, Wolfgang (Szerk.) (1990): Bildundswesen und Sozialstruktur in Mitteleuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Köln, Wien, Böhlau Verlag. Peter Slaner (Ed.) (1992): Ethnokulturelle Prozesse in Gross-Städten Mitteleuropas. Bratislava NÚ SAV. Elena Mannová (1997): (szerk.):Bürgertum und bürgerliche Gesellschaft in der Slowakei 1900–1989. AEP, Bratislava.

3 Romsics Ignác: A trianoni békeszerződés. Osiris, Budapest, 2001



administrative structure were created ruling the thousand years

old cultural and economic connections in population just like

the new borders did.4

The new borders cut finally the former trading, vehicular

lines and families or even cities. In the new state north-south

dimensioned administrative divisions came into existence in

advantage to proof less Hungarian ethnicity percentage just

like the changed method did in the new Czechoslovakian

census asking nationality instead of mother tongue. No wonder

that app. six/seven hundred thousand Hungarian migrated into

the remained Hungary. In the newly created states

governments required a mortifying oath for the state to proof

loyalty from Hungarians left in their homeland to keep their

jobs but many a time despite taking the oath they were fired. In

Kassa like in other cities the direction of every institution

changed. Czech people arrived even into schools to teach. Jus

on example of anomalies to mention: in the Trade School after

firing teachers and changing language to Czech no one student

remained because none of them were speaking Czech. As a

consequence Czech students were brought into the school

uprooted from their homeland. Crossing the new borders were

strictly regulated and controlled permitting very few chance

per a year disregarding family membership. Official language

changed but in major cities like Kassa people were spoken

Hungarian. In the interest of changing it immigration from

mostly Slovak villages were forced. As a consequence of

these: forced immigration of Slovaks, forced emigration of

Hungarians, asking nationality and introducing Czechoslovak

as a new nationality and Jew as not a religion but nationality

(most of them were Hungarian) census data showed major

changes from 1910 to 1919 and two years later a repeated

Czechoslovakian census.5

4 Koudela Pál: A kassai polgárság 1918 előtt és után.

www.lib.uni-corvinus.hu/phd/koudela_pal.pdf, 2007 5 Koudela Pál: Trianon hatása a határmenti és határon túli

városok népesedésére. In: Beszteri Béla (szerk.) Magyarország határ menti térségeinek és városainak fejlődése a rendszerváltás és az



Composition of nationality or mother tongue in Kassa (%)

Hungarian German Czechoslovak Ruthenian Jew Other

1910 75,4 7,2 14,8 0,5 - 2,1

1919 38,4 5,3 48,8 0,2 - 7,3

1921 22,7 4,3 60,8 0,8 10,6 0,8

1930 19,8 5,1 61,5 1,3 10,1 1,2

Surces: Censuses of 1910, 1919, 1921, 1930

In such circumstances the question was how far social

progress was influenced and/or social values remained. We can

view a given social formation in two different ways at the

same time. Which kind we see depends on our approach. The

two kinds of virtual reality are after all two kinds of

interpretation of the same world. To look at both kinds of

explanation together can take us closer to understanding its

reality. Like every life history narrative, this is also a

somewhat subjective representation. The narrative analysis

draws the attention to social processes which influenced the

evolving personality of the person remembering, or which

influences their memories directly.6 In this memoir, the “hero”

– Ferenc Sziklay’s son – writes the stories of the past from his

viewpoint at the time of writing (the 1970’s). This is similar to

the earlier and later reminiscences. In interviews people

remember under the influence of narrated time and “current

present”. They reflect on moods and memories of the time of

their story.7

Európai Uniós tagságunk következtében. MTA VEAB, Veszprém, 342-360. o. 2010 6 Majtényi György: Mobilitás és életstílus. In: A mesterség iskolája. Tanulmányok Bácskai Vera 70. születésnapjára. Szerkesztette: Bódy Zsombor – Mátay Mónika – Tóth Árpád. Budapest, 2000. 429–449. o. 443. o. 7 Gyáni Gábor: Emlékezés és oral history. In: Gyáni Gábor: Emlékezés, emlékezet és a történelem elbeszélése. Budapest, 2000. 128–144. o.



It is generally accepted that everything which is

written in the form of stories creates a complicated chain of

actions and contains a determined direction at the same time.8

So both the necrologies and László Sziklay’s memoir go in a

determined direction too, and in this sense these are

teleological like every biography.9 Interpersonal connections

bare the influences of the narrative tradition, so the narrative

tradition itself influences our senses. This pre-forms the

writing itself and what is more pre-forms thinking. Generally

we want to create a story in which components fit with each

other and to eliminate inconsistencies that would naturally

occur in real life.10 Not only the history itself, but the extracted

knowledge can be a narrative.11 The difference between linear

and configuration order can be described in the difference

between life history (Lebenslauf) and biography (Biographie).

Life history is the accumulation of countless acts, experiences

and feelings in this sense. The self is a pure consequence of

these data. Biography is not only a form of self thematisation

but an interpreting process realized with the instituted forms of

representations (confession, testimony, autobiography)

delivered from society. This process reduces the countless and

complex data to a biographical schema creating a new

8 MacIntyre, Alasdair (1999): Az erény nyomában. Erkölcselméleti tanulmány. Osiris, Budapest. 289. o. 9 Bourdieu, Pierre: (1986): L’Illusion biographique. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1986. június (62-63. sz.). 69-72. o. idézi Gueniffey, Patrice (1998): A biográfia a megújuló biográfiatörténetben. (www.lib.jgytf.u-szeged.hu/aetas/2000_3) 72. jegyzet. 10 Spence, Donald (2001): Az elbeszélő hagyomány. In: László János – Thomka Beáta (szerk.) Narratívák 5. Narratív pszichológia. 121-131. o. Kijárat, Budapest. 122. o. 11 Thomka Beáta (2000): Előszó In: Narratívák 4. A történelem poétikája. Szerkesztette és válogatta: Thomka Beáta. Kijárat Kiadó. Budapest, 2000.

http://www.lib.jgytf.u-szeged.hu/aetas/2000_3



possibility of reflection.12 The reconstructed story offers us the

structure for interpreting which originally we wrote down on a

superficial level. These are also important, but we must look at

them like secondary values.

At the same time it is chronological biography that

gives us a good opportunity to interpret and explain social

identity. For this reason chronology stays a basic structural

element henceforth.

We mostly agree with Peter Burke’s approach. This

says that structures can be illustrated with narratives.13 This is

the basis of systematic and continuous reflection.

The formation of the sources carries some meaning

through which we find out about both the author and the

culture itself. This kind of interpretation lets us find and

decode latent meanings which we wouldn’t be able to find on

the surface level of the text.14 We got an interesting picture

from comparing the correspondence with the memoir, the

necrologies, interviews and biographies. The narrative reading

of different sources showed a similar lifespan although the

sources themselves were quite different. The memoir written

by Sziklay Ferenc’s son, László contains the image he formed

of his father, which is an interesting structural element in itself.

It has a double structure, on the one hand an idealized lifeline

12 Hahn, Alois (1987): Identität und Selbstthematisierung In: Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis: Bekenntnis und Geständnis, (Szerk.) Hahn, Alois, Kapp, Volger, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 12-17. o. 13 Burke, P. (2000): Az eseménytörténet és az elbeszélés felélesztése. In Narratívák 4. A történelem poétikája. szerk. Thomka B. Kijárat Kiadó 42. o. 14 Biernacki, Richard: Method and Metaphor after the New Cultural History. In: Beyond the Cultural Turn. New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture. Szerkesztette: Bonnel, Victoria O. – Hunt, Lynn. Berkely – Los Angeles – London, 1999. 73. o., 83. o.; Halttunen, Karen: Cultural History and the Challenge of Narrativity. In: Beyond the Cultural Turn. 166–167. o.



and on the other the “tragedy”15 shown in contrast with the

first. We can find the bourgeois values in which Sziklay

Ferenc was brought up, behind the contrast of these two ways

of life. The story insinuates that the community is responsible

for the individual’s fate, because the reason for every step our

hero makes towards his demise, can be found in the

disintegration of the original community. History itself is

responsible for the community’s disintegration, but this is only

of secondary relevance from this perspective, as it stands

outside the perspective of the individual. This structural

element is accentuated by the imagery of the hero’s behavior:

he does everything for the community. Not surprisingly, these

same biographical elements can be found in the

correspondence and also in the necrologies and later

biographies.

We analyzed the social network of a cultural club

called Kazinczy Társaság based on its members’ lists in the

period of dualism; and the network of our hero between the

two world wars based on his correspondence and guest book.

As we have two different sources of data, we need to mention

them separately. We measured society’s plurality at the turn of

the century with the nexuses among the bourgeoisie and

gentlemen. This was based on their participation in public life

together. We analyzed the occupational composition of the

members’ lists of the Kazinczy club.16 In this database we

assumed the connections to be homogeneous, and were simply

interested in the distribution of the occupations and social

statuses. We needed this only as part of the first hypothesis.

The procedure is reasonable with regards to society’s history

and everyday life. The members’ lists and occupations were

obtained from the club’s yearbooks. The second database was

15 White, Hayden: Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. 8. th. Ed. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, London. 1993. 1–42. 16 Analyzing networks of clubs is very often in elite researches. E.g. Laumann, E.O.- Pappi, F. (1973): New directions in the study of elites. American Sociological Review, 38. 212-230. o.



made by record linkage. Perfect precision is not guaranteed

with this procedure, but a method in several steps, with at least

three independent coordinates, gives the most realistic result

from our sources.17

The network’s specific structure called for an

independent study in which representative sampling was given

more of an emphasis. The database contains two different

kinds of data: attribute and relational.18 Most questions were

interested in the social composition of the networks of the

middle classes after Trianon – thus in the distributions.19 Even

more complicated methods wouldn’t bring us more

information that would bring us closer to the causality behind

the answers, for example why social distribution is the way it

is?20 We have to note that the database thus created is

essentially different from the usual ones used in network

analysis.21 It is not composed of more cores (centrums) with an

average of twenty connections (ties) but of only one core with

708 connections. Accordingly, the traditional methods were

not fit for our analysis. Patterns in networks therefore also

became important. We took into consideration Maurizio

Gribaudi’s works22 as methodological background.

17 History and Computing IV. (1992): (szerk. P. Denley – D. Hopkins), Manchester. 57. o. Mawdsley E.- Munck T. (1996): Számítógép a történettudományban. Osiris, Budapest. 181-189. o. 18 Scott, J. (1991): Social Network Analysis. Sage, London. 2-3. o. 19 Rudas T. (1993): Kontingencia táblák elemzése. Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest. 75 o. 20 Gokhale D. V.-Kullback S. (1978): The Information in Contingency Tables. Marcel Dekker. 5-7. o. 21 Walker, M. E.-Wasserman, S.-Wellman, B. (1994): Statistical Models for Social Support Networks. In: (szerk.) Wasserman, S.-Galaskiewicz J. Advances in Social Network Analysis. Sage, Thousand Oaks. 53-79. o. és 54-55. o. 22 Gribaudi, M. (1995): Diszkontinuitások a társadalomban. Egy konfigurációs modell. In: Czoch G.-Sonkoly G. (szerk.) Társadalomtörténet másképp. Csokonai, Debrecen. 105-137. o.



We also used classical structural methods of analyzing

middle classes. We analyzed the most important distributions

of the chosen stratum of teachers: habitation, earnings, attained

level of education, distribution by gender, religious

denomination, etc. (Analyzed network’s core person was a

teacher.) These created a structure of their position in local

society. We found also answers to questions of how and how

far the social arenas and geographical segregation changed

under the influence of Trianon, and its evident consequences.

Institutional and legal structure and changes in it was

considered as natural context.

We needed to create a propozography by way of

parallel life histories. This makes a new context and shows

some possibilities for further research. We can further clarify

the picture of society, and place it into historical perspective

more easily. Biography can provide empirical evidence for

social norms, because these were the most typical and

statistically most common types of life spans.23 Different

walks of lives represent the socially typical therefore,

determined by the historical circumstances. Not only context

influences lives – this was the reason to study social

subsystems – but lives influence social context too. The value

system introduced by these walks of lives adds a new

dimension to the analyses.

We also analyzed the demographical changes of Kassa.

The macro environment of the local ethnos is not only a

context but also an independent analysis. Without this the

previous approaches wouldn’t be wholly understood.

Exploring structural demographic questions helped to draw a

larger context and to find the reasons of micro-level changes.

23 Levi, G. (1989): Les usages de la biographie. In: Annales ESC. 1989/6. 1325-1336. o.



The main conclusions and results

There develops a certain connection between the

individual’s fate, its determinants at the edge of history

(family, childhood, and personal neurotic conflicts) and the

will of the community in which this fate comes to existence.24

The community or its absence has an important relevance in

this social historical situation. Partly some older values have

remained, expecting a greater loyalty to the community in a

mostly urbanized, industrialized town. We could say that when

constructing a biography we do nothing else but transmit

between ‘world time’ (Weltzeit) and ‘living time’

(Lebenszeit).25 This lifespan makes it possible for us to have a

look and see if it shows something beyond itself, i.e. whether

we can look at it as some sort of identification with a social

role and also at the same time one’s distancing from these

roles. This is not an exclusion of the individual, as we can have

a better experience of him in the context of this game of

internalization vs. divergence.26 The reconstructed and

deconstructed biography of Sziklay Ferenc is not only

interesting because of his lifespan and fascinating personality

but because he manifests the values of the local ethnos/ethos of

Kassa. He is a representative of the imaginary community

organized by bourgeois ideology and values; an archetypical

representation of being ‘of Kassa’.

24 Besançon, Alain (1971): Psychoanalytische Geschichtsschreibung In: Wehler, Hans-Ulrich (szerk.): Geschichte und Psychoanalyse. Frankfurt a . M. – Berlin – Wien, 197. 91–140. o. 25 Ricoeur, Paul (1999): A történelem és a fikció kereszteződése, (ford.) Jeney Éva In: Ricoeur, Paul Válogatott irodalomelméleti tanulmányok (szerk., vál.) Szegedy-Maszák Mihály, Budapest, Osiris, 356-357. o. 26 Kohli, M. (1990): Társadalmi idő és egyéni idő. Az életút a modern társadalom szerkezetváltozásában. In: Időben élni. Történeti-szociológiai tanulmányok. (válogatta Gellériné Lázár Márta) Akad K. Budapest 175-213. o. 176. o.



The complexity of the individual is related to the

complexity of the community and the complexity of the

connections between these two. “Each social structure can be

understood as the result of the interaction of many personal

strategies”, and the reconstruction of this labyrinthine network

is just the object of microanalysis.27 The suppression of the

issue of education was a big step backwards in the

development and modernization of Kassa. Its importance is

obvious from the viewpoint of the Czechoslovakian

government: education was mostly the business of Hungarians.

To find Slovak teachers and students for graduate or any

higher level school was difficult. We can see this in case of the

trade school in which teachers and students came from Czech

towns and later they went back to find vacancies. This same

thing also resulted in the lack of emphasis on higher education

and the expansion of lower educational systems. We could

interpret the restrictions on religious schools as a sign of

modernization, and it is also known that the least flexible

teachers and pupils, those who accepted the new state the least

came from these. This is supported for example by the fact that

almost all the teachers of the suspended Premotrei Grammar

School taught in the Hungarian grammar school that was

illegally founded and run after 1918.

There were no significant differences between

different sources in the construction of Sziklay Ferenc’s life

history. The same fate emerged from his correspondence, from

his son’s memoir, the interviews, and the necrologies. This

could be seen as the result of all these different sources

emerging from the same background, the bourgeois values of a

past society, which can be seen not so much from the life story

of our hero, but from the image he created of himself made of

these values. This precisely is the product of collective

consciousness, which is shared by not only the members of the

past community, but also those who through the channels of

socialization inherited it or elements of it, i.e. their sons and

27 Ginzburg, Carlo (1993): Mikro-Historie. Zwei oder drei Dinge, die ich von ihr weiß. In: Historische Anthropologie. I. 1993. 169-192. o.



grandsons. The difference between the constructed biography

and the latent structure contains elements which are mostly

expectations. Expectations created by a disintegrating and in

the 70’s (the time of the son’s memoir) surely non-existent

community. These are the personal values of an absolute

devotion to community, to constructing it, and to the protection

that can be expected from it. Classic bourgeois values are

embedded into these: building culture, solidarity, loyalty,

being silent, diligence etc. These values can be observed

explicitly but they get their real meaning only this way, this

embedding in the community gives it its representative value.

The contextual basis of the local ethnos was created by

the legal, political, economic and social community of the

town in the early modern age and we could find them in the

depth of Kassa’s society in the period of dualism. In other

words: the type of segregation created by the bourgeoisie

during the centuries, the old, middle age-like spatial structure

in this town, and its distinct literacy didn’t change after the

turn in 1867. One of the most important pieces of evidence

was just the distribution of residential location observed from

teachers’ addresses. The obviously no longer existing city wall

and legal unity nonetheless live on in the life of the local

community and still influences peoples’ thoughts, minds,

values and life of the city. The central city structure, the

collective meanings of the inner city lives on. To be a member

of the town no longer requires one to have a piece of land or

building in the city centre, but these places still have a special

meaning. For example more than three fourth of teachers lived

in the centre, which verifies their homogeneity, even though

their earnings were heterogeneous. At the same time we can

see a new modernization in the transformation of the city’s

structure: new outskirts come into existence; suburbanization

begins in the 20’s and 30’s. Traditional demographic and

economic reasons are only part of the reason: political events

and social consequences play a role too.

The city centre kept some of its communal functions.

In the 30’s the small city centre was the only place for social

life despite the town’s considerable size, which was quite big



in the area with 70 000 inhabitants. The main public facilities

are still in the centre; it is not surprising that the new political

symbol, the Bat’a palace was also built here. To represent the

middle strata in Kassa was a puzzle, whose parts are the world

of the Monarchy and the society of towns in the motherland,

especially the one of Budapest. This way we get a new

dimension both in space and time. At the same time the

radically different context of the Czechoslovak Republic also

influenced the circumstances. The locality of Kassa is not the

only independent entity; in other cities we might find

something similar too.

The fact that a significant proportion of teachers

arrived from other parts of the country didn’t influence the

community’s human values, just like this fact had no effect on

values between the two wars. This is understandable, since the

survival of these specific ‘old fashioned’, sociopetal values

derives from the living on of the locality: the intellectual

isolation of the bourgeoisie, and the strength which made this

outlook viable, effective and a cooperative game. In previous

eras cities and their legal inhabitants – especially in the

highlands (Felvidék) – were bubbles in the country’s society.

This created the isolation necessary for a particular progress.

After 1848 though the possibility for this remains only virtual,

nevertheless we can see very similar values in a real

community after three generations. This phenomenon derives

from the previous continuous isolation.

These are very important facts. 86.5 % of teachers

were replaced because of the political change. The political,

legal, and official changes extended to individuals but not to

the upper organizational level: to locality, community. Social

spaces changed only slightly. After 1918 only the less

nationalist, most adaptable part of the Hungarian middle strata

stayed in the city and this made it possible for the local ethnos

to regenerate.

General modernization showed itself mostly in the

equalization in the differences in earnings. Contrary to the

Monarchy’s great differences in earnings the Czechoslovakian

Republic attempted to homogenize the middle strata; for



example to make primary school teachers’ earnings fall in line

with those of high school teachers. This equalizing tendency,

which made the whole strata more homogeneous, and which

had as its background the strong economy, indirectly affected

the whole of society by reducing its hierarchical structure. At

the same time this progress dissolved the middle strata’s

isolation, which was one of its most important characters. This

archaic feature was similar to the isolation of an organization

in which formally anybody can be a member but which

monopolizes and makes membership a privilege. This

aspiration for equality was not wholly successful because

while the growing salaries should have increased the prestige

of being a primary school teacher, the remaining gender

segregation contradicts this. The process of devaluing the

prestige of a teaching career couldn’t be reversed, assuming of

course that teachers ever had a higher prestige. The line of

demarcation between primary and secondary level teachers

existed henceforward despite the similarity in wages. This

despite the fact that the Czechoslovakian education system was

more developed than the Hungarian: e.g. the method of having

a scientific degree vs. the doctorate in the Monarchy which

was rather a feudal title. The network analysis clearly showed

that the strata of primary school teachers was not homogenous:

not everybody got left out of the local bourgeoisie. In Kassa

even in the period of the first Czechoslovakian Republic there

was a great possibility to be upwardly mobile and this shows

the openness of the local society.

The analysis demonstrated that in the period of

Dualism there were communities in Kassa that were accepting

in their personal relationships, rather than excluding. These

communities consisted of the members of the middle strata,

who also created organizations like Kazinczy Társaság, Kassai

Daloskör etc. Their composition was similar to the citizenry at

the beginning of the century: merchants, primary school

mistresses, aristocrats, judges, Christians and Jews were

members equally. These were real connections, coherent, real,

personal networks, not only organizations to make and diffuse

high culture or literature. Even to be a member signified an



open value system; to explicitly undertake this togetherness in

the city’s publicity has its special meaning.

The city’s traditional values were strong therefore and

this strength is verified by its continuity after the radical

changes caused by the peace-treaty of Trianon. The plurality

that showed itself in the relationships between the different

groups in the community during Dualism lives on even in this

period. We can see this in the structural features of the later

networks. At the background we can see a strong core of this

bourgeoisie: families living in the city or in the highland since

more generations. Different people form this core creating a

living community being friends, or relatives.

Teachers kept their leading positions in social life with

its aldermanic and educator character. Even if most of them

were not Hungarian.

In such a critical period it was natural that the most

basic and strongest connections came to the front, namely

kinship. After such a cataclysm-like change the predominant

trait in human relationships, i.e. the giving of help, was most

easily expressed within one’s own family, whose basis is

found in human nature. Any other type of connection is mostly

culturally determined consequently capable to be influenced by

external changes. Nonetheless there was a difference between

connections in the city and connections between Kassa and

Budapest. Reciprocal ties in Kassa etc spanned such a

complicated structure that wove itself through the entire life of

an individual, which lets us come to the conclusion that the

individuals involved in these relationships could expect

cooperation and reciprocity. At the same time similar

relationships in Hungary were only superficial, temporary and

didn’t create any kind of structure. The reasons for this, like

being tied to an area, belonging to a minority, greater

dependence on one another, or at least the experience of this,

all seem to be givens of the situation. Yet in their background

we can see tradition at work, since these ties were part of the

tradition of the system, and these were not broken by any sort

of border.



We have seen the living on of archaic forms therefore,

but still there was a feature of this town in this period which

showed modernization: the importance of connections in the

workplace. This is a modern phenomenon and gives a new face

to the structure of connections. But the two phenomena are not

contradictory. The living on of this archaic form can be

described as a sign of viability. From such viewpoint this is not

even a disadvantage but rather a positive feature. This is an

organic structure helping not only individuals’ successes but

those of the community too.

We couldn’t give a convincing picture of Trianon’s

influence on the traditional bourgeois openness. From the

network of ties we found that Budapest stayed in the centre of

the network but new nodes appeared, most importantly Prague.

Many new clerks came to the town in this period, mostly

Czechs. The network doesn’t contain ties of this kind but

seclusion is not an evident reason of this. We have good reason

to believe that workplace connections are the dominant

influence on the directions of these relationships. The central

position of Hungary, especially Budapest, confirms this

assumption. Politics also influenced personal micro worlds a

lot in this period. Politics of minorities creates ethnically based

professional organizations and ethnic communities. All of

these don’t imply a fundamental change in the values of the

bourgeoisie. Our assumption is based on the previous period’s

tolerance for ethnic, linguistic and religious differences and

plurality. The values appeared in the biography too.

How did new arrivals influence the local community?

Both macro dimensions and parallel life spans showed that

they had no problem with integration. But for us the question

is more interesting from the point of view of the accepting

community which doesn’t show any significant changes that

could be expected. Neither structural nor organic sub systems

changed in the town. New components only took place of older

ones and partly gave back these places after 1938. This

confirms our thesis that a social pattern like this is viable and

strong enough not to disappear by a high rate of change of its

components.



The local ethnos – living on in Kassa as a content of

social forms – carried values: self-discipline, diligence,

tolerance, plurality, and putting the community first. We

studied primarily the strategies of for survival of Hungarian

society, and the components of the microcosm also came to be

in the context of the Hungarian language and culture. After

such a great institutional, political change when even the

structure of the traditional institutional system almost

completely changes, it was the community itself that formed

the institution that gave a chance for social spaces to live on

and this is the reason why community had a value of its own

and worked so well. We have seen this in the biography of

Sziklay Ferenc.28 Typical life spans in section four showed that

people arriving in Kassa after Trianon still came into a strong

receiver community. We also saw life stories that gave context

to the biography.

The rapid evolution of Kassa’s population in the 20’s

and 30’s only partly can be described as a sign of

modernization. The structure of sectors didn’t show the same

picture, despite the Czech economy’s great modernizing

influence. This fast development indirectly delayed the change

in social structures and we also found political aims behind

this. We found a high rate of illiterates in the population during

the Dualism despite Kassa being an educational and cultural

centre of the country. This gave the same result we got from

analyzing the networks. The cohesion of local community was

very strong, open and carried positive values. At the same time

the community was very small and was not able or willing to

integrate everybody in town, only perhaps by free-will.

28 Koudela Pál: A magyar érdekérvényesítés intézményesülése a két világháború közötti Felvidéken In: Társadalmi és gazdasági érdekérvényesítés a XX. században. (szerk. Dobák Miklós) L'Harmattan, Budapest, 2010, 119-138. o.



Conclusions

There is one general consequence beyond all this: we

can talk not only about changes in Kassa’s society but about

the subsistence for a whole century of an entity that was

influenced only by local changes. This is a natural and

ordinary phenomenon in itself, but in this case nationwide

economic and social changes abolished the original, specific

features of local society and this caused a dissonance. As we

have seen Kassa’s society was not closed during the period of

Dualism. They were continuously connected with their wider

environment, with the whole country. The consequences of

Trianon and the following migration are obvious in this regard.

Despite all of these specialty we discovered was viable and

was able to survive in a generally different environment. These

consequences are interesting not only to know more about the

past but to know more about our societies in the present. The

studied mechanism can happen in a different society at a

different time, even in the future, and anywhere. The specifics

of these values, respect for each other, tolerance etc, and how

well they coincide with our current values, give a greater

importance to this question. Of course when an event has

multiple causes it is impossible to tell the proportions of these

causes in causing the event, especially as some of these

‘causes’ influence each other too. We created the various

different contexts just to solve this problem.



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Policy Influencing Society after Trianon in Kassa

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