Irredentism, Being a Minority, and Revision From Different Perspectives A Picture of Southern Slovakia in Magyar Élet

The Hungarian nationhood policies review, Magyar Élet, published between 1936 and 1944, was linked through its owners to racialist groups and the Hungarian Fraternal Community (Magyar Testvéri Közösség), which was secretly active during the period and became known for the 1947 mock trial, and through its authors to the popular movement. What makes the journal’s view of Felvidék (the present-day Southern Slovakia) interesting is the diversity of contemporary perspectives. The articles present the issues of irredentism, being a minority and revision along different narratives, motivated mainly by generational differences between the authors. While the representatives of the generation with personal memories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire devoted their writings to the sense of loss caused by the Treaty of Trianon and the failure to accept the change of borders, the younger authors, while drawing a detailed picture of the economic, social and cultural life of the annexed part of the country, argued that the common interest of Hungarians in the motherland and in Czechoslovakia was not to resurrect the past, but to create a Hungary with a renewed social and political system.