Nemzetfogalom és nemzeti identitás a dualizmus korában és a Horthy-korszakban
The Concept of Nation and National Identity in Austria-Hungary and in Miklós Horthy's Hungary

Summary/Abstract: The dual, i.e. discursive and socializational, nature of the national agenda has its roots in the Austria-Hungary (1867- 1919). This is when the basic conditions for the formation of a modern national identity were created, the self-image of the nation and national culture were canonized, and the creation of a public educational system and the rise of the printed press allowed the political elites to exert influence over national socialization. The state was modeled on a ‘Hungarian political nation’, including, in addition to the Hungarian nation, citizens of a non-Hungarian nationality. However, the nation, both as a symbolic and a legal community, could not become a political community, and the various nationalities as communities were not granted an equal political status. The failure of the model was jointly generated by the concept of nation as promoted by the political elites, limited electoral rights and the peculiarities of public education. After the trauma caused by World War I, the revolutions and the loss of a significant part of the country’s territory, politics aimed at symbolically reconstructing the nation and at revising the borders of the country, drawn by the Trianon Treaty. A reformulated national agenda focused on consolidating and perfectuating a model of nation that was based on common historical and cultural roots, integrally including the creation of images of both external and internal ‘enemies’. The concept of this political nation did not encompass the equality of its citizens before the law or the conception of the nation as a democratic political community. The national agenda, driven by the state and focusing on territorial revision was backed by the socializational activities of a school system playing a primary role in formulating national identity, the Christian Churches, and the Boyscout Movement. The politics beyond this agenda was responsible for Hungary’s participation in World War II, the failure of the efforts aiming territorial revision, and the loss of millions of Hungarian citizens.

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