Abstract
Czech and Slovak society had two different approaches to activities regarding cooperation between Czech and Slovak culture and Hungarian culture (be it minority culture in Czechoslovakia, or culture in the form of inter-state cultural-social relations). The first approach can be simply characterized as arising from “historical experience,” whose origins lie in the coexistence of Slovak and Hungarian society before 1918, since the reverberations of this coexistence still resounded in the Czechoslovak state.
The second approach was evaluating the activities of Hungarian society (after the creation of an independent Hungary in 1918) as a whole – thus not distinguishing between the behavior and social activities of Hungarian minorities outside of Hungary, and Hungarian society and its political and cultural-social manifestations inside Hungary itself. As a result of the drastic politicalization of almost all spheres of social life in Czechoslovakia and in Hungary, the possibility of cultural-social cooperation at a domestic or inter-state level was completely sidetracked after 1918.
The disputes that caused the tension on both levels (internal and external) were caused by the inclusion of regions into Czechoslovakia that the traditional social segments of Hungarian society considered to be historically part of their state. Towards the end of the first half of the 1920s, increased social activity of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia brought about attempts to break through its own external social isolation and internal passivity.
These attempts did not focus only on activating members of the Hungarian minority, but also intended to appeal especially to Czech society through their cultural-social activities. These attempts were motivated by the effort aiming to gradually ameliorate disputes that generally resided in history, but were purposefully being used throughout the whole interwar period to achieve political goals.