Minorities Research [antikvár]

LECTORI SALUTEMThe book that you, Dear Reader, are now holding in your hand contains essays byHungarian authors (living in the Carpathian Basin, both within and without Hunga-ry), which have been published in the past one or two years in Kisebbségkutatás,a Hungarian magazine specialising in minorities research. This magazine was fo-unded eight years ago by the author of these lines; this was roughly the timewhen it once again became possible to continue that tremendous scholarly workin the area of Hungarian studies and national minority research, which had beenhallmarked between the two world war by such names as Pál Teleki, Jenő Cholno-ky and András Rónai (geography), István Kniezsa and László Hadrovics (linguis-tics), László Buza and Ernő Flachbart (international law) and Elemér Mályusz,Gyula Szekfű and László Makkai (history). Since the moment of its foundation, Ki-sebbségkutatás has been dedicated to the task of keeping the readers informedabout the scientific results in the area, in which now there is a renaissance of inte-rest. For us, Hungarians, these results are very important, since for the past ele-ven hundred years, ever since the foundation of our state, we, the nation politic,have lived in the Carpathian Basin side by side with other ethnic groups, while thepeace treaty concluding the First World War drove one third of the Hungarian na-tion into the conditions of minority existence.Our special interest in minority matters is, therefore, understandable; however,we envisage, and have always envisaged, research in this area only in complian-ce with the principle of "sine ira et studio". On the point of the methodical appro-ach, Pál Teleki's expression used seventy years ago still applies: to produce re-sults in minority research, "the collaboration of disciplines" is necessary. (There isnothing new under the Sun: in today's fashionable frazeology we would call this amultidisciplinary approach.)It is possible that the essays published in the present book will not reflect thefull complexity of the theme; nevertheless, we hope to be able to show throughthese essays that in order to understand the minorities' conditions, both existenti-al and spiritual, the parallel application of several disciples is required.In the chapter entitled Conditions of Minorities the geographer Károly Kocsis,author of the essay "Findings about the Demographic-Ethnic Geography of Hun-garian National Minorities in the Carpathian Basin", calls attention to the strangeduality of the situation whereby Hungarians living outside the mother state havepreserved their unitary national awareness and culture, while their numbers havedeclined not only in the mother country but also as regards the percentage ofHungarians relative to the total population of the Carpathian Basin. In the samechapter the socio-psychologist Sándor Hódi from Vajdaság makes interestingcomparisons between the respective nationalities of three regions to discoverwhich geographical unit they are most closely attached to: their place of residen-ce, their region, their country or Europe.In the chapter Minority Culture, the literary historian (and also President of the