Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
The southern counties along the Danube, Sava, Tisa (Tisza) and Tamis (Temes) rivers, including Srem (Szerém, Sirmium) had been the richest, most developed and purely Hungarian inhabited part of the Hungarian Kingdom in the Middle Ages. The Ottoman conquest brought about a dramatic population shift between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the Hungarians were either massacred or forced to flee the area. The demographic vacuum was filled by Serbian immigration. The Serbs acquired a privileged status as frontier guards of the Habsburg realm, with full territorial, religious and cultural autonomy up to the middle of the eighteenth century.
1. For the Novi Sad massacre see Buzási's, János Az Ujvidéki ’Razzia‘ (Budapest, 1963); for the demographic changes wrought by “ethnic cleansing” at the end of World War II, see Stephen Kertész, Diplomacy in a Whirlpool (Notre Dame, IN, 1953), pp. 57–58; Theodore Schieder, ed., Das Schicksal der Deutschen in Jugoslawien in Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mittel-Europa (Bonn, 1962), Vol. V, IIA; Marton Matuska, Days of Revenge (Novi Sad, 1991); and Tibor Cseres, Blood Feud in Bácska (Budapest, 1991).Google Scholar
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3. Statistički Godisnjak SAP Vojvodine (Novi Sad, 1983).Google Scholar
4. Macartney, C. A., Hungary and Her Successors (London, 1937), pp. 398–403, 427, provides the interwar aspects of this discrimination.Google Scholar
5. “Broj Zaposlenih Radnika…” Statisticki Bilten, No. 114 (Novi Sad, 1982); Statistički Godisnjak SAP Vojvodine. Google Scholar
6. Ibid. Google Scholar
7. Ibid. Google Scholar
8. Ibid. Google Scholar
9. The Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, ed. Dragolub Durović, Marjan Barasić, et al., trans. Marko Pavicic (Belgrade, 1974), p. 53; on this point compare and contrast the “Socialist Constitution of 1963,” Collection of Yugoslav Laws, pp. 3-4, with “Constitution of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia,” 30 January, 1936, in Constitutions of Nations, ed. Amos J. Peaslee (Concord, New Hampshire, 1950), III, art. 1, p. 522, and with “Fundamental Law Pertaining to the Bases of the Social and Political Organization of the Federal Organs of State Authority, 13 January, 1953,” in Constitutions of Nations, ed. Amos J. Peaslee, 2nd edn (The Hague, 1956), III, art. 1, p. 766.Google Scholar
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11. Ibid., pp. 245–248.Google Scholar
12. Ethnic Hungarians in Ex-Yugoslavia ed. S.O.S. Transylvania, Geneva Committee (Ottawa, 1993), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar
13. This low point was reversed for a time beginning in the early 1950s. By the late 1960s a decline again became apparent. For the evolution of these policies, see particularly Statistički Godisnjak SFRJ 1967 (Beograd, 1967), Table 126-124, p. 286.Google Scholar
14. Ibid.; Also see Jugoslavija 1945-1964: Statisticki Pregled, Table 19.3, pp. 295-296; Radomir Babin, “Principles and Problems of Bilingual Education in Northern Bačka,” in Razprave in Gradivo [Treatises and Documents] 18 (Ljubljana, 1986), pp. 188-193; Sonja Novak-Lukanović, “Some Yugoslav Experiences in Asserting Equality of the Nations and Nationalities in the Field of Education,” Ibid., Table 5, p. 77; Table 24, p. 87; Table 25, p. 88.Google Scholar
15. Ibid.; Statistički Godisnjak SFRJ 1967, Table 126-124, p. 286; Ethnic Hungarians in Ex-Yugoslavia, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar
16. Ágoston, Mihály, “Hova Irassam?” Magyar Szó , 3 July, 1966, p. 14; Géza Vukovics, “Büzlö iskola udvar meg a többi,” Magyar Szó, 24 June, 1966, p. 9.Google Scholar
17. Ibid.; Babin, “Principles and Problems,” pp. 188–193.Google Scholar
18. , Agoston, “Hova Irassam?” p. 14; Vukovics, “Büzlö Iskola Udvar…” p. 9; Ethnic Hungarians in Ex-Yugoslavia, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar
19. For a comparison of the cultural opportunities between the 1960s and 1970s with the current conditions compare Ibid., pp. 10–12, with Ludanyi, A., “The Hungarians of Yugoslavia: Facing an Uncertain Future,” Hungarian Studies Review, Vol. XVI, Nos. 1-2, 1989, pp. 105-112; and Jugoslavia 1945-1964: Statistički Pregled, Table 20–13, p. 331.Google Scholar
20. “Broj Zaposlenih Radnika…” Statistički Bilten, No. 114.Google Scholar
21. , Ludanyi, “The Hungarians of Yugoslavia,” p. 111.Google Scholar
22. Ethnic Hungarians in Ex-Yugoslavia, pp. 3, 8-9, 10–13.Google Scholar
23. Ibid. Google Scholar
24. Ibid., p. 3.Google Scholar