National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements

Lajos Kossuth: Proposal. Concerning the future political establishment of Hungary

LAJOS KOSSUTH: PROPOSAL. CONCERNING THE FUTURE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT OF HUNGARY Title: Javaslat. Magyar Ország jövő politicai szervezetét illetőleg – tekintettel a nemzetiségi kérdés megoldására (Proposal. Concerning the future political establishment of Hungary, in view of solving the nationality question ) Originally published: The text in its present form was written in 1859 and remained in manuscript Language: French/Hungarian The text, originally written in French, survived in various versions. The first draft was published in English as well as in French in 1851, while an extended version in French (Projet d’organisation de la Hongrie la question des nationalités étant prise en considération) was published by Dániel Irányi and Charles-Louis Chassin in 1859. The current version, the most complete, remained in manuscript until published by György Spira, Kossuth és alkotmányterve (Debrecen: Csokonai, 1989). The excerpts used are from: Kossuth Lajos alkotmányterve (Budapest: Budapest Főváros Levéltára, 1994), pp. 50–59. About the author Lajos Kossuth [1802, Monok (Upper Hungary) – 1894, Turin]: lawyer, journalist , politician. His family was from the Upper-Hungarian petty-nobility, ethnically Slavic and Lutheran by denomination. Trained as a lawyer, he entered politics first in 1832 as a representative of an absentee aristocrat in the Upper House. Between 1832 and 1836 he edited the Országgyűlési Tudósítások (Reports from the Diet), the principal popularizing organ of the reform movement. By the mid-1830s he became a key figure in the liberal nationalist opposition. He was arrested in 1837, but popular pressure forced the Metternich regime to release him in 1840. He edited the journal Pesti Hírlap (Pest Gazette), which became the most important organ of the opposition in the forties. He was a protagonist in the Hungarian revolution of 1848, becoming Minister of Finance in the revolutionary government of Lajos Batthyány. When the Austrian government openly sided with the ban (viceroy) of Croatia, Count Jela čić, who was moving against Hungary, Kossuth became head of the ‘Committee of National Defense’ which assumed the reins of government. His government withdrew to Debrecen before the advance of the Austrians under General Windischgrätz. In April 1849 the Hungarian parliament declared Hungary an independent republic, LAJOS KOSSUTH: PROPOSAL 269 with Kossuth as governor. The Hungarians won several victories, but Russian troops intervened in favor of Austria, and Kossuth was obliged to offer the government to General Artúr Görgey, who finally surrendered at Világos. Kossuth fled first to Turkey , and then to England. From 1865 he lived in Italy. He could not accept the Ausgleich of 1867, and refused an offer of amnesty in 1890. After his death in Turin his body was returned to Budapest and buried with official ceremony. One of the most important nineteenth century Hungarian politicians, Kossuth became the symbol of ‘national independence,’ used and abused by various regimes in the twentieth century. Main works: Felelet [Answer] (1841); 1847-es Ellenzéki nyilatkozat [The Opposition Declaration of 1847] (with Ferenc Deák); Irataim az emigrációból [My writings from emigration], vols. I–III (1880–82). Context Soon after the initial enthusiasm for the revolution in March 1848, the Hungarian liberal nationalist leadership had to face growing discontent on the part of considerable segments of the nationalities of the country, who expected it to acknowledge not only their individual civil rights but also their right to form a separate national body with territorial self-government. At the outset the Hungarian revolutionaries perceived these demands as opposed to the sweeping measures of modernization they proposed, and blamed the elites of these nationalities for sticking to their purported “feudal privileges” instead of accepting the Hungarian liberal offer and together with it a dominant symbolic position in the Hungarian national project. It was only after the painful experience of a series of clashes—with the Croatian army of Count Jelačić, with the Serbian and Romanian guerrilla armies in southern Hungary and Transylvania, respectively, and with the less numerous but still considerable Slovak nationalist movement—that the Hungarian liberals were forced to reformulate their national agenda. Kossuth himself started his political career as an ardent nationalist, and his position on the nationality question was one of the main points of contention in the early 1840s between him and István Széchenyi, who came to consider the impatient assimilatory discourse of the Hungarian liberal nationalist camp as potentially self-destructive. Kossuth...