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MILAN HODŽA: FEDERATION IN CENTRAL EUROPE Title: Federation in Central Europe. Reflections and reminiscences. Originally published: London, Jarrolds Publishers, 1942 Language: English The excerpts used are from the original, pp. 3–8. About the author Milan Hodža [1878, Sučany (Hun. Szucsány) near Turčiansky Svätý Martin (Hun. Turócszentmárton) – 1944, Clearwater, Florida]: politician and journalist. He was born into the family of a Protestant pastor. After being banished from the gymnasium in Sopron (Hungary) he concluded his secondary education at the German gymnasium in Sibiu (Hun. Nagyszeben, Ger. Hermannstadt, in Transylvania). Between 1896 and 1898 he studied law in Budapest, and, between 1916 and 1918, philosophy in Vienna. Before the First World War, he was active as a journalist and became a member of the Hungarian Parliament, where he closely collaborated with Romanians, Croatians, Serbs and other non-Magyar representatives in an effort to carry through democratizing reforms, a national educational policy, and land reform in Hungary. He became a member of the so-called ‘Belvedere workshop’ formed around the archduke Franz Ferdinand, which was critical of Austro-Hungarian dualism and was forging plans for the transformation of the Empire into a modern federalized state. In inter-war Czechoslovakia, Hodža served in several subsequent governments as the Minister of Law Unification, Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Education respectively. He was an active member and a prominent representative of the powerful Agrarian Party. Besides, he was a co-founder and member of the International Agrarian Bureau. In 1935, he became the Republic’s first Slovak Prime Minister. Unable to reach a deal with the Sudeten-German politicians he resigned and left Czechoslovakia in 1938. He tried to establish a Slovak democratic exile representation that opposed the political conceptions of President Edvard Beneš. Unlike him, Hodža promoted the idea of federation in Central Europe throughout the war and warned against the danger of Sovietization. In 1941, he moved to the USA, where he was briefly active among the American Slovaks. Throughout his life, he remained an active publicist. In the postwar period, Beneš’s political camp and later even more effectively the communists tried to marginalize Hodža’s legacy. But it was rediscovered in the late 1980s by the Slovak anti-communist dissidence, and following the 1989 turnover, some of his most important works were re-published. The high esteem that the historical persona of Milan Hodža enjoys in today’s Slovak MILAN HODŽA: FEDERATION IN CENTRAL EUROPE 383 society was symbolized by the transfer of his remains from Chicago to the National Cemetery in Martin in June 2002. Main works: Československý rozkol [The Czechoslovak schism] (1920); Slovensk ý rozchod s Maďarmi [The Slovak divorce from the Hungarians] (1928); Články, reči, štúdie 7 vols. [Articles, speeches, studies] (1930–1934); Federation in Central Europe (1942). Context After the collapse of the Versailles system in the late 1930s and the incipient war, many European politicians and political analysts started to reflect upon the previous 20 years and devise alternative political strategies for the post-war settlement. Central Europe, with its weak political safeguards, minority regimes and fragility of borders was among the crucial topics of these discussions. Especially during the earlier years of the Second World War, the idea of a Central European federation, aimed to create a stronger political and economic unit in the region stretching between Germany and Soviet Russia, acquired some prominence. The common experience of German occupation drew closer together the Czechoslovak and Polish exile leaderships represented by President Edvard Beneš on one hand and Prime Minister Władys- ław Sikorski and his deputy Stanisław Mikołajczyk on the other. They agreed to form a closer political and economic association, which would become the basis of a new order in Central Europe after the war. These efforts found their counterpart in similar initiatives between Greek and Yugoslav exile leaders forging plans for a future Balkan federation. The situation, however, started to change with the growing influence of Soviet politics in the region after 1942. Stalin understood, not without some justification, that any federative or confederative plans for post-war Central Europe would have antiSoviet and anti-Russian agendas. Due to his pressure and as a result of further disagreements, the Czechoslovak exile government in London let their earlier agreement with the Poles stagnate and then collapse, a development further assured by the new Czechoslovak–Soviet treaty of alliance in December 1943. Apart from the...

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