A csehszlovák-magyar lakosságcsere egyes külpolitikai összefüggései

In Europe, following World War I, and also during and after World War II, more or less sovereign states exercised population exchanges on multiple occasions. Their aim was to establish an ethnically homogeneous state and/ or to repatriate their minority countrymen. In many cases, governments entered into the treaties under the impact of constraint, abuses against minorities and provisions depriving their rights. On many occasions, these stabilised the changes occurring during the wars and neither party was keen on observing the principle of parity. This paper compares different visions on arranging the future of the European continent following World War II. Many of the visions concerning Central Europe promoted the stability of Central European states through creating states that lacked national minorities. The idea of creating national states through population exchanges was conceived in the British foreign office in late 1939. Although later both the USA and the Soviet Union considered the idea valid, the Western powers and the Soviets did not share a view on implementation. The analysis also focuses on presenting the suggestions of the Czechoslovak and the Hungarian governments regarding the “issue of the Hungarians”. Finally, the paper presents certain foreign policy correlations and the international environment of the Czechoslovak–Hungarian population exchange treaty, firstly based on the speeches and position statements of delegates of major powers and the affected governments in different committees discussing the Czechoslovak-Hungarian issue, and secondly through analysing diplomatic correspondence relevant to the topic