The Hungarian minority
Because of their numbers (about 540,000 people), this minority, living in the form of the diaspora, is the best organised in the country. At the political level, Hungarians in Slovakia are represented by the Magyar Coalition Party (conservative autonomist) and above all by the Most-Híd Party (centre-right liberal), which is a member of the coalition in power between 2016 and 2020. Mainly settled in the south, along the Danube, Hungarians in Slovakia have many Hungarian-language nursery, primary and secondary schools, but no Hungarian-language university. The Hungarian language chair at Nitra University has only 50% of its courses in Hungarian. Young Hungarians in higher education usually go to Hungary and tend to stay there after finishing their studies. As regards the media, the Slovak national radio and television broadcaster RTVS broadcasts 35 hours a week in Hungarian, and there are many Hungarian-language radio and television stations and about 15 Hungarian-language newspapers.
Strained political relations
History has had a lasting effect on the fate of the Slovaks, who were dominated for nine hundred years by the Hungarians. The Treaty of Trianon in 1920 formalized the disintegration of Austria-Hungary at the end of the First World War. The map was redrawn and Czechoslovakia was born by recovering certain territories with a Hungarian majority, particularly north of the Danube. In these mixed areas, cohabitation went smoothly. Komarno and Štúrovo, for example, have a record number of mixed marriages in towns where all the inhabitants speak two languages, without any tension. Over time, Slovaks have come to understand that the further south you go, the more Hungarian is spoken. It is at the diplomatic level that relations are more complicated. This issue is instrumentalized by politicians and, like a ping-pong match, the populist leaders of the two countries take it in turns to play on this nationalist string. Each side is using its media output to defend its side by relying on certain unhealed historical wounds of the past leading to a certain polarisation.
The Czechs
This minority represents 0.8% of the Slovak population. Perfectly integrated, the Czechs have a close language and cultural background in common with their Slovak sister. Close ties unite these two nations, and traditionally, the newly elected Slovak president makes his first official visit to his Czech counterpart. Many Slovak students go to study at Czech universities in Brno or Prague, and many Slovaks have relatives on the other side of the border. Indeed, during the "velvet divorce", it was possible to choose between Czech or Slovak nationality. All Slovaks understand Czech, thanks in part to television, which offers many Czech-language films, mainly for reasons of economy. Even though there is a historical rivalry, especially in sport, with a slight inferiority complex on the Slovak side, these two peoples have a special relationship.
The Ruthenes
This little-known minority represents only 0.4% of the total Slovak population with about 33,000 registered members. This people with a well-defined territory, referred to as Subcarpathian Ukraine, is today largely located in Western Ukraine around Lviv and for a small part in eastern Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and northern Romania. The history of this nation has a similar trajectory to that of Slovakia, except that it has never succeeded in founding its own state. Like Slovakia, Ruthenia was under Hungarian influence from the 14th century until 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell. The Ruthenians then asked to be integrated into Czechoslovakia while demanding a certain degree of autonomy. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919 ratified this wish. The first Czechoslovak Republic, a parliamentary democracy, was divided into four zones, Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, each of which had cultural autonomy, particularly with regard to administrative languages. The beginning of the Second World War marked a turning point, Czechoslovakia was dismembered and Ruthenia declared its independence only four days before the arrival of the Nazi armies, which re-attached it to Horthy's Hungary, Hitler's ally. The Ruthenes then participated in the Czechoslovak armies in the liberation of the country, particularly at the Dukla Pass near Svidník. After the war, the USSR redrew the borders and took over the eastern part of Slovakia, including Uzhgorod (now in Ukraine), the regional capital of Ruthenia, to have a direct border with Hungary. The territorial unity of Ruthenia broke up and its nation gradually fell into oblivion. Yet this community, which still today has about 700,000 representatives, has preserved its ancestral culture. Ruthenians means "Little Russians". Until the 19th century, this term referred to the inhabitants of Rus, the territory of the Prince of Kiev in the Middle Ages. The Ruthenes were first called Rusenians or Russians, a name that referred to all Ukrainians. Today the majority of Ruthenes live in the west of Ukraine and speak a language very close to Ukrainian. They use the Cyrillic alphabet, but are of the Greek-Catholic (Uniate) confession, unlike the Ukrainians, who are mostly Orthodox. In the eastern confines of Slovakia, on the borders with Poland and Ukraine, this official and perfectly integrated minority can be found. It continues to publish two newspapers in its own language, while the national television and radio broadcasts in Ruthenian.
