Changes in traditional culture, language and identity issues in Slovak communities in Hungary in the context of historical research

MIROSLAV KMEŤ – PATRIK KUNEC
Katedra histórie, Filozofická fakulta, Univerzita Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici

Abstract: In the study authors critically reflect on selected research on the Slovak national minority living in Hungary, carried out in the period 1945 – 1990 by some ethnographers, historians and linguists from Slovak and Hungarian territory. Their research focused on the problem of change in three areas: traditional culture, language used and ethnic identity. More intensive research on Slovak communities in the Lower Land began in connection with the post-war population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and it is interesting that ethnographic research played a dominant role in it. The authors of the analyzed outputs came to conclusions that some manifestations of traditional material and spiritual culture, which migrants brought from Slovakia, survived in a foreign-language environment for a surprisingly long time, but at the same time gradually underwent adaptation. In the case of the language used, the majority of Slovaks first transitioned to bilingualism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and then to the dominant use of Hungarian after the 1950s. The persistence of spiritual culture, the use of the mother language and the ethnic identity of Slovaks in the Lower Land were supported mainly by social and cultural traditions, the patriarchal model of life and the closed nature of peasant communities.

Keywords: Lower Land Slovaks, Changes of Culture and Identity, Historical and Ethnographic Research, 20th Century.