Just as Germany was shattered and torn apart by the monstrous Treaty of Versailles in 1919, so Hungary, also burdened with phony "war guilt" for World War I by the victorious and vengeful Entente powers (Britain and France), was carved up by the equally monstrous and corollary Treaty of Trianon the following year. In rewriting the map of Europe after World War I, the Wilsonian slogan of "national self-determination" for each ethnic group was used like the Orwellian slogan in Animal Farm: ethnic groups discovered that some were more equal than others; some ethnic groups were set by the post-war order to rule over others. Poor Hungary was shorn of fully one-third of its ethnic and linguistic brethren. And, after all the vicissitudes of the next seventy years, this situation still obtains. Hungary now is Hungary after Trianon; several hundred thousand Hungarians groan under Slovak (instead of Czech) tyranny in southern Slovakia; and the Hungarians who people the northern Vojvodina are now suffering under direct Serb rule, after previously enjoying semi-autonomous status. And most grievous of all is the status of legendary Transylvania, the land of Dracula and other classic vampires. Transylvania was torn from the Hungarian bosom at Trianon and given to "pro-Western" Romania, and Stalin put it back the same way after World War II.

Is Transylvania ethnically Hungarian or Romanian? Both nationalities are in this land, and it is obviously a matter of much dispute. The distinguished historian Bela Kiraly, a top general in Hungary who escaped to the West after the heroic and failed Revolution of 1956, told me, when I asked him about ethnic boundaries in Transylvania: "I hate to say this, but Hitler's imposed boundary was probably about the best solution." The point is that, during World War II, both Hungary and Romania had right-wing governments friendly to Germany, so that Hitler could afford to be "objective" and concentrate on ethnic justice between the two. Hitler granted northern Transylvania to Hungary, and southern to Romania. Friends of mine claim, however, that this shortchanged Hungary which should have obtained either the northern two-thirds, or even all, of Transylvania.

And then there is the neglected problem of Carpatho-Ruthenia, the eastern tail grabbed from Hungary by the Czechs after World War I. After World War II, this land was incorporated into the western Ukraine, Ukraine claiming that these were long-lost Ukrainians. I understand that the Ruthenians are beginning to make noises about independence, of wanting out of the Ukraine. In any case, it seems that Hungarian ethnic claims to this small area are fairly weak.

But, in any case, why is nothing more said and done about restoring Hungary? Hungary's territory should definitely be expanded to include: southern Slovakia, the northern Vojvodina in Serbia, and something like two-thirds of Transylvania. Hungarians arise!

Of course, there are nationalist stirrings in Hungary; technically these are irredentist, dedicated to redeeming unredeemed lands lost to an ethnic nationality. The great playwright Istvan Czurka, leader of a nationalist faction of the ruling party in Hungary, is calling for such a movement. More militantly, agitation is led by the "1956 Anti-Fascist and Anti-Bolshevik Association," headed by the artist Istvan Porubszky, who had fled to Canada after 1956. The 1956 Association is also organizing teenage youth, called the National Conservative-Thinking Boys, who listen to lectures on Hungarian history, celebrate statues of the turul, a mythological eagle-like bird that symbolizes Hungarian unity, and shout "Down with Trianon!"

Only one guess how these groups and this agitation is regarded by the "pro-Western" (i.e., Social Democrat) Hungarian establishment, plus the Social Democrats of the New York Times and the rest of the U.S. received opinion. Like all Social Democrats, who hate and revile all nationalisms except that of the U.S. and Israel, these groups fear and loathe these nationalists, the youth being denounced as "skinheads" simply because the teenage lads like to wear their hair crew-cut.

It's clear that Hungarians will never achieve their true place in the sun so long as their rulers are more interested in currying favor with the United States government than they are in justice for themselves.

(Once again, I take the opportunity to declare that I am not a descendent of, related to, or connected in any way, with any of the ethnic groups I have celebrated in Triple R. Except in spirit, I am not Hungarian nor a Croat nor an Abkhazian.)