Gerundium (Dec 2024)
The UNITY OF THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND THE CITY OF PÉCS AGAINST THE TRIANON PEACE TREATY DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD
Abstract
In the Horthy era, the maintenance of irredentist goals became crucial among university students. The youth were socialized in a completely different life situation than the adult generation because they had lived through the First World War and the Trianon Peace Treaty as children. In this way, the desire for revision had to be constantly kept alive among youngsters because many of them had grown up without remembering Great Hungary. The aim was also to reinforce the feeling of offense that they did not accept the immutability of the borders. Due to this policy, the government and local city councils wanted the youth to dominate in spreading revisionist ideas.During my present study, I will describe how the city administration of Pécs, and the students collaborated in expressing irredentist purposes. The city council expected the youth not just to take part in various national holidays such as the Heroes’ Memorial Day, the celebration of March 15, or the commemoration of the martyrs of Arad, but also emerge as a key factor in the organisation of ceremonies. In addition, the students regularly participated in the demonstrations, which were organized by the Pécs Group of the Hungarian Revision League and the Pécs-Baranya Circle of the Hungarian National Federation. However, from the beginning of the 1930s, the students started to be more and more active in propagating irredentism, so it also became common for them to hold their revision meetings.
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