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Anssi Halmesvirta
Jalava, it seemed guite natural in Hungary that the Hungarian authorities had to
“discipline” (Jalava’s phrase) fifteen different nationalities in order to keep the state
together. However, Hungarians had already gone too far in trying to abolish the
use of other languages either by closing minority schools or by denying the support
of state finances to them. Relative to this, the situation of Finnish in Finland was
a paradox; there the language of the Finnish-speaking majority (92%) was treated
in the way minorities and their languages were treated in Hungary. The “lust for
power and thirst for suppression” of Swedish speakers was most glaringly seen in
their efforts at obstructing the establishment of Finnish schools for Finnish speak¬
ers; this violated the “natural rights” of languages (Jalava 1876b: 349; Tervonen
1987: 321-322).
As we have seen, Jalava approached the Hungarian nationality problem from
the point of view of Finnish language strife, the fennoman onslaught against the
predominance of the Swedish in order to provide ammunition in the fennomen’s
own nationality policy doctrine: that “one state could be ruled only by one na¬
tion.” According to this integrative doctrine, minorities should not, however, be
oppressed by any unnatural coercion but they had gradually to assimilate or die
out—a Hungarian lesson of up-to-date “social Darwinism” for multinational states.
“Freedom” (i.e., natural competition) and the rational statesmanship should have
been the forces to regulate the process by which a nation became the “strongest”;
in the end, in Hungary the “masters” should be Hungarians, in Finland, Finns but
without despotic measures (Jalava 1876b: 337). The “magyarization” of minorities
of Hungary violated the principle that every nation was entitled freely to cultivate
its language and culture, and in keeping with this principle, Jalava relied rather on
“natural growth” and competition in economy and culture controlled by smooth
“guiding” by the Hungarian State that would in the long run assimilate “national
caricatures” into Hungarianness. This process would result in “happiness” for the
minorities, and—what was paramount to Hungarianness in Jalava’s opinion—it
would preserve the vital force of the Hungarian nation, for example, in the face of
threatening Germanization (Jalava 1876b: 319-321, 348-350).
To put it in the language of political systems, Jalava envisaged a “democratic,”
federal state ruled by Hungarians as the best solution for the future. It would have
been acceptable also for the Western powers, for it would keep pan-Slavist move¬
ments at bay in central and eastern Europe (Jalava 1876b: 352-362). It would secure
the balance of power between West and East, and it was favorable to the peaceful
progress for small nations like Hungary and Finland between West and East.
From his visit to Hungary, Jalava concluded: Finns and Hungarians were
“brothers of the same flesh and blood” (Jalava 1876b: 365), confirming the pos¬
sibility of understanding of and identification with Hungarian Alterity, which was
geographically far away but close enough in terms of kinship relations and na¬
tional characteristics. However, the reunion could not become complete: when