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Hungarian foreign policy from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in November 1918 to the Peace Treaty of Trianon of June 1920 concentrated on maintaining Hungary's integrity and finding ways to break out of the international isolation in which the newly independent state found itself. Such were the aims of the regimes that followed each other in succession, and which are identified with the names of Mihály Károlyi, Béla Kun, and Miklós Horthy.
The Paris Peace Treaty by which hostilities between Hungary and the Allied Powers were officially ended was signed on February 10, 1947. It consisted of eight articles covering territorial, military, economic, political and other terms. The paper focuses on the territorial decisions that restored the 1920 Trianon frontiers with a small rectification in favour of Czechoslovakia. The American, British, Soviet and French peace delegations were in complete accord that the 1920 Trianon bounderies should remain in force along Hungary's frontiers with Austria, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. With regard to Transylvania, however, a sharp discussion developed. The Western powers supported a compromise solution while the Soviet Union was opposed to any modification to the Hungarian-Roumanian frontier established at Trianon. Eventually the Soviet position prevailed. The decision was received with bitterness in Hungary but it did not cause hysteria. The majority in Hungarian society understood that neither a restoration of historic Hungary nor even a compromise solution based on ethnic principles was possible.
This paper traces the international history of Eastern Europe in the 20th century within the analytical framework of the national self-determination/independence paradigm. It argues that in 1918 the allied powers dissolved the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in the hope that the newly established nation states would strengthen European stability and would balance Russian and German power. The Munich agreement was not a mistake but a conscious effort to reorganize the continent on a more stable basis after it turned out that the international system created for middle Europe in Paris was not working. Thereafter Great Britain strove to achieve continental balance by surrendering the region to German, later to Soviet hegemony. This would also be the policy of the United States until 1948 when the Truman administration decided that the restoration of national independence in Eastern Europe would create a safer Europe. After the failure of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution the U.S. returned to the position that continental stability took precedence over the independence of the Soviet satellites, a view shared by the major NATO allies. This remained the Western position through 1989. The restoration of national independence and continental reunification originated in Eastern Europe, which for the first time since 1918 was a policy maker in the international arena.
prosecution and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis,” 9 and afterwards the Armistice Agreement signed by the Allied Powers and Hungary on January 20, 1945 in Moscow confirmed the previously established objectives. The latter agreement
