The Fate of Western Hungary 1918-1921 - Corvinus Library ...

Austrian subversion. They continually removed the Austrian posters urging the
vote against Hungary and prevented the distribution of flyers. At the same time,
they placed Hungarian material on the streets. The students also mounted a
defense along the new border and at the new border railway stations against the
smuggling in of publications popularizing Austria and flyers. They searched
most thoroughly incoming trains, wagons and passengers, confiscating
thousands of Austrian flyers and wall posters, arresting numerous persons
active in conducting Austrian political mobilization. Traffic at the train stations
was continuously kept under surveillance – for months, the student / reserve
officers were the stationmasters – and the students were also in command of the
home guard units. 493
The local press loyal to Hungary – the German-language Christliches
Oedenburger Tagblatt (Christian Newspaper of Sopron) and Sopronvármegye
(Sopron County) – asserted the advantages of staying with Hungary. Among
other things, the press stressed that cross-border traffic would be easier, the
Hungarian government will stimulate the economy, the German-language
population will continue to be able to use freely its mother tongue, foster its
culture. In the previously quoted report by Villani, the expectation was that the
better-off citizenry, the tradesmen and craftsmen and intellectuals, who would
remain loyal to the country in the plebiscite. A part of the locals who worked in
Austria were under the influence of the Hungarian Communist – Social
Democrat refugees in Vienna and behaved with hostility toward Hungary. The
well-to-do Protestant farmers tended to side with Austria, saying they will be
able to sell their produce there for higher prices. Hungarian reasoning tried to
counter this group / argument by pointing out that the situation of Austria’s
economy is terrible, the money devalues, and great gains have been made in the
country by the Communists. At the time, these were all too real facts. Of the
settlements to hold the referendum, Ágfalva, Balf, Fertőrákos, Harka and
Sopronbánfalva were anti-Hungarian, and seemingly impossible to win over.
Hungarian propaganda here intimated to the locals that, in the case of an
Austrian win, rebels would attack the villages. The people of Fertőboz,
Kópháza and Nagycenk were decidedly in favor of staying with Hungary. 494
It soon became apparent that assembling the list of eligible voters posed the
greatest problem. As we have written, the roll of voters was based on the
February 1920 National Assembly election lists but that was two years old and
Sopron and vicinity experienced a lot of vicissitudes in the intervening time.
All eight of the electoral committees found that the lists were out of date. One
of the main reasons was that the civic authorities were only given eight days by
the Entente Mission to update the rolls. 495 The Austrian government
immediately attacked the process, saying that persons who fled from the rebels
were not on the lists, while hundreds were being enumerated – according to
493 Villani, 1923, op. cit., p. 26.
494 Ibid, pp. 23–29.
495 Ibid, pp. 20–21.
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