DBWI Challenge: Break up the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Your challenge is to breakup the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or at least have Hungary secede and declare independence, with a POD no earlier than 1910.
 
Well, I think if the 1985 Communist Revolution in Russia hadn't happened, Russia might be well-off enough to invade Hungary and create a puppet-state there.
 
Seriously, no. Research and historical evidence show that countries only break up when the state stop being a natural presence and thus a guarantee of law and order. There's a reason the anarchists could control most of Spain for so long - even if people did not agree with their visions, their organisation when the Spanish state fell allowed them to provide law and order when no-one else did. Only when it is obvious that the state will soon be unable to provide law and order to people seek other options, such as nationalist movements.

To have the nationalists movements in Austria-Hungary, or the communists, or the anarchists to break the Empire apart, you really need some massive doomsday event for the state for it to stop function - a long, losing war without access to the world markets in the time 1900-1930 when the Empire was dependent on food imports (the introduction of mechanised agriculture in the 30s changed this) perhaps, or perhaps some kind of massive plague.

As the 1922 Hungarian revolt showed, any one revolt would be crushed by the army - twelve days from the declaration of independence until the army entered Budapest - the whole thing was laughable. The Hungarian nobility had no support from the Croatians, Serbs, Slovaks, Ruthenians or Romanians and even not that much from their own people!
 
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