Lajos Kazar: Facts against fiction

RUSSIA

,,Transylvania (Rumanian Transilvania), a historic region in northern Rumania. The first century A.D. saw the formation of a Dacian early slaveholding state with its center in Transylvania.

From the early 2nd century A.D. until 271, Transylvania was a part of the Roman province of Dacia. From the third through sixth centuries, Goths, Huns, Gepids, and Avars overrun Transylvania. ... Slavs settled in the region in the sixth and seventh centuries, and according to some sources, the Vlachs, a Romanized people, became associated with the area in the late 9th century. In the tenth century certain Hungarian tribes migrated to Transylvania,,.

N.B. It is a pity that neither the Hungarian name Erdél(y), nor its borrowed Rumanian version: Ardeal, nor German Siebenbürgen is mentioned. The sequence of the various populations moving into the area now known as Transylvania is correct up to the 9th century. The Hungarians took possession of later Transylvania around 895 and, according to their own firm tradition, the Hungarian-speaking Székelys settled in the northwest of today's Transylvania centuries earlier. The association of the Vlachs/Wallachians/Rumanians with the area in question is fairly stated to be debatable.

,,In the early 11th century, Transylvania came under the rule of Hungary. In the 11th and 12th centuries the Hungarian kings settled Szeklers and 'Saxons' in the area, and the process of feudalization began. Transylvania was invaded by the Mongol-Tatars in 1241. From the 12th through 16th centuries, the region was ruled by voivodes, who were usually Hungarian magnates. By the 13th century, towns had sprung up in Transylvania, and in the 14th century guilds of craftsmen appeared.

In the 15th and 16th centuries the peasants rose in antifeudal rebellions, including the Peasant Revolt of 1437-38 and the Dózsa Rebellion of 1514. The bulk of the peasantry was completely enserfed by the end of the 17th century".

N.B. In the early 11th century (Saint) Stephen I wrested eastern Hungary from his own uncle to organize the whole of the Carpathian Basin under his own rule. The Székelys were settled from the NW to the SE of the region in question. German settlers were called in from 1143 onward. The voivodes ruling Transylvania were at times heirs to the Hungarian throne. The participants of the peasant revolts of 1437-38 and 1514 were almost exclusively Hungarians. This fact is pointed out because Rumanian propagandists have spread the notion that the peasantry in Transylvania under Hungarian rule always consisted mostly of Wallachians/Rumanians.

,,The Grand National Assembly,,, which was held in the city of Alba Iulia on Nov. 18 (Dec. 1.), 1918, unanimously endorsed the resolution proclaiming the union of Transylvania and Rumania. The Treaty of Trianon (1920) recognized the union".

N.B. The Grand National Assembly referred to above consisted, on the Rumanian side, of Rumanian activists and other Rumanians transported not to Alba Iulia, but to Gyulafehérvár - (for prior to 1920 the town in question was Hungarian!) - free of charge on trains put at the disposal of the participants by the Hungarian government in order to give Transylvanian Rumanians a chance to discuss matters with representatives of the Hungarian government. It is not factual to speak of a ,,Grand National Assembly,,, without adding that those who resolved to have an autonomous Transylvanian Rumanian administration in the predominantly Rumanian-inhabited areas of Transylvania, and who later decided for full union with Rumania, were exclusively ethnic Rumanians, and mainly activists at that. It is unfair not to point out that the Hungarians, Germans and other non-Rumanian elements of the Transylvanian population did not vote for union with Rumania. In fact, even the Rumanian population was not given a chance to decide in a plebiscite whether it really wanted to be detached from Hungary. The Treaty of Trianon recognized a union with Rumania which had never been intended by President Woodrow Wilson, but which had been foreshadowed in a secret treaty signed on August 17th, 1916, in Bucharest by Tsarist Russia, Great Britain, France and Italy, as the Entente Powers, and Rumania - until then a neutral ally of the Central Powers - by which more than a third of Historical Hungary had been promised to Rumania for changing sides in WW I.

The Government of the United States of America refused to acknowledge as binding on itself the Secret Treaty of Bucharest and also refused to ratify the so-called peace treaty of Trianon. Instead, it signed a separate treaty with Hungary.

Lajos Kazar: Facts against fiction