Maracz: Hungarian Revival

PART III.

Towards a new Central Europe

"Historically Hungary was always known as a harmonious state, a safe place for people to live in and as a country that cushioned Europe against direct danger from the East. This mission, fulfilled by Hungary for some ten centuries was made possible by its organic unity. Those, at least, were the words of the great French geographer ElisEe Reclus who believed that Hungary formed a perfect geographical entity which made it, as such, unique in Europe. The valleys and rivers running from the country's periphery to its heart create a powerful structure that can only be governed from a central point. The separate segments of the country are almost all inter-dependent with the central region forming a strong economic nucleus and the peripheral regions providing the various raw materials vital to the country's economic development."

This quotation comes from the speech made by count Albert Apponyi on 4th June 1920 during the time of the peace negotiations in Trianon.

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The Trianon apologia

Even now, in this post 1989 era, the Trianon apologia still continues. The division of Central Europe into small states which expand at the expense of the Hungarian centre is something that is still happening today. Even now that the artificially constructed states, which may thank the power political constellation of both the world wars of this century for their very existence, have started to disintegrate, there is still no indication that the position of the Hungarian national communities is going to improve. Since communism fell in 1989, East Germany has disappeared and the Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia have fallen apart. These developments have completely altered the geopolitical balance within Europe. The present situation is starting to resemble the situation of before the First World War when Germany was also powerful in Central Europe. Not only have states fallen apart and has Germany been reunited but, on the basis of the right to self-determination, a significant number of new states have come into being as well: the

Baltic countries, the Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, Moldavia etc. In the process, the pre-Trianon borders have in certain instances been restored, such as, for example, in the case of the present Czech and Slovak border and in the case of the borders of Croatia and Serbia. The Hungarians, who were really discriminated against, in Trianon are again being threatened with a similar kind of discrimination. With this revival of the right to self-determination the Hungarians have, from a national point of view, become even more fragmented. Before the fall of communism, the Hungarians were dispersed over six states (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Austria). Now they live in eight states (Hungary, Slovakia, the Ukraine, Rumania, Rump Yugoslavia (Serbia), Croatia, Slovenia and Austria). Though the Trianon configuration might have been reduced by virtue of the fact that relatively powerful states, such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia have disappeared and smaller, less stable states, such as Slovakia and Rump Yugoslavia have arisen in their place the Hungarian question has only become more complex than it was before.

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The right to self-determination has not only manifested itself in the formation of new states, but it has also, in a number of cases, been implicated within existing borders. The first and most clear-cut instance is that of the German community in South Tirol which falls under Italian jurisdiction. After the First World War, this area was annexed from Austria by Italy. After forty years of negotiations, Italy and Austria have finally signed a treaty which assigns territorial autonomy to the German community (350,000) of South Tirol. This so-called internal self-determination has been applied in Central and Eastern Europe as well, for instance, amongst the Turkish Gagauzi in Moldavia, and amongst the Crimean Tatars of Russia. The Hungarian national communities of Hungary's neighbouring countries have not so far been able to profit in any way from the dynamic right to self-determination developments, even though all these particular Hungarian communities in Central Europe only claim a right to autonomy on the basis of the internal application of the right to self-determination.

In this part of the book, I shall demonstrate how the upholders and the apologists of Trianon, the Trianonists, still manage to dominate the scene in Central Europe and how they still approach the 'Hungarian question' in terms of stereotypes and prejudices. The Trianonist's agenda is no different from that of their predecessors from before the First World War. The objective is to keep Central Europe in a stranglehold position so that it is unable to regenerate politically, culturally and economically. This political objective has been put back on the Trianonist's agenda now that Germany has been reunited. German power in Central Europe must be kept strictly under control. It is an aim that can only be fulfilled if the region gets swept up in an endless downward spiral of internal strife that will ultimately lead to chaos and desolation. Consequently, the extreme nationalist forces in the region are allowed to go their own way as long as they basically support the Trianon coalition. This explains also why the Serb leaders Milosevic and Karadzic were given free rein to do as they pleased in the 'Serb' regions of former Yugoslavia.

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By contrast, the Hungarians in Central Europe are given absolutely no room for manoeuvre whatsoever despite the dehumanizing activities discussed in the previous part of this book that continue to take place in Hungary's neighbouring states. Hungarian autonomy is seen as a threat to the Trianon configuration which is why the West closes its eyes to the many blatant violations of human rights against Hungarians. It is, of course, easy to simply say that the victims deserve their fate, because they are 'extreme nationalist', 'anti-Semitic', or even 'fascist' and to assert that such barbarians do not deserve the support of the West. In part one of this book, I have shown how deeply-rooted these negative stereotypes and images of the Hungarians are in Western culture. The mammoth task of demythologizing these stereotypes sometimes seems to be a totally impossible task. Suffice it to say, the Hungarains have not yet been successful on this front. In this chapter, I shall expound on a number of methods and strategies which are characteristic when it comes to 'controlling' the Hungarian question: asymmetries, neutralization and the status quo.

Since the Treaty of Trianon, Hungarians living outside of Hungary have come to be classified as 'minorities'. This category was applied to all groups of people who were not a part of the constitutional nation state. During the Trianon congress, it was decided that all citizens who did not ethnically belong to a given nation state's majority group would be guaranteed cultural rights in an appendix to the Trianon Treaty. These so-called minority provisions, published in the Journal Officiel de la REpublique Francaise were reluctantly signed by the new states of Yugoslavia, Rumania and Czechoslovakia after the First World War. What these special provisions implied was that there were big groups of citizens who, individually, were able to benefit formally from the civil rights to which everyone in the country was entitled while at the same time they were as a group an alien element within the unitary nation state. This was why the rights laid down in these

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minority clauses, such as the right to autonomy in the field of mother tongue education, were not honoured. Even the Entente Powers who had thought up these agreements in the first place and who, in signing the documents, had guaranteed to ensure that these regulations were abided by, did nothing to enforce them.

It is correct that in the successor states of Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Austria the Hungarians were, numerically speaking, in the minority. In the areas where they live, however, they are in the majority. In part two of this book, I furthermore demonstrated how the Hungarians living in compact concentrations in neighbouring countries are, in most cases, populate an area contiguous to the Hungarian heartland. The term 'minority' so often used in Western literature to describe Hungarians living in Hungary's neighbouring countries is, therefore, misleading. Apart from anything else, the word 'minority' has all kinds of other connotations in the West.

In the West, the concept 'minority' has an extremely complex and vague meaning. The concept pertains to an endless list of different cases. For instance, there are national, ethnic, cultural, religious, immigrant and language minorities. There are the Basques of France and Spain, who form a national minority, in Alsace-Lorraine there are the Germans, who form a language minority, the Frisians in the Netherlands are recognized in the Dutch constitution as a linguistic minority but not as a national or ethnic minority. The Catholics of Northern Ireland constitute a religious minority. In most Western European countries, gypsies are seen as belonging to a social minority. Finally, there are the immigrants and foreign workers who have been settling in states in the West since the Second World War, who are considered a minority. In the Western context the concept 'minority' is ambiguous and, therefore, it cannot be unequivocally defined.

Since the list of possibilities is endless, it is thus virtually impossible to define exactly what one means by 'minority'. Hence the conclusion that all terms derived from 'minority' such as: minority rights, minority statutes, minority protection have an

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empty meaning. The term 'minority' furthermore has a rather derogatory undertone in Western society which has to do with the fact that in the West our notion of what constitutes a state is linked to the concept of a homogeneous nation state. Minorities are seen as elements that disrupt internal harmony which in turn leads to tension within a state. Therefore, 'minorities' that fight for cultural freedom and autonomy are, a priori, given a negative image. They are often branded as being 'intolerant' or 'extremist'. Furthermore it is so that existing states refuse to give minorities separate language rights, because conducting administrative systems in two or more languages would be too expensive. 'Minorities' are, therefore, not only seen as a threat to the cohesion of a nation state, but also as creating extra expenses.

Because of its heterogeneity, it is, therefore, difficult to unambiguously define the term 'minority'. Solutions to the problem are, therefore, also difficult. Often factors other than the compliance of the relevant state are responsible for resolving the problems surrounding the rights of minorities in an amenable way. Below are a few examples to illustrate my point. The different national groups of people in Switzerland who together compose the Swiss state: the Germans, French, Italians and Rhaeto-Romans constitute equal status portions of the Swiss nation each with their own territorial and cultural autonomy. This symbiosis is partly made possible by Switzerland's geographical circumstances. The country lies isolated between mountain ranges. It is a symbiosis with a long history, Switzerland provides us with a prime example of tolerance in a country. Last but not least, Switzerland, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, can financially afford to operate with four official languages. The Swedish minority in Finland that constitutes approximately 10% of the population is also in a relatively favourable position as far as rights are concerned. This has to do with the fact that Finland is a large, but thinly populated country. From an economical point of view, the Swedish minority is important to Finland. As it is concentrated in the south of Finland and is separated from the mother country by a stretch of water, there is no danger of separatism occuring. For the German minority living

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in Denmark (20,000) and the Danes domiciled in Germany (40,000) things have been more or less satisfactorily resolved for two reasons, firstly because there are relatively low numbers of people involved - only several tens of thousands - and secondly, because the proportions are roughly comparable. This is, therefore, a well-balanced situation. These minority groups have the function of a bridge between the German and Danish nations and of thereby contributing to good relationships between these two neighbouring states. In most cases, though, the legal positions of 'minorities' are far from well organized.

When applied to the Hungarians living in the Carpathian Basin, the term 'minority' infers an asymmetry which does not correspond to reality. It is incorrect to apply the term 'minority' to the Hungarians of the Carpathian Basin for the following reasons:

- national communities of people living next to their heartland who only find themselves in their present unnatural 'minority position', because of falsely taken political decisions can easily return to being in a majority position, if country borders are simply changed. This constitutes a qualitative difference between, for instance, the Slovakian Hungarians and the gypsies and Germans of Hungary. Such groups may, therefore, not be casually lumped together.

- the concept of what constitutes a minority is relative to the territorial area to which it is related. If one takes the Carpathian Basin as a territorial criterium then all the Hungarians living in that area can be seen as belonging to the majority nation. Viewed from this angle the only Hungarians forming an ethnic minority in Eastern Europe are those living in Moldavia in Rumania, the Csango-Hungarians (200,000).

- because of their numbers, the Hungarians living outside of Hungary's present territorial boundaries cannot be rightly termed 'minorities'. If one considers that there are European states, for example Luxembourg (250,000) with fewer inhabitants than the number of Hungarians in North Vojvodina (400,000 Hungarians) or newly created states, for instance, Slovenia (two million people), with equal or less people than for instance the number of Hungarians living in Transylvania (over 2.5 million). Therefore, it

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is necessary to establish a 'critical number' so that above this number there can no longer be talk of a 'minority'.

If a stop is going to be put to the unmotivated asymmetrical situation, it will be necessary to stop regarding the Hungarians of the Carpathian Basin who live outside of Hungary as a 'minority'. It would be more correct to refer to them as 'Hungarians living outside the country' or 'Hungarian national communities'.

Slovakia became independent on 1st January 1993. In part two, I explained how it was that the disintegration of the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic was not the result of a democratic decision. The Slovak leader Meciar did not think it necessary to call for a referendum. The international community simply accepted the division of the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic as an accomplished fact. When the country was split in two, the Slovaks claimed their right to self-determination. What was interesting about this claim was that it remained exclusive. It should, furthermore, be noted that the area of southern Slovakia which is inhabited by Hungarians has never previously come under Slovak authority. Before the First Slovak Republic was established, in 1939 this area had been returned to Hungary on the grounds of the First Vienna Award of 1938. It is, therefore, not absolutely certain upon what grounds, historical (?), self-determinatory (?) or otherwise the Slovaks claimed that the south of the country was rightfully theirs.

The Slovaks had been free to choose to separate from the rest of the country, but they could not accept that similarly the Hungarians domiciled in the south of Slovakia might conceivably be allowed to decide to which state they wanted to belong. On the basis of the democratic principle: 'what goes for one must go for another' the Hungarians had envisaged the following two options. Either they could establish a new Slovakia together with the Slovaks, obviously on a basis of equality within a democratic federation of Slovakia, or they could choose to break away in much the same way as the Slovaks had separated from the Czechs, namely by exercising their right to self-determination.

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The Hungarian community living in Slovakia received nothing whatsoever from the Slovaks. No referendum was held which would have given the Hungarians a possibility to air their views, nor was their constitutional position improved in any way. The preamble to the Slovak constitution made matters quite clear. The Hungarians need not expect to receive equal treatment in the new Slovakia which had sunk to the level of an apartheid state in which huge portions of the population were to be systematically discriminated against. Slovak nationalism had bared its teeth and claimed for itself rights that it withheld from others. The Slovaks had only intensified their asymmetrical relationship with the Hungarians.

The preamble to the Slovak constitution states that independent Slovakia is the historic successor state of the Great Moravian Empire.(153) According to aberrant Slovak irredentist theory, the borders of this ancient empire bisect present day Hungary. Historians affiliated to the Slovak Academy of Sciences maintain that the southern boundary of the Great Moravian Empire follows lake Balaton in Hungary.(154) From a purely scientific point of view, it is absolutely uncertain whether or not this Great Moravian Empire ever even existed, but the people of Bratislava firmly believe in this myth. Hence the Slovaks were not afraid to lay indirect claims on Hungarian territory in the preamble to their constitution. Furthermore, the Slovak emblem and flag contain the double cross, a symbol which originates from the coat of arms of the Hungarian royal Arpad dynasty and which is as such a centuries-old component of Hungary's national emblem. The question is, on what grounds does the new and independent state of Slovakia claim the right to use the heraldic symbolism of another existing state? Finally in October of 1992, Slovakia blatantly ignored all international agreements in going ahead with unilaterally changing the course of the Danube. The river was redirected to flow into the Danube canal, needed to drive the newly built hydro-electric power station at Gabcikovo/Nagymaros.(155) Bela Liptak, an American-Hungarian expert and environmental activist stated in a lecture given in the Netherlands in March 1995 that, when the course of the Danube

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was changed the Slovak army had stood by, presumably to stave off possible Hungarian intervention, but this precaution had been quite unnecessary as the Hungarians had not intervened. Slovakia, therefore, made a unilateral decision to alter the Hungarian-Slovak border, a border which, according to a peace agreement of 1947, is created by the river Danube. As a consequence, there are places where Hungary no longer has free access to the river Danube. Different independent studies have demonstrated that the long-term effects of the hydro-electric power station will be catastrophic for the wider regional environment. Rare kinds of flora and fauna will eventually disappear. The power station, which is very uneconomical also consumes huge quantities of water with the result that vast tracts of southern Slovakia, notably the Csallokoz (Zitny Ostrov) region, inhabited by many Hungarians whose livelihood depends on agriculture, will dry out. It is highly probable that the Hungarians living there will be forced to give up agriculture and look elsewhere for an income. In the western part of Hungary, the ground water level is dropping which means that domestic water supplies are under threat as is the whole agricultural industry. Another problem is that the actual hydro-electric power station construction is showing major structural faults which means that the nearby cities of Komarom (Komarno), Gyor and Budapest might one day be in very great danger. If any major technical problems occur at the power station all these cities would be flooded or, worse still, because of the fall of the water of twenty metres, these cities would be in danger of extinction.

The Danube dam project is just one in a chain of ploys to ecologically surround Hungary and to destroy the area of southern Slovakia which is predominantly inhabited by Hungarians. In February 1995, the Slovak government announced that its nuclear power plant in Mohi (Mochovce) on the Danube, just over the border with Hungary, was nearing completion. Meciar alleged that if European financiers had not been forthcoming then the Russians would be prepared to lend money for the completion of the nuclear power plant (156). When the Slovak government announced that they were planning to finish building this nuclear power station, a storm of protest broke out amongst Austrian,

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Slovak and Hungarian environmental activists. The power plant, which is situated about 140 kilometres to the north of the Hungarian capital of Budapest, is similar to the one that was built in Chernobyl and is fitted with French safety valves. Apart from the perpetual risk of a meltdown occuring the atomic reactor at Mochovce will be dumping its radioactive waste into the Danube which means that Budapest's drinking water supplies will automatically become contaminated. If this happens, the genetic make-up of the inhabitants of that city could be altered within a generation.

Until now Hungary has not reacted to any of these violations of international agreements and threats of danger generated by the Slovaks which is incomprehensible if one bears in mind that Hungary's legitimate rights are clearly being seriously violated. One would expect some kind of reaction from the Hungarian side if only to prevent a freshwater shortage occurring in the country. According to experts in the field, there will be a worldwide shortage of freshwater before very long.(157) It is, therefore, in every state's best interests to protect its clean drinking water and freshwater supplies. All states react differently in similar cases. If, for instance, the course of the river Jordan, which forms the border between Jordan and Israel, were to be unilaterally changed the Israelis would regard this as an open declaration of war.

The nature of the conflict continuing between Slovakia and Hungary is not dissimilar to the one going on between independent Macedonia, a federal republic of former Yugoslavia and Greece. In three different ways Greece felt threatened by the new Macedonian Republic and so refused to give the state international recognition. In the first place, the Macedonian constitution contains a clause which declares that Macedonia will do everything in its power to free fellow Macedonians living in neighbouring countries. In the second place, the Macedonian emblem and flag represent a star like the one found in the grave of the father of Alexander the Great in Verghina which is situated in what is now Greece. In the third place, the fact that Macedonians refer to Thessaloniki as a Macedonian city indicates, so the

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Greeks believe, that they would like to annex it. Such a move would give the Macedonians free access to the Aegean Sea. Though Greece admits that the Macedonian state is militarily very weak at present, it still feels threatened by this young state and reserves for itself the right to give priority to its own national interests and pursue a preventative policy. What it amounts to is that Greece is not prepared to recognize Macedonia's independence, unless, perhaps, if it changes its name. Greece has finally endorsed its politics by introducing an economic boycott against the young state that contravenes all international agreements.

During one of the Yugoslavia conference meetings supervised by the European Union held on 4th November 1991 in The Hague, the so-called Carrington paper, which aimed at building up new relations in former Yugoslavia, was accepted. Article 2/paragraph 3 stated that people who belong to a national or ethnic minority have cultural rights and may not be discriminated against because of their national or ethnic affiliations. The Carrington paper went a step further. In paragraph 5 of the same article, special status in

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the form of autonomy is given to people of national or ethnic groups who form the majority in the area in which they live. This autonomy makes allowances for the following matters: (a) the right to have national symbols, (b) a separate education system that respects the values and needs of the group in question, (c) legislative, judicial and administrative bodies including regional police forces and (d) facilities in the field of international monitoring.

On the basis of this proposition, the EU offered the Serbs in Croatian Krajina cultural and territorial autonomy. The Serbian leader Milosevic agreed to this proposal on 9th January 1992 in Brussels.(158) The EU's Council of Foreign Affairs Ministers made the recognition of Croatia dependent on the granting of autonomy for the Serbian Croats living in Krajina. In this way, Croatia was compelled to recognize the cultural and territorial autonomy of some 400,000 Serbs living on Croatian territory in its constitution. The Serbian community was treated quite differently from the Albanians living in Kosovo or the Hungarian community in North Vojvodina. The chairman of the Democratic Community of Vojvodina Hungarians (VMDK), Andras Agoston, made it clear in letters addressed to the conference chairman, Lord Carrington, exactly what kind of pressure and threats the Hungarians and Croats of Vojvodina were having to live under. In a letter addressed to the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, Agoston pointed out that Serbia was not prepared to keep to its side of the bargain where the Carrington proposals were concerned: "The draft text of the constitution does not correspond with reality which is that both Serbia and the federal Republic of Yugoslavia are multinational communities. In fact, the proposal represents an anti-democratic procedure in the legislation process. Furthermore, the constitution drafted out does not account for the collective rights of ethnic groups. They are not recognized as legal or political subjects. These omissions constitute a direct contravention of the agreements laid down in The Hague on which the peace negotiations are to be based. No mention is made of autonomy as a possible solution to the nationality problem in the whole new European system."(159)

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The Serbian leader Milosevic was obviously successful in persuading the international community to accept that the Krajina Serbs living in Croatia should be given autonomy, while simultaneously not being required to make any concessions for the national communities within his 'Greater' Serbia. The asymmetry of the Trianon configuration towards Hungarians (400,000 of them) and towards the Albanians of Kosovo (2 million) is thus perpetuated. Obviously, this completely goes against any kind of democratic and just approach to this kind of problem. It also gave an indication of what the power balance situation was like within the EU. At the time of the peace talks the Serb Milosevic was given a free hand. The Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, confirmed this in an interview with Vrij Nederland on 23rd January 1993 when he said: "From the beginning the Germans have felt very involved in matters concerning Slovenia and Croatia. They had a limited idea of Yugoslavia. Because of its past Germany was unable to take part in any kind of military intervention. France has found itself in rather a dilemma; the French knew the Serbs well. For a long time, France found it best not to offend Milosevic. From that point of view it was pure good fortune that our ambassador in Paris, Henry Wijnaendts, was able to play such a prominent role as mediator, because the Netherlands just happened to be chairing the EU at the time. He agreed with the French and was keen to keep on negotiating with Milosevic."

In their struggle for more rights and greater autonomy, the Hungarians living in Transylvania have so far received no support from international public opinion and politics. Whenever the Hungarians raise the Transylvania question, the propaganda mongers immediately get going. The Hungarians are then branded as 'nationalists', 'anti-Semitics', 'revisionists', etc. It is a different matter, though, when the Rumanians start to raise the question of reuniting Rumania with the former, but now independent Soviet Republic of Moldavia (Moldova) and bring forward territorial claims for a particular section of the Ukraine. During the secret Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of 1939 a section of Rumania covering approximately 50,500 square kilometres with 3.7 million

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inhabitants was handed over to the Soviet Union. In 1940, Stalin turned the greater part of this area of the Soviet Union into the Soviet Republic of Moldavia and the remainder was added to the Ukraine (South Bessarabia and North Bukovina). Together the former Soviet Republic of Moldavia and these parts of the Ukraine formed what was historically known as Bessarabia and what had, until the First World War, belonged to Tsarist Russia. Only after the war, did it become a part of Greater Rumania.

The former Soviet Republic of Moldavia (Moldova) is inhabited by ethnic Rumanians, Russians, Ukrainians and Turkish speaking Gagauzis. On 6th May 1990 when the independent state of Moldavia was still a part of the Soviet Union, the border between Rumanian Moldavia and Soviet Moldavia, formed by the river Prut, was opened for six hours at eight different points. So it was that ethnic Rumanians living on both sides of the border were able to cross over without having to show any identification papers. The day was organized by Moldavian cultural societies in both countries and was named the 'bridge of flowers' day. In the international press much was written about this 'bridge of flowers' day: "On Sunday the millions of flowers that were thrown over the bridge converted the river into a beautiful field of blooms. There were just as many tears as flowers, though, as the deep emotions of a divided people were poured out."(160) The articles written about this occasion when 'the Moldavian people were reunited for one day' were accompanied by a photo of a Rumanian border soldier shown throwing flowers into the river Prut from the bridge, into 'Moldavia's wound' as the caption read. When the border opened "many people took the school books with them that had been banned in the Soviet Republic for a long time. It is only since last year that Soviet Moldavians have been allowed to publish books and newspapers in Latin script."(161) In all these instances nothing other than understanding is shown for the Rumanians who have been separated from each other by an artificial border. That also applied to the declaration made by the 'liberal' opposition in Rumania, the so-called Democratic Convention, that concerned itself with the question of "the Rumanian regions on the other side of the river Prut that were forcibly occupied by the Soviet Union,

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but which remained an inextricable part of Rumania."(162) It was logical that the Rumanians were delighted to be reunited with their Moldavian brothers for one day and that they took with them school books to give to the Rumanians in Moldavia who had been deprived of such books for so many decades. Why then should Hungarians be called 'extreme nationalists', when they do similar things for their brothers in Transylvania? Why also is there no 'flower bridge' at Komarom (Komarno) where the Danube forms the Hungarian-Slovak border as this is also one of the many 'Berlin walls' of the Carpathian Basin where a city extending over both banks of the river Danube is chiefly inhabited by Hungarians?

The Rumanians have even managed to go a step further without being reproached by the international community. On 29th November 1991, the Rumanian government claimed that "it could not accept that these areas [South Bessarabia and North Bukovina, LM] might be integrated into the Ukraine, an independent state."(163) The Rumanian government tried to mobilize the international political machine in order to give their demands international publicity. The under-secretary for Foreign Affairs, Adrian Dohotaru, was for instance sent to the Netherlands to further explain the territorial claims: "Bucharest demands South Bessarabia and North Bukovina", regions that until now have belonged to the Ukraine. According to Dohotaru his country would only use "peaceful" means to achieve their goals. "We shall do our utmost to win back those regions through the channels of international justice open to us. Our history-based arguments are very strong. The Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939 that had allocated these areas to Russia was invalid and the world knows that. The pact has never been fully recognized by Rumania which regarded the taking over of these tracts of land within 24 hours as outright theft" and "The new government in the Ukraine has not yet voiced its official view on the matter. Everybody is still too preoccupied with the new-found independence. We respect the Ukraine's independence, but we also want to see that an end is put to historical injustice."(164) The reverberations felt in the West that emanate from such 'revisionistic' utterances on the part of

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Maracz: Hungarian Revival