A Case Study on Trianon

The dismemberment of Hungary and corollary provisions of the Treaty of Trianon have rankled Hungarians for more than half a century.¹ Redressing the humiliation of Trianon has been a cardinal aim of Hungarian political leaders of the interwar years and, in a more muted form, even of contemporary ones. Crucial to Hungarian revisionism-the most extreme form of expression of Hungarian aspirations-has been the recovery of Transylvania from Romania. Even more moderate exponents of the need for rectification of the injustices inflicted upon historic Hungary at Trianon have, in their determination to keep the Transylvanian question in the forefront of international discussions, focused on actual or alleged abuses of the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania by successive Romanian regimes. And there are good reasons for this preoccupation.

The singling out of Transylvania and of the Romanians as central to Hungarian aspirations is ultimately related to the historic contempt shown by Hungarian ruling classes, and even by many of the non-ruling ones, toward their Romanian counterparts. The Romanians, whether in Transylvania or in the Old Kingdom, have been traditionally viewed as uncivilized, unscrupulous, and inferior to the Hungarians. If Romanian leaders resented Tsar Nicholas's bon mot that being a Romanian is "a profession rather than a nationality;" if they expressed outrage at the Germans' concept of the "Unmensch," which embraced the Romanians with other peoples in Southeast Europe, it was the Hungarians' contempt for the Romanians that gave Romanian nationalism the greatest impetus since the late nineteenth century.² The "liberation" of Transylvania from Hungarian yoke was the primary goal of Romanian nationalists before Trianon, and conversely, the liberation of that province from the Romanian yoke became the primary goal of Hungarian nationalists after Trianon. Under these circumstances a review of the significance of Trianon for Romania is indeed desirable, particularly because of the

continuing importance of the Transylvanian question in the 1980s to nationalists and communists alike.

In the last analysis, the decisions made by the Great Powers with respect to Hungary's dismemberment, and the determination of the Hungarians not to accept their validity, is the root cause of all problems related to Trianon. The Hungarian challenges to the legitimacy of Romanian rule in Transylvania invariably focused on violations by the Romanians of specific provisions of the Treaty of Trianon, particularly those related to the rights and treatment of national minorities.³ Moreover, as these discriminatory, and thus illegal, practices provided the rationale for the Hungarians' seeking the physical reincorporation of at least those parts of Transylvania in which Hungarians constituted a majority of the population, all Romanian regimes of the interwar years-all committed to the maintenance of Greater Romania-defended their minority policies and rejected all accusations leveled against them as "external interference in domestic affairs." And in these respects, too, little has changed since World War II.

It would be erroneous to assume, however, that Romanian policies in Transylvania were primarily motivated by the need to safeguard the territorial integrity of that province against Hungarian irredentism. And it would also be incorrect to regard the anti-Hungarian policies in Transylvania as a prerequisite for maintaining the spirit of Romanian nationalism at a high pitch during the years when the euphoria of reunification of all Romanian territories into Greater Romania was blunted by the political and socioeconomic realities which faced all Romanians after World War I.⁴ It is true that anti-Magyarism was an integral part of Romanian nationalism but it was not necessarily its principal component. It is also true that Hungarian revisionism was unwelcome to Romania's rulers but there was no apprehension over the territorial security of Transylvania. Other problems, some expressly related to Transylvania and others only peripherally so, were more relevant to an analysis of Romanian minority policies than have been suggested by individuals concerned with the Hungarian minority alone.

The primary political issue in postwar Romania was that of consolidation of power by the "unifiers," identified with the political establishment of the Old Kingdom and particularly with Ioan I. C. Bratianu's "Liberals," who entertained the belief that Greater

Romania was their own creation.⁵ Bratianu's power base was, however, threatened by the proliferation of political organizations following the territorial expansion of the Old Kingdom and by the Great Powers' lack of confidence in his tactics and policies. His temporary absence from the premiership of Romania, between September 1919 and January 1922, following his resignation over a dispute with the Allies over peace settlements, allowed him to develop political positions designed to discredit his opponents and secure unrestricted power for himself and the Liberals. The main threat to the Liberals' interests was perceived to come from the National Party of Transylvania which, together with the Peasant Party of the Old Kingdom, sought to identify itself with the nationwide interests of the peasantry by advocating acceptance of the popular Transylvanian pattern of agrarian reform as the prototype for the whole Greater Romania.⁶ Bratianu, fearful of a likely realignment of political forces, sought and secured the support of all conservative and nationalist forces of the Old Kingdom. In fact, it was the alteration by the Romanian parliament of the Transylvanian pattern of agrarian reform which paved the way for Bratianu's return to power as the protector of the traditional political interests of the creators of Greater Romania.

The anti-Transylvanian aspects of the political struggles of the immediate postwar years clearly transcended the Hungarian question in Transylvania. Whereas the reforms initiated by the Romanian National Party of Transylvania were indeed detrimental to the interests of the Hungarian latifundiaries, they were not adverse to the interests of the rank-and-file of the Hungarian peasantry. Moreover, the reforms were designed to be democratic and nondiscriminatory toward national minorities.⁷ As such, they were unacceptable to Bratianu-the self-styled champion and protector of the Romanians' historic interests and guarantor of Romanian supremacy in the Greater Romanian state. Since Bratianu's political philosophy also entailed non acceptance of "dictates" by the Great Powers in matters related to the rights of minorities and to any form of "external interference in Romania's internal affairs," the rights of the Hungarians in Transylvania became an ipso facto issue, but not the main issue, in post-Trianon Romanian politics.

Bratianu's policies toward Transylvania in general and toward national minorities in particular were also affected by external factors

not directly related to Trianon. Bratianu was identified as the diagnostician and primary opponent of the "Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy," both in Romania and abroad, largely because of his actions against Bela Kun's regime and his defiance of the Bolsheviks' demands for restitution of Bessarabia.⁸ It was thus incumbent upon the Liberals to protect all Romanians-particularly those of Transylvania and Bessarabia-against Judeo-communists who, by definition, included most Hungarian Jews in Transylvania, most Russian Jews in Bessarabia, and most Jewish, pro-Jewish, or Jewlike intellectuals in all parts of Romania. Jews and communists thus provided a convenient link between internal politics and the primary and most persistent external problem of interwar Romania, that of Soviet revisionism in Bessarabia.

The Bolsheviks' insistence on the return of Bessarabia coupled with Romanian rejection of their demands bode ill for Soviet-Romanian relations.⁹ It is not that in the early 1920s the Romanians feared seizure of Bessarabia by force of arms or even by externally-fomented revolutionary actions; yet, Bratianu as well as other Romanian political leaders realized that Soviet revisionism was not to be taken lightly. Whether Romania's rulers were fearful of an actual or potential link between Russian and Hungarian revisionisms is uncertain. But they were aware of the Bolsheviks' anger over Romania's military intervention against Kun's forces which afforded the Russians with the opportunity of branding Romania as the enemy of the "democratic" Hungarian masses. They were also aware of the anti-Romanian sentiments of the Hungarian masses, whether "democratic" or not, and of the Hungarian bourgeoisie and aristocracy who far from looking upon the Romanian armies as "liberators" from Bolshevism viewed the Romanians as rapists and plunderers of Hungarian property, not to mention of Hungarian territories secured by the Treaty of Trianon. Thus, revisionism-of the threatening Soviet variety as well as of the potentially-threatening Hungarian one-became the bugaboo of Romanian foreign policy in the twenties. And, in the process, the groups that could be labeled as supportive of external revisionist forces, specifically Hungarians and Jews, were singled out for discrimination by Bratianu and by other nationalist forces in Romania.

It is fair to say that the ensuing anti-Hungarian and anti-Jewish manifestations were largely based on guilt by association. It is true that there was little love lost between Hungarians and Romanians

and between Romanians and Jews in Greater Romania. But it would be difficult to argue that the majority of the Hungarians were revisionists or that most of Romania's Jews were anti-Romanian or pro-Bolshevik. There can be little doubt, however, that most of the Hungarian bourgeoisie, functionaries, expropriated landlords, and intellectuals were anti-Romanian and that many of these educated Hungarians favored the reincorporation of Transylvania into Hungary. And it is also undeniable that most of Transylvania's Jews identified their interests with those of the Hungarians as they considered themselves to be either Hungarian Jews or Jewish Hungarians.¹⁰

Whether reconciliation of disparate ethnic, socio-economic, and cultural differences could have been achieved within the Romanian body politic under more enlightened rule is a matter of conjecture. The fact is that since 1922, at least, Bucharest made no effort to secure the allegiance of the Hungarians and Jews of Transylvania and, if anything, made a conscious effort to Romanianize Transylvania in a manner detrimental to the interests of most of its inhabitants regardless of their nationality or religion.

The ascendancy of Romanians over Hungarians in Transylvania would have occurred even if political power had been held by the Romanian National Party of Transylvania. The introduction of Romanian as official language, the replacement of Hungarian functionaries, the redistribution of wealth, and similarly radical alterations of previous relationships were prerequisites for the reincorporation of Transylvania into the Greater Romanian body politic. It is possible, but not likely, that the resultant dislocations could have been made less painful had the process of Romanianization been directed by Transylvanians for the benefit of the Romanians of Transylvania but in a spirit of reconciliation toward non-Romanians. But that was not to be since Bratianu and the Liberals were determined to integrate Transylvania into Greater Romania a la roumaine. In their dual opposition to both Hungarians and the National Party of Transylvania, the Liberals controlled the process of Romanianization from Bucharest by subordinating it to the central bureaucracy. Although Transylvanian Romanians participated in the transfer of political and economic power they did not direct it. Their displeasure with the arrogance and corruption identified with Bratianu's men became more pronounced as Bucharest continued to direct Transylvanian affairs even after the transfer was completed. As for the

Hungarians, their bitterness toward Romanians was exacerbated by the need to deal with Bucharest-appointed functionaries and to cope with Bucharest methods of governance. Yet, from a Romanian political standpoint, the integration of Transylvania into Greater Romania and subordination of regional to central political interests was essential. Minority rights could be observed to the extent to which they would not affect the interests of the state. Or, in the view of Bucharest, the Hungarians were a potential Trojan Horse because of their presumed allegiance to Hungarian revisionism and, in any event, they and the Jews had to be humiliated because of their historic exploitation of the Romanian masses in Transylvania. Nevertheless, the rights of national minorities were formally respected by the Liberals and by their successors throughout most of the interwar period. Thus, the repeated complaints regarding actual or alleged violations of the provisions of the Treaty of Trianon addressed by the Hungarian government to the League of Nations or to Bucharest were readily refuted by the Romanian government.¹¹ In fact, such complaints tended to aid Bucharest as they gave credence to the official line that Hungarians, both outside and inside Romania, were revisionists and enemies of Greater Romania and of the Romanians. All the same, relations between the Hungarian minority and the Romanians in Transylvania were correct during the twenties and, if anything, even improved between 1928 and 1933 during the short-lived governance of the National Peasant Party.

Nevertheless, the prognosis for the solution of nationality and political problems in Transylvania was poor by the early 1930s for reasons not necessarily related to Transylvanian affairs. By then the problems of Greater Romania had become a function of major international crises related to the global economy and the corollary alteration of political structures.¹² The economic difficulties facing Romania in the twenties and early thirties were symptomatic of the general economic malaise which facilitated the rise of Mussolini and Hitler and which led to the Great Depression. The Romanian agrarian economy suffered less than the industrialized economies of other European countries in the interwar years, but the peasants disillusionment with the agrarian reform, and the intellectuals' and students' with the inability of the Liberals and other political organizations to provide remedies for the economic stagnation and unemployment of university graduates and of the intellectual community in general, led to the formulation of Christian populist

ideologies and the organization of extreme right-wing political groups whose proclaimed mission was to save Romania from Jews and communists. The virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Communist ideology of the students and intellectuals, who supported Professor A. C. Cuza's League of National Christian Defense and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's Legion of the Archangel Michael, was relatively ineffectual before the Depression but caused havoc in Romania by the mid-thirties.¹³ Nevertheless, the established political parties, to counter the impact of Cuza's and Codreanu's appeal to the young, the unemployed, the intellectuals, and even the disgruntled peasants and industrial workers, became more and more committed to nationalist formulae in attempting to solve Romania's problems. And since the problems proved insoluble, the scapegoats were readily identified as non-Romanian and, presumably, anti-Romanian elements-the Jews and the Hungarians at home and the Russian communists and Hungarian revisionists abroad.

It is true that anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism ranked higher with Romanian nationalists than anti-Magyarism, but it is also true that the spreading of Codreanu's radical ideology into Transylvania led to a coupling of the anti-Jewish and anti-Hungarian attitudes of his supporters in that province. In Transylvania the Hungarians and the Jews, because of their preponderance in urban commercial and professional activities, were linked as common "exploiters of the Romanian masses." In Transylvania too the nationality problems were further aggravated by the presence of the Saxons and the political significance which that group assumed after the rise of Hitler in Germany.¹⁴

The Saxons had received preferential treatment from Romania's rulers even before the rise of Hitler because of their support of Bucharest and their sharing of a common antagonism toward Hungarians and Jews. With Hitler's advent and the corollary strengthening of the influence, if not yet the power, of the Romanian extreme right, the Saxons were regarded as a potential link, or at least contact, with Berlin for those political organizations that were in power, or seeking power, in Greater Romania. By 1936, as the first overt expressions of Hungarian revisionism were voiced by Budapest to its friends in Rome and Berlin, the importance of the Saxons as a possible counterweight to Hungarian revisionism in Transylvania and as supporters of Romanian positions in Berlin became more pronounced. Moreover, as the shift to the right in

Romania in general gained momentum by 1937, the Saxons were used both by Nazi Germany and by pro-Nazi organizations such as Codreanu's Iron Guard as tools in their attempts to fulfill common political goals. It should be noted, however, that even during this period of sharpening of nationality conflicts in Transylvania, violations of the constitutional rights of Hungarians and of their alleged supporters, the Jews, were not legally evident. What was evident was the worsening of the psychological climate. the decline of the levels of toleration by Romanians of Hungarians and Jews. In fact, it was not until 1938 that overt legal violations of minority rights occurred in Greater Romania following the establishment of the first radical right-wing government-that of Goga-Cuza, following the national elections of December 1937.¹⁵ But it should be noted that discriminatory measures against the Hungarians became evident only after the Munich and ensuing crises, which affected Romania's relations with Hungary, with the Soviet Union, with the Axis, and with her traditional allies.

Italian support of Hungarian revisionist claims and Russian reluctance to abandon its own revisionist claims to Bessarabia, so manifest in the 1930s, were taken in stride by Bucharest until German revisionism itself assumed significant proportions. Hitler's support of the Sudeten Germans' demands were perceived as ominous for Czechoslovakia, but the Czechoslovak contacts with Moscow and the Axis' with Budapest were deemed ominous for Romania. The First Vienna Award of 1938 which favored Hungary's claims to Czechoslovakia, caused panic in Bucharest and placed the question of maintenance of the territorial integrity of Greater Romania on the front burner of political activities and concerns. To most Romanian political leaders it was no longer a question of whether territorial revisions were to occur but of how to cut losses.¹⁶

Reconstruction of the political dynamics of Romania between the fall of 1938 and the fall of 1940, during which period the territorial integrity of the state was the paramount concern of all political forces, remains a difficult and controversial task.¹⁷ It seems fair to say, however, that all political organizations-with the exception of the communists-were united in opposition to any territorial revisionism but aware of the likelihood of Hitler imposing a rectification of Romania's borders with Hungary in the foreseeable future. Few believed that France or England could effectively guarantee Romania's territorial integrity, but most were persuaded that Soviet

revisionism could be contained because of Hitler's seemingly implacable hostility toward Stalin's Russia. In fact, the gradual abandonment of the French connection by King Carol II and other astute political leaders was largely based on the assumption that neither France nor Britain could safeguard Romania's integrity and that the French and the British, in their quest for an arrangement with Stalin, would be more likely to support Soviet revisionism against Romania than Hitler ever would.

In line with this general assessment of political realities, Bucharest entered into pourparlers with Budapest and with the Axis powers with a view to ascertaining the extent of likely losses of Transylvanian territory to Hungary. In this process the Romanians sought to exploit the often conflicting German and Italian interests in Eastern Europe in general and with respect to Hungary and Romania in particular. In this process too, Romanian political leaders found it necessary to proclaim their determination to maintain the territorial integrity of Romania and to rally the Romanian masses against revisionists and pro-revisionists, most notably against Jews and communists but also against Hungarians.

The juggling for the survival of Greater Romania and of its political leaders is well known except for one key aspect which affected the ultimate resolution of Hungary's territorial claims in Transylvania. It is clear that the destruction of Greater Romania which occurred in 1940 was not due to Hungarian revisionism as such but to the fatal Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939. As far as Romania was concerned this unimaginable agreement which rendered all game plans obsolete meant the inevitable loss of Bessarabia to the USSR.

It is uncertain just how many Romanian leaders were aware of the secret clauses of the agreement, but it is certain that many suspected the worst in August 1939. The Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in June 1940 certainly came as no surprise to the communists who had been alerted to the Soviet move; it also failed to surprise political realists whose proverbial mistrust of Russia seemed vindicated by Stalin's action. What did surprise everyone, however, was the realization, soon after the occupation of the Romanian territories, of a connection between Soviet and Hungarian revisionism, which was to affect the ensuing negotiations between Hungary and her Axis partners and the Romanian government in Bucharest.

It has been ascertained by serious researchers of territorial revisionism

in Eastern Europe that links between Hungarian and Soviet revisionism antedated June 1940; that, in fact, Moscow was supportive of Hungary's demands throughout the interwar years.¹⁸ Such an interpretation of Russo-Hungarian relations is indeed plausible given the antagonism shared by Moscow and Budapest toward Bucharest following the Romanian military intervention in Hungary before Trianon and the securing of territories deemed Hungarian, and respectively Russian, by Greater Romania after World War I. But pending publication of documented studies of these relations for the interwar years, it seems desirable to limit our observations to actual evidence related only to Russo-Hungarian relations in 1940. In this respect, the evidence is conclusive that Molotov encouraged the Hungarians to push their "legitimate" claims in Transylvania during the summer of 1940 in an obvious effort to lessen Hungary's dependence on the Axis and to so weaken a dismembered Romania as to preclude meaningful revanchist action by Bucharest. It is also clear that Budapest used Moscow's support as leverage in its own dealings with Berlin, Rome, and Bucharest and that the Moscow connection proved to be somewhat counterproductive.¹⁹ Whether Hitler's blueprint for partition of Transylvania would have been more generous to Hungary had it not been for Russia's actions in Romania and overtures to Budapest is uncertain, but it is evident that the Fuhrer was anxious to prevent the total humiliation of Romania and to secure control over Romania's strategic resources, as well as to gain support for Germany's plans against the USSR and for Romania's participation therein by assuming the role of the "honest broker" in matters territorial. Thus, the Second Vienna Award of August 1940 whereby Northern Transylvania was returned to Hungary achieved Hitler's immediate goals but not the long-range ones of the principal parties involved, the Hungarians and the Romanians. The Treaty of Trianon may have been repudiated in 1940, but the fundamental problem of territorial allocations and rights of national minorities in Transylvania remained unsolved. It is thus not surprising that Trianon is still a household word in the vocabulary of international relations some sixty years after the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian conglomerate.

In truth, the Vienna Award was unsatisfactory to both Romania and Hungary.²⁰ The Romanians vowed to recoup the lost territories while the Hungarians thought that they were shortchanged by not receiving all of Transylvania. The treatment of Hungarians in Romanian

Transylvania and of Romanians in Hungarian Transylvania was sure as to raise animosities among nationalities and governments to historically-unsurpassed levels. Hungarian Jews or Jewish Hungarians suffered more in Hungarian Transylvania than in Romanian territories with the resultant virtual annihilation of that minority, ostensibly protected by the Treaty of Trianon and implementing accords. Only the Saxons benefited from the repudiation of Trianon. As the proteges of Nazi Germany they enjoyed a privileged status unprecedented since medieval times. But all this was to change in 1945 when Stalin returned Northern Transylvania to Romania.

The repudiation of the Vienna Award was ostensibly based on the illegitimacy of Hitler's actions rather than on acceptance of the validity of Trianon.²¹ In fact, Stalin's refusal to return Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to Romania and Russia's seizure of territories in other parts of East Central Europe were conclusive proof of Stalin's continuing rejection of the legality of previous treaties affecting Eastern Europe. Reconciliation of political differences among nationalities and states concerned with Transylvania was assumed to be inevitable because of the common rejection of fascism and acceptance of the comradely principles inherent to communist doctrine and practice. To demonstrate the validity of this dogma, the equality of rights among coinhabiting nationalities was repeated ad nauseum and, during the early years of communist rule, the Romanian leaders extended unusual privileges to "democratic" Hungarians, to anti-fascist Jews, and even to repentant Saxons. Minority rights were given special attention in the Constitution of 1952 when the Hungarian Autonomous Region was established in the predominantly Hungarian-inhabited part of Transylvania.²²

But reconciliation and harmony under communism proved to be even more ephemeral than under previous political systems. The harshness of communist rule was unacceptable to most inhabitants of Transylvania. Antagonisms were either papered over or temporarily suppressed but not forgotten. This is not to say that in the late forties and early fifties the Hungarians in Transylvania-or in Budapest for that matter-longed for reincorporation of Transylvania into the Hungarian body politic. It is to say, however, that dissatisfaction with communism in general was nearly all-pervasive among Transylvania's inhabitants and that any change within the extended Soviet empire in East Central Europe would have been welcomed by all nationalities. As it happened, following Stalin's

death, limited options became available to the more mobile minorities-the Jews and the Saxons-and by 1956 they appeared to be available also to the Hungarians. And indeed, after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Hungarian question in Transylvania was born again much in the mold of the interwar years, yet within the framework of new internal and external political orders.²³

The Hungarian Revolution revealed the lack of acceptance of communist rule by Hungarians, whether in Hungary or in Transylvania. The Hungarians in Transylvania did not join the Hungarian revolutionaries but were clearly supportive of the aims of their conationals in Hungary. The anti-communist sentiments of the Hungarians in Transylvania were representative of that of other nationalities in that province but was singled out by the communist Romanian regime for political purposes essentially unrelated to nationality questions. Specifically, the Hungarian Revolution and its reverberations in Transylvania were exploited by Romania's leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej to secure his own power base which was threatened by Khrushchev's plans to replace the Stalinist Romanian leadership with one of his own choice. As self-styled protector and executor of Romanian national and communist interests, based on "objective Romanian conditions," the self-proclaimed architect of a Romanian road to socialism was able to justify the correctness of his own policies as opposed to the Hungarian ones which led to the threatening Hungarian Revolution. The Romanian road to socialism, after 1956, became increasingly more nationalist as its scope and validity were continually challenged by Khrushchev and his followers in the Kremlin. Thus, first Gheorghiu-Dej and later Nicolae Ceausescu reverted more and more to traditional Romanian policies on matters related to the rights and privileges of national minorities. And, as pressures from Moscow mounted and a Romanian road to independence within the Soviet bloc emerged more clearly in the 1960s, the Romanian leadership adopted extreme nationalist positions commensurate with claims of execution of historic legacy rooted in the legitimacy of the entire Romanian historic experience since the days of the Dacian warrior Burebista.²⁴ In the process the Transylvania question, in all its historic aspects, became of paramount concern to Bucharest and, perhaps only to a slightly lesser one, also to Moscow and Budapest.

There are indeed very close similarities between contemporary Romanian positions and policies and those of the interwar years.

The Romanianization of Transylvania and corresponding decline in rights and privileges enjoyed by coinhabiting nationalities-particularly the Hungarians bears striking similarities to the policies of previous Romanian regimes. As in the past, the constitutional rights of the national minorities in Transylvania are being observed de jure, but the selective imposition of quotas based on nationality has reduced the one-time virtually unlimited opportunities for employment and political representation enjoyed by Hungarians, Saxons, and Jews. Romanianization has also affected educational and cultural opportunities for members of national minorities again not because of the elimination of schools, theaters, and publications in the languages of the minorities but because of the necessity of integration for possible advancement within the contemporary Romanian order.

The motivations for the adoption of restrictive minority policies, particularly against the Hungarians, are manifold. Apart from the need to pose as the defender of Romania's historic interests and traditions-which by definition entails acceptance of the nationalist historic tradition-Ceausescu has pursued a Romanian road to communism based on Romanian autarchic principles of long standing, as best expressed in the slogan of the 1920s: "By ourselves." As the implementing policies have been no more successful than those adopted by previous exponents of the same doctrine, Romanian economic conditions today are markedly worse than those of Hungary. Thus, the disaffection of Transylvania's Hungarians with Romanianization is exacerbated by comparisons of their own living standards in Romania with those of their conationals in Hungary. Finally, Soviet exploitation of the disaffection of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania for the express purpose of checking Romanian deviations from policies devised by Moscow and accepted by faithful members of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact has further aggravated the nationality problem in Transylvania.²⁵

There is little talk of outright revisionism within the Soviet bloc, although fear of yet another repudiation of the Trianon treaty through a contemporary version of the Vienna Award is apparent in Romania. What tends to contribute to that fear are the activities of interested parties abroad which, in a manner reminiscent of similar attacks during the interwar years, have steadily attacked Romania's policies toward national minorities on the grounds of their violating human rights. And, as in some instances, formulations of classical

Hungarian revisionism with proper reinvocation of the "betrayal" of Trianon are becoming louder and clearer, the specter of actual revisionism has reappeared on the East Central European political arena.

"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" may not be an accurate historic slogan. It is, however, applicable to East Central Europe because the Soviet empire has adopted the essential policies of the Tsarist, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires of yore for the attainment of its goals and because member nations-whether integral components or vassal states of that empire-have not forgotten the lessons of the past.

Notes

1. The text of the Treaty of Trianon will be found in The Treaties of Peace 1919-1923 Vol. I compiled by Lt.-Col. Lawrence Martin (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1924), pp. 457-648.

2. A succinct study of these issues will be found in Stephen Fischer-Galati, "Romanian Nationalism," in Peter F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer, eds. Nationalism in Eastern Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 373-395.

3. R. W. Seton-Watson, A History of the Roumanians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), pp. 548-550.

4. The most complete and perceptive analysis of these problems will be found in Henry L. Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), pp. 89 ff.

5. See especially the comprehensive study by Sherman D. Spector, Rumania at the Paris Peace Conference: A Study of the Diplomacy of Ioan I. C. Bratianu (New York: Bookman Associates, 1962), pp. 67ff.

6. Roberts, Rumania, pp. 22 ff.

7. Ibid., pp. 36-39.

8. Spector, Rumania, pp. 98 ff.

9. Important data will be found in Walter M. Bacon, Jr., Behind Closed Doors: Secret Papers on the Failure of Romanian-Soviet Negotiations, 1931-1932 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), pp. 3 ff.

10. The most intelligent overview of these problems is by Eugen Weber, "Romania," in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, eds. The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 501-574.

11. See especially C.A. Macartney, Hungary and Her Successors: The Treaty of Trianon and Its Consequences 1919-1937 (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 284 ff.

12. Stephen Fischer-Galati, Twentieth Century Rumania (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 29 ff.

13. Weber, Romania, and the important study by Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, The Green Shirts and the Others (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1970) are most informative on these topics.

14. See Macartney, Hungary, pp. 284 ff. and Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars, 1918-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945), pp. 277 ff.

15. Roberts, Rumania, pp. 206 ff.

16. The essential study is by Bela Vago, "Le Second Diktat de Vienne: Les Preliminaires," East European Quarterly, II:4, 1969, pp. 415-437. See also William O. Oldson, "Romania and the Munich Crisis: August-September 1938," East European Quarterly, XI:2, 1977, pp. 177-190.

17. Fischer-Galati, Twentieth Century Rumania, pp. 46 ff. Roberts, Rumania, pp. 206 ff. See also the interesting contemporary study by Al. Gh. Savu, Dictatura regala, 1938-1940 (Bucuresti: Editura Politica, 1970).

18. See Vago, "Le Second Diktat: Les Preliminaires," pp. 415 ff. and especially his "Le Second Diktat de Vienne: Le partage de la Transylvanie," East European Quarterly, V:1, 1971, pp. 47-73.

19. Ibid. See also Savu, Dictatura regala, pp. 407 ff.

20. Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe, pp. 303 ff.

21. Ghita Ionescu, Communism in Rumania 1944-1962 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 107 ff.

22. Ibid., pp. 217 ff.

23. Stephen Fischer-Galati, "Rumania," in Bela K. Kiraly and Paul Jonas, eds. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in Retrospect (Boulder, Colorado: East European Quarterly, 1977), pp. 95-101.

24. Revista de Istorie, 32:7, 1979, pp. 1215-1233 contains important data on this subject.

25. Robert F. King, A History of the Romanian Communist Party (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), pp. 128-134.

A Case Study on Trianon