A Case Study on Trianon

Romania's legal definition of the place of minorities is anything but clear. Nonetheless, certain tendencies are apparent in its constitutional development. The constitutional metamorphosis represents a more thorough integration of the Hungarians into the life of the country as a whole. It also represents a diminution of their ability to defend their cultural heritage by referring to constitutional guarantees. The Socialist Constitution of 1965, provides them with no autonomy and negligible self-government. It places them within the framework of a unitary and indivisible state, which provides them with some generalized guarantees of nationality rights. These rights, in turn, are counterbalanced by restrictions and obligations that make the original guarantees almost meaningless.

The evolution of constitutional law in the direction of less tolerance, followed closely those international and domestic events which reinforced Romanian nationalism. On the international front we already noted that the events of 1956-58 were particularly critical. On the domestic scene the most important developments concerned the changing nationality profile of the Romanian communist party leaders and the party rank and file. The most dramatic development having long-range effects on the position of Transylvania's Hungarian inhabitants was the rapid growth of the CPR following the seizure of power.

The rapid growth of the Party, particularly in the years up to 1948, drastically altered its ethnic make-up. This growth relegated the ethnic minority Party members, who in the past composed the bulk of the CPR, into a secondary position as Party ranks were swelled by ethnic Romanians who had seen the handwriting on the wall.⁴⁹

The rapid post-war growth of the Party was the first major step toward its Romanization. After 1948, however, the CPR stabilized its membership and carried out purges among elements which it regarded as unhealthy. Even these purges, however, caused the

greatest damage not in the ranks of the newly-recruited ethnic Romanians, but in the ranks of the veteran ethnic minority Communists.⁵⁰ Thus, both the growth and the purges of the Party contributed to the strengthening of the ethnic Romanian sectors of the CPR. The most recent increases in Party membership have even further accentuated this trend.⁵¹ At present, the regime's search for popularity among the masses has allowed it to lower its standards for membership. This has enabled many to join who are ignorant of, if not hostile to, the tenets of proletarian internationalism and to the traditional policies of minority tolerance which had prevailed prior to this growth in Party membership.

The examination of the fate of the Hungarians in Transylvania provides an opportunity to reflect on the nature of present-day Romania's actual objectives relative to the largest minority within their state jurisdiction. On a theoretical level we can project minority policies on a continuum from most tolerant to least tolerant. At the intolerant end of the spectrum is the policy of physical extinction or genocide (e.g., Hitler's "final solution"). Close on its heels would be a policy that excludes, by expulsion or deportation, unwanted peoples (e.g., Germans from East Prussia following World War II and Chinese from Vietnam in the wake of the war in Cambodia). Another form of exclusion would be to isolate the minority within society and reduce to a minimum its contact with the rest of society (e.g., Jewish ghettos, apartheid in South Africa). Still another way to treat minorities is to extinguish them culturally through a policy of acculturation or assimilation (e.g., Russification, Magyarization, Romanization), which seeks to absorb the minority into the national community in such a way that the minority will abandon its own identity for the identity of the majority nationality. A fourth alternative is to fuse or integrate the minority with the majority, to create a union that is more than its component parts (e.g., U.S.A., Canada). The fifth or most tolerant alternative is to assert that unity and diversity can complement one another. In the latter instance unity is assured by providing security for diversity (e.g., Switzerland), implying active state support for both minority and majority interests.

Romanian policies toward the Hungarians of Transylvania were initially guided by the spirit of proletarian internationalism imposed by Stalin. It envisaged a relationship between Romanians and Hungarians which would not necessitate the abandonment of their

respective national cultures. It demanded only that the two peoples live together within one state as co-inhabiting nationalities, struggling shoulder to shoulder to defeat the forces of reaction and inaugurate the new socialist millennium. This definition of the place of the Transylvanian Hungarians made them partners of the majority nationality.⁵² They were given every opportunity to preserve their cultural identity, as long as they supported the process of Socialist transformation and the Soviet Union's hegemonial interests. These opportunities were spelled out both in the country's ideological commitments and its constitutional objectives. Until October 1956, these opportunities were also put into practice. Schools, publications, policies relating to the Hungarian Autonomous Region reflected the integrationist approach.

Changes in Romania's internal and external political relations have turned it away from the integrationist solution. In the years between 1952-1967, the CPR lost its cosmopolitan character and became, both in membership and leadership, primarily an ethnic Romanian organization. This ethnic Romanization of the Party paralleled the period of de-Stalinization in the bloc, which loosened Soviet hegemonial controls. The Hungarian Revolt of 1956 led to unrest among the Hungarians in Transylvania. This made the Hungarians suspect in the eyes of both Romanian and Soviet policy-makers. Romanian efforts to help quell this unrest, as well as the Hungarian revolution itself, increased Soviet confidence in Romania's dependability to such an extent that in 1958 all Soviet troops were removed from the country. This military withdrawal gave Romanian leaders more control over their internal policies. By the beginning of the 1960's they also gained more control over their foreign relations as the Soviet Union became more and more embroiled in its ideological and political dispute with China.

By 1963, Romanian policies began to reflect openly the country's more nationalist orientation both internally and in the international arena. Defiance of COMECON integration efforts was one evidence of this new Romanian nationalism on the international front. Internally, the shift to an assimilationist nationality policy became its most concrete expression. The reduction of Hungarian educational and cultural opportunities, as well as their symbolic self-government in the Mures-Hungarian Autonomous Region, reflected the new Romanian socialist patriotism on the domestic front. Only at the end of 1968, following the Czechoslovak crisis, did Romanian

assimilationist policies slacken in momentum. Thus, Romanian nationality policy can be summarized as integrationist from 1945 to 1958,⁵³ and assimilationist since the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Briefly, from 1968 to 1972, it returned to an integrationist posture. However, since 1973, the policies in Transylvania have again become assimilationist.

In the context of this brief study it is impossible to assess the entire spectrum of discrimination which currently weighs on the Hungarians of Transylvania. Other assessments are available, including the classic study by Robert R. King, on Minorities Under Communism (1973),⁵⁴ and the recent collection of personal testimonies published under the title, Witnesses to Cultural Genocide: Reports on Rumania's Minority Policies (198O).⁵⁵ Instead of attempting to portray the whole range of shortcomings in Romanian nationality policies, I will focus only on the area of education for this is the most critical area. A brief summary of developments regarding minority educational opportunities will give a taste of the treatment of the Hungarians, and enable us to categorize prevailing minority policies in Transylvania.

Although much of the information on this sensitive area has been available for some time, the Helsinki Final Act (1975) and the debate concerning human rights has flushed out a number of significant testimonies on the question, including the 1977 summer revelations of Karoly Kiraly, a former high-ranking Hungarian member of the Romanian Communist Party.

As we noted above, the fate of the Hungarians from 1945 to 1953-56 was-in terms of minority-majority relations-in many ways better or equal to the fate of their co-nationals in Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, however, changed all this.

Using the revolution and the parallel disturbances in Transylvania as a pretext, the Romanian Ministry of Education initiated and is now actively pursuing educational policies which are designed to reduce and eventually eradicate all forms of national particularism and isolationism.⁵⁶ These policies were to achieve their goal by stressing socialist content rather than national form in education.⁵⁷ While the national form was hedged in and carefully limited, the new designs to de-emphasize national form entailed curbs on the presentation, and reduction in the content, of curricula. In content, more emphasis fell on Romanian subjects and less stress on those

which are of more particular relevance to national minorities.

The most outstanding feature of minority education in Transylvania has been the appearance of parallelization. Though parallelization has always played a part in the educational process, it has become particularly important since 1956.⁵⁸ Parallelization means the setting-up of Romanian language classes parallel with the existing minority language classes. This is done even in areas where there is only one Romanian student to attend them. The primary purpose is to induce minority students to leave their own schools and classes to attend the schools and classes of the majority nationality. This policy reduces, in the long-run, the existence of the nationality schools. What happens is that one minority school after another is closed because there are supposedly not enough pupils to attend them.⁵⁹ Until 1973, the law required a minimum of 15 minority students per grade to justify classes in the minority language at that level in any school district. Since then the minimum has been raised to 25 students.

Thus, the parallel schools and sections were set up to absorb the students of the minority schools, after they have been pressured into deserting the latter.⁶⁰

As the national minority schools lose students to the parallel Romanian institutions, the government closes the former and replaces them by nationality sections, which are then attached to the formerly parallel Romanian institutions. In this way the parallel Romanian schools become the only schools for the minority as well as the majority.

This policy has steadily reduced the number of independent educational institutions of the nationalities-increasing the nationality sections attached to the Romanian institutions.⁶¹ Parallelization is then followed by the progressive curtailment and reduction of the nationality section, until it too becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the new parent school either in curriculum or in staff.⁶² Decree/Law 278 of 1973 has accelerated this discriminatory policy even further by requiring that there must be a minimum of 25 students per grade on the elementary level and 36 students per grade on the high school level to maintain or establish instruction in the language of any minority in any given school system.⁶³

The result of these policies has been to reduce Hungarian educational opportunities by 50 percent between 1956 and 1978. As Table II indicates, the proportion of those allowed to be educated

Parallelization has also affected universities and higher institutions. In fact, it is on the level of higher education that this policy most clearly reveals the attempt to Romanianize and to assimilate.⁶⁵ During the period of "proletarian internationalism,"⁶⁶ the Hungarian minority had its own independent Bolyai University at Cluj (Kolozsvar), its Medical and Pharmaceutical Institute in Tirgu-Mures (Marosvasarhely), its Istvan Szentgyorgyi School for the Dramatic Arts in Tirgu-Mures, the Hungarian Teacher's College in the same city, and a Hungarian section in the Petru Groza Agricultural Institute and at the Gh. Dima Conservatory, also at Cluj.⁶⁷ Since 1959,

these have been paralyzed. The Bolyai University was the first to meet this fate, when in 1959, it merged with the parallel Romanian Babes University.⁶⁸ This was followed by the reduction (i.e., absorption) of the Hungarian section of both the Petru Groza Agricultural Institute and the Hungarian Medical-Pharmaceutical Institute at Tirgu Mures in 1962.⁶⁹ Since that date all higher education for Hungarians is to be received at Romanian institutions, and at the few remaining Hungarian sections, which still maintain a precarious existence within such Romanian facilities.⁷⁰

The Romanizing effects of parallelization on the highest levels can be seen in the academic publishing activity of the Babes-Bolyai University. Before the Babes and the Bolyai Universities were merged, in 1958, their learned journals were published in Romanian and Hungarian respectively.⁷¹ After the merger, the academic publications still appeared in both languages, but now the Romanian and Hungarian studies appeared together rather than in separate journals. In most cases each of these studies was followed by a brief summary of its contents in the other language.⁷² However, with the passage of time (less than seven years) the Hungarian language studies have been completely eliminated.⁷³

As a perusal of these studies indicates, Hungarian scholars now publish their studies mainly in Romanian.⁷⁴ This tendency is not a natural process. It is a consequence of both faculty and editorial pressure.⁷⁵

Perhaps an even more telling indicator is the format of these academic journals. In the years immediately after the merger, the journals were truly bilingual in appearance as well as content. The table of contents in each journal listed the articles according to the language in which they were written. The Hungarian article listings were even followed by Romanian translations.⁷⁶ Titles, in tables of contents, for example, appeared in both languages. At first even the name of the place (Cluj-Kolozsvar) of publication, was provided in both languages. But this was not to last. By 1959, the place of publication was listed only in Romanian.⁷⁷ In some journals even the bilingual designation for contents (Sumar-Tartalom) was replaced with the Romanian Sumar.⁷⁸ While this may seem trivial, it indicates how the national form was being eliminated in the university life of the Transylvanian Hungarians.

A substantive analysis of these articles also indicates that the socialist content or higher learning fits more and more into a national

TABLE III. Population Changes of Eight Cities in Romania 1966-1977²⁶

A Case Study on Trianon