Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation

Today, despite the large number of Marxist-Leninist legal regulations providing for minority rights, it appears that the Romanian policy to satisfy the minorities, to the extent that such a policy exists, is shaped by industrialization. The basic thrust of the country's policy of modernization is in industrialization, and the rights of the minorities are emphatically subordinated to it. Another factor of relevance, which is common to all Communist societies, is the existence of internal regulations, usually kept secret, which may directly contradict the formal rights entrenched in the Constitution.

The general trend of Romanian policy toward the Hungarians is perhaps best illustrated by the fate of the Hungarian Autonomous Region. Comprising the Szekely population of Transylvania, it was established on Soviet prodding in 1952. In 1960, its area was reorganized in such a way that, while its Hungarian-speaking population fell, its Romanian-speaking population rose. At the end of 1967 the region was abolished altogether.

From the mid-1970s onward, a growing number of Hungarian intellectuals came to feel that the situation was less and less tenable. In particular, they were forced to the conclusion that, whatever the declared or undeclared aim of the Romanian leadership was, the possibility of leading a Hungarian life in Romania was shrinking. It is this conclusion that characterizes the present state of relations between the Hungarians and the Romanian state.

Hungarian intellectuals took stock of the potential international action, notably in the framework of the Helsinki Final Act, which specifically safeguarded nationality rights. Other international developments, like the U.N. sponsored Ljubljana and Ohrid seminars on national minorities, and the upsurge of minority actions in Western Europe, were also taken into consideration. Contacts with Hungary no doubt also played a part in persuading members of the Hungarian minority to put pressure on the Romanian state by publicity in the West. This coincided with the favorable reception of the concept of "human rights" in the West and with the recognition of samizdat as a legitimate and reliable means of communication. The Hungarians of Romania must also have been aware of the leverage provided by unfavorable publicity for a state that, overtly at any rate, makes its independent foreign policy contingent on Western approval. The result of all this was the rising amount of information made available about the Hungarian minority in Transylvania - such as the 1977 memorandum by Professor Lajos Takacs19 - and consequent pressure on the Romanian leadership to account for its treatment of the minority.

For a while after the war, under Petru Groza's premiership, unprecedented Romanian tolerance prevailed toward the Hungarian minority. Hungarian-language schools were opened on all levels throughout Transylvania wherever there was a substantial Hungarian population, and even in the Regat - in the Hungarian-inhabited areas of Moldavia. The pinnacle of the educational system was the Hungarian-language university network, consisting of the Bolyai University at Cluj (Kolozsvar), the Medical and Pharmaceutical Faculty at Tirgu Mures (Marosvasarhely) and also an agriculture college in Cluj. In other words, despite the authoritarian pressure that weighed on all the inhabitants of Romania, until the 1950s, it was perfectly possible in Transylvania to receive a full Hungarian education. The period of Communist tolerance, however, was of short duration. Intolerance began under the Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej regime, to escalate into an undisguised policy of repression under Nicolae Ceausescu.

The turning point occurred in the afterrnath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. To usher in the policy of repression, a decision was

taken to dismantle the Hungarian educational system. As a general principle, the dismantling was to take place in two stages. First, Hungarian schools were merged with Romanian institutions and allowed to function as parallel "sections." In the second stage, the two sections were fully merged. In practical terms this meant that receiving education in Hungarian became a privilege granted by the Romanianrun institutions.

The merging in 1959 of the Bolyai University in Cluj with the Romanian Babes, University was the first action in this process. As a result of the merger, university education in Hungarian shrank drastically. According to the memorandum prepared by Lajos Takacs - a former pro-rector of the university, one time nationalities minister, and an old Communist - in the academic year of 1957-58 (the last one before the merger of the two universities), the total number of the country's Hungarian full-time undergraduates was about 5,500, and most of them were studying in the Hungarian language. They represented about 10.75 percent of all undergraduates in Romania, which corresponded favorably to the percentage of Hungarians in the country's total population. By 1974-75, the number of undergraduates throughout Romania had more than doubled, but the number of Hungarian undergraduates had risen only to 6,188. Thus, the latter declined proportionately from 10.75 to 5.7 percent of the total undergraduate population, and appears to have remained at that low level, according to calculations based on the figures given in the official booklet Full Harmony and Equality.20

A generally similar policy has been followed with regard to primary and secondary education. Here the nub of the matter appears to be Law No. 278/1973, which stipulates that at the primary level there must be a minimum of 25 applicants every year before a class giving instruction in the minority language is opened for that year; at the secondary level, the minimum number of applicants is 36. Thus, under the 1973 law, if there are only 24 Hungarian (or, for that matter, German) applicants, no class will be opened. By contrast, there is no such restriction on Romanian pupils: "Romanian language sections or classes shall be organized regardless of the number of pupils," states the 1973 law. The significance of this is that when 25 Hungarian schoolchildren fail to turn up any one year even in purely Hungarian villages, they must be educated in Romanian. For a while, parents attempted to resolve the problem by busing children to the nearest

large village where a Hungarian school still existed. But the authorities banned this effort on the pretext that there was an insufficient amount of gasoline - a curious pretext indeed in light of the fact that Romania was the largest oil producer in Europe. Of course, the dismissal of Hungarian teachers has gone hand-in-hand with the closing down of Hungarian-language classes.

Thus, a substantial proportion of Hungarian schoolchildren in Romania are no longer educated in their mother tongue. According to Arpad Debreczi, head of the nationalities department of the Ministry of Education, in the year 1971-72 about one-fifth of Hungarian schoolchildren were not receiving their education in their mother tongue.21 (Calculations based on other official statements indicate that this proportion has remained constant in more recent years.) Even in Hungarian schools a large proportion of what is taught is in Romanian: history, geography, literature, as well as technical subjects. Furthermore, great emphasis is placed on the learning of the Romanian language - indeed, one article in the Romanian press described it as "a patriotic duty." Extracurricular activities, such as literary circles, excursions, artistic programs, and reunions are organized jointly with the Romanian section of each school and are regarded as instruments for teaching Romanian.22

Hungarian cultural complaints concentrate on two points: shortages of materials and control of Hungarian institutions by non-Hungarian speaking Romanians. For example, after the merger of the Hungarian theatre at Tirgu Mures, a new Romanian director was appointed and he knew no Hungarian. Meetings of the Hungarian section of the Cluj branch of the Romanian Writers' Union have to be held in Romanian, because of the presence of Romanian writers.23 Shortages are regularly used as a pretext to curtail Hungarian activities. After expansion of Hungarian-language newspaper publishing in the late 1960s, there was a cutback in 1973. Some daily newspapers were converted to thrice-weekly papers or the number of their pages was reduced. The pretext was paper shortage. The same fate befell local Romanian papers, but soon the Romanian papers were returned to their original size, while Hungarian papers were not. There is a persistent shortage of books in libraries; local libraries have often found it extremely difficult to stock up with Hungarian-language books, and their stocks may include a large proportion of Romanian-language material which no one wants to read. In one small village

in the Szekely country, a farmer complained that the only agricultural text in the local library in Hungarian was about buffalo breedingin an area where no one has seen a buffalo for generations.24

Takacs argued in his memorandum that while the activities of three publishing houses with a Hungarian output were satisfactory (these were Kriterion, Politika, and Dacia), the activities of the others were not. There were particular shortcomings in scientific and technical literature and in children's and juvenile literature. Takacs also put in a plea for a special Transylvanian radio and television station which would be able to devote more time to Hungarian programs. He made a particular point of arguing for the founding of a scientific journal which would deal at a high level with the natural and social sciences.

Another area which gives rise to complaints is that of the archives and museum collections. The Law on National Cultural Patrimony (63/1974) and the Decree on National Archives (207/1974) summarily nationalized all materials over thirty years old in private or institutional possession. The pretext was the protection of the "national cultural patrimony," but the legislation was used against the Hungarian churches in a confiscatory manner.25

One of the most harmful features of Romanian policy from the standpoint of the Hungarians is the rewriting of the history of Transylvania in such a way as to exclude them completely. In effect, Romanian history writing virtually denies the Hungarian presence in the history of Transylvania.26

In an analogous fashion, bilingual signs have all but disappeared with the exception of a few places in the Szekely country. (Recent reports speak of the reinstallation of some Hungarian-language inscriptions.) Hungarians have also complained (perhaps this is an example of oversensitivity) that whenever urban renewal takes place, it is buildings with Hungarian associations that are demolished and replaced by modern blocks. Certainly, the physical aspect of Transylvanian towns is very different from the Regat. The center of Brasov (Brasso) and the old town of Sighisoara (Segesvar) suggest the medieval Germany (which is, of course, their origin). The center of Cluj (Kolozsvar) is similar to other late nineteenth-century Hungarian towns; the same is true of Oradea (Nagyvarad). Romanians are conscious of this and evidently do not mind if traces of the Hungarian presence disappear during rebuilding. There have even been reports that this attitude has been extended to cemeteries, in that sometimes

when tombstones are given a facelift, their deceased Hungarian occupants are turned into Romanians - a practice that recalls Mussolini's Italy.27

Hungarians are also highly suspicious of one of the main planks of official economic policy, that of increasing investment in the nationality areas as a way of evening out different levels of development. The Szekely country has traditionally been an underdeveloped area this was so even when the region was part of Hungary - and the Romanian state has invested considerable sums there. A fair number of factories have been built (twenty-two in Covasna [Kovaszna] and Harghita [Hargita] between 1966 and 1975), but the managerial and skilled positions too often go to Romanians, even when qualified Hungarians are available. Romanians from the Regat are offered special incentives (e.g., housing) to take up jobs in the new factories. It is a matter of policy that in all plants, including those in areas where the population is overwhelmingly Hungarian, the language of the plant is exclusively Romanian.

In fact, the problem of language in factories is a genuine one. Bilingualism in administration or education is relatively straightforward to implement, it is much more difficutt to run an enterprise on that basis. It adds considerably to costs, it confuses chains of command, it makes for problems in contacts with the planners and ministries at the center, as well as laterally with other enterprises, and it can give rise to potentially dangerous situations, as, say, in an emergency. The Romanian state feels that it cannot afford the luxury of making certain enterprises predominantly Hungarian in character. Any such solution would gravely damage the unitary quality of Romanian society. From a nationalist standpoint, the creation of islands of employment reserved for Hungarians would be an intolerable provocation. On the other hand, there is force in the Hungarian argument that all educated Hungarians today speak Romanian and that this places them in a favorable position to mediate between the Romanian state and the Hungarian community. The employment of Hungarian engineers in factories with large numbers of Hungarians on the shopfloor would be of advantage to society as a whole, in that it would

ease the communication problem, it could be the basis for a measure of de facto bilingualism, and it would remove a serious grievance.28

The political representation of the Hungarian community is made extremely difficult by the interlocking principles of centralism and nationalism professed by the Romanian state. According to Communist Hungarian argument, it is perfectly possible to be a good Communist citizen of Romania without being a member of the Romanian nation. For example, Takacs argues that the Hungarians are a community with their own history and their own perspective for the future, but this does not make them in any way disloyal - and that should be the basis of policy toward them. This means that the Romanian state should recognize the collective existence of Hungarians and make provision for it as a "separately identifiable social category." Communist Hungarian and Romanian views are as far apart in these matters as are the non-Communist ones.

There seems to be general agreement that among the Communist party officials the number of Hungarians is kept at a level equivalent to the official proportion of Hungarians in the population. Hungarian representation is also proportionate in the higher party organs like the Central Committee, in the local party committees, and in the Grand National Assembly and the People's Councils. However, these are largely facade institutions with no real powers, and Hungarians are often excluded from the real policymaking organs, like the local party bureaus. The Council of Workers of Hungarian Nationality, which is paralleled by a similar body for the Germans, is a typical facade institution. It is supposed to be an organ for the minority, but its existence is largely confined to occasional plenary sessions at which various figurehead individuals sing the praises of Romania's nationality policy. The Council has no headquarters, no office hours, its deliberations are censored, and its resolutions are empty formalities.

At the national level there are comparatively few Hungarians. They appear to be excluded completely from employment in a number of important ministries, notably the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of the Interior. Consequently, there are few if any Hungarians in the Romanian diplomatic service, in the officers corps and, above all, the police. There are no figures available, but it is clear from reports that the number of Hungarian policemen in Transylvania is minimal. As the policeman is frequently the first point of contact between individual and state, this has serious

consequences for that relationship, especially when Romanian policemen resent being addressed in Hungarian.29

The Transylvanian question has been enormously complicated by its international ramifications. It is probably no exaggeration that the absence of good will, which is so characteristic of the situation, derives above all from a persistent Romanian fear that the question has not been irrevocably settled and that one day, using the existence of the minority as the pretext, the Hungarian state will again lay claim to the province. No amount of disclaiming from Budapest can dispel this sense of insecurity. Hungarian leaders, Janos Kadar included, have repeatedly insisted that the Hungarian state has no claims to Romanian territory. Yet, concern from Budapest about the minority is automatically interpreted in Romania as covert irredentism. This fear has been exacerbated by the invisible role that Transylvania has played in the triangular relationship between Romania, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. On a number of occasions in the past, the Soviet Union has tacitly encouraged the Hungarian party to express criticism of the Romanian party in international Communist terms - criticism that was automatically translated by public opinion in both states as criticism in national terms, focused on Transylvania.

In May 1977, presumably after Soviet pressure, the Romanian government agreed to hold bilateral discussions with Hungary on, inter alia, the problem of the Hungarian minority in Romania. After what was reported as a fairly chilly meeting between Ceausescu and Kadar, the two sides issued a joint communique, in which the Hungarian minority in Romania (ca. 2 million) and the Romanian minority in Hungary (ca. 25,000) were declared to be bridges between the two nations. In political terms, this declaration was seen as giving Hungary its much coveted status vis-a-vis the Hungarians of Transylvania. The two sides agreed to promote cultural contacts and that a Hungarian consulate would be reopened in Cluj, while a Romanian consulate was to be set up in Debrecen. In the year that followed, no movement of any significance took place on either front and when Ceausescu's personal representative, Stefan Andrei, visited Budapest in February 1978, he was told by his Hungarian hosts that matters had dragged on for long enough.30

The entire question of cultural links between the Hungarian minority and the Hungarian state is a highly sensitive one from the Romanian standpoint. It arouses precisely those fears of Hungarian irredentism that the Hungarian authorities are so anxious to dispel. The results have been absurd. For years, Hungarians complained that it was virtually impossible to buy newspapers from Hungary, largely due to Bucharest's decision to limit their numbers in their import quotas from Hungary. When under pressure the quantities of Hungarian dailies became greater, the authorities made sure that they were put on sale in the Regat, where there were hardly any Hungarians living. Subscriptions by Transylvanians to journals from Hungary are frowned upon and the Romanian authorities make difficulties with deliveries and payments. At one stage in the 1960s, it was reported that whenever the Romanian authorities screened films from Hungary, they showed them either dubbed into Romanian or with Romanian subtitles and with the volume of the Hungarian soundtrack turned down to make it unintelligible. Listening to Hungarian radio or watching Hungarian television is disapproved of by the authorities. The Communist regime in Hungary is incomparably more liberal than the one in Romania and the Romanian authorities are afraid of the comparisons with Hungary, where quite apart from anything else - the standard of living is much higher. This problem also extends to Romanian intellectuals, many of whom know Hungarian and use Hungary as their window on the West. In this sense, publications from Hungary are seen as subversive.

The raising of the Transylvanian issue in the West, particularly in the United States where various bodies have been campaigning energetically on behalf of the Hungarian minority with the object of revoking Romania's most-favored-nation status in trade with the United States, has forced the Romanian leadership to respond. This response has varied from bland denials of discrimination to abuse of the Hungarian minority's case. Ceausescu personally denounced traitors to the fatherland, "weak elements or morally decadent persons who, for two gold or silver coins, for a bowl of lentils or goulash, sell their services to foreign circles." This was interpreted as a reference to the letters protesting Romanian minority policies, written by Karoly Kiraly, a prominent Transylvanian Hungarian Communist. Though addressed privately to the party leadership, the letters have received wide publicity both at home and abroad.31 Annoyed by the

Kiraly affair's international repercussions, Romanian officials in the West sought to give assurances that the Hungarian minority has never been better treated in its entire existence. To support their contention, however, they could quote only official documents and statistics.

As far as non-official viewpoints go, a case could be made for a position I have heard from a number of thoughtful Romanians. They agree that it is counterproductive to dismiss the Hungarian complaints as the work of malcontents fuelled by irredentism. According to them, the problem would be better approached through regional concern for Transylvania. They would argue, however, that the Transylvanian Hungarians have not been alone in being swamped by a kind of knownothing Romanian nationalism. Transylvanian Romanians suffer, too, along with Transylvanian Hungarians and Germans, from the Ceausescu line which pays no attention to the specific character of the region. Thus, for instance, the Romanians have also been at the receiving end of the unthinking "mobilizatory policy." They, too, are ordered to go to any part of the country. In turn, large numbers of Regatean Romanians are relocated to Transylvania. The Regatean newcomers lack sensitivity toward local Transylvanian preferences and habits; and they are not at all sympathetic to Hungarians.

There appears to be a genuine spirit of Transylvanianism in this view. Essentially, it looks at the Transylvanian way of life as a fusion of all three main national cultures (Romanian, Hungarian, German). It recognizes that all three owe a great deal to one another. This line of thinking appeals strongly to Hungarian intellectuals, especially those on the left, who are by no means committed to the idea of irredentism - indeed, they often reject interference from Hungary as suspect and possibly counterproductive. But Transylvanianism, however attractive it may seem and however workable it is at the grassroots level where relations between the nationalities are often very good, founders on the rock of Romanian state nationalism, for which Transylvanianism is a dangerous concept in that it questions the unity and integrity of the Romanian nation.

After the Kiraly-letters affair and the consequent international attention focused on the Hungarians in Romania, there was a brief lull in

the antiminority campaign. Some ad hoc concessions were made by the Romanian authorities, notably in education by permitting the temporary opening of Hungarian-language sections in primary and secondary schools. However, once Romania was struck by a major economic and financial crisis in 1980-81, the minority problem was brought back onto the central government agenda. The government realized that, due to poor planning and the bunching of debt repayments to the West, the country was close to bankruptcy. The authorities were constrained to squeeze consumption. Not unnaturally, the squeeze was highly unpopular with Romanian public opinion. The authorities sought to ease the resultant tensions by making the Hungarian minority a target of hostility.

The renewed anti-Hungarian campaign was fostered through hints and whispers, by tangential allusions to "aliens,, and "incomers," and by renewed emphasis on Daco-Roman continuity which effectively served as clear notice to the public that the authorities regarded the Hungarians as a hostile element in the body of the national territory. In a situation where the regime had run out of the possibilities of making its rule acceptable on economic grounds - the promise of a prosperous Romania - or on the grounds of international prestige, traditional nationalism was the sole option left open. Attention was to be diverted from Romania's economic ills with the suggestion that, if only the country could be nationally homogeneous, the Romanian people would not suffer the difficulties they were experiencing. Discontent was inevitably focused on the Hungarian minority, for the other acceptable target, the Soviet Union, was too dangerous.

Irrational though this may seem, the Hungarian scapegoat propaganda was an attractive way to please the Romanians. The response from the Hungarian minority, on the other hand, was one of near despair. It too had largely run out of options. It obviously lacked the political power to take on the ruling regime - backed as it was by the Communist party and the security forces - and could turn only to international opinion for whatever support it could muster. To reach international opinion, the minority or more properly a small number of Hungarian intellectuals - launched in December 1981 an underground (samizdat) journal, entitled Ellenpontok (Counterpoints). By January 1983, nine issues had been published. Samizdat, as an instrument of political action, had two basic objectives: to arouse

international opinion, and to strengthen minority consciousness by demonstrating to the minority that they were not as isolated and atomized by Romanian state power as they thought.

The content of Ellenpontok offered some guide to the attitudes of at least a section of the Transylvanian Hungarian intelligentsia. They were concerned with the preservation of their culture. But, whereas an earlier generation had sought to create a concept of "Romanianity" - an idea that the Hungarians were loyal citizens of the Romanian state while conserving their separate Hungarian cultural identity - the new current represented by Ellenpontok was different. The editors of Ellenpontok were concerned primarily with showing what they perceived as the long historical roots of Romanian intolerance and xenophobia and, by implication, the impossibility of coming to terms with the existing nationalist current.

The longer term prospects of the Hungarian minority had deteriorated in tandem with the worsening of Romania's economic situation and the concurrent decay of the Ceausescu system. It was a logical supposition that the Romanian regime was least likely to make concessions to the minority when it felt itself under severe pressure from external and internal circumstances. This exacerbation of the position of the Hungarian minority in Romania was not without its impact on the Communist regime in Hungary as well. The latter found itself under pressure from Hungarian opinion to do something. Since bilateral discussions with the Romanian government produced no results, the Hungarian regime allowed a semiofficial polemic against Lancranjan's book on Transylvania, using his tacit attack on Kadar as the pretext.32 This polemic was not unwelcome in Budapest, for it too could manipulate opinion in a nationalist direction at a time of some economic dislocation. But this had little or no impact on the prospects of the Hungarian minority, which were regarded as uniformly gloomy.

Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation