Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation

(*English text, translated from the Hungarian, as submitted to the Madrid Conference.)

The Hungarians of Transylvania, and of Rumania in general, are presently experiencing a more critical period of threat to their existence than perhaps ever before. Legal provisions protecting their survival exist only for the sake of appearances; they serve only to veil practices and realities which are diametrically opposed to the formulations contained in ceremonial speeches and official declarations. To the practitioners of this system of thought, the mere idea of

someone actually demanding a right is a complete absurdity. Even the simplest petition in Rumania must take the form of a more or less humble entreaty, clad in official phraseology and supported by the "principles" which happen to be in style. It is unthinkable for any request to be fulfilled without the support of an influential member of some central body of authority, and the granting of a request is always akin to the benevolent gesture of a feudal lord, awarding a well-behaved subject. (The dispenser of awards to the citizen is the state; to the minorities, the dominant Rumanian nation.) The graceful gesture has nothing to do with the rights of the petitioner, merely with the merits of the gift-giver.

Numerous minority representatives, having accepted the conditions outlined above as given and believing themselves pragmatic, chose to force themselves to adapt, attempting through subservience and a defensive manner to protect the interests of their ethnic group.

From our point of view, though we commend the good intentions underlying such behavior, the facts convince us that a minority deprived of its resources cannot hope to defend its interests, except to the extent of gaining the minimal concessions absolutely necessary for the state to maintain outward appearances. In addition, behavior of this sort is alien to our nature.

As it is our conviction that two ethnic groups can live next to, and indeed together with, each other only if they regard one another as equal partners, we demand that the Hungarians of Rumania be granted the fundamental freedom to voice demands regarding the protection of their rights and opportunines.

We know all too well that a demand of this kind may appear illtimed in present-day Rumania, where any expressed desires pertaining to Hungarian culture are openly labeled irredentist and revisionist, even when they are couched in the required phraseology. In our opinion however, this attitude is characteristic of the relationship a feudal lord maintains with his subjects.

We are also aware that, given present conditions in Eastern Europe, it is unrealistic to expect that a demand of this kind will be met. But since our situation is growing worse each day, we feel obligated to take action because we cannot afford the luxury of waiting for a miracle to change these conditions.

For these reasons:

I . We demand that we be considered an inseparable part of the entire

Hungarian people, and that as such, and as citizens of Rumania, we be permitted to maintain unhindered contacts with the Hungarian People's Republic, on both the institutional and the individual levels!

1. Allow every citizen of Rumania to travel to the Hungarian People,s Republic without restrictions.

2. Repeal the regulation which forbids the accommodation of friends from abroad in our homes. (This regulation affects us, Hungarians, most of all.)

3. Permit our cultural institutions, as well as Hungarian cultural groups operating as sections of other institutions, to freely invite Hungarian ensembles and individuals from the neighboring countries.

4. Until the Transylvanian Hungarian universities are restored, permit Hungarian students from Rumania to study in Hungary. Upon their return, allow them to function according to the qualifications they have obtained.

5. Stop the practice by Rumanian customs officials of arbitrarily confiscating Hungarian-language publications.

6. With the help of relay-stations, make Hungarian (Budapest) television programming available in all parts of Transylvania.

7. Insure that Hungarian-language books published in countries inhabited by Hungarians (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union) can be obtained in Rumania as well.

8. Allow us to subscribe to any and all newspapers and periodicals published in Hungary. See to it that such publications are, in fact, delivered to the subscribers hy the postal service.

9. Stop treating the natural interest and justified concern of cultural and political figures in Hungary toward the fate of Hungarians in Rumania as interference in Rumania's internal affairs.

II. We demand that cultural autonomy and institutionalized forms of self-protection be guaranteed to the Hungarians of Rumania, as an ethnic community!

1. Expand paragraph 22 of the Constitution to grant minorities the right to form an organization to protect their interests, the officers of which are democratically elected.

2. Allow this organization the right to direct Hungarian cultural activity and education policy, to supervise cadre-policies affecting Hungarians, to maintain Hungarian historical monuments and to seek legal redress for minority grievances.

3. Allow Hungarians in all parts of Rumania (not just Transylvania) to be members of this organization.

4. Permit this organization to have its own official publication.

5. Publish the history of the Hungarian People's Alliance, and make known the true circumstances of its termination in 1949.

6. Publicly rehabilitate all formerly imprisoned leaders of the Hungarian People's Alliance, as well as all others who have been sentenced during the past 35 years for defending the interests of Hungarians, and declare their sentences null and void.

7. Officially acknowledge the fact that our culture is an organic part of Hungarian culture and not some kind of offshoot of Rumanian culture.

8. Create departments for the education of nationalities within the Ministry of Education and the county school boards, and treat these departments as equal to their Rumanian counterparts.

9. Re-open the Hungarian-language kindergartens and schools, granting every Hungarian child the opportunity to attend a Hungarian-language kindergarten or school. In all Hungarian-inhabited countries, make high school education in the humanities and the various trades available in Hungarian.

10. Establish Hungarian-language orphanages and schools for the handicapped, putting an end to the practice of placing Hungarianspeaking orphans and handicapped children in the respective Rumanian institutions - a practice used as a tool of Rumanianization.

11. Enforce regulation number 6/1969 relating to teaching staff qualifications, which provides that teachers whose command of the Hungarian language is inadequate or nonexistent may not teach Hungarian-language classes.

12. Reduce the minimum quota of children required to form a class, in order to prevent the elimination of Hungarian village schools. Enact legislation in Rumania similar to the exemplary nationality statute in Yugoslavia which requires a minimum of nine children in order to establish a school. In this regard, any quotas should apply to Rumanian and Hungarian children equally.

13. In Hungarian-language secondary schools, teach the history and geography of Rumania in the Hungarian language.

14. Reestablish the Hungarian universities, and establish Hungarian-language institutions of higher education in all trades.

15. Expand the sphere of activity of the minority language

publishing house "Kriterion," and increase its financial base, to enable "Kriterion" to fulfill those minority-language publishing requirements which the other publishing houses are unable to satisfy at this time.

16. Allow the Hungarian-language press, and the Hungarian-language radio and television programs, to discuss the actual and real problems of the Hungarians in Rumania.

17. The Rumanian authorities should, once and for all, stop the practice of treating Hungarian intellectuals as suspicious elements, and of subjecting them to constant police surveillance and harassment solely because they are Hungarian.

18. Insure true freedom of worship, and grant the Hungarian churches real internal autonomy.

III. For regions inhabited predominantly by Hungarians, we demand self-administrahon and an equitable share in the country's government!

1. Restore autonomy to the Szekely land - this time real autonomy, extended to the entire region.

2. In the villages inhabited predominantly or exclusively by Hungarians, stop the practice of appointing ethnic Rumanians to leadership positions (Chairrnan of the Village Council, Chairman of the Farm Collective, Party Secretary, policeman).

3. Allow Hungarians to be represented according to their percentage of the total population not only as Party members and representatives to the Grand National Assembly, but also among the managers of the economy, in the Party leadership at all levels, and in the government.

IV. We demand an immediate end to measures aimed at artificially altering the ethnic composinon of Transylvania (including historic Transylvania, the territories west of it, and the Banat region)!

1. Terminate the massive and forced resettling of peoples from Moldavia and Wallachia into Transylvania.

2. Stop experimenting with the ethnic composition of purely Hungarian villages, trying to create a mixed population in those villages.

3. Stop the practice of assigning recent Hungarian graduates (especially physicians and engineers) to Moldavia and Wallachia, against their will.

V. We demand the opportunity for the Hungarians in Rumania to develop and cultivate their identity!

1. With regard to the past:

a. Allow the Hungarian pupils studying in their native tongue to learn the true history of their own ethnic group, and allow Rumanian pupils as well to become acquainted with that history, at least in broad outline.

b. Discuss the history of Transylvania objectively in historical publications. Stop using materials placed on museum display to conceal or trivialize the significance of Hungarians in the past, or their presence in Rumania today.

c. Discontinue the ideological function of the theory of Daco-Rumanian continuity. (Let this theory remain what it is, in fact: a working hypothesis of historians.)

d. Stop treating those who take an interest in the history and cultural heritage of Transylvania as exhibiting revisionist tendencies. Stop forbidding experts specializing in the history of Transylvania to research subjects.

2. With regard to the present:

a. Make public, and accessible to all, detailed statistical data regarding the present situation of the national minorities.

b. Allow anyone who so desires, to engage in sociological research pertaining to the national minorities, without police harass ment against those who express an interest in this line of research.

c. Let schools, regardless of their language of instruction, teach their pupils an awareness of the country's national minorities and their culture.

d. Publish books in the Rumanian language as well which deal with the life, national customs, art, etc., of the national minor ities who live here.

e. Expand the existing injunctions against manifestations of chauvinism to apply to those manifestations which are directed against Hungarians. (Thus, apply the same standard to such [anti Hungarian] epithets as "bozgor" and "hazatlan" as to the [anti-Rumanian] "olah".)

VI. We demand that in all areas of greater Transylvania inhabited by Hungarians, the Hungarian language be treated as equal to the Rumanian language in official as well as everyday use!

1. Grant, in practice, the right provided for in paragraph 22 of the Constitution to use the Hungarian language in administrative offices and before the various authorities, and to submit to those

offices documents written in that language. Make identification cards, passports, official form letters, etc., bilingual.

2. Within the regions described, require workers employed in the field of health care, commerce and public services to be familiar with the Hungarian language.

3. In the areas inhabited by Hungarians, make the Hungarian language a required subject in Rumanian schools as well. (During the Horthy regime in Northern Transylvania, it was compulsory for Hungarian children to learn Rumanian!)

4. In these areas, make the inscription of place-names and street-names, the signs on shops, factories, museums and public institutions, and the inscriptions on consumer products, etc., bilingual.

VII. We demand the same career opportunities for the Hungarians of Rumania as the Rumanians have!

Terminate the practice whereby job hiring and professional advancement are determined primarily according to ethnic background rather than professional expertise. Discontinue the practice of applying the proportion of Hungarians nationally to determine the number of Hungarians hired locally, even in firms located in overwhelmingly Hungarian areas.

VIII. We demand the preservation of the environment which reflects our historic and cultural past!

1. Preserve the traditional townscape of Transylvanian cities.

2. Stop tearing down the buildings which are significant for cultural or historical reasons.

3. Register as protected cultural properties all items deserving that title.

4. Stop altering the surroundings of Hungarian cultural landmarks, to show the landmarks at a disadvantage.

5. Establish a source of funds for the preservation of perishing historical and cultural monuments.

IX. We demand that the Hungarian-speaking natives of Moldavia, the Csangos - whom official statistics have declared to be Rumanian, without exception - be permitted to declare themselves Hungarians again, and to participate in Hungarian cultural life!

1. Permit them to join the organization representing Hungarian nationalities interests.

2. Permit them free use of their native Hungarian language.

3. Reopen their Hungarian-language schools.

4. Grant them the right to conduct religious services in the language of their choice.

5. Put an end to the forced isolation of the Csangos, the obstruction of their contacts with Hungarians from elsewhere and the persecution of visitors to Csango villages.

X. We demand that an impartial international commission (whose members would also include Hungarians and Rumanians) examine our situation and make decisions in the issues which bear upon our fate!

Nevertheless, we do not consider this act of ours premature. The wall of silence must at last be broken from somewhere on the inside, as must that enormous, motionless and seemingly immovable block of tyranny and deprivation of rights which weighs nightmarishly on every inhabitant of Rumania (except for those who profit from it) and which is ultimately responsible for the totally catastrophic condition in which the country finds itself. In this regard, it is our conviction that our program proposal, which may be considered by "some" to be directed against the Rumanian people, actually supports their interests, because any increase in the respect for human rights would necessarily lead to an increase in their rights as well.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.

The Romanian police tracked down and dispersed the group of Hungarians responsible for the Madrid Memorandum. Ellenpontok ceased publication. The three identified authors of the Memorandum were arrested, interrogated, beaten, and subsequently expelled from Romania to Hungary: Attila Ara-Kovacs in May 1983, Karoly Toth in July 1984, and Geza Szocs in August 1986. However, Geza Szocs, before his expulsion, submitted in

September 1985 a petition to the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist party for consideration at the forthcoming Thirteenth Party Congress. The principal demands of the petition are:

1. Revision of the country's constitution to include a guarantee of collective nationality rights in order to recognize Romania's Hungarians and Germans as "independent ethnic-historical entities."

2. Restitution of the Ministry of Nationalities disbanded in 1953.

3. Drafting of a Nationality Law based on the Nationality Statute of 1945, on the draft law proposed by the Hungarian People's Alliance in 1946, and on the "Program Proposal" submitted by the editors of Ellenpontok to the Madrid Conference in 1982.

Among other demands (most of them spelled out in the "Program Proposal"), the petition proposes that, since the government of Hungary proffers no support for the Hungarian minority, Romania should take the international initiative on behalf of the proposition at the United Nations to add to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights the explicit protection of minority rights and to the Convention on Genocide the explicit ban on cultural genocide and ethnocide.

For the text of the petition in Hungarian, see Magyar Fuzetek, no. 16 (1985): 104-120.

Stephen Borsody: The Hungarians: A Divided Nation