The Hungarian Minority's Situation in Ceausescu's Romania

Bela K. Kiraly: The Hungarian Minority's Situation in Ceausescu's Romania

Introduction continued...

Linked to all of the above, we still have to consider the governmental bureaucracy, the guiding force in the economic-social-cultural realm. While it is totally subservient to party direction, it is likewise top-heavy and inseparably intertwined with it in personnel and its vested interest in the status quo. From the village, city and county peoples' councils to the administrators of state enterprises, from numerous and overly bureaucratized ministries to the functionaries of the Democratic Socialist Unity Front, from the labor unions and women's organizations to the network of activists that control the comununications media, the Romanian governmental set-up probably holds a world record as a sustainer of drones.
Those who belong to the privileged categories discussed so far, are all part of Romania's upper crust. In terms of their living standards, they are members of another country. It is out of these categories that Romania's "higher" echelon is composed. If they could also have free use of their passports, they could be considered privileged demigods. The unparalleled fusion of legislative, judicial and executive, policy-making and monitoring functions of govenunent, merged with indistinguishable personal, family and special interest ties, provides Romania with a complex but homogeneous and self-conscious stratum composing 20-25% of the population. What binds them together is their vested interest in the existing distribution of goods, status and power. Family dependents of all those who compose the ruling caste, have been conservatively estimated as "two" for every "one" in the employed category. While the overall 20-25% is a minority, it is a large minority which controls all the instruments of power so that it can retain its monopoly of control and leadership.
Let us also cast a brief look at the outer circle of this privileged political establishment. Who do we find in this outer circle?
The outer circle includes all those who make a living by providing services for the establishment. Here I am thinking of such "responsible servanst" positions as correspondence secretaries, letter openers, technicians charged with installing bugging devices, drivers and chauffeurs, physicians, cooks, tailors, barbers and others who take care of the day-today needs of the leaders of the parly, government and armed services. In other words, the people who are entrusted with the housekeeping chores of the powerful.

The next outer circle includes people who feel vulnerable, and consequently out of fear or opportunism tie their destily to the mainteliance of the .status quo. They do this generally because of personal weakness, and for a minimal payoff, the illusory feeling that they have more security in case employment opportunities change. For this illusory security they are willing to become informners for the surveillance system and provide regular reports to the police about their co-workers, neighbors or their acquaintances. In Romania the law even demands this kind of tatteling when people have contacts with foreigners. The number of these "informmers" in Romania is mind-boggling.The previously quoted book by Ion Pacepa includes extensive data about this. According to his report, present-day Romania has the largest number of informers in the "Socialist camp. "
These people may no longer even be tied to the system by the petty awards or privileges they may have gotten, much more important as a tie is their compromised conscience. They now fear that a political turnaround may actually lead to revelations, to the publication of their reports, which would destroy their credibility in society. In a real sense they have become hapless prisoners of the system. They cannot turn against the system because it has too much "dirt" on them.
A much smaller group within the "outer circle" are the black marketeers. However, because of the catastrophic condition of the economy, this group is actually influential and indispensable. While they benefit from the overall misery of the economic situation, they also pump life into an otherwise unworkable system. In this way the "second economy" may make a difference for both the power structure and the man in the street. For the latter the "black market" can also make the difference between life and death, if it is only through this network that a person can obtain needed medication or gasoline. Gasoline can also be a life-saver if, for example, the individual has already used up his montilly quota of 25 liters, and needs to make an emergency run to the hospital, because the ambulances of the latter are grounded for lack of fuel! At any rate the black marketeer network includes an ever expanding number of smugglers, money launderers, sellers and re-sellers of smuggled or stolen goods. Those who are engaged in this kind of illicit enterprise, make excessive profits. Because of this. they have a sunk cost in the preservation of this system. Their numbers overall may not be large but they are strategically located and support the status quo that works to their personal financial benefit.

From the perspective of our overall concern, the role of women deserves attention. While in Poland 95 percent of the workforce provides for the needs of the remaining 5 percent, of the 95 percent the burden shared by women is not quite half, or 45 percent. In Romania, on the other hand, where 75 percent have to provide for the needs of 25 percent, the consequence for Romania's women population is an increased burden. Of the 75 percent almost half, or about 35 percent are women. However, even if they provide a smaller proportion of the active workforce than their Polish counterparts, they have to carry the weight of more drones. In other words, if we consider the overall sharing of work responsibilities, we find that in Romania seven women have proponionately the same amount of burden as nine women would have in Poland. This comes on top of more adverse conditions in Romalua in relation to such thngs as the provision of basic foodstuffs, and intense social stresses that target women in particular. For example, in Romania abortion is strictly forbidden, it is a "criminal offense." At the same time, civilized birth control devices such as condoms, diaphragms, etc. are also forbidden and unavailable, except at great expense on the black market. Also on top of this is the male-dominant worldview of Romanian society. Relegated to such a subservient position women are not likely to become the catalyst for a resistance movement. One example will suffice to contradict the official lip-service paid to the equality of sexes. Although it is the women who bear children even in Romania, govenmental "child-support" payments, as nominal as they are, are always paid to "the head of the family" (the menfolk) and not the mothers.
This essay has sought an answer to the question: why is there no effective opposition in any part of Romanian society that might challenge the oppression of the political establislunent? There must be some oppressed minority that has nothing to lose and is therefore willing to become the center of resistance to the power structure. Furthenmore, the powerstiucture must have some weak spot, some vulnerable point where pressure would lead to its collapse. After all, the power is monopolized by a minority, even if it is a significalit minority of 20-25 percent of the population. In opposition to this ruling caste, with its unwilling allies. stands two-thirds or three-fourths of the population. And thus vast number -in spite of the downtrodden condition of women in Romania - would seem a large enough majority to sweep away the tyrannical minority if the conditions were right. Because the majority must be able to recognize that its eneny and oppressor is this tyrant minority.
If this is how things are, if two-thirds or three-fourths of Romanian society is exploited, oppressed and humiliated, then one would think that the numerical superiority of the underdog, the lowest of the low, would be enough to produce a movement which would destroy this degenerate, distorted, and anti-social power-structure. It would be enough if it were united, but united it is not.
First of all, it is disunited ethnically. While the ruling "upper crust" of Romania is 99.99 percent composed of "pure" ethnic Romanians, the remaining three-fourths include a disproportionately larger representation of other ethnic groups. (In a population of 100 people, 10 Eskimos constitute 10% of the population, but if out of this 100 a separate ruling caste of 25 is established without Eskimos, then within the subordinate 75 the 10 Eskimos will now constitute not 10% but 15%.) This is parallel to what exists in Romania, and is a partial explanation for why the ethnic/nationality minorities are not in the forefront to dismantle the power-structure by force.
In this way the ethnic profile of Romania as a whole is not the same profile as the profile of the "ruling upper crust" or the profile of the remaining 75 percent. Even the 75 percent can be subdivided into the "lower part" and the "lowest part". The Gypsies, for example, are all situated in the "lowest part" frrom a socio-economic perspective. Those of them who are Hungarian in speech are always designated as "Gypsies" in the census, while those that speak the Gypsy language become Romanians according to the census. The Gypsy population of Romania is all in the "lowest part," all 1.4-1.6 million of them. The census does not admit this many. However, Romanian census results have been notorious for their "ethnic" manipulation. Between the two World Wars, the official census claimed that only 250,000 Gypsies lived in Romania. Fifty years later, according to the 1977 census, only 230,000 Gypsies were counted. This is an absurdity as well as an outright lie. The Gypsies are probably the only ethnic group that still retain their commitment to large families and many children! However, whatever their actual numbers in the population, since they have not developed their own middle class, they lack the stratum that could provide them with leadership in a resistance movement. In this sense, at the present time, the Gypsies have to be discounted as part of the 75 percent that is willing to rebell against the power structure.
Unfortunately. the same applies to the other ethnic/national minorities. The Jews -who survived World War II - have been all but eliminated by the mass migration to Israel. The German minorities are also in the last stages of their evacuation from Transylvania. Even the Hungarians - or at least their intellectuals - are becoming more and more familiar with the option of emigration. All three of the latter, as well as the remaining Slavic and Turkish minorities now focus their attention on bettering their conditions by emigrating rather than by trying to reform the system that grinds them into the ground. For most of them this option is relatively painless, because they have a "motherland" in close proximity geographically. For the Jews this is also understandable because of the legacy of intolerance that has surrounded them in Romania. Barely had they come out of the shock of the Holocaust and the Romanian pogroms of the 1940s when at the end of the 1950s, they had to face a revived anti-Semitism. Emigration seemed the only logical escape-hatch. For the Hungarians and Germans the intolerance was framed as their "collective war guilt." They were the objects of constant intimidation, with the threat of expulsion and extermination constantly hanging over their heads. This was brought home to them in forced labor settlements, pogroms, extermination camps, and expulsions. The constant repetition of "war guilt" made the two largest minorities cautious and passive. The decision of the minorities to choose emigration, almost instinctively, rather than resistance, is decimating the best elements and the most self-conscious sectors of the skilled working class and the intellectuals This is a major loss not just for the minorities but for Romania also, because minorities always constituted an important part of its middle class and the elite of its skilled workers But perhaps this is the intent of the Romanian power-stmcture the decapitation of the potential opposition It is pretty evident to most observers that without intellectuals and a self-conscious working class, it is very difficult to establish a core of resistculce With the emigration of Jewish, German, and Hungarian intellectuals, Romania is sinking into a kind of helpless Eastern torpor, out of which - at least from within - it will be very difficult to shake free.
The key role of the minorities is closely linked to the relative weakness of the ethnic Romanian intelligentsia. Unlike the Polish, Czechoslovak or Hungarian middle class, the Romanian middle class suffered much more devastation from the effects of comrnmtist rule. Because of the unique distortions of the Romanian system, the re-emergence of an independent intellectual sector of society is much less likely. In part this is due to the inability of the - numerically small - middle class elite to break with the kind of nationalism that Ceausescu uses as his instrument to persecute the national minorities and to undemsine the prospects for democracy.
Another reason why developments have taken the direction they have is that Romanian society lacks the kind of political traditions which sanctify radical opposition to authoritarian government. The fact is that Romanian energies - or at least most of them - have not been guided by the desire to become a pan of Europe intellectually or spiritually. Since 1919, with the creation of Greater Romania the nation as a whole, including most of its intellectuals as well, has been absorbed in a kind of digestive obsession. Romanian society has seen as its primary task the absorbtion and assimilation of the cultures and peoples that were incorporated with the engorged territory. This obsession has led to a neglect of democratic and constitutional reforms.
It is in this light that many people have accused the emigrating minority intellectuals of betraying not only their own people - for example the Hungarians of Transylvania - but also Romanian society at large. Parallel to this. the Romanian intellectuals are also responsible for neglect of duty. They have bought into the mass psychosis that the minorities must be digested and elimiliated. Thus Romania's historic opportunity to provide a program of ethical and spiritual guidance has been betrayed by the short-sighted quest of establishing a homogeneous nation-state. The intellectuals failed to recognize that by eliminating minorities - practicing ethnocide - they were setting the stage for their own enslavement. For some reason they did not see - or did not want to see - that the elimination of schools teaching in the languages of the national minorities, would ultimately lead to the elimination of their own schools. That intolerance for instruction in a different language can easily become translated into intolerance of what is taught in any language. Hating what is different in languages can then also lead to hating what is envisioned by others. In this kind of environment there can be only one official language and only one acceptable system of ideas.
To summarize the foregoing: Rornania has become an autocratic social-economic-political system, in which roughly one-fourth of the population has a vested interest. This one-fourth is the most homogeneous and unified sector of society ethnically and in terms of interests. It monopolizes political and coercive control over society. The remaining three-fourths of Romanian society is not unified or homogeneous. Although it is exploited by the "ruling upper crust," it has not been able to take a united stand in favor of a radical transformation of the political order. Differences in ethnic, cultural origins, traditions and interests, have kept them from being able to define common goals and to take a united stand against the powerstructure. This inability of the lower three-founhs to act as one is the tragedy of contemporary Romania.
This does not mean that the dictatorship goveming Romania is a permanent fixture. However, we can assume that an intennal collapse of the system is not likely. The present socio-economic and political profile of Romania does not seem to possess the kind of reserves or hidden potentials for resistance, the cumulative effect of which could lead to a successful challenge of the present power-stnucture.
At the same time, in 1987, the workers' rebellion in Brasov (Brasso) - in reality a desperate Jacquerie sparked by hunger and famine conditions - and the public criticism of Ceausescu by six important party veterans and some poets in the spring of 1989, led some observers to talk about the coming collapse of this system. However, due to tl e atomized nature of Romanian society, these events and other acts of resistance could be isolated, and therefore they did not become a chain of events that could activate a coherent opposition movement. In large part the present essay was written in 1987 to warn people not to expect the imminent collapse of the regime, and that perhaps things will continue as always!
In other words, the power structure of Romania is such that it is capable of reproducing itself as long as it has its primary force of cohesion, the dictatorship and the dictator Within the existing structure the will of this dictator is unquestionable and final.In this context the collapse of the stnucture is conceivable only if one of two scenarios occurs. One would be a major international or extensal challenge to the system. We cannot deal with such a prospect given the limitation of this essay. Secondly, if the dictator would die or signifiicantly become impaired physically or mentally, this would lead to an internal struggle for succession. This in turn could lead to the kind of break-down or anarchy which might result in all overall collapse. Presently I will not deal with this scenario either, that is, the unlikely disappearance of the Ceausescu clan from the political scene.In the final analysis, Romania's intenal power-structure will accommodate or acclimate to the external pressures that circumscribe the role of the country in the greater international environment. In turn, the survival of the power structure will depend on its ability to find acceptance and allies in that larger external context.
In conclusion, with the present analysis, I hope to have provided a better understanding of Romania for those who are unable, for example, to comprehend Ceausescu's village bulldozing plan.This was nothing more than the manifestation of Ceausescu's desire for total control, linked to his personality cult which was driven by the need to impose total conformity on society by eliminating all vestiges of cultural uniqueness, rural "backwardness," or a toleration of pluralism. Thus, this book helpes to answer the questions: Why does Romania tolerate this kind of abject slavery? Why does Romanian society tolerate this systematic subjugation that leads to its rape and humiliation on a daily basis?

Geza Szocs
Geneva, May, l989.

Bela K. Kiraly: The Hungarian Minority's Situation in Ceausescu's Romania