GAVRIL FLORA
Competing
Cultures, Conflicting Identities
NATION,
STATE AND MINORITIES IN
CONTENTS
NATION AND STATE: A FRAMEWORK FOR
UNDERSTANDING
NATIONAL IDENTITY
CITIZENSHIP AND NATIONAL STATE
NATIONALISM AND ELITE – LEGITIMATION
THE PROBLEM OF MINORITY RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL
CONTEXT
INTERETHNIC POLITICAL CONSENSUS AND MINORITY
-RIGHTS
COMPETING CULTURES, CONFLICTING
IDENTITIES: THE CASE OF TRANSYLVANIA
DIVERGENT PRINCIPLES OF LEGITIMACY
THE NATIONALITY QUESTION IN TRANSYLVANIA
WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE AUSTRIA-HUNGARIAN
MONARCHY
NATION AND STATE IN INTER-WAR ROMANIA
NATIONAL MINORITY POLICIES IN ROMANIA DURING
THE INTER-WAR PERIOD
TRANSYLVANISM - AN IDEOLOGICAL ALTERNATIVE
COMMUNISM AND AFTER
“SOCIALIST HOMOGENISATION"
THE CHANGING BALANCE OF ETHNIC COMMUNITIES
IN TRANSYLVANIAN URBAN AND RURAL AREAS
INTER-ETHNIC RELATIONS IN ROMANIA AFTER
DECEMBER 1989
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NATION,
STATE, MINORITIES: A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING
NATIONAL IDENTITY
National identity can be defined as a modern community type symbolical cultural identity, shared by a group of persons living in a given territory, who organise themselves politically for the preservation of their spiritual values. According to this interpretation, the term "national" should be regarded as a general expression of modern collective identity, which is expressing the need and the aspiration of a cultural community to organise itself as a political community.
In line with this argument, Ernest Gellner states that "nationalism is a political principle, which claims that the borders of the state and the national boundaries must coincide." This definition is emphasising the essential role of the "national idea" as political ideology within modern or modernising societies and inevitably raises the important and difficult issue of the relationship between the state and national rights. From such perspective, the assertion of Rogers Brubaker that "nationhood" represents an "institutionalised political and cultural form" can be considered an inspired methodological innovation, which orientates the researcher towards an unbiased assessment of the functions fulfilled by national ideologies in various fields of the social practice.
The importance of the concepts related to "territory" and "population" within national ideologies derives primarily from the fundamental transformation in the way these two concepts appeared to be linked in the way of thinking of population, which occurred at the beginning of modern age. As Elie Kedourie correctly observes, while during the Middle Ages "the European society of states knew a great diversity of governments and constitutions, a society of nations must be composed of nation-states, and any state which is not a nation-state has its title and its existence perpetually challenged.”
Several important authors describe the modern national movement precisely in the terms of competing power struggle between nations for transforming their national territory into state territory, for including all territories inhabited by them into the framework of their own state. As John Breuilly demonstrates in his historical analysis of modern nationalism, there could be various arguments and means put at work in the competition for the creation of a nation-state. Characteristically, the nations, which had their own state entity, did express their case in historical-political terms. As a reaction, subordinate groups often expressed their aspirations in ethnic and linguistic terms.
The main problem here, according to Gellner’s approach, consists in the fact that there are much more real or potential national movements and nations than the number of state units. The result of their competition can not be therefore other, that some succeed in their struggle, while many others will be defeated. One can add, however, that in principle nothing prevents the "winner" nations to share some of their rights with the members of those who "lost" the struggle. On the contrary, a rational compromise and consensus between the different national identities within the same state could be beneficial not only for the preservation of cultural and linguistic plurality, but also for the internal stability and external security of the states concerned.
A variety of solutions can be worked out for the relationship between the state and its own national communities. However, basically one major line of demarcation can be drawn between two fundamentally distinct models. The "one-nation-dominated-state" builds its legitimacy and political practice on the affirmation of the rights and protection of only one national community (that is the state building nation) In contrast, the " nationally pluralistic state" provides co-participant status in the political power for more than one national-political community.
Below I enlisted some of the most important characteristics of the two types, presented in a comparative perspective:
|
One-nation-dominated state |
Nationally pluralistic state |
|
Only one official culture and language |
Recognition of cultural and linguistic plurality, protection against assimilation |
|
State centralism |
Federalist or/and autonomy based models |
|
Legitimisation strategies centred on the idea of one "state building" nation |
National communities considered as “ constitutive components" of the state |
It results that the two models are expressions of two rather different types of political and ideological attitudes of the state towards its national communities. The doctrine and practice of "one nation dominated state" and "one- state building nation" claims that the whole state territory should be identical with the national territory, and acknowledges the existence of only one single nation, that is the "state building" nation. The nationally pluralistic state recognises juridical and political status (including the territorial rights) of more than one national community.
The term "national minority" appears, in most of the cases in the constitutional and legal documents of the "one-nation-dominated states", while the nationally pluralistic constitutions define the constitutive ethno-cultural entities of such states as "communities" or "nations". The term "national minority" customarily refers to a minority in terms of its number and proportion within the population, but might suggest and express a political inferiority as well.
The legal definitions of minority embodied in major international documents (such as those of the UN, OSCE and the Council of Europe), although are including all the elements of nationality mentioned earlier, nevertheless tend to exclude those groups, which are to be defined as "peoples" or "nations". The essential difference, which makes a national community form a "minority" rather than a "nation" can be seen, according to this approach, precisely in their non dominant status. Minorities, in this understanding of the term, do not have a political entity of their own, with other words they are not members of the state - building nations of the state of which citizens they are.
By contrast, the legal and political regulations of the nationally pluralistic states offer specific rights both to the individuals as citizens, and to the national communities as collective subjects, co-participants in the government. Such provisions normally include recognition of their co-participatory status in the state institutions, special rights of self-administration in particular regions, where the demographic proportion of the community justifies it, as well as certain cultural and linguistic rights.
This problem often appears in particularly acute forms generating political instability in the historically young nation-states of Europe, which have to bear the burden of a considerable delay in their social-economic and political modernisation, compared with the Western part of the continent. From this perspective, the distinction between West-European and East European models of national political culture appears to be highly significant.
As A.D. Smith points out, "The Western model of the nation tended to emphasise the centrality of a national territory or homeland, a common system of laws and institutions, the legal equality of citizens in a political community and the importance of a mass civic culture bringing the citizens together. The Eastern model, by contrast, was more preoccupied with ethnic descent and cultural tie. Apart from genealogy, it emphasised the popular or folk element, the role of vernacular mobilisation and the activation of the people through a revival of their native folk-culture, their languages, customs, religions and rituals, rediscovered by urban intellectuals such as philologists, historians, folklorists, ethnographers and lexicographers."
The roots of this differentiation can probably be found in the different role of civil and ethnic dimensions in the emergence of national ideologies in Western and Eastern Europe. In the West, the affirmation of individual citizenship rights and the formation of modern nation-state can be seen as two interconnected dimensions of the same historical process, and therefore national identity acquired a strong civic significance. By contrast, in East the existence of multicultural and multi-lingual empires and the delay of socio-economic modernisation led to the creation of weak civil society structures and consequently strengthened the importance of ethnic belonging, language and religion.
In the West, modern national identities developed as a definite rejection of feudal privileges, and symbolically expressed the rule of the ‘people’ as well as the equality of all citizens. By contrast, in Central-Eastern Europe, as a consequence of weak urban and bourgeois development, in the first stage of national movements the nobility largely took over the role of ‘national awaking’, paradoxically using the modern idea of nationality for the preservation of its old power positions.
The problem of establishing a similarity between the territory of the state and the territory of the nation appears in rather different terms in the case of Western and in that of Eastern model of the nation. In the West, a predominantly civil concept of national identity prevailed, where the membership in the nation was based on citizenship. There appeared therefore lesser possibilities for the development of alternative national movements. In the East, on the contrary, the fact that the state borders and the living areas of ethnic communities did not coincide, often resulted in sources of tension and conflict.
The mentioned differentiation also resulted in a different perception of citizenship and of citizenship rights. In Eastern Europe, the identification with one ethnic culture and community had a much more important role compared to citizenship in the political integration and mobilisation of inhabitants. As a consequence, a complex relationship developed between ethnicity and politics. Ethnic belonging was constantly and intensely politicised, while political problems were often translated in “ethnic” terms.
This assertion leads us to the second important characteristic of nation-state type political-territorial units in Eastern Europe: the lack of legitimacy, or more correctly, their incomplete legitimacy. By the identification of the state with one single national entity, the other national communities inhabiting the territory of the state inevitably fall outside this legitimising process, thus providing an additional source of ethnic tension.
State-borders and the national "boundaries" often did not coincide, and the attempts to "correct" the situation according to the nationalist plans of the different political elites were often not successful. The fundamental question was and still is, whether, and if so, in what conditions, the state can or is willing to express, protect and promote the plurality of national community interests, cultures and collective identities within its territory.
CITIZENSHIP AND NATIONAL STATE
The codification and implementation of the modern human rights system, as the legal expression of national civil and political emancipation, fulfilled basic social functions, deriving from the requirements of the emerging modern society:
1; to define a new type of mutual relationship between the individuals and the state, which had to replace the traditional model of feudal hierarchies and dependencies.
2; to develop alternative strategies (and ideological discourses) of legitimisation, according to the characteristics and requirements of modernisation.
One can identify two distinct, but interconnected categories of modern institutional structures and corresponding discourses of ideological legitimisation:
-The institution (and ideology) of citizenship and individual rights;
-The political practice (and rhetoric) of the nation-state as the expression of community (collective) rights
There is no doubt that the liberation of individuals (the acquiring of citizenship) and the formation of the liberal state (the triumph of the national principle) are two interconnected facets of the same historical evolution. The free citizens had to be integrated into a sovereign state able to protect and guarantee their liberty. The functioning of the liberal state presupposed the inclusion of free and equal right citizens. However, in spite of this obvious mutual inter-conditioning, the co-existence of the two fundamental modern political institutions - the citizenship and the national state- was marked throughout the unfolding of the modern age by historical and structural tensions, difficulties and even conflicts. At the roots of these, basically two fundamental contradictions can be identified:
-
a. The contradiction between national state sovereignty and community
national minority rights
The basic documents of modern bourgeois revolutions focused on the rights of individuals. The only recognised supra-individual legitimate political entity was the nation-state. The first modern political regimes were set up as territorial-historical successors of established centralist states in a well defined territory (such as England or France), or were founded in the framework of essentially non-contested territorial boundaries (as it is the case of United States). The citizens of these countries were strongly committed to identify themselves with the state, which offered them full status as equal members of the political community. Cultural and ethnical differences played a secondary role in the new power structures, and were to a less extent politicised. There was a clear tendency to define both the Nation and the State on the basis of citizenship rights.
A second group of states, namely Germany and Italy, form a distinct category. As a consequence of a considerable delay in the process of setting up a modern national state, in their case this process coincided in time with the creation of a homogenous ethnic identity (based on a partly invented common history and cultural heritage). In fact, the proclaimed existence of a shared culture, language and ethnicity of Italians and Germans has been used as the main tools of legitimising their drive towards political unification. These factors contributed to a more important role of ethnicity in the process of nation building in Italy and Germany, compared to Western Europe.
The third category of nation building concerns the territory of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, where several ethnically or ethno-territorially defined political elites claimed their rights to equitable political participation and later for state succession. The Hungarian elite, for instance, developed the idea of Hungarian" political nation" which had to include the members of all different ethnic or linguistic groups who lived in the territory of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. As a reaction, other national political elites (such as the Romanians, the Slovaks or the Croats) based their own national rhetoric on the idea of ethnic nations (cultural nations) and ethnic nation-states. A complexity of economic, social, political and spiritual particularities resulted in what one can call "a lack of modernisation". To these, one should add the consequences of the existence of strong ethno-territorial political communities inherited from the medieval period. All these created favourable conditions for national-ethnic community self-organisation and for the development of parallel and often competing national movements.
The historical experience of modern national development, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, points out clearly that the norms of citizenship have, by their own nature, an inclusive character. Citizenship, by definition tends to integrate all individuals of various ethnic identities into the political community of the state. By contrast, the norms of nation-state tend to exclude the members of ethnic minorities from the full right participation in the power structures. This situation can be traced not only at the level of legal regulations and of political practice, but also, and even stronger, at the level of majority national rhetoric. The nation state is almost openly defined as the most important protector of national majority interests against the potential - real or imaginary - threats coming from minorities.
b. The contradiction between modern national homogenisation and the right
to protect identity
As Ernest Gellner very convincingly argues, there is a necessary connection between modernisation, the formation of nation-states and the construction of a standardised high culture. In the same time, however, national homogenisation should be considered as an effective instrument of legitimising the modern power-distribution systems and territorial-political units (the nation-states). Modern society - together with its corollary, cultural modernisation - not only contributes to the emergence of contemporary social egalitarism, but also to the emergence of new sources and new types of non-gradual, non-continuous, inequalities. Homogenisation policies conducted by the nation states might affect the right to preserve and protect cultural, religious, ethnic and national identity of the persons who belong to minorities, in various ways:
- Limitations of the educational system in the languages of national and ethnic minorities.
If citizenship can be adequately defined as the totality of individual and collective civil, political, social and cultural rights, than an elementary distinction between constructive and destructive, spontaneous and enforced, voluntary and politically oriented national homogenisation needs to be made. Long term solutions should be built on consensual policies of majority and minority communities, based on rational compromises. The communicational and educational system of the developed societies allows for the implementation of adequate instruments and mechanisms in order to protect cultural and ethnic diversity, especially the survival of the so-called small cultures. The development of national or even supranational high cultures does not exclude or contradict by any means the right to existence of ethnic community based or regionally defined identities.
NATIONALISM AND ELITE -
LEGITIMATION
In his theoretical essay The Coming of the Nationalism and its Interpretation, Ernest Gellner argues that:
" The nation - state became political norm as the result of major changes in the social conditions of the mankind, when a high culture becomes the pervasive, operational culture of an entire society. The emergence of nationalism is essentially connected with the new principles of legitimacy of the advanced industrial society, where:
- A significant proportions of the posts have to be filled meritocratically, in the light of the performance and competence;
- The inequalities are gradual and continuous, rather than being marked by theoretically un-crossable chasms between estates and casts;
- These inequalities are not internalised in the souls of the beneficiaries and the victims of the inequality;
- They are not self-justifying, but require practical justification. "
These statements - while providing valuable theoretical and methodological insights and tools for the interpretation of the national ideologies - nevertheless need to be discussed further. Modern society should not be regarded exclusively as the expression of basic egalitarism built on generalised economic growth, but also as the outcome of a more complex and sophisticated distribution of power, which involve an increasing role of the state (and of its bureaucratic elites). The modern state should not be considered only as a product of economic rationality. It fulfils in the same time very important other regulative functions in the sphere of political life, which basically consists in:
- Supervising the social groups and other units
- Creating and reproducing the power-structure of the society
- Offering, maintaining and legitimising the status-positions (privileges) of certain social groups
This more complex interpretation will allow us to consider nationalism both as a social-economical and as an ideological phenomenon: as a response to the requirements of the modern industry, but also as a discursive strategy of power-legitimisation. In this latter capacity, nationalism has been used in various historical contexts for different purposes, such as:
a; legitimising the survival of the old feudal structures, and of the power-positions of the aristocratic elites
b; generating, enforcing and legitimising ethnocratic, rather than meritocratic elite-recruiting processes, non-gradual and non-continuous, discriminative types of inequalities. This function implicitly involved a kind of internalisation of such inequalities both by the beneficiaries of inequality (the dominant national elites), and by its victims (the frustrated minority elites, who were excluded/discriminated due to their identity). All these social processes basically require a non-pragmatic, ideological justification.
In view of the above considerations, it is possible to distinguish between five historical types of nationalist legitimisation discourses:
1. Aristocratic nationalism
This type of elite legitimisation was characteristic for the period of transition from the feudal to the modern bourgeois state, the time of temporary compromises and power-equilibrium between the old aristocratic and the new emerging bourgeois elites. As the result of declining imperial structures and dynastic principles, former members of the feudal hierarchy became promoters of national sovereignty and institutional modernisation in their own territorial units, thus creating alternative resources of power- legitimisation. These legitimisation processes should be regarded as an attempt of the aristocracy to conserve as much privileges and power-positions as possible, by using the new ideology for its own interests.
When emphasising the historical role of the nobility in the so called "national salvation", the aristocrats pretended to be entitled to play a political role, this time justified not by the old and already outdated feudal-dynastic principles, but by their assumed traditional role as historical "savers of the Nation". This argumentation is, on the other hand, organically connected with the ideology claiming ancient historical roots for the "Nation" as a basis for its rights to posses a certain geographic and population area.
2. Civil nationalism
That part of the bourgeois class, which geographically and politically was located in the centre of the former absolutist states and empires (or of some of their recognised sub-units), became the historical successor in power of the replaced nobility. The new rulers appealed to the “people” for support. They presented themselves as the opinion-leaders of a new "Nation", which excluded aristocracy, and relied on the which according to this view, was identical with the whole citizenship based community of the state.
The discourse about "the Nation of free and equal citizens" should be considered a monopolist ideological instrument of the centrally located and centralist modern national elite. Its main functions were to legitimise the newly created political structures and of the new territorial -political units (the nation -states); to prevent, or, at least, to limit the development of alternative or competitive centres of power (e.g. those of the regional/ethnical sub-units inside the new state).
It is important to stress here, that the integration of the individuals into the political community of the nation-state (both in ideological and practical terms), depended only on the person's political status (in the terms of citizenship), rather than on cultural (ethnic, religious or racial) belonging. However members of certain ethnic communities (notably the Jews) in certain periods and countries were deprived from the rights of citizenship and thus fall outside the political- national community of the respective states.
3. Political-cultural nationalism
This type of legitimising-process expressed the need of the consolidated centralist political elites to enforce their dominance, by suppressing the alternative centrifugal tendencies promoted by the minority elites striving to develop their own national legitimising discourses. The most convenient and accessible method to counterbalance those tendencies was, of course, to recognise only one official culture and language and to attempte a kind of cultural homogenisation. In spite of the fact that it was not very successful (in most of cases) in achieving its aims, the policy of cultural homogenisation undermined the traditional types of privileges and power-legitimisation, replacing them by the idea and social practice of "one State, one Culture, one Nation". It created, however new sources and new types of non-continuous, non-gradual inequalities, mainly by:
- Establishing only one official language and one privileged culture, which led from start to disadvantages for minority cultures and languages (and for the citizens belonging to minority cultures who decided to stick to their own identity.)
- Conditioning the possibility to join the political elite (or to fill posts in the official hierarchy), by the attachment of the person to the official culture and the dominant ethnic identity (elite-assimilation).
- Preventing the possibility of minorities to be equitably represented in the power structures as politically recognised, legitimate communities.
4. Ethnic (ethnocratic) nationalism
The ideology of national expansion (majority elite-expansion) expressed the tendency of the national majority power centres to increase their economic, political, and cultural influence within the state, to the detriment of minorities, by making use of the ethnic argument. This is the logical continuation and consequence of the relatively unsuccessful previous cultural homogenisation attempts. The basic idea was that only the members of the dominant ethnic community should be fully accepted as equal citizens of the state. The others, those who have other identities, must be assimilated as much as possible, determined to emigrate, prevented from filling important positions in the state-apparatus and discriminated against in all fields.
The most important strategies, followed to achieve the above mentioned targets, were:
- Preferential allocation of posts in the public life and administration (on the basis of ethnic criteria)
- Economic facilities offered to the members of majority national communities
- Imposing discriminative regulations to the detriment of minority citizens in the political, economic and cultural life
- Artificial, politically determined increasing of the majority population's proportion in the traditionally multiethnic areas
- Cultural and ethnical assimilation: discriminative language laws, limitation of the education in the languages of minorities.
-Politically directed/stimulated emigration and immigration processes, aimed to reduce the number and proportion of the minority population in a given territory
- Limitation and systematic obstruction of the minority communities' representation, as well as of their efforts of economic, political and cultural self-organisation.
The main motivations behind the ethno- nationalist expansive policies can be found in the following objectives assumed by national majority ruling elites:
-To change the ethno-demographic map of multinational states to the detriment of minorities, in order to legitimate with demographic arguments the ideology and political practice of the ethnocratic nation state
- To enforce state-centralism and the dominance of the national majority elite in the areas predominantly populated by minority population
- To suppress the centrifugal tendencies of the minority elites and to attenuate the effects of any territorial claims of the neighbour states
5. Racial nationalism
This was the extreme case of nationalist destructiveness based on openly claimed and programmatically assumed ethno-racial principles and political practices. Those who were not members of the dominant nation had no choice, no possibility of self-defence. They were from the start eliminated (excluded, replaced by force, or physically destroyed), only due to their ethnic belonging (origin).
It was not the task of the above considerations to provide empirical material which can sustain (or reject) the validity of the typology presented. This will be carried out by special studies. Of course, concrete analysis would require differentiate and selective investigation of the facts, which might be in more or less extent compatible with this model, varying from one particular situation to another. In any case, the explanation of nationalism and of the emergence of the national states in terms of elite legitimisation strategies and processes is intended to be not as an opposite, but as a complementary scheme to the very plausible and comprehensive interpretation offered by Ernest Gellner.
THE PROBLEM OF MINORITY RIGHTS IN
INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
In recent years, there has been a significant sharpening of interest in the problem of minorities, partly as a result of the emerging national movements and conflicts in the territory of the former communist block. The international community is becoming more and more aware, that ethnic conflicts can be both violent and destructive, threaten the unity of states, and involve risks regarding peace and security.
Today there is an almost general recognition of the fact that minority rights are an inseparable part of the universally accepted human rights, which should be protected by the means of international society. This recognition remained, however, essentially at a declarative level, due to certain objective and subjective obstacles, which will be summarised below.
a; the nature of the international system
As international relations are established on the basis of voluntary co-operation between equal right states without sovereign power above, there is a lack of legal and political framework within which certain norms and standards could be made effective. While the unresolved situation of national minorities very often becomes a source of interethnic and interstate conflicts, it was always difficult to demonstrate a direct connection between the status of minorities and the security issues. Inter-state conflicts have been solved in most of the situations by the means of "realpolitik", which sought to eliminate or reduce the immediate and explosive effects, rather than to deal with the profound causes, which were often linked to the unfair treatment of minorities.
Even those international documents, which state the necessity of protecting minority rights, do not include, however, any sanctions to be taken against the states which do not respect those rights. It is very difficult to determine in objective terms, which are the situations when a national community in a country is affected to such an extent as to require the intervention of the international community. The principle of non-intervention, directly connected to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, seems to be much more powerful in the real functioning of the international system than are human and minority right concerns.
Very relevant for the legal and practical difficulties encountered by the efforts to protect minority rights internationally is the way the problem of self-determination is treated in the UN Charter. While it does not include direct and clear dispositions referring to the rights of national minorities, the aims and principles enounced in the Charter imply in fact the need for a satisfactory solution of the minority problem.
1; It was agreed that UN has to act for the implementation of efficient procedures, rules and institutions in order to prevent and eliminate any threat or aggressive action which could endanger the international peace and security;
2; The co-operation of equal right states and the advancement of human rights and freedom without regard to race, gender, language and religion have been stated as collective priorities.
The above mentioned tasks can not be achieved without the institutionalisation of a minority rights protecting international mechanism, able to guarantee the legal status of national communities within the states, including their rights for equitable political representation and for maintaining their ethnic, cultural, religious and national identity. There is, however, one major legal difficulty for the international protection of minority rights. Paragraph seven, chapter 2 of the Charter states that the UN is not entitled to intervene in the internal affairs of any state. In the last four decades the principle of sovereignty was frequently used to prevent efficient protection of the minorities by the international community. The former communist regimes usually regarded the political positions and attitudes from outside concerning the rights of minorities in their countries as manifestations of interference into their internal affairs, and therefore, violations of the international law.
On the other hand, Art.7 of the UN Charter proclaims "the peoples’ right for self determination", without any definition of who are the "peoples." In practice, United Nations, the European Parliament, the OSCE and any other international organisations are dealing basically with the states, the only subjects which have a clearly recognised and defined legal status in the contemporary world system.
As the international society is still based on the existence of independent states without sovereign power above, the promotion of fundamental human rights and liberties from supra-state level is facing major obstacles. There is a lack of international legal entitlement in this field. It is unlikely to achieve a consensus of the member states on the issue whether a violation of the minority rights by a particular state endangers international peace and security. Even in the case that such a consensus is achieved, however, the means and practical possibilities of an eventual enforcement of sanctions against that state are very limited by the nature of the present world state system.
The major task in this regard would be to reduce the existing tensions and discrepancies between the aims and means of the UN and to make UN a much more effective instrument of the new emerging international legal and moral order. In order to achieve this, it is necessary a completion of the Charter. It should include a clear statement, that the recognition and implementation of the basic human rights, including national minority rights, must be considered as a common concern of all states, of the international community as a whole, and can not be considered an internal affair of one state or another. The institutionalisation of this principle requires the elaboration of an international minority convention, a multilateral treaty of the participant states under the auspices of the United Nations, which should include certain obligations and standards for protecting the legal status of national minorities.
b; lack of definitions
The situation is problematic not just in the case of how to define " people”, but also in providing accurate legal definition of the term "minority rights”. There is no clear definition of what a national minority means. The problem is complicated by the enormous diversity of social, economic, and political situations, historical and cultural traditions around the world and even in relative homogenous areas such as Europe. It is very difficult to find out general criteria for defining a minority community. The confusion is increased by the ambiguous and interchangeable use in the scientific and political discourses of such key terms as people, nation, nationality, national community, national minority, ethnic minority, ethnic group etc.
As a result, there are no satisfactory definitions of minority rights. It is not even clear who are the subjects of this category of rights. It is debated, for instance, whether national minorities are or not to be considered as belonging to the "peoples." In the situation when the principle of peoples' self determination integrated in the UN Charter is applicable for the population living in a determined territory, should include this population the members of national minorities? If the answer is yes, the majority and minority communities have to decide together about their future status, on the basis of ethnic community consensus, which is often not easy to reach. If the answer is no, or the will of minorities is ignored by the majority, part of the population will find itself excluded from the right of self-determination.
c; Political interests of the states
Exclusionary and discriminatory norms and political practices, legitimised by ”national state" type rhetoric are still at work in many states. Majority nationalism, inevitably associated with minority frustrations remained a significant part of the political elites legitimisation strategies. On the other hand, minority problems are also, in many cases, to less or more extent, manifestations of economic, social and political concerns or of the power struggles inside the states.
In the same time, there is an important inter-state dimension of the minority issues, directly related to the principle of territorial integrity. The reluctance of governments to satisfy the political claims of their minorities can be partly explained by the supposition that behind these claims might be undeclared intentions of minorities to acquire independence by secession, or to attach the territory where they live to another state. There is a fear shared by majority populations and members of the majority political elite, that minority rights might be used as a threat to the national security and the existing territorial boundaries of the states.
These are only a few of the most important obstacles the international community is faced with in its attempts to implement an effective minority rights code and protecting institutional system. As a consequence, in the present stage of international political development, in spite of the great expectations and noble aspirations, minority rights can not be extensively guaranteed or enforced from international level. It still belongs to the state parliaments, governments and other significant national political forces within the states; to promote the political will for equitable solutions. What the international community should be able to do, however, is to provide political and legal assistance for the internal efforts to reach inter-ethnic agreements in each individual state, and for bilateral and multilateral agreements between the states, concerning the envisaged status of national minorities.
In the context of the advancing European
integration and globalisation, there are various means to convince the states
that it is in their own interest to co-operate in the field of human and
minority rights. The UN, the CSCE, The European Parliament and other important
international organisations should try to elaborate general and specific
political models for their member states, as possible starting points in the
process of achieving interethnic accords on the minority-rights. To stimulate
the involvement of national minorities in this process, it would be essential
to improve their representation at international level, both in the existing
and in the emerging new institutions.
INTERETHNIC POLITICAL CONSENSUS
AND MINORITY -RIGHTS
One of the most difficult tests the new democracies in East and Central Europe are faced with is their capability to guarantee equitable status for the minority (ethnic, religious, linguistic) communities. There is however a lack of agreement between the significant political forces, concerning the nature and the desirability of specific provisions to be codified and implemented in this field. Thus, the envisaged stability of the post-communist institutions and the perspectives of full acceptance into the European and international democratic community are potentially being challenged by an unresolved major internal problem.
The key issue in this complex area of problems is the participation of minorities in the decision making process. The State has to become a real expression of the ethnic diversity within the society, rather than the protector of exclusively or mainly ethnic majority interests. Due to the nature of the contemporary international system, which is based on the existence of equal right sovereign states, it is the responsibility of the legislative assemblies and governments of each country to implement a functioning minority right protecting system:
- The codification of minority-rights, including constitutional and legal guarantees
- The setting up of an efficient institutional framework of minority rights protection
The legal provisions protecting minority rights are to be considered as an integrated part of the general democratic and human rights - protecting system (derivable from the principles of non-discrimination, political freedom and equity and the right to identity). In the same time, these provisions should be regarded and should function as the legal expressions of shared majority -minority interests and mutual expectations.
Such new legal and institutional system cannot be established by exclusively administrative or regulative decisions. It has to be the result of a political process within the states, as well as the outcome of achieving a certain level of political consensus between the states. The creation of the system should presumably involve the following steps:
1; the concerned national governments and leading political forces in each country have to recognise that the status of minorities is still not satisfactorily solved and a special attention, an adequate political response has to be offered by the state. Second, governments should recognise that the representative political organisations of the national minorities are entitled to be accepted as their only legitimate partners in the process of ethnic reconciliation.
2; The national minority organisations should elaborate special packages of minimal expectations on what kind of regulations and institutions they need and require for preserving their identity
3; The parliaments have to decide the principles and regulations of the forthcoming national roundtable discussions between the governments, the political parties representing the majority population, and the organisations of minorities.
4; The aim - and the presumed result - of the national roundtables should be a general political agreement, a common platform accepted by all involved sides, concerning the provisions, implementation and functioning of a new minority-code.
5; The results of the roundtable have to be translated in constitutional and legal terms, including definitions, principles, instruments and guarantees of minority rights.
6; The most important principle for the functioning of the newly created constitutional system seems to be the requirement of interethnic political consensus in the case of those particular kind of decisions, which are in connection with the status of different national communities and could affect minority-rights.
A; to decide which are the regulations with direct connection to minority-rights, which can be adopted or modified only on the basis of national community political consensus;
B; to supervise the general climate of interethnic relations, and to recommend adequate actions for central and local governments, in order to prevent possible tensions or conflicts.
8; The constitutional principles and provisions of the particular states should be integrated into an international human and minority rights protecting system, by means of bilateral and multilateral agreements concerning certain obligations, which the participant states are willing to assume in the field of minority rights protection.
9. Participant states should agree that observance of legal norms protecting minority rights will not be considered as an internal problem, and the governments, which violate these rights, are situating themselves outside the international community.
It was not the task of this brief presentation to propose a general model or an overwhelming solution of the problem. The intention was only to stimulate the theoretical and political debates, by suggesting a possible alternative strategy to achieve ethnic accord by consensual parliamentarian political means. The advancing process of European integration and the end of the bipolar division of the world created a favourable context for adopting and implementing long-term equitable regulations in this field.
COMPETING CULTURES, CONFLICTING IDENTITIES:
THE
CASE OF TRANSYLVANIA
DIVERGENT PRINCIPLES OF
LEGITIMACY
Any effective approach to the study of inter-ethnic relations in Central-Eastern Europe should consider ethnic and national communities in their mutual interaction, rather than seeing them as isolated and self-sufficient entities. Due to the specificity of nation building and state formation in this part of Europe, the various national self-images have been developed to a large extent as a reaction to policies and images promoted by the “other side”.
In this regard, the term ‘parallel cultures’ can prove its effectiveness as a key concept if it is interpreted from a sociological, rather then a purely ‘geometrical’ perspective, so as to include the relationship between cultures as an essential component of social relations. According to this vision, interaction is in itself a driving force: both a cause and an effect. It constantly creates and recreates the interethnic context, but at the same time is significantly affected and influenced by it, thus acting both as a factor of stability, and as a motive power of change. The case of Transylvania, a multicultural region in central Romania, is particularly relevant in this regard.
Historically, Transylvania has been regarded as a homeland by its Romanian, Hungarian and German (Saxon) inhabitants equally. The area has had a distinct path of development, which produced its own specific cultural environment and identity. During the Middle Ages, ‘Transylvania was an integral part of the mediæval Kingdom of Hungary, but owing to its remote situation, enjoyed a certain autonomy.’ After the collapse of independent Hungary in 1541 it became a separate principality under Turkish Ottoman rule, and maintained this status for more than 150 years, until the beginning of 18th century, when it was integrated into the Habsburg Empire as a self-governing unit. From 1867 the province belonged to Hungary within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and became part of Romania after the dissolution of the Dual State at the end of the First World War.
Several centuries of co-existence created in this region a space of cultural diversity and ethnic and religious tolerance, including a very specific institutional system, aimed at preserving the very delicate balance of power, which recognised and reflected the plurality of cultures within the territory. It is worth recalling in this connection that the political structure of mediæval Transylvania was based on the shared dominance of the three recognised ‘political nations’ : the Hungarian nobility (which included the feudal leaders of the Romanians), the Szecklers and the Saxons. At the same time, Transylvania was the first country in Europe to codify religious pluralism—by the so-called Edict of Toleration of 1571, which institutionalised the full equality of the four recognised churches (recepta religio): that is, the Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran and Unitarian denominations.
Although the term natio in its medieval sense should be understood primarily as expressing a community of legal rights and privileges, including the ‘libertas’ enjoyed by the individuals who belonged to it, the Transylvanian system of three political nations should by no means be considered empty of ethno-cultural significance. Two of the three ‘nations’ (the Szecklers and the Saxons) were ethnically homogeneous, while the third - the ‘county-based’ nobility - although included individuals of various ethnic backgrounds - was Hungarian in its spirit, mentality and style of life: thus, if not originally homogeneous, in effect homogenised. The reasons that laid down the fundamentals of the system were evidently connected with the necessity to provide participation in the power structures and thus ensure the loyalty of the ethno-regional groups concerned.
It is important to note here that each natio had its own autonomous territorial basis; and that the rights of the three recognised estates could be exercised only collectively, by political-territorial communities, rather than by individuals. The Saxons held the southern areas granted to them by a special charter, the Andrenaum of 1224, where they formed their universitas. The Szecklers, a group closely related to Hungarians, but often regarded as ethnically separate during the Middle Ages, had been settled as border guards, with their own autonomous lands in the eastern regions. The ‘county-based’ nobility administered the rest of the country. One can identify in the territorial individuality of the various ethnic communities the early roots of subsequent strong autonomy oriented tendencies, something, which has deeply influenced the modern political process and also the mentalities of the people in the region.
In spite of all these favourable preconditions for the development of a culturally pluralistic and tolerant society, Transylvania did not become an ‘eastern Switzerland’. It entered the age of nation-building facing the consequences of competition between two parallel discourses of legitimacy—the Hungarian and Romanian ones—both of which claimed state-building rights for their own nation. The long-term results have been the sacralisation of ‘national territory’ as an essential element of cultural identity, and a predominant, mutually exclusive perception of national interests, which has led to the polarisation of society along ethno-national lines.
Why did it happen so? The only answer, which seems credible, points to the lack of a real alternative. Basically there was no qualitatively different path of development available. Ethnic nationalism was in fact the only effective means available to build up a satisfactory level of legitimacy, and the only efficient tool of political mobilisation in the region. Two major factors contributed to this:
1. Lack of territorial-political continuity. The period of the autonomous Principality was, by all accounts, too brief to produce a solid basis for a distinct Transylvanian national identity. In fact, Transylvania has always been a ‘borderland-country’ standing at the fringes of large empires, and it entered the era of modernity as a remote province of Austria. Within the territory of the Austrian Empire, the alternatives for the creation of nation-states had been limited from the start by certain characteristics with constraining effects. The most important ones had been the multiethnic character of both the imperial state and its constitutive parts, and the low level of continuity with medieval political and territorial entities. The peoples integrated into the framework of the Empire either lost the historical continuity of their independent statehood (e.g. the Hungarians and Czechs) or never had a state of their own (the case of Slovaks and Ruthens, among others).
In order to have a clearer picture of the solutions and ways of action in dealing with the nationality problems of the area, one has to consider first the theoretically open options. These options, although much closer to the ideal "nationalist project", could not be implemented due to the obstacles outlined above.
One hypothetical possibility, which had to be abandoned, however, almost from the start as being unrealistic, was the creation of a German (Austrian) nation-state, based on the overwhelming political, cultural and linguistic dominance of the German element throughout the territory. Although this idea probably would have been able to gain certain support from among the Germans of Transylvania, Bohemia, Silezia etc., neither their demographic share nor their political position was strong enough to provide the necessary basis for the implementation of such plan.
In Transylvania, the political institutions on which the imperial power had to rely in order to ensure stability were largely based on the ethnic and territorial privileges of the recognised estates. The Government of Vienna was bound, therefore, to respect within certain limits the cultural identity of its subjects. Nevertheless, the Habsburgs did their best to undermine the potential challenges, which an increasing influence of alternative national political forces could have involved. The extensive colonisation with Germans, Serbs and Romanians under Ferdinand I, Charles III and Maria Theresa was undoubtedly undertaken partly in order to weaken the Hungarian element, regarded as representing the major threat to the integrity of the Empire in the eastern areas.
2. Weak civil society institutions Historically a lack of balance between the ethnic and civil dimensions of national identity determined the crucial role of ethnic affiliation throughout the process of nation building. The weak supra-ethnic civil bonds within society made particularly difficult the creation of a citizenship-based identity. Socio-economic backwardness was of course a key factor in producing such an outcome. The institutionalisation of the so-called ‘second serfdom’ in the XVI-XIII centuries has to be regarded as a particularly unfavourable development in this respect. The consolidation of feudal-type relationships, at a time when the Western part of continent was preparing to open a free path for modernisation, to a large extent prevented the creation of strong civil society institutions and therefore of a sense of civil nationality in this part of Europe.
In Transylvania, instead of the liberation of
serfs from feudal ties and the proclamation of full equality, in the beginning
the opposite trend manifested itself. The traditionally free, and socially and
ethnically homogenous communities (such as the Szecklers, but also free
Romanian villages) started to lose their privileges due to an internal
differentiation process, which gradually led to the creation of a unitary
ruling stratum, joined only by wealthy members of the previous ruling nationes.
The nobility was not only not excluded from the nation (as it happened
during the French revolution), but had a leading role in the process of nation
building. In fact, the past and present dominant position of the Hungarian
aristocratic elite aspiring to nationalist legitimacy had become the most
effective argument in the struggle for Hungarian national supremacy in the
territories of the former medieval Hungarian kingdom. As a result, the main
factor in shaping the separate modern national consciousness of Hungarians,
Romanians and Germans in Transylvania seems to be related to the unequal
power positions of their respective leading political strata.
According to this criterion, the Hungarian elite was evidently in the most favoured position. After all, two of the three ruling ‘political nations’ of Transylvania, the county-based nobles and the Szecklers, were Hungarian by culture, mentality and language. As Transylvania had belonged to the medieval kingdom of Hungary, a traditional link also existed between the Transylvanian and Hungarian nobility. Thus, the appeal to the tradition of the medieval state provided them with a shared ground of legitimacy.
In addition, Hungarians - both those inside and outside Transylvania - could argue that the Transylvanian Principality was in a sense the continuation of historical Hungary. Consequently, the core principle of Hungarian nationalism (which had been embraced by Transylvania’s Hungarians too) became the idea of establishing—or, in their vision, of re-establishing—a Hungarian nation state within the historical borders of Hungary. Starting as mainly a fight for cultural and linguistic rights in opposition to the predominance of the German language in public life, the Hungarian national struggle evolved towards legal, social-economic and political reforms strongly connected with the desiderata to establish a Hungarian nation- state.
Thus, another alternative emerged from the competition between the two most powerful elites, the German and the Hungarian, the idea of national compromise. The steps undertaken towards this aim included, first, the recognition of Hungarian as the official language in 1847, but gradually involved the demand for certain political and administrative rights as well. Hungarian national aspirations became to a large extent a reality as the result of the 1867 Compromise, when the Austria-Hungarian Monarchy came into being. The Hungarian nation received equal status with Austria within the central government, and full self-governing power in the areas belonging to the territory of their historic kingdom, including Transylvania.
THE NATIONALITY QUESTION IN
TRANSYLVANIA
WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE
AUSTRIA-HUNGARIAN MONARCHY
After 1867, within the "recreated" Hungary, the rhetorical appeal to the historical tradition of the medieval kingdom, while so popular among ethnic Hungarians, did not provide sufficiently strong legitimacy against the increasing threats coming from the various and numerically strong nations living in the territory of the "revived" statehood. The most important such nations had been the Romanians in Transylvania, the Slovaks of "Upper-Hungary", the Croats, the Slovenes, the Serbs of Voivodina and the Ruthenes. In 1868 these nations repeated their previous claims for autonomy and collective rights, and proposed that Hungary should become a multinational state, with six official languages; proportional representation in the central institutions, cultural autonomy; self-governing rights at regional level and administrative units established according to the ethnic criteria.
The Hungarian political elite rejected these demands (with the only exception of Croatian self-government), and tried to consolidate the one-nation dominated character of the state. Nevertheless, Hungarian political leaders had to acknowledge in one way or another the ethnic diversity within the society, including the right of various nations to exist at least as ethno-cultural entities. The 1868 Law of Nationalities fulfilled this task. The Law granted, in a liberal spirit, the possibility for all non-Hungarians to use their own mother tongue in their contacts with authorities, and also their right of association ‘for the development of language, arts, sciences, industry and trade’. In the same time the Law stated that ‘all citizens of the country, in the political sense, are members of one nation, the unitary and indivisible Hungarian nation, which includes with equal rights all citizens of the fatherland, to whatever nationality they belong’.
The idea of a ‘Hungarian political nation’, supposed to include all citizens regardless their ethnic belonging, can be seen as an unsuccessful attempt of Hungarian leading circles to reconcile the need to assert an ethno-nationalist rhetoric of legitimacy with the practical political necessity to recognise ethnic diversity within the state. This necessity was the more pressing, as ethnic Hungarians amounted to less than half of the total population.
However, as J..McCartney rigorously observed, " neither had many Magyars accepted in their hearts that the primacy which the law allowed to the Magyar language was a simply pragmatic concession to administrative convenience, and that Hungary was no more the Magyars state than that of Ruthenes or Romanians. For them, the Magyar national character of the state was axiomatic.” Representatives of the middle level administrative apparatus, which was already predominantly Hungarian or Hungarianised, indeed, from the beginning contested the desirability of nationality rights and tried to prevent or to limit their implementation to the economic and cultural sphere, which were regarded as politically less sensitive.
The concept of "one political nation" implied, on the other hand, the legal supremacy of individual civil political rights as opposed to the collective national rights. The obvious intention was to prevent or diminish as much as possible the politicisation of non-Hungarian ethnic concerns, which were overwhelmingly perceived as a major source of potential danger for the very existence of the new state. Part of the effort to create a politically unitary state as a guarantee of internal stability and territorial integrity, the territorial reorganisation of 1876-77 eliminated the traditional autonomy of Saxons and extended the unitary county-based administrative system to the whole territory of the country.
The major concern behind such measures was that if provided with collective recognition, the various nationalities might attempt to propagate the ideals of the nation states to which their co-nationals belong. Among the national communities of Transylvania, the Romanians were most likely to develop such alternative nation state ideology. As the result of their numerical importance in particular areas, their comparatively disadvantaged economic and political status compensated with idealised collective perceptions, and their territorial proximity with the newly formed Romanian Kingdom, the Transylvanian Romanians formed a strong consciousness of separate identity. Beginning from the 18th century they persistently demanded their recognition as a distinct legal and political entity.
In the case of the Romanians the most important influencing factors in the process of nation building had been the lack of past political participation, their exclusion from the status of a recognised natio, and the almost complete absorption of their privileged members into the Hungarian nobility. As a consequence, the leading role in the creation of a Romanian national identity had to be assumed by the intelligentsia, and especially by the clergy of the Uniate (Greek Catholic) Church. There were no traditions of independent statehood to be invoked in support of national claims, and, in their absence, arguments of historical ancestry and continuity as well as demographic arguments had been put forward. (as the Romanian population was the most numerous).
At first, Transylvanian Romanians did not demand a state exclusively of their own, but the autonomy of Transylvania and shared power with the other nations within the region. This claim was in fact in line with the traditional Transylvanian constitutional principles, which were based on the plurality of territorial community rights. These Transylvanian institutions, however, were at variance with the legal tradition of Hungary proper, where only one political nation existed, the natio hungarica. The difficulty of resolving this contradiction might partly explain why leading Hungarian national thinkers and political leaders in the XIXth century, though to some extent in favour of cultural pluralism, were nevertheless not able to accept a multinational model in the political sense. As a consequence, they ultimately failed in their attempt to integrate Transylvania into the Hungarian nation state.
Not surprisingly, the reaction of Romanian representatives to the idea of their being included into the ‘Hungarian political nation’ was sharply negative, as they saw it as a step towards ethnic homogenisation, and an attempt to separate and alienate the national elites from their own communities. The fact that the proposed unitary political community was designated ‘the Hungarian political nation’ rather than ‘the political nation of Hungary’, was regarded by Transylvanian Romanian leaders as a proof in itself of the real intentions of successive Hungarian governments. The Romanian elite perceived that the proposed replacement of ethnic principle of political representation with a modern "civil" one was an attempt of the Hungarian elite to conceal and/or to legitimise the real dominance of the Hungarian element and its envisaged plans for the ethnic assimilation of non-Hungarians. The fact that Hungarian language became a compulsory subject in the mainly Church owned Romanian schools and in the kindergartens, and that the state owned education institutions were almost exclusively of Hungarian language, came only to underline such suspicions.
The language issue was indeed an extremely delicate problem. Hungarian nationalism itself started mainly as a struggle for linguistic rights, which is for the recognition of Hungarian as an official language within the Austrian Empire. This ‘birth certificate’ had long-term consequences. As the Hungarian national movement began to take shape, it became more and more important for the leading nobility to enlarge the popular base for their nationalistic claims.
The appeal to language—and to folk culture— as essential symbolic bonds linking all Magyars regardless of their socio-economic status, fulfilled an important role in this legitimising strategy. Proclaiming Hungarian as the only official language, beyond the instrumental advantage provided to Hungarian speakers, also offered them an additional sense of privilege and dignity compared to the rest of the population, thus enhancing their legitimacy still further. This had an exclusionary effect on non-Hungarian speakers, and prompted their elites to follow the same model in order to gain popular acceptance, that is, by emphasising the nation-building virtues of their respective languages.
To conclude, in contrast with the medieval political institutions of Transylvania, which partially reflected the ethnic and religious heterogeneity of the region, the formation of modern national identity coincided with the contesting of community rights and ethno-territorial privileges. Instead of ethnic or religious criteria, the primacy of citizenship rights had been proclaimed as organising principle of the state. The persons who belonged to various national groups could enjoy ethnic, cultural and religious freedom within the limits defined by law. However, the nations as such were not granted collective recognition. This situation, according to their own perception prevented them from an effective political representation and adequate protection of their rights and interests.
The fact that national entities were denied the status of political subjects and the increasingly strong dissatisfaction of non-Hungarian political leaders, particularly of Romanians, concerning the perceived dominance of the ethnic Hungarian element within the state encouraged the development of alternative nationalist rhetoric. This eventually led to the challenging of the existing political-territorial arrangements.
NATION AND STATE IN INTER-WAR
ROMANIA
On the 4th of June 1920, the peace treaty signed between the victorious allied and associated powers on one side and Hungary on the other, along with the other treaties signed at the conclusion of the First World War, put the seal of international recognition on a new territorial division of East-Central Europe. As part of the territorial transfers 37· 5 % of the territory belonging to the former semi-independent Hungary within the framework of the Austria-Hungarian Monarchy, an area of 103,093 km, which included historical Transylvania, Partium and a segment of the Banat of Timis oara, with a population of 5,565,000 (of which 1,651,000 were Hungarians and 565,000 Germans), was incorporated into the Romanian state.
Transylvania was the most important, but not the only region incorporated into the enlarged state. ‘Greater Romania’ also included Bessarabia, taken over from Russia, Bukovina from old Austria, and the south of Dobrogea, obtained from Bulgaria: territories with large numbers of Russians, Ukrainians and Bulgarians, respectively. As a result, the Kingdom more than doubled its territory, and a basically one-nation society was transformed into a multi-national one. According to the 1930 census, the proportion of ethnic Romanians in the total population was no more than 71· 9%, but within Transylvania their share was only 57· 8 %. Thus a major problem emerged: whether, and if so, to what extent the state should now change its structures, so as to provide a model of integration for its numerous ethnically non-Romanian citizens.
The following analysis will focus on the most important trends of ethnic relations in inter-war Romania and their influence on national minority policies, with a special attention to Transylvania. First, it will be argued that this region has had certain historical, political, demographic and cultural peculiarities, which made it particularly unsuitable for the implementation of ethno-nationalist designs. Second, the basic terms of political offer aimed at the integration of national minorities which emerged in this conditions as a compromise choice will be outlined, with a closer look to the situation of Hungarian minority. Finally, an attempt will be made to point out those historic dilemmas of ethnic co-existence originating in the nature of majority - minority relationship of the inter-war period, which are still important in today's efforts to reach a long term resolution to Romania's nationality problem.
Obstacles to a nation-state type integration
Perceived by Hungarians as a deep national trauma, welcomed and celebrated by Romanians as the apotheosis of their nation-state building, the new territorial status of Transylvania created in fact as many national problems as it solved. The new minority population approximated in number that existing before the territorial shift. New borders were not established in a way to leave in either side as small number of minority inhabitants as possible. Due to the inextricably mix ethnic map of the area, it was in fact simply impossible to draw a state borderline even remotely resembling the national boundaries.
One major consequence of such a degree of ethnic mix had been the enormous theoretical and practical difficulty in applying the nationality principle as a basis for territorial - political legitimacy. Historically, Transylvania has been equally regarded as a homeland by its Romanian, Hungarian and German inhabitants, and two of its nations, Hungarians and Romanians have developed fully fledged national territorial claims towards the land, including the right to integrate it into a state "of their own".
Furthermore, the area occupies a central position in the collective memory and myths of both nations, as a powerful symbol of ethno-genesis and historical continuity. While Romanians insisted that Transylvania is "an ancient Romanian land", for Hungarians the Magyar national character of the region was almost axiomatic. The long term consequence of the competition between two parallel discourses of legitimacy, both of which claimed state building rights in the same area, had been on both sides the sacralization of "national territory" as essential element of cultural identity and a predominantly mutually exclusive perception of ethnic interests. This led to a polarisation of society along nationality lines.
In addition to the problems resulting from a high degree of ethnic intermingling and the existence of competing national claims, the new situation produced now a different type of minority, drawn from the previously dominant population. Hungarians who came under Romanian rule were understandably likely to perceive more accentuate feelings of disappointment and frustration, due to the sudden, unexpected and radical change of their status. This was especially true for members of the Hungarian economic and administrative middle class, who in the years of Dual Monarchy managed to benefit in a much larger extent of modern industrial and urban development. They now feared that the new authorities might conduct preferential employment policies to encourage the Romanian ethnic element, and might adopt selective socio-economic measures in order to improve the situation of ethnic Romanians.
The new power holders looked upon Hungarians of Transylvania with suspicion and the faithfulness of Hungarian minority members to a state where they found themselves against their own will was considered at best as being questionable. Therefore, it was only to be expected that the Romanian government would try to exert pressures in order to weaken them demographically, economically and culturally. It was hoped that in this way it will be possible to reduce the potential threat to the territorial integrity ethnic Hungarians were perceived to represent. In the view of Romanian inter-war power elite, granting more rights to Hungarians would only have contributed to an increase of territorial revisionist threat, rather than ease the tension.
The German ethnic community of Transylvania occupied a somewhat different position in this picture. As a consequence of their smaller demographic strength and specific geopolitical situation, the Germans, unlike the Hungarians, could strive neither for a dominant role in the region, nor for the integration of the province into a state of their own. By joining " Greater Romania", Transylvanian Saxons merely exchanged minority status in one state with a similar position in the framework of another state. They could look back however to a tradition of autonomous political organisation, which lasted several centuries, and accepted incorporation into Romania with the condition that the new rulers will restore their territorial self-governing rights lost under Hungarian domination. The failure of Romanian authorities to satisfy this claim contributed to a subsequent radicalisation of ethnic Germans, and their position on minority question became closer to that of Hungarians.
The difficulties that Romania had to face in integrating Transylvania after 1918 were in certain respect harder than those encountered by Hungary a few decades earlier, also due to the fact the contradiction between the state-building models of Transylvania and Old Romania was much more striking. Throughout several centuries of political distinctness, Transylvania produced institutionalised forms of cultural diversity, religious tolerance and ethno-regional self-government, which were unknown in the territories located to South and to East to the Carpathians. The problems encountered by the ruling elites of "Greater Romania" thus consisted not only in how to accommodate a multi-cultural society under the roof of one state - a difficult task in itself- but also, how to conciliate through this process two rather different political cultures and historically - regionaly determined state building traditions.
Competing models of ethno-political organisation
The main legitimising principle on the basis of the newly drawn "map" was the "nations right for self-determination" according to the article 14 of the Wilsonian Proclamation. It was not clear, however, in which conditions "the right of the Nation" could apply to the multinational population of Transylvania; who was the legitimate subject of this right and to what territory the effects of a decision taken on the name of "self determination" was to be rightfully extended.
Basically, two conflicting views emerged. Romanians both inside and outside Transylvania preferred an ethno-national interpretation of self-determination concept and regarded the creation of the greater state as the fulfilment of centuries long aspirations of the Romanian people. By contrast, the representatives of Hungarian and German communities considered, that, on the one hand, a citizenship based territorial model was to be applied and thus the whole population was to be consulted. On the other hand, they shared the view that any territorial shift was to be based on the consensus of all the important national communities living in the area, namely, on the consultation and agreement of Transylvanian Romanians, Hungarians and Germans.
On the other hand, there was a lack of consensus not only on the issue of unification, but on the nature of the future political system as well. During the first few months, shortly before and after the extension of Romanian sovereignty over Transylvania, it seemed that Greater Romania might be built to some extent on the foundation of shared power between the Romanians and the other numerically and politically important nationalities. The Proclamation of Alba Iulia, which expressed the initial view of Transylvanian Romanians, embodied the following principles on the nationality question, which were favourably received by minorities:
Art. 3 The National Assembly declares as fundamental principles of the Romanian State, the following:
(1) Complete national liberty for all the peoples inhabiting Romania. Each people to educate, administer and judge itself through the medium of persons from its own midst. Each people to have the right to administrative legislation and of taking part in the administration of the country in proportion to the number of individuals of which it is composed.
(2) Equality and complete autonomous religious liberty for every denomination of the state
It was on the basis of this programme that Saxons had voted in favour of unification. In the decades of the inter-war period the political organisations both of the Hungarian and German populations had insistently demanded a solution of the nationality problem on the basis of the principles put forward at Alba Iulia.
In the event, ethnocentrism, rather than a consensual vision prevailed. The representatives of Romanians and Saxons had indeed approved the territorial changes at their popular meetings hold at Alba Iulia and Medias respectively, but the Saxon acceptance was made only conditional, pending on the recognition of their old community rights. As for Hungarian delegates, at their meeting at Cluj they protested against unification, but neither their opinion nor the position and proposals of Hungarian State were taken into account when the final decision was made.
It can not be said yet with certainty, and it should form object of a separate research, to what extent the content of Proclamation initially expressed a genuine intention of Romanian national leaders from Transylvania to build a multinational state. What is clear, however, is that very soon they abandoned more or less explicitly the model proposed at Alba Iulia, and in the following period fully supported the intensive centralising integrative efforts initiated by the political elite of the Old Kingdom. As a consequence of this sudden shift of attitude, a new, and this time long lasting division was created, now basically along ethnic lines.
Frequent political signals indicated from the beginning that the ruling circles of Old Romania would favour a unitary centralist state, and nationalistic models of legitimacy, instead of federalist or autonomy based solutions. The policy of ethnic mobilisation and homogenisation was in conformity with the interest of the centralist bureaucracy and was perceived as a political priority and as a matter of urgency by the Bucharest elite. Transylvanian Romanians too, very soon abandoned more or less explicitly the model proposed at Alba Iulia, and in the following period fully supported the intensive centralising and homogenising efforts initiated by the political elite of the Old Kingdom.
Nation and State
This became evident when the Constitution of 1923 was adopted in a form, which embodied exclusively the conceptions of the ethnic majority. Romania was defined as a ‘national, unitary and indivisible state. ’No provisions had been included for the protection of the identities of national minorities, except for the principle of full citizenship and equality. A unitary administrative territorial system was established, without special status being offered to those areas mainly inhabited by minorities. No institutions of political or cultural self-government were established for the needs of national minority populations.
The Romanian language was declared ‘the language of the state, and the use of languages other than Romanian in the political life and state administration was declared illegal. Citizens were allowed to communicate with the administrative authorities, including those at local level, and regardless of the ethnic composition of local populations, exclusively in the official language. Furthermore, the Constitution proclaimed that ‘the nation’ is the only legitimate source of power, stating as follows: ‘All the power in the state is originated in the nation, and may only be exercised by delegation, in accordance with the principles and rules stated in the present Constitution’.
It is possible to offer two different interpretations of this article. Either the non-Romanian citizens were considered a distinct entity from the "Nation"- and in this case they found themselves excluded from the right of participation in the power institutions - or they had the right to take part, but only as members of the Romanian nation. As the Constitution indeed provided for equal citizenship political rights, excluding however any guaranteed representation for national minorities, the latter interpretation has to be accepted as being closer to the spirit of the Fundamental Law.
In the absence of relevant internal regulations, the remaining - both juridical and political - institution for the protection of minorities in Romania was the international system of minority treaties established by the Allied Powers as part of the international collective security system within the framework of the League of Nations.
In exchange for international guarantees of their sovereignty and integrity, the signatory states, among them Romania, were expected to respect certain principles as regard to the status of minorities. The declared task was to ensure the loyalty of minority members, and to avoid, by effect, possible threats to peace, which could result from inappropriate minority policies. The Romanian government agreed to undertake the obligations concerning the protection of minorities included in the Treaty, without including, however, relevant regulations into its internal legislation. Thus, the Treaty provisions did not serve as a juridical source of authority within the country, and there was no mean to enforce them through appeal to a Romanian court of justice. The appeal to the League of Nations, on the other hand, involved a rather complicated procedure. Some of the formulations were not translated in precise juridical terms and consequently, did not facilitate a rigorous control.
Analysing the nature of Treaty provisions and the attitude of the Romanian governments towards them, one can identify three main groups of regulations, different by the nature of their provisions, which need to be discussed in turn.
The first group pertained to the respect of individual civil rights and liberties for all citizens. Specific reference was made to the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of "racial, linguistic and religious differences" (art.8). It included the obligation of Romanian authorities to grant citizenship to every inhabitant born in the country (art.6), to all the former Hungarian and Austrian citizens living in the recently attached territories, and to all other than Hungarian or Austrian citizens from that territories who opted for the Romanian citizenship. A special provision (art.7) required Romania to offer citizenship to all its Jewish inhabitants. The inclusion of such obligation was particularly urged by Jewish organisation in the West, since that time the Romanian State was the only one in Europe, which denied citizenship to the Jews living in its territory.
Apparently, this was the category of provisions most likely to be fulfilled by the Romanian authorities, as it included exclusively individual rights perfectly compatible with the model of unitary state embodied in the Constitution. It might be therefore surprising that the implementation of such basic human rights as the right to choose ethnic affiliation and the right to make a free option for particular forms and institutions of education produced controversies between the Government and national minority representatives.
The second group of regulations by the Treaty extended the civic liberties offered to the minority citizens to the fields of language, culture, education and community life. It included provisions such as the right of association, religious freedom and the right to create charitable, religious and social institutions, schools and other educational establishments on their own expensive, with the right to use their own languages within such institutions and to direct and supervise them (art.9-11). In addition, the Treaty required that the state was to be only neutral and tolerant towards the social and cultural institutions created by the minorities, but within certain limits was to be involved in supporting by its own financial and institutional means the protection of minority identity. The measures to be undertaken included the allocation of government expenses for the cultural and educational needs of minorities in those areas where they lived in a "considerable number" and maintenance by the state of primary schools with teaching in the native tongues of the children.
The text of the Treaty was, however, ambiguous enough at this point to allow for various interpretations. For instance, the specification "considerable number" of minority population living in a given area did not include any concrete provision. It was not mentioned what would be the minimal demographic strength to be required to consider a population as residing in a "considerable number" in a given territory. No indications were included concerning the method of establishing the administrative limits of the areas with a "considerable” number of minority inhabitants. As a result, authorities could make the assessment at their own discretion. During the whole period between 1920 and 1937 there were only three occasions when Hungarian schools received small amounts of state support, and such counties with overwhelming Hungarian majority as Ciuc and Satu Mare were denied the right to have even one single state administered primary school in Hungarian language.
On the other hand, the discretionary power retained by the Government in allocating resources did leave room at any time for a discriminatory treatment of different minority groups, with the possibility of playing of one against other. The Hungarian minority, for example, received by far smaller share of allocations compared to its needs than the Germans. Such differentiation of treatment can be partly explained by the fact that Saxons were probably to a lesser extent regarded as a potential threat to the unity and integrity of the state, as due to their geopolitical position they virtually could not have separatist plans. Also, it could be argued, when faced with Hungarian complaints at the League of Nations, that in contrast with the Hungarians, the Germans and other minorities are more satisfied.
The most favourable provision for minorities embodied in the Treaty provided for "local autonomous rights to be offered for Szecklers and Saxons in regard to scholastic and religious matters, subject to the control of Romanian State. This provision was perceived by successive Romanian governments of the inter-war period as contradicting the basic principle of the Romanian state as defined in its Fundamental Law: namely, its unitary and indivisible character. From national majority side it was often argued that any delegation of authority to the local minority representatives would lead to the violation of state sovereignty and the division of political power along ethnic lines. The administrative-territorial preconditions for ethnic autonomy were also absent, as all areas of the country, including those largely inhabited by Szecklers and Saxons were completely integrated into the unitary county-based administrative system. In practice, the government policy in this field not only rejected any form of minority autonomy, but even imposed a stricter government supervision of minority populated areas compared to other administrative units of the country.
This was - in most general terms - the model of political integration put forward on behalf of Transylvania's new ruling nation. Transylvanian Romanian leaders felt that their national interests could be protected more effectively if they assumed a privileged power position, instead of sharing power with Hungarians and Germans within the framework of autonomous Transylvanian institutions. Their choice should also be interpreted in the context of the social structure of inter-war Transylvania. Due to historical peculiarities, the social set-up in this region had strong ethnic connotations. Hungarians and Germans (together with Jews, who underwent a quick process of Magyarisation) were predominant within the urban population (in the ranks of industrial and commercial entrepreneurs and of the working class), while Romanians were very much under-represented in these social categories. Thus one of the important aims promoted by Bucharest governments was to change this distribution—regarded as inequitable—by promoting the upward mobility of ethnic Romanians to the detriment of other nations. Hungarians, as the formerly dominant nation, were considered mostly responsible for ‘the past injustices’. Therefore they were the principal negative targets of such policies.
The preferential socio-economic mobilisation of the ethnic Romanian population was most attractive to the Transylvanian Romanian middle class: the very social stratum which, due to its education received under Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, had otherwise assimilated fairly well the culturally pluralistic and tolerant mentality specific to the region. In other conditions this economic and cultural elite could have been much more open towards the idea of an autonomous Transylvania. But its immediate interests, and particularly the way these interests were perceived in the years of euphoria and enthusiasm after the creation of ‘Greater Romania’, ultimately prevailed.
Although regionalist tendencies did exist in inter-war Transylvanian Romanian political life, this orientation, even if somewhat more generous in its formulation of political offers to minorities (compared to the terms of the 1923 Constitution, that is), nevertheless did not agree with any form of power-sharing with the other Transylvanian nations. On the contrary, regarded the Romanian supremacy within the region as a political axiom. Even put in such a mild form, the regional idea never succeeded in acquiring majority support within the Transylvanian Romanian political class. Regionalist ideas were advocated mainly by some leaders of the older generation who were discontented with their own loss of position in favour of the administrative and political bureaucracy from the Old Kingdom.
In contrast, younger Transylvanian Romanian ideologists, socialised intellectually and politically in the years following the territorial shift, formulated the aspiration of a ‘pure Romanianism’, free of regional connotations and nostalgia. Their desideratum was complete integration into Romanian society, by the disappearance of any differences between Transylvanian Romanians and ‘Regaters’. The social model envisaged by these intellectuals was conceived on an ethnocratic basis, proposing economic, political and cultural privileges to be granted to the ethnic Romanian population.
To the political, economic and social causes outlined above, one should add the peculiarities of cultural development. Until the XVIIIth century, which marked the start of Romanian nation-building, the high culture of Transylvania developed mainly as the result of the Hungarian and German contributions, the result being perceived by Romanian inhabitants of the area largely as a foreign culture. The historical frustrations, which deeply affected Romanian national ideology, prompted an important segment of Transylvanian Romanian intellectuals and political leaders to look for support beyond the Carpathians, and join the ethnic homogenisation policies of the central government.
This offer of national political integration was obviously unacceptable for the other large national communities of the area, the Hungarians and Germans, for several reasons. First, as their proposals, alternative models were largely ignored during the process of drafting the new fundamental law, national minorities felt that the state building national elite already decided on their future without taking into account their legitimate needs.
Second, there was a prevailing perception among minority members that, by not providing any collective rights or guarantees for ethnic group rights and recognising only one nation - the Romanian - the Constitution only laid the ground for the perpetuation of dominating minorities in the name of democracy. Political majority was bound to coincide with ethnic majority and minorities were not offered any safeguard of their status included in the internal legislation. They felt, therefore, that their position in the political life was extremely fragile and very much dependent on the day to day context as well as on the fluctuating and quite uncertain "good will" of the dominant national elite.
Finally, an important objection of minority representatives concerned the fact that the political system which the 1923 Constitution legitimised, was by no means intended to be neutral as far as national cultures were concerned. The constitutional arrangements of 1923 denoted very clearly the choice of the Romanian ruling elite for a nationalist model of legitimisation, which excluded those inhabitants who did no want to accept affiliation to the majority cultural identity. The state openly defined itself as the expression of one nation: the Romanian. While the protection of Romanian culture was taken for granted and Romanianisation was regarded an overtly state supported "national mission”, the minority language use was severely restricted not only in the official sphere but also in the fields of economic, social and spiritual life. In fact, any attempts by minority groups to express politically their specific cultural, linguistic or other needs could be interpreted as aimed at ethnic separation and ultimately secession, and therefore dismissed as unconstitutional, as directed against the integrity and unity of Romania.
The Romanian majority has from the beginning taken it for granted that its own national interests are identical with those of the state. According to the logic of such an assumption, the minorities were expected either to adhere fully and unconditionally to the view of the majority, or face accusations of disloyalty. The major problem faced by Romanian governments after 1918 was how to build up nation state legitimacy in a territory, which included historically diverse and ethnically mixed regions. In such conditions, the urgent political need to forcefully assert ‘the national idea’ often conflicted with the general democratic requirement to create a citizenship-based state. Although affirmed from time to time at a declarative level, the political and cultural rights of those belonging to minorities were in many respects dependent on the shorter- or longer-term interests and calculations of those in power.
NATIONAL MINORITY
POLICIES IN ROMANIA
DURING THE INTER-WAR PERIOD
"Simplifying" the ethnic map
Romania's national minority problem can probably best be described historically as a continuous and still unresolved tension between the dominant "nationalist project" of creating a culturally homogenous state and the complexity of ethnic map, which made the implementation of such a concept impossible. This contradiction constantly provided ground for alternative versions of national legitimacy.
The main source of this contradiction has been a basic inadequacy of political ideals, when confronted to social reality. In spite of the fact that it included a multiethnic society, Romania built itself as a state dominated by a single nation, as the historical expression of only one ethnic community and culture: the Romanian. Thus a major difficulty arose, to be faced by subsequent Romanian governments: namely, how to construct nation state legitimacy as a basis for political integration in a territory which included culturally distinct and ethnically mix regions.
This option has had important long-term consequences. The ethnocentrist rhetoric of exclusive legitimisation promoted by the "state building" national elite was evidently not acceptable to the country's numerous and large non-Romanian ethnic communities. Thus every effort had to be made to weaken their resistance and to reduce their political and demographic strength, bringing the nationalist model of an ethnically homogenous state closer to fulfilment.
According to official census data, in 1930 ethnic Romanians formed 71,9% of the total population, but in the interval 1930-1992 their share increased to 89,5%. During the same period, as the result of assimilation and resettlement, the proportion of Hungarians dropped from 10% to 7,1%, that of Germans from 4,4 to 0,5% and that of Jews from 3,2% to 0,1%, mainly due to emigration and annihilation.
The case of Transylvania, a genuinely multicultural and multilingual region, which has been incorporated into Romania as the result of territorial changes following the First World War, is particularly conclusive. The more than 75 years which have passed since then have witnessed a constant retreat of social and political factors promoting cultural diversity, and at the same time a clearly identifiable advance of homogenisation policies.
Romanians, who in 1930 formed only a slight majority (57,8%) in this area have increased in 62 years to 73,6% (a gain of 15,8%), while the share of Hungarians has been reduced from 30,1 to only 20,8,%.. In 1930 Hungarians still made up an absolute majority in five Transylvanian counties (Covasna, Harghita, Mures, Satu Mare and Timis), but today they have a predominant demographic position only in two administrative districts (Covasna and Harghita).
In 1930, out of the eight most important cities of the province, four ( Satu Mare, Cluj, Oradea and Tirgu Mures) were overwhelmingly Hungarian-inhabited, while the other four had a balanced Romanian-Hungarian-German population without any particular group holding an absolute preponderance. By 1992, however, only two urban localities of this category (Satu Mare and Tirgu Mures) preserved a very narrow and vulnerable majority; all the other six cities had become predominantly Romanian populated.
Culture and State
To achieve such an outcome, through the decades following the creation of Romania' s national, unitary and " indivisible’ state, a series of administrative, political, cultural and economic pressures were applied to minority groups. The regulations and government policies were often clashing, both in principle and in practice, with the general democratic requirement to ensure equality of citizenship regardless of ethnic belonging. Such was the case, for instance, of the intensive campaigns of ‘re-Romanianisation’ initiated by inter-war governments. On the basis of ‘etymological analysis’ , minority citizens whose family name was found to be of Romanian origin, were required to take up an obligatory Romanian identity and to belong to the Orthodox Church, while their children were only permitted to attend schools using Romanian as the teaching language.
In 1924, in order to promote Romanianisation, now regarded as a ‘national mission’, so-called ‘cultural areas’ came into being in the nine Transylvanian counties with the largest Hungarian population. As part of the special provisions implemented in this area, ethnic Romanian teachers, who did not know the language of their pupils, were sent to overwhelmingly Hungarian localities, being offered special economic incentives such as higher salary, quicker advancement, and 10ha of land in the case of definitive resettlement. It was intended to create, in the first stage, small but spiritually and politically active ‘islands’, with the task of preparing the ground for a subsequent, larger-scale colonisation.
In the field of education, measures were taken to ensure the tight ideological control of minority administered schools, in order to subordinate them to the "national idea". Non-Romanians were largely prevented from learning about their own past, except from official textbooks which often adopted an exclusively ethnocentrist tone and a confrontational attitude towards their own nations. Various methods and forms of interference in the life of minority language educational institutions were implemented. These included the discretionary closure of schools, the control of curricula, the right to appoint and dismiss teaching personnel and the obligation to teach such subjects as History, Geography and Civic Education exclusively in Romanian.
An important means of enforcing official cultural policies in the mainly minority-populated areas was the appointment of ethnic Romanian administrators en masse. They often came from very distant regions, had no previous experience of ethnic coexistence and had mainly been selected on the basis of political reliability, rather than for their ability to deal with the needs of local inhabitants.
Romanian had been declared the state language, and the use of any other languages in contact with the authorities was banned, regardless the ethnic composition of localities. At the same time, arguments of questionable loyalty and insufficient knowledge of the state language had often been used against office holders belonging to minorities. Many of them were either forced to retire or transferred to remote corners of the country were they could not serve their fellow co-nationals and were probably less likely to resist assimilation.
Exclusive historic legitimacy
The suspicion towards non-Romanians shared by many members of the ruling circles and the systematic disregard of their demands for equal and non-discriminatory treatment, particularly in cultural and linguistic matters could not, but contribute to the alteration of citizenship identity among minority inhabitants. The alienation of minorities from the state had been, however, even further accentuated by the fact that the constitutional arrangements of 1923 denoted clearly the choice of the Romanian ruling elite for an ethno-nationalist model of legitimisation. This model excluded the inhabitants who did no want to accept affiliation to the majority cultural identity. The state openly defined itself as the historical expression of one ethnic nation: the Romanian.
By far the most important instrument of creating Romanian national and nation state identity had been modern historiography. Romania's rights over Transylvania were legitimised by Romanian ethnocentrist arguments, which often described other ethnic groups, particularly Hungarians, as historic oppressors or enemies. Nationalist historians had taken nations as eternal elements of world history, largely seen in the light of a continuous struggle for liberation from foreign rule, the creation of modern nation state being viewed as the culmination of this process.
To make the new national rhetoric effective as a mean of ideological control, measures were taken to ensure the supervision of independent minority schools and their subordination to the "national cause". Ethnic Hungarian and German students were in large extent prevented to learn about their own national past from any other source except from Romanian official textbooks, which often adopted a confrontational tone towards them. Various forms and methods of interference in the life of confessional and other non-state owned minority language educational institutions were implemented. These included the discretionary closure of a number of schools, the control of the curricula, the right to appoint and dismiss teaching personnel and the obligation to teach exclusively in Romanian subjects as History, Geography and Civic Education. The certificates and degrees issued by minority administered institutions were recognised only conditional, after a state examination hold obligatory in Romanian language, with examiners appointed from Romanian state schools.
Such ideology and practices could not in any sense appeal to those minority citizens who expected that, in return to loyalty, their identity, historical tradition, cultures and languages be protected and promoted as well. Any integration process based on such one-sided and exclusive legitimacy was bound to remain incomplete, and, in the last instance, it proved to be unsatisfactory.
The failure of inter-war Romania to develop its constitutional system and political practice in full conformity with the principles embodied in the minority-treaty can be explained by the conflicting political positions concerning the ethnic issue, the mutually exclusive perception of minority and majority interests. This situation was also reflected by the fact that the institutional and legal system of the country resulted from a unilateral decision of the "state-building" majority, rather than from a political process based on the equal participation of the various national communities.
The Romanian majority had taken from the beginning as granted that its own national interests are identical with those of the state. According to the logic of such assumption, the minorities had been expected either to adhere fully and unconditionally to the view of majority, or face accusations of disloyalty.
The major problem faced by inter-war Romanian governments was to build up nation state legitimacy in a territory, which included historically diverse and ethnically mix regions. In such conditions, the urgent political need to forcefully assert "the national idea" often conflicted with the general democratic requirement to create a citizenship based state. Political and cultural rights of the persons belonging to minorities were in many respects dependent on the short or long- term interests and calculations of the power holders.
Certain historic circumstances further complicated the relationship between the principles of "citizenship" and " nationality". The weak supra-ethnic civil bonds within the society made particularity difficult the creation of a citizenship based identity; the legitimisation rhetoric of the main national communities was based on ethnic history, culture and language, which tended to separate rather than to unite them. Nationalist competition often led to confrontational and exclusive attitudes towards "the Other", which were only likely to reinforce the vicious circle of ethnic isolation and mutual distrust.
Many of these deeply rooted historical problems are continuing today to affect the climate of inter-ethnic relations in Romania. A civil society able to facilitate the integration of citizens into the political community still needs to be created. The terms of a mutually acceptable compromise between the main national communities needs to be worked out and agreed upon. The polarisation of society along ethnic lines, the exclusive perception of interests and the incompatible interpretations of history are still hindering the process of reconciliation and form a serious obstacle in the way of democratic transition and European integration of the country.
As long as ethno-nationalist principles of state building are continuing to be applied, instead of a policy of integration based on the principle of cultural pluralism and on a consensual agreement of the main national communities, every effort to solve the tension could led only to partial and temporary results. A long-term solution can be based only on a completely new ethno-political system, aimed to offer equal recognition and dignity to all citizens, as well as to all national and cultural communities.
TRANSYLVANISM – AN IDEOLOGICAL
ALTERNATIVE
Mainly as a reaction to the new political – territorial situation in which the Hungarian community found itself in Romania after the territorial shift, in the inter-war period a new ideological trend had developed, suggestively called transylvanism. This trend expressed the renunciation of irredentism, and envisaged the life of ethnic Hungarians within the territorial framework of the Romanian State.
The proclamation entitled ‘Cry!’, issued in 1921, expressed in this respect a clear break with the exclusiveness of traditional Hungarian nationalism, promising as it did the faithfulness of Hungarians to Romania with the condition that ‘national autonomy’ be granted to them. This proposal was aimed at preventing the creation of an ethnic division line between the two main national communities of Transylvania, by trying to overcome Romanian fears concerning the territorial integrity of the enlarged state.
The transylvanist ideology had proposed the following major tasks:
-To define, according to the new conditions, the identity of Hungarian community living in Romania
-To draw up a programme for the self organisation of this community, in order to safeguard and ensure the perpetuation of its national identity
- To define the nature of the relationships of Hungarian community inhabiting Romania with the Romanian state, with the Hungarian state, with the Romanian and Hungarian nations as well as with the other national and ethnic communities living in Romania
In setting the basic ideas of the proposed ideological alternative, transylvanist thinkers proceeded to a fundamental reinterpretation of the way national identity was perceived. Instead of the vision, which viewed the sense of belonging to the national community as a homogenous, uniform and one-dimensional form of identity, the founders of transylvanism proposed a more sophisticated approach. Their aim was to take into account both the complex internal structure and the transformations in time of identity.
In their attempt to respond to these requirements, transylvanists emphasised three important factors, which, in their view were generating a distinct regional identity. First, Hungarians of Transylvania were presented as possessing a distinct historical tradition, with certain peculiarities, which differentiated them from the rest of Hungarian population. The source of this specificity was found to reside primarily in the multicultural history of the region, the necessity and long lasted practice of ethnic and religious co-existence.
The second fundamental source of Hungarian cultural specificity invoked by transylvanist thinkers was the existence of a distinct regional belonging, a special perception by inhabitants of their relationship with the homeland.
Finally, the third factor of distinctness emerged from the new territorial-political reality after 1918, when Transylvania became part of Romania. In the new conditions, in order to protect its interests, the Hungarian community had to organise itself as a political community within the legal framework of the Romanian State.
In this new ideological context, history remained a basic source of legitimacy for the community, but this required the development of a critical approach, self-revision and honest re-evaluation of the community's past and it's historical self-images. Transylvanists also involved the assumption of continuity between past, present and future, interpreted as strongly linked dimensions of community life. In this way, the past gained a new significance, which differed very much from the interpretations developed within the traditional ethno-centrist views about the nation.
According to this vision, realism meant, first of all, the renunciation of illusions and unrealistic expectations, and a shift of attitudes towards responsible action for the benefit of the community. However, given the situation of political marginality in which Hungarians of Romania found themselves, the national ideology of this community had to have to some extent a defensive character, attempting, by all available legitimate means, to ensure the protection of a disadvantaged culture and identity.
One of the most important merits of transylvanists was that they proposed an alternative of national co-existence and offered to the national communities inhabiting the region a new vision, which aimed to replace the classical national view by a model promoting multiculturalism. The fundamental difference from the classical Hungarian national ideology consisted in the fact that according to the viewpoint shared by transylvanists, the solution of the situation of Hungarian minority in Romania was not requiring any change of the borders. Irredentism needed to be abandoned. The basic precondition for a positive development was seen in the transformation of the internal structure of the state, to enable it to reflect the diversity of cultures, languages and religions within its territory.
Without having in mind any limitation of the cultural peculiarities of the ethnic groups inhabiting the region, transylvanian theoreticians proposed a reunification of these particular identities within a larger transylvanian identity. From this perspective, the transylvanist vision can be regarded as an attempt to reformulate the traditional ethnocentrist view of the nation with the principle of “unity in diversity”. In such context, transylvanist thinkers also attempted a re-evaluation of the role of history and historiography, in order to eliminate the negative, tension generating effects. Recognising the importance of historiography in the process of building up national identity, transylvanists made an effort to offer a constructive view on history, proceeding to a reconsideration of history as a factor of national legitimisation.
Unlike in the traditional national historiography, in the transylvanist perspective the region does not appear any more as the scene of a perpetual fight between its ethnic communities. On the contrary, it was emphasised the common history of the people inhabiting Transylvania, the facts which provided a link between them, and contributed to the creation of a distinct regional identity.
Due to the prevalence of nationalist ideologies and policies, this example of intellectual creativity and responsibility remained, however, rather an exception. Met with distrust by the Romanian State, transylvanism ended up in a predominantly defensive position meant to safeguard the Hungarian minority's identity.
COMMUNISM
AND AFTER
"SOCIALIST
HOMOGENISATION"
If in the inter-war era citizenship rights frequently entered in conflict with the national principle, but were nevertheless legally affirmed and could be openly claimed and defended by the representatives of the individuals or groups concerned, under communism the leading role of the party nullified any practical significance for minority rights. The extent and the limitations of these ‘rights’ depended exclusively on the arbitrary will of the political leadership, and provisions could be offered as well as withdrawn according to tactical moves and calculations by those holding power. Thus, paradoxically, even the existence in certain periods of facilities created specially for minorities, such as a state-controlled minority language education system, newspapers, broadcasting programmes, etc., could also serve as a faç ade to hide the absence of real rights. The situation of national minorities was made even more difficult by the fact that, like all other social groups, they did not have any real possibilities for independent representation of their interests.
Compared with the inter-war period, two additional motives played an important role in the intensification of ethno-nationalist homogenisation policies. First, this was the period when the society of Romania entered the phase of economic mass mobilisation and large scale rural-to-urban migration—a process which was planned and implemented from above by the communist leadership, and under strict government control, which included the smallest details. Ethnonationalist rhetoric played the leading ideological role throughout this period, in an attempt to offer a surrogate sense of identity to the uprooted population, in order to integrate them into the new environment as fast a possible. While temporarily ‘efficient’ in that regard, its ‘socialist patriotic education’ implied at the same time the inculcation of a false sense of superiority of ethnic Romanians, with disastrous consequences to the climate of interethnic relations.
The second important motive force in the Romanian version of co-habitation between communism and nationalism, particularly under Ceausescu, was the regime’s desperate search for a traditional type of legitimisation in order to enlarge the power basis and consolidate the stability of communist rule. Appealing to the widespread nationalistic sentiments of the population attracted part of the intelligentsia and gained popular support, or at least a silent acceptance of repressive totalitarian measures, by obsessively invoking the argument of a ‘threat to the territorial integrity’ of the country. Romanian communist minority policies did occasionally include short periods of relaxation (as in 1945-47 and again in 1968-70), during times when the regime needed to make some concessions in order to consolidate power. The general trend, however, was an ever more intensive use of ethnonationalism as a political tool of mass mobilisation, a tougher limitation of the cultural space available for minorities, and the use of more complex and effective strategies and methods in order to achieve higher degrees of ethnic homogeneity.
By the second half of the eighties, education in the Hungarian and German languages had shrunk drastically. While in 1976 only 37% of Hungarian pupils were required to attend Romanian schools, in 1986 the proportion of those forced to do so rose to 77%. In December 1984 the central television and local radio stations ceased broadcasting in Hungarian. Ethnic Hungarians’ ties with neighbouring Hungary were restricted, and travel abroad reduced to a minimum. Non-Romanian versions of geographical names were forbidden to appear in publications, and the use of personal names without a Romanian equivalent was also banned.
Unlike the inter-war governments, which could rely only on limited means, mainly of an administrative nature, which consequently could not bring about a major change in ethno-territorial distribution, the socialist state disposed in addition of a wide range of economic, demographic, political and cultural resources and instruments. These were often used in combination so as to further the regime’s nationalist aims. The steps taken by the party leadership in this respect included: merging of Romanian and minority schools, with the aim of subsequently reducing the share of classes and subjects using a non-Romanian teaching language, up to their complete closure; dismissal of most minority functionaries from such institutions of the central apparatus as were regarded of vital importance, like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Interior and the Army, and a severe reduction of their number in other administrative fields; and establishing a system of compulsory assignment for university and high school graduates, with the aim of preventing specialists belonging to minorities from returning to their home regions.
To reinforce the effect of such measures, a system of ‘closed cities’ was institutionalised. This included several heavily Hungarian- and German-populated localities, with the undeclared task of barring the settlement of minority inhabitants, while at the same time offering financial, housing and other incentives for ethnic Romanians to come to those cities, often from remote areas.
The Hungarian community living in Transylvania, unlike the Roma or other smaller ethnic groups, but similarly to the Transylvanian Saxons, does have a strongly developed and fully integrated sense of regional national identity connected to this region, which includes the perception of its own historically constituted territorial basis. That is the main reason why the demographic advancement of ethnic Romanians, and the concomitant reduction of Hungarians’ share in state and national activities has always been perceived by the Hungarian population as a painful loss, and as a continuous threat to the preservation of its culture and identity. The arguments in this regard are indeed numerous. The diminution of the demographic importance of ethnic Hungarians over the past 75 years has usually meant a dramatic loss of their previously dominant positions in the economic, political and cultural life of Transylvania. Moreover, these changes have been implemented with the help of state-conducted measures aimed at encouraging the dissolution of the traditional ethno-demographic composition of the predominantly minority-inhabited regions by means of migration and assimilation.
This was also the period when the Romanian government ‘successfully’ negotiated with the West German and Israeli governments to allow the emigration of ethnic Germans and Jews. As a result, populations of several hundreds of thousands, which for centuries had made an important contribution to the economy and culture of the country, almost completely disappeared from the life of the country, a loss, which is still very hard to evaluate. As emigration affected German and Jewish populations much more than Hungarians, one long-term consequence in the field of ethnic co-existence was a diminishing of Transylvania’s traditional multicultural profile, and an increasing Romanian-Hungarian bipolarity within that region.
THE CHANGING BALANCE OF
ETHNIC COMMUNITIES
IN TRANSYLVANIAN URBAN AND RURAL
AREAS
Background
There is no doubt that the problem of ethnicity has become one of the most important East - Central European issues. The main purpose of this chapter is to offer a descriptive and analytical image of ethnodemograpic changes in the rural areas of Transylvania, a traditionally multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual region in the Carpathian Basin. The period of analysis includes the last 8 decades (1910 - 1977) only for general global considerations. The typological comparative investigation was restricted to the period 1930 -1977, for which are comparable data.
The most important question to be addressed is to what extent internal migration affected the historically constituted ethnic structures of the Transylvanian villages. According to the main problem, the objectives of the research are:
1; to offer a global description of the rural ethnodemographic changes within the region during the above-mentioned period.
2; to elaborate an ethnical typological classification model of the Transylvanian rural areas
3; to use the typology for analysing the major connections between urbanisation, migration and the ethnodemographic processes.
The central concept of the investigation is " ethno-demographic changes" which expresses the historically determined interactions between the demographic and the ethnic factors of the social life. The main work -hypotheses made, are the following:
1; The changes in the ethnical compound of the analysed area are particularly connected with two major factors:
a; industrial and urban development
b; the creation of the modern nation-state
2; The interactions between ethnic and demographic factors can be efficiently analysed only by being considered as integrated components of the whole social life (including the economic, political, cultural sphere, housing, income and property - relations etc.)
3; Modernisation can have positive or negative consequences for the ethnodemographic equilibrium of territorial communities.
4; The society in transition can be characterised by higher levels of occupational and territorial mobility.
5; The most significant mobility processes, which can determine major changes in the ethnic compound of the territorial communities are the following:
- Rural - urban migration within the same area
- Interregional migration (resettlement of population from one region to another)
- External migration
6; During the process of modernisation, the overwhelming majority of the new working places and housing facilities were created in urban localities. As a consequence, the place of destination for migrants was in a much larger extent the urban compared to the rural.
7; Due to the assertion made above, rural localities are likely to preserve more successfully their traditional ethnic composition than the urban.
8; There are significant differences, however, between the capacity of different rural-community-types to maintain their specific ethnodemographic structures. Such differences can presumably be based on the following factors:
- The characteristics of the local ethnic composition (homogenous or mix)
- The location of the rural community (whether there is a relationship of homogeneity or heterogeneity between the ethnic structures of the village and that of the area in which is located).
- The demographic behaviour (community preserving strategy) of the particular ethnic groups inhabiting the rural locality (whether they are inclined or not to emigrate).
9; Important changes in the ethnic structure of rural areas can occur in the following hypothetical situations:
a; when the rural community achieves a certain level of modernity (which can be expressed by a high proportion of non-traditional, non-agricultural activities), conditions are created for mobility processes similar to those existing in the urban localities
b; when the minority population living in the rural locality emigrates in great number, and is replaced by persons or families who belong to other (majority or minority) ethnic communities.
c; when the proportion of a particular ethnic group within the village becomes small and sporadic enough to stimulate assimilation by alien communities.
10; It is necessary to consider three important political factors involved in the demo-ethnical transformations under discussion These are:
- The dominant Romanian national political elite interested to extend the demographic preponderance of the majority population
- The political and cultural organisations of the national minorities interested to preserve the traditional, historically constituted ethnodemographic structures and positions of minority ethnic communities.
- External factors, with unequal and contradictory effects during the analysed period
a, the majority political elite
As E. Gellner very convincingly argues, the transformation in the conditions of the mankind during the age of modern industrialisation necessarily required the creation of new political units based on the nation and its own standardised high culture. In practice, this meant the implementation of the ideal " One Culture, One State, One State, One Culture. The policy of national, cultural and linguistic homogenisation promoted by Romanian governments after the creation of the national state in 1918 was intended, in this regard, to correlate as much as possible the political and cultural units and authorities within the boundaries.
As a consequence, on the one hand a normal, spontaneous process of cultural homogenisation and changes in the traditional ethnical compound due to industrial and urban development can be found. On the other hand, one can observe the reinforcement of the mentioned tendencies by the tools of the acting political power of the state. The main motivations behind the nationalist expansive policies, have been the following:
The methods used by the political power in order to change the ethnical composition of multiethnic areas included:
- Politically directed/stimulated emigration and immigration processes
- Cultural and ethnical assimilation; limitation of the education - system in the languages of minorities
- Discriminative allocation of political and administrative positions
The main ideological principles and arguments used in the support of the homogenising ethno-demographic policies have been:
- The idea of a culturally, ethnically and linguistically homogenous state
- Sacralization of the state territory, regarded as national territory
In addition to the general features presented here, one can take into consideration particular motives and reasons of Romanian state-attitude towards minority problem, which emerged from the specificity of nation building. Romania as a modern nation state had a long and difficult process of formation, which has been finalised only in 1918, by the inclusion of provinces with very different social-historical structures, and an extremely complicated and mix ethnic map. Some of the newly integrated regions had strong traditions of political-administrative and cultural self - governments. These characteristics partly explain the concerns shared by the representatives of the centralist political elite about the stability and internal cohesion of the new political-territorial structure.
b; the political and cultural organisations of national minorities
As a reaction to the pressures coming from the majority-governmental side, the political and spiritual representatives of national minorities - mainly of the Hungarian, German and Jewish minority - have developed a variety of counter-assimilation oriented and self-identity protection strategies. They realised very soon the importance of demographic issues for preserving the minority communities, and emphasised the role of ethnically homogenous areas and localities in maintaining and developing the cultures and languages of the non-majority population. As the immigration of ethnically alien masses to the minority populated and mix areas affected especially the cities and towns, prominent social scientists belonging to the national minorities considered the rural (particularly the homogenous rural) population as the main demographic resource of their own communities. As a consequence, minority political and spiritual leaders maintained a strong interest in local socio-economic modernisation, as a mean of preserving the original population within its native areas.
c; external factors
The territorial configuration of this part of Europe, connected with the international political situation in different historical periods, have influenced significantly the ethno-demographic processes, by opening up or closing the alternative of external emigration. While the German and the Israeli governments made considerable political and financial efforts to help their co-nationals to emigrate, the position of Hungary was that ethnic Hungarians from Romania should not leave their homeland, where they must have the same rights as the majority population.
Ethno-demographic typology of Transylvanian rural areas
According to the census data, the global ethno-demographic trends in Transylvania in the period 1910 - 1977 present the following picture:
TABLE 1 The population of Transylvania by nationality, 1910-1977
(thousands)
|
Year |
Total popula-tion |
Roma-nians |
% |
Hunga-rians |
% |
Ger-mans |
% |
Others |
% |
|
1910 |
5263 |
2830 |
53,8 |
1664 |
31,6 |
565 |
10,7 |
203 |
3,9 |
|
1930 |
5548 |
3207 |
58,3 |
1353 |
24,4 |
540 |
9,7 |
294 |
5,3 |
|
1956 |
6232 |
4081 |
65,5 |
1558 |
25,0 |
373 |
6,0 |
162 |
2,6 |
|
1966 |
6719 |
4559 |
67,9 |
1597 |
23,8 |
372 |
5,5 |
191 |
2,8 |
|
1977 |
7500 |
5331 |
71,0 |
1651 |
22,0 |
323 |
4,3 |
205 |
2,7 |
One can observe that in the considered period, while both the number and the proportion of Romanian population increased significantly, the number of Hungarians remained almost the same, and their proportion decreased by 9%. The German ethnic community was faced with a dramatic decrease of its size and proportion. This general image suggests an essential differentiation in the demographic behaviour and strategies followed by the main national communities:
a; The main sources of Romanian population growth were the natural increase and a strong inter-regional migration.
b; The stability in the number of ethnic Hungarians was the consequence of their relatively weak commitment to external emigration, to the extent that their natural increase was able to compensate the population losses caused by resettlement, wars and assimilation.
c; the strong reduction of the size of German population ( both in terms of their number and proportion) can be explained by an almost total abandonment of identity preserving strategies within the homeland, in the favour of external emigration to Germany. The emigration of Germans continued intensively after 1977 and especially after 1989. One should include in the same category also the Romanian Jewish community, regardless the fact that its dramatic decrease (from 800 thousand to 20 thousand according to unofficial sources) is difficult to be counted in the population statistics (due to the ambiguities in declaring Jewish identity at the censuses).
The following table presents the changes in the ethnic composition of Transylvania, by types of localities: rural and urban.
TABLE 2 Increase or decrease of rural and urban population in
Transylvania by ethnic affiliation from 1930 to 1977 (in thousands and in
percents)
|
Type of locality |
Romanians |
Hungarians |
Germans |
Others |
||||
|
number |
% |
number |
% |
number |
% |
number |
% |
|
|
Rural |
144 |
5,7 |
82 |
-9,5 |
-162 |
-51,8 |
-43 |
-23,3 |
|
Urban |
1961 |
279 |
257 |
42,7 |
-53 |
-23,6 |
-42 |
-38,6 |
|
Together |
2105 |
65,5 |
175 |
11,9 |
-215 |
-40 |
-86 |
-30 |
A; It can be observed that most of the total population increase is due to the growth in the number of city dwellers. The share of ethnic Romanian population in the total increase is 88,4%, while Hungarians contributed only in a proportion of 11,6% to population growth.
B; By contrast, the rural area appears as a different picture, with relatively stable and constant number of population, where the local natural increase is balanced by an almost equivalent size of demographic losses, caused by emigration. The major trends in the demographic behaviour of the ethnic communities can be identified even at this general level of analysis:
a. A moderate increase of the Romanian rural inhabitants number and proportion
b. A relatively constant size of Hungarian rural population
c. Important losses of German and other minority populations
A first conclusion can be drawn from this global image: the decrease of the share of minority populations and the demographic expansion of the majority population affected mainly the ethnic composition of the cities and towns. In the rural areas, the destruction of the traditional ethnic structures was to a large extent successful only in localities inhabited by a considerable number of German or Jewish population, where the local minority inhabitants followed the strategy of external emigration instead of the identity preserving strategy in their homeland. In the case of the villages with significant Hungarian population, the demographic viability and stability of native local communities remained relatively high, as a consequence of the fact that this minority community rejected (also due to certain external influences) to chose the alternative of en masse emigration.
It is very important for the objectives of our investigation to have not only the picture of the global ethnodemographic trends, but also a more detailed image of the territorial repartition and redistribution of different national communities. As one of the main aims of the nationalist homogenising policies was to modify the ethnical map of certain areas with large minority population, in the favour of majority, it is necessary to follow how these intentions have been implemented at the level of territorial-administrative sub-units (counties).
Due to the huge differences between the socio-economic and ethnic profiles of the counties, a typological comparative analysis is required. I propose here a typology, which is based on the combined criteria of ethnic composition and the dynamics of minority population. For the construction of such a typological classification model, one has to take into account two fundamental variables:
a. The proportion of minority population within the region
b. The amplitude of the increase or decrease of minority population
According to the census data from 1977, I classified the Transylvanian regions on the basis of the Romanian majority population's proportion within their rural areas. The groups, which resulted, are the following:
- Counties, where the ethnic Romanian population has a strong preponderance (more than 70%) in the rural population: Alba, Arad, bistrita-Nasaud, Caras-Severin, Cluj, Hunedoara, Maramures and Salaj counties belong to this category
- Counties with a mix rural ethnic composition. These are Bihor, Brasov,, Mures, Satu-Mare, Sibiu, Timisoara.
- Counties with an overwhelming majority of ethnic Hungarian population: Covasna and Harghita
b; The second variable used in this typological analyse was the amplitude of increase or decrease of minority population in different rural regions, which is shown by Table 3
TABLE 3 Increase or decrease of the share of
different national communities, by counties, in the rural: (in percents of the
total rural population)
|
County |
Romanians |
Hungarians |
Germans |
Others |
|
ALBA |
3 |
-1,3 |
-1,7 |
- |
|
ARAD |
5 |
-3,1 |
-1,8 |
-0,1 |
|
BIHOR |
3,4 |
-1,8 |
-0,1 |
-1,5 |
|
BISTRITA-N |
14,4 |
-2,6 |
-7,5 |
-4,3 |
|
BRASOV |
10,5 |
-2,8 |
-8,5 |
0,8 |
|
CARAS S. |
3,3 |
-0,5 |
-2,7 |
-0,1 |
|
CLUJ |
4,2 |
-3,1 |
-0,1 |
1 |
|
COVASNA |
3,5 |
-4,5 |
-0,1 |
1 |
|
HARGHITA |
2,4 |
-2,8 |
-0,2 |
0,6 |
|
HUNEDOARA |
1,8 |
-1,1 |
-0,3 |
-0,4 |
|
MARAMURES |
6,6 |
-1,4 |
-0,2 |
-5 |
|
MURES |
7,3 |
-1,9 |
-4,5 |
-0,7 |
|
SALAJ |
2,4 |
1 |
- |
-3,4 |
|
SATU MARE |
9,1 |
-2,6 |
-5,6 |
0,9 |
|
SIBIU |
7,2 |
-0,2 |
-8,1 |
0,9 |
|
TIMIS |
19,4 |
-2,9 |
-16,1 |
1,4 |
Considering the data included in this table it is possible to divide the Transylvanian counties in the following groups:
- Counties with low rural minority emigration: Alba, Hunedoara, Salaj,Bihor, Mures, Satu Mare, Harghita, Covasna
- Counties with high minority emigration: Caras-Severin, Maramures, Cluj, Arad, Bistrita-Nasaud, Brasov, Sibiu, Timis
By the combination of the above mentioned two subdivisions are resulting five types (clusters):
CLUSTER 1: Counties with ethnic Romanian preponderance and low decrease of minority population: Alba, Hunedoara, Salaj.
CLUSTER 2: Romanian rural preponderance - relatively high minority population decrease: Caras-Severin, Maramures, Cluj, Arad, Bistrita-Nasaud
CLUSTER 3: Mix (mainly Romanian-Hungarian) ethnic composition - low minority population decrease: Bihor, Mures, Satu Mare
CLUSTER 4: Mix (mainly Romanian -German) ethnic structure - - high level of minority population decrease: Brasov, Sibiu, Timisoara
CLUSTER 5 : Hungarian rural preponderance - low level of minority emigration: Harghita and Covasna
The above-defined groups will stay on the basis of the cross-regional typological comparisons included in the following chapter.
Interregional migration and the
changing ethnic balance in Transylvanian rural areas
One of our main hypotheses was that territorial mobility processes had important influences not only on the age, gender and occupational structures, but also on the ethnic composition of the rural communities. In the same type we presupposed that different types of migration contributed to a different extent to the changing territorial distribution of ethnic communities.
Rural- urban migration within the same region proved to be efficient in the cases where the city had a significant minority population and the rural areas surrounding the city were inhabited mostly by the ethnic majority. In the homogenous minority areas, however, significant inflows of immigrant ethnic majority population could come only from outside the region. The following table presents the balance of cross-regional migration between the main historical provinces of Romania, according to the census data from 1966 and 1977.
TABLE 4.The balance of internal migration in Romania (1966, 1977) by
historical provinces (in thousands and percents).
|
Historical regions |
1966 |
1977 |
Difference in % |
|
OLTENIA |
-250 |
-258 |
3,2 |
|
MUNTENIA |
-382 |
-564 |
4,7 |
|
DOBROGEA |
98 |
122 |
24 |
|
MOLDOVA |
-207 |
-465 |
124,1 |
|
TRANSYLVANIA |
273 |
324 |
35,5 |
|
BUCHAREST |
808 |
1095 |
33,7 |
These data situate Transylvania in the second position after Bucharest among those provinces, which have a larger number of immigrants than emigrants. The flows of non-native population coming from the provinces with strong negative balances (Moldova, Oltenia, Muntenia) not only compensated the losses caused by internal and external emigration, but significantly contributed to the demographic growth of the region.
A more detailed look to the territorial distribution of Transylvanian immigrants can offer an image about how this "overpopulation" was distributed between different territorial-administrative units:
TABLE 5 The balance of internal migration in Transylvania, by regions -
1966,1977 (in numbers of inhabitants)
|
County |
Balance of migration |
County |
Balance of migration |
|
ALBA |
-76188 |
SIBIU |
32139 |
|
BISTRITA N. |
-23725 |
ARAD |
30372 |
|
BRASOV |
109076 |
BIHOR |
-8062 |
|
CLUJ |
36671 |
MARAMURES |
7831 |
|
COVASNA |
-19650 |
SATU MARE |
-18680 |
|
HARGHITA |
-41650 |
HUNEDOARA |
-132973 |
|
MURES |
-12684 |
CARAS-SEV. |
- 47365 |
|
TIMIS |
136049 |
SALAJ |
-57784 |
For a typological interpretation of the results presented above I calculated the balance of internal migration in the five clusters of rural areas.
TABLE 6 The balance of internal migration in
Transylvania, by clusters- 1977 (in thousands)
CLUSTER 1 -1 CLUSTER 4 277
CLUSTER 2 97
CLUSTER 3 -60 CLUSTER 5 -61
It may appear paradoxical that the most important "beneficiaries" of the demographic growth produced by cross-regional resettlement were the counties belonging to cluster 2 and especially cluster 4, which in the same time lost a large part of their minority population, as a consequence of external emigration. Here, the minority emigrants were replaced by a very strong inflow of ethnic Romanian population.
In the case of cluster 1 (mainly ethnic Romanian populated rural areas with small size of minority emigration) the data of the table suggest a less important role of cross-regional territorial migratory processes. The most important type of territorial mobility was the rural- urban migration within the same county, which transformed the ethnic composition of the urban to the detriment of minorities.
The main similarity between clusters 3 and 5 is that in both types of rural areas is living a numerically important Hungarian population. The negative migratory balance of the 5 counties classified in the two mentioned clusters reflects a slow but clear decreasing of ethnic Hungarians proportion, even in those regions where they form an overwhelming majority. However, in the case of Hungarian minority there is a visible effort to limit the extension and the negative consequences of internal and external emigration and to ensure a relative stability of the existing ethnic structures. This strategy of identity- preservation within native places is- generally speaking - more successful in the rural than in the urban.
The observations and conclusions drawn from the balance of internal migration are also confirmed by the data concerning cross-regional migration
TABLE 7 The share of cross-regional immigrants in the total, urban and rural population, by clusters –1977 ( in percents)
|
Clusters |
The share of cross-regional immigrants |
||
|
Within the total population |
Within the urban population |
Within the rural population |
|
|
CLUSTER 1 |
9 |
15 |
2 |
|
CLUSTER 2 |
7 |
8 |
2 |
|
CLUSTER 3 |
1,5 |
3 |
1 |
|
CLUSTER 4 |
15 |
24 |
6 |
|
CLUSTER 5 |
4 |
6 |
2 |
A first remark at this point concerns the special situation of cluster 4, the only category where the interregional immigration significantly influenced the size and ethnic composition not only of the urban, but also of the rural population. One of the possible causes might be the loss of minority population suffered by villages, which created "empty" spaces, ready to be filled by the potential immigrants. At a more general level of explanation, however, the flows of migrants coming from different historical provinces were dependent of a partly spontaneous, partly directed process. This led, under the auspices of "socialist modernisation", to a dramatic alteration of the traditional ethnic profile of those areas.
Secondly, the small proportion of immigrants from outside in case of clusters 3 and 5 demonstrate a strong commitment of the local ethnic Hungarians to preserve their traditional demographic positions, especially in the villages. In the same time, the situation of cluster 1 suggests that the homogenous Romanian rural communities have a sufficient demographic viability to provide population resources for rural-urban migration inside the region. It is relevant in this regard to compare to what extent interregional immigration contributed to the increase of the urban population in the five considered clusters:
TABLE 8 The contribution of
cross-regional resettlement to the growth of urban population -1977 ( in
thousands and percents)
|
Clusters |
Total increase |
Increase by cross-regional migration |
Increase from other sources |
|||
|
Number |
% |
Number |
% |
Number |
% |
|
|
CLUSTER 1 |
340 |
100 |
87 |
26 |
253 |
74 |
|
CLUSTER 2 |
491 |
100 |
71 |
14 |
420 |
86 |
|
CLUSTER 3 |
337 |
100 |
19 |
5 |
318 |
95 |
|
CLUSTER 4 |
648 |
100 |
246 |
38 |
402 |
62 |
|
CLUSTER 5 |
89 |
100 |
18 |
20 |
71 |
80 |
One important question has to be raised, connected with the data on interregional immigration: to what extent this type of territorial mobility coincided with the ethno-dmographical changes in the areas of destination. I can not have a precise and demonstrable answer to this question, due to the lock of relevant data. The only available approach is to check if there is any significant correlation/closeness between the proportion of immigrants and the increase of majority population within different clusters. In order to simplify the analysis I have chosen for each cluster one region, considered as representative.
TABLE 9. Increase of the ethnic Romanians’
proportion in the total, urban and rural population and the proportion of
cross-regional migrants within the total, urban and rural population by
counties regarded as representative for the 5 clusters - 1977 (in percents)
|
Counties |
Within the total population |
Within the urban population |
Within the rural population |
|||
|
Increase of Romanian population |
Proportion of immigrants |
Increase of Romanian population |
Proportion of immigrants |
Increase of Romanian population |
Proportion of immigrants |
|
|
ALBA(CL1) |
6,6 |
3,44 |
15,6 |
5,44 |
3 |
1,8 |
|
ARAD(CL2) |
12 |
4,56 |
28,9 |
7,27 |
5 |
2,1 |
|
BIHOR(CL3) |
7,7 |
1,81 |
28,1 |
3,67 |
3,4 |
1,1 |
|
BRASOV(CL4) |
23,8 |
25,58 |
39,5 |
33,19 |
10,5 |
8,3 |
|
HARGHITA(CL5) |
5,1 |
4,17 |
5,6 |
6,89 |
2,4 |
2,4 |
Some considerations can be formulated here, concerning the specificity of the above mentioned correlation in the case of particular clusters:
a: The relative importance of inter-provincial territorial mobility in changing the traditional ethnical composition of the region depended on three major variables:
- The ethnodemographic profile of the area: homogenous Romanian, homogenous Hungarian or mix.
- The relation of homogeneity or heterogeneity between the ethnic structure of the rural and urban areas within the same region
- The existence of a strong/weak inclination to minority-emigration
b ;In the case of homogenous Romanian rural areas located in the vicinity of urban localities with a mix ethnic profile, and with relatively low inclination for emigration (Alba - cluster 1, partly Arad – cluster 2 and Bihor- cluster 3) the most convenient and available way to transform the existing compound of the cities was the migration of Romanian rural inhabitants to the urban localities of the region. Cross-regional immigration had a secondary, but still important role, mainly in compensating the losses of population resulted from minority emigration, as well as an additional source of increase of the urban population
c, For the regions included in cluster 4 ( mix ethnic composition with high minority emigration) and cluster 5 ( homogenous Hungarian), there is a strong correlation/coincidence between the proportion of immigrants from outside and the increase of the ethnic majority population’s proportion, both in the rural and in the urban. This suggests a presumably important contribution of this type of territorial mobility to the ethnodemographical transformations. The major difference between the two mentioned clusters concerns the amplitude of the changes. In the homogenous Hungarian areas there was a relatively small increase of the Romanian population’s proportion, corresponding to an almost similarly small proportion of immigrants within the total population. In the mix areas with strong inclination to minority emigration, both the increase of ethnic Romanian's proportion and the proportion of immigrants within the total population are high.
As a brief concluding part of this typological analysis, below I included brief descriptions of the main ethno-demographic trends, which characterise the five clusters:
CLUSTER 1 : relatively low level of urbanisation and modernisation; preponderance of ethnic Romanians in rural, subsequently transmitted to the urban, mainly by rural-urban migration inside the region; secondary importance of inter-provincial migration-processes .
CLUSTER 2: higher level of urbanisation than in the case of the previous group; preponderance of Romanians in villages; significant losses of rural and urban minority inhabitants due to emigration; great importance of natural increasing and rural - urban migration inside the region.
CLUSTER 3: low level of inter-regional immigration, stability of the existing mix (Hungarian-Romanian0 ethnodemographic structures in the rural, expansion of majority population in the urban, mainly by migration inside the region and by natural increase.
CLUSTER 4: at the top of urbanisation and modernity in the context of Romanian socialist industrialisation; originally mix (Romanian - German) ethnic composition almost completely transformed in ethnic Romanian predominance both in urban and rural; huge losses of minority (especially German) population due external emigration, regardless type of locality; strong correlation between urbanisation, industrialisation, cross-regional migration and ethnic homogenisation
CLUSTER 5: strong ethnic Hungarian preponderance, high degree of ethnic homogeneity in the rural as well as in the urban; slow decreasing of the Hungarians proportion, mainly due to the migration between historical provinces.
Conclusions
1; The ethno-demographical changes in the Transylvanian rural areas in the analysed period can be sub-summed under the concept of national homogenisation. This phenomenon has to be considered with two inter-conditioned dimensions: The first is the social-economical dimension, generated by modernisation and the qualitatively new mobility processes associated with. The second dimension is the political one, namely the policy to change artificially, for state- political reasons, by the means of power, the ethnical map of a multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual area.
2; Among the tools used by the political elite of the Romanian nation-state in order to facilitate the implementation of the new ethnic structures a great importance was given to the demographic means: rural-urban migration, cross-regional resettlement and external emigration had very important ethnic and ethno-political causes and consequences. What appears to the superficial outside observer as a spontaneous move of population, should be more correctly evaluated, in a deeper and broader context, centred on the permanent mutual inter-conditioning between economic, politic and ethnic factors.
3; Due to the social-economical, political and ethnical diversity of the territorial sub-units, the strategies followed by state policy and the characteristics of the entire process present important particularities, which requires further typological comparisons and case studies.
INTER-ETHNIC RELATIONS IN ROMANIA
AFTER DECEMBER 1989
Background
In spite of all the obvious differences originating in the different nature of the political system, one can identify a series of important similarities between the attitude of inter-war and communist governments, as far as the minority question and ethnic policies were concerned. To both types of regime, emphasising "ancient Romanian rights" and the assertion of Romanian national supremacy within the state was regarded essential, ethno - cultural homogeneity remained a cherished ideal, and minorities were basically excluded from the dominant national rhetoric.
In light of such a line of continuity, it is not surprising that after the sudden collapse of communist system nationalism very quickly and effectively filled the vacuum of legitimacy. The more so, as members of the political elite left over from the old system acutely perceived an urgent need of sudden "conversion" and, given the preconditions, they could hardly find a more convenient and suitable solution than becoming fervent promoters and defenders of the "national cause."
At the same time, the appeal to nationalism probably also addressed a psychological need, offering a certain reassurance to people who felt insecure that not everything had changed and that there were some values—such as the national ones—which remained the same. On the other hand, such concepts as ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’, which were to play a key role in the post-communist period, had been emptied of their real content under communism to such an extent that an urgent political necessity emerged to overemphasise ‘national values’. These were perceived as the only ones, which seemed to preserve a clear and unaltered meaning to the population.
The negative memory of past homogenisation policies, shared by all the national minorities, concerning especially the last years of Ceausescu’s dictatorship, when they indeed had to face a not very remote prospect of complete annihilation as separate ethno-cultural entities, led to a rapid political mobilisation of minority groups. This was particularly the case of the ethnic Hungarian organisation, the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR), which was already functioning at the end of 1989. Almost at the same time, however, an intense ethnic Romanian nationalist political activism manifested itself, with a virulent and occasionally aggressive anti-minority discourse, claiming to defend the rights of Romanians in their own country against revisionist threats, and particularly against Hungarian irredentism.
In January 1990, the organisation Vatra Romaneasca (Romanian Cradle) was founded. This firmly rejected Hungarian demands for the restoration of past cultural and educational rights, and accused UDMR of an attempt to force the ‘enclavisation’ of ethnic Hungarians, in order to create a state within the state with the ultimate aim of secession and eventual reunification with Hungary. In a few months, the organisation also formed a political arm—the Party of Romanian National Unity (PUNR), which was intended to serve as a counterbalance to the Hungarian Union. Under the effect of conflicting positions concerning the ethnic issue, particularly on the emotionally charged problem of separating Romanian and Hungarian schools, demonstrations and counter-demonstrations followed. The situation degenerated into ethnic clashes in March 1990 in the city of Tirgu Mures, with a population almost equally divided between the two ethnic communities. Although a certain degree of stability has been achieved, and further violent events have been avoided, the polarisation of society and political life along ethnic lines has remained. The country’s minority problem is still basically unsettled, and the main sources of the tension, which generated the Tirgu Mures conflict, have not yet been extinguished.
Language and State
This became clear when the articles concerning minorities of the 1991 Constitution were adopted in a form which basically reflected a consensus of political forces representing the ‘state building’ majority population. The Constitution approved in November 1991 defined Romania as a ‘national state, sovereign, unitary and indivisible’ (art.1), where ‘the official language is the Romanian language’. (art.13).
Two rather different interpretations of the mentioned constitutional principles have emerged: one restrictive and the other permissive.
The advocates of the first position, particularly those political forces which base their discourses on contesting the national minority rights, are giving the force of prohibition to the articles in question. They start from the premise that if the Romanian language is the only to one have an official status, then, as a consequence, all the other languages have to be ab initio excluded from official use (in political life, administration, public inscriptions, juridical proceedings etc.).The main argument used is that the national and unitary character of the Romanian State included in the first article should entirely justify the monolingual character of all kind of public activities. According to the logic of such position, everything is not explicitly permitted is in fact prohibited.
By contrast, representatives of national minorities are in favour of a permissive interpretation, arguing that what is not openly prohibited is in reality permitted. In accordance with this understanding, the articles referring to the official language could not serve as a legal base to prevent the public use of other languages. However, in order to overcome the intrinsic ambiguity of the text, and to prevent the use of the term "nation state" for the limitation of minority rights, UDMR requested the elimination of the word "national" from the definition of the state. In the same time Hungarian representatives insist for the inclusion of specific guarantees concerning the status of minority languages. As pointed out by the president of the Union, "If the phrase 'national state' had only a sentimental meaning for the majority, than we would have no reservations about it. But the articles of the Constitution clearly mean that this definition is synonymous with a concept, an understanding that there is only one nation and one language in Romania."
Protection of identity
The second important point of controversy between the Government and the organisation of the ethnic Hungarian community concerns the nature and extension of minority rights. The constitutional provision which is central to this debate, under the title " the right to identity" includes the following provision:" The state recognises and guarantees for persons belonging to national minorities the right to preserve, to develop and to express their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity. The measures of protection taken by the state for preserving, developing and expressing the identity of persons who belong to national minorities must be in accordance with the principles of equality and non-discrimination in regard to other Romanian citizens."
On this matter almost the same two positions are confronting, although in different terms. The discussion is centred on a definition of what " identity " means. The interpreters from the Romanian majority side are trying to diminish the extension of that particular social sphere within which the right to preserve, to develop and to express "the identity may be applicable. As the text of the Constitution provides for explicitly mentioned guarantees only in the field of education, those adhering to this point of view incline to reduce the significance of the term " linguistic rights " to its spiritual-cultural dimensions. They are ignoring the economic, political or other social and public implications of the concept.
By contrast, Hungarian minority representatives promote an inclusive approach, considering that the discussed constitutional text provides only some of the most important fields within which the right for identity is recognised and guaranteed by the state, without pretending to be exhaustive. The right to use the minority languages in the public life, administration and juridical institutions has to be regarded, according to this version, as an inseparable part of the non-discrimination provision formulated by the article 6.
As for the problem of compatibility between minority language rights and the principle of full juridical and political equality of all citizens, UDMR considers that the persons who belong to the national minorities form a special category within the society, with particular linguistic and cultural needs. The protection of these needs requires positive action, beyond mere non-discrimination, if the principle of equality is to be realised in practice.
The Romanian critiques of this point of view, however, argue that above all the principle of individual juridical equality of the individuals must have priority. Any special provisions for the protection of a particular category of persons which by its effects might be to the detriment of other individuals needs to be avoided as unconstitutional and undeserved privileges. Some of the defenders of this position, however, contradict their own principle when they claim for members of the Romanian majority living in areas where there are in minority exactly the same provisions and facilities which they regard as being not legitimate elsewhere.
The subjects of minority rights
Finally, probably the most intensively disputed controversy refers to the subject of minority rights. When speaking about who is entitled to exercise "the right to identity", the Constitution refers to the "persons who belong to the national minorities". It can be observed, however, that in spite of this individualistic definition, the text implicitly suggests the collective dimensions of implementing and practising rights, as well as their importance for the maintaining and developing various group identities, and of the plurality of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious communities.
There is an undeclared recognition in the constitutional provisions of the fact that an individual "who belongs to the national minorities" can exercise the right to use his own language only together with other individuals who are members of the same community. It is necessary to emphasise here that the Romanian legal-political system indeed allows for the ethnic, linguistic and religious communities to organise for the protection of specific rights and interests of their members. Taking these into account, one question needs to be raised. If the group character of linguistic rights is so evident and implicitly recognised both by the legal system and by the political reality, what is in this case the motivation for a strictly individualistic definition of these rights in the Constitution.
One possible explanation is historical. As the post-1918 Romanian State included ethnically and culturally distinct and diverse areas, the principle of a "unitary state" has been historically regarded as an essential guarantee of stability and territorial integrity.. Both the population and the political parties share the concern that the implementation of collective rights on an ethnic basis might be a starting point for further steps towards some kind of territorial autonomy or other form of self-determination, and might lead ultimately to secession. Even ethnic Romanian politicians and analysts who are generally regarded as having a genuinely ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’ outlook on ethnic issues insist on making a firm distinction between those minority rights which can be regarded as rights ‘in themselves’ and those which might induce further political action (i.e. secession). Collective rights and territorial autonomy are concepts almost unanimously seen by ethnic Romanian political actors as falling into the latter category.
One of the hardest obstacles to overcome in this respect is the negative psychological effect of the way past historical events are perceived. By far the most important instrument in creating both the Romanian and the Hungarian national identity has been modern historiography. The two nations' rights over Transylvania were characteristically legitimised by arguments, which described the other nation as the ‘eternal enemy’. Nationalist historians took nations as the unchanging elements of world history, seen in the light of a continuous struggle for liberation from foreign rule, the creation of the modern nation state being viewed as the culmination of this historical process. While rather successful in mobilising and integrating the members of the titular nation (the ‘state-building majority’ ), this strategy excluded minorities—both in real terms and symbolically—from this integration. It constantly created and recreated the image of the minority as the enemy, and thus permanently reproduced political instability and a constant crisis of legitimacy.
Changes in territorial status have appeared for the members of the two communities either as an apotheosis or a tragedy (with the two sides naturally adopting contradictory interpretations). The memory of these shifts produces a sense of insecurity, and is only likely to increase the lack of confidence. As long as history still provides important raw material for national political legitimacy, it is very hard to make any significant step forward in this highly sensitive field. The transformation of the way history is written should involve a metamorphosis of national self-images, as well as of the mutual (and now overwhelmingly negative) perceptions of the ‘other’. This should probably mean in essence a gradual reversal of the traditional relationship between present and past, when history has seemed to dominate (at an ideological level of course) the way of thinking and action of the people.
Second, there is an important argument of a pragmatic political nature, shared by part of Romania’s political and administrative elite, especially by those who represent the interests of the central bureaucracy. They share the concern that recognising collective rights and guarantees for the protection of minority identities would diminish their chances to justify state centralism by invoking the ‘political necessity’ to exercise tight control of minority populated areas. The available means of furthering assimilation policies would diminish, and the current ethnic balance would probably be frozen. There would be much less of a possibility to make non-Romanians a convenient scapegoat for the country’s difficulties—as has frequently happened in the past: and it would become more difficult to gain or retain power or political capital by exploiting the ethnic agenda.
Finally, there are also ideological-cultural reasons connected with the historical path of nation-building, which in Romania has resulted in an ethnocentrist, organic vision of the nation, something now profoundly entrenched in the minds of an overwhelming majority of the population, particularly of the ethnic majority. How deeply seated this way of thinking about the nation is, not just in the mentality of ordinary people, but also in that of a significant part of political and intellectual elite, can be seen by the way members of Romanian majority usually refer to the country’s Hungarians. While strongly rejecting any form of collective minority rights, they still often speak of and treat Hungarians as a block, a collective homogeneous entity, sometimes even invoking the supposed collective responsibility of the Hungarian community for certain events and facts of the past or present. Within the specific logical structure of a traditional nationalist mode of reasoning, the refusal of collective rights and a strong affirmation of collective guilt of the very same minority community seem to complement and reinforce each other.
While understanding the entrenched historic nature of some Romanian arguments, the representatives of ethnic Hungarians nevertheless insist that collective rights have to be offered for minority communities. Otherwise, they argue, the ground is laid for dominating the minority in the name of democracy. Under the conditions of an electoral system based on the principle of individual representation political majority is bound to coincide with ethnic majority. .In the absence of firm safeguards of their collective status, the position of national minorities becomes very much dependent on the day to day context as well as on the fluctuating interests and political calculations of those holding power. Consequently, the creation of positive measures, which would prevent minorities from being permanently outvoted and would enable them to have their political views effectively taken into account is regarded by ethnic Hungarian representatives as essential components of a constitutional and legal framework aimed at the protection of minority identity.
The gap between Romanian and Hungarian views on the relationship between minority and majority, so evident in the debate on individual versus collective rights, manifests itself with the same clarity in the different interpretations of the loyalty to the state. In the Hungarian view, loyalty is, above all, a relationship between citizen and state, and therefore it can only belong to the individual (since it is absurd to demand it from a whole community). Secondly, loyalty is seen as conditional on the fulfilment of rights; as the expression of a mutual relationship in which both the state and its citizens have certain obligations and responsibilities to each other. In contrast, the Romanian nation-state’s attitude to minorities has always demanded unconditional loyalty. According to this view, while the loyalty of ethnic Romanians is regarded as self-evident, minority citizens, and the minority community as a whole, must again and again demonstrate that they are faithful to the state.
What appears on the surface to be a debate between the contractualist view shared by Hungarian minority representatives and the paternalist conception of Romanian politicians has in fact far deeper roots. According to the East European model of nation building, primary loyalty must always belong to one’s own ethnic group, rather then to the state. To Romanians this reality is somehow hidden, since to them the relationship between ethnic loyalty and faithfulness to " their own" state is non-problematic (at least as long as the state preserves a biased attitude in favour of the majority ethnic group). However, for minority members the same preconditions might produce a rather different effect. In certain circumstances a dilemma of loyalty might appear, which would implicitly lead to a hierarchy of loyalties. This might potentially generate suspicion and produce situations in which the minority is denied collective rights - but at the same time is expected to display collective loyalty.
The dilemmas of Hungarian-Romanian ethnic co-existence outlined above clearly point to a lack of consensus: the existence of very divergent views on the nature of the ethnic problem and the measures to be taken to address it. A rather visible consequence of this is the absence of common concepts to designate ethnic relations and an over-politicisation of basic terms such as "ethnic group", "national community", "minority" or "majority".
A first consequence of this terminological gap concerns the relationship between academic, legal and political discourse. There is a strong temptation for and at the same time intense pressure on academic researchers of both Romanian and Hungarian affiliation to identify with or be influenced by the political rhetoric of their own communities. In this regard, a widespread belief exists in society that everyone - politicians, lawyers, and even academics, should serve - by means of their profession - the interests of the "nation", often viewed in terms of opposition and confrontation with the "other".
The influence of the political sphere largely explains why it is that most Romanian researchers prefer the term "ethnic group", instead of "minority-majority" terminology, as they feel it makes the issue less sensitive; and it might also imply an avoidance of responsibility for the fate of minorities. As for ethnic Hungarian researchers and other non-Romanian experts, they also have objections to the term "minority", since they fear it might implicitly suggest some pejorative connotations, and might be used for the limitation of rights. Hungarians, therefore, prefer to designate themselves as a "national community" rather than as an "ethnic group", since they feel that the term "ethnic minority" is restrictive, and does not refer to a fully developed national identity. The issue is clearly not a purely academic one, for by using the term "national community" Hungarians are striving for recognition of group rights. Therefore, the insistence of Romanian researchers to reject recognition of "national communities" other than the Romanian one also has a very clear and direct political motivation.
The complexity of these definitional debates is increased still further by the fact that the texts of fundamental international documents generally speak about the rights of "national minorities" rather than of "communities". That is why ethnic Hungarian representatives have chosen to adopt a pragmatic and flexible attitude in this respect. They wish of course to benefit from all "national minority rights" put forward in international documents, but regard the fulfilment of these rights as a minimal standard only. They argue that the peculiarities of ethnic co-existence in Romania demand specific solutions, beyond international or European norms, as far as the status of ethnic Hungarians is concerned.
Population, Territory and National Identity
The Hungarian community living in Transylvania, unlike the Roma or other smaller ethnic groups, but similarly to Transsylvanian Saxons, does have a strongly developed and fully integrated sense of regional national identity connected to this region, including the perception of its own historically constituted territorial basis. The demographic advancement of ethnic Romanians, and the concomitant reduction of Hungarians’ share in state and national activities, partly as a result of nation state conducted homogenisation policies, has always been perceived by the Hungarian population as a continuous threat to the preservation of Hungarian culture and identity. The arguments in this regard are indeed numerous. The diminution of the demographic importance of ethnic Hungarians over the past 75 years usually meant a dramatic loss of their previously dominant positions in the economic, political and cultural life of Transylvania. Moreover, these changes had been implemented with the help of state conducted measures aimed at encouraging the dissolution of the traditional ethno-demographic composition of the predominantly minority inhabited regions by means of migration and assimilation.
Secondly, Hungarians feel that losing their centuries long demographic predominance in several areas and cities would lead - as in the past few decades - to a reduction of their capability for self-defence and a consequent reduction of their political strength and legal status. Finally, one should also take into account the fact, deriving from the peculiar conditions of state- and nation building, that the demographic share of particular ethnic groups, and the changes in the ethnic map of the country, are still important elements of national political legitimacy in Romania. Consequently, each ethnic community is striving to win in the "demographic war", since the number and proportion of a particular minority population within a locality and a region count as basic criteria in granting or refusing rights.
Given such conditions, ethnic Hungarian political thinkers and representatives regard demographic homogeneity as essential in reproducing ethnic identity. The special position and importance of the so-called Land of Szecklers, a traditionally homogenous Hungarian-populated region in Southeast Transylvania, is largely derivable from this peculiar ideology of ethno-territorial self-preservation and self-containment. In spite of all efforts to alter its ethnic structure, this area remains overwhelmingly inhabited by ethnic Hungarians. The UDMR’s insistence on obtaining territorial autonomy for the regions where ethnic Hungarians maintain a majority can also be explained by the perceived need to gain guarantees that the current ethno-demographic structures will not suffer a further alteration by massive (and possibly state-encouraged) inflows of ethnic Romanian populations.
Such claims are, however, strongly rejected by ethnic Romanian politicians, who invoke the importance of the freedom of movement, meaning that the freedom to settle anywhere in the country should be guaranteed to all citizens as part of their individual rights. Council of Europe’s Recommendation no. 1201 does include an article, which forbids (however ambiguously) artificial changes of ethnic composition in minority inhabited regions. However, Romania agreed to include this recommendation in its Treaty with Hungary only if accompanied by an explicative Annex stating that it does not mean granting any form of "territorial autonomy on an ethnic basis" or collective rights.
A step towards reconciliation?
From this perspective, the co-optation of ethnic Hungarian representatives into the government and the parliamentary majority after the elections of 1996 and 2000 respectively, can be regarded as an interesting sociological fact, which would need a careful and fair assessment. Since then, the issue of Hungarian participation is continuously an object of heated debates, pro and contra arguments, and controversies of all sorts in Romanian political life.
There are frequent attempts to use the Hungarian participation in the Romanian Government or parliamentary majority against those seeking a modus vivendi, for the benefit of groups displaying a more "radical" position. Undoubtedly, there is a considerable amount of political opportunism behind such critical attitudes. In the same time, one should not neglect the real vested interests of those who feel threatened by any improvement in the climate of ethnic relations: extreme nationalist parties, a certain political circle connected with the past etc. On the other side, Hungarian critics of the UDMR’s involvement in the government fear that by perpetuating such a participation the long term political goals of the Hungarian community are to be postponed indefinitely, and the price of the compromise will be too high. They are warning that the Hungarian Union might lose its legitimacy and popular support if it chooses to abandon its traditional rhetoric in favour of a "step by step" strategy.
The UDMR participation in the governing coalition ensued at a relatively favourable moment for the resolution of the ethnic issue, both from the perspectives of internal and international contexts. Internally, the hope of fruitful democratic development determined the outcome of elections, and became even stronger thereafter, encouraging a more tolerant and positive attitude towards ethnic Hungarians, who were seen by a part of Romanian society as catalysts of the democratisation process. On the other hand, the need to gain external recognition and internal legitimacy by demonstrating success in the process of integration led - at least in short run - to a more pragmatic and less ideologically biased approach to the ethnic problem by the new holders of power.
However, one could sense certain negative effects as well, which might seriously question the future of the current political co-habitation. A triumphal rhetoric claims that the minority problem has been already solved by the simple fact of ethnic Hungarian participation in the power structures. Romania is usually presented externally by government representatives as a model country from this point of view. By contrast, the UDMR considers what has already been achieved only as a starting point, and is continuously stressing the importance of creating (or in many cases re-establishing) further autonomous Hungarian community-based institutions (e.g. an independent Hungarian language university). In the same time, Hungarian minority leaders are emphasising the imperious necessity for firm legal guarantees of minority rights: something, which the government is not prepared, as yet, to grant fully.
Whatever the long term fate of inter-ethnic co-operation in the government might be, it is without doubt that ethnic Hungarian participation in the power structures has already attenuated somewhat the sense of frustration perceived by the ethnic Hungarian population. It provided an opportunity to demonstrate that Hungarian functionaries can and want honestly to act in the interest of the whole population, beyond the representation of their own community interests. On the other hand, the experience of multi-ethnic involvement in the government had an encouraging effect on Hungarian-Romanian contacts at the level of civil society institutions, and on the development of joint initiatives of economic co-operation.
In spite of such achievements and promises for the future, many ethnic Romanians and Hungarians still see the present development basically as a conjectural situation only, which does not have the right conditions to last. The split between the Romanian and Hungarian positions concerning ethnic issues and the envisaged status of minorities is widely regarded by influent political circles of both sides as being too deep to be overcome in the near future. The more so, as even "moderate" leaders of the two communities are inclined to be more sceptical than optimistic about their partners’ readiness and real political will to agree on mutually acceptable compromises over "questions of principle".
Both Romanians and Hungarians regard certain issues as non-negotiable. For Romanians the "national and unitary character of the state" is sacrosant, while Hungarians cannot conceive any long-term solution without their acceptance as a separate national community, with the right of self-government, which is obviously irreconcilable with the Romanian position. Even those Hungaran ethnic representatives who are considered by their Romanian counterparts as adepts of a more gradual approach maintain that the "step by step" strategy followed by them does not affect in any sense the basic goals of the Hungarian community. Rather, it refers only to an optimisation of the available political means.
Conclusions
After more than a decade of legal codification and clarification processes, a general political agreement on the set of linguistic and other provisions to be provided to Romania's national minorities has not yet been achieved. Thus, the desired stability of the newly created institutional system is potentially challenged by a still unresolved major internal problem.
There are certain historic circumstances, which further complicated the relationship between the principles of "citizenship" and "nationality". The weak supra-ethnic civic bonds within society made particularly difficult the creation of a citizenship based identity; the legitimisation rhetoric of the main national communities having been based on ethnic history, culture and language, which tended to separate rather than unite them. Nationalistic competition has often led to confrontational and exclusive attitudes towards "the other", which is only likely to reproduce the vicious circle of ethnic isolation and mutual distrust.
Any prospect of reaching a long- term solution is still hindered by the prevalence of a mutually exclusive perception of minority and majority interests. On the one side, national minorities fear the resumption of past homogenisation and discriminatory policies; on the other side, a significant part of the Romanian population and political spectrum still perceives certain minorities as a potential threat to state unity and territorial integrity. The perception of present frustrations and threats is only likely to reproduce negative images of the "other", thus constantly reinforcing ethnic isolation, self containment and mutual lack of trust.
In spite of the progress, which has been achieved in recent years, as a result of the democratisation process and of the participation of ethnic Hungarian political organisation in the government coalition, many deep-rooted historical problems still affect the climate and general state of inter-ethnic relations in Romania today. A civil society able to facilitate the integration of citizens into the political community still needs to be created. The terms of a mutually acceptable compromise between the main national communities have yet to be worked out and agreed upon. The polarisation of society along nationality lines, with exclusive perceptions of interests and incompatible interpretations of history, still hinder the process of reconciliation and form a serious obstacle in the way of democratic transition and the European integration of the country. For a more encouraging positive development it would be important if the population could experience in everyday life a completely new pattern of interethnic relations, based on equality, partnership and mutual respect. This alone would have an effective chance to succeed, and bring stability to Romania.
Directions to act in the future
All our conclusions, point to the obvious importance of developing a citizenship based national identity, but it would be unrealistic to think that this can be achieved overnight. The current paradigm which defines national identity in the country, and which still profoundly affects the collective memory and the mentalities of the population, has to be acknowledged as a fact. This reality, however undesirable it might be regarded, cannot be changed by the mere wishes of concerned. Any step towards an ethnic accord can only be achieved for the time being by acting within the traditional model of nationhood.
Nationalist historians of the past have had an important role in establishing both the Romanian and Hungarian national identities. That is why a step in the right direction would be to make systematic efforts on both the Romanian and the Hungarian side towards a gradual but firm de-politicisation of history as a science. At the same time however, due regard should be paid to the historical symbols of national identity, trying to eliminate or at least to reduce to a minimum their negative effect in propagating past ethnic and national hatred. Through the process of building up a new pattern of ethnic co-existence those forms and elements of collective identity should be emphasised which are common or more easily reconcilable: e.g. Christian religion. On this basis the practice of mutual respect should develop to each other’s "important days”.
Further participation of minorities in the policy making process both at central level and in the regional and local bodies should be encouraged. This can have a favourable effect in overcoming the still existing psychological barriers and thus reducing suspicion towards non-Romanians and alleviating the sense of frustration and exclusion perceived by minority citizens. However, minority participation can give its full benefit to the process of inter-ethnic reconciliation only if this is not the result of a temporary political situation, but rather a right guaranteed by law. It is particularly important in this respect to develop a legal and institutional mechanism, which should ensure that representatives of the ethnic communities have a real possibility to effectively take part in the decision making process.
The success of the economic reform and the advancement of democratisation in Romania might contribute to some extent to a de-politicisation of the ethnic issue by drawing the attention of the population to problems, which can be regarded as neutral from an ethno-national point of view. In the short run, however, the opposite trend can be expected. The popular discontent caused by the constant fall in living standards and the increasing unemployment due to the difficulties of economic transition might be canalised by interested forces to provoke nationalistic reactions.
It will of course be essential to stimulate cultural dialogue by all available means. It should be emphasised, however, that such dialogue should not in any sense express a subordination of one culture to another. All cultures should participate with equal status and equal dignity in the cultural interaction, which means that minority cultural institutions should be offered legal guarantees of independent existence. Granting such autonomous status for the cultural institutions of various national communities (e.g. in the form of separate universities or faculties of their own) does not necessarily mean encouraging "non-European" forms of isolation and self-containment, as some of the opponents of this idea are arguing. On the contrary, institutional independence might help a minority culture to act as an equal and effective partner and thus benefit fully from its integration into the spiritual life of the country.