“Trianon” a politicians’ game, also in Romania
One hundred years after Transylvania was added to Romanian territory, the memory of “Trianon” is still very much alive in Romania. Since last month, the country even has two national holidays to celebrate this for Romanians joyous event. On December 1, on National Day (Ziua Națională) — also known as Greater Union Day (Ziua Marii Uniri) — they commemorate the unification of the Romanian provinces of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania. On May 13, parliament passed a law that makes June 4 the Day of the Treaty of Trianon.
“Something that in the past, a century ago, was a huge joy for the Romanian nation, for the Hungarian nation and for the Hungarians in Romania was a huge loss and a huge sadness,” said Kelemen Hunor, leader of the UDMR (Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania), after parliament adopted the proposal for a new holiday. “This state of affairs can no longer be changed through such debates and by adopting this bill.”
Hundred years after the Treaty of Trianon, the political debate on Transylvania is still the order of the day, not only in Hungary but also in Romania. “It is part of the nation-building process, in both countries,” says professor Silvia Marton, political scientist at the University of Bucharest. And in particular the status of the three districts in the heart of Romania — Covasna, Harghita and Mureș, where ethnic Hungarians, the “Szeklers”, often form a majority. (According to the 2011 census, there are 1,227,623 Hungarians in Romania and are the largest national minority with 6.1% of the total population.)
Since 1920, the policy of the central government in Bucharest towards the Hungarians in Transylvania has taken different forms. Initially, a cultural policy was pursued with an emphasis on Romanisation of minorities. It was also aimed at “elevation” of the Romanians who for centuries mainly practiced agriculture, while under the Austrian-Hungarian dynasty the Hungarians belonged to the bourgeoisie and regional cultural elite. Romania’s first land reforms have their origin in the 1920s. In 1940 Hungary, as an ally of Nazi-Germany, regained a large part of Transylvania. Under Miklós Horthy’s regime, war crimes were committed against Romanians and 140,000 Romanian-Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz.
After World War II the allies gave Transylvania back to Romania. Both Romania and Hungary shared a communist government after the war and in 1952 a Hungarian Autonomous Region was created in eastern Transylvania (“Szeklerland”), with partial territorial autonomy and self-governance. However, this autonomy imposed by Stalin was a thorn in the side of the Romanian communist party and was considered a possible fifth column by the secret services. During the Ceaușescu regime, the authority pursued an assimilation policy. Use of the native language in public life was restricted, circulation of Hungarian-language newspapers was hampered, and Hungarian schools were closed. Ceaușescu’s nationalist politics were supposed to give legitimacy to his regime, but the enormous scarcity in the 1980s led to some degree to a better relations between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians as they were now all victims of the same regime.
However, the fraternisation during the December 1989 revolution, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ceaușescus and in which László Tőkés, pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Romania in Timișoara, played an important role, was short-lived. In March 1990, Hungarians and Romanians spent days fighting in the streets of Târgu Mureș, capital of the Mureș district in Transylvania. The causes and circumstances have never been fully clarified, but Black March led to a deterioration in relations between the two neighbouring countries and between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians.
Nevertheless, in September 1996, under pressure from the Council of Europe and with a view to NATO accession, Hungary and Romania managed to sign a basic treaty guaranteeing the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania. Since then, things have remained fairly quiet around the “Hungarian issue”, partly because the UDMR has regularly participated in the government since 1996; with more than six percent of the votes, the party often occupies a key position to form cabinets. In addition, the extreme nationalist PNUR (Party for Romanian National Unity) and PRM (Greater Romania Party), which were part of the government from 1994-1996, disappeared from parliament after 2000.
However, the theme of territorial, local and cultural autonomy for the Hungarian national minority remains on the political agenda. Recently, a bill that opened the door to limited autonomy for a part of Transylvania where ethnic Hongarians are concentrated received implicit parliamentary approval because, closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the deadline for debate had passed. While it was clear that the PSD, Romania’s largest party, would never support the UDMR in the Senate, President Klaus Iohannis and his liberal government party reacted furiously. The usually level-headed Iohannis, himself a member of the German national minority, accused the PSD of making a secret deal with Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán to “give Transylvania to the Hungarians”. “It’s the same nationalistic, xenophobic reflex, the same vocabulary, on both sides, when it comes to this issue,” explains Silvia Marton. The proposal would have made Hungarian a second official language in state institutions in the counties Harghita and Covasna, where ethnic Hungarians form the majority, and Mureș, which has a large number of Hungarian speakers. Szeklerland (Székelyföld in Hungarian) would have been allowed to fly its own flag, manage its own finances and have more autonomy to pass its own laws.
Although politicians are regularly at odds with each other, the relations between ethnic Hungarians and their Romanian neighbours in Transylvania seem much less tense a hundred years ago. Research shows, for example, that the social distance between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians has narrowed in recent years. In 2019, 76% of Romanians surveyed accept Hungarians as family members, friends, neighbours or colleagues. It is striking that intolerance is stronger in the capital Bucharest, where hardly any ethnic Hungarians live, than in central Romania and the countryside, where most ethnic Hungarians live.
Prominent scientists such as the Italian anthropologist-historian Stefano Bottoni (University of Florence) point out that Bucharest’s central government policies have never led to rebellions or ethnically motivated clashes caused by separatist movements or terrorist actions. Only during periods of political turbulence or war in 1919, 1940, 1944 and 1989–90 was there limited violence.
So perhaps there is hope that a hundred years after “Trianon” relations between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians and between politicians in Budapest and Bucharest will normalize? At the end of May, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijarto visited his Romanian counterpart Bogdan Aurescu with the aim of improving relations between the two countries “despite occasional political tensions over the ethnic Hungarian community which lives in Transylvania”. And President Iohannis was fined RON 5,000 (€ 1,035) by the National Anti-Discrimination Council for his statements on the autonomy proposals.
It is therefore not surprising that Romanians seem to be quite indifferent about their new holiday, which will also coincide with Orthodox Pentecost. And in Romanian media on June 4 there was relatively little attention for the centenary. One hundred years later, mainly politicians seem to be still obsessed with Trianon.
The original Dutch version of this article appeared on June 4, 2020 in Donau. Magazine over Midden- en Zuidoost Europa.
