Béla Pomogáts
The Idea of Hungarian Autonomy in Transylvania
[...]
The idea of self-government has surfaced more than once
in various forms. The idea of autonomy has become an organic part of Hungarian
policy in Transylvania. In 1918, Oszkár Jászi, Minister for
Nationalities in the short-lived Károlyi government, devised the
Hungarian state as a system of national autonomies, and the leaders of
the Romanian National Party, with whom he was negotiating, also promised
autonomy for the non-Romanians of Transylvania. The establishment of the
institution of national autonomies was specified as a goal at the mass
meeting in the city of Kolozsvár (Cluj), on 22 December 1918. The
meeting took place a few days after the Romanian National Assembly in Gyulafehérvár
(Alba Iulia) announced the union of Transylvania and the eastern fringe
of the Hungarian great plain with the Kingdom of Romania. The decisions
passed on the future of Transylvanian Hungarians were being made as the
occupying Romanian army advanced. The scheme of national autonomies that
Jászi designed unfortunately came too late, and the Kolozsvár
decisions were never implemented. The fate of Transylvania was decided
by arms and was confirmed by the Paris peace treaties.
[...]
In the Middle Ages, half the population in historical
Transylvania and the Hungarian territories later to be annexed to Romania
was Hungarian (including the Székely or Szekler regional group),
one quarter German (Saxon), who had been settled there in the Middle Ages,
and another quarter Romanian, who first appeared in Transylvania in the
late 11th century--no earlier mention of them is found in historical sources--and
did not start to play a role of any significance in its history before
the 19th century. These ethnic proportions tilted in favour
of Romanians during the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Hungarians in
the river valleys and towns suffered from the raiding Turks and Tartars.
The Romanians, however, who lived in the mountains, were largely spared,
their numbers even increasing when a sizable amount fled from the principalities
ruled by Phanariote Greeks, who were appointed by the Turks. By the early
18th century, Ro manians were in majority in Transylvania, where they made
up more than half the population.
Yet in several regions in Transylvania, such as in Székelyföld,
the land of Szek lers along the Eastern Carpathians, and in the region
adjacent to the Great Hun garian Plain, i.e. the western borders of Transylvania,
as well as in the big cities--Kolozs vár (Cluj), Nagyvárad
(Oradea), Marosvásárhely (Tîrgu Mures,), Arad and Szatmár
németi (Satu Mare ), the Hungarians were in majority. In Southern
Tran sylvanian areas and in other cities such as Temesvár (Timis,oara),
Brassó (Bras,ov) and Nagyszeben (Sibiu), the majority was German.
Urban culture on the whole in Tran sylvania was either Hungarian or German,
as were the overwhelming majo-rity of burghers, professional people and
factory workers. Of the 49 towns in Tran sylvania in 1918, only two were
of a Romanian character.
[...]
Notions of Transylvania's separateness and autonomy
were revived by Tran sylvanian Hungarians (also Germans and Romanians)
before 1918, who aimed at more independence for public and cultural life
in Transylvania as a result of political and cultural decentralization.
Hungarian democratic political and cultural movements in Transylvania sought
in the development of this greater independence not only a basis for modernizing
a backward economy but also an alleviation of nationality conflicts. Many
people in Transylvania thought that giving up the earlier relative autonomy
as a result of the 1867 Compromise with Austria, which unconditionally
accepted the revival of the 1848-49 union of Hungary and Transylvania,
and exposed the nations of Transylvania to Hun garian imperialist unification,
was a mistake.
The idea of autonomy surfaced even more widely after Trianon amongst
Germans as well as Hungarians and, to a smaller degree, those Romanians
in Transylvania who distrusted the Bucharest government. As subjects of
the Empire, Romanians in Transylvania felt closer to Western values and
ways than did their fellow Romanians from the Old Kingdom, who had not
long before been liberated from Turkish suzerainty. Indeed, over a third
of the Romanians of Transylvania were of the Greek rite in union with Rome
and not members of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Before the peace negotiations
began in Paris, when the Hungarians of Transylvania could not have known
with any certainty the
actual new borders the Allies had in mind, some Transylvanian Hungarian
intellectuals suggested an independent Tran sylvanian state based on the
partnership of the three nations--Hungarian, Romanian and German, and an
autonomous Transylvania within the Romanian state.
The idea was presented at Dicsõszentmárton (Tirnaveni)
in the form of a memorandum by Elemér Gyárfás, earlier
Lord Lieutenant of Kisküküllõ County, Chairman of the
County National Council after the 1918 Hungarian revolution, and forwarded
to Emil Hat,ieganu, the Romanian minister for Transylvania, in Kolozsvár
(Cluj), on 24 March 1919. The Consiliul Dirigent in Nagyszeben (Sibiu),
the temporary Romanian government in Transylvania, never replied. After
the military occupation of Transylvania, and especially after publication
of the peace treaty provisions, the autonomy of Transylvania, a major demand
of the Romanian nationalist movement in Transylvania during the 19th century,
was no longer on the agenda.
[...]
The Bucharest regime, headed by Nicolae Ceausescu,
especially from the 70s onwards, made a point of breaking the identity
of Hungarians and destroying their national culture by doing away with
the greater part of Hungarian educational and cultural institutions and
then, in the framework of what has become notorious as "village systematization",
sought to achieve assimilation by uprooting and forcefully resettling Hungarians.
Ethnic self-government as an idea could be maintained in the circumstances
only in opposition thinking. A recent example of the autonomy plan was
elaborated in the mid-80s by the contributors to the samizdat magazine
Ellenpontok (Counterpoints) edited by the poet Géza Szõcs.
Endeavours and expectations
Official Romanian nationality policy aimed at destroying the ethnic
and cultural identity of Hungarians and at assimilation has been maintained
after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. It has thus opposed
the autonomy plans drawn up by the Democratic Association of Hungarians
in Romania (RMDSZ-UDMR), in November 1993, entitled "On Ethnic Minorities
and Autonomous Com munities", the draft prepared by József
I. Csapó in August 1994, under the title "A Statute of Personal
Autonomy for the Hungarian Ethnic Community in Romania", and the draft
he also elaborated for the autonomy of Székelyföld, the region
inhabited by the Szeklers, in 1995.
The Romanian governments, the National Assembly in Bucharest and Roma
nian political parties have regularly rejected and ignored such plans.
The fight for self-government is for the future. This rejection may perhaps
be changed under Pre si dent Constantinescu and his government, in light
of the reforms introduced in state administration and a novel approach
to minorities, especially if such reforms continue.
The new political role the RMDSZ, the Hungarian political party in Romania,
has undertaken in coalition with the democratic parties and participation
in the new Bucharest government, may contribute towards an assertion of
the right of self-government of the Hungarians in Transylvania. The democratic
parties which make up the Romanian government are inclined to extend minority
rights, a necessity if the country seeks integration in Western institutions
and wishes to join NATO and the European Union--efforts also supported
by the Hungarian government.
The RMDSZ works for the achievement of minority language and educational
rights with considerate, well-devised policies. The organization is, however,
not entirely unified on certain points, namely the justification for, and
the political mileage expected from, participation in the coalition government
by the political party of Hungarians in Transylvania. The radical wing
is led by the respected Calvinist bishop, László Tõkés,
honorary president of the party and hero of the 1989 Temesvár (Timis,oara)
events; the moderate wing by the president of the party Béla Markó,
a poet whose literary activity has been important.
Hungarians in Romania thus have to go on defending their own interests,
a struggle which calls for both bravery and sobriety. Hungarian autonomy
in Tran sylvania is in the interest of all Hungarians in Romania, as well
as of the country itself. The country is expected to create a democratic
political system and nurture good relationships with its Western neighbour,
a Hungary which will soon be a NATO and EU member.
A political struggle that has lasted close to a century must sooner
or later lead to results, especially if it receives the unambiguous support
of the mother country, and particularly so if the plans for autonomy are
in harmony with similar developments elsewhere in Europe. Indeed, it can
be said about the Transylvanian Hun garian plans for autonomy that, in
their entirety, they satisfy the norms and standards that govern the progress
of territorial, cultural and personal autonomy in Europe.
Béla Pomogáts,
an essayist and literary historian, is President of the Hungarian Writers'
Association.
