[..]

The range of options open to Romania has considerably narrowed in the two years that have passed since the right-of-centre government and President Constantinescu, a member of the dominant party of the government came to power in November 1996. In the first place, as regards Euro-Atlantic integration, it became clear that—in spite of the stress on an open doors policy—no new members will be invited at the NATO jubilee summit to be held on April 4th 1999. Thus even that kudos is lost which Romania enjoyed thanks to the country’s name being specially mentioned at the June 1997 NATO Conference. Furthermore, the EU Brussels committee’s report, published in October 1998, permits the conclusion that the strategy of selective extension will be even more unambiguously applied in the future. It is presumed that the circle of countries with which negotiations have already started (Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Estonia) will be perhaps extended to Slovakia and Lithuania (which does not, however, imply that those countries will become full EU members at the same time). Meanwhile, a kind of queue is forming amongst the countries on the waiting list. Thus the committee report mentioned emphasizes Bulgaria’s recent economic and financial achievements, but also the grinding to a halt of reforms in Romania and an unambiguous worsening of the economic situation there.

The conclusion that can be drawn from the above is that, in the next ten years, which promise to be a key decade for the Western integration of Central and East European countries, the gap between Romania and a Europe undergoing integration—and those of its neighbours (primarily Hungary) which are taking part in this process—will not narrow but grow, with all the expected consequences. What this means can already be discerned: as the prospects of integration become faint, the options open to politics at home are alarmingly narrowed.

The coalition based on the Democratic Convention, the Democratic Party and the RMDSz, a coalition which in its policy statements has shown itself reform and market friendly and, at the very least, not hostile to decentralization and minority rights, appears to have exhausted its resources. On the other hand, the former governing party, led by Ion Iliescu, is labouring on the organization of a National Left that will make a comeback after defeat. In a recentralization impetus, it wishes to recover all that it "lost" owing to the "anti-nation and anti-state irresponsibility" of the Right of Centre coalition. It suffices to glance at things said by a number of ci-devants about the transformation of Transylvania into "a zone of joint Romano-Hungarian sovereignty and governance" (a former undersecretary in the Ministry of Defence); the need to re-introduce "protectionist measures" (a former Minister of Finance); "the challenge of institutional devolution and the drafting of other concepts which will lead to the federalization of national states and their later disappearance" (a former Chairman of the House of Deputies); the "huge threat" of the radicalization of Transylvanian Romanians, which may lead to an "ideal of Transylvania that stands above the imperative of an integrated Romania" (a former Chairman of the Senate); "the crime of treason which will soon be followed by a just judgement" (a former Governor of State Television); not to mention all those "threats" which may well lead to the carving up of the state as the "communiqué" of the Central Bureau of the PDSR (Iliescu’s party) lists in such minute detail. After all that, it is not difficult to imagine what will happen if the old post-communist group came to power again in Bucharest, and in alliance with the extremist, nationalist, anti-West and anti-minority PRM (the Party of Greater Romania).

[..]

The essence of Gabriel Andreescu’s train of thought can be summed up in two closely interrelated propositions. According to him, a process of modernization, started in 1848 and carried through in interaction with the international commu-nity, transposed the Romanian world from the Orthodox, Balkanic space into a Western one with amazing speed. The second proposition argues that since the nationalist-maffioso political line effective until 1996 in practice excluded Romania from the major structures of European civilization, the coming to power of a Right-of-Centre coalition in the European tradition must be considered an essential moment or crossroads in the evolution of the Romanian state. Naturally, this can only happen if, as after 1848, the regional and world constellation is favourable, in other words if domestic changes are confirmed by the inclusion of Romania in the second round of NATO extension in 1999, and if the EU does not exclude predominantly Orthodox countries like Romania or Bulgaria from the extension. #1

The question is why a new decisive moment was needed in 1996 if the Romanian world had already been transposed from the Orthodox Balkanic space in the decades that followed 1848. Why, given these extraordinary modernization efforts, was the ingrafting of institutions and customs characteristic of European civilization aborted, why did Westernization not prove irreversible? What is at issue here is not only between-the-wars break-downs, or the succession of the two totalitarianisms but primarily the reasons why the collapse of Communism was followed by the nationalist-maffioso line mentioned by Andreescu, which widened the gap to the West instead of narrowing it.

These are problems of a more or less theoretical nature; what we have to confront now, two years after the new coalition came to power, is a most serious political fact: the political élite, which undertook to employ a systematic policy of reforms to restore the historical continuity, including the country’s own Western traditions and to create the economic and legal conditions for joining Western structures, proved unsuccessful.

The best Romanian intellectuals were well aware, as Adrian Marino had already argued in 1994, that it was part of the essence of the nomenklatura, a ruling class educated in Moscow, or in the spirit of Moscow, that it could not be honestly and creditably pro-Europe. Its social origins, ideological and cultural upbringing, its interests and endeavours all set it a long distance from genuinely European standards. At the same time, according to Marino, the new geopolitical realities and the new international balance of power after the collapse of the Soviet Union force the nomenklatura to put on a show of being European, to accept on the surface all, or as many as possible, of the basic European principles, institutions and forms. In Marino’s view, the duplicity is obvious, nor can one deny that such a picturesque European Potemkin village is evidence of a certain facility and arranging skill. #2 What the past two years have shown is that the coalition of a National Peasant Party, which claims to be Christian and democratic, the National Liberal Party and the Democratic Party have not changed the situation. (The RMDSz, which represents the Hungarian minority, was only asked to join to improve the coalition’s image.) It cannot be denied that some of the new government’s measures were truly important and established a break with earlier conditioned reflexes but, characteristically, they were regularly forced to make use of the not exactly democratic instrument of emergency government regulations. The ideal of an integrated, authoritarian, oppressive, closed and severely centralized national state, #3 rooted in the 19th century, manifest in a consolidated form after 1918, and taken to its ultimate consequences under Communism, stood in the way of every reform that wished to weaken the economic and administrative powers of the state. And, unfortunately, not only under the post-communist administration, when Adrian Marino expressed the views I have mentioned; the questioning of this ideal has since maintained its status as a taboo.

The situation is dramatic. PDSR, the former governing party, and the former members of the nomenklatura who have found a home in it, only pretend to being European, something made obvious by their collaboration with extremists, parties that are openly anti-Western, who advocate fascist methods in dealings with the Hungarian, Gypsy and Jewish minorities. The anti-communist Democratic Convention, however, is distinguished by its impotence. Political leaders, veterans of the prisons of the fifties, were unable to rid themselves of political élites who had been moulded by the Ceaus¸escu period, relying instead on so-called functional élites, committed to democracy, who are interested not merely in Euro-Atlantic rhetoric but in comprehensive economic reform and in the dismantling of étatism. The latter imagined that the victory of the Democratic Convention was their own, but now, in a state of shock, are forced to experience that the present power élite is behaving just as the earlier. The political scientist Emil Hurzeanu maintains that the élites of the Ceaus¸escu era dominate the whole of the political spectrum, that, in this respect, the state of affairs in Romania resembles that in Russia rather than that in Hungary, the Czech Republic or Poland. #4

[..]

In my earlier article I already referred to historical and present facts which, in the words of Sorin Mitu, the Cluj historian and author of a recent work on the cultural identity of Transylvanian Romanians, #5 mean that the existing centralized political structures are out of keeping with both historical traditions and European norms. As regards the history of Transylvania, Sorin Mitu and I are largely in agreement, nor does he object to devolution in principle, it is, however—in the absence of the needed foundations—out of place in Romania. Just about nothing of Transylvania’s Central European heritage survives. For that very reason there is nothing left to federalize.

Mitu’s arguments are weighty and should be heeded. No doubt, the idea of an autonomous Transylvania was abandoned in the 19th century, first by Hungarians, then by Romanians, in neither case, however, did this lead to a denial that there was something special about the region. It is also a fact that, by now, thanks to the manipulations governing attitudes to history in Romania, the priority and otherness which Transylvania, as a political and administrative entity going back at least to the 16th century, enjoyed vis ŕ vis a Romanian state which de facto did not antedate the union of the Danubian Principalities in 1859, was successfully obliterated. In Romanian symbolic geography Transylvania is one of the Romanian lands, thus retrospectively an indivisible part of Romania. A Romania of the mind was created which is homogenous and therefore cannot be reconciled, in theory or practice, with notions of federalism or even devolution. Finally, the ravages of the communist system, and the sociological state of a levelled society no doubt favour an étatist collectivism fed by general, uniform and national pauperization rather than a decentralization that presumes the powerful structures of civil society. #6

Nothing, however, lasts for ever in history and politics. Given that traditions of autonomy that were of great importance amongst the Romanians of Transylvania could suffer a sea change, the present situation, which appears hopeless, could alter too. What is specifically Transylvanian and thus possibly influential on the political and administrative structure is not some kind of geo-cultural essence, but something protean, undergoing constant change, that can be deliberately abandoned but just as deliberately renewed.

It is obvious that Romania no longer offers those advantages which, when feeling threatened in one way or another by Hungarians, made adherence to an integrated nation-state not only acceptable but expressly advantageous for Transylvanian Romanians. They have done away with the handicaps under which they laboured vis ŕ vis the Hungarians in Transylvania, they no longer need the crutches which Bucharest, as the centralized state, offers. The latter has changed into a burden.

GDP in Transylvania is at least twice that of the rest of the country. Ilie Serbanescu, a respected economist and Minister for Reforms in the Ciorbea government, draws the surprising consequences, which are, however, typical of the present situation in Romania, that "the conditions are given for the loss of Transylvania." Serbanescu no doubt rightly argues that "given growing differences in economic levels, centrifugal tendencies will not be reduced but will be amplified", but only those who basically support an obsolete, overcentralized and all-powerful state will interpret such seemingly unavoidable centrifugal tendencies as a signal of approaching catastrophe, advising the Bucharest government that, having lost the economic battle, "it is a national duty to make use of every possible weapon to make sure that Transylvania is set within the framework of an integrated Romanian nation-state". #7

The perception of Romanians in Transylvania is entirely different. What they object to is that they pay too much into central funds. Sabin Gherman, who lives in Cluj, the spiritual centre of Transylvania, shocked Romanian public opinion with a manifesto. #8 He is indignant because less is spent on Transylvania as a whole than on Bucharest alone. #9 Every survey so far has shown that Transylvanians systematically favour less state and more individual initiative, a smaller role for the state in the economy and more private property, and as far-ranging privatization as possible. This is also expressed in political preferences. Since 1990, from election to election and in an increasing measure, Transylvanians have backed parties which urged radical reform and the liquidation of loss-making state enterprises, showing growing opposition to parties mouthing left-nationalist slogans, and showing anxiety concerning the integrity of the state and radical reforms. Recent public opinion polls also bear out this trend. They show that the allied left-nationalist opposition (PDSR, the post-communists and the Greater Romania Party) and the Government coalition (Democratic Convention, Democratic Party, RMDSz Hungarian Party) regionally relate as follows in November 1998: Wallachia 49–43, Moldavia 47–40, and Transylvania 30–59 per cent. #10

If this trend continues, than the expected opposition victory on the national level projects an unprecedented acute difference between Transylvania and the Old Kingdom. This creates an entirely new situation. What will most likely happen is what happened in Scotland after the 1987 elections when, according to David McCrone, "the division over social policy along national lines propelled Scottish opinion towards interpreting the problem in constitutional terms. #11

• 1 See Andreescu, in this issue
• 2 Marino, Adrian: Pentru Europa. Integrarea Romaniei. Aspecte Ideologica si culturale (For Europe. The integration of Romania. Ideological and Cultural Aspects), Jassy, 1995
• 3 op. cit.
• 4 Herezeanu, Emil: "The élites". 22 (Bucharest) Nov 17–23, 1998
• 5 Mitu, Sorin: Geneza identita×t¸ii nationale la roma×ni (The Genesis of National Identity Amongst Romanians), Bucharest 1997.
• 6 See Mitu, Sorin in this issue.
• 7 See Serba×nescu, Ilie: "Will Romania Lose the Political Battle in Hungary as She Has Lost the Economic One?" Adeva×rul. October 8 1998.
• 8 See Gherman, Sabin: "I Am Fed up with Romania" Monitorul de Cluj, September 17 1998.
• 9 Gherman, Sabin: "Why I Am Fed up with Romania", Transilvania Jurnal (Bras¸ov-Brassó) Nov. 14,1998
• 10 Barometrul de opinie publica Romania November 1998. A public opinion poll carried out for the Foundation for an Open Society.
• 11 McCrone, David (University of Edinburgh): "Scotland and England. Diverging Political Discourses." 1998. Paper presented to the Conference on Regionalism, Budapest, September 5–7, 1998.