The hard core of the Romanian-Hungarian dispute on minority status was composed of both different theoretical and practical approaches. The most general theoretical controversies regarded national identity either as "national" or "cultural'.
The Romanian side argues that ethnic consciousness is a cultural phenomenon, and consequently the Hungarians in Transylvania share only a common culture with Hungarians from Hungary; in this perspective Hungarian population from Transylvanian is an "ethnic minority" #1;. On the other side, for the Hungarian government, the national consciousness is rather a political phenomenon, which is expressed in an identity with a common government; in this different perspective the Hungarians from Transylvania are a "national" minority. That is why Ceausescu did not recognise the minorities as belonging to other nations. He claimed that because a nation is created by centuries of' "living together", the Hungarians, the Germans, Serbs and other groups are part of the Romanian nation. On the other hand, Mátyás Szúrös, the leading figure of Hungarian diplomacy in the late 80's, expressed the opposite: "the Hungarians living outside our borders, but mainly within the Carpathian Basin, constitute a part of the Hungarian nation. They have every right to expect Hungary to feel responsibility for their fate and to speak up for them when they are objects of discrimination". This different approach had profound consequences: the question of the links between Hungary and Hungarian minority in Romania is a very sensitive issue for Romanians. On the other hand, Hungarians tried to juridical legitimate it, claiming that the nationality question was not exclusively an internal affair, since it had human rights and international aspects as well #2;.
Another important aspect is the issue of official and maternal language, heighten by the fact that nationalism has a very strong linguistic dimension in Eastern Europe. Romanians defined bilingualism as a characteristic of the nationalities and required the study of Romanian as a second language #3;. N. Ceausescu repeatedly claimed that "we cannot set up special institutes of physics, chemistry, or other specialities for young people who do not know Romanian". If national minorities will not learn Romanian, then they will be "in a position of inequality compared to Romanian young people" because they would not be able to have "free access to all the forms of higher education". "Romanian is not a foreign language to any youth living in Romania! it is the language of our socialist society and it must be learned by all Romanian citizens". This request was received with frustration and intense resentments by the Hungarian minority, who in turn advocates for "the introduction of mandatory bilingualism in Transylvania, with administrative and judicial proceedings conducted in the Romanian and Hungarian language" #4;.
The other controversy regarded the individual rights versus collective rights. For Hungarians from Transylvania, "Nationality rights...are essentially collective rights, and do not exist in any other way, because the nationality is a form a communal existence. The restriction of these collective rights to individual rights meant practically the deprivation of the nationalities of any rights" #5;. Romanians stressed that Hungarians, as citizens, enjoyed the same rights as all the other citizens. These rights are not considered sufficient by the Hungarian minorities. National autonomy and the free use of language in all kind of institutions are considered by the Hungarians from Transylvania the prerequisite of any form of equality. Why are Hungarians from Transylvania so insistent in these collective rights? First of all, because it is also true that minorities are by their condition disadvantaged. In some situations, the changes generated by social mobility forced them to be bilinguals. As M.E. Fischer pointed out, even if 20% of the publications would be in Hungarians, the Romanians will still have four times more available publications. The Hungarian officials pointed to a growing influx of Romanian workers into traditionally Magyar districts. They complained that qualified Magyars were systematically assigned jobs in purely Romanian regions and considered that Hungarians were under-represented in the central and local administration. And they accused the regime of practising a policy of cultural "Romanisation" by increasingly restricting the use of the Hungarian language and by assailing the minority's educational system. Television programs in Hungarian were discontinued in 1985; contacts between Magyars in Transylvania and in Hungary were discouraged; and the importation of newspapers and books from Hungary has been severely curtailed.
Romanian government always rejected
these accusations, responded with statistics and also pointed
out that mobility of labour is a characteristic of any modern
society and that Hungarians enjoy the same rights as Romanians.
According to official statistics, but which were by no means convincing,
in 1987 there were 32 publications with a total print of 84,000,000
per annum, one opera house, 10 theatres and more than some 263,000
high-school students were taught in Hungarian. #6;
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