Historiography played a major role in the process of state and nation building in Eastern Europe (Seton-Watson, 1922), a conclusion enforced by the students of the Hungarian and Romanian case. Historicism, that is the important role played by the historiography in building the nation and creating national symbols is a general characteristic of Eastern Europe's nationalism. But in the communist period, historiography was also the main ideological battlefield and a direct source of legitimacy for political power (Verdery 1991); ideas about nation and identity were produced and reproduced in historiography as central political elements. In the Romanian-Hungarian conflict, historians were responsible for myth making. National utopias and ideals of the Romanians and the Hungarians are overlapping, having Transylvania as the common ground, considered as having made a crucial contribution to the autonomous survival of both nations: Hungarians consider that in Transylvania, the Hungarian culture and the Hungarian political elite could survive and perpetuate themselves in a difficult period of Hungarian history; Romanians consider that Transylvania is the core of the Romanian land and the cradle of the Romanian civilisation, the demographic reservoir of the Romanian nation. In both cases, Transylvania took a mythical significance that gives it a much more importance than a rational analysis would confer it. This mythical approach of the problem, coupled with political interests and made impossible a rational resolution of the conflict.
The historiographical conflict refers to all major events of the national history of Romanians and Hungarians:
a) the chronological pre-eminence in Transylvania #1;. Being the first on this land became in a mythical understanding of history synonymous with being the legitimate master. In this perspective, all the other minorities which came later become latecomers, aliens, foreigners and even intruders.
b) the place of Transylvania within the medieval Hungarian kingdom. The Hungarian position was explained by László Makkai: "Transylvania's historical position may be summed up as follows: it is not the question of Transylvania and Hungary, but of Transylvania in Hungary" #2;. In opposition with this view, Romanian historians claim that Transylvania was never properly a part of the Hungarian kingdom at all. Consequently, they stress the role of the Romanian people in the shaping of Transylvania's development, whereas the Hungarian historians focused on the primacy of Hungarian influence in the region, arguing that the Romanian contribution to the region's institutional development was slight.
The divergence of opinion culminates with the interpretation given to the post-First World War status-quo and political development. Hungarian historians usually regard the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a possible model of coexistence, in opposition with the Greater Romania, seen as a state which failed to develop a concept of common identity for all its citizens #3;. On the other side, Romanian historians consider the achievement of Greater Romania as the result of a necessary and objective process of historical development. This conflict was exacerbated in the communist period as the history became much more vulnerable to abuses; the historiographical conflict was becoming very important in the 1980's, exceeding the limits of an intellectual dispute; the highly political meanings of controversies went far beyond the former period. New myth and traumatic memories were created or invoked by the communist historiography, having as playground the Second World War experience. In its August and September issues, the Hungarian monthly Kritika published wartime documents that were subsequently deemed offensive by Romanian historians. On 6 and 20 December 1984 Romania Literara, the Romanian Writers' Union's weekly, criticised the Kritika articles for their alleged "fascist, revanchist, anti-Romanian ideas". On January 1986, Romanian journals, having alleged that Horthy's regime was being rehabilitated in Hungary, described the "cruelties" of the Hungarian administration in Northern Transylvania between 1940 and 1944. A book on the latter subject by the historians A. Fãtu and I. Muºat received wide publicity in the Romanian media #4;.
Let's take now some other relevant examples and to consider the political conclusions rather that the polemical content:
On December 5 1986, a long article was published by the cultural magazine Romania Literara, under the title "Revisionists and Chauvinists at Work Again", by two party activists and historians, Stefan Stefanescu and Nicolae Petreanu. Their article was in response to a piece entitled "Independent Transylvania" that had appeared in the Spanish issue of Hungarian magazine, number 3, 1985. The Hungarian article was written by the Hungarian Petter Ruffy, born in Transylvania, and dealt with the Transylvanian history from 1541 to 1687. The dispute gained present political relevance, because the Romanian historians blamed Ruffy of having "performed a slalom through the entire history of Transylvania, a genuine race of errors" #5;. According to them, during the Austro-Hungarian dualism (1867-1918), Transylvania was "forcefully incorporated into the Hungarian state, losing its political and administrative identity". and the Hungarian elite of the time "carried on a policy of oppression and forced assimilation, an overt and brutal Magyarization of the Romanians." #6; The article's conclusions, extensively reproduced by Agerpress (Romanian News Agency) commentary in English, stated that: "Every honest person, as well as the entire public opinion in our country have the right to put the following legitimate question: why and for whose benefit are circulated old chauvinist, revisionist, revanchist theses taken from the arsenal of the inter-war Horthyist propaganda? Obviously, such materials reactivate noxious, anti-Romanian theses in flagrant contradiction nor only with historical truth but also with the principles of normal relations among states and nations." #7;; And they finished by adding that "not only the Peace Treaty of 1947, but the entire system of international security, too, recognises the immutable character of the post-war boundaries, including those between Romania and Hungary" #8;.
On 6 December 1985, one day after this article had appeared, the cultural magazine Contemporanul #9; carried a piece under the title "Hungarian Academy of Sciences Publication Harbours Revisionist Ideas", by Constantin Botoran and Ion Calafeteanu. The publication mentioned was Hungarian History -World History, a collection of studies published in Budapest and written by Peter Gosztony, an émigré historian #10;. In the words of his Romanian reviewers, Gosztony displayed, especially in the study "The Hungarian Army During the Second World War", "the well-known arsenal of misinformation: insinuations, truncated quotations, ambiguities", and had a strange amnesia regarding the Vienna Dictate#11;. Their conclusion was in the same spirit of the earlier article: how the publication of such "deviationist, chauvinist, and revisionist materials"#12;; had been possible, especially under the aegis of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. They insinuated that communist cultural institutions were collaborating with anti communist émigrés in an attempt to rehabilitate the Horthy's regime, including its participation in World War II on the side of the Axis powers.
The tone and undertones of this polemic attracted the attention of the Western media#13;, which was unanimous in considering this Romanian criticism the sharpest in recent years.
The most spectacular example of the historiographical conflict in the 1980's was the launching in 1987 by the Hungarian Academy Publishing House of a three-volume "History of Transylvania", whose editor in chief was the Hungary's Minister of Culture, Béla Köpeczi. A second edition and foreign language editions were announced. This fact was bitterly denounced by the Romanian authorities, which stressed the involvement of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. As a response, N. Ceausescu mobilised the whole historical community to react at this "revanchist and anti-Romanian campaign"#14;. He established two historical commissions, which worked in the Central Committee building, for two years, to write a replay. His great personal interest in it is demonstrated by the fact that he received monthly reports on the commissions' progress.
In spite of its importance, the historiographical dispute was not the object, but rather the vehicle of the Romanian-Hungarian conflict. The rules of the communist diplomacy did not allow the direct expression of different opinions between Warsaw Pact member states beyond historical polemics.
*
But in the 1980's not only the intensity and terrain of the disputes have changed, but even the nature of the controversies. In the former period Romanian-Hungarian disputes were mainly related to foreign policy and ideology, and generally coincided with the Romanian-Soviet disputes, as part of inter-communist diplomatic crisis. But in the eighties the disputes were focused on the status of Hungarian minority from Transylvania and were turned into a very sharp ideological conflict. Let's take two statements for expressing this major change. On 22 November 1971, AFP quoted Hungarian Foreign Minister J. Peter saying at a Press Conference in Bucharest that the most important points of Hungary's foreign policy were: the unity of the socialist countries, the establishment and the development of relations between all countries and the "guarantee of European security"#15;. In 1985, Mátyás Szúrös, the leading figure of Hungarian diplomacy in the late 80's, expressed very clearly that: "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"#16;. I have already referred to this gradual process of transforming the minority concern into a fundamental principle of Hungarian diplomacy: from the Kádár's theory: "minorities as bridges", to the "double bound responsibility", culminating with the introduction of this principle in a 1990 Amendment to the Hungarian Constitution. This is not to say that the Hungarian concern for the Hungarian minority was not constant, but in the former period it was disguised and never directly expressed. The change occurred gradually: the talks were more and more focused on such minorities issues as cultural exchanges, border traffic and visas, and finally to political aspects. I see this policy as being full of hesitations and incertitude.
Because the dispute on the status
of Hungarian minority in Romania is the hard core of the Romanian-Hungarian
dispute, I consider that an extensive review of the Hungarian-Romanian
controversies on the status of minorities in Romania could be
very relevant for our analysis.
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