Maracz: Hungarian Revival

In this chapter, we shall discuss what the Hungarians and the international community have done to oppose the Trianon configuration and what the consequences of Trianon have been. With Yalta, which was effectively a reaffirmation of Trianon, there was little prospect of being given the chance to raise the Hungarian problem. After the Hungarian uprising of 1956 had been quelled, in which the communist Janos Kadar had played a prominent part, his regime made clear that the affairs of the Hungarian minorities were matters of internal concern to be resolved within the socialist 'brother'states and that Hungary should no longer make any territorial claims. Until the latter half of the eighties, communist Hungary left the Hungarian minorities to fend for themselves. During the era of communist rule in Central Europe, the Hungarian national communities were hardly given a chance to air any of their grievances. Because of the fact that the communist rulers had a strong totalitarian hold on the people of the various states, which meant that there was virtually no room for manoeuvre whatsoever. In connection with the need to promote communist interests, alibi organizations such as CSEMADOK, the society of Hungarian workers in Czechoslovakia, were set up. This organization consisted of the communist cadre that adhered completely to official communist ideology and politics.

Protests launched in the communist period were, therefore, often solitary affairs, sometimes organized within the framework of the official communist body. The first and only Hungarian politician to operate within the communist hierarchy was Karoly Kiraly who had climbed within the Rumanian Communist Party (RCP) to the level of Politburo member. Ion Pacepa, former head of the Rumanian intelligence service, the Securitate, who fled to the West explained in his memoirs Red Horizons how Kiraly had

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managed to find his way into the Politburo of the RCP.186 The cunning Szekler-Hungarian had managed to catch Ceausescu's attention by organizing big bear hunts in which the 'genius', who was mad about going on shooting expeditions in the Carpathians, was allowed to shoot the biggest bear. In 1972, Kiraly wrote a letter to the Rumanian Foreign Affairs minister in which he protested about the way in which Hungarians domiciled in Rumania were discriminated against and afterwards he resigned as member of the Politburo. In the summer and early autumn of 1977, Kiraly repeated his protests. He wrote letters to Politburo members and to the Central Committee in which he outlined his grievances on the oppression of Hungarians living in Rumania and listed a number of recommendations which could lead to improvements in the situation. His proposals were discarded and in October 1977, Kiraly underwent a series of security police interrogations. Because of this, he subsequently decided to publish his letters in the West and in the last week of January 1978 reports of his protest were published in the international press. In reaction to this and also in order to repress the growing unrest among Hungarians in Transylvania, the Rumanian government took certain emergency steps. Rumanian army units were dropped in Marosvasarhely, the place where Kiraly lived, with instructions to find possible copies of his letters. Even though Kiraly's life was under threat and he was forced to distance himself from his letters he steadfastly held on to his convictions. In February 1978, Kiraly was banned to the little city of Karansebes. Even though he had been ordered to remain silent he still allowed himself to be interviewed by three Western correspondents and reiterated his objections. In October of that same year, Kiraly was allowed to return to Marosvasarhely where he lived in complete isolation. Until the time of the Rumanian uprising in December 1989 Kiraly remained under house arrest.187

The Hungarian from Slovakia, the geologist Miklos Duray, operated outside the communist bodies. He was one of the few people to sign Charta '77 in Slovakia. Duray set up the Committee for the Legal Protection of the Hungarian Minority

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in Czechoslovakia and between 1978 and 1988 managed, together with a small group of supporters, to map out the situation for Hungarians living in Slovakia and to regularly organize protests against their oppression. The committee's study reports and various memoranda have been collected and published under the title "The double oppression: documents on the situation of and legal protection of the Czechoslovakian Hungarians".188 Apart from containing memorandums the collection also contains reports on and protests about anti-Hungarian acts of violence such as, for instance, the actions of 8th and 9th March 1987 (p.306) directed against four Hungarian cultural institutions in Pozsony (Bratislava). In the end, Duray was sentenced to a year in prison (1984/1985) because of his activities directed at democratizing Czechoslovakia and for standing up for the rights of Hungarians. Duray wrote of his struggles as an activist in his book "Kutyaszorito" (In the Doghouse) (New York, 1983) and in "Kutyaszorito II" (In the Doghouse II), (New York, 1989), he describes his trial and time in prison.

Though the overt protests of activists such as Kiraly and Duray were rare, they were important when it came to the matter of keeping the Hungarian question alive on the international agenda. In the Cold War power constellation, the Hungarian diaspora in the free West played an important part. They were instrumental in bringing the matter of the Hungarian 'minorities' to the attention of various parliaments and the international media. In Hungarian diaspora circles different organizations have been and still are active on behalf of the Hungarian national communities. These organizations made use of the room for interpretation offered in the UN treaties for the protection of human rights and, from 1975 onwards, the Helsinki Agreement that has clauses on human rights and on the rights of national minorities. These treaties were also signed by the various communist states.

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One leading organization that supported the cause of the Hungarians in Transylvania was the Transylvanian World Federation which has its seat in Brazil and is chaired by Istvan Zolcsak. The many memoranda issued by the Transylvanian World Federation were designed to indicate that as far as human rights for the Hungarians were concerned things were not going all that well. The memoranda were aimed chiefly at the American Congress and Senate.189 At the instigation of the Transylvanian World Federation resolution H. Res 415 was passed in the House of Representatives on 1st April 1992. This resolution relating to the human rights position of Hungarians in Transylvania was supported by 35 representatives and was aimed at the Foreign Affairs commission, went as follows:

minorities living in Rumania and it requests the president and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to discuss the issue of the cultural rights and self-determination of the Transylvanian Hungarians with the Rumanian government, other governments concerned and the OSCE.

In the United States the group most actively occupied with Hungarian affairs was the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation (HHFR) situated in New York and led by Laszlo Hamos. This group, chiefly composed of second and third generation American Hungarians, managed to organize a big anti-Ceausescu demonstration near to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on 16th April 1978 which successfully ruined the Conducator's visit to America. It was largely thanks to the financial backing of the steel baron Thyssen-Bornemisza of aristrocratic Transylvanian Hungarian/German extraction that the HHFR was able to realize many of its activities. On a number of occasions, in follow up conferences that have taken place since the Helsinki Agreement, the HHFR has brought the Hungarian issue to people's attention.

In Europe, an important feat of arms was the condemnation of Rumania by the Council of Europe on 29th September 1984 in Resolution 5259. It was a resolution that heavily criticized Rumania's negative human and minority rights politics. In this resolution which had been conceived under the chairmanship of Blaauw, the Dutch delegate, the Rumanian government was called upon to "stop violating basic human rights in social, ethnic, cultural, economic and religious areas and to create an atmosphere in Rumania in which all nationalities can live without being discriminated against and are not being forced to leave their own country." Resolution 5259 which takes a critical stance on the position of all Rumania's minorities, its Hungarians, Germans, Gypsies and Jews had the following to note about the Rumanian Jews: "The emigration of Jews which has been stimulated by the Rumanian government still continues. The Rumanian Jews have been forced into urban conglomerations. This community, composed now of many aged people, is doomed to die out. Rumania, the only country in Eastern Europe that recognizes the

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state of Israel will soon be without a Jewish community. In this way, Rumania will probably inadvertently revive the fascist Iron Guard slogan of the inter-war years: "Out with the Jews, down with the Hungarians!"

The plan announced by Ceausescu to 'systematize' the Rumanian countryside aroused a storm of protest throughout the world. The Conducator's grand plan had been to flatten 8,000 villages with bulldozers and transfer the villagers to agro-industrial complexes in concrete jungles. Apart from destroying an irreplaceable part of Europe's cultural heritage such a scheme would certainly have eradicated Transylvania's Hungarian community, notably the many traditional Hungarian villages of Szeklerland. The Conducator's plan, which involved obliterating country life, had been to create a new type of socialist human being.

However, he had probably underestimated the opposition that such a bizarre plan would arouse. By 1988, it was clear that international public opinion turned firmly against such devastation of villages.190

In Hungary, it was the first time since the Second World War that people were being forced to wake up to reality and to really think about Transylvania's problems. The change was partly instigated by the many thousands of Hungarians who had fled from Transylvania to Hungary during the latter half of the eighties. Gradually, the vicissitudes and the hardships of these Hungarians living in the Rumanian 'ideal state' came to light. It was only because of the political upheavals going on at international levels that it was possible to take an official stand against the anti-Hungarian Ceausescu regime. The moves made by Gorbachev had given the moderate communist contingent in Budapest the confidence to push through their reforms, while the hardliners in Bucharest lost their hinterland. As a result, the authorities for the first time ever decided to give their support to a big demonstration against a fellow socialist state. The huge 100,000 man strong rally staged in Budapest's Heroes' Square was not only supported by

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official communist civil organizations, but also by the organizations from which later, after 1989, Hungarian political parties would emerge. In the demonstration manifesto it was stated that the participants would "implore the Hungarian government to turn to the UN for help in this tragic matter."191 The Rumanian threat to destroy Hungarian villages and the predicament of the Hungarian refugees recently arrived from Transylvania were what galvanized the Hungarians of the Western diaspora into swift action. By circulating memoranda the SOS Transylvania Geneva Committee tried to bring the plight of the Hungarians in Transylvania to the attention of representatives of the UN and the Council of Europe.

The effects resulting from the thousands of Hungarian refugees streaming out of Transylvania were not purely negative. Apart from arousing international public interest and mobilizing Hungary there were also, among the refugees, a number of intellectuals, who were able to provide insight into the situation and make rational analyses of the Rumanian danger.

Because of communism and being cut off from their fellow Hungarians in Transylvania, Hungarian intellectuals living in Budapest had become oblivious to the dangers threatening the Hungarian nation and were not able to weigh the interests involved. An important task, therefore, lay ahead for the Transylvanians. The Transylvanian Hungarian writer Istvan Kocsis, who in 1984 was forced to leave Rumania with his family, played a prominent part. In a penetratingly brilliant analysis entitled Our self-defence reflex do not let us down... (February 1988, Budapest), Kocsis got to the bottom of the Transylvanian problem and revealed how the Rumanians really view the matter.

According to Kocsis the anti-Hungarian hatred generated by the Rumanians, notably by the political leaders regardless of political affiliations stems from the fact that the Rumanians have still not come to terms with the idea that such large parts of Hungary, Transylvania and eastern East Hungary and so many Hungarians suddenly became a part of Rumania in Trianon. Rumania's political leaders know quite well that the territorial decisions made

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were unjust and they have a guilty conscience about this. The way to escape from such a burden of conscience is by immersing themselves in anti-Hungary hate campaigns and convincing themselves, and the Hungarians, that the decisions taken at Trianon were fair. This guilt is manifested in the hate campaigns that extend across the borders, in the way in which the Rumanians falsify their own history by propagating the Daco-Roman theory which Rumanian historians know to be false, in the way in which they seek to destroy Transylvania's Hungarian community and in the way in which, clinging to the tactics that 'attack is the best form of defence', the Rumanians make ever new claims on Hungarian territory. During the Ceausescu period even the poet laureate Adrian Paunescu was allowed to appear on television and loudly proclaim that Rumania claimed from Hungary the area extending as far as the river Tisza. As long as Rumanians carry on living with such feelings of guilt and with such self-deception, they will not be able to break away from this nationalistic totalitarian system. The road to democracy will, therefore, remain closed to the Rumanians and they will continue their world-wide hate campaigns directed at the Hungarians.

Kocsis proposes that if the Rumanian's depression is openly discussed this will bring salvation for Transylvania's Hungarian population. For the Rumanians this will also be the only way to break away from nationalistic totalitarian dictatorship whatever its name or guise. The Rumanians can only put an end to anti-Hungarian politics and to having to resort to falsifying history and telling other lies to escape from their remorse if they adopt an attitude of openness. The advice Kocsis gave the Hungarians of Hungary (in 1988!) was almost prophetic: "The Hungarians of Hungary should delay no longer. Do they want to wait until anti-Hungarian pogroms commence in Rumania or large-scale riots. The least they can do, if no one else saves the Hungarians of Transylvania from ruin is to step in and help. This is the burning question that is to shape the future of the Hungarian nation."

Those who defended the interests of the Transylvanian Hungarians and Germans believed that with the dawn of the Rumanian politics

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of ethnocide by the Ceausescu regime the time was ripe for calling for Transylvania to become independent. Transylvania would have to become a communal state for the Rumanians, Hungarians, Germans and other nationalities living there. In a study entitled Transylvania: Analyses and Proposals for Solutions, published by the International Transylvanian Committee in Vienna that is presided over by the Austrian lawyer Eva M_ria Barki, a constitution for an independent Transylvanian state is worked on. According to Dr. Barki the right to self-determination is a general international right that can become a secession right, if national communities live in states that discriminate against them so that in the end the government of the nation state no longer represents all its citizens. In the study many examples are given of cases where self-determination rights have been adopted in the form of secession or autonomy. Even in Switzerland, one of the wealthiest and most stable democracies in the world, this right has been exercised. The French-speaking community within the German-speaking canton of Berne broke away during the course of the seventies and set up its own French-speaking canton of Jura. Partly on the basis of historical arguments, Dr. Barki urges that the right to self-determination should apply to Transylvania and its constitutional nations including the Hungarians, Rumanians and Germans. The oldest European right to autonomy was that granted to the German Saxons of Transylvania in 1224 in a document known as the Andreanum. In 1293, the Vlachs (the Rumanian's ancestors) were officially recognized as a separate nationality. The federalization of Rumania and the cantonization of Transylvania are not just empty slogans, this is reinforced by the way in which votes are distributed there. During Rumanian elections it has been evident, time and again, that Transylvanians vote differently from the rest of the country, from the parts on the other side of the Carpathians. In the parliamentary and presidential election of May 1990, Iliescu, the presidential candidate, and his crypto-communist National Salvation Front were able to win the election largely because of the support obtained from voters in Old Rumania. In the study carried out by the International Transylvanian Committee it was proposed that, taking into consideration the ethnic dispersal of the national communities,

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Transylvania should be divided into four autonomous areas as follows: (1) Szeklerland, (2) the border areas with Hungary densely populated by Hungarians, (3) remaining areas and (4) the Banat region.

In August 1989, a summit was called between the Hungarian party leader Karoly Grosz and the Rumanian dictator Ceausescu because of the tension being generated by the Hungarian refugees and the plans to flatten Hungarian villages in Transylvania. The Arad summit was a failure. The loss of face suffered by the Hungarian delegation turned out to be fatal for Grosz, the party leader. It marked the end of his political career. It was only then, during the summit in Arad, that the Hungarians started to realize how really threatened they were by Rumania. Matyas Szuros, the communist supporting reforms who had also been present in Arad admitted in an interview in 1990 that during the negotiations Ceausescu had tried to intimidate the Hungarian delegation. Szuros alleged that Ceausescu had said at one point: "I can produce anything, even nuclear weapons" and that when nobody had reacted to the remark Ceausescu repeated his threat. So, the Conducator was even prepared to use nuclear weapons against the Hungarians ...192

Since the fall of the wall in Berlin, the Hungarian national communities of Subcarpathia, Rumania, Lesser Yugoslavia (Greater Serbia) and Slovakia have organized themselves into parties and interest groups. These parties and organizations are made up of Hungarians of all persuasions and from all political sides who share the one objective of wanting to preserve Hungarian national identity. Day by day, they give myriad signs of wanting to fight the injustice that is being done to them. In recent years, the Hungarian national communities have produced hundreds of kilos of petitions, memoranda, protest letters etc. addressed to the governments of the countries in which they live, the Hungarian government, the great powers and to the

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international gremia in which they make mention of systematic discrimination and repression, of grave violations of human rights and even of the use of violence and terror towards them. In all these letters etc. pleas are made, often in vain, for the harshness of their cruel lot to be eased. The Hungarian national communities have not only put all their energy into fighting injustice and inhumanity, but they have also tried to give shape to their emancipation process in which autonomy is central. The parties of the Hungarian national communities have made a programme of the following points.

All these communities see themselves as an integral part of the Hungarian nation. In the respective countries in which they live, they wish to be treated as equal partners. This implies that Hungarians claim collective rights in accordance with the recommendations that have been made by international organizations, such as in the last document of the OSCE's follow-up conference on the human dimension in Copenhagen in June 1990, the European charter on regional and minority languages, the European charter on local self-government of the Council of Europe (1990), Resolution 1201 of the Council of Europe (1993) and statement no. 47 of the UN General Assembly, 1992 on the rights of people who belong to a national, ethnic, religious or language minority.

In repudiating the national unitary state the Hungarian communities, thus, automatically applied themselves to the democratization, federalization and regionalization of the countries in which they live. They aimed at achieving a federal state structure of the type that exists in Switzerland and Belgium. The Hungarian national communities, thus, wish to be seen as 'constitutional nation' partners. The partner-nation concept was conceived by Imre Borbely, RMDSZ member of parliament, who introduced the idea at his party's first national congress in Marosvsarhely. Since then, the claim for Hungarian autonomy for the Hungarian national communities has been developing at a rapid pace.

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The Subcarpathian Hungarians first made public their claim for autonomy in the referendum of 1st December 1991. Where the district of Beregszasz (Beregovo) is concerned the Ukrainian state still has not recognized territorial autonomy. The KMKSZ, the organization which represents the interests of the Hungarian community in Subcarpathia, keeps applying the necessary pressure. On 28th April -199-2, the council in Beregszasz passed a bill laying down the legal principles for the creation of an autonomous Hungarian district. The enactment was also supported by the Rumanian and Ukrainian delegates of the Beregszasz council. The council has, furthermore, made an urgent appeal to parliamentary representatives in Kiev to adopt this bill. At the moment, things have come to a standstill, but this does not mean that the drive to regenerate Hungarian identity in Subcarpathia has in any way weakened.

On 2nd March 1995, the Hungarian Ukrainian parliamentary representative, Mihaly Toth from Beregszasz, managed to get the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev to agree to restoring all the original Hungarian place names in the three Subcarpathian districts of Beregszasz (Beregovo), Nagyszollos (Vinogradov) and Ungvar (Uzsgorod). Hence-forth the Hungarian place names will be the officially recognized names instead of the Ukrainian equivalents or translations.

The Szekler-Hungarians planned to hold a people's meeting and a referendum on 19th October 1991 in Agyagfalva (Lutita) on autonomy for Szeklerland. This was the place where, in 1506, the Szekler-Hungarian's ancestors had decided during a people's meeting that Szeklerland was rightfully theirs and that, according to ancient royal privileges, the Szekler-Hungarians of Terra Sicolorum were entitled to aristocratic status. Until 1848, the Szekler-Hungarians had a separate constitutional status based on a system of self-government organized in territorial districts known as szekek 'seats'. The initiator of this autonomy for Szeklerland and the organizer of the gathering in Agyagfalva was the art historian, Adam Katona originating from Szekelyudvarhely (Odoreiu Secuiesc), the 'capital' of Szeklerland. In an interview with

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the Hungarian language newspaper Erdelyi Naplo 'Transylvanian Diary' (8th, 15th, 23rd and 30th January, 1992) Katona explained why they were unable to go ahead with the planned referendum.

The first attack to their initiative came, strangely enough, not from Bucharest but from Budapest. On 7th October, Radio Kossuth began a smear campaign against the organizers of the referendum. The pattern followed was familiar. It was the Foreign Affairs minister, Jeszenszky, supported by the former Foreign Affairs minister and the prime minister of the day, Gyula Horn who led the attack. Katona and the other organizers of the initiative were stigmatized as 'radicals' and 'nationalists' and were excluded from both the Hungarian and the Rumanian media. At the same time, other Transylvanian Hungarians labelled as 'moderates' were pushed forward, the same representatives that were later to become the 'Neptun trio' and who would later negotiate in secret with Rumanian leaders without receiving a mandate from the RMDSZ. It was only after Hungary had opened up its attack on the Szekler-Hungarians that they fell prey to Rumanian politics, notably that of the extreme nationalist organizations; Romania Mare and Vatra Romanaesca. In the end, on 14th October 1991, Katona and his friends decided to cancel the meeting and the referendum. When asked to comment Katona said: "Since the crisis in Yugoslavia had led to a civil war, we decided that the tanks lined up in the Agyagfalva region, the machine-gun emplacements and the larger and smaller Rumanian army units that had been patrolling for days on end in our woods constituted a real danger. Therefore, we decided to put off the planned rally. Our minimal goal, however, namely that of making known our demands for autonomy for Szeklerland had been achieved, thanks to the 'help' of our opponents and enemies."

Since then, there has been much discussion on Hungarian autonomy in Transylvania. The RMDSZ declared on 25th October 1992 in Kolozsvar (Cluj) that the struggle for internal self-determination is a political doctrine. The text of this declaration reads as follows:

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Maracz: Hungarian Revival