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Romanianization is the series of policies aimed toward ethnic assimilation implemented by the Romanian authorities during the 20th and 21st century. The most noteworthy policies were those aimed at the Hungarian minority in Romania, Jews and as well the Ukrainian minority in Bukovina and Bessarabia. [1] [2] [3]
After the end of World War I, on 1 December 1918, the Romanian National Council (elected representatives of the Romanian population) and soon afterwards, the representatives of the German population had decided to unify with Romania. The decision was contested by the Hungarian minority. The Hungarian–Romanian War of 1918–1919 established Romanian control over Transylvania, while the Treaty of Trianon of 1920 determined the Romanian border with the new Hungarian state. However, Transylvania had a large Hungarian minority of 25.5%, according to the 1920 census. A portion of them fled to Hungary after the union; [4] however, most of them remained in Romania, and by the 1930s, their number increased to 26.7% of the whole Transylvanian population. The increase in the proportion of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania was induced by the immigration of the Hungarians from Hungary and by the significant improvement of living standards of the Hungarian minority in Romania compared with those of the interwar Hungarian population. While Romania included large national minorities, the 1923 Constitution declared the country to be a nation-state, following the French model which was popular in many European nations at that time.
After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the post-war mass actions undertaken by the Romanian authorities were primarily directed against the Hungarian aristocracy and, at times, the Jews. [5] The takeover did not happen without impacting the cultural and economic life of the Hungarians. While, in accordance with the Agricultural Act of 1921, a number of Hungarian estates and lands were confiscated, the land reform openly favored the Romanians, the national group which used to be the victims of the unjust land allocation systems in place during Hungarian rule.
Although Romania won the war, the anti-Hungarian sentiments were not remitted. During the 1930s, in response to Hungarian irredentism, anti-revisionist demonstrations began in Romania, [6] supported by Nationalist newspapers like Universul. After a particularly violent protest in Cluj, Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu officially condemned the events in Bucharest newspapers. [7]
In August 1940, during World War II, Northern Transylvania was annexed by Hungary as a result of the Second Vienna Award, leaving Southern Transylvania to Romania. After the coup d'état of 23 August 1944, Romania left the Axis and joined the Allies, and, as such, fought together with the Soviet Union's Red Army against Nazi Germany and Hungary, regaining Northern Transylvania. During the fall of 1944, after the withdrawal of the Hungarian military forces and administration from Transylvania, the Székely Land was engaged and pillaged by the Romanian Gendarmerie and volunteers. However, on 12 November 1944, the Soviets expelled the returning Romanian authorities from Northern Transylvania with reference to the massacres committed by members of Iuliu Maniu's so-called Maniu Guard, and the Romanian administration was not allowed to return until the communist-led government of Petru Groza was formed on 6 March 1945. [8] The Hungarian-Romanian conflicts in 1940 and 1944 are still controversial.
From 1947, the Romanian authorities gradually eliminated the wartime Hungarian institutions, after the Treaty of Trianon borders had been restored at the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947. However, Hungary was a Communist country as well; after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Hungarians in Transylvania were often accused of separatism and revisionism, [9] and the majority of Hungarian intellectual and spiritual leaders, including Catholic bishop Áron Márton, were arrested and imprisoned for years. On the other hand, during the Communist era, the former civil organization possibilities of the interwar period were eliminated.
After 1948, the industrialization of towns doubled or even tripled the number of inhabitants in some urban areas, most of the newcomers being ethnic Romanians from the rural areas. The urbanization policy, a natural phenomenon tied to economic development and the intention of transforming a predominantly agrarian country into an industrialized one, was followed throughout Romania, including in areas inhabited by minorities.
By the late 1950s, the regime of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej increasingly manipulated Romanian nationalism as a popular legitimizing device, applying more repressive policies toward the Hungarian minority. [10] After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Magyar Autonomous Region was dissolved[ dubious – discuss ] and most key posts were filled by loyal Romanians. [10]
In 1959, the Hungarian university in Cluj was merged with the Romanian one to become Babeș-Bolyai University, an almost exclusively Romanian-language institution. [11] The event was marked by the suicide of several Hungarian professors. [11] The Romanianization of education had begun earlier, in 1958, with the forced merger of Magyar primary schools with Romanian ones. [11] The Csángós, for their part, lost their last Hungarian school in 1958. [11]
After Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power in 1965, the assimilationist drive was pursued with new vigor. [12] The remaining minority "privileges" were lost; Hungarian representation in the local bureaucracies was limited to the proportion of Hungarians in the total population. [12] Mass resettlement of Romanians into Transylvania took place. [12] Hungarian intellectuals were coerced into leaving Transylvania and were compelled to take jobs in non-Hungarian areas which also contributed to Romanianization. [12]
According to census data, the Hungarian population of Transylvania decreased from 25.5% in 1920 to 19.6% in 2002. Changes were more significant in cities/larger settlements where Hungarians used to be the majority, especially in Northern Transylvanian cities such as Oradea and Cluj-Napoca.
Romanianization of the Transylvanian population was also affected by the fact that 300,000 Germans emigrated to West Germany. The West German state paid Romania the equivalent of US$2,632 per ethnic German emigrant, as of 1983. [13] Also, about 50,000 Jews who survived the Holocaust emigrated to Israel on similar terms. These mass emigrations were, however, an example of positive discrimination towards the German and Jewish populations, as the rest of the Transylvanian population (Romanians, Hungarians, Romas) had no opportunity to take part in this economically-driven emigration.
Romanianization was less sustained in the compact Székely areas of south-eastern Transylvania (the Székely Land), where in 2002, Hungarians made up around 61% of the population. The capital city of the former Magyar Autonomous Region (covering mostly the Székely areas) is an exception: the percentage of Hungarians in Târgu Mureş decreased to 46%, as the industrialization of the city led many people from the surrounding rural areas (largely Romanian) to move into the city.
In the aftermath of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, ethnic-based political parties were constituted by both the Hungarians, who founded the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, and by the Romanian Transylvanians, who founded the Romanian National Unity Party. Ethnic conflicts, however, never occurred on a significant scale, even though some violent clashes, such as the Târgu Mureș events of March 1990, did take place shortly after the fall of the Ceaușescu regime.
In 1995, a basic treaty on the relations between Hungary and Romania was signed. In the treaty, Hungary renounced all territorial claims to Transylvania, and Romania reiterated its respect for the rights of its minorities. Relations between the two countries improved as Romania and Hungary became members of the European Union in the 2000s.
The Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) is the major representative of Hungarians in Romania, and is a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. The aim of the UDMR is to achieve local government, cultural and territorial autonomy and the right to self-determination for Hungarians. UDMR is a member of the European Democrat Union (EDU) and the European People's Party (EPP). Since 1996, the UDMR has been a member or supporter of every governmental coalition.
Political agreements have brought the gradual implementation of Hungarian in everyday life: Public Administration Law 215/2002 stipulates "the use of national minority languages in public administration in settlements where minorities exceed 20% of the population"; minority ethnics will receive a copy of the documents in Romanian and a translation in their language; however, official documents are preserved by the local administration in Romanian only; local administration will provide inscriptions for the names of localities and public institutions under their authority, and display public interest announcements in the native language of the citizens of the respective ethnic minority under the same 20% rule.
Even though Romania co-signed the European laws for protecting minorities' rights, the implementation has not proved satisfactory to all members of the Hungarian community. There is a movement by Hungarians both for an increase in autonomy and distinct cultural development. Initiatives proposed by various Hungarian political organizations include the creation of an "autonomous region" in the counties that form the Székely region ( Székelyföld ), roughly corresponding to the territory of the former Magyar Autonomous Region, as well as the historical Székely Land that had been abolished by the Hungarian government in the second half of the 19th century, and the re-establishment of an independent state-funded Hungarian-language university.
However, the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania has been seen as a model of cultural and ethnic diversity in the Balkan area: [14] In an address to the American people, President Bill Clinton asked in the midst of the air war in Kosovo: Who is going to define the future of this part the world... Slobodan Milošević, with his propaganda machine and paramilitary forces which compel people to give up their country, identity, and property, or a state like Romania which has built a democracy respecting the rights of ethnic minorities? [15]
The process is, with a lower intensity, active even today, irrespective of the political affiliation of the current government, partly because each party uses the ethnic minorities as scapegoats for their own electoral benefit. The measures include:
In June 2019, a Romanian crowd broke into the former Austro-Hungarian military cemetery in Valea Uzului, despite heavy police presence and a human chain of ethnic Hungarians protesting peacefully. The cemetery was established in 1917 by Austrians and Hungarians as the burial place for the fallen heroes of WWI battles, and has also been used during WWII for the same purpose. [25] The local council in Dormănești, a town of 8,600 inhabitants located in Bacău County and which does not have jurisdiction over the cemetery, began a so-called “renovation” on the cemetery grounds, erecting concrete crosses and a memorial to Romanian war heroes that are in fact buried in the neighbouring former village of Poiana Uzului. The council of Dormănești, however, scheduled the inauguration of the newly and illegally erected Romanian war memorial. Eager to protect the burial site of their fallen heroes, some 1,000 ethnic Hungarians formed a human chain in silent prayer around the graveyard. Despite police presence, several from the Romanian crowd eventually broke through the police cordon and the fence and tore open the cemetery gate. Some members of the Hungarian group were physically attacked and injured. The Romanian Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Defense have said that the new crosses and memorial violate the law. [26] [27] [28]
The territories of Bukovina (today split between Romania and Ukraine) and Bessarabia (today by 2/3 in the republic of Moldova and 1/3 in Ukraine), were historically populated by Moldovans and Ukrainians for hundreds of years.
In 1775, Bukovina was annexed by the Habsburg monarchy, which offered certain currency in the public life for the two nations, [29] however the general policy on churches and education disfavored the Christian Orthodox population. [30] Austrian control favored immigration to develop the economy of the region. [31] [32] Due to Bukovina being administratively linked to the province of Galicia, the ethnic composition of the province was altered by waves of Ruthenian (Ukrainian), German and Jewish immigrants. [29] [31] According to Keith Hitchins, [31] "In 1774 the estimated population was 75000; in 1810 it was 198,000, and in 1848 378,000. The changes in the province's ethnic composition were dramatic. In 1774 the Romanians constituted an overwhelming majority, roughly 64,000 to 8,000 Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and 3,000 others. By 1810 the Romanian share had fallen from 85 per cent to 75 per cent (150,000 to 48,000 non-Romanians), and in 1848 there were 209,000 Romanians (55 per cent), 109,000 Ukrainians (29 per cent) and 60,000 others (16 per cent). The Jewish population rose from 526 in 1774 to 11,600 in 1848."
In 1918, following the collapse of Austria-Hungary, control over the whole of Bukovina fell under the Kingdom of Romania; same situation happens in Bessarabia after the relinquishment of Russian Empire. The takeover was followed by the policy of Romanianization of ethnic minorities, mostly Ukrainians, pursued by the Romanian authorities. The policies were built on an increasing sentiment spread in Romanian media and historic works that all of Bukovina was inherently a Romanian ethnic territory. Ion Nistor, a prominent Romanian historian and one of the most vocal proponents of Greater Romanian nationalism, [33] [34] was made a rector of the University of Cernăuţi (Chernivtsi), the main university of the province. Enrollment of Ukrainians in the university fell from 239 out of 1671 in 1914 to 155 out of 3,247 in 1933, while Romanian enrollment in the same period increased to 2,117 out of 3,247. [35]
The Romanianization policies brought the closure of the Ukrainian public schools (all such schools were closed until 1928) and the suppression of most of the Ukrainian (Ruthenian) cultural institutions. The very term "Ukrainians" was prohibited from the official usage and some populations of disputable Ukrainian ethnicity were rather called the "citizens of Romania who forgot their native language" and were forced to change their last names to Romanian-sounding ones. [33] Among those who were Romanianized were descendants of Romanians who were assimilated to Ukrainian society in the past. As such, according to the Romanian census, of the total population of 805,000, 74% were called Romanians; the number included the Ukrainians and other possibly related Ukrainian ethnic groups Hutsuls referred to as "Romanians who forgot their native language" [36]
According to the 1930 census, Ukrainians made up 3.2% of the population of Romania. The declines in Ukrainian population between the censuses of 1919 and 1930 is illustrated as follows: the first census indicates a population of 16,250,000, of which 763,750 (4.7%) were Ukrainians; in 1930, as the total population had increased by 11% (to 18,025,896), the Ukrainian community had dropped to 576,828 members (75.5% of the previous total). [37]
Transylvania is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains and to the west the Apuseni Mountains. Broader definitions of Transylvania also include the western and northwestern Romanian regions of Crișana and Maramureș, and occasionally Banat. Historical Transylvania also includes small parts of neighbouring Western Moldavia and even a small part of south-western neighbouring Bukovina to its north east.
Bukovina is a historical region at the crossroads of Central and Eastern Europe. The region is located on the northern slopes of the central Eastern Carpathians and the adjoining plains, today divided between Romania and Ukraine.
The Székelys, also referred to as Szeklers, are a Hungarian subgroup living mostly in the Székely Land in Romania. In addition to their native villages in Suceava County in Bukovina, a significant population descending from the Székelys of Bukovina currently lives in Tolna and Baranya counties in Hungary and certain districts of Vojvodina, Serbia.
Miercurea Ciuc is the county seat of Harghita County, Romania. It lies in the Székely Land, a mainly Hungarian-speaking ethno-cultural region in eastern Transylvania, and is situated in the Olt River valley.
Unio Trium Nationum was a pact of mutual aid codified in 1437 by three Estates of Transylvania: the nobility, the Saxon (German) patrician class, and the free military Székelys. The union was directed against the whole of the peasantry, regardless of ethnicity, in response to the Transylvanian peasant revolt.
The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania is a political party in Romania which aims to represent the significant Hungarian minority of Romania.
The Transylvanian Saxons are a people of mainly German ethnicity and overall Germanic origin—mostly Luxembourgish and from the Low Countries initially during the medieval Ostsiedlung process, then also from other parts of present-day Germany—who settled in Transylvania in various waves, starting from the mid and mid-late 12th century until the mid 19th century.
The Magyar Autonomous Region[a] (1952–1960) and Mureș-Magyar Autonomous Region (1960–1968) were autonomous regions in the Romanian People's Republic.
The Székely Land or Szeklerland is a historic and ethnographic area in present-day Romania, inhabited mainly by Székelys, a subgroup of Hungarians. Its cultural centre is the city of Târgu Mureș (Marosvásárhely), the largest settlement in the region.
The United States of Greater Austria was an unrealised proposal made in 1906 to federalize Austria-Hungary to help resolve widespread ethnic and nationalist tensions. It was conceived by a group of scholars surrounding Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, notably by the ethnic Romanian lawyer and politician Aurel Popovici.
The Székelys of Bukovina are a small Hungarian ethnic community with a complex history. They live today in the Tolna and Baranya counties of Hungary, in Hunedoara County, Transylvania and Suceava County, Bukovina, both in Romania as well as in the Serbian province of Vojvodina.
About 9.3% of Romania's population is represented by minorities, and 13% unknown or undisclosed according to 2021 census. The principal minorities in Romania are Hungarians and Romani people, with a declining German population and smaller numbers of Poles in Bukovina, Serbs, Croats, Slovaks and Banat Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Jews, Turks and Tatars, Armenians, Russians, Afro-Romanians, and others.
The Germans of Romania represent one of the most significant historical ethnic minorities of Romania from the modern period onwards.
Transylvania is a historical region in central and northwestern Romania. It was under the rule of the Agathyrsi, part of the Dacian Kingdom, Roman Dacia (106–271), the Goths, the Hunnic Empire, the Kingdom of the Gepids, the Avar Khaganate, the Slavs, and the 9th century First Bulgarian Empire. During the late 9th century, Transylvania was part of the Hungarian conquest, and the family of Gyula II of the seven chieftains of the Hungarians ruled Transylvania in the 10th century. King Stephen I of Hungary asserted his claim to rule all lands dominated by Hungarian lords, and he personally led his army against his maternal uncle Gyula III. Transylvania became part of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1002, and it belonged to the Lands of the Hungarian Crown until 1920.
The Principality of Transylvania was a semi-independent state ruled primarily by Hungarian princes. Its territory, in addition to the traditional Transylvanian lands, also included the other major component called Partium, which was in some periods comparable in size with Transylvania proper. The establishment of the principality was connected to the Treaty of Speyer. However, Stephen Báthory's status as king of Poland also helped to phase in the name Principality of Transylvania. Although the principality was essentially independent, it existed as an Ottoman vassal state for the majority of the 16th and 17th centuries, overseen by Ottoman Turkish sultans but ruled by Hungarian princes. At various points during this period, the Habsburgs also exerted a degree of suzerainty in the region.
The union of Transylvania with Romania was declared on 1 December [O.S. 18 November] 1918 by the assembly of the delegates of ethnic Romanians held in Alba Iulia. The Great Union Day, celebrated on 1 December, is a national holiday in Romania that celebrates this event. The holiday was established after the Romanian Revolution, and celebrates the unification not only of Transylvania, but also of Bessarabia and Bukovina and parts of Banat, Crișana and Maramureș with the Romanian Kingdom. Bessarabia and Bukovina had joined with the Kingdom of Romania earlier in 1918.
The Székely Land (Szeklerland) is a historic and ethnographic region in Eastern Transylvania, in the center of Romania. The primary goal for the Hungarian political organisations in Romania is to achieve Székely autonomy. The Szeklers make up about half of the Hungarians in Romania and live in a compact ethnic bloc. According to official data from Romania's 2011 census, 609,033 persons in Mureș, Harghita, and Covasna counties consider themselves Hungarian. The Székelys (Szeklers), a Hungarian sub-group, are mainly concentrated in these three counties.
Hungarian-Romanian relations are foreign relations between Hungary and Romania dating back to the Middle Ages and continuing after the Romanian unification in 1859 and independence in 1877. In the past, they involved Wallachia and Moldavia.
The Hungarian minority of Romania is the largest ethnic minority in Romania. As per the 2021 Romanian census, 1,002,151 people declared themselves Hungarian, while 1,038,806 people stated that Hungarian was their mother tongue.
The Principality of Transylvania, from 1765 the Grand Principality of Transylvania, was a realm of the Hungarian Crown ruled by the Habsburg and Habsburg-Lorraine monarchs of the Habsburg monarchy and governed by mostly Hungarians. After the Ottomans were ousted from most of the territories of medieval Kingdom of Hungary, and after the failure of Rákóczi's War of Independence (1703–1711), the Habsburg dynasty claimed the former territories of the Principality of Transylvania under the capacity of their title of "King of Hungary". During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian government proclaimed union with Transylvania in the April Laws of 1848. After the failure of the revolution, the March Constitution of Austria decreed that the Principality of Transylvania be a separate crown land entirely independent of Hungary. In 1867, as a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the principality was reunited with Hungary proper.
