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Hungary Romania
According to Romanian statistics, 1.7 million
Hungarians were
living Romanian Transylvania in the late 1980s. Western
experts
maintained that at least 2 million Hungarians inhabited
this part
of Romania, and some estimates put the figure as high as
2.2
million. Although problems existed earlier, in the
mid-1980s
Romanian treatment of the Hungarian minority became
increasingly
harsh. For example, the Romanian city of Brasov had no
Hungarianlanguage schools, although the city was home to
Transylvania's
second-largest Hungarian minority. In 1983 the Romanian
government reduced Hungarian-language television
broadcasts from
two and one-half hours per day to one hour per day. In
1984 it
discontinued Hungarian-language programming altogether.
The
Romanian government allowed the importation of only one
periodical--Sakkalet (Chess Life)--from Hungary.
The
Romanian government also attempted to prevent Hungarians
from
traveling to Romania. During the height of the summer
tourist
season, Hungarians had to wait up to a whole day while
Romanian
authorities searched their cars and baggage. Many
Hungarians were
not allowed to enter Romania after the seizure of books,
periodicals, and even HSWP and Hungarian government
newspapers.
The Hungarian regime failed to respond quickly to the
Romanian actions. As Austrian political commentator Paul
Lendvai
has noted, because all communist countries are, according
to
their official definition, brothers, they must bury the
differences that frequently appear between noncommunist
states.
Therefore, until the mid-1980s the regime remained silent
about
the treatment of Hungarians in neighboring countries. For
example, after a high-level Romanian delegation visited
Hungary
in April 1985, the joint communique contained no reference
to
Romania's nationality problem.
Beginning in 1984, however, Hungarian criticisms of
Romania
began to surface in the media, and Hungarian leaders began
to
develop their own position on minority nationalities. In
August
1984, the deputy prime minister, Lajos Faluvegi,
criticized
Romania's treatment of its minorities. In a November 1984
speech
to the Thirteenth Party Congress of the Romanian Communist
Party
(RCP), National Council of Trade Unions secretary Lajos
Mehes
echoed Faluvegi's comments. The Thirteenth Party Congress
of the
HSWP in 1985 also addressed this problem. Kadar twice
spoke about
the need to respect the rights, language, and culture of
national
minorities and to allow them freedom of movement and
contacts
with their mother country. Kadar emphasized that national
minorities ought to act as a bridge between neighboring
countries.
In June 1987, at a meeting with a Romanian delegation
headed
by Emil Bobu, an RCP Politburo member and Central
Committee
secretary for party organization, Hungarian officials
brought up
the problem of Romania's treatment of its Hungarian
population.
Hungary maintained that Romania's treatment of Hungarians
failed
to comply with a 1977 agreement between Kadar and Romanian
leader
Nicolae Ceausescu to strengthen friendship and cooperation
between the two peoples and to develop good relations
between the
two countries. However, the two sides failed to reach an
agreement on the minority problem. Hungary wanted
Hungarians in
Romania to be loyal citizens of that country but to
preserve
their language and culture and be considered equals in
"building
socialism." Hungary agreed that the problem could be
settled only
by Romania. However, the Romanian report of the meeting
failed to
mention that the two sides had discussed the problem.
Hungary took the unprecedented step of raising the
minority
issue at multilateral forums. In October 1985, Hungary
addressed
this problem at the Cultural Forum of the Conference on
Security
and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). A representative of the
Hungarian delegation revealed that Hungary, Poland, the
Soviet
Union, and East Germany prepared a proposal "about the
assertion
by national minorities of their cultural rights" in which
Romania
and Czechoslovakia did not participate. More important, on
November 15 Marton Klein, a department head in the
Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, condemned the oppression of 3 million
Hungarians
in neighboring countries. He called for guarantees of the
minorities' civil rights and for granting them specific
collective rights to use their language to enable them to
preserve and enhance their cultural traditions.
In March 1987, at a closed session of the CSCE review
conference in Vienna, the Hungarian delegation supported
proposals for protecting minority rights submitted by
Yugoslavia
and Canada. This action marked the first time a Soviet
ally
supported a Western proposal at a CSCE review conference.
Hungary
faced heavy pressure from its allies for this decision. In
April,
Hungary responded to Romanian criticisms of its
"diversionary
moves" and "nationalist" and "chauvinist" practices. Rezs
Banyasz, head of the Council of Ministers' Information
Bureau,
argued that the Romanian charges lacked foundation and
damaged
the basic interests of the Romanian and Hungarian peoples.
Relations between Hungary and Romania further
deteriorated in
1988. Thousands of ethnic Hungarian (and some ethnic
Romanians)
were fleeing from Romania to Hungary to escape Ceausescu's
political oppression. The National Assembly passed a
resolution
calling Romania's planned destruction of thousands of
villages a
violation of human rights. The razing of between 7,000 and
8,000
villages and the relocation of their inhabitants were not
directed at minorities as such, but the minorities would
suffer
the most because they would be scattered throughout the
country
and lose their national identities. In July tens of
thousands of
Hungarians demonstrated in front of the Romanian embassy
in
Budapest against the destruction of the villages. In
response,
Ceausescu threatened to close the Romanian embassy, closed
the
Hungarian consulate in Cluj-Napoca, and blamed Hungary for
the
worsening of relations.
Grosz and Ceausescu held an impromptu meeting in Arad,
Romania, on August 28, 1988, to discuss relations between
their
countries. The talks lasted eight hours but failed to
produce
tangible results. The joint communique did not mention the
nationality issue. Hungary later conceded that the two
sides had
made no progress on this problem.
On November 14, 1988, relations fell to a new low when
Romanian police arrested Karoly Gyorffy, the Hungarian
commercial
counselor, in Bucharest. The Romanians accused Gyorffy of
using a
stolen automobile, causing a serious accident, and
distributing
leaflets inciting public opinion against the authorities.
On
November 19, Romania declared Gyorffy persona non grata
and
instructed him to leave the country within three days.
Hungary
rejected all accusations against Gyorffy and noted that
this
incident did not mark the first time that Romanian organs
had
hindered the work of its diplomats. On November 24,
Hungary
expelled Romania's political counselor.
Data as of September 1989
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