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Romania National Minorities under Communist Rule
Although shifts in Romania's ethnic structure can be
attributed
to several factors, the most far-reaching changes occurred
at the
behest of the PCR, which subscribed to the Marxist belief
in the
primacy of class over nation. Marxist theory claims not
only that
national identity is subordinate to class identity, but
also that
as class consciousness rises, nationalism and nations will
disappear. The practical problem of how to deal with
nationalities
in a multinational state until the class consciousness of
socialism
eradicates them was addressed not by Karl Marx but by
Vladimir
Lenin. A pragmatic response to the reality of national
minorities
in the Soviet Union, Lenin's nationalities policy is often
summarized in the phrase "national in form, socialist in
content."
The policy essentially permitted national minorities to be
separate
in terms of language, education, and culture as long as
they
adhered to the principles of socialism and did not pose a
political
threat. Romania's national minorities at the outset of
communist
rule were seemingly well served by the Leninist approach.
The
Constitution provided them equal rights in "all fields of
economic,
political, juridical, social, and cultural life" and
specifically
guaranteed free use of their native language and the right
to
education at all levels in their mother tongue.
The large Hungarian minority received special attention
with
the establishment of the Hungarian Autonomous Region in
1952. Like
many other generous provisions for nationalities, however,
this
concession turned out to be by and large an empty gesture
and
masked the true nature of relations between the state and
minorities. The region was never home to more than
one-quarter of
Romania's Hungarian population, and it had no more
autonomy than
did other administrative provinces. Moreover, in the
aftermath of
the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, even this autonomy was
curtailed.
In 1960 directives from Bucharest reorganized and renamed
the
province so that its Hungarian nature was even further
reduced. The
territorial reorganization, by adding purely Romanian
inhabited
areas and excluding Hungarian enclaves, increased the
Romanian
element in the province from 20 to 35 percent and reduced
the
Hungarian presence from 77 to 62 percent. The name was
changed to
Mures Autonomous Hungarian Region and thereafter was most
often
referred to simply as the Mures Region.
In 1965, concomitant with Ceausescu's rise to first
secretary
of the Partidul Muncitoresc Român (PMR--Romanian Workers'
Party),
a new Constitution proclaimed Romania a socialist unitary
state.
Thereafter, the country's multinational character was
largely
ignored, and the problem of cohabiting nationalities
officially was
considered resolved. In 1968 the regime eliminated the
Autonomous
Hungarian Region outright. The regime maintained the
appearance of
minority representation at all levels of government, and
official
statistics showed that the proportion of people from
ethnic
minority communities employed in government duly reflected
their
numbers. In reality, minorities had little real power or
influence.
At the local level, minority representatives, who were
generally
quite Romanianized, were mistrusted by their constituents.
Ironically, although these spokespersons were routinely
hand-picked
by the PCR, their loyalty to the regime was often
suspected. The
ethnic composition of the party itself was a more accurate
reflection of minority participation and representation.
From the start of communist rule, large numbers of
ethnic
Romanians joined the party, and their share of total
membership
rose steadily over the years, increasing from 79 percent
in 1955 to
almost 90 percent in the early 1980s. Although the regime
claimed
that minority membership and representation in the
people's
councils and the Grand National Assembly were commensurate
with
their size, minorities were largely excluded from
policy-making
bodies on both the local and national levels
(see Central Government
, ch. 4). Even in areas where Hungarians
represented a
sizable portion of the population--Timis, Arad, and
Maramure
judete--few were found in local PCR bureaus. At the
national
level, the most powerful positions in the critical foreign
affairs,
defense, and interior ministries were reserved for ethnic
Romanians, and minorities were consigned to rubber-stamp
institutions.
Ostensibly representing minority interests, workers'
councils
were established for Hungarian, German, Serbian, and
Ukrainian
citizens. These bodies operated within the framework of
the Front
of Socialist Unity and Democracy and were under the
constant
supervision of the PCR Central Committee Secretariat,
which funded
their budgets. The councils had neither headquarters nor
office
hours, and their sole function appeared to be praising the
regime's
treatment of national minorities. Significantly, when the
councils
did meet, business was conducted in Romanian.
Data as of July 1989
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