Gabriel Andreescu

The Transylvanian Issue and the Issue of Europe


NOTES

Geocultural tectonics

Gusztáv Molnár (THQ 149)* embraces Huntington’s thesis with a somewhat incautious enthusiasm. He devotes a number of pages to supporting it against critics such as Horia Patapievici. To be sure, Molnár has every right to rehearse with joy the features of Western civilization, which are "the classical heritage, Western Chris tianity (first Roman Catholicism, then Pro testantism), the separation of Church and State, the Rule of Law, social pluralism and a civil society, and, last but by no means least, that individualism which became dominant by the 17th century. On the other hand, I would be less inclined than Molnár to echo the claim made by the celebrated American political scientist that this combination is unique. Not because
it is not unique—anything concrete is unique, but I do not think that Huntington has demonstrated convincingly that it is only this combination of characteristics which is compatible with those features of modernity that recognize each other and which, in their powerful interaction lay down the foundations of relations that are peace ful in their very nature.1 Nor was Gusztáv Molnár in a position to add decisive arguments of his own. He appears to opt without any misgivings for the meta phor of geo cultural "layers" that float on the astheno sphere of universal existential conditions (resources, economic activities, media, &c.)

This plate-tectonics metaphor has perhaps inspired one of the most profitable observations by the director of the Geopolitical Research Group in Budapest. With reference to Huntington’s elaboration of the paradigm of civilizations, Gusztáv Molnár remarks: "Huntington engages in what is called grand geopolitics. With his elaboration of a paradigm of civilization and his firm repudiation of Western daydreams of universality, he may have succeeded in producing the most precise outline so far for an international world order in the next century. He does, however, ignore details and finer shades—frontiers within particular countries, or even smaller territorial or administrative units. These are the concern of what is called micro-geopolitics". Gusztáv Molnár insists on the importance of greater refinements. The inspiration derives from the fact that the richest and most unpredictable geologic phenomema appear where tectonic plates meet. Analogical thinking gives rise to the expectation that political processes of extraordinary sophistication would appear where two regions with significant cultural differences march on each other. One would therefore miss out if one did not plough more deeply in the micro-cultural zones where two geocultural plates intersect, since it is there that interesting (rich and unpredictable) transformations of cultural features into political phenomena take place.

In my view the example provided by Gusztáv Molnár is crucial: "In his study on the results of the 1990 and 1992 parliamentary elections and the county results of the 1992 local government election, István Székely points out that while in 1990 the opposition received over 40 per cent of the vote in only the four counties where the proportion of Hungarian population is the highest, in 1992 the counties of Bihar, Arad and Temes also joined Hargita, Kovászna, Maros and Szatmár—with over 50 per cent." [...] "By 1996, however, the Transylvanian vote practically decided the national results."

Transylvania in the post-communist period

If the last affirmation in the passage
quoted is true (and it is), and the 1996 political changes were a significant moment in the evolution of the Romanian state (I shall expound below why I consider them to be that), then Transylvania is the region which tipped history in the right direction. One might ask whether speaking of a crucial moment in the evolution of the Romanian state with reference to the 1996 elections is not somewhat pretentious. That question cannot receive a full answer yet. What I have in mind is the coincidence of political changes in Romania and processes of continental integration. Essential decisions concerning the Euro-Atlantic integration and the extension of the European Union were taken and planned around 1996. It is beyond any possible doubt that the mafioso-nationalist line pursued by Romania up to 1996 excluded the country from the great civilizational structures of the European type. Romania somehow appears to be in a situation where, following an out of breath sprint, she caught the last carriage, holding on tight, without really knowing how long she’ll manage to do so and whether perhaps that carriage will not be left behind in some shunting yard. If, in 1999, Romania is nominated for the second
NATO wave, then, in another two or three years, she will become a member of that organization. From that moment the country will have found a course to which it will keep, albeit with the occasional wobble, and which will nevertheless safely lead to a more effective and prosperous democracy, in other words a course opposed to that taken by the bankrupt states Gusztáv Molnár cites. On that basis the 1996 political changes would indeed constitute a crossroads ("a signifcant moment") in the history of this country. But what will happen to Romania will depend not only on what happens in Romania but also on what happens in the outside world. Given that the regional and world context act in favour of the country, 1996 will truly have been the year of the essential crossroads, of a decision owing, as the data show, to Transylvania.

Why did Transylvania vote differently? How come that the option of the uneducated, of the old, of industrial workers, the rural masses, categories of a limited and conservative civic and political understanding dependent on the propaganda of a partisan television or a demagogic discourse,2 was defeated in a decisive ratio in this region?3

One of the irrevocable losses of the period of transition was the absence of financial and human resources (in all the region formerly under Soviet influence) needed to study the leap from Com mun ism to an Open Society. We here confront a typically uneven process. Empirical data of great subtlety have to be gathered,
conceptual categories have to be refined. Socio logical analyses have to be carried out, public opinion polls, politological evaluations; about all of these we know that, in the case of Romania, they do not meet the standards of comprehensive research. In this absence, the only explanations available to us are opinions and observations of the kind cited by Gusztáv Molnár: "thanks to the beneficial influence of the Austrian Empire", the Romanians of Transylvania are "more reliable than those in the Regat." (Horia Patapievici); "The Central European values of the Enlightenment, the Reformation, tolerance and com petition, primarily those of the Transyl vanian Romanians," he writes, "are join ed in Romania by social and political forms of contemplation and passivity and belong to the values of the Orthodox eastern world." (Emil Hurezeanu); Gusztáv Molnár him-self declares: "by the specific cultural identity of Transylvanians—Ro manians, Hun garians and, naturally, the remaining Ger mans—I mean primarily a given work ethic and closely related political attitudes."

For a variety of reasons Gusztáv Molnár prefers to refer to the Transylvanian identity; what I should like to stress, however, is the considerable influence of the Hun garian minority on the formal realities and the practices of the Romanian state. Through their political struggle for the rights of national minorities, the Hun garians have exercised an extraordinary pressure on the mentality of Romanian society. In conditions in which protochronist mythology, the belief that Romanians anticipated many Western technical innovations and ideas, visibly marked public thinking and the majority of Romanian intellectuals of the best sort is still in the thrall of the cultural adventure of the period between the wars, the Hungarian strategy of differences, rights, autonomies and self-determinations appeared as a conceptual torrent that swept over an obsolete architecture. For a society that lives under the impression that Romania was projected by Burebista, King of the Dacians at the time of Julius Caesar, and that Greater Romania is the fullfilment of history, the placing of the problem of Transylvania at the centre of discussion, in such a dramatic manner, almost placed things the right side up. The formula which was oft repeated after UDMR-RMDSz, the Hungarian party, joined the government coalition, that for the first time in the history of Romania the Hun garian minority has been politically integrated, can also be extended to the cultural plane: at the end of seven years of post-communism, for the first time, otherness has been integrated in the cultural fund of Romanian society.4

It would appear that, in the context of European evolution, the Hungarian minority in Romania will continue to play an important role. It must be made clear that the extension of the European Union implies a transformation into a fortress. The Schengen treaty simultaneously creates a common European space and raises a wall which divides this space from the less prosperous and less civilized world outside. Can Hungary afford to leave the 1.7 million Hungarians beyond the Tisza outside this Great Wall? Speculations concerning Hungarian citizenship for the Hun garians of Romania, given currency by immoderates like Ádám Katona, in my opinion, provide the best synthesis of the anxieties felt by the community represented by the UDMR-RMDSz concerning a situation in which Hungary is "in" and Romania is "out". Hungarians on this side of the Tisza cannot simultaneously be citizens of Ro mania and citizens of Hungary. What will happen then? Here the logic of nuances proposed by Gusztáv Molnár comes into play. Will Romania and Hungary succeed in cooperating in such a way that the first will adhere constantly and progressively to the civilization on her western frontier, as a solution for her own and the Hungarian community’s crucial problems? Romanian society and her Hungarian neighbour will provide the answer to this question in the years to come.

Devolution versus integration

This takes us to Gusztáv Molnár’s next conceptual step. "We know all too well that national homogenization breeds conflicts as much as ethnic separation does. Consequently, political actions should be based on territoriality—territorial or local identity—rather than ethnicity or nationality. The unlimited dominance, or sovereignty, if you like, of the state over its ‘own’ territory today is as repulsive and hazardous as were the efforts of the tyrannical state to retain unlimited control over bourgeois society in the 17th century. As in the 17th century, the theoretical and practical solution to the problem has been found by the British. At the time of the Glorious Revolution it was the division of constitutional competencies between the monarch and parliament; today it is devolution, the rational division of power between central and local parliaments. Devo lution means that the exclusive dominance of the state territory, as it is spiritualized by the ‘soul of the nation’, is replaced by a pluralism of territories. Owing to devolution, local territories (historical provinces or regions of later origin) , which are objects of state administration, will now become subjects of the state, themselves states in some sense, just as citizens/bur ghers became ‘sovereign’ in 17th-century Western Europe." According to Gusztáv Molnár, there is not much time left for Romania. Surrounded by bankrupt states, all the way from Montenegro to Siberia, she must choose, in keeping with the British model, between devolution and federalism in order to achieve political modernization and internal integration.

I am well aware of the attractions which the idea of devolution has for Gusztáv Molnár. This, however, is no argument for looking on devolution as the sole or principal answer to his important question. "What is going to happen to the fringe territories that historically belong to Central Europe and culturally to the West that, after decades of forced centralization by right and left-wing totalitarian regimes, are emerging more and more conspicuously, in direct proportion to the assertion of democracy, as separate from the Eastern European regions of their own states?"

It is clear that Gusztáv Molnár puts his faith into Huntington’s model, down to the detail of drawing the frontier of Western civilization in the middle of Romania, along the line of the Carpathians, to the east of Transylvania. It is also clear that Gusztáv Molnár does not, in principle, see Romania as integrated with the European Union, whatever her future economic performance may be (because she belongs to a different cultural space). He shows himself equally pessimistic as regards continued NATO enlargement. Then, "these fringe territories" will find a refuge in devolution! This is the essence of Molnár’s line of thought, and it has important political implications. There are a number of observations I want to make both on his reasoning and conclusions.

First of all, the myth of great geocul-tural plates presupposes the inertia of culturally homogenous areas, as if these were subjected to a sort of macro-mechanics. But such a macro-mechanics would in fact be geopolitics dominated by culture. I feel that idea is bluntly contradicted by reality. An obvious counter example is the movement in Romania which had its origin in the 1848 Revolution.

As regards religion, the Danubian Prin ci palities formed part of the same Ortho dox space as Greece, future Bulgaria, Rus sia and Serbia. The last named experienc ed no 1848 Revolution—and neither did Slavophone Poland. In no way can one say that Moldavia or Wallachia were closer to Western Europe in other respects—cultural or social—then Greece or Bulgaria. They were conservative societies, perhaps even backward, and closed societies—perhaps even hostile. They were certainly part of the Orthodox-Balkan geocultural space, and not of the West.

The Fortyeighters movement, of which the revolution was an essential aspect but not the whole, forced an extraordinary growth path onto the Romanian world. Their political demands—a republic and universal suffrage—and their social demands—the emancipation of Jews, abolition of the death penalty and of degrading forms of punishment—confronted the Danubian Prin cipali ties with the most advanced Euro pean ideals. These were no mere plans, this was a movement which succeeded, within a few decades, in modernizing Ro mania at an amazing speed. All this was the work of a few dozen hommes de politique, an insignificant proportion of the total of Romanian society, whose human typology was far from that of Balcescu, Rosetti, the Bratianus, the Golescus and others of their kind. This is a spectacular example of a process which, thanks to a highly sophisticated interior web and in an extraordinary interaction with the international community, lifted the Romanian world from a given cultural space into another. In the absence of the deviation of the twenties and thirties which led to two successive totalitarianisms, this shift would have continued to a point of irreversibility.

To return to the present. What is the mes sage of the political debate which has so far produced the Madrid and Luxem bourg decisions? Obviously, the Madrid option was for a further extension, and at this moment in time, the least that can be said about Romania is that she is on course towards integration. For the EU the position is even firmer, a decision exists to extend it into regions of Orthodox dominance (Romania, Bulgaria) in as much as these countries satisfy the criteria for integration, criteria which are political and economic and not cultural. To be sure, obstacles in the way of these processes may arise—within Romania too, or outside the country. The satisfaction of criteria is not simply a question of time and goodwill. What then, is the role of Huntington’s logic in this evolution? It has none. In fact Gusztáv Molnár embraced the ideology of cultural scepticism for motives that are pure conceptual speculation. He prefers a high-falutin’ theory to an analysis of data which are at his disposal and with which he shows himself to be familiar. In other words, he prefers "ideology," turning his back to empirical argument.

Let us now deal with "devolution." I prefer as high a degree of social decentralization as possible, and devolution serves as a good tool for decentralization. It has proved its usefulness in Italy and in Spain, and appears to be working well in Great Britain. I can say that here I am a sympathizer. The trouble is, however, that Gusztáv Molnár affirms with an exaggerated assurance: "Wedged between two zones of fail ed states, the post-Yugoslav and the post-Russian, Romania is running out of time. What can it do if, in its long-term interests, it wishes to proceed along the path of integration but the West ignores, certainly in the coming years, its overtures?" Molnár argues that the only option is the federalization of the country or, at the very least, devolution offered to Transylvania and other parts of the country which seek it. Is that how things really are? What, in deed, are the aspects of modernization which oblige you to chose either devolution (federalism) or a fatal recentralization?

The instruments of a modern state are, as I know them: the rights and liberties of the individual, with their extension, the rights of minorities, political pluralism in conjunction with the totality of powers (authorities) which enjoy some independence,5 the effectiveness of institutions (in the case of Romania, these are in need of essential reforms), local autonomy, and a market economy. That should serve as a sufficent list. Do these imply the need for devolution? Obviously not. But, according to Gusztáv Molnár, devolution assures a sound handling of ethnic relations. Here again Gusztáv Molnár prefers concepts and principles to observing genuine social trends. The process leading to a "Ro manian model" of reconciliation is very close to realization. This "model" implied the acceptance by Romanian political forces of very high standards concerning special measures for the protection of national minorities. On its part, the Hun garian community has implicitly given up its own way of providing protection, that is a system of self-determination and autonomy that does not fit the Romanian constitutional framework.6

How did we reach that point? In the past three or four years we have witnessed an interaction of considerable interest to all political analysts: on the one hand, considerable outside pressure insisting on transcending ethnicity as a source of conflict (in the context of the processes of extension of European structures in which Romania wishes to take part), and on the other, powerful domestic pressure to keep the present Constitution inviolate. It is a sorry state of affairs to prefer "ideals", given the fascinating developments in the Romania of recent years. What appears clear to me is that the system of special measures is as efficient in dealing with interethnic tensions as devolution, and that the former has now imposed itself.

Gusztáv Molnár may well answer that, in time, the trend towards devolution may become dominant, whatever the present process of evolution. He could even refer to the latest idea that has come from Jassy, that is Constantin Simiriad’s Party of Moldavians. On my part, I am opposed to the irritation or indifference with which Romanian public opinion has responded to an initiative which is not only absolutely legitimate and of obvious importance but an innovation in Romanian mentalities. Once again, however, I propose an authentic analysis of the situation in Romania rather than day-dreams.

Any analysis of the situation in Ro mania will show that the British model does not apply. The speed of events in Britain—a special referendum in Scotland, a constitutional reform which produced a parliament for Scotland and an assembly for Wales depended on a British legal and political framework of great permeability as regards devolution in Scotland and Wales.

There is nothing comparable in Ro mania. Devolution means constitutional changes, that is a considerable majority in favour of devolution, over two thirds of Parliament over several stages.7 When Gusztáv Molnár speaks of the political will of Romanian society, he should consider that this means something highly concrete, two thirds in Parliament needed to amend the Constitution. Let us ask our selves if a political current in Tran syl vania and another in Moldavia can be imagined which would produce those need ed parliamentary two-thirds. To my mind, certainly not within a reasonable period of time. A rational policy and the present course of political integration of the Hungarian community suffice to produce the moderni-zation of Romania. There are no insurmountable obstacles in their way, of the kind faced by the devolution option.

There is another aspect which must not be neglected. What I have in mind is the temporal competition of concurrent pro cesses. Within a centralized state the problem of the administrative and political structures demanded by the affirmation of regional identities on occasion appears with dramatic intensity. Things are different in an integrated system like the EU. There the regions appear as actual units—geographic, linguistic, economic or whatever—not as mere administrative units.

As we approach the year 2000, this pro cess of joining major international structures appears much speedier than a pos-sible internal development towards devolution.

Gusztáv Molnár’s gauntlet is opportune, it helps to introduce something of the savour of contemporary debate to the Romanian political discourse. The manner, however, in which he deals with the issue of Transylvania, calls forth basic objections. Let me try to sum up what I have been arguing. It is an error to think of identities, like the Transylvanian identity, as monads.8 Thinking in terms of monads, Gusztáv Molnár considers that we must stick a politico-administrative label onto a cultural identity. That is not true. If the Transylvanian identity is itself complex, it manifests itself in different ways, and has no need of a formal cover. (As I said, the major characteristic, that with most effects, is nevertheless the presence of a powerful Hungarian community.)

In the first place, however, I should like to stress the essentially ideological character of his contribution. Ideology is a way of thinking which grinds down reality in making it fit the logic of the desired model. I am curious indeed how ideological and how analytical will be the responses to Gusztáv Molnár’s position.
 
 

NOTES

1 n Huntington’s major thesis is not that the cul-tural boundaries are mere lines of demarcation but that they are inherent sources of political tension.

2 n I use these terms non-judgementally, in a descriptive sense.

3 n It would be wrong to argue that people voted "against" and not "for." The principle is valid to a degree, but uniformly all over the country, in every region. Thus it is irrelevant in an explanation of differences between regions.

4 n We have to be cautious when referring to tradi tion in an explanation of the present. The German presence was powerful in Transylvania, and the reception of their influence on the part of non-Germans was high. Nevertheless, I cannot see its role in these processes in which the Hungarian minority happens to be a driving force.

5 n The independence of the institutions which administer legislative, executive and judicial powers has become a commonplace. In reality, things are somewhat more complicated.

6 n The Romanian Government Emergency Regu l ations issued in May and June 1997 have dealt with the most persistent problem, that of the use of minority languages in the administration and in education. These norms still have to be passed by Parliament. They have been further extended by the transformation of Recomendation 1201 into domestic law. A National Minorities Act, projected for 1998 would add the final touches, including the use of minority languages in the courts. (see Gabriel Andreescu, Renate Weber: Evolutt¸ia concept¸ii UDMR privind drepturile minorita×t¸ii maghiare (The evolution of the UDMR-RMDSz draft concerning the rights of the Hungarian minority) Centre for Human Rights, Bucharest 1995; Renate Weber: "Romaˆnia s¸i drepturile omului: standarde interne, standarde internat¸ionale" (1) (Romania and the rights of
man: domestic standards, international standards) Revista Romana de Drepturile Omului Nr 13, 1996, pp 27–38)

7 n Since the form of government and the unitary character of the state cannot be the subject of amendment according to the present constitution, Article 148 (1) must be abolished for a start.

8 n Hence the objection that even I do not go all that far when drawing all possible institutional consequences from the above. But what could be "further" than to consider that Transylvania has tipped the scales of Romanian political reality and has already essentially changed the self-consciousness of Romanian society.

* "The Transylvanian Question" by Gusztáv Molnár, originally published in Hungarian and then in
Ro ma nian, also appeared in an English version in THQ No. 149, Spring 1998. It provoked a lively discussion in Romania. Two of the more significant Romanian comments are published below, together with Gusztáv Molnár’s rejoinder. It goes without saying that the latter expresses Dr Molnár’s right of reply and not THQ editorial policy.
 

Gabriel Andreescu
is Chairman of the Centre for Human Rights (APADOR–CH) in Bucharest and is the author of numerous books and articles.


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