In an article written in August 19971 I
resorted to arguments taken from geopolitics, political philosophy and
from history to shore up an acceptable scenario for Romania. The otherness
of Transylvania, the fact that, compared to other parts of the country,
it is clearly more Western, is a quality that I prize and which I think
can and should be used to further Romania’s integration in Europe—in spite
of her being left out of the first round of NATO and EU extension—and even
if this process is likely to be lengthier than originally expected. Political
and work ethics, characteristics historically rooted in Mitteleuropa, place
Transylvania nearer to the West and these could be buttressed by the federalization
of Romania, or by, at least, devolution of the Scots type. In the absence
of something of that sort, Transylvania could not become that motor which,
dragging the whole of Romania with it, a hostage to fortune, would ensure
that the country, continuing a modernization commenced a hundred and fifty
years ago, would reach a point of no return.
What I stressed was that this would serve
Romania’s long-term “outside” integrational interests, at the same time
furthering inner integration, making it irreversible. In meeting the ever
stronger regional demands of the more developed Banat and Transylvania,
the political elite of the Old Kingdom (pre-1918 Romania), which is interested
in the ultimate success of political, economic and cultural modernization,
would also be able to bring about the political and psychological integration
of the Hungarians of Transylvania, the lack of which has been a running
sore these eighty years. What Romania could not achieve as an “integrated
and indivisible national state”, and, unlikely to do in the future either,
would need no exceptional effort if Romania were radically decentralized.
As soon as nation or ethnicity, which symbolize exclusivity, are replaced
by a reinterpreted territoriality, that is as soon as the pluralism of
spaces became the framework of political interests made manifest in parties
and ideologies, the “Hungarian question” would take itself off the agenda.
In my article I naturally also reckoned
with the contingency that the new anti-communist President, supported by
close to 70 per cent of the votes cast in Transylvania, and the right-of-centre
coalition,2 which truly made Western integration their strategic aim, would
not make this basic constitutional change part of their policy, let alone
carry it out. In that case, however, I argued as the final conclusion of
my 1997 article, the left-wing nationalist faithful advocates of recentralization
will seize the political initiative once again. Stressing the need for
a new salvation of a state and nation that was “swept into jeopardy,” they
will “integrate” the country not with the West but in the zone of “failed
states,” stretching from Montenegro to Eastern Siberia, caring nought that
such a fatal decision would put at risk the inner coherence of the state
of Romania.
Much interest was shown in my basic idea
in Romania and the reaction was surprisingly tolerant. Not that they considered
the idea practical—or, with one or two
exceptions—even necessary.3 Hungarian Transylvanians
naturally sympathized with my geopolitical and historical arguments but
by and large they kept to generalities.4 It would appear that they do not
really wish to draw the theoretical, ideological or political conclusions
which follow from my suggestions. The source of the clearly palpable embarrassment
may well be, as Miklós Bakk tellingly puts it: that “such a long-term
strategy would transgress the [political] self-image of the RMDSz (the
Hungarian party in Romania). This is so because the success of the regional
idea would imply the transformation of the Romanian party system, and this
would directly affect the RMDSz.”5
The range of options open to Romania has
considerably narrowed in the two years that have passed since the right-
of-centre government and President Constantinescu,
a member of the dominant party of the government came to power in November
1996. In the first place, as regards Euro-Atlantic integration, it became
clear that—in spite of the stress on an open doors policy—no new members
will be invited at the NATO jubilee summit to be held on April 4th 1999.
Thus even that kudos is lost which Romania enjoyed thanks to the country’s
name being specially mentioned at the June 1997 NATO Conference. Furthermore,
the EU Brussels committee’s report, published in October 1998, permits
the conclusion that the strategy of selective extension will be even more
unambiguously applied in the future. It is presumed that the circle of
countries with which negotiations have already started (Slovenia, Hungary,
the Czech Republic, Poland and Estonia) will be perhaps extended to Slovakia
and Lithuania (which does not, however, imply that those countries will
become full EU members at the same time). Meanwhile, a kind of queue is
forming amongst the countries on the waiting list. Thus the committee report
mentioned emphasizes Bulgaria’s recent economic and financial achievements,
but also the grinding to a halt of reforms in Romania and an unambiguous
worsening of the economic situation there.
The conclusion that can be drawn from the
above is that, in the next ten years, which promise to be a key decade
for the Western integration of Central and East European countries, the
gap between Romania and a Europe undergoing integration—and those of its
neighbours (primarily Hungary) which are taking part in this process—will
not narrow but grow, with all the expected consequences. What this means
can already be discerned: as the prospects of integration become faint,
the options open to politics at home are alarmingly narrowed.
The coalition based on the Democratic Convention,
the Democratic Party and the RMDSz, a coalition which in its policy statements
has shown itself reform and market friendly and, at the very least, not
hostile to decentralization and minority rights, appears to have exhausted
its resources. On the other hand, the former governing party, led by Ion
Iliescu, is labouring on the organization of a National Left that will
make a comeback after defeat. In a recentralization impetus, it wishes
to recover all that it “lost” owing to the “anti-nation and anti-state
irresponsibility” of the Right of Centre coalition. It suffices to glance
at things said by a number of ci-devants about the transformation of Transylvania
into “a zone of joint Romano-Hungarian sovereignty and governance” (a former
undersecretary in the Ministry of Defence); the need to re-introduce “protectionist
measures” (a former Minister of Finance); “the challenge of institutional
devolution and the drafting of other concepts which will lead to the federalization
of national states and their later disappearance” (a former Chairman of
the House of Deputies); the “huge threat” of the radicalization of Transylvanian
Romanians, which may lead to an “ideal of Transylvania that stands above
the imperative of an integrated Romania” (a former Chairman of the Senate);
“the crime of treason which will soon be followed by a just judgement”
(a former Governor of State Television); not to mention all those “threats”
which may well lead to the carving up of the state as the “communiqué”
of the Central Bureau of the PDSR (Iliescu’s party) lists in such minute
detail. After all that, it is not difficult to imagine what will happen
if the old post-communist group came to power again in Bucharest, and in
alliance with the extremist, nationalist, anti-West and anti-minority PRM
(the Party of Greater Romania).
All this is of great importance, both from
the point of view of the general situation of Romania and from that of
the Hungarian minority which lives there. Likely political developments
call for answers to two basic questions.
1. Why didn’t a coalition, considered to
be the heirs and successors of a modernization process that follows the
Western pattern, a coalition for that very reason supported by the majority
of the electorate, fulfil the hopes placed in it?
2. Will there be a Transylvanian question
in Romania after the predictable failure of the one hundred and fifty-year-long
process of modernization, and if so, what will be the political and cultural
consequences?
My answer to these two questions will,
at the same time, be my response to Gabriel Andreescu and Sorin Mitu’s
critical observations. As Heraclitus says, we cannot twice step into the
same river. Debates that are part of a living political process only make
sense if, transcending each other’s arguments, we pay heed to modifications
to the basic questions which unavoidably occur with the passage of time.
The essence of Gabriel Andreescu’s train
of thought can be summed up in two closely interrelated propositions. According
to him, a process of modernization, started in 1848 and carried through
in interaction with the international commu-nity, transposed the Romanian
world
from the Orthodox, Balkanic space into
a Western one with amazing speed. The second proposition argues that since
the nationalist-maffioso political line effective until 1996 in practice
excluded Romania from the major structures of European civilization, the
coming to power of a Right-of-Centre coalition in the European tradition
must be considered an essential moment or crossroads in the evolution of
the Romanian state. Naturally, this can only happen if, as after 1848,
the regional and world constellation is favourable, in other words if domestic
changes are confirmed by the inclusion of Romania in the second round of
NATO extension in 1999, and if the EU does not exclude predominantly Orthodox
countries like Romania or Bulgaria from the extension.6
The question is why a new decisive moment
was needed in 1996 if the Romanian world had already been transposed from
the Orthodox Balkanic space in the decades that followed 1848. Why, given
these extraordinary modernization efforts, was the ingrafting of institutions
and customs characteristic of European civilization aborted, why did Westernization
not prove irreversible? What is at issue here is not only between-the-wars
break-downs, or the succession of the two totalitarianisms but primarily
the reasons why the collapse of Communism was followed by the nationalist-maffioso
line mentioned by Andreescu, which widened the gap to the West instead
of narrowing it.
These are problems of a more or less theoretical
nature; what we have to confront now, two years after the new coalition
came to power, is a most serious political fact: the political élite,
which undertook to employ a systematic policy of reforms to restore the
historical continuity, including the country’s own Western traditions and
to create the economic and legal conditions for joining Western structures,
proved unsuccessful.
The best Romanian intellectuals were well
aware, as Adrian Marino had already argued in 1994, that it was part of
the essence of the nomenklatura, a ruling class educated in Moscow, or
in the spirit of Moscow, that it could not be honestly and creditably pro-Europe.
Its social origins, ideological and cultural upbringing, its interests
and endeavours all set it a long distance from genuinely European standards.
At the same time, according to Marino, the new geopolitical realities and
the new international balance of power after the collapse of the Soviet
Union force the nomenklatura to put on a show of being European, to accept
on the surface all, or as many as possible, of the basic European principles,
institutions and forms. In Marino’s view, the duplicity is obvious, nor
can one deny that such a picturesque European Potemkin village is evidence
of a certain facility and arranging skill.7 What the past two years have
shown is that the coalition of a National Peasant Party, which claims to
be Christian and democratic, the National Liberal Party and the Democratic
Party have not changed the situation. (The RMDSz, which represents the
Hungarian minority, was only asked to join to improve the coalition’s image.)
It cannot be denied that some of the new government’s measures were truly
important and established a break with earlier conditioned reflexes but,
characteristically, they were regularly forced to make use of the not exactly
democratic instrument of emergency government regulations. The ideal of
an integrated, authoritarian, oppressive, closed and severely centralized
national state,8 rooted in the 19th century, manifest in a consolidated
form after 1918, and taken to its ultimate consequences under Communism,
stood in the way of every reform that wished to weaken the economic and
administrative powers of the state. And, unfortunately, not only under
the post-communist administration, when Adrian Marino expressed the views
I have mentioned; the questioning of this ideal has since maintained its
status as a taboo.
The situation is dramatic. PDSR, the former
governing party, and the former members of the nomenklatura who have found
a home in it, only pretend to being European, something made obvious by
their collaboration with extremists, parties that are openly anti-Western,
who advocate fascist methods in dealings with the Hungarian, Gypsy and
Jewish minorities. The anti-communist Democratic Convention, however, is
distinguished by its impotence. Political leaders, veterans of the prisons
of the fifties, were unable to rid themselves of political élites
who had been moulded by the Ceaus¸escu period, relying instead on
so-called functional élites, committed to democracy, who are interested
not merely in Euro-Atlantic rhetoric but in comprehensive economic reform
and in the dismantling of étatism. The latter imagined that the
victory of the Democratic Convention was their own, but now, in a state
of shock, are forced to experience that the present power élite
is behaving just as the earlier. The political scientist Emil Hurzeanu
maintains that the élites of the Ceaus¸escu era dominate the
whole of the political spectrum, that, in this respect, the state of affairs
in Romania resembles that in Russia rather than that in Hungary, the Czech
Republic or Poland.9
What makes the Romanian situation so special—and
so hopeless—is the ever widening chasm between a nascent civil society
and political life as a whole. This has been true of modern Romanian history
throughout, the difference being, however, that the issue is not what it
was
in the 19th century and early in the twentieth when the élites were
far in advance of an archaic society, but precisely the reverse: the élites
are unable to meet social expectations. There are really no parties in
the true sense of the term in Romania (in this respect too, the situation
recalls Russia). There is nothing like the situation in Hungary, the Czech
Republic or Poland, where alternative poles were created by new parties
based on the organized anti-communist opposition and the reform communists.
The structurally inorganic nature of the system of political institutions
as a whole confronts the electorate with a difficult choice. Interest groups
wearing different party colours take their turn, which only leads to the
devaluation of democracy, the only alternative—which has its precedents
in Romanian political history—being a coup staged by the ruler à
la Prince Cuza in the mid-nineteenth century, or by Carol II on the eve
of the Second World War.
The causes of this political paralysis
must be sought in precisely that mid-19th century switch of civilizations
to which Gabriel Andreescu refers. Sad to say, however, this does not deny
but in fact confirms one of Huntington’s basic propositions referring to
the essential difference between Westernization and political
modernization which too many interpret
superficially and criticize overhastily. According to Huntington, the 19th-
and 20th-century imitation of Western political and legal forms produces
not new Western states but torn countries. “A torn country has a single
predominant culture which places it in one civilization, but its leaders
want to shift it to another civilization. They say, in effect, ‘We are
one people and belong together in one place but we want to change that
place.’ [...] Typically, a significant portion of the leaders... decide
their society should reject its non-Western
culture and institutions, should join the
West, and should both modernize and Westernize. [...] the political leaders
imbued with the hubris to think that they can fundamentally reshape the
culture of their societies are destined to fail. While they can introduce
elements of Western culture, they are unable permanently to suppress or
to eliminate the core elements of
their indigenous culture. Conversely, the
Western virus, once it is lodged in another society, is difficult to expunge.
The virus persists but is not fatal; the patient survives but is never
whole. Political leaders can make history but they cannot escape history.
They produce torn countries; they do not create Western societies. They
infect their country with a cultural schizophfrenia which becomes its continuing
and defining character.”10
Romania is a typically torn country, something
she was long able to cover up thanks to her unbelievable powers of adaptability.
The seminal Romanian thinker Mihai Ralea thought this the principal characteristic
of the Romanian soul. In a famous 1927 book he argued that this was a double-edged
sword. “It may mean evolution, intelligence, cunning, suppleness, progress,
but it can also mean baseness, perfidy, superficiality.”11
It seems that exaggerated accomodation
to national-communism extinguished a capacity for a proper adjustment to
the requirements of Western civilization in the Romanian political élite.
There is perhaps no better proof for this than the way in which the language
rights of the Hungarian minority, and its demands for an independent university,
were dealt with.
In the autumn of 1997, Gabriel Andreescu,
obviously writing with undoubted bona fides, claimed that a Romanian model
for overcoming ethnic tension, which consisted of the acceptance by the
Romanian political forces of very high standards concerning special measures
designed to protect the national minorities, was close to realization.
Since then Andreescu himself has felt forced to state on numerous occasions
that the Romanian political forces interpreted these measures in such an
odd way that their implementation has come to nought in practice. The finesse
of Romanian nationalists, their subtle exploitation of the diversionary
tactics of the former Securitate and their tricks of mass manipulation
were met by cowardice, the duplicity with which the coalition partner was
overwhelmed with promises, the cunning shown in dealings with the West,
and superficiality in handling self-imposed moral standards: these were
the empirical data available to Andreescu already at the time of writing
his article; he, however, preferred the ideological dream of systematically
making up the lee-way to the West.
A year ago we still both had faith in the
hopes that came with the change of government
in Romania, albeit our hopes were framed in different ideological visions
of the future. Today, it would appear that we share the bitter experience
of failure. The question today is: what conclusions should be drawn from
the present Romanian political cul-de-sac, which also severely tests Hungaro-Romanian
relations as a whole.
On my part I am of the opinion that, although—for
the time being—Transylvania is not ready for an independently initiated
regional political movement, this could well occur as a retaliation to
the predictable re-centralizing and re-nationalizing attempts by a nationalist
left eager to get its own back. We will then be able to state, and some
will be forced to accept in astonishment and sadness, that it is not the
Hungarians who are the Achilles heel of Romania but the Romanian political
system itself, based on the supremacy of Bucharest, which insists on its
preponderance not only vis à vis a stubborn national minority but
also the majority in particular regions. The latter cannot be damned in
using the methods—be they accustomed or less so— which were so facilely
mobilized against the just demands of the Hungarians.
That is when Romania will confront what
will perhaps be the most critical moments of its post-1918 history. In
1940 the Axis Powers and the Soviet Union jointly acted against Romania
in the interests of a frontier revision, because they directly—or via their
allies—claimed certain territories which then belonged to Romania. The
new challenge comes from within, and for that very reason its consequences
will be more far-reaching.
Once Hungary joins the EU, very likely
around the year 2002, the Hungaro-Romanian border will truly become a fully-fledged
geopolitical frontier with all that this implies. As the power of attraction
of the new Western Reich including Hungary increases on an unbelievable
scale with
a common currency and homogenized European
stock-exchanges, Hungary will, in practice, cease to be a “dangerous” nation-state.
What this means is that, pace waves of whipped up hatreds, the inhabitants
of Transylvania will be perfectly aware that a single actual Hungarian
“threat” will continue: that, because of Schengen, they will be excluded
from Hungary as well, and that, on the other side of the frontier, the
relatively easily obtained forint will be replaced by the Euro as legal
tender.
In that situation, Transylvanian separateness
will appear with elementary force, naturally not in the form of a devolution
due to the wise foresight and common sense of the central administration,
but as anti-Bucharest opposition.
In my earlier article I already referred
to historical and present facts which, in the words of Sorin Mitu, the
Cluj historian and author of a recent work on the cultural identity of
Transylvanian Romanians,12 mean that the existing centralized political
structures are out of keeping with both historical traditions and European
norms. As regards the history of Transylvania, Sorin Mitu and I are largely
in agreement, nor does he object to devolution in principle, it is, however—in
the absence of the needed foundations—out of place in Romania.
Just about nothing of Transylvania’s Central
European heritage survives. For that very reason there is nothing left
to federalize.
Mitu’s arguments are weighty and should
be heeded. No doubt, the idea of an autonomous Transylvania was abandoned
in the 19th century, first by Hungarians, then by Romanians, in neither
case, however, did this lead to a denial that there was something special
about the region. It is also a fact that, by now, thanks to the manipulations
governing attitudes to history in Romania, the priority and otherness which
Transylvania, as a political and administrative entity going back at least
to the 16th century, enjoyed vis à vis a Romanian state which de
facto did not antedate the union of the Danubian Principalities in 1859,
was successfully obliterated. In Romanian symbolic geography Transylvania
is one of the Romanian lands, thus retrospectively an indivisible part
of Romania. A Romania of the mind was created which is homogenous and therefore
cannot be reconciled, in theory or practice, with notions of federalism
or even devolution. Finally, the ravages of the communist system, and the
sociological state of a levelled society no doubt favour an étatist
collectivism fed by general, uniform and national pauperization rather
than a decentralization that presumes the powerful structures of civil
society.13
Nothing, however, lasts for ever in history
and politics. Given that traditions of autonomy that were of great importance
amongst the Romanians of Transylvania could suffer a sea change, the present
situation, which appears hopeless, could alter too. What is specifically
Transylvanian and thus possibly influential on the political and administrative
structure is not some kind of geo-cultural essence, but something protean,
undergoing constant change, that can be deliberately abandoned but just
as deliberately renewed.
It is obvious that Romania no longer offers
those advantages which, when feeling threatened in one way or another by
Hungarians, made adherence to an integrated nation-state not only acceptable
but expressly advantageous for Transylvanian Romanians. They have done
away with the handicaps under which they laboured vis à vis the
Hungarians in Transylvania, they no longer need the crutches which Bucharest,
as the centralized state, offers. The latter has changed into a burden.
GDP in Transylvania is at least twice that
of the rest of the country. Ilie Serbanescu, a respected economist and
Minister for Reforms in the Ciorbea government, draws the surprising consequences,
which are, however, typical of the present
situation in Romania, that “the conditions
are given for the loss of Transylvania.” Serbanescu no doubt rightly argues
that “given growing differences in economic levels, centrifugal tendencies
will not be reduced but will be amplified”, but only those who basically
support an obsolete, overcentralized and all-powerful state will interpret
such seemingly unavoidable centrifugal tendencies as a signal of approaching
catastrophe, advising the Bucharest government that, having lost the economic
battle, “it is a national duty to make use of every possible weapon to
make sure that Transylvania is set within the framework of an integrated
Romanian nation-state”.14
The perception of Romanians in Transylvania
is entirely different. What they object to is that they pay too much into
central funds. Sabin Gherman, who lives in Cluj, the spiritual centre of
Transylvania, shocked Romanian public opinion with a manifesto.15 He is
indignant because less is spent on Transylvania as a whole than on Bucharest
alone.16 Every survey so far has shown that Transylvanians systematically
favour less state and more individual initiative, a smaller role for the
state in the economy and more private property, and as far-ranging privatization
as possible. This is also expressed in political preferences. Since 1990,
from election to election and in an increasing measure, Transylvanians
have backed parties which urged radical reform and the liquidation of loss-making
state enterprises, showing growing opposition to parties mouthing left-nationalist
slogans, and showing anxiety concerning the integrity of the state and
radical reforms. Recent public opinion polls also bear out this trend.
They show that the allied left-nationalist opposition (PDSR, the post-communists
and the Greater Romania Party) and the Government coalition (Democratic
Convention, Democratic Party, RMDSz Hungarian Party) regionally relate
as follows in November 1998: Wallachia 49–43, Moldavia 47–40, and Transylvania
30–59 per cent.17
If this trend continues, than the expected
opposition victory on the national level projects an unprecedented acute
difference between Transylvania and the Old Kingdom. This creates an entirely
new situation. What will most likely happen is what happened in Scotland
after the
1987 elections when, according to David
McCrone, “the division over social policy along national lines propelled
Scottish opinion towards interpreting the problem in constitutional terms.18
1 n “The Transylvanian Question” Magyar
Kisebbség (Cluj-Kolozsvár) 1997/3–4 (in Hungarian), The Hungarian
Quarterly, No. 149 Spring 1998 (in English) Altera (Taˆrgu Mures¸/Marosvásárhely)
1998/8 (in Romanian).
2 n In the Old Kingdom Ion Iliescu minimally
came out on top. It was primarily Transylvanians who voted for the Democratic
Convention and Emil Constantinescu. See Gusztáv Molnár: “Electoral
geography”, Magyar Narancs (Budapest) December
1996.—The former President and leader of the post- communist PDSR, campaigning
in Moldavia for
an early dissolution, said in August 1998:
“You are the principal victims of the present economic crisis. It was the
errors of others which made you victims. It was the Transylvanians who
voted for the Democratic Convention”. (Adevaˆrul – Bucharest, August 18,
1998).
3 n Altera (Taˆrgu Mures¸-Marosvásárhely)
printed a Romanian version of my article, together with comments by Gabriel
Andreescu (Bucharest) (published in English in this issue) and Victor Neumann
(Timis¸oara-Temesvár).
4 n For comments by Tranylvanian Hungarians,
see Magyar Kisebbség, 1998/1–2.
5 n Bakk, Miklós: “Romania and Central
Europe: Two Compromises. Magyar Kisebbség 1998/1.
6 n See Andreescu, in this issue
7 n Marino, Adrian: Pentru Europa. Integrarea
Romaniei. Aspecte Ideologica si culturale (For Europe. The integration
of Romania. Ideological and Cultural Aspects), Jassy, 1995
8 n op. cit.
9 n Herezeanu, Emil: “The élites”.
22 (Bucharest) Nov 17–23, 1998
10 n Huntington, Samuel P.: The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York, 1996.
11 n See Ralea, Mihai: Fenomenul roma×nesc
(The Romanian Phenomenon), 1997.
12 n Mitu, Sorin: Geneza identita×t¸ii
nationale la roma×ni (The Genesis of National Identity Amongst Romanians),
Bucharest 1997.
13 n See Mitu, Sorin in this issue.
14 n See Serba×nescu, Ilie: “Will
Romania Lose the Political Battle in Hungary as She Has Lost the Economic
One?” Adeva×rul. October 8 1998.
15 n See Gherman, Sabin: “I Am Fed up with
Romania” Monitorul de Cluj, September 17 1998.
16 n Gherman, Sabin: “Why I Am Fed up with
Romania”, Transilvania Jurnal (Bras¸ov-Brassó) Nov. 14,1998
17 n Barometrul de opinie publica Romania
November 1998. A public opinion poll carried out for the Foundation for
an Open Society.
18 n McCrone, David (University of Edinburgh):
“Scotland and England. Diverging Political Discourses.” 1998. Paper presented
to the Conference on Regionalism, Budapest, September 5–7, 1998.
Gusztáv Molnár,
a philosopher, heads the Geopolitical Research
Group of the Teleki László Foundation—Institute for Central
European Studies, Budapest.
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