ern negotiators, ~a~ked by Romania, su ~eeded in introducing in the preamble ...... that diplomatic agendas had changed since the time of Nixon and Kissinger.
Romanian Political Science Review
STUDIA POLITICA
Revista Romana de Stiinta , , Politica
Vol.III No.4 2003 Universitatea din Bucure~ ti In sti t utu l de Cerce t a ri Politi ce /Ii~
Edi l u ra
~..{._~Ieridiane
Ul'HVEIlSI1Y OF BUCHAREST DE(,AIlTMENT OF (,OUTlCAl SClENCE INSTITUTE FOR PO LITICAL RESEARCH
UN IVERSITATEA DIN BUC~ I'ACUlTATEA DE sTIlNTE POll11CE INSTI1UIlJL DE CERCETARI POLITICE
STUD IA POLITICA Romanian Political Science Review Volume III, Number 4 December 2003
Revista Romana de $tiinta Politica Volumul III, NumiiruJ 4 Decembrie 2003
~
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EDI1U RA MERIDIANE
Who Was the First in Transylvania On the Origins of the Romanian-Hungarian Controversy over Minority Rights CRISTINA PETRESCU After the collapse of communism, among the issues that surfaced in the public sphere and s br~ed e~d less debates, therights of the Hungarian minority had not only the greatest sOCietal tmpact, but also senous consequences on Romania's image abroad. The regtme of NIColae Ceal1'1escu, which was ideologically growlded in the most organIcally developed blend of communism and nationalism in the entire Soviet bloc, was hea vily criticized, especially during its last decade, for orchestrating a silent policy of assinlliation primarily targeting the Transylvanian Hungarians. Until the electoral revolution of 1996, the unwillingness of the post-commWlist authorities to satisfy the demands of the Hungarian community in their entirety was internationally perceived as a powe rful, enduring legacy of the Romanian national-communism '. Considered a manifestation of outdated nationalism, if not of sheer xenophobia, the way in which the issue of minority rights was tackled by the first two lliescu regimes ranked high among the factors that contributed to Romania's belated start in the race for Europe. Moreover, because the post-communist elite had much in common with the commWlist one, and because the organized fOffils of opposition emerged only in the aftermath of the 1989 Revolution, the political polarization until 1996 seemed to reproduce the state - alternative society cleavage characteristic to the Central European countries in the late 19705. During this period, the ruling party was increasingly perceived as delaying the reorganization of society according to democratic rules, while the political opposition championed a fast and complete d emocratization. In this framework, the emergence of a coalition between the so-called democratic opposition and the H'Ulgarian Democratic Union in Romania (HOUR), the organization that took over the defense of this mirlority after 1989, prevented a political and societal cleavage along ethnic lines. If the occurrence of such polarization did not help in solving easier the interethnic problems, it might have helped Romania in avoiding the fate of Yugoslavia. Aimirlg a t highlighting continuities between the communist and the post-commlrnist regimes, this study traces, as the title aJUlOlUlCe5, the origins of the Ror:nanianH'Ulgarian conflict on the issue of minority rights. Although the focus of this study is Romania, the analysis tries to cover, whenever relevant, perspectives from bO,th sid es of the border. Moreover, it looks at both societal levels, th at of the commwust political elites in the two countries, and that of their critiques, who~ however small in number, still represented the only voices spealdngon behalf ~f Civil sOCiety. It IS, however, beyond the scope of this s tudy to analyze Ul thelT entirety the post-comI Si nce in the Roman ian case the concept of national-oonlDlUnisnl w as
ofte~ used ~o define late~eau§escui~m,
it is important to underline that the same concept was previ.ously employed With a ~I!ferenl Dlea l1l~\g.ln relatI on to developments ocrurred after the laundl of de-Slalini zation by Khrus hchev, natlon.al-coDlm.ullls m w~ used in western schOlars hip to defin e the divergent paths followed .by I~\e sat~lJjte countries. [n tlus ~espect, III the 1960s it was acknowledged that nati onal-comDlunis m could mamfest It.self e ither by ~me de~:ee of md epen.dence fro m Soviet control, thus op posing oneof the fi ve types of control.(diplomatic, polillcal, military, economic ~nd id eological), o r by so me degree o f internal li berali zation. S~ fo~ Ins tance H. Gord on SKILLING, Commurusm National and International: Eastern Europe alter Stalin, UllIvers lty of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1964, p. 17.
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mWlist developments in relation to the issue of the HWlgarian minority rights. As known, after many avatars, the minimal European s tandards for mmonty protecanu $; Transilvania, 1945- 1946, Ed itura Ellcicloped ica, Bucur ~t i, 2001, pp. 64-66. That the RCP o rganized manifestations against the Second Vielll.la. Award is co nfirm~ by ~Iircea Raceanu , who mentions that his adoptive fa ther, Gri gore Raceanu , was at the origin of one s uch mal1J festatl on held Oil 1 September 1940in Bra~ov. See his Infern 89: Povcstea unui con d~nat la m~arte, Si lex, BUCUI~.ti, 2000, p. 27. Fo r an ana lYSis of the textbooks by Mihail Roller with regard to the In~er p retatl?n of ~Ie S~ond ~Ienna Awanl, see Oltmar TRA$c.A , "Raporturil e Romano-Maghiar_e in tiD~ pu l celul de-a! DOilea Razbol Mond lal reflectatetn o\anualele ~colar e de istoria Romliniei " in Lucian NASTASA (~d.), Studii istorice romatlo~ungare, .Fuudalia Academica A.D. Xenopol, I~ i , 1999, pp. 3~360. It should be menlJon~d however th at the author fa lls Into th~ t~ap?( perpetuating a wid espread mistake in assessing Roller's idea of hl~tory and II~e textl?00ks he authored, onglllatlllg from the communist period, namely, that Roller's textbooks mystIfied our 1~lstory III all aspects..Alt hough s~ch. ~ n ass.erti on is tru e in mallY respects, there is still a need to re-evaluate theIr c?n ten~ a n~ establish the contlllultles WIth the intenvar interpretations of "national " history. ? nly after such an mvcs~lgahon of the patte~l~s of. conti nuity with the interwar historiography one can fully und ers tand the way Roller remterprcted RomallI a s history on the basis o f the Marxist theory.
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of takeo~er with the s,:,pport of the Soviet Union. From the very beginnings, both commumst parties reah~ed that the way in which the border dispute would be finally solved would determme theIr popularity. Putting aside their internationalist allegiance, the Hungarian and Romanian communists tried hard at the time to get Moscow's backmg for a convenient territorial arrangement. The Hungarian communists hoped that some justice would be done and they would get if not the enti Northern Transylvaniaback, at least parts of it. After all, as compar~d to 1920, wh:~ Hungary had been punIShed With heavy territorial losses for being on the losing side, durmg the Second World W~r both COuntrIes fought on the wrong side . . The Romaman commumsts formed a delegation - which includ ed GheorghiuDel, Ana Pauker and Gheorghe Apostol - that went to Stalin to plead for the incorporation of the whole Transylvania into Romania. Leaving aside the thesis of selfdetermination up to the point of secession, they made use of arguments from the nationalist repertory, stressing the importance of the short-lived union of Transylvania with Moldavia and Wallachia under a medieval ruler Michael the Brave. Although Stalin was unimpressed by their historical knowledge, he promised to give the region back to Romania for switching sides during the Second World War, on 23 August 19441. According to Hungarian sources, Stalin, just like Hitler five years before, pushed Romania and Hungary to compete each other for Transylvania. At a meeting in Budapest in 1945, a Soviet representative told the local communists that the country that would become first entirely communist would get the entire region of Transylvania'. In short, the two communist leaderships, which hoped to increase their political role in domes tic affairs with the backing of Moscow, inherited from t1,eir bourgeois predecessors a border problem. More importantly, due to the need to acquire popular support, their border problem ranked high on their agendas. It is still not clear what were the criteria according to which Stalin decided to return the whole region of Transylvania to the Romanians. In June 1944, the committee in charge of drafting a report on the Soviet position regarding the postwar world reorganization, led by M.M. Litvinov, advanced three possible solutions: (a) to give Northern Transylvania back to Romania; (b) to leave it to Hungary; and (c) to create an independent Transylvania under Moscow's tutelage. The report, although more favorable to Romania than to Hungary, proposed nevertheless the third solution. At that stage, the first solution, in case it would have been finally favored , was supposed to be carried out with the help of Iuliu Maniu and the National Peasant Party3. This is a clear indication that, at that stage of the war, the Soviet Union did not decide yet to boost the Romanian communists to power. As a recent analysis based on Soviet sources has shown, it was the Romanian commwllsts who, at a time when the capitulation of Germany was still pending, pushed Stalin to support them to seize I For Apostol's story, see Lavinia BErEA, Maurer $i Jum ea d e ieri: Mar!urii d espre ~tiJliniZilIe~ Rom4niei Dacia, Cluj- Napoca, 2001, p. 260, It is also interesting to note that the R~mam~n communIsts of J~w,sh or other ethnic ori gins w e(e in fav or of th e Romanians' right to possess the entlte territory of Transylva!,,,,, In the case of those of Jewish background this ca n be explained by the very fact that only the Tr~nsy lvamal,l Jews under Hungarian admi nistrati on perished in the Holocaust. In any case, Romanian ~mmulllsts' cOD~mltment to ,the Cominter nist theses o f the Fifth Party Congress o f 1931 regarding self· determination up to ll~e pOint of SecessIO~l, so much criticized later on by Cea~, must be reconsidered. Ion Gheorghe Maurer, hunself not an ethillc Roma nian, maintained that, with the exception of Ana Pauker ?nd those who ca-?,e fr om ~osco;;:; ~~.~ever hel~1 a Romanian cODlDlunist arguing that Bessarabia had to be SoVIet, orTransylvama Hunganan. I em, p, , 2 George SchCSpflin, interview by author, ta pe recording, London, 5 March 2003, _ 3 TIle advantages and disadvant?ses for ad opting the propos~d so'ution~::~:~::,f:~~~':h:;:~~',~~\: fi rst solution had the advantage that It would have pushed Romania to a perp , ,. I I . Bes b' and would have o bliged it, because of rega injngTransy lv? ni~, to put an end to Its temtona c amlS over sara ,a. See CONSTANTINIU, P,C.R" Patra~anu ~j TransjJvama, Cit, pp. 52·55.
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power. The incentive for the Soviets was the guarantee to have a more loyal lead ership in Buchares t' which would support the Soviet war effort better than the reluctant historical parties l Once the Soviets decided to back the Romanian communis ts' aspiration to power, they counted that the return of Transylvania would increase their almost non-existent popularity'. Such a hypothesis converges perfectly with other recently published sources, including transcripts of the Politburo and Central Committee meetings of 1945-46. Debates at the top of RCP's hierarch y with regard to the national problem show that once the Soviet backing for Transylvania was secured , their m ain concern was to ca]m down the Hungarian wuest and gain the votes of Hungarian minority in Romania. The Romanian commlUlists did their best to assure the Hungarian community, which was still hoping for a more favorable border settlement, that the new and allegedly democratic Romanian state would guarantee them equal rights with the m ajority'. This is not to say that since th e Romanian communists genuinely fought to acquire Transylvania, they were better patriots than was previously thought. They simply approached the national question more pragmatically and less ideologically. Even today, the period following the communist takeover is remembered by some Hungarians in Romania as a sort of golden age. Indeed, the Groza government not only assured equal political rights by law, but also the use of the Hungarian language in schools. Moreover, the Groza government applied the agrarian reform without ethnic discrimination, thus satisfying the requests of the Hungarian Popular Union'. The Constitution of 1952 - the first to stipulate the leading role of the Romanian Communist Party in political life, also legalized the administrative reform, which mirrored the Soviet system. This included also the establishment of the Hungarian Autonomous Region in the Transylvanian areas inh abited almost exclusively by I The argument was developed by Alfred J. Rieber in "The Crack in the Plaster: Crisis in Romania and the Ori gins of the Cold War", forthcomi ng. Th is argument challenges the traditional interpretation developed by western analysts in the high days of the Cold War, according to w hich the Soviets had a carefull y prepared plan to su bmit alilhe countries of East-Centra l Europe to their rule. See in this respect Hugh SETON-WATSON, The East European Revolution, Praeger, New York, 195221n any case, immediately after the establishment of the first communist government, on 8 March 1945, Petru Groza, the President of the Counci l of Mi nisters, o(ficiaUy asked Stalin to transfer the adm inistration of Transylvania into Roma nian hands. Next day, Stalin approved the Romanian request Oil the condition that the new government wou ld assume the responSibi lity to restore order and guarantee ri ghts for ethnic minorities. For more on this, see CONSf ANTINJU, P.CR., Palra~anu ~i Transylvania, cit., pp. 68-92. ) The meeting of the party aktiv of 22 June 1946 during which Lucre\ iu Pa tr~ca nu was fi ercely critici zed for his famous speech in auj is extremely telling in this respect. Pat r a~can u 's discourse was always interpreted as a proof that he was the only cOQlmunist animated by patriotic feelings, aU the others being Moscow's blind followers, and this is why he was eliminated later on. From the transcript of th at meeting, th e nature of the criticism directed against ratra~canu becomes clearer. Both Ana Pauker and Gheorghiu-Dej underlined th at, since Transylvania would belong to Romania, the problem that remained to be solved was to appease the Hungarians in Romania by convincing them of the Party leadership's good will, In Cluj, Pa tr ~ca nu had been unwise enough to criticize the Hu~garian chauvinism more than the Romanian o ne, which not only stirred the Hunga rians, bu t could have also triggered the loss of their votes in the comi ng elections. This was the reason why ratr ~ca nu was criticized. See Andreea ANDREfSCU, Lucian NAST ASA and A ndrea VARGA ( eds.), Minorit.ili erno-culturale Miirturii documentare: Maghiaril din Romania, 1945-1955, Ethno-Cu ltural Diversity Resource Center, Cluj, 2002, esp. pp. 369-404. ~The requ ests of the Hun garian Popular Union were presented to the Groza government immediately after takeov~,o~ 12 March 1945. :h.ese i~c1u~ed : (1) p~oportional representation in the government; (2) adequate representatIon III th e loca l adOlllllstratlO1l 111 the regIo ns with Hungarian po pulation ; (3) the Hungaria n language to be declar~ o f~ciallanguage in Transy lvania; (4) education to be provid ed in Hungar ian from the grammar school t~ universIty; (~) equal treatment (or the religious denomin.,tions to which the Hungaria ns belonged; (6) theater 111 the Hungarian language; (7) the (ree use of national sy mbols; (8) re-distributio n of land without ethni sd iscri~ination ; and (9) the inclusion of the Hungarian Jews in the Hungaria n commu nity. See ANDREfSCU, NASTASA and VARGA, Maghiarii din Romania, cit. , pp. 65-69.
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Hungarians'. Th~ autonomous status of that region was stipulated by article 19. However, accord mg to the next article, the laws of the Romanian Popular Republic and the decIsIOns taken by the central authorities were obligatory on the territory of that region as well as in the res t of the country . Thus, the real autonomy was severely restn cted, not to mention the fact that the local elections were as fictitious as those held in an y communis t country'. Following the adoption of the 1952 Constitution the Hungarian Popular Union, a long-term companion of the RCP, but also the defen~ der of the Hungarian communi ty in Romania, dissolved itself on the basis that it had lost its importance and initial role 3 . Later on, under Cea~escu, one of the issues raised
by the Hungarians in Romania wo uld be that.they lacked an organization that genuinely represented them . As Gabriel Andreescu, arguably the most fervent ad voca te of the rights of the Hungarian commwlity in post-communism, aptly observed , the autonomous sta tus of the Hungarian Autonomous Region was purely fictitious . The nostalgia for the Groza period represents only nostalgia for symbols'. Pax sovietica, which was supposed to finally put an end to the competing nationaHsms in the region in the n ame of internationalism, succeeded onl y in temporarily concealing the problems. Following the 1956 Revolution the tensions between the two countries surfaced again. In spite of the fact that Transylvania was completely incorporated into Romania after the war, the specter of a new awa rd - this time und er the pa tronage of Moscow - would never cease to halUlt the Romanian communist
elite. The role of Buch arest in helping Moscow to suppress the Hungarian revolution is known'- In fact, the Revolution of 1956 would offer the Romanian communists the opportunity to equate the Hungarian attempts at reforming the commlUlis t system w ith border revisionism, and condemn both as equally dangerous. Gradually, the righ ts enjoyed by the Hungarian community - consid ered by the Romanian commWlist e lite a purely internal affair - were restricted . The firs t m easures of anti-
HlUlgarian character were part of the larger post-1956 new wa ve of repression in Romania. Since students and professors of Hungarian origin at the Bolyai University of Cluj were indeed among the most vocal in Romania after the outburst of the Hungarian revolution, the Hungarian and Romanian lUliversities in Cluj were merged in June 1959 . Moreover, the level of unrest among the Hungarian population in the Szekler region was higher than in other regions, which made the Romanian leadership decide a territorial reorganization. Consequently, in December 1960, the boundaries of the Hungarian Autonomous Region were redrawn in such a way as to include Romanians as well'. I This was one o f the 19 regions of the count ry and includ ed 9 raioane. It is interesting to note tI~at on, 24 September 1952, when th e Gra nd Nati onal Assembly voted the 1952 Cons titut,ion - which granl~ tlu ~ r,e.g lon an autono mous status - Petru C roza w as its President. He w as no longer the President of the CowlCI l ~(, Mlnl~tez:s, his pOSitio n being occupied s ince 2 June 1952 by Gheorg hiu-Oej wh~ this way ocOJpi~ the top, posl~lon w ll ilin the Party and the government at th e sa me time, as his counterparts In the other ~atelhte countl'l~ did" 2 1n this res pect, a transcript of the Regi onal Party Committee o,f the Hun~arlan A uto nomous Region, held in January 1954 which d iscu ssed the electoral campai gn, is very telling, Candidat es wer~ propo~ and elected accord ing to t h~ same cl ass pri nci ples as in the rest of Roma nia, See ANDREESCU, N ASTASA and VARGA, MagruarU din Rom Ania, cit. , pp, 744-760, , ., d' I ' , ) For the transcript of the meetin g of the Hungarian Popular Umon lead ers 11\ wili ch the self- ISSO utlon was
vote~S::e~!~~~:l~D~~~
~i
la~i, 2~1 , ~, ~~,
Ruieta: Rom ani m aghiari, 1990-2000, Poliro m, , S For an account o f the role played by the Romania,n coDUlluni~ts,of HWlgarian etl~l~.O~I:~~ ~~I:;,"~:r~~ gations of the 1956 Hungaria n revolutionary commullIsts, see Clm stJan DU P0 ~n III , ' en rou e. Les ionniers: Varsovie, Prag ue, Budapest, BucaresL 1944·-1968,Seull, Pa(l~, 1 ~4, , 6 f ft er the Ro mania n lead ership took the opportunity to III ported the 1956 Hungarian Revoluti on of nationalis m and "bourgeOIS t:UdVlIllS~ or ~10~ 1964 pp 294-295 IONESCU, Conununism in Romani a, 1944-1962, Oxford University Press, 11 on ~n ew or , " '
1 9~
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It is still a matter of debate to what extent these measures were anti-Hungarian and to what extent anti-revisionist. It is beyond doubt that the steps undertaken by the Romanian leadership were dictated by the fear that the reformist views, which were flourishing in the neighboring country, would spread into Romania too. Due to language skills and family connections over the border, the Hungarians living in Romania were better placed than the ethnic Romanians to absorb them and to expose therefore the Romanian population to ideas that would h ave been otherwise inaccessible to them. In fact, the Romanian leadership never intended to introduce any internal reforms and observed the same dogmatic Stalinist line from the beginnings to the very end of the system. Thus, the Romanian communists followed the developments in the neighboring and more liberal Hungary, since the 1956 Revolution onwards, with suspicion and fearl. There are, nevertheless, authors who emphasize that at the origin of the above-mentioned measures were the same old anti-Hungarian feelings. Especially Hungarians critical to the Kadar regime argue that, because the Budapest communists explicitly asserted that it was up to the Romanian communists to take care of the Hungarian minority in their country, Bucharest felt free to gradually resume the interwar policy of disregard for minorities'. Recently published sources give a hint on the perspective the Romanian communists h ad on the minority issue. Far from feeling reassured that the Hungarians ceased to have any claims on Transylvania, it seems that the Romanian leadership continuously suspected their western neighbors for trying to arrange a border resettlement. Since both countries were once again in the same sphere of influence, Gheorghiu-Dej and his men feared that th e HlU1garians might succeed in persuading Moscow to redraw the frontiers more favorably to them, as they once did with the help of Berlin and Rome. Transcripts of the Politburo meetings and the available tes timonies of the former nomenklatura members show that, after 1956, the Romanian communists followed extremely carefully the way the problem of Transylvania and of the Hungarian minority living there was tackled in Budapest. This suggests that the commlU1ist leadership inherited from its bo urgeois predecessors not only the political conflict with Hungary over Transylvania, but also the fear that borders might be resettled again more favorably to the neighboring country by an international arbitrage imposed on Romania 3 . This legacy of the pre-: mh ~nt ed tlus flgl~t, or because they acquired it du e to spedal services to the crown. During th.e medieval peflod, III Tr~nsy ~vallIa there were three natio: th e Hungaria ns, the Szeklers, and the Germans. In tillS ~es pect , there was a majOr difference between . .. Tran sylvani a, w hi ch had three naUo, and the rest of Hungary, willch had only one. J Wri ting in the mid-19lh century about the history of different nati~>I1aliti es from t1~e Ha.bs burg EmpIre, Ro~l er tried to explai n how the population speakin g Romanian, a clearly ~at~n langu~ge, arraved III th ~ a.rea. Supposmg that with the withdrawal of the Roma n Empire from Transylvallla III th e 3' century, aU Latm speakers must have left he presupposed that this g roup must have come later. Since the Romanians were known as Ylachs at the time '(Olahs ill Hungarian), he also assumed that they were dir~ct d escend ants (ron~ t he Vlachs who were still to be fou nd the mountains of Maced onia . It was during th e pefl od when the Bu lgaJ~an Tsardom stretched north of the Da nu be that is in the 12111 and 131h centur ies, that some Vlachs must have mIgrated from the sout h of the river up to Tr~nsylvania, and settled there. Thus, the Romanians in Tra.nsylvan ia ru:e d.irect d esce~~ants from these medi eval shep herd s and not from the Ro mans w ho conquered DaCia ~t the be~tnl1lng of the 2 c~n tury. For the influence of Robert Rosier's theory on the Hungarian authors who studIed the hIstory oftl~e Romalllan communily in Transylvani a in the second half of the 191h century, see Frederick KE~LOG, A H!story o~ the Romanian Historical Writing, Charles Sch lack, Backersfi eld, Californi a, 1990, translated mto Romaillan as 0 lstorie a istoriografiei .romane, Institutul Europea n, Iajli, 1996. . f 4 This view is held even by the most liberal interpretations, such as KO~LER, A. Hlstory 0 . ~ung~y. 5 He mai ntains that it was not the Lati n ori gi n that determin ed peop le to WIthdrew WIth the admlillstrall on and legion of th e Roman Em pire in the 3'd century, but th e state of wealth. O nly the reach peopl~ could have afford ed to leave, even among those of Roma n descend, which, in Rosier's view, wou ~d have be.en less connected with the region and , thus, readier to leave. Thus, argued Xenop~l, it was more p.lau~lble t~ reil~ve ~hat Ith~ ~u~k of the Latin speaking population, the proto-Roma nians, re.ma ll1~d ~\l here their pIece 0 . a~ was,/ ~ IS II~ Transylvania. See A.D. XENOPOL, lstoria Romlnilordin Daaa TraJana, vol. 1, Istona veche. Dill vrenll e e mal
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tion of the Roman withdrawal remained the standard one. Although many of his other interpretations were challenged ever since, the issue of continuity in Transylvania was never abandoned in Romanian historiography. Even after the commums t takeover, when history was reinterpreted from an intemationalist perspective, based on the class s truggle scheme, Xen opol's view remained unchallenged '. Th e historiographical debate over who was the first in Transylvania, or, in other words, who has historical righ ts over Transylvania, is important, because it shapes to a great extent the CUrrent discourses delivered by Romanians and Hungarians as well. The irony is that, the Romanians would not need to make use of the his torical argument, but continued to do it because the issues of primacy and continuity in Transylvania represent central themes of Romanian historiography from its very beginnings and up to the present. In fact, with regard to this issue, the only novelty introduced by thenational-commwtist regime by promoting a wtique interpretation of history and marginalizing real debates was that it induced not only among lay men, but also among many professionals, the idea that history, as an objective science, cannot be but one. Of all the problems uncovered by the textbook debate, the most troublesome was the almost general questioning of the idea that several interpretations of the past could perfectly coexist. Many Romanian historians continue to believe even today that, if the researcher is absolutely honest and writes from a purely scientific view, he cannot come but with a single interpretation, which is the only objective one2. This perspective became long ago obsolete in w estern scholarship and the fact that there are historians who still hold this idea of history represents another legacy of national-communism. Once, A.D. Xenopol stated that: "The defense of the Romanians' continuity in the old Trajan Dacia emerged from a d eep scientific conviction, so that I never faced a dilemma to choose between historical truth and the interest of my people"3. For the present day generations in Romania and Hungary, one could not support with serenity such view. Since most of the controversies over political issues originate in the different views of the past, a first and necessary step towards the Romanian-Hungarian reconciliation is to acknowledge differences and accept their right to co-exist.
v~ pilla la jnteJ~jerea ,TariJor Romine, H. Gallier, lassi, 1888, p. 290. See also his Teoria l ui Ros/er, lassi, 1884. Th ls1w as also publlsl~ed III ,French as ,Les R? umains au Moy en-Age, une crtig m e his torique, Paris, 1885. ,In fact',the w ay III '~ll1~h t~\e entire ~pl~ e was reinterp.reted in such a way as to accommodate class strugsle WIth the 'ss.ue of contllluity IS rather m gelllous. The most Important hi storian at the time, Mihail Roller, who \~as cdu~a led III Moscowl,argu ed that a~ the R ~man withdrawal, aU slaves must have remai ned, happy to get rid of their masters. Thus, It was from tillS workmg e1ass avan t la fettre, in other words from the "healthiest elements" of the society in the communi st perspective that the Romania n nati on descends. See Mihail ROLLER, ff~/f7.'e de istorie: ContributH la lupta pentru a istorie $tiinrifica tn R.P.R. , Editura P.M .R. , Burure;;li, 1951, pp .
. ~ Very ~Uing in thi s re::'peet the. reply given by loan A urel Pop to Luci an Boia. See Ludan BOlA, /storie $i m it III :O'l $illnta romJneasca, Human Jt ~s, Bu.cur~ti, 19m, translated into English as History and Myth in Romanian C~nS~O tISm~ss, Cent~a l Eur~p:a n Uni versit y Press, Budapest, 2001 , and loan-Aurel POP, ISioria, ade varul $i m ltuflie, Edltura Enelelopedl ca, 8u cu r~t i , 2002. ) See A. D. XENOPOL, RomJnH $i ung urii, edited by Constantin Schifirn e\, Albatros, Bucur~ti, 1999, p. 85.
Revisl!1 Romanil de ~iiIll
