15: Since Then
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Ever since it became even a possibility that, in view of its Romanian
majority, Transylvania may or should be removed from the aegis of the Hungarian
Crown and be incorporated into a larger framework containing the bulk of the
Romanian people—with its center naturally beyond the Carpathians—there
had been no unanimity as to the mechanism of this change, even among the
Romanians. The Romanians living inside the arc of the Carpathians would have
preferred it if Transylvania were to enjoy a substantial autonomy. For this
there are two strong indications. This part was economically, socially and
politically more advanced than the potential incorporator. Secondly, under
these conditions, the appreciable non Romanian residents would be more ready to
accept a development that was clearly distressing for them. The residents of
the Regát, however, wanted full integration, with a homogenous central
administration, which did not recognize regional autonomies and in which the
final say-so belonged to Bucharest, to the "old Romanian" politicians of the
Regat.
In the gradual but rapid take-over of 1918-1919, initially there was some
local autonomy and some evidence of toleration toward the nationalities. This
was motivated by the practical realization that knowledge of the area and
familiarity with the local conditions would facilitate the take-over. Thus, the
Romanian representatives of the area were most suitable to manage its affairs.
There was also a tactical consideration for such a move. The yet unsigned peace
treaty would most likely be the more advantageous for the Romanian interests if
the Entente decision makers were favorably impressed by the way the take-over
was handled.
The moment the borders were determined in the Palace of Trianon, everything
took on a different coloration. There was no further need for dissimulation.
The liberal, democratizing trends and considerations were swept aside by the
Regat majority. Complete incorporation began and remained in effect, even
though there would always be ineradicable differences between Transylvania and
Old Romania which would require a different approach and a different
solution.
"Between the two world wars, Romania was a backward, agrarian country. This is
well illustrated by the fact that in 1930, 78.7 % of its active population
worked in agriculture, and only 6.7 % in industry. In agriculture
dwarf-holdings and small farms predominated, and after the land reform, which
was implemented in 1921, their preponderance increased. In industry and
commerce, the large proportion of small enterprises was conspicuous. Oil
extraction and coal mining together with iron and steel production
characterized economic development in the longer run, as did, to some extent,
the development of machine-tool industry. Besides Romanian capital, French,
Belgian, German, and to a lesser degree, in Transylvania, Hungarian capital had
a stake in the larger industrial enterprises, as well as in banks.
"As was typical in eastern Europe at this time, Romania's social structure
bore the marks of economic underdevelopment. This meant that the peasantry
constituted the majority of the population, and broad sections of it lived in
traditonal, backward circumstances; standards of living were extraordinarily
low. The working class, which was comparatively undeveloped, lived in a
geographically limited area, and was concentrated in only a few branches of
industry. Small businessmen, small traders and white collar workers made up the
equivalent of the bourgeoisie. The state was directed by representatives of big
business and by the large landowners". (Béla Kõpeczi)
The fairly extensive 1921 land reform—initiated after a war and among a
population suffering from severe poverty in spite of the increase in the size
of the country—was a historical necessity. This was a fact that was
recognized by the Romanian leadership, while it was ignored by the Hungarian
elite. Its results varied on a regional basis. In the Regat it improved the
general structure of land ownership while in Transylvania it resulted in a
shift between the land owned by a majority group and the land held by the
members of the minority nationalities. There is no question as to who
benefited. It did not exclude, however, all Hungarians and other nationalities
from acquiring land. The loss of the jointly owned forests and pastures was a
particularly severe blow since they played a major role in the economic life of
the Székely communities.
In the strongly conservative Romanian leadership, the promoters of an
autarchic economic evolution set the tone. This path was partially justified by
the fact that the new Romania was almost completely surrounded by countries --
Soviet Russia, Bulgaria and Hungary—who all lost territory to it. At that
time only the narrow Czechoslovak-Romanian border was a "friendly" one. Against
autarchy, there was the possibility of an internationally protected maritime
and Danubian shipping industry. Its expenses were largely covered by the
increasing production of oil in the eastern foothills of the Carpathians, which
made Romania the world's fifth largest producer in the early 1930s. (The
autarchic trend was continued in the Romanian "Socialist" economic developments
after 1945, just as the industrial-armament program of Kálmán
Darányi in Hungary, the so-called Gyõr Program was fully
realized only much later, during the feverish Rákosi-Gerõ
industrialization).
Romanian industrial developments at this time—contrary to the events after
1945—took place almost exclusively in the Regat, in spite of the fact that
the available manpower in this area was much less skilled when compared to the
Transylvanian one. The new Romanian industry had an effect on the demography of
the country and led to migrations. Between 1918 and 1923 about 200 thousand
Transylvanian Hungarians fled to the mother country—mostly officials and
intellectuals—the new migration toward the east was triggered by the demand
for workers in the industries of Old Romania. As a consequence of this two-way
migration, thousands of the escapees to Hungary lived in great poverty, in old
railroad cars on the sidings of railway freight depots, while Bucharest became
a city with one of the world's largest Hungarian populations. Many
Transylvanian Hungarians, while preserving their original homes, commuted to
temporary or permanent jobs in Old Romania, mostly in construction work and in
industry. The emigration to America, interrupted by the war, was also
resumed.
The economy of certain regions, small areas or cities, sensitively documented
the absurdity of the new borders. While in the south and in the north the
incorporation of Hungarian national blocks may be explained, to some extent, by
geographic and economic (rivers and railroads) circumstances, the new western
Hungarian-Romanian border was most idiosyncratic and most economically
damaging. Nagyvárad, for example, was only a few kilometers from the new
border and its population—at that time still predominantly Hungarian --
was devastated by the loss of its natural economic and commercial base in the
Great Plains. If Trianon had not paralyzed the growth of this city, it would
have rapidly become the second largest Hungarian city after Budapest. Its
development after 1945 was purely artificial, and even today it can barely
subsist on the resources of its former area. This was and is to the great
detriment of both Hungarian and Romanian economy.
Even though the loss in manpower after 1918 was substantial, this was not the
real tragedy of the Transylvanian Hungarians. It was the fate of those who
remained behind. The changes were dramatic. The Transylvania Hungarian society
and its every class, level and group had become a minority in the area that for
a thousand years it called home. It had to learn the miseries of this fact. The
lovely promises of Gyulafehérvár disappeared. It was of no great
benefit that a large part of its elite remained obstinately faithful and did
not take advantage of the available and, for it, very promising opportunities
of emigration. The literary life was rich and manifold. Periodical publications
[Pásztortüz (Campfire), Erdélyi Helikon
(Transylvanian Helicon), and the left-wing Korunk (Our Times)]
organized around the Erdélyi Szépmives Céh (Transylvanian
Craftsmen's Guild) which was able to distribute the best works of the
Transylvanian authors, in Hungary, in sizable editions. There was also a slowly
developing, gently naive Transylvanian spirit, concerning the exemplary
spiritual role of the Transylvanian Hungarians.
The ongoing Romanization which they later used, contrary to all evidence, as
justification for the declaration of a national state took many forms. It
granted economic advantages and increased employment for officials from the
Regat, who poured in to fill the vacancies left by the withdrawal of the
Hungarians but, most significantly, the major emphasis was placed on the use of
the Romanian language, both in official and personal communications and on the
complete restructuring and rearranging of the schools and of the educational
process.
Considering the latter, it seems appropriate to recognize the diligence and
the rate with which, in the framework of the revitalized educational system,
the Romanians developed their own, new officials and intellectuals. The
strengthening of public education obviously also served to replace the teaching
of the Hungarian language, or to relegate it to religious instruction. This,
incidentally, also had the effect of tying the Transylvanian nationalities much
more tightly to their Church and to its institutions—contrary to the
secularization of the last one-hundred years. This action-reaction was further
emphasized by the strong support that the two great national Romanian Churches,
but particularly the Greek Orthodox, acting almost as a recognized state
religion, gave to the national and nationalist endeavors of their country.
During the 1920s and 1930s the "mutilated" Hungary blamed Trianon for all
economic and social problems and troubles. These included the loss of
territory, of forests and of most sources of raw materials. These were indeed
grievous losses. Yet in the so spectacularly enlarged Romania, the economic
concerns and the social tensions were no less. There were a series of peasant
movements—sometimes bloody—in both Transylvania and Old Romania. and
there were labor unrests and resistance against the greedy domestic and foreign
robber capitalism. It is understandable that among the doubly disfranchised --
economically and as minorities—there was a strong, radical left wing. In the
Transylvanian and in the entire Romanian Communist movement there were numerous
Hungarians and Jews who considered themselves Hungarians. This had serious
effects after 1945...
The rebellious social dissatisfaction assuredly did not limit itself to a move
to the left. It also gave munition to the right wing, which came naturally to
the ruling classes, traditionally influenced by a nationalist public sentiment.
The main battle in the Romanian political arena was between the various
factions of the right wing. Some of them were Populists, others relied heavily
on the elite.
It is not surprising that the world-wide economic depression hit Romania's
undeveloped economy particularly hard. This also showed the limitations imposed
by autarchy. The great recession came at a time when the Iron Guard, supported
by the Orthodox clergy and many of the university students, was already ready
and waiting. This movement started in Moldavia and would very soon have a major
effect on all of Romania. This bloody movement, responsible for political
murders and for anti-Semitic pogroms (it tried to recruit even in Transylvania
with vague promises of autonomy), showed peculiar similarities with and
differences from its European counterparts. Both its overt and covert
activities were more extensive than those of the Hungarian extreme right, the
Arrow Cross. While the latter got a tragic and criminal starring role "only" in
the last act of the Hungarian tragedy in 1944-45, the Iron Guards were attacked
first in 1930 and then again in 1941 and—similarly to the elimination of the
SA leadership in Germany in 1934—there were two "Nights of the Long Knives"
in which other right wing Romanian groups, brutally and bloodily tried to do
away with them.
In these turbulent extremes of Romanian public life, the political freedom of
movement for the Hungarians in Transylvania was very limited. Even with the
tightly controlled educational system, they could still serve the preservation
of their nationality. Hungarian culture and science were supported by
institutions that came and went but were maintained more effectively by the
most talented writers, artists and scientists who gained substantial
recognition both in Transylvania and in Hungary. The attempts to form political
parties on a nationality basis were generally feeble and in 1938, all parties
in Romania were disbanded and the multi-party system was replaced by a
corporate form of statism.
The situation of the German nationalities in Transylvania, the Saxons and,
further south in the Banate, the Svabians was somewhat more favorable. Ever
since Gyulafehérvár they resigned themselves to the Romanian
conquest. Their Lebensraum, or "living space", was far removed from that
of their Great German homeland, and could hardly be expected to form a union
with it. Also, Romania exchanged its former French-English orientation with a
German one. This naturally agreed with Hitler's desires to exert a tighter
control over Romanian oil.
The Transylvanian Germans, who were generally receptive to the Hitlerian
ideas, became the favorites of the Romanian leadership, since the Romanians
viewed their relationship with this group as the touchstone of their future
relationship with the Third Reich. Yet, the above could hardly explain the
dramatic twists and turns that took place in this region in 1940. The outbreak
of World War II, put a land mine under everything that seemed settled "in
perpetuity" by the Parisian peace treaties. A number of European borders were
moved. Hungary, which received a significant area from Slovakia under the First
Vienna Agreement in the fall of 1938 and which, after Czechoslovakia's
destruction by Hitler, occupied the Kárpátalja—and
re-established a common border with Poland—thereafter increasingly looked
toward Transylvania. The Horthy regime, whose primary purpose, since the moment
of its inception, was the territorial revision of the Trianon treaty, would not
have been true to itself if it did not prepare for this—with military
forces, if necessary.
Hitler, however, needed Hungarian wheat, meat, aluminum and the Transdanubian
oil just as much as he needed the Ploesti oil. Pál Teleki, serving his
second term as Prime Minister, was concerned about Hungary gaining back the
territories taken away by Trianon, purely by the grace of Germany. The
Hungarian-Romanian revisionary conference, held in Turnu-Severin in the summer
of 1940, and instigated solely by Germany, ended in complete failure. It was
the Second Vienna Agreement, engineered by a German-Italian "tribunal" that
gave northern Transylvania, i.e. the northern and eastern parts of Greater
Transylvania, back to Hungary. At the same time, Romania was made to give up
about 50 thousand square kilometers in the north to the Soviet Union. In the
south, it had to yield 7,000 square kilometers to Bulgaria and the area it had
to cede to Hungary encompassed another 44 thousand square kilometers. This was
truly a Romanian Trianon. It was that, even though, this time it was a new
country and not a thousand-year-old kingdom that was being dismembered by its
neighbors, under the authority granted by foreign great powers. The ruling
king, Charles II, was deposed, and was replaced by his son, Michael I.
There are as many estimates about the population and its ethnic composition of
the area returned to Hungary as there are sources for same. Reasonably accurate
estimates can be made only prospectively from the 1930 Romanian census and,
retrospectively from the 1941 Hungarian one. We can be certain, however, that
of a population on one million, the Romanians amounted to more than 40%, while
in the part retained by Romania, they represented only 60% which also included
the German nationalities, the majority of whom live in that area.
The new borders, drawn up by the Second Vienna Agreement, were not
satisfactory to either party, and were replete with economic and
transportational absurdities. Thus, the almost totally Hungarian
Székelyfõld could not be reached from Hungary by rail. One of the
explanations of these absurdities was that the division of the territory,
largely determined by the Germans—Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister was
only a bit-player in the negotiations—had a hidden agenda item. Based
primarily on the Transylvanian Saxons and on the Serbs in the Banate, the
Germans wanted to control an economic belt in this area which was significant
in itself and also represented a bridge toward the Ploesti oil fields and
Bucharest. In this, the Germans also relied on the chain of southern
Transdanubian and eastern Great Plains German villages.
Romania could not resist the Vienna decisions. During the previous weeks the
Hungarian army, although poorly equipped, was ready to fight. It now clumsily
completed the task of occupying the region, welcomed enthusiastically by the
Hungarian population. It encountered no resistance. The stories about
confrontations and bloodletting in Transylvania, published much later, but
cited frequently even today, are rumors and fabrications.
The enthusiasm cooled off rapidly. Tensions developed between the Hungarians
who remained in place and held out during the Romanian occupation, and who now
expected to play a leading role, and the military leaders and administrators
dispatched to Transylvania from Hungary. Prime Minister Pál Teleki, had
very little success with his confidential instructions in which he advised
moderation in the treatment of the Romanians who suddenly again became a
minority nationality from previously having been a nation. The new Hungarian
regime in Transylvania, or rather northern Transylvania, was most effective in
using its local people in destroying the Communist organizations. The less
prominent leftists who managed to escape imprisonment quickly found themselves
serving in labor battalions, under military direction, together with several
thousand Romanians. Large population migrations took place among both
Hungarians and Romanians, between northern and southern Transylvania. The
Hungarian wartime boom and the resulting serious demands for workers resulted
in that many were put to work in the Csepel factories, first as volunteers and
later, another group, under compulsion. At the same time the situation of the
approximately half million Hungarians in southern Transylvania, took a marked
turn for the worse. (This number represented about 15% of the local population,
with another 15% being Germans).
One certainly could and should write the history of the next four years in
Transylvania. The further course of World War II however, and the divergent
politics of Hungary and Romania have made this, at best, an episode without any
foreseeable influence on the future. While both the claimants for Transylvania,
Hungary and Romania entered the war on Hitler's—and each other's—side,
they did this largely to obtain and keep Transylvania. Through overt and covert
channels, both countries received word from the increasingly victorious Allied
Powers that at the end of the war, Transylvania would be awarded to the one
who would wrest it away from Germany. This was confirmed by the Soviet Union
via the Hungarian Communist emigrés in Moscow, because of or in spite of
the fact that the Soviet Union itself had territorial demands against Romania.
This had now become the position of the western Powers as well who conceded
that they could not avoid or prevent Eastern Central Europe from falling under
Soviet influence.
When at the end of August, 1944 Romania which had fought on Hitler's side with
considerable forces, first asked for an armistice and then, two days later,
declared war on Germany, the fate of Transylvania was once again decided. There
was no way back. The Romanian army was successfully turned around and the
country moved from the rank of the losers to the camp of the winners. Their
only gain was northern Transylvania. She did not regain the other territories
lost in 1941, and this is a grievance to Romania to this day.
The Hungarian army, having suffered very heavy losses between the millstones
of the Soviet front, had tried, as best it could to strengthen the crest line
of the Carpathians which in the north and east constituted the borders of
Hungary. The terrain lent itself very well for this purpose. Yet, the rapidly
moving Soviet troops, including their new allies, used the passes of the
Southern Carpathians to enter Transylvania. The Hungarian army was unsuccessful
in preventing this, in spite of counter-attacks, first from the
Kolozsvár area and then, with German assistance, from the southern Great
Plains, in the direction Arad-Temesvár. Every attempt collapsed in days
or weeks. The fight shifted very shortly to the central portion of the
Hungarian Great Plains, where in the region of Debrecen—already to the west
of Transylvania—the Debrecen Tank Battle was fought. This is an almost
forgotten incident of World War II, although considering the forces involved,
it was a very major engagement.
Thus, when after much hesitation, Miklós Horthy's clumsy and weak
armistice effort was made on October 15, 1944 and the Hungarian Arrow Cross
(Fascists) assumed power, most of northern Transylvania was already in Soviet
and Romanian hands. The war rolled on bloodily toward the west. Behind it,
first in the Székelyfõld and then in all of northern
Transylvania, the Romanian administration was being organized. This did not
prevent the atrocities, the cruel, bloody, anti-Hungarian pogroms in several
settlements of the Székelyfõld and in the area of
Kolozsvár. Such events were common behind the fronts during periods of
transition. The culprits were the Maniu Guardists who were the successors of
the Iron Guard. Iuliu Maniu (1873-?1951) was twice Prime Minister, the leader
of the National Peasant Party, one of the leaders of the liberal wing of the
Romanian right. He was not responsible for the murder and persecution of the
Hungarians perpetrated under his name, but he did not distance himself from
them either. The situation deteriorated to the point where the Soviet military
command, not exactly celebrated for its sensitivity, took over the
administration of northern Transylvania for four months—nominally under the
auspices of the four power Allied Control Commission. "These four transitional
months represented a strange historic moment: The life of northern
Transylvania, its reconstruction and its political life, were organized and
directed by Romanian and Hungarian Communists. The latter had their power base
in the local and county organizations of the Hungarian Popular Association. In
both Hungary and Romania, the Communists at this time were just beginning the
struggle to strengthen their position." (Béla Kõpeczi).
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