The career Transylvania made as a centre of 'some sort of imaginative whirlpool', while the 'wildest and least known portion of Europe' is well-known. The land 'beyond the woods' of despots and vampires, of werewolves and all sorts of monsters completely occupied the Western imagination to such an extent that attempts to show mediaeval Transylvania as an enlightened place of religious tolerance, reform and learning was not even noticed, although it is precisely this image inhabitants have of themselves. Disputed in the modern times between Hungary and Romania without the conflict ever reaching the heights of conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Transylvania survived all through the 20th Century as an ethnic mix of Romanians, Hungarians and Germans. Gypsies are also there, but quite unnoticed; Jews used to be there, but they were either decimated during the Holocaust, or they left during Communist times. Encyclopedias show along time the changing image of Transylvania in the West as rooted in frequent changes in its history, but also the endurance of the core facts. The Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1911 carries echoes of Stoker's description of Transylvanian inhabitants as 'picturesque' except a few looking like German or French 'normal' peasants, when qualifying the Germans as 'the most advanced section of the population'. Unfortunately they made only 233,019, while 'The Hungarians and the Szeklers together number 814,994', 'but by far the most numerous element, though long excluded from power and political equality is formed by the Rumanians, 1,397,282 in number, who are spread all over the country. The gypsies of Transylvania (...) are estimated at 50 000)(...). Jews, Armenians, Bulgarians, Ruthenians and Greeks are also represented in the medley of peoples'. The authors note Transylvania's incorporation into Hungary since 1868, adding' since that time the Magyarization of the principality has steadily been carried through, in spite of the bitter protests and discontent of both Saxons and Romanians. A Hungarian university was founded at Kolozsvar in 1872; and Hungarian is recognized as the official language'. Le Grand Larrousse encyclopedique of 1964 devotes more attention than the pragmatic Brits to the 'dark millenium' noting that so little is known of Transylvania during that time that two versions of history, a Romanian and a Hungarian one, can still present fundamental different points of view over the matter. The French also record Transsilvania as a Romanian name for the region, not only Latin, as in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Both acknowledge the existence of the Hungarian name, Erdely, also used in Romanian pronunciation as Ardeal, and the German 'Siebenburgen'. Since 1911, many things happened: Transylvania was reunited with Romania by the Trianon Treaty of 1920, then northern Transylvania was granted again to Hungary by the Axis Powers in 1940, to return again to Romania at the end of the war. Le Grand Larousse shows the usual optimism of Enlightenment when stating in 1964 : 'A more liberal status granted to Hungarians seems to have settled the matter forever (definitivement).' This approval towards the Communist solution of the minorities problem is shared by the Encyclopaedia Americana (1998), which underlines the 'more enlightened nationality policies by the Communist regime’. The 21,000 sq m reported by Britannica, circumscribed by the borders of the Hungarian province of Transylvania since 1876 had become 39 372 square miles in the American Encyclopaedia, as other Romanian contingent regions (Maramures, Banat) were added to the lands between the Transylvanian Alps, Eastern Carpathians and the Apuseni Mountains. The fifteenth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1994 Micropaedia) sums in four lines this 'turbulent' history, saying: 'After forming part of Hungary (11th-16th century) it was an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire (16-17 century) and then once again became part of Hungary at the end of the 17th Century; later it was incorporated into Romania. This edition also displays a beautiful 17th century oriental rug under the title of 'Transylvanian rug'; together with many others this rug made either in Turkey and imported or in some part of European Turkey once decorated a Christian church in Transylvania. The American Encyclopaedia brings to date the demographics of Transylvania, noting that from the about 7 million inhabitants of nowadays 65 % are Romanians, 25 % Hungarians and 6 % German and other nationalities. The last inter-ethnic clash did not make its way into Encyclopedias: it dates from 1990 and left eight dead and hundreds injured in the beautiful old town of Tg. Mures, capital of the Szeklers (Szekelys) region. The Szekelys are the people among whom Jonathan Harker was traveling: ' who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns', but nowadays see themselves as Hungarian. This minor clash doesn't indeed seem noteworthy compared to other Balkan contemporary violent disputes; it is however notable beyond the Transylvanian context, as the first inter-ethnic violent conflict after the Liberation year, 1989.

I started to think about this research while on a Fulbright Fellowship at Harvard University in 1995. In between satisfying my need of political assertiveness by showing up at small rallies where we protested against the UN policy towards Bosnia and the lectures of Samuel Huntington on the ‘religious’ motives of the Bosnian conflict, I started to wonder on the reasons of the so different approaches and understandings of the nationalism topic between us, East Europeans with a communist experience, and our Western colleagues and friends, a difference which is marvelously mirrored in the collection of essays by Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner (1998). This is not to imply that we discovered something new in our experience: it is just that our communist experience prevented us from forgetting some old truths, mainly on the human nature. Most of us, East Europeans, were stricken with the truth of Fukuyama's famous essay on the end of history from the first words- only to be the first to realise afterwards the tremendous distance separating political theory from the real world. Political theorists have this marvelous capacity of presenting ideas, at least in retrospect, as the sole responsible of events. When reading Popper of Kedourie one really feels it was the fault of Hegel or it was the fault of Kant- making one truly nostalgic of classic historical approaches, and mostly of the work of economic historians. We have little means of ascertaining, while being once and for all made sensitive by Marxism to the powers of ideas, how powerful were those ideas in producing actual events. In fact I think Marxim-Leninism is so far the only proven case of ideology shaping society. I suspect for the rest it is safer to assume ideology derived from social representations held by society, and their influence on those social representations was a remote and late one. The same goes today, when the validity of Fukuyama's theory has no immediate practical importance. In theoretical battles, such as are unfold in journals and academic amphiteatres he made a point so strong I think it cannot be essentially challenged. In the real life, however, we should have known better than expect people in underdeveloped countries as my own to show ‘enthusiasm’ over market economy and institutional reforms - these abstractions whose application mostly generate poverty and disorder in the short term. Once the communist regime overthrown we were not to see ‘enthusiasm’ except for national causes anywhere in Eastern Europe. From the rallies in former Soviet Republics in 1991 to the extraordinary mobilization in the days of the Soccer World Cup in 1998 no other cause was able to generate popular enthusiasm than national pride and solidarity, these not-at-all abstract, down to ground feelings. This is not to say that Fukuyama is mistaken : he is not. He may seem so influential with the present age in one hundred years as Hegel or Kant retrospectively seem to Popper or Kedourie. This is not to say philosophers are innocent of the responsability attributed to them: this is to say, however, that the importance of philosophy is exaggerated in our post-Marxist era, while the importance of psychology- my own field- is underestimated.

So while liberalism remains the only legitimate doctrine at least for political theorists, people remain the same as they have ever been : keen for a collective identity, not an individual one, and lazy when it comes to choose between complex alternatives, so ‘cognitive misers’ (Fiske and Taylor: 1984). Adding to theis the terrible impersonalization of Communist societies (Inglehart and Abramson: 1997) there is little wonder the most basic need of people in East Europe was identity, not freedom, and it was a lucky historical development these two could go together in some places. Where they could not go together the need for identity was stronger. While the need for identity prevails over the need for freedom, I think psychology prevails over political theory. It is therefore such an approach that I shall take on my topic. I have, on all accounts, little or no qualification for another.

In the rather ‘competitive’ area of East European ethnic conflict zones Transylvania was until now luckier than Bosnia or Kossovo. Besides the violent outburst of 1990 in Tirgu Mures the region was peaceful. Since 1996, in an experiment unique in Eastern Europe, the Hungarian Alliance (DAHR), an ethnic party, became a member of the government coalition and enjoyed seats in the Romanian government. However, the national theme dominated the Romanian political debate since 1990 to our days, and is responsible for shaping a whole range of domestic policies - some with little connection to the national one at first sight. But how can the ‘national’ problem in Romania be defined? Obviously, it means different things to different political actors. To the nationalist Romanian parties, mostly post-communist parties, but partly also anti-Communist, the national problem is the lack of loyalty and therefore the danger of irredentism of the 1.7 million Hungarian community inhabiting Transylvania. For the Romanian anti-Communist intellectuals the ‘national problem’ seems to be the regaining of some meaning of the Romanian identity in a world so different from the one before the 2nd World War ,the last moment said, -although little evidence supports this- to have presented such a clear identity. For the Romanian Hungarian elite the problem is to find a political formula which can accomodate their very distinct cultural identity. Finally, for the international community, the ‘national problem’ of Romania is seen only as the containment of the ethnic competition between Romanians and Hungarians in the strict legal and administrative framework of Romania and Europe.

Analysts are also divided. Some believe there isn’t any national problem in Romania and would rather consider it from the human rights angle, making it a problem of collective rights of a minority (this is the aproach of human rights groups, most notably Romania's Helsinki Group). This tradition draws on the Ceausescu years and has adjusted little to the new realities of post-Communist Romania. Others, such as Tom Gallagher, point to the national problem as to the main determinant of the political life and the main negative element preventing democratization (Gallagher: 1995). The latter seems to imply that the main cleavage of the Romanian society is the ethnic one, despite strong evidence against this assertion (both in the elections of 1990 and 1992 the public was divided on the communist-anticommunist cleavage line, a purely ideological cleavage, with the Hungarians supporting for President the Romanian anti-Communist candidate).

Time seems so far to side with the optimists. Since the brutal confrontation of 1990, despite occasional increase in tension and constant hatespeech in a part of the Romanian press the situation improved steadily. The conclusion in 1996 of a bilateral treaty between Romania and Hungary led to the disappearance of the Hungarian theme in the electoral campaign of fall 1996 - and the democratic opposition, allied with the Hungarian Alliance, won elections - the first democratic political alternance after the war, and only the second after the introduction of the universal vote in 1918. After victory the Hungarian alliance joined the government with the winning Romanian parties.

Despite these favourable developments, a majority of Hungarians keep perceiving a ‘conflict’ between Hungarians and Romanians. The immediate following of granting some self-government in the Hungarian dominated area (the county of Harghita now has all only Hungarian leaders, either government appointed or directly elected) lead to the intense and bitter conflict of Odorheiu Secuiesc, where the local community instigated by the town council brutally evacuated four Romanian nuns and prevented a Swiss Foundation to start an orphanage on the grounds that this would change the ethnic composition of the region. The legal amendments, meant to satisfy the long-enduring claims of the Hungarian alliance, also had serious difficulties in passing through the Parliament, as members of the majority rebelled against the political agreement between party leaders and sided with the nationalist opposition. The electoral victory of Viktor Orban’s FIDESZ in the May 1998 Hungarian elections further endangered the consociatonal experiment started in 1996 Romania. Orban had been attacking the Romanian-Hungarian treaty during his electoral campaign and at summer camps at Balvanyos he proved repeateadly to be an outspoken promoter of self-government for the Hungarian communities abroad. During the February 1999 visit of Romanian Prime Minister Radu Vasile to Budapest Orban insisted a separate all-Hungarian university should be created for Romanian Hungarians. All these developments show that there is more to it than the optimism of 1996 led us believe.

This should have not come as a surprise, either. Circumstances only cannot be relied upon to solve a problem which is ill-defined and constantly marginalised. The consequence of the presence of a strong ethnic Hungarian party lead to a total disinterest of the Romanian parties for the topic of Hungarians. The post-Communist parties were in principle opposed to the policy of revendications of DAHR, considering the Hungarians have already too many rights. The anti-Communist parties considered that since DAHR is their ally it is to their concern only to bother with Hungarians’ problems and simply tried to find the best strategic ways of solving their punctual demands. No global vision was ever expressed by a Romanian politician, and no national debate has ever taken place on this issue.

The purpose of this book is to provide this better definition of the problem and describe the alternatives for solving it. The author is therefore not interested in seeking some definitive historical truth about Transilvania, as a historian would perhaps do, and the Transylvanian past will be mentioned just to the extent that it shades some light on the present. I am not interested here in the objective truth about the Transylvanian history, supposing such an objective truth might be ever reached, but only in the present ‘subjective’ Transylvania. By this I mean the current synthesis of collective beliefs, perceptions, attitudes and behaviors which, although subjective, give shape to a psychological reality more objective than anything real in the world. It is the belief of this author (as I shall show in Chapter 1) that it is ‘subjectivity’ which explains nationalism much better than anything else, that is, the ‘political imagination: which turns cultural entities into political ones. In order to exist, nations have to express their political subjectivity (Jenkins & Sofos,1996 :19).

It is subjectivity that feeds the substance ethnic conflicts are made of. It is a subjective matter of little practical consequence if the Quebecois have a constitutional mention as a ‘distinct society’ in the Constitution, if the Romanian Hungarians can study in Hungarian in a pure Hungarian University or a multilingual one, if South Tyroleans have their parking tickets in Italian or in German. Little should it matter also for the American Irish or the German Kurds or Kossovars if their homelands are independant or not, since they no longer live there. However these abstract matters can lead people to behavior which is often contrary to their immediate interests. The mystery of nationalism, and its superiority towards all ‘isms’ lies in this capacity to generate such disinterested behavior in the masses.

To conclude, this book will attempt to give a critical overview of the contemporary nationalism theory, with a special focus on theories on East European nationalism and socio-psychological theories (chapter 1) ; to describe and interpret the collected data on common social representations of identity (chapter 2), history(chapter 3) and interethnic cohabitation(chapter 4) in Transylvania; to outline the different trends in opinion, rhetoric and attitude among elites(chapter 5); to establish if there is reason to talk of an ethnic conflict in Romanian Transylvania and if so, how serious this conflict is(chapter 6) ; to discuss the possible solutions and ways to deal with such conflict(chapter 7).

Data for this study was collected between 1996 and 1998, in a two-steps strategy.

1. Qualitative interviewing

2. Survey (June 18-24 1998)

Inteviews conducted were both group interviews (14 focus groups in transylvania, plus a control one in Bucharest with psychology students) and in-depth interviews with political leaders, journalists, opinion leaders of both communities. The material recorded during focus groups was the main basis for the questionnaire used in the survey. In order to gather the maximum amount of significant material locations for the focus groups were selected after the conventional division of the region in three areas, each with a different cohabitation experience, so to have a region with a Hungarian majority (the Szekelys), a region with a Romanian majority (Cluj/Kollosvar, the old capital of the whole region), and a a region with no distinct majority (Tg. Mures, where the conflict broke in 1990 as ethnic supremacy is constantly challenged by the two groups whose proportion is similar.)

This conventional division was not taken into account for the survey, however. The sample covered all the Transylvanian counties : Alba, Bistrita Nasaud, Bihor, Brasov, Cluj, Covasna, Harghita, Hunedoara, Maramures, Mures, Satu-Mare, Salaj, Sibiu. Counties of Banat were not included.The sample was made of 597 persons older than 15 and is representative for the age, sex, and ethnic structure of the region.

The six focus groups involving the Romanian population included :

Intellectuals (holders of some academic degree), two groups, one in Tg. Mures, one in Cluj;

Peasants, two groups, one in Viisoara (Cluj county),a region and a village where Romanians make the majority. and the other in Livezi, a small village in the Szekely land (Harghita county), where the Hungarians have the majority;

Workers, one group, Cluj;

Aged Greek-Catholics, Cluj.

The seven Hungarian groups consisted of:

Peasants, two groups, one in Covasna County (Sanziene), pure Hungarian area, one in Mures county (Miercurea Nirajului), ethnically mixed area;

Intellectuals, three groups (Cluj, Tg. Mures, Sf. Gheorghe, Covasna);

Aged men, one group, Sf Gheorghe, (Covasna county);

Workers, one group,Cluj;

Lower middle class, one group, Miercurea Ciuc, (Harghita county).

One additional focus group interview was performed with a group of University Babes-Bolyai students, 5 Romanians and 5 Hungarians. This was the only ethnically mixed group.

Interviews with the Romanian groups were conducted in Romanian. Interviews with the Romanian Hungarian groups were conducted both in Romanian and Hungarian.

Unless specified otherwise, statements reproduced in the book met the approval of the whole groups, so can de considered as stereotypical statements. As is it usually the case with qualitative research our groups are not representative, but illustrative for the population and the region under study. (Burgess 1996). Complementary use of focus groups and surveys were used before quite successfully (Morgan : 1993: ch. 8) Each time we considered a statement might be representative we included it in the survey questionnaire.

Transylvania used to be an ethnic puzzle, with a mix of ethnic groups (Romanians, Hungarians, Szekelys, Germans, Gypsies, Jews), and religious communities (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Greek Catholic or Uniate, Christian Orthodox), united only superficially under the same political leadership, but preserving each a sort of autonomy. This pattern was essentially changed during the Communist regime : the Germans were at first deported to the Soviet Union in the Stalinist years on grounds of having collaborated with the SS during the war, then were allowed to immigrate to Germany in exchange for generous sums paid by the German state to the Ceausescu regime. In 1990, when it became obvious Romania was slow on the road to land restitution and creation of a new rule of law most of what was left of the Germans, even aged people, emigrated to Germany. The Jews have been also submitted to persecution in Southern Transylvania under the Antonescu regime and to the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania under Horthy. In the seventies Ceausescu traded them with Israel, the same he did with Germans, so their number decreased until their almost total disappearance. That left Transylvania to Romanians and Hungarians, and the intermediate stratum between these historical rivals was gone. Unlike Banat, where historically cohabitation was closer to the cosmopolitan type, in Transylvania cohabitation was mostly of the inter-cultural type (Abraham, Badescu, Chelcea : 1994). This means that while in Timisoara, capital of Banat, and the surrounding border areas people of various ethnic origins (including also Serbs, Aromanians,etc) have traditionally lived together, keeping their cultural and national identity reduced mostly to the private sphere and often engaging in transactional behavior, people in Transylvania lived alongside each other, but not together, being separated in compact groups of different ethnic origins.

Communism, but mostly the blind modernization imposed by Communism changed Transylvania enormously. One major change was the modification of its ethnic composition : besides changes we mentioned above, Ceausescu's industrialization of the seventies led to subsequent arrival of Romanians from the old Kingdom of Romania (Moldova and Wallachia) to urban Transylvanian areas and to large numbers of Transylvanian peasants, regardless of their ethnic origins, who too settled in urban areas. This urbanization was however a very superficial one (Mungiu: 1995). Villages of Romania were deserted of the younger generations, while cities and towns received a large number of peasants with a very different life style than the urban one.

Comparing Transylvania with other areas of ethnic conflict also calls for some specifications. I saw fit for the present book to compare Transylvania only with other regions of the ‘first’ world, although Transylvania belongs geographically to the second. More than one reason can be summoned up to explain this, First, Transylvania had an organical development : nothing happened in Romania after 1918, or in the rest of Eastern Europe to that effect that can be compared to the mass scale social and national engineering of the former Soviet Union (including genocides and mass deportation). Little ground for comparison can be found with post-colonial countries, either. Attempts of assimilation of the other ethnic groups in Transylvania had merely an administrative character, and they were not violent. Even in Ceausescu's times the most aggressive state policy was to distribute jobs to university graduates in areas far from their home - but even then it was not mandatory to accept these jobs if one assumed the risk to seek a job by himself .Spontaneous violence between the two groups, excepting the war times, is also lacking - the Tg. Mures case is the exception, not the rule. There are no records of ordinary violence or confrontational behavior in bars, night clubs or such - both groups behave peacefully. For these reasons I think it is only correct to compare Transylvania to similar regions of the developed world, although Romania's current GDP falls far beyond this category I tend to believe that for the study of ethnic identity and conflict a cultural model as embodied in the political and institutional culture is far more more important than economical statistics. And in this respect, Transylvania is undoubtely a European region : both by its rich European past and by its present culture. There is also no party in Romania's today Parliament not to have in its political program the goal of achieving the European integration of Romania.

One last explanation is perhaps necessary to justify our decision to discuss elites apart from ordinary people. Post-Communist Romania has a limited extent of participant political culture : the interest in politics is the lowest of the 43 countries reported by Inglehart in the World Values Survey (Inglehart :1998). In these circumstances the political culture of the elites, of people closer to the centers of political decisions matters enormously (Hague, Hartop and Breslin, 1992:51) and may differ substantially from the political culture of ordinary citizens. Social representations of history (what Hallbwachs would have called 'collective memory') such as we describe in Chapter 3 can be found at elites members as well. However we can easily differentiate in elite members between the shared common representations, their own personal cognitions organised by a logic closer to political opportunism and their political rhetoric, often closer to the former than to the latter. What is internalized in an ordinary citizen and member of an ethnic group is often a consciencious exercise of the use of common beliefs, representations and images by an elite member, who may even have a distance from these views.

Can a work about a conflict fail to have a fate other than conflictual ? We doubt so. However, we felt a local view was necessary in order to understand Transylvania better. George Schopflin was right to warn Westerners that for many of East Central Europe inhabitants the hypothesis their ethnic identities are contextual and not essential, artefacts of a cultural and nationalist heritage and not inherent is unnacceptable.(Schopflin :1998:31). Psychologically, there are good reasons for that, as I shall attempt to demonstrate. In practice it matters little the reason for what people believe something, but the intensity of their beliefs and the personal risks they would assume to protect them, be they rational or not. I chose a region in a moment of peace only to show that fundamentals of the conflict are always there, and that what should be adressed by policy-makers is not the acute attack but the disease itself, to the extent that such diseases can find a cure.

The research for this book was generously supported by the European Commission (the PHARE program), the Soros Foundation (Research Support Scheme Program), and NATO. I am indebted to Sorin Ionita and Monica Botnaru for the survey data, to Alice Dumitrache, Levente Salat, Teddy Sugar and Rafael Heckman for support with the focus groups, and to Aurora Liiceanu for making me read Henri Tajfel when a doctoral student. Finally my gratitute goes to my husband, historian Andrei Pippidi, who was the first reader and critic of this work both in Bucharest and at Harvard.

2. Nation and identity in Contemporary Europe
1. Theoretical context of this study

If one looks the item called 'nationalism' in the Blackwell Dictionary of Political Thought one will find out that, although it is still debatable if nationalism is a political ideology, it is beyond doubt the most successful one ever. This contradiction in terms may alone explain why such a vast literature of many scholarly fields have tried to explain nationalism and nationalism: and why there is so little agreement to nowadays on what this theory has produced that is valuable in creating a policy to manage national conflicts, now that the frenzy of ethnic-or rather national- revivals seems to have moved from the Third World to the old Europe.

This chapter does not mean to review the vast body of literature on the topic of nationalism and ethnic conflict. Instead it will focus on the theories that most influenced the present work and try to work out a typology of nationalism out of these theories, one that would also provide a framework for East European nationalism as I see it. I shall therefore challenge more than one of the current assumptions on either Balkan or West European nationalism: and in doing so I shall draw more upon the work of social psychologists than to the other students of nationalism. I agree, however, with Edwards and Liebkind (in Breakwell: 1992) that nationalism cannot be approached from the perspective of only one academic field, ignoring the others; and that anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and political scientists need to interact more in order not to seclude the theoretical and empirical data within the boundaries of each discipline.

Reviewers of this huge body of literature agree there are two main trends within the sociological and anthropological theory of nationalism: the primordialist and the instrumentalist ones. Historians and political scientists, even when not attempting to explain nationalism as an entity, but rather to coin its specific features in one society or another are in their turn either influenced by or influential in providing arguments for one of these two theories. The almost infinite number of cases and faces under which nationalism displays itself prevents theories from providing a typology to encompass them all (Smith: 1983. However one can find reliable knowledge on nationalistic behavior of groups in a large body of facts historians, anthropologists and psychologists managed to put together. Anthropologists are very influential and their mark on nationalism theory is a strong one. Social psychologists are less so. The only theoretician to acknowledge some social psychology influence is Donald Horowitz, who was influenced by the Bristol school. Horowitz, in turn, provides important arguments for a social psychological approach to ethnic identity and nationalism. Liebkind (in Breakwell: 1992:181) was however right to point that : 'While social psychologists may need to know more about research in ethnic identity within other disciplines, no other discipline can do without the social psychology of ethnic identity'. My point goes even further: I think it is social psychology that provides the in-between approach to primordialism and instrumentalism, and I shall try to prove my point here.

Nation and nationalism are the key concepts of social theory. Ethnic or national identity is the key concept of social psychology: when other theorists use it, as in Anthony Smith's 'National Identity' they simply confuse 'nation' with 'national identity'. (Smith: 1991:: p 14). The same goes for the synonymous use of 'ethnicity' and 'ethnic identity' in sociological literature. Smith defines both 'national identity' and 'nation' as a named human population sharing an historical territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members'. The difference between 'ethnie' and 'nation' is at the core of many polemics. T.K. Oomen revised this literature in 1997 in a comprehensive study essentially focus on the difference between nation, state and ethnie. According to Oomen, only the territory seems to differ in the case of 'nation' and 'ethnie'. Removing a national group from its territory, 'cleansing' it, as it is fashionable to say today, is to 'ethnificate' it, according to Oomen, who blurs the distinction between national groups with some experience with a state of their own and others who were never in possession of a state. Nowadays, when so many groups with little or no previous experience of a national state -Bosnia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Slovakia- actually got a state of their own the potential of every ethnic group in becoming a nation seems very powerful. However the stress on territory of Oomen is an exaggeration. Smith, like Anthony Giddens, emphasizes not so much the territory per se as the political consequences of legally controlling a territory, that is, of having a state.

The definition of 'nation' and 'ethnie' seems however to have become more 'subjective' lately, under the influence of the influential critique of authors like Walker Connor. In the Smith and Hutchinson anthology on ethnicity the subjective elements prevail. Ethnicity is therefore defined by:

What, then, about nation? Is the difference between the two as fragile as being an ethnic Slovene in Yugoslavia and a national Slovene in independent Slovenia? To be sure, the difference is fragile enough. It mainly consists in subjective elements, as Walker Connor pointed out:

Walker Connor is right to stress the failure of theory to explain the ethnic revival in developed Europe. It is the minority nationalism in the West, not in the East, which rises the most serious questions. Would nationalism be found entirely in the underdeveloped world the instrumentalist theories would explain it all. Since, however, Wales, Scotland, Corse, the Basque country and South Tyrol cannot be accommodated in the framework described for the Third World by Benedict Anderson we have to look for another explanation. Furthermore, we have to search for a single explanation, even if complex and manifold, to explain nationalism in both worlds.

Since 'nation' is so disputed a term 'nationalism' has also at least two major different contemporary interpretations. One is the definition employed by Gellner and Kedourie (shared by Anthony Smith as well), which has the advantage of explaining historical and contemporary nationalism as well. According to this view nationalism is the political principle which states that the national and political units must be congruent. The other, laid out by Brian Barry in Blakcwell's Encyclopaedia of Political Thought takes a rather different approach:

Barry's definition either applies only to contemporary societies, or implies that there are movements who seek to realize the confluence of political unit-national unit without exercising this type of pressure- and others who do not. This brings us back to the 'good' and 'bad' variants of nationalism, which I think is a theoretical failure. Rather I would see nationalism as a single phenomenon in various shapes according to society/stage of development upon which one can look as a 'negative' phenomenon (as Kedourie does) or 'positive' one as Melluci (199). The main problem for the psychologist is not why nationalists calls their supporters to subordinate interests they share with other fellow citizens to the more basic national loyalty but why they succeed so often in this enterprise. Walker Connor bridged the division between primordialism and instrumentalism when answering this:

One explanation which comes close to the psychological understanding of nationalism is one's bond with one's culture. We see the world from the perspective of our culture and cannot see it differently. Our thought is shaped by culture- notably by language and everything entailed by it. Geertz was right to assert that 'a country's politics reflect the design of its culture':

Culture, is, however, achieved by socialization. Primordialism came under attack for its understanding of 'culture' as a 'given' thing, as a 'primordial attachment'. (Eller and Coughlan :1993)

Primordialism was strongly attacked for what was seen as a confusion made by primordialists between something existing and something primordial, so without a sociogenesis . For my purpose I think it is useful to purify the 'givens' of this 'metaphysical' origins and see them simply as 'psychological givens', acquisitions of an early context that prove unshakable for most people during their lives. We can safely assume these 'givens' will be the main identity-providers for most people, so their use or misuse will be more influential and stronger than any later affinities or affiliations (as political parties evoked by Barry). The focus of the debate, in my view, should not be not on the innate character of the 'givens'. It is rather on the ethnic or national identity as 'given' or 'invented'. If we see the 'given' in cultural terms, as the only lens we can look upon the world through and 'create order out of chaos' as in cosmogenesis reported by historians of religion such as Eliade, then identity is more 'given' that 'invented'. It is certainly 'learned' but learned does not mean invented. Everything is learned, including knowledge about the self. The self is there before we learn about it: and identity is part of the self, and is simultaneously personal and collective. Allport's concept of 'in-group' is perhaps the most useful here:

The main thing is that members of the in-group tend to favor the in-group and stereotype and discriminate against members of the out-group. Since this attempt to a definition by Allport many evidence was gathered to explain this behavior. Here is where social psychology, notably Henri Tajfel and the Bristol school make their important contribution to the theory of ethnic and national identity, seen as a particular form of social identity in general, social identity being originally defined by Tajfel as a person's knowledge of group membership. The 'minimal group paradigm' added to this an important element of social comparison, as Tajfel asserted that groups define themselves by comparison with other groups. Compared to earlier experiments of Sheriff and Hovland who organized a competition between two groups for an unique prize, Tajfel's experiments showed that even when social membership is established arbitrarily (by a coin toss, e.g.) it significantly influences behavior. Even when assigned randomly in a group Tajfel's subjects displayed immediately strong in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice. This behavior is also little influenced by the presence of an unique reward, so it cannot be explained by a 'scarcity of resources' hypothesis. In one of the experiments, for instance, the possible rewards are distributed between groups as follows: 1. in-group and out-group profit combined is maximal 2. profit of in-group is maximal 3. difference between in-group profit and out-group profit is maximal. Subjects tend to choose the third variant, so they are more interested to have the superiority of their group maximal than earn more in absolute terms. In order to illustrate this theorem Tajfel uses a Russian proverb (which, by the way, in different variants, is extremely common in the Balkans as well) with a benevolent God offering to grant a wish to Ivan 'but only you have to remember your neighbor will get twice what you get'. After a long meditation Ivan asks God to remove one of his eyes.

Developing this theory further, Turner (1994) increased the weight given to cognitive aspects of identification. According to Turner social identities are defined as 'cognitive groupings of oneself and some class of stimuli as the same...in contrast to some other class of stimuli’ (Turner at all: 1987: 44). Categorization is fundamental in our understanding of identification. categorization is our main tool of 'make-meaning'. Allport had already stated that we need categories, we even need stereotypes to put some order in the world that would otherwise appear to us as an anarchical puzzle of informations. Furthermore, people are lately seen by psychologists as 'cognitive misers', so prone to give in to the easiest, effortless alternative when making a cognitive choice. (Fiske and Taylor: 1984)

The fact that groups seek maximal differentiation lead Tajfel and his followers to the elaboration of what is known as the social identity theory. Group strife for positive social identity, and this is obtained via differentiation and competition among groups. (Tajfel: 1974). Tajfel also considered that social categories carried important affective meaning, and he spoke of 'great heights of intensity that social identification may involve (1982). For Tajfel affect operated primarily through self-esteem. Social identification is thus desirable because it is seen as a source of self-esteem . Groups need to be high on self-esteem, and members develop various strategies to cope with its scarcity., culminating with deserting the group when everything else fails (Tajfel and Turner: 1979). Bat Chava and Steen (1995, quoted by Kay Deaux) also found moderately strong correlation's between ethnic identification and self-esteem that are consistent across age, sex, and a number of ethnic groups.

Ethnic identity is quite an accessible form of social identity so we may reasonably expect people to develop some form of it. We can further speculate that ethnic attachment will be strong since ethnic groups are both accessible and have distinct cultural markers to differentiate them from other groups. A 'cognitive miser' is therefore prone to be a happy 'ethnic' or 'national' group member. Walker Connor hit even more than he intended, I guess, when he wrote the famous formula: 'Man is a rational national animal.' In this perspective nationalism is 'natural'. Denying this truth will only lead to confusion and errors of judgment. Accepting it does not mean, however, granting legitimacy to discriminative behavior. Psychologists do not equate 'natural' with 'legitimate'. Quite on the contrary sometimes.

According to Brown and Turner (1981, quoted by Liebkind) there are important differences between the actions of individuals as individuals and their actions as group members. The transition from personal to social identity is the psychological process underlying the shift from interpersonal to inter group behavior, which implies interaction in terms of group identifications. However, occasionally some specific social identify may function nearly to the exclusion of all other identity dimensions (Turner, 1982, quoted by Liebkind). Breakwell considers the whole dichotomy of social and personal identity to be a temporal artifact, as social identity becomes personal seen across biography.

Ethnic identity may vary in definition and identity from group to group. However, self-definition, a sense of belonging and pride in one's ethnic group seem to be the norm.

How does one, however, select one's ethnic group when more than one choice is possible? Studies tend to look upon language as the main cultural marker. Language is the main connection vehicle between personal and collective identity. According to Lange and Westin (1985, qouted in Breakwell) there are five conditions promoting this connection: 1. existentially language is very significant to the individual as an instrument for naming the self and the world 2. essentially primary socialization is a matter of linguistic interaction 3. social representations as the cognitive connection tissue of a culture are expressed in language 4. language is the medium of the ethnic group's (more or less) mythological conception of its common origin, and 5. of all ethnic markers language is one of the most salient. (quoted by Liebkind, in Breakwell, 150). Fishman also comments on why the language is such as salient dimenssion of a group's identity:

Furthermore, as studies by Giles and his colleagues prove, ethnic group members identify more closely with someone who shares their cultural background. As Giles (1977) puts it :

Now this sounds as old a truth as humanity. One's language is the main provider of identity. It is based on the observation of this fact, however unsupported at the time by scientific knowledge, that states forced their linguistic policies upon linguistic minorities in order to obtain good subjects or good citizens. So when Kedourie puts the essential question: why are groups based on linguistic difference entitled to states of their own ? the answer is: for convenience. Humans seek convenience, and we tend to look upon this as rational behavior. Again, is convenience enough to claim legitimacy? Certainly not. But one should not disregard the force of a drive based merely on convenience-seeking and be assured it will always prevail in front of more complex and more soliciting types of motivation.

The theories of Tajfel and Giles go well together. Furthermore, there is evidence that it is the exposure to another language which strengthens the feelings of identity and the loyalty towards one's ethnic group or language. Weinrich (1974, quoted by Giles, 1977) observed:

Chapman et al (in Giles, 1977) make the same point, quoting a study which shows that the strongest feelings of language loyalty among the Welsh were in the English-speaking counties of Wales. This induces the conclusion that exposure to the difference is actually increasing nationalistic feelings, making one aware of the distinction between the self and the others' group. Identity is seen in terms of social comparison: any element of competition will only further differentiate and oppose the two groups. The vaguer the borders, the greater the chances the two groups will interact in real-life competition, the stronger the nationalistic feelings bred by the groups. No classification of nationalism or ethnic conflict should ignore this factor of outmost importance.

One of the most important challenges for the theorists of nationalism is to create a typology that would encompass all national and historic peculiarities. The further challenge for an East European is to understand the difference between 'Western' and 'Eastern' type of nationalism. Indeed this difference is at the core of all nationalism classifications. The review of the existing literature would prompt one to say that it is Eastern Europe, beyond any doubt, which turned good 'Western' nationalism into evil 'Eastern' one. But things are indeed more complicated than that.

I shall insist here only on three of the large number of theories pointing to the differences among Western and Eastern European variants of nationalism. One is the theory of Hans Kohn, which focuses on the relationship between state and nation. The second is the theory of Ernest Gellner, who sees a structural difference between the East and the West. The third is the theory supported by students of political development, of which George Schopflin gave, in my view, the best account and Peter Sugar the best typology.

I shall not delay in discussing theories focused on the genealogy of ideas, whose brightest exponent is Elie Kedourie. For one thing, Kedourie is not so much concerned with the difference between the two Europes: in fact he rightly stresses the uniqueness of the principle at work here, which leads to different results according to the society where it was tried. For another, the influence of one philosopher or another - notably Herder and Fichte, whose writings are so unanimously considered the source of all evils- matters less than one would think in the political development of Eastern Europe. To be sure, EE elites copied the West and the moment where the 'Western' model simply broke into the East was the 1848 Revolution. This pragmatic desire of bringing independence and prosperity to their countries via a model already tried in the West was the driving factor in the East: ideology was secondary. Ideology was built in order to attract the masses into it: the development plans of the elites were otherwise too abstract to have found any followers. The abstract doctrine of collective self-determination, as derived from Rousseau and the French revolutionists was the main inspiration source for modernizing elites in Eastern Europe. The nationalist ideology was simply the initial propaganda coat for self-determination. Here comes the revivalist ideology of the past, the historicism, the nostalgia for a golden age in the small East European countries included in large absolutist multinational empires. Here lies the major difference between them and Germany, where Kedourie's genealogy fits perfectly.

So it was a conscientious act of building an ideology for instrumental puposes, but those who started it in the East- the Hungarian Kossuth and the Romanian Bratianu, to quote only two names- were pragmatic men. No wonder they were seen in their countries as 'liberal'. They were liberals guided by a liberal idea, and to be sure it was an imported one. Mill had not written yet his famous passage, but it was in the air since the previous French Revolution:

It is, in general, a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of government should coincide in the main with those of nationality....Where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart. This is merely to say that the question of government is to be decided by those governed.

(1872, in Principles of Representative Government)

Kohn's typology is based on a simple distinction. The nation precedes the state in the West, but the state is precedent in the East. Nationalism in the West was therefore 'a reality'; in the West it was based on myths and dreams.

Kohn is right to point at the differences of political development, although I think he underestimates the role of the absolutists empires playing the little nationalities ones against the other and preventing an homogenization process on the Western European type to develop. He also overestimates the degree to which the nations were formed in the West: more recent evidence, such as the works of Eugen Weber and Eric Hobsbawn, point to the fact that nation-building was a task consciously assumed by Western governments and elites as well. Where Kohn is undoubtedly right is when attracting our attention to the 'wishful image of nation' created by these elites. Indeed what might well have happened and it did happen was that these powerful representations, elaborated by elites in the act of building an ideology, became afterwards real mass representations, so powerful that they took over when the political franchise was instituted.

The theory of Ernest Gellner is perhaps the best known. Gellner masterfully combines features of political and cultural development. His final outcome, however, fails into the classical image of the East which only perverted a Western idea: we feel all through the work of Gellner the regret that the small Eastern states, deprived of any important cultures, ever came to life as states, and the underlying opinion the world would have had more to gain had Czechs, for instance, continue to write in German than in Czech.

Gellner is not, however, to be treated lightly, despite his Central European nostalgias. To the theory of Kohn he adds a strong 'cultural' element and a finer delimitation of Europe when writing:

According to Gellner, we have therefore similar nationalism in Britain, France and Spain, the first time zone- he admits independent Ireland was however a political novelty in the area. We then have the German and Italian cases- a second time zone, and Eastern Europe- the third. The fourth is Russia, with all the small nation enclosed first by the Czarist Empire, then by the Soviet Union, seen as a successor.

The theory of Gellner is bright. He is right to notice the difference between the widespread High Culture in the West and its confinement to a much smaller elitist group in the West. He is right to notice both polity and culture had to be created in the East, polity only in proper Central Europe, and only minor adjustments of the two in the West. However, there are important points in which this theory fails to provide adequate answers.

1. Gellner does not account for the strong recurrence of ethnic revival movements in the West. he sees Ireland as an exception and notes with some satisfaction the failure of the new Irish state to create a new culture as well. However, the Welsh, the Scots, the Basques, the Catalans, the Corsicans are falling behind Ireland in their effort to find a suitable political form to express their -perhaps minor- cultural difference from their fellow citizens in the states they belong to.

2. Gellner fails to explain nationalistic behavior of British and French beyond the limits of Western Europe, in, say, Transvaal, Algeria, Ireland.

2. Gellner's theory does not explain why the worst nationalism developed in Germany and to some extent in Italy. We are left without a clue to that.

3. Gellner considers political models were lacking from the tradition of Eastern Europe. I think he is again wrong to generalize this assumption. In South East Europe the Byzantine model was a strong model all through the Middle Ages, as Bulgarians, Serbs and Romanians tried to reproduce it in their own polities and even to expand it to the neighboring areas under their political domination. I fail to see any notable difference between the Byzantine model and Charlemagne's one depicted for Western Europe. Only the Ottoman occupation confiscated this development. Poland also had a state tradition before being partitioned between great powers, and a strong one, too.

The typology which comes closest to the grounds in Peter Sugar's. Sugar has a much more nuanced version than Gellner's. He considers East European nationalism, for instance, similar to the Western one due to its anticlerical, egalitarian and constitutional approach. But the degree to which the model was pursued in Eastern Europe was dependent on the development of EE societies. Sugar considers the Czechs came closer to a Western version of nationalism- although not similar, labelling it 'bourgeois nationalism'. Poland and Hungary lacked a middle-class as developed as the Czechs so their nationalism couldn't be but aristocratic, and so it stayed until the end of the second WW. In Romania nationalism was a state project, in fact a government one, and Sugar sees it as 'the project' of the government, subordinating all the others. Romanian, Greek and Turkish nationalism are coined as ;bureaucratic'. Finally, Serbia and Bulgaria, which lacked an aristocracy, a bourgeoisie, and a state as well, developed a populist, mass nationalism, animated by the low, peasant clergy and the small traders.

This excellent typology is highlighted further by George Schopflin's understanding of the differences in political traditions between East and West Europe. Schopflin asserts bluntly but orrectly the backwardness as the central feature of Eastern Europe, and opposes the political development of the two Europes balancing the weight between state and society, the city and the countryside, the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie and the peasantry. Autonomy and the separation of spheres is identified as the Western way of development, discretionary power of the state over the society as the Eastern way. Rule of the law and separation of powers, due to the initial opposition between the secular and the religious rulers became the norm in the West; church subordinated to the state the norm in the East. The cities were at the heart of the Western development -not only economical, but political as well- with their entailed concept of citizenship, while the East had no cities in the proper sense: the peasants and the peasant mentality continued to dominate politics even after 1918, while states were the expression of a skillful bureaucracy, able to survive thorough political change, but with little ability for anything else. Schopflin goes into much more detail, and his application from country to country is just: I consider however that the core elements mentioned here are enough for the purpose of this work.

The key word here is development: development of the society, its economy and its political institutions. Sugar and Schopflin provide such good theories because they point at key issues of development. Gellner is right to stress this development is culturally dependent. Sugar points out an essential external element in the political development of Eastern Europe, more and more under evaluated nowadays: the 'external pressures (German, Russian, Byzantine, Ottoman)' that 'never ceased' (p 35). He is then right to notice that if initially this prompted local nationalism, it then turned to negative effects, as all strangers were seen as threats (36). Other authors remarked nowadays how this external factor, decisive in many cases, disappeared from the Western conscience. If Balkanization was initially described as a fragmentation of cultures and polities in a backward environment,' a prey to the machinations of the great powers' (Paul Scott Mowers, quoted in Todorova 34) today's Oxford Dictionary dropped all allusion to the historical role of autocratic powers so Balkanization is seen as a phenomenon entirely entailed in some structural default of the people or the region- or both. However, as political scientists know, for comtemporary emerging democracies the strongest influencing factor is not an internal institutional or cultural one, but the external context. The undemocratic turn of all Eastern Europe at the end of the 2nd WW was not entailed in its history and not a consequence of its failure to attain a democratic regime: it was the consequence of the influence first of Nazism, then of Soviet Russia, on these small, in-between countries. I think the same can be said about historic Eastern Europe. The decisive role in the evolution of these countries was played by Germany, Russia, the Ottoman and the Habsburg Empires. The legacy of East European nationalism is to a large extent their legacy, too. If one looks at the roots of conflicts between nationalities in the Balkans, for instance, one will always find out the Ottomans manipulation of elites at the heart of it. It is a grave delusion to indulge ourselves with the idea that these empires were tolerant political entities struggling to keep peace among small savage tribes (in all the Balkan wars infinitely less people died than in the massacre of Armenians by the Ottomans in the same period). They were autocratic underdeveloped states themselves playing divide et impera, encouraging conflict and political corruption in order to dominate. Any British colony in the world received more in terms of a viable political and social order model than East Europe got during its whole history of subordination, even if an hierarchy of legacies can be sketched, with the Habsburgs on top with some positive achievements as well and the Ottomans at the botttom.

The two criterias I underlined all along are the identity and the political development. Perceived threats to identity are the source of nationalism. This factor tends to be underrated, but it is crucial. It’s also impossible to change via policy- or almost. Political development, seen in a full geertzian meaning (politics as an expression of culture) can either ease or aggravate the perception of this threats and the answer to them. I tried accordingly to range a few cases of nationalism, however as diverse as to include the usually hard to classify ones, according to this two criterias in Figure 1. The combination of the two criterias can make us both range with relative easiness the cases and predict a certain type of nationalism and nationalistic behavior as well. In describing the types of nationalism resulting I used both the Kohn and Sugar classifications. I also noted two important elements: what is the social basis of nationalism resulting from this situations (elite and/or mass/and/or state) and its resilience (expressed in the pair of opposites transitory-lasting). The main advantage of this classification is that it ranges cases seen in a specific historical moment. It is not enough to compare nations: one has to compare nations in similar phases of development to make some sense of nationalism. Despite the wide variety of cases, and the specificities of each case authors complain about nationalism can be framed.

A national group can be roughly exposed to another group in four ways: either aliens are living in neighbor states, or in another national group inside the same state, they can be rulers or the dominating elite, or they can be the immigrants. According to the stage of development of the respective society, this exposure leads to a pattern of nationalistic behavior. In cases of advanced development and distance of any possible rival group (situation 1) we deal with a national group high on self-esteem that can display only a form of ‘civic’ nationalism. In case problems of development appear nations start looking over the borders, but they obviously tend to settle when their problems are settled. Having the others in another state is obviously the best situation-only history did not provide many cases of the sort.

When groups are inside the same state the problems is the most serious, because it is lasting. The third situation, of having foreigners as rulers, is usually a transitory one: a war of independence will sooner or later come and relieve the group in an inferior position. When, however, the group which is better-off is not made of foreigners, but of locals, the conflict is terrible (the example of Hutu and Tutsi). Neither equality not seggregation have proven to be great solutions so far. The situation seems to be manageable only in conditions of advanced development and practice of consociatonalism (the Benelux is a good example). Consociatonalism seems to have worked in Liban, too, in difficult circumstances. Low development and territorial separation leads from civil war to war among neighbors- so it is not a solution.

In the case of newly independent states, which used to be ruled by foreign elites, the main type of nationalism is centered on state-building. A fair dose of insecurity in these new states will persist for a while, so former ruling elites turned into minorities will be discriminated against. As it looks this is just a historical phase that we witness now in the Baltics, but it was experienced by the rest of the world as well in similar situations ( most of eastern Europe, for instance, after countries became independent at the end of the last century and beginning of this one).

2.3. Romanian nationalism and Hungarian nationalism: conclusions for the Year 2000In the proceedings of a conference at the School for Slavonic and East European studies dedicated to 'Transylvania and historians' the leading Hungarian historian Domokos Kosary complained bitterly about the alleged parti-pris of the founder of the school, R.W. Seton-Watson, for the Romanians. Kosary quoted a conversation he once had with the British historian in which he accused Seton-Watson of making a difference between 'good nationalism' such as the Romanian nationalism, and 'bad' nationalism, the nationalism of Hungarians. Seton-Watson simply replied that, had Kosary been older and acquainted with the Hungarian politicians around the years 1900 he could not have failed to loathe them in the same manner, as they were the most terrible nationalists ever. The reference to the 'aristocratic' nationalism made here by Seton-Watson came to dominate in time the literature on Hungarian nationalism. Marxist Hungarian historians complained, for instance, that Hungarian aristocrats monopolized for hundreds of years the Hungarian nationalism, as they were the only group endowed with political rights : 'the political nation'(Frank Tibor,in Sugar: 1994). The Romanian nationalism was also marked forever by the exclusion of Romanians from this basic Transylvanian chart known as ‘The pact of three nations' (Hungarians, Szekelys and Saxons)- Unio Trium Natiorum of 1438, which was never dissolved. The 18th century nationalism of Romanians started in Transylvania and was built on the conscience of this discrimination, as Romanians found themselves unable to account for their exclusion otherwise but by some structural inferiority of their own. It was a tremendous effort from the part of the emerging Transylvanian elites to endow this majority of peasants, clearly a psychological 'minority' in the tajfelian sense (that is, a group with low self-esteem, who internalized the negative image of themselves from the larger society) with a sense of self-pride. Katherine Verdery was right to note that 'Unlike the Magyars and Germans, who from at aleast 1800 on were using ethnic identification to exclude others and protect privileges, Romanians built into theirs a yearning for inclusion, for equality and dignity that implied admiration as well as resentment for those with whom they interacted.' (Verdery: 1983: p.349) Although the Trianon Treaty and the inclusion of Transylvania in modern Romania brought important changes and reshaped practically the nationalism of both nations, one can still trace this fundamental Romanian inferiority and feeling of rejection and this fundamental superiority and pride of Hungarians as the basis of nationalistic feelings of today. To this respect the creation and consolidation of Greater Romania, but even more the aggressive nationalist ideology of the Ceausescu times played on this low self-esteem to build a paranoid vision of the world into a full blown xenophobic nationalism, a massive change from the initial datum. Territorial losses, constant siding with the losers of the two world wars and the terrible represion of 1956 alienated more and more Hungarians from the initial aristocratic nationalism: however it did not change the character of this nationalism where it lasted. George Baranyi was right in this respect to assert that the remarkable thing about the Hungarian nationalism is that 'the more it changes, the more it remains the same'.(in Sugar: 1969: p. 259). Hungarian nationalism was the only aristocratic-type of the area: former minorities in Greater Hungary (Croats, Slovaks, Romanians) all presented a combination of state and peasant nationalism, which favored the development and success of populist peasant parties between the two world wars. Hungarian 20th century nationalism was built on the idea that the Trianon Treaty is unacceptable, so it was revisionist in its essence. Baranyi recalls how twice a day millions of children were required to recite, long with their prayer before and after the school, the 'Magyar Creed':

I believe in one God,

I believe in one Fatherland,

I believe in one divine eternal Truth,

I believe in the resurection of Hungary. Amen' (in Sugar: 1969; p.288).

Communism appeased Hungarian revisionism in a large extent (although a simple search of the word ‘Transylvania on the Internet produces more revisionist materials than anything else). However, its echos were clear in the rhetoric of anti-Communists who came to power after 1989. First Joszef Antall, Prime Minister from 1990 to 1994, declared that he is the Prime Minister of all the Hungarians, including those living as minorities in border-states, then Viktor Orban, the younger generation of conservatives, made similar declarations in his electoral campaign for the 1998 elections that he won. The policy of acting as an advocate of the Hungarian minorities rights and notably to their right of self-government can be seen, in this respect, as a more liberal form of the same nationalism. George Baranyi already noted that 'the issue of the Magyar minorities may be more deeply interowen with the larger question of Magyar nationalism than is generally assumed' (in Sugar: 1969; p.306).

There is, however, an important change in the Hungarian nationalism to be recorded, but this is due to the major historical change Hungary undergone after the 1st WW. From the absurd dreams of assimilating a population larger than its own ('Who is either naive or stupid enough to believe that 9 million Hungarians are able to assimilate the other half of the country?' asked Oskar Jaszi, the most liberal Hungarian politician ever, in 1912. (in Sugar: 1984: 206), Hungarian nationalists turned to a dream of elaborating a network of self-governed Hungarian minorities in the bordering countries which would make Trianon superflous and come the closest to bring all the Hungarians again together without going against Helsinki and requiring a modification of the borders. The most important document, in this respect, is Professor Ferenc Glatz's (now President of the Hungarian Academy) Guide for a Conduct towards Minorities (1993 for the English version quoted here), a basic document created to endow Hungarian diplomats with a coherent proposal at the European organizations. The essence of nationalism in this self-government proposal, which is not otherwise deprived of all merit, is however the insistence of having Hungarian an official second language and giving up the legal obligation of all Hungarian minorities in learning the official language of their home countries.It is significant this policy proposal did not originate in Vojvodina, or Transylvania, or with a Hungarian minority, but came from a semi-official Hungarian office in Budapest. This is revisionism in a well-mannered, polished contemporary European form.

Romanian nationalism, as I already asserted, was much more changed- and it was not a change for the better. The state nationalism after the formation of the Greater Romania was directed towards builing the state and the nation and integrating together Romanians who had belonged to different states and political traditions for hundreds of years. It is unanimously considered to have been a clumsy policy, which alienated both Transylvanian Romanians and Bessarabian Romanians, treated as second-ranked Romanians. Minorities also received less than they had been promised in terms of self-government, but they kept their cultural autonomy intact. This state nationalism was however very close to the Western type liberal bourgeois nationalism: its stronger accents were due to the backwardness of the political institutions and society both, that the state desperately tried to solve in only one generation.

The Romanian elite, however, turned more and more from this design towards another type of nationalism. We have both psychological and sociological reasons to account for that, in the words of two famous nationalists of the interwar times:

Acknowledging the historical handicap of Romanians but surpassing it via an act of will ('Our nationalism has to start from the wish to revenge our historical sleep, from a messianic idea, from the will to make history, wrote Cioran) was the basis of this 'new' nationalism. It was to be as short-lived as the Hungarian 'neo-nationalism' of Count Klebelsberg based on education. With the dissapearance of the bourgeois bureaucratic state under the blows of first fascists, then Communists, the Romanian liberal nationalism was gone forever. The Right was completely destroyed in prisons or its representatives emmigrated as Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran. The Romanian fascists had also killed in 1940 the spiritual father of the Romanian nationalism, historian Nicolae Iorga. Often portrayed as an anti-Semite and a fierce nationalist Iorga was in fact a 'nation-maker' character on the type of Masaryk. In his famous 1924 conference on nationalism Iorga speaks more as a civic than an ethnic nationalist, declaring national minorities have a right to their own culture, and asking for 'a political solidarity with nations who live alongside us'. He actively opposed tearing down of Hungarian statues and monuments in Transylvania, even when they comemorated characters who allegedly played a negative role in the Romanian history. The simple fact that almost all the Hungarian monuments survived shows that the main trend politicians of the interwar times (Iorga was also a prime Minister and leader of a small nationalist party) weas still closer to the bourgeois nationalism thant to the totalitarian nationalism decribed in 1942 as an emerging victor by Manoilescu.If one is to analyse this time one has to look at facts more than at the rhetoric. A far-right xenophobic rhetoric is to be found in this epoch (rasist Nichifor Crainic is its foremost exponent), but it never succeeded in becoming a main trend, not even in the newspapers. However, this literature was a source of inspiration for the Communist times new nationalists (veritably 'new', this time) as Ketherine Verdery proved in another book.(Verdery: 1994)

One can easily imagine what happens to a young nation, formed mostly by peasants, when submitted to the heavy repression and uniform education of the Communist age. Previous research I did in 1992 and 1994 led to the surprising conclusion that collective memory of Romanian peasants stops in the fifties, and the stalinist years are seen by the survivors (who were usually speared by repression) as 'a golden age'. Ceausescu seized the opportunity of winning this rather brain-washed population in the early seventies, when his speechwriters started to quote Romantic 19th century nationalists and invented an original ideology labeled afterwards as 'national-communism'. This ideology presented the past in a simplified and mistified version, making the unity of all territories inhabited by Romanians as the main goal of national history, something that never was (Boia:1988) The success of Romanian sportsmen and women (Nadia Comaneci is the most famous example), the independent stand of Ceausescu from Moscow when Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968 all led to the consolidation of this 'new' nationalism. Not to be mistaken, it was an 'ethnic' version, praising the values of 'Romanianess', presented as the historical 'exception' of a Latin Christian people who defended the West from the Infidel Turk, resisting both the Hungarian nationalism and the Slavic attempt to conquer it, an island of Europeannes among barbarians. Via television, movies, and textbooks, this version prevailed over a tradition extinguished in Communist prisons with the almost one million Romanians affected by the stalinist repression. Current national social representations as displayed in the Romanian contemporary mass-media belong with this tradition, not the old one Verdery is speaking about. While the Hungarian nationalism changed to remain quite similar in essence, the Romanian one was entirely reinvented and forged anew. This new ideology made Transylvania from a central feature of the national theory the central feature as the cradle of the Daco-Latin population. This accounts for the fierce nationalism concerning the Transylvanian question both in Communist and post-Communist times compared to the low interest and involvement in the Moldova (former Bessarabia) province, even in 1991, when chances were for a possible reunification. Gaspar Miklos Tamas, the contemporary leading Hungarian political theorist went to the heart of the matter when deacribing the 'etno-anarchists', the 'apolitical and anti-political' new type of nationalists. His examples range from Milosevic to Moldovan politicians who came to say they are not omanians, but a 'new' nation, to identify this breaking with the tradition and forging of 'new' nationalism. Along with communism this new ideology, equally created to suit the purpose of an elite (namely the same) is only another particular form of what Tamas sees as an incessant attack on 19th Century European Liberalism. (Tamas: 1996)

This is not to say that in the present-day Romanian and Hungarian elites only one type of nationalism can be found. We shall discern many others in the chapter dedicated to elites. We needed to trace, however, the most important trends in the 20th century history of both nations in order to make some sense of the present day Romanian and Hungarian nationalism.

The group interviews and the survey were concerned with answering a set of related questions, such as: What is the ‘nation’ the Hungarians from Romania identify themselves with? What geographic entity do they consider their country? Do they feel closer to coregionals, or to conationals, regardless of the region? What stereotypes are used to portray their ethnic group, and the others’ group?

This chapter will also challenge on one of the important assumptions made by a cultural and political trend which considers Transylvania in itself a separate ‘society’, displaying a culture which is different from the rest of Romania, and a separate identity of its inhabitants - the ‘Transylvanian identity’. This hypothesis implies that nationalities living in Transylvania, Romanians and Hungarians mainly, have more common than distinctive features, that can be discerned in their current perceptions of their civilization and behavior. In other words, this means Transylvanians tend to form an in-group with other Transylvanians, regardless of their ethnic origin, towards the rest of Romanians, and, respectively Hungarians.

The ‘separate identity’ hypothesis relies mainly on the different historical development of Transylvania from the other Romanian inhabited regions. Romanian nationalist politicians, but many scholars also, protested at the line dividing Transylvania from the rest of Romania in Samuel Huntington’s ‘map of civilzations’ from his famous and controversial essay on the clash of ‘civilizations’. No doubt Huntington was right, in terms of development, to point at Transylvania as to a distinct region, closer to Central Europe than to the Balkans. But the many ambiguities due to the way the concept of ‘civilization’ is used in this context show here. Tramsylvania is the homeland of at least three distinct cultures (Hungarian, Romanian, German), with the Romanian Christian Orthodox population enjoying a relative majority since at least the Emperor’s Joseph II first census in the area (1791). This pattern is in fact a multicultural one, with the Romanian culture closer to the Balkan Orthodox one, and the Hungarian and German closer to Catholic and Protestant Central Europe. Due to the absence of geographically clustered communities (except the Szekelys area), resulting in the very poor segregation of ethnic groups (Romanians and Hungarians mingle inside the same counties, cities, villages, blocks of flats even) we tend to look upon Transylvania as to an unique society shared by various (mainly two) cultures. So what is perhaps true in terms of historical development may be less so in contemporary social reality.

The results of our survey show that Romanian Hungarians have a distinct national identity (Hungarian), but acknowledge their contract as Romanian citizens with a large majority and consider Romania is their country (Figures 2,3). After 80 years of being incorporated in the Romanian State practically no Hungarian defines himself as ‘Romanian’. The 35 % Hungarians and 10 % Romanians who look upon Transylvania as their ‘country’ are a restricted minority in the total sample. None of the respondents indicated Hungary as their country. Since Transylvania has been the homeland of Transylvanian Hungarians for almost a millenium, and they are outnumbered by Romanians in the region ( the report is 3 :1) the result is hardly surprising. Transylvania is a part of the Romanian state, but is their homeland also. Seton-Watson was right when describing the situation in the seventies to point that the major conflict was that the Romanian Communist state wanted in exchange for its liberal policies that Hungarians admit they are Hungarian-speaking Romanians, and they would not, considering themselves part of the Hungarian nation, altough they accepted their Romanian citizenship as a fact (Seton Watson: 1977: 184)

Table 1 and 2 about here

To be a Transylvanian Hungarian means to share your loyalty between state and country. It is not an easy life, with Hungary just across the border. However it is the experience of the freedom to travel to Hungary after 1990, to an extent unprecedented before, that plays an essential part in self and heteroidentification and stereotyping. As focus group participants put it (each paragrapgh indicates a different speaker):

The old men from the Szekelys were considerably more nationalist than the intellectuals from multicultural Cluj. For the latter, Romania is their country since Transylvania is a part of it and Transylvania is their homeland, the historical ‘cradle’ of the civilization they belong to. They feel close only to other Hungarians who share this specific experience, that is, other Hungarians from Transylvania. For the old Szekelys, who evoked nostalgically the short reunification with Horthyst Hungary during the war years, stating a difference between Hungarians from Romania and Hungarians from Hungary was politically incorrect, since the ‘Magyar nation is just one’. National identification is much stronger than regional identification (for both ethnic groups), and national identification is not however done with the country (Hungary), but with a national group (Hungarians).

What are the main determinants of self-ascription? First, the language.

People interviewed in the groups stated it is extremely rare if not at all unlikely for someone to have a double identification, even if it comes from a mixed family and is bilingual. Everyone with a mixed background in our groups identified him/herself as Hungarian. Religion is seen as important for ascription, mainly for the Romanian group, but not essential, while other characteristics such as physical appearance are disregarded, although there is some perception of a difference:

People expressing this view were however just a few and isolated by the rest of the groups. Lower educated groups especially insisted ‘all people look the same, it doesn't matter what they are’.

A poll done in 1997 by the Babes Bolyai University showed that language was an important element of identification for 79 % of the Hungarians, self ascription for 84 %, ‘having a Hungarian parent’ for 77% and being ‘close to the Hungarian culture’ for 78 %. Self-ascription was considered as important as the maternal language also on the Romanian sample of the same poll (UBB; Research Center for Interethnic Relations: 1998)

The most common feeling associated with this identification is pride.

As Tajfel stated, self-evaluation is always made by comparison with other groups, and the pride of being a Hungarian from Transylvania is reported to Romanians from outside Transylvania, Hungarians from Hungary and even the ‘religious intolerant’ Western Europeans.

Alongside pride this identification is related to various frustrations.

However it is not the comparison with Romanians or the treatment they’re subjected by Romanians which make Romanian Hungarians feel inferior. It is their relationship with Hungarians from Hungary, which disturbs them:

The conclusion of these negative experienced was very well synthesized by an intellectual of Tg. Mures:

What seems like an irreversible loss for Transylvania and is strongly resented is Transylvania’s presence as a cultural, political, spiritual 'center'. Either from Bucharest or from Budapest today’s Transylvania is a marginal region. Even the memories of old men from the Horthyist times, otherwise seen as a golden age, display this frustration Transylvania was treated as a margin and all the civil servants positions emptied by the severance of Romanians were occupied by Hungarians from Hungary and not locals.

The 'Szekely' identity survived only as a ‘local’ identity. With one exception, the rest of the ‘Szekelys’ we discussed with considered ‘it is the Romanian nationalists who say Szekelys are anything else than Hungarians’. Due to their homogenous presence in their areas, Szekelys are in fact less interested in cohabitation than other Hungarians. The young ones ignore completely the fact that Szekelys have a different ethnic background, and the older ones invented imaginative explanations in order to explain the traditionally different way of writing which persisted until the 19th century saying ‘shamans only wrote like that’.

Defenses built during the 80 years of Romanian domination make even intellectuals deny the original ethnic background of the Szekelys was different (the writing was close to Turkish) and consider the idea as ‘a propaganda thesis of Ceausescu’. When confronted with the History of Transylvania edited by the Hungarian Academy (and bitterly disputed by Ceausescu’s historians) they were stunned to discover this is not propaganda, but history, and tried to explain it as a mistake, or a concession (interview with Hungarian MP by the author).

Stereotypes of Hungarians from Hungary compared to Hungarians from Romania develop easily:

To summarize, one of the major problems of the Hungarian identity for the Romanian Hungarian minority is the treatment they are subjected by their fellow Hungarians from Hungary. This is a widespread negative first-hand experience, since everybody either tried to work in Hungary for more money in the past years or had a close acquaintance that did. They felt unwanted, often because they volunteered for hard work for a lower pay so becoming the unwanted immigrants who lower the price of the work. In the case of Hungary, national solidarity was manifested occasionally only at the Department of Foreign Affairs or by political parties such as FIDESZ, and not as a widespread attitude. This lead to various attributions meant to explain Hungarians’ behavior, such as envy towards their fellows from Transylvania. In fact, the perception of this ‘rejection’ lead to an increase of group ties and ethnic solidarity and a strengthening of the ‘in-group’ feelings. The group identifies itself by comparison with other groups, so Romanian Hungarians feel superior to Hungarians from Hungary (because they speak a more ‘pure’ language, allegedly) superior to the Romanians from outside Transylvania (‘Transylvania is the cradle of civilization, it’s 100 yeard ahead from the rest of Romania’) and superior to West Europeans, who allegedly have no such tradition of ‘religious tolerance’ as Transylvania enjoyed. However, the hard trials of the Romanian Hungarians self-esteem did not push them closer to Romanians, but increased their national sensitiveness. Since they are a small community, which recently discovered they can not really rely on the other Hungarians from the mother country their need of protecting their identity from Romanians and their sensitivity to appeals at group status and prestige is even greater.

Not only Hungarians are defensive when they have to picture themselves as a group. Amazingly, so are Transylvanian Romanians, although they are three times as many as Hungarians. Romanians we talked to were preoccupied the interviewer could misunderstand they are somehow not Romanians, so, if asked ‘Transylvanian Romanians?’ they answered ‘No, just Romanians’ or ‘Are there more categories of Romanians? I don't think so’. (Greek-Catholic, Cluj) or ‘Romanians will tell you they’re Romanians. Ask Hungarians, they’ll tell you they’re Transylvanians’. Romanian worker, Cluj)

Once established nobody is contesting them being Romanians, it comes out some traces of regional identity exists, associated with a feeling of pride.

The Romanian national group is mainly interested to make clear they are related to the rest of Romanians. They would never allow their regional identity, however present, to go against their national identity, since the fear of Hungarian irredentism is widespread. However, when it comes to stereotyping Romanians from the rest of Romania their representations are quite similar, although milder, to those of the Hungarian group, as we shall see.

Stereotypes are politically incorrect. Amazingly, all the groups seemed aware of this, peasants perhaps less than urban groups. Compared to a control focus group in Bucharest with political science students with no previous acquaintance of any other ethnic group all the groups in Transylvania showed extreme caution when describing the others, including the usual negative-labeled Gypsies. The Bucharest students characterized the Gypsy as ‘barbaric’ and the Hungarians and Russians as ‘enemies of Romanians’.

Finally, the stereotypical portrait of the Romanian from Transylvania as seen by a Hungarian mixes positive and negative traits: it is a ‘warm’ and ‘communicative’ person.

Romanians are also perceived by Hungarians as ‘patient, more peaceful, they endure more’. ‘They are more obedient towards authorities’, while Hungarians are ‘more impulsive’, ‘colder’, ‘less patient’, and ‘tougher’. Both are perceived as hard working, although Hungarians feel Romanians get more out of their work, and the Szekelys tend to feel they work harder than anyone does. Hungarian teachers in our groups complained Hungarian students are less ambitious, and while Romanians learn two-three languages, they are happy if the Hungarians at least learn Hungarian well. Hungarians see themselves as more ‘civilized’, but only when compared to Romanians from outside Transylvania, as they like to point out. Both Hungarians and Romanians from Transylvania are perceived as superior to the Romanians outside Transylvania, seen as a ‘backward’ group: ‘We here are prouder people’. Many Hungarian respondents apologized when asserting the civilization in Transylvania was at least one hundred years in advance compared to the civilization in the Kingdom of Romania (Tg. Secuiesc, workers).

The explanation for that is ‘because we are closer to the West, people are more civilized as they are closer to the West’. This geographical attribution is more popular in low-educated groups. Romanians from outside Transylvania are therefore seen by Hungarians as ‘uncivilized’, ‘speaking too loud’, ‘intolerant’ ‘vulgar’, and ‘crooks’. Everybody, Romanians and Hungarians, seemed to agree ‘Southerners’ are faster and noisier. Romanians, however, point out this is just a different life style.

Peasants travel so little they can hardly have enough material to create stereotypes, so they tend to generalize usually one experience (a wedding they attended or any other single trip) and the generalization is either positive or negative, as the experience. The overall image of both groups is that Romanians are warmer, more communicative, while Hungarians are more serious, distant, proud. An interesting problem with both Romanians and Hungarians is that in low-educated milieus ‘nationalist’ is a positive attribute. When asked ‘Who is more nationalistic, Romanians or Hungarians’ the answer was ‘We both are…. We all care about tradition here in Transylvania’. The ‘bad nationalists’ are in fact called ‘extremists’ and both sides agreed they can be met among Romanians and among Hungarians as well. ‘There is no garden without its weeds’(peasants, Miercurea Niraj, Mures county).

Romanians envy Hungarians for their stronger national awareness:

Hungarians agree with this view, both workers in Tg. Secuiesc and old men in Sf Gheorghe mentioning the case of Romanian Moldovans ‘who no longer admit they're Romanians’. For the Romanian Greek Catholics this is extremely shameful and humiliating.

The Greek Catholic group displayed the attitudes of a minority persecuted group, which despised Romanians (with an intensity close to self-hate) and resented and feared Hungarians. They complained the Orthodox Church (which is in fact the state church, and was close to the Communist regime), in order not to give them back the churches confiscated in Communist times, was spreading rumors of them as being ‘Hungarians’. One more reason to be nationalist: to differentiate themselves from Hungarians. A very difficult and psychologically uncomfortable position.

Not only Southerners are considered ‘uncivilized’ by Transylvanians, especially by Hungarians. So are newcomers, who are blamed with all the interethnic problems and intolerance, both in Cluj and Tg. Mures, towns where Romanians were a minority in the 19th century and which have now an important Romanian population (70 % in Cluj, 50 % in Tg. Mures).

The temptation to blame it all on newcomers ‘people who were not raised here, in the spirit of Transylvanian tolerance’ (Hungarian intellectuals, Tg. Mures) is indeed very great, and academic milieus such as the Babes Bolyai University faculty members tend to endorse this very simple explanation despite any lack of evidence. Our experience points to the contrary: old inhabitants of Transylvania, therefore locals, tend to be more intolerant and distrustful towards the other ethnic group, regardless if they are Romanian or Hungarian. Both our third age groups (Romanian Greek-Catholics, Cluj, and Hungarians, Sf. Gheorghe) displayed fierce nationalism, having their personal memories to support their prejudices.

Hungarian intellectuals believe in a sort of Transylvanian ‘identity’ or at least ‘specificity’, although they admit this is not crosscutting the much stronger national loyalties.

But there is also a dark-side of the Transylvanian identity.

Both groups tend to consider the cohesiveness of the other group as superior to their own. Romanians are actually scared of the fact that ‘Hungarians are more united’, while Hungarians perceive that ‘Romanians care about each other more, they help each other more than we do’.

There are actually two different types of ‘unity’ perceived here. What Romanians fear is the political cohesiveness of the Hungarian group, much superior in fact to the Romanian group? For instance, in Tirgu Mures, although the two groups are equally numerous the mayor is Hungarian because Hungarians vote according to the ethnic criteria with the Hungarian Alliance (DAHR), while Romanians divide their votes politically among several Romanian parties (Nationalists, Socialists and Christian-Democrats mainly). The distinctive group conscience of the Hungarians as a minority scares the Romanians, who, although they form the majority, are not organized as a self-conscious group. The few constituents of ‘Vatra Romaneasca' ('The Romanian Cradle') the Romanian national preservation association are attracted on the basis of this fear. Their mobilization is a reaction against the Hungarian mobilization, and is constantly used by Romanian nationalist politicians. In simple words, here is a description of this ‘mirroring’ mobilization mechanism in the words of a Romanian peasant from the Cluj County:

As a physician from Tg. Mures told this author back in 1990, a few weeks before the violent clashes in Tg. Mures:

The ‘unity’ of Romanians as perceived by Hungarians is very different. It is mostly a form of sociability, an increased participation to the others’ life, which is perceived as unity. A majority which is divided and has no clear direction is weaker than a homogenous, goal-oriented minority (Moscovici : 1982) and somehow Romanians perceive that, and that makes them feel , in their own words ‘complexes’ towards the Hungarian group.

Other Romanians interviewed pitied the Hungarians for this ‘unity’ which they perceived as a perpetual state of mobilization.

This exceptional state of mobilization is confirmed by Hungarians. Here is an impressive statement from the Hungarian intellectuals’ group in Tg.Mures, a comment on the violence outburst of 1990, which ended with dozens of severely injured people :

On the other hand, Romanians cannot admit Hungarians keep their distance from fear of being assimilated (see demographic statistics below) and complain of constant rejection :

Table 3 about here

The Romanian students at Babes-Bolyai were concerned Romanians and Hungarians will become two totally separate groups with the separation of universities and, as they say,

The concern of losing ties with the Romanian community was not present at the Hungarian students of the Babes-Bolyai University, who considered nothing will change if they separate the universities completely (students' group, Cluj, May 1997). Communication seems to be the main concern of Romanians, while fear of being assimilated is the main concern of Hungarians. Mixed families are an exception in this picture of the two ethnies living alongside each other without any real communication between, but mixed families also tend to get separated along ethnic lines :

Asked if they would approve a mixed marriage the peasants in Viisoara said 'Oh, yes, only they wouldn't be happy, families will make them split apart sooner or later'.

As paradoxical as nationalism is the perception of the others' religious behavior. In low-educated Hungarian groups Romanians were perceived as ‘more religious’ because, allegedly, of the more impressive rituals of the Orthodox Church. However, in the same Hungarian groups some members considered the Orthodox religion as ‘more recent’ than Catholicism and ‘more primitive’. In the group of intellectuals we were told ‘Romanians look more religious than us, because our religion is so much simpler than theirs (meaning rituals)’. In the Romanian groups, however, Hungarians were considered more religious, because they ‘do what they are taught at the church’ and because of the large number of associations connected with the church, non-existent in the Orthodox Church. Romanians feel their religious participation is more formal, although many told us they disagree that in Hungarian churches ‘they do so much politics, priests tell them whom to vote and even raise money for DAHR’ (workers, peasants, Cluj). Peasants are, on the contrary, inclined to say Hungarians are less religious because they work on holidays, when the Romanians take several free days (for instance, on Easter). Romanians don't work even during Hungarian holidays, while the opposite doesn't happen frequently.

More interesting than stereotypes of each other are stereotypes of the difference between the two groups.

The importance of this perceived difference of character and its impact on the normal social competition was excellent put by a Hungarian trainer of a handball team in Miercurea Ciuc :

The ‘objective' disadvantage of belonging to a minority group is here transformed into a ‘subjective’ disadvantage, perceived as already internalized in the behavior of the two groups. This exemple highlights the Hungarian usual perception that Romanians do better with less effort, that Hungarians receive less gratifications than they deserve and fortifies the drive to create a separate society where competition with Romanians is excluded for ever and Hungarians will no longer be cheated of what is rightfully theirs.

The most telling fact is, perhaps, that a social representation of nations living like a family within Romania is simply missing, so difficult it is to imagine an in-group including both Romanians and Hungarians. When asked ‘Were Romania a family, how would it look like’ most Hungarian groups told us they cannot conceive it as a family ‘or we would be the intruders' (intellectual, Miercurea Ciuc). Even Romanians had difficulties. ‘It would be like a mother-in-law with the daughter-in-law’ (classical image of conflict in the Romanian folk-stories) (peasants, Cluj). At the other extreme is this beautiful representation of a young Romanian student in Cluj:

Germans are the most admired by Romanians of all national minorities (IMAS: 1996). Group participants also stressed the difference they perceived between Germans and Hungarians.

In the same time we should not forget the modern dinasty of Romania was of German (Hohenzollern) descent. Although far from perfect, the life of different nationalities in the kingdom of Romania is viewed retrospectively with some nostalgy by both groups, as showed mainly in our low-educated participants to group interviews. The King is seen as an arbiter who kept balance and peace. Such an arbiter seems to miss today, although in polls both communities agree President Emil Constantinescu is the political character who did most to improve relations among the two groups.

To conclude, Hungarians of Romania emerged from the post-Communist period with a national identity enforced by the comparison with Hungarians in Hungary (they see themselves as ‘better Hungarians’ than those) and frustrated because of the lack of national solidarity among the ‘unique Magyar nation’. The exposure to an enlarged communicational environment only increased the group’s desire ‘to preserve its separate identity, and this is further reinforced by an interaction between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ attitudes and patterns of social behavour’ (Tajfel: 1981 :315). National, not regional identity seems to be the main concern of Romanians also, as they are preoccupied with the alleged Hungarians lack of openness towards them and loyalty towards the Romanian state.). Romanians and Hungarians from Transylvania do try to see each other objectively: but the harder they try, the more they notice their difference.

Nationalism would be unconceivable without history. Perceptions of the common history by nationals feed national identity, pride, solidarity, and attitudes towards other national groups. If history is invented or not it matters little. What is important is that the need for a historical identity is there, as a part of a need for a positive social identity. History is positive social identity that already passed the most difficult test: the test of time. It is not the sequence of particular events, however outstanding they might be, which makes a nation, but the perception by nationals that something specific to their group endured along history, during times of hardship and golden ages as well. In other words, it is not the American Revolution in itself that makes Americans feel proud, but the inherently American values people perceive were at stake then. It is not Kossovo as a specific event or location- historically Kossovo was a defeat, and demographically Serbs are no longer a majority for more than one century- but the whole self-image of the Serbs as defenders of Christianity that makes Serb people so enraged over the autonomy of Albanian Muslims in that territory. Defending a specific version of history is seen as enraged nationalism, but in fact it is rational behavior: people defend the consistency of their identity, of their self-image. Individuals may see themselves as unimportant or even as failures, but few people see their nation and history this way: usually national ideology has some convenient explanation- historical, of course- if that particulate nation is not doing very well at the time. Positive social identity compensates for low individual self-esteem, so people really feel the need to have one. In any event, history and national identity are so deep interacted that telling them apart is difficult sometimes. Let us take, for instance, Hutchinson and Smith's definition of ethnicity, and we shall see that at least three of the six elements are strongly related to history, that is:

1. A myth of common ancestry, a myth rather than a fact, a myth that includes the idea of a common origin in time and place and that gives an ethnie a sense of fictive kinship (Horowitz, 1985: chapter 2)

2. Shared historical memories, or better, shared memories of a common past or pasts, including heroes, events, and their commemoration

3. A link with a homeland, not necessarily in physical occupation by the ethnie, only its symbolic attachment to the ancestral land, as with Diaspora peoples. (Smith and Hutchinson: 1996; 7)

History is directly connected to these three, but has some connection to the other elements of this definition such as the common culture and the sense of solidarity as well. It is oral history which preserves and shapes in the collective memory of ethnies the social representations of common ancestry, founding myths, homeland, and makes an essential contribution to the widespread feelings of sharing a common culture and experiencing solidarity in the present on the model of the past. Written history, as an instrument of national self-awareness or even nation building is equally important, as studies of Eugen Weber (1976) and Eric Hobsbawm (1983), among others, proved brilliantly. Ethnicity is essentially ‘oriented to the past, to the origins and ancestors of the community and its historical formation, including ‘its golden age’ (Hutchinson and Smith, 1996: 7) History is therefore an essential element of socialization in the framework of a national culture.

I shall discuss here social representations of the history and the past. My choice of terms needs some specifications. Scholars and journalists use commonly Maurice Halbwachs’ notion of ‘collective memory’. In Hallwachs’ (1992) theory memories are said to be formed and organized in a collective context. Radley had furthermore added that people’s way of remembering the past should be dependent of their relationship to their community (Radley: 1990), while classical psychoanalytical theory considers people repress inconvenient memories. While I consider these theoretical foundations essential for the understanding of this research, I however use the notion ‘collective memory’ a bit differently, in order to be able to distinguish both the source of recollections and their sharing by the group. Therefore I make a distinction between ‘social representations of history’ and ‘collective memory’, and another between ‘past’ and ‘history’. I mean by ‘past’ here only events from the recent history, which were experienced by the subject directly and have in the same time enough social relevance to have generated a social representation. By ‘history’ I mean that period placed out of the reach of subject’s experience, and known to him only via other sources, either ancestors or other more or less specialized persons. Social representations of history have a double source: on one part the authentic experience of a community propagated by collective memories of families or larger groups, on the other hand representations and beliefs acquired in the socialization process (school education, mass media, cinema). To preserve some collective memories in a community it is necessary that the family and the group can survive in the same environment through social and political change and discontinuity. Where this failed to happen (as in the case of deplaced populations, immigrants from rural to urban areas) it is very likely social representations will be influenced more by outside sources and the public discourse on history. A previous research in Romanian villages of Muntenia showed Communist modernization, and especially the process of ‘village systematization’ managed to ‘erase’ collective memory, now reduced and confined to the Communist years (Mungiu: 1995)

It is already evident that by ‘collective memory’ I mean here not the whole set of representations on the past shared by the members of a community, but only the recollections socially reconstructed on the basis of some direct experience of the community on the length of two generations at outmost (living memory). Social representations of the past and mainly of history are, however, due more to sources other than the family/group, being shared by large collectivities such as ethnic group/nation. We are not in any event interested in their original ‘authenticity’ or lack of it: we are interested in their instrumental aspect mainly, that is, their role in forming and maintaining current attitudes and behavior.

The topic of history is constantly absent from sociological and anthropological research in Transylvania, with a few notable exceptions (Verdery: 1983; Mitu: 1997). It is quite natural, since anthropologists are less concerned with actual history, historians, even historians of mentalities, limit themselves to documents and do not go into field research, while sociologists are bound by clients and tend to measure only present and future-oriented attitudes.

In our group interviews participants considered discussions on history a natural and organic part of the larger Romanian-Hungarian topic. In the everyday discussion frequent historical themes are invoked, such as continuity of Romanians in Transylvania, injustices suffered by Romanian in the Austro-Hungarian empire, historical injustice done by the Paris Treaty to the Hungarian nation, and so on. Some of those themes, such as treatment of the ever-changing minority group by the ever-changing majority ethnic group during the 2nd World War feed continuously historical propaganda on each historical anniversary, mostly on the Romanian but also on the Hungarian side. Appealing to historical resentments to blame difficulties of the transition during the past seven years was a constant policy of the Romanian post-communist governments (Gallagher: 1995; Mungiu: 1995). The 1990 violent clashes of Tg. Mures were also fueled, among others, by the Romanians discontent with the mass celebration by the Hungarians of the March 15 1848 anniversary, date considered by the Romanians as frustrating for their history.

It is perhaps not uncommon for a territory claimed by two or more countries to have a disputed history. Transylvania is however an unique case: the historiography of both countries was dedicated in modern and contemporary times primarily to the task of proving the legitimacy- or lack of it — of Transylvania’s belonging to one state or the other.

The Romanian history, starting with Enlightenment, considered the Romanians as direct heirs of the Roman colonists in Dacia and of their mixed marriages with the native Dacian population. The homeland of Daco-Romans, the Latin-speaking population resulted from the Roman occupation, was Transylvania, where the two capitals, of native Dacia and Roman Dacia are to be found. The Roman emperor Aurelian (276) abandoned Dacia, which had become a difficult position to keep in front of barbarian invasions. The Romanian historiography claims that soldiers and clerks only left with the official retreat, colonists, farmers, and families with children remaining in Dacia. There is little archeological evidence to support this assumed presence of Daco-Latins, at least a massive presence, in Transylvania, but there is little trace of them south of Danube either. Linguistic arguments are richer, but some are also interpretable in various ways. The fact is that the first census in Transylvania made by Emperor Joseph II (1791) discovered the Romanian ethnic group to be the largest. In the other two provinces Wallachia and Moldova Romanians also formed a large majority.

By 1791 Transylvania could almost qualify as an ethnic-ranked society. Feudal lords were, with few exceptions, only Hungarian. The urban middle class was formed by germans (Saxons). Szekelys were free landowners, performing a military function (defending the border) Almost the entire Romanian population and some Hungarians were serfs.

Romanian historiography claims that Hungarians arriving in the eleventh century as a migratory people defeated the local scarce chieftains, who were Romanians, and became for almost 900 years the upper class. Bloody peasants' revolts combined during Middle Ages this social and ethnic element. At the end of the First World War, a war in which Romanians sided with the winners, Transylvania was occupied by Romanian troops; some of them made of Transylvanians who deserted the Austro-Hungarian army. The popular assembly of Blaj proclaimed the unification of Transylvania with Romania after the consent of German and Hungarian communities was asked and granted under certain conditions. By that time Romanians made of Transylvania's inhabitants more than all the other ethnic groups taken together (2.830.040 of 5.263.602, 53, 8 % in 1910 — source Livezeanu: 1994: 135). The Trianon treaty ratified the unification of Transylvania with Romania. In 1940, after more years of Hungarian official revisionist policy, and the defeat of France, fascist Germany and Italy decided to return to Hungary northern Transylvania in a decision which was labeled by the Romanian historians as the ‘Vienna Diktat’, and is mentioned by the Hungarian historians as the’ First Vienna Award’. Romanian historians also claim the take over of Northern Transylvania created the opportunity of massacres of Romanians in several villages, as some proof was published.

The Hungarian historiography tells, of course, a different story. According to the majority of Hungarian historians, Hungarians, at their arrival in the 11th Century found a Transylvania that was mostly uninhabited except by small groups of Slavs. They started to colonize it, imported Germans and Szekelys to build cities and guard frontiers and created the Transylvanian civilization. Romanians, originally very few and living in the mountains, started to come in large numbers crossing the Carpathian passes from the 13th Century. When Hungarians fell defending their country and Europe in the Mohacs battle against the Turks in 1426 the Hungarian State ceased to exist for almost 150 years and the cradle of the Hungarian civilization remained the autonomous Transylvanian Principality, subordinated to the Ottoman Empire. After that the demographic situation started to change quickly, due to the continuos immigration of Romanians, to their reproductive capacities, and to the great number of Hungarian men who died in the war against Turks. Hungarian historians do not claim Romanians came from the south of Carpathians, but from the South of Danube, where, allegedly, all Daco-Romans retreated after Aurelian's decision to leave Dacia. Evidence consists in predominance of Slavic names of rivers in Transylvania, scarcity of archeological proof showing Romanian presence during the ‘dark millennium’ in Transylvania, and presence of ‘Wallachs’, who are also called ‘Aromanians’ in small ethnic groups scattered all over Balkans, in Macedonian, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and so on.

With few exceptions, historians in both countries built cohesive versions of history, carefully leaving out all that could contradict or leave some doubt on their theories. Few attempts were made to bridge the gap and even recently an attempt of the Open Society Institute to create a common ‘History of Transylvania’ failed. In both countries Transylvania and its history is considered a central issue in the national formation theory.

Revising the two versions, Hugh Seton Watson concludes:

The American anthropologist Katherine Verdery humorously complained about the difficulties of doing some ‘value-free’ work in Transylvania, since most topics touch the explosive Romanian-Hungarian dispute. As she puts it:

Neither am I.. But it is not easy, as we shall see.

This absolute division between the two national schools of history was perfectly mirrored by our focus groups. First, regardless of the knowledge of history people assess or actually have, their opinions on history are nevertheless strong. After an initial defensive reaction met in most of the groups ‘History is the business of historians’ or ‘let's leave that to historians and politicians, we know only what our parents told us’ everybody was aware of the core of its national theory. This is not surprising for Romanians, because in Ceausescu's last years national indoctrination rivaled Communist indoctrination to be finally synthesized in an unique doctrine (see Verdery: 1978). But this good knowledge is rather surprising in Hungarians, who, even in Hungarian schools, learned history from Romanian Communist textbooks. An exception can be made for the counties that were part of the Hungarian Autonomous Region from 1949 to 1964. A separate Hungarian history textbook circulated in this area and allegedly it carried some of the Hungarian version of history. During that period Romanians were also compelled by the Soviet Union to accept what was called ‘the Roller theory’ which claimed Romanians are, in fact, Slavs, therefore a part of the big Slavic family. The theory corroborated well with the Hungarian claim that it were Slavs, not Romanians that had been found by the first Hungarians at their descent in Transylvania The excellent knowledge by Hungarians of their dissident theory shows the effectiveness of a parallel socialization process, helped by the proximity of Hungary (Radio, and more recently Hungarian Television can be received almost everywhere in Transylvania).

All the Hungarians in our group, with one notable exception (a worker in a group in Cluj immediately singled and labeled as ‘traitor’ by two more radical members of the group) consider the Romanian founding myth a ‘pure myth’ and Hungarians the first to have settled in Transylvania. This belief is expressed in various ways, according to the degree of education, and displays several nuances as well. As group participants stated (different paragraphs indicate different speakers):

The latest myth is not original, but is a theory, less important and accepted, of a Hungarian historian, somehow picked by this low-educated member of our group, who couldn't recall where he first heard it. The other members of this group, although some looked skeptical, did not argue with him on what even when asked if they share this view. Attributions tend to have quite a complex elaboration on this matter:

This is another minor theory of a Hungarian writer. The woman who told us that slightly disapproved by other members of the Hungarian group, was the only one in the group to believe Romanians were the first settlers, but only under these dubious circumstances. The story was consistent with her own traumatic history: born in the Szekelys area, she decided to leave this homogenous Hungarian region and ‘to mingle’. She went to school to Cluj where she enlisted to the Romanian-English Faculty. She had serious problems with her Romanian language that was faulty and she claims professors constantly told her she should have tried the Hungarian section instead. She was unable to graduate, returned to the Szekelys region and took a job she despised in the private sector because she didn't own a university diploma. She expressed bitter frustration for having tried to ‘become Romanian’ and having failed. Her attribution was constructed as a defense. She initially ‘had bought’ the idea that Romanians are heirs of Romans, a noble people, nobler than Hungarians - but after feeling rejected by them she could not reject it altogether: so the ‘good Romans’ became ‘bad Romans’- convicts of the Roman Empire. The rest of the group, partisans of the ‘classical’ Hungarian theory, listened skeptically to this person.

Mobilization against the Romanian theory was spontaneous and almost general in all our group interviews. The basic idea of the Hungarian group is that not only is it the first to have settled, but also were the only civilized population until the import of German settlers.

Romanians, on the other side, are strong believers in the ‘Daco-Roman theory, although they are persuaded ‘Hungarians will never accept it’. In the Cluj urban groups, opinions were far more nuanced.

This ‘relativism’ disappears in lower educated groups:

Before discussing the importance the groups attribute to their historical theories I’d like to point out a few things. First, we should notice the self-assurance and superiority of Hungarians when it comes to this topic. They ‘feel sorry’ for Romanians who don’t know their real history, unlike them who do and have evidence to support it in their immediate environment (such as tombstones). We did not fall upon any image of the Romanian as ‘immigrant', despite the overspread belief in this theory among Hungarians. On the contrary, Romanians have largely shared images of Hungarians as invaders:

Regardless the historical truths, Hungarians display more confidence than the Romanians, who react defensively and tend to distribute their group in the role of the victim.

We can consider both representations are actually attributions, trying to 'give a meaning' to the Middle Age hierarchy, turned into contemporary prejudices. Hungarians try to avoid the guilt of their superior status by invoking their previous settling and their 'civilization'. Romanians try to justify their inferior position implying they were violently forced into it by ' migratory barbarians '.

In our poll Transylvanian Romanians and Hungarians could choose one of the three options:

1. Exclusive nationalism (whoever settled first has more rights and the others have to play by his rules (first two answers)

2. Moderate nationalism (they consider historically proven their group was the first to settle, but that group rights should be equal

3. Pragmatism (they rule out any association between the moment of the settling and the group rights).

Figure 4 (cahart) comes about here

1. Only 23% of Romanians and no Hungarians chose this alternative. Almost a quarter of Romanian Hungarians therefore considers they should have superior rights to other ethnic groups due to their first arrival. In other words, this group sees itself as a first-class category of citizens and the others as 'lesser rights' groups. Hungarians although so articulate in focus groups about their historical theory chose overwhelmingly the alternative 3. Since they have been numerically inferior in Transylvania for more than two hundred years they do not dare to challenge the Romanian superiority.

2. 32 % of Romanians and 15 % of Hungarians are convinced their theory is just, but do not think this should affect the rights of the other groups. 9% of the Hungarians and almost no Romanians (1.5-%) accept the other group's historical theory.

3. 71.8 % Hungarians and 39 % Romanians (the relative majority) refuse to associate in any form the national birth theory with the distribution of rights, choosing the alternative that rights should be equal regardless of when the settlement took place.

To sum up, only a quarter of the Romanian population in Transylvania identifies with nationalist slogans such as 'Hungarians are tolerated by the hospitality of Romanians in Transylvania'. Another third might feel provoked by Hungarian nationalistic slogans that Hungarians are the first and the founders of the Hungarian civilization. The Hungarian community feels disadvantaged by the use of this topic under any circumstances so they choose the most defensive alternative, although group interviews suggest many more are strong believers in their theory.

The displayed attitudes in group interviews towards the importance of the national birth theory were either denial or minimalism. Common sense was the prevailing attitude:

Mobilization appears immediately, however, when the other group uses the argument:

The logical sequence of thought in both Romanian and Hungarian 'pragmatics' runs as follows:

1. It doesn't matter who settled here fist, we're all people, now we're here together, so we have to make the best out of this, only politicians like to make a big fuss about this

2. However we were here first and the others migrated here, then managed somehow (by higher reproduction rates, Hungarians on Romanians; by imposing themselves as masters and making the rule, Romanians on Hungarians) to become stronger than we are

3. That's why it matters we are not immigrants here, but natives, so we do not have lesser rights

4. So when I see it matters to the others then it starts to really matter for me too.

Both groups seem today to resort to their national theory not in order to dominate the other group, but to protect themselves- they were tried so hard and so often on the basis of this argument. They become immediately defensive when it comes to it. Although both groups deny the national theories are important, both are reluctant to admit it was not their group to settle first and their theory is as relative as the other group's. The only outspoken groups on the matter were Romanian Greek-Catholics and peasants of Viisoara, Hungarian old men and partly workers in Tirgu Secuiesc.

The topic is in fact a major producer of discriminative representations and attributions even among pragmatics. The way the two theories are built they can hardly fail to be discriminative. Representations of this type can be grouped in four major recurrent themes:

1. The reproductive potential of Romanians

The issue of the Romanians higher reproductive potential came spontaneously in every conversation with the Hungarians. More educated Hungarians, however, tend to blame themselves rather than Romanians.

2. The lack of 'civilization' of the Romanian group

Hungarians tend to think of their culture as superior. Some apologize when stating that, others see no need, but it is an overspread belief their civilization in Transylvania is older and better, a belief enforced by the scarcity of Romanian monuments when compared to the Hungarian ones.

The old men in Sfintu Gheorghe synthesized this argument perfectly:

We are the first because there is overwhelming evidence of this fact, but even assuming we are not we're the only state-building nation in Transylvania and had been the only civilization for centuries.

3.Hungarians as oppressors

This is a widespread stereotype among Romanians, inside and outside Transylvania as well, since history textbooks and major Romanian literature pieces by Transylvanian authors such as Liviu Rebreanu promoted this image. Romanians resorted to it as the obvious defense when discussing about the large number of monuments Hungarians have in Transylvania.

If Hungarians do have more monuments, Romanians claim this was done at the expense of Romanians, with their work and on their land. Historically, the Romanians claim that they are the only natives in Transylvania developed in a time when they were deprived of elementary rights (The Romanian Orthodox Church did not enjoy an equal status with the other denominations in Transylvania, being considered an inferior church).

4. Hungarians as invaders

The stereotype of Hungarians as invaders, who came from Asia and conquered Transylvania, is also due to Romanian history books. Therefore it is widespread among Romanians and provokes strong defense reactions in Hungarians. The group of peasant women in a village near Cluj still remembers they told their Hungarian neighbors the second day after the Tg. Mures violent clashes in 1990 ‘You should go back to Hungary or wherever you came from and let us leave peacefully here’ and they were surprised to be answered ‘Why should I go to Hungary when my ancestors are buried in this land’.

Two other observations deserve to be made concerning the topic:

1. Hungarians are extremely defensive and reserved when it comes to this topic and the interviewer had to spend time to persuade them they can tell whatever they want regardless of consequences. This is reflected in the large share of pragmatics, but also in the following sequence of a group interview (Interviewer's interventions are in Italics):

2. Everybody, Romanians and Hungarians included, seems to be aware it is politically incorrect to consider the first settlers have superior rights. This prompts group to be cautions and defensive. However people have strong views despite that fact and the use of discriminative stereotypes derived from the national 'history' theories is common practice. Both groups are defensive and do not even need the other group to trigger defense mechanisms, since nationalist politicians and the media do the job almost daily. Ordinary people have to face the consequence of these provocations, immediately converted into behavior: the Romanian women in Viisoara fought with the Hungarian women after seeing on television the Tg. Mures conflict, although they had a peaceful coexistence until the conflict.

The Middle Ages was a dark time indeed for our respondents. Knowledge of history, excepting some intellectuals - especially Hungarians - lack on a large scale. People even refuse to discuss history, and say it was not a topic in their families. They prefer to stick to what fathers and grandfathers told them about more recent times. The only exception seem to be the Romanian Greek-Catholics, from two main reasons: the advanced age of this group (corresponding to the national character of this aging group), and the past of this denomination, closely associated with the national emancipation of Romanians in Transylvania. It was the Greek Catholic more than the Orthodox Church, perhaps also in need to justify its own unity to Rome, which fought for the revival of Romanians' conscience as a Latin nation. Therefore, it is not surprising this group has a higher interest and knowledge of history, displaying stronger prejudicial attitudes towards Hungarians.

For the mediaeval history of Transylvania can hardly fail to be other than traumatic for Romanians and it can easily provide the basis of frustration and prejudice? Deprived of any political rights Transylvanian Romanians could climb the social scale only by ethnic assimilation, abandoning their ethnic ‘losing’ group and joining another. Such was the case of Iancu de Hunedoara, a Romanian born noble who became regent of Hungary and is claimed as self by both national groups.

This is the ‘objective’ basis for frustration. Both groups try to shape it in order to fit their general system of beliefs. Hungarian intellectuals, since ordinary people have little knowledge or interest in the matter, choose to believe that the Transylvanian mediaeval ranking system was purely social and not ethnic. Hungarian intellectuals, with minor differences among them (groups in Ciuc, Sf Gheorghe, Cluj, Tg. Mures) also consider the big riots of Romanians peasants during feudal times were predominantly ‘social, not national’ and consider these cannot be made a part of the conflicting Romanian-Hungarian history as official Romanian history puts it.

Do ordinary people perceive it so? Indeed they do. Although 18th century peasants barely defined themselves as ‘Romanians’ and bore no national ideal but rose only to fight for elementary social-not even political- rights- popularization of the riot of Horea, Closca and Crisan got roots in the Romanian public opinion. A favorite theme of the national communist school of history, which used this superimposition of cleavages to blame it all on the Hungarian feudal lords, the riot and its bloody repression remains the first traumatic moment of direct confrontation. Its contemporary portraying in movies and TV series endorsed this image as well. This memory generates a very simple representation -and therefore a very powerful one - which is also consistent with the whole history of the Romanians in the Habsburg Empire - as they see it - with Hungarians the exploiters and Romanians the exploited, although there were also Hungarian serfs on the side of the rioters. Simple, even rudimentary representations are stronger since they respond to the need of people of attributing a clear explanation to complex historical backgrounds. Overall, the riot of Horea raises more emotion in Romanians, while the 1848 moment meets more the feelings of Hungarians.

Another mediaeval issue completely erased from the collective memory is the fact that Szekelys were a different ethnic group from the Hungarians. The official history of Transylvania edited by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences assumes Szekelys were a tribe of Turkish origin who came together with Hungarian tribes but had a separate language and conserved for centuries a separate alphabet and writing. Szekelys were finally completely assimilated by the Hungarians, but the mere mention of this fact provokes nationalist angry reactions, even from the part of intellectuals.

The next important moment is the 1948 Revolution, with its failure of bringing a historical agreement between the Hungarian revolutionary bourgeoisie and the Romanian one. The level of knowledge on this matter would probably scare a history teacher. Although details are scarce, the general overview is of a national emancipation war than of a social revolution — of the Hungarians against Habsburgs and of the Romanians against Hungarian lords. The whole story finished with a blood bath after Austrians were skillful enough to play nationalities fears and frustration over the Hungarian domination against emancipated Hungary and asked the Czar's troops in. The compromise that was eventually reached later between Austria and Hungary, creating the Hungarian national state allowed unprecedented displays of Hungarian nationalism on behalf of minorities, namely Slovaks and Romanians.

Hungarians honor Kossuth, the leader of the Revolution, although admitting half-heartily:

‘He started to realize minorities should be a part of all these only when it was too late’

‘When Kossuth met with Balcescu it was already too late’.’Kossuth would have granted minorities more rights later, now it was important for the Hungarian Revolution to win’.

Hungarians in our groups, even the less educated ones, had more idea about the 1848 moment, due also to the fact that Hungary's National Day is the anniversary of March 15, 1948.They also had the recent opportunity to reconsider this historical moment due to the Romanian nationalist mayor of Cluj, Gheorghe Funar. Funar raised in 1993 in the middle of the town, now 70% inhabited by Romanians, in 1848 almost a pure Hungarian town, the statue of Avram Iancu, the military leader of the Romanians in 1948, with an inscription saying forty thousands Romanians were killed during those battles (of course, by Hungarians). This provoked huge protest from the part of Hungarian political organizations. Romanian democratic parties also blamed this ‘provocation'. Our respondents were still furious remembering this.

Less educated Hungarians freely interpret facts to their advantage.

Recent clichés borrowed from the TV analysis of the December 1989 revolution are applied to the 1948 one

Old Greek-Catholic Romanians consider the 1848 Revolution just one more episode in the long history of rejection of Romanians by Hungarians.

This rejection feeling is very common in the Romanians' version of the common history.

Hungarian peasants in Covasna and Mures were the least informed, knowing only about the celebration of March 15, considered the birth of the Hungarian national state. Students in Babes Bolyayi University in Cluj, both Romanians and Hungarians, showed not only ignorance but total lack of interest to the matter, and they were unanimously blaming Funar for giving the city ‘such a poor statue, looks like shit’ (Romanian students, Cluj).

What then is keeping the participation rate in the March 15 Hungarian celebration so high? 45% of the Transylvanian Hungarians say they attended it in 1990, and 36 % attended it in 1997(UBB poll). This former official national day in Hungary is still respected in Transylvania and gives birth to popular holidays in every village and town, although few people know what actually happened on March 15 1948.

One explanation is the opportunity it gives to Hungarians, especially in the Szekelys area, to use this traditional moment to display their national flag and reassert their separate identity. This explains why the sudden decline in 1997, the first year when the Hungarian Alliance (DAHR) was participating to government, so the need for identity politics dropped. On the other hand, the strong participation of the Hungarian elite can account for this massive participation: not only are the church and the local governments associated in organizing the event, but high-ranked Hungarian politicians from Romania and Hungary attend it. Former Foreign Affairs Minister Geza Jessensky used to come on a regular basis, and so was current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In 1990 the celebration in Tg. Mures fueled the rising tension in the city, Romanians considering insulting the pompous celebration of a revolution which failed to grant them the right of being recognized as a nation. Many Romanians share the view ‘freedom of Hungarians in 1948 meant only further enslaving of Romanians’ (worker, Cluj).

Hungarians, in their turn, dislike the Romanian National Day, the 1^st of December, the day when in 1918 the Romanian popular assembly at Alba Iulia decided the unification of Transylvania with Romania, therefore cutting Transylvanian Hungarians from their mother country.

These mutual exclusive holidays, in fact celebrations of national victories on the behalf of the other nation or nations, are however quite different when it comes to popular participation. The Hungarian celebration is a community celebration: civil society is involved to a similar extent as politicians. The Romanian celebration is an official, ‘state-lead’ holiday, generating no widespread popular emotion, although Romanian politicians as pretext for nationalist speeches constantly use it. Romanian Television displays on such occasions only official speeches and ceremonies, and even the traditional celebration from Tebea in Transylvania is more and more organised by officials. In December 1998 President Emil Constantinescu organised the first military parade of the post-Communist era on this occasion. None of these can compensate the fact that December 1 is not a popular celebration turned into a national one, but an official national one, with little or no involvement of the public and the civil society.

4.4.3.‘Romanians were no worse than the rest of peasants...’

Coming closer to our times, recollections of family histories recreate for Romanians the picture of an oppressive rule, close to a colonial vision of Transylvania.

Hungarians do not share this view, their bottom line being ‘it was bad, but not as bad as Romanians complain.

Sources of these recollections for the two groups remain quite different. Romanians quoted mainly what parents and grandparents told them about the distant past (therefore the collective memory), while Hungarians (intellectuals only, since the rest knew nothing, except that ‘it was better for the Hungarians’) quoted mainly books and written history.

The essential attribution of the Hungarians is that Romanians were discriminated on social, not ethnic grounds.

I could not find any trace of collective guilt from the part of the Hungarian intellectuals over the harsh discriminative treatment Romanians and other nationalities suffered under the Hungarian domination, especially after 1867 when Hungary became a sovereign state and equal partner in the Dual Monarchy. There is not even a recognition of the situation, so how could any guilt be found? Mixed families were the only ones with a bilateral vision.

Romanians complain Hungarians look upon these times as a golden age. Nostalgia with the Habsburg Empire is deed present:

Hungarians complain the fact that Romanians remember these times as times of national oppression, and feel pointed at even if they were not born at the times.

A golden age for some, a terrible time for the others. Two perfect opposites. Only oblivion and ignorance are common, but they are constantly disturbed by nationalistic propaganda.

‘‘For us it is not the Trianon treaty, but the Trianon Diktat’

The next crucial moment in the collective memory of both, but mostly of the Hungarians, is the Trianon treaty, which after months of negotiations and military operations acknowledged Transylvania as a part of the Romanian Kingdom. Here the two versions collide more than ever. But Hungarians remember it better; it was more a topic in their families than in the Romanian families. Trianon is remembered in Transylvanian Hungarian families as a major disruption, a change of all the societal norms.

The catastrophe described in low-educated groups has quite an elaborate representation in high-educated ones. Hungarian intellectuals see in Trianon a twofold act of treason: treason of the West, which punished Hungary for losing the war and was unable to make agreements on minorities’ treatment respected, and treason by Romanians, who promised at Alba Iulia a different status of minorities.

Educated Hungarians' recollections present important differences compared to less educated ones. For the present Hungarian politicians, as to the nowadays-Hungarian intellectual living in Romania, Trianon means mostly the breaking of the trust between the Hungarian minority and the Romanians. This was embodied in the so-called ‘Alba-Iulia statement’ which granted ‘national autonomy’ to Transylvanian nationalities. The Romanian Constitution of 1923, the first official act, however, defined Romania as a nation-state.

The truth is the Romanian national state, 40 years only after its independence and having to cope with the difficult problem of integrating three new regions, each with its minorities, was too insecure to be able to promote a federal form of government and respect entirely the promises made to minorities by the Romanian National party, swept from power already by 1923. The ‘Alba-Iulia Statement’ promised nationalities exactly the same rights Romanians had been asking unsuccessfully from Hungary for the past 50 years. Some of it was granted, but not, as the leader of the Romanian National Party put it later, the ‘national autonomy’, and only the ‘cultural autonomy’. Once Greater Romania was formed Romanian politicians pursued as political ideal the Western nation-state on the type of France or Britain, Romania's allies in the 1st World War.

Romanians are not aware of the importance Hungarians attach to the Alba-Iulia statement. Two major representations of Alba-Iulia shape even today the attitudes of Hungarians towards the Romania State.

1. Alba Iulia as the first moment of the Romanian-Hungarian relationship

For most of the Hungarian politicians in nowadays Romania, the situation of the Romanian majority in pre-war Transylvania is not an issue, although it was the determining factor of the Romanian policy in the area after Trianon. The Alba Iulia statement is considered the starting point of the common Romanian-Hungarian history, therefore a starting point with Hungarians being frustrated by the Romanian state. The Hungarian politicians complaining back in 1924 did not forget to add this touch of bilateral approach, assuming Hungary’s guilt as well: this is over today. The unilateral reconstruction of the past is necessary in order to build a strong demanding policy, while a more complex approach would certainly mine the aggressive touch of this frustration-based policy.

2. Alba Iulia as a broken contract

Alba Iulia is seen as a contract broken by the Romanians, therefore freeing Hungarians from their obligation to be loyal towards the Romanian State.

Intellectuals and ordinary people both have two traumatic recollections connected to the event. One is the massive exodus of Hungarians leaving for Hungary.

The second is the fact that public servants had to swear loyalty to the Romanian State in Romanian, a language. Hungarian intellectuals recall those moments:

Romanian old men (Greek Catholic) tell a different story.

But for most of our low-educated Hungarian respondents, besides the 1918 disruption the inter-war time was a good one, superior to the present times, economically and politically.

Would there have been a better solution? Of course, here all Hungarians agree the solution chosen by the Big Powers was the worse. The ‘ideal solutions’ indicated by our respondents vary from an ‘independent Transylvania’ and a ‘Transylvanian state’ to a ‘federal Romania, like Switzerland’. Another controversial issue is which of the two ethnies made the majority back in 1918. Only some educated Hungarians acknowledge it was a Romanian majority in Transylvania. For the rest of the Hungarian respondents, except that man in Cluj singled out by the group, the Hungarians were the majority in 1918. That firmly grounded conviction makes the injustice even greater in their eyes and their loss even harder to endure.

4.4.4.‘There were times of hate, of revenge, there were evil times then’

The most serious traumas undergone by the two communities originate the 2nd World War. Nothing in the collective memory can compete in terror with the 1940-1944 period for the Transylvanian Romanians, and to a less extent to the end of war for the Hungarians, as northern Transylvania was first occupied by Hungary, than reoccupied by Romanian and Soviet troops. Personal recollections are still present, and so are the defenses in remembering a version of the past, which would make one guilty.

The situation is further complicated by two historical facts: the support Hungarians received from the Soviet Union after 1945 to build an autonomous region, and the strong national communist campaign during Ceausescu's times - and even after - which concentrated on the commemoration of the year 1940. These two events affected the personal recollections and attitudes of people. Romanians associate, for instance, the Communist Hungarian Autonomous Region with Communism, even Soviet Communism and hate its memory, while Hungarians reject any criticism of the Horthyist regime in Transylvania because they were so indoctrinated with it during Ceausescu. Very few cared to comment on the issue; most of them underlining that even if some atrocities really happened they were greatly exaggerated by the Romanian propaganda. Very few Romanians -almost none- also accepted the idea that in 1944 some Romanians, organized in paramilitary groups, tried to revenge what happened in 1940. However, some Romanian intellectuals, both in Cluj and Tg. Mures showed critical distance towards recollections of other respondents, such as: ‘That's what your grandfather told you, you had no means of checking’. But overall none of the groups is prepared to accept a bilateral view of the events.

Romanians evoke the ‘Vienna Award’ when Germany and Italy decided Northern Transylvania (including Cluj) is to return to Hungary and the consequences for the Romanian population.

The difference between these recollections, most of them personal or family inherited to the social representations of the Romanians who did not actually lived through the events is spectacular. Collective memory was organised by national Communist propaganda to a large extent. Not only the television popularized the atrocities of the Horthyist army, but also Cluj students remembered that their schools used to organise yearly trips to Ip and Traznea, the places of events, in order to educate children.

These social representations are often to be found outside Transylvania in the other Romania as well. Although we do not doubt events were indeed terrible, it is easy to tell apart the real, experienced traumas from these ‘legendary’ pictures, having all in common the idea of total, symbolic destruction of the other ethnic group: unborn infants killed in their mothers’ belly, people put on fire. Hungarians have similar images from the end of the war.

Who did it? Recollections are unclear and contradictory. For the Romanians, it was mostly ‘the Horthyst army’, not locals. It is true Communist propaganda blamed it all on Horthy and Hungarian fascism. For the only survivor of one of the famous massacres in Ip, it was a part of the local Hungarians who killed all the Romanian inhabitants, women and children included. He even recalls that a week later, after order was reinstated and he was able to leave his hiding place he heard a Hungarian soldier from Hungary telling a villager ‘I don't know what could these Romanians have done to you for you to hate them so.’(Reported by the Romanian news weekly Expres/no12/1994). This version, different of the Romanian official one is shared by many middle-aged Hungarians but is strongly opposed by the old Hungarians:

The story of the only survivor from Ip is also worth telling for something else. In many of these tragic stories about ethnic hatred and violence human understanding and solidarity makes, strangely, a part of the same story. Hungarian neighbors warned the family of the Ip survivor that something bad was about to happen. They didn't leave the village, having no other place to go. The man himself, only a small boy then, witnessed the savage killing of his brothers and sisters from the barn of a Hungarian neighbor who helped him hide. Another Romanian remembers his father, a railroad clerk, was protected by a Hungarian friend. Hungarians in Ciuc also recalled that after Trianon the Romanian peasants told a Romanian grocer who refused to help a Hungarian child who didn’t know Romanian they would boycott his grocery if he behaves this way. A Hungarian in Cluj recalled how his father protected a Romanian priest from an aggressive Hungarian gang. Hungarian students at Babes-Bolyayi remember that when a furious Romanian came to their block after the 1990 Tg. Mures violent clashes asking Romanians to ‘go after Hungarians’ who shared the same block it was a Romanian who sent him away.

Although most of the Hungarians we talked to deny almost everything considering it ‘heavy exaggerations’ the point they make is very similar to the point of the Romanians. The people from outside did that, not the locals. Hungarian intellectuals in Cluj put it like this:

It seems, in fact, that people prefer to believe it was outsiders who did it all, because this helps them cohabit further with their neighbors. The same mechanism goes for the 1990 Tg. Mures clashes, as Tg. Mures inhabitants blame politicians, Ceausescu’s secret police, villagers from outside Tg. Mures, everyone but locals.

Anyway, if ever a settlement was a disaster, so was the Vienna settlement which made the Romanians from Northern Transylvania -which went to Hungary- flee to Romania in massive numbers, and the Hungarians from Southern Transylvania flee to Hungary. The memory of this one more exodus is well remembered by both. The only lucky ones where those who happened to be in the right country, as the old Szekelys from Sf Gheorghe who pictured a golden Horthyst time:

The evaluation of the Horthy times was totally uncritical in this group. Asked if they still think there were good times considering what happened to the Jews they answered Germans, not Hungarians, deported Jews. Obviously this did not make them see those times less as a ‘golden age’.

The reoccupation of Northern Transylvania by Romania is also remembered differently by Romanians and Hungarians. For Romanians, it was liberation, but not a joyful one: Soviets were there and an uncertain future. Nobody from the Hungarian groups had a first-hand recollection to tell. But they were well documented to tell about abuses Hungarians suffered, perhaps because they had to reply for years to the Romanians stories about the 1940 abuses. Most of the stories about the paramilitary Romanian troops (the so-called Maniu's guards) and their abuses in 1944 were therefore second-hand memories, except for the old men in Sfintu Gheorghe, who remembered without any visible emotion that ‘they cut off the heads off of two boys ‘. A woman in the Hungarian working class group in Cluj remembered their mayor in a village near Blaj, a Gypsy who tried to ‘Hungarize’ a Romanian village and in the end was killed by women. She recalled her mother and the rest of women ‘ hit him with the spoon in the head until he was dead because he had humiliated us too much’.

The sequence of violence as perceived by the Romanian intellectuals in Cluj, a group that was perhaps the most tolerant and trying to be objective, goes as follows:

Women in Viisoara rejected angrily the suggestion some Romanians paid it back to Hungarians in 1944 and declared it was all a Hungarian lie, an invention. Some of the stories look quite unlikely, even stories told by intellectuals: ’The Romanian army gave guns and bazookas to children and taught the children to shoot Hungarians... That is why Stalin suppressed the Romanian administration in Transylvania and took over.’ (Hungarians, Tg. Mures).

Hungarian peasants in the Mures County knew little about the events, but had a fair opinion on it:

Frustration with the others along history is important today, even more important than today’s competition. It is on this theme that nationalist propaganda plays more often. Our survey tried to measure frustration and coping with it. Respondents had to three alternatives to choose from:

1. unilateral attribution of guilt (either one group, or the other had a prejudicial attitude and wronged the other group) (A,B)
2. bilateral attribution of guilt (C)
3. positive reconstruction of the past with elimination of the guilt (D)

Chart 5

Distribution of the answers went as follows:

1. 41.8 Romanians compared to only 3.8% Hungarians considered their ethnic group was persecuted during history by the other group. Frustration of Transylvanian Romanians and blame of the Hungarians for past wronging has important dimension. Whatever the reason —personal recollections or nationalist indoctrination the figure is high. This group associates history and past with a negative affect and is prone to experience fear and defensive attitudes which can de mobilized either by Hungarians campaigns of national assertiveness or by Romanian nationalist propaganda.
2. 2. 9.8% Romanians and 20.8 % Hungarians agree the two groups wronged each other during history.

Assuming guilt is difficult. However these Romanians and Hungarians admit their own group id wrong towards the other. A higher figure of Romanians would be indeed surprising, since both Romanian history and propaganda present a unilateral view of the events. Hungarians were in fact subjected to the same history and propaganda themselves, as they had been Romanian citizens for the past 80 years, with limited access to alternative sources.

3. rejection of guilt and positive reconstruction of the past

77% of the Hungarians in the sample and 44 % of the Romanians choose to reorganize the past by eliminating conflicting elements and retaining of those favoring a peaceful cohabitation. This population is probably avoiding to meet conflicting evocations and expresses frustration when those are forced upon it (such as the endless sessions of the Romanian Parliament commemorating the Vienna Award).

4.4.5. A time of common enemies

Soviet authorities thought proper to regulate the Romanian-Hungarian relationship by creating an autonomous Hungarian region. This included the homogeneously populated Szekelys areas, but also heterogeneous areas with many Romanians living within. The Hungarian autonomous region failed to satisfy Hungarians, since ‘it was Communists who run it’ or ‘it was called autonomous but it was run from Bucharest like everything in Communist times’. It created rather traumatic memories to Romanians, old Greek-Catholic complaining about the fact that Hungarians would not answer if said ‘Hello’ in Romanian and that public signs were in Hungarian only.

The important presence of Hungarians apparatchiks in the structures of this region also contributed to the Romanians’ impression that ‘Hungarians were more Communist than Romanians’. (Workers, Greek-Catholics, Cluj).

The times of Ceausescu are perceived differently again. For the Hungarian intellectuals it was a disaster, as the Communist government reduced Hungarian classes in high schools, replaced high bureaucrats in the party and administration of Hungarian descent by Romanians, and forced university graduates to take jobs outside their native area. Romanians, excepting some intellectuals in Cluj, refuse to accept the last years of Ceausescu's rule had this particular nationalist touch directed against Hungarians, and complain this is just lack of solidarity from the part of Hungarians.

In fact, Ceausescu’s times seem to have been beneficial for ethnic cohabitation, since the majority of Romanians and Hungarians consider their relationship degraded after 1989. Freedom allowed resentments and claims to surface, leaving behind the good times the time when Hungarians and Romanians had a common enemy to busy with. When Hungarians and Romanians had a common enemy to busy with.

History raised a lot of interest in our groups, except in the young generation. Even if knowledge is scarce people display not only interest but also strong prejudgments. Although we constantly pointed to them it is not the historical truth we are after, but their personal memories and impressions discussions turned into real debates immediately and a lot of controversies occurred. Everybody agreed writing of a common history of Transylvania is necessary, Romanians more skeptical than Hungarians. In one group the idea of a common history written by Hungarian and Romanian historians came up spontaneously. We display this part of the interview entirely, since it is relevant for the chances of such a history to be written and accepted (Interviewer's questions are in italic)

Each stands by his ideas.

A Hungarian lady, teacher in Ciuc put it bluntly:

The same lady showed a lot of objectivity during the earlier interview, contradicting the others and telling them Romanian villages in Hateg are at least as old as Hungarian villages. She was objective towards the cohabitation: only she was not interested in it.

The way it looks today the Romanian and Hungarian histories can only be sources of prejudice and frustration towards the other national group. The idea, which circulated lately to teach minorities separately the history of their own group, is not the best, either. The difficulty is to address the Romanian-Hungarian relationship and not to build separate histories, which are a part of the problem as they are and would be only false if they avoided the topic. An ideal version, accepted by everyone is impossible. But one to show theories, not absolute facts, wherever the two versions collide and to try to teach bilateral thinking instead of unilateral one might be possible. Until the time such a history is written Romanian and Hungarian children find out more often about the conflict from the school or the media than from their direct experience with neighbors and colleagues.

5.1. On sharing

The major problem of Transylvania is that territory is shared among ethnic groups. Excepting villages that are pure Romanian, Hungarian or German, the pattern for most of the Transylvanian villages and towns is intricately mixed. Romanians and Hungarians mix inside neighborhoods, streets and blocks of flats. The intermediate national group - the Germans -left so massively before and after 1990 that in many places their retreat is visible, as an open wound. In many cases in the place of the Germans left Gypsies were settled, following a policy initiated by Ceausescu, but which only generated more conflict. The presence of Gypsies doesn't somehow matter for Romanians and Hungarians, often united in their resentment and contempt for them. 'When a Roma shows up and starts with their tricks we immediately unite with Romanians against him’ (Hungarian student, Cluj). Roma 'simply don't matter’ (Romanian villagers, Viisoara). The retreat of the Germans left Transylvania a field for ethnic competition between Romanians and Hungarians. Sharing of physical space between the two groups has a twofold signification: symbolic, as Transylvania is the 'cradle' of both groups, and geographical, as in this example:

To understand cohabitation one has to understand at first this territorial disposition. It has its advantages, like in this example of nowadays-natural economy, where it fosters exchange based on complementarity:

It has disadvantages where people are not separated into different villages, but compelled to share the same village:

In this type of situation competition and envy from the part of whoever feels is losing the economic and social competition is likely to occur. The same happens in the cities, where competition is fierce. One of the most troubled political problems, the issue of school separation (Hungarian oppose mixing inside the same school of Romanian and Hungarian classes and demand to have separate Romanian and Hungarian schools, as the tradition used to be) is in fact a competition for scarce space:

The competition also turns ethnic when it comes to employment:

Distribution of economic gratifications also gets an ethnical interpretation:

But the most visible competition is the one for social power and recognition:

Exceptionally people take into account competence above ethnic affiliation, as happened in a community in Ciuc, including several Hungarian villages and one small Romanian one (Livezi). In this environment where all local councilors are Hungarian (Hungarian was the language spoken by local authorities already back in 1996 when this was still not legal), Hungarians overwhelmingly voted a Romanian as mayor in June 1996 elections since he had the reputation of being a good organizer. Romanians in the small village of Livezi were flattered, but remained cautious. Like most of the Romanians we talked to, except intellectuals, they resented the fact that DAHR presented a candidate for the office of President of Romania in 1996, although the candidate spoke perfect Romanian and he had been for year a representative of the Parliament of Romania at the Council of Europe. 'They dare too much' we were told. Intellectuals were more liberal, some confessing they would vote for a Hungarian candidate who proved better than a Romanian (some even did), but Romanian peasants and workers admitted they would never vote for a Hungarian as President were he better than any Romanian, because 'here is Romania, not Hungary'.

The years of the Second World War- between the Vienna Award and the entrance in Transylvania of Soviet and Romanian armies - had the highest traumatic impact on Romanians.

For Hungarians, the same effect was produced by Ceausescu’s last years, when he started to cut Hungarian schools and classes, replaced Hungarians from leading positions with Romanians and shut down all the radio local stations, a decision which left the Hungarian community without its Hungarian-language radio programs. But the most traumatic act was the forced work placement of Hungarian graduates in all-Romanian Moldova, while graduates from the main Moldavian University were sent to Hungarian areas. Romanians, excepting a few intellectuals, usually fail to grasp the intensity of the threat the Hungarians perceived on that occasion and the extent to which their present behavior is based upon this traumatic experience. The insistence of Hungarians to separate the schools completely in Hungarian and Romanian schools is partly based upon this negative experience (once a mixed school Hungarian classes could be downsized easily). But since Romanians do not fully comprehend what Hungarians experienced during Ceausescu they tend to attribute this request to bad intentions such as separatism or disdain towards Romanians.

The Revolution of 1989 brought times of shared traumas. The ethnic cohabitation, at least as perceived by Romanians, seemed to have been better during Communist times, since Communism, on one hand, was everybody's common enemy, and on the other hand, it had its own policy of affirmative action. Both Romanians and Hungarians agree ethnic cohabitation deteriorated after 1989, which is confirmed by the IMAS survey (IMAS: 1994 and 1995). This happened because of 'that air of liberty'; each national group attributes to the other the responsibility for the deterioration.

The days of the 1989 ‘revolution' as lived in the Szekelys area seem to have been more traumatic than elsewhere in Romania. The Romanian nationalist propaganda tried to exaggerate and distort them: the Hungarian official version tried to deny this exceptional character altogether. However, there it was, a social and national uprising combined, unlike the rest of Romania, where the majority of the population was made of Romanians. In these Hungarian dominated areas of the Szekelys the representatives of the Communist political order had been Romanians, notably the policemen. The superimposition of the ethnic difference on the political one certainly mattered. For weeks all the elements of social and political order seemed to have disappeared forever all around Romania, and the same went for the national order in some Hungarian dominated counties, where Hungarian flags were displayed on official buildings, Romanian policemen and Securitate officers were beaten and some savagely killed. DAHR claims they were identified as symbols of the Communist persecution and killed on political, not national, grounds. However, if policemen had to flee in the rest of the country, too, they were killed only in the Szekelys. Romania's nationalist former government turned this into a demonstration of Hungarians' intolerance and irredentist behavior, and a booklet was printed to prove Romanians were chased from the Szekelys area after 1990, although evidence is pointing people who left were graduates who had been compelled previously to take jobs in the area. Anyway, the climate at the Revolution was confusing and dangerous, no doubt about that, and this contributed to the state of mind inhabitants of Tg. Mures had in March 1990 when the tension finally turned into violence. Permanent inhabitants of the area, who of course did not flee with graduates at the first chance, as the peasants from Livezi, reconstruct by their recollections 'the days of the Revolution' in the Szekelys:

:

This story from Livezi is very telling for the mood in the Szekelys region during the Revolution and the traumas it left behind, which were afterwards used by nationalistic leaders and the government. Livezi, a 16th century village, has less than 100 houses and is isolated among hills. Since it is close to an important railroad crossing men work mostly at the railroads. Being state owned, the Railroad Company traditionally hires Romanians in that area, to help them survive, they told us. This was true even before the war. Inhabitants of Livezi know Hungarian quite well, since local authorities are Hungarian. Besides them as old inhabitants, only few Romanians live there, those considered by the Szekelys representatives for the state of 'occupation' : policemen, army officers, a few bureaucrats and clerks. In 1989, after Ceausescu's discriminative policy there is no wonder all these people were replaced. For weeks workers all over the country were 'democratically' electing their managers, and since here most of the workers were Hungarians, naturally Romanians, and representatives of the Communist establishment were chased. But what was in the rest of Romania a revolution against Communist establishment in the regions where Hungarians had the majority turned into a revolution against the Romanian domination as well, took on a national character so Romanians felt threatened. Romanian peasants are especially known for their patience and submission to authorities and were particularly frightened by the chase after policemen, although the Communist policemen were universally hated.

5.3. On violence

Nobody is guilty of violence. No violence could happen in one's community where everything goes so well. It is surprising how reluctantly people let themselves be reminded that, despite the alleged instigation of the Securitate it was however ordinary Romanians and ordinary Hungarians who actually did the fighting in 1990 at Tg. Mures. Local people point to the fact that it was Romanian peasants, brought from the nearby villages, mobilized by priests and transported in official buses and Hungarian Gypsies who fought savagely. 'There was no inhabitant of this town there' insisted blindly the intellectuals in Tg. Mures, both Romanians and Hungarians. However, a day before, on March 19, Romanians, always instigated, attacked the headquarters of DAHR and hurt people, while Hungarians won the 'battlefield' by their savagery on 20. Even today outside the intelligentsia circles some macho pride surfaces:

In Tg. Mures, considered a city 'deeply hurt' both Romanian and Hungarian intellectuals refuse this approach: 'We all lost.' Hungarians are especially frustrated because later on police started to summon for investigation Hungarians who allegedly took part at the rally on March 20, 1990. The only few people convicted were Gypsies, and DAHR lead a long lasting and obstinate campaign for the release of the only Hungarian who suffered a longer imprisonment, a man who savagely kicked a fallen old peasant, while filmed by a television crew. The image went all around the world as one of a Romanian beating a Hungarian and two days later when everybody was identified it proved to be the other way round. The victim suffered serious trauma, not entirely recovered until today, and was popularized as 'a victim of the Hungarians' by the Romanian State television until saturation. DAHR, on the other part, filled several complaints to European organization asking for the release of the aggressor on the grounds that he only kicked the fallen man so he was not really the author of the damage. When finally released, the 'abused' man was met at the prison door by his lawyers, who were also DAHR MP.

Although everybody denies Tg. Mures could happen again or that it could have happened in his or her town, a few doubt and fear the future

Others saw the good part of Tg. Mures, like another Hungarian intellectual, from Tg. Mures this time, who ranked the value of Hungarian identity a lot above the desire of having Romania a democratic state or avoiding the violence of Tg. Mures:

In the Szekely area this feeling of mobilization is widespread:

Tg. Mures tore Transylvania apart, in a way. Nobody tried to discuss it with Romanian or Hungarian friends, apparently. People took refuge in their own camps and blamed it all on the others, then on the government, Securitate, whoever except themselves, of course. There were few, if any attempts to discuss the events with the other group, even with good friends belonging to the others. People attributed the guilt to the government (37 % Hungarians and 25 % of the Romanians blamed 'Ion Iliescu and his government'), 18 % Hungarians and 9 % Romanians believe that Romanian local government authorities are to blame, and 23 % Romanians and 7 % of the Hungarians blame Hungarian local government (the mayor of Tg. Mures was a Hungarian) 13 % of Hungarians blame Romanians compared to 19 % of Romanians who blame Hungarians. 20 % of Romanians and 23 % of Hungarians display a more bilateral attitude, blaming both ‘Romanians and Hungarians’. The majority of each national group, however, blames it unilaterally on the other group: either directly on the people, or indirectly on the administration identified with the others' culture.

Figures 7 and 8 about here

People consider it is the business of the state to contain violence, which is normal. A little more than 60 % of each national group consider it is the state who should intervene in events like Tg. Secuiesc. About 5 % of each group think that in similar situations citizens must take justice in their own hands while 25 % think it is wiser to give up. This about a quarter of each population is probably able of having a bilateral view of the situation.

The experience of Odorheiu showed incidents similar to Tg. Mures can actually happen again. In pure Szekely area, even in the town (Odorheiu Secuiesc) where the most radical autonomist wing of DAHR is based (a wing which is in minority but provoked serious discussions opposing mixed marriages or asking for the organization of a regional poll to decide about autonomy) a serious incident occurred, covered by nationalist Romanian press extensively. The City Council granted the permission for a Swiss charity to build an orphanage. Versions clash if the orphans were supposed to be only Hungarians, as the city council claims, or simply orphan, as the Swiss charity pretends. Anyway, the orphanage was built with considerable expense, a few Romanian nuns, Greek-Catholic were installed there, when the mayor heard orphans are going to be from all Romania instead of just Szekely area. After a stormy meeting the local government claimed back its land and, what is worse, the building. A court in Mures ruled in favor of the Swiss charity, but that didn't prevent the council members from inciting the population to chase the invaders, accused of wanting to ruin the ethnic composition of the region. A mob went to the orphanage, evacuated by force the nuns and seized the building. DAHR officially disapproved the incident, but local Hungarian councilors remained firm on their position. The local press intoxicated the public opinion with rumors claiming some hidden design was behind the orphanage. It was written that the Swiss charity is only laundering Ceausescu's money, that the plan was to bring Romanians in the pure Hungarian Odorheiu town, that they envisaged bringing in criminal youth and Romanian whores, and so on. The scandal that followed only strengthened the locals in the idea trouble was brought about by foreigners and that the mistake was made when granting the first license, not when deciding to take it back. This 1997 incident shows that, despite opposite opinions, Tg. Mures could happen again. Had Odorheiu Secuiesc had also Romanian inhabitants, they would have probably run to the defense of the nuns and confronted the Hungarian mob. Despite the fact that pictures were published showing the evacuation and the Hungarian minister of Minorities, Mr. Gyorgy Tokay, said it is shameful this could happen and never in their history did Hungarians treated women and nuns so badly, the inhabitants of the town are mostly on the mayor's side than on Mr. Tokay's. Attitudes towards the incident fitted well the pattern of ‘Romanians as invaders’ of the Szekelys.

Cohabitation in the Szekely area is viewed differently than in the rest of Transylvania, especially in towns, since at the countryside there are almost no Romanians except one policeman per village. Town-dwellers consider Romanians as occupants, who want to change the demographic status quo,

One of the rumors still going on is about the supplementary pay policemen in the Szekelys is allegedly receiving for working in a 'risk area'. This seems to be a main concern both for ordinary Hungarians and for opinion leaders in the area. After discussing with Romanian police officers that denied it we finally met a Hungarian police officer who volunteered to show us his receipts to prove it is just a rumor. Such rumors, however, keep people mobilized.

5.4 On communication

Complaints about misunderstanding from the others occur often, although the meaning of misunderstanding is very different from Cluj, a true multicultural city, to traumatized Tg. Mures or isolated Szekelys region. Intellectuals attribute it to the little knowledge the two national groups have of each others' culture.

The situation is, however, more paradoxical. Not only ethnic conflict is grounded in misunderstanding and lack of knowledge, but ethnic peace as well. Such is the case of many intellectuals who are strong promoters of a reconciliation without understanding nothing of the essence of the conflict...Most of the Romanian liberal intellectuals never read a Hungarian history book: while rejecting the nationalists propaganda they do not try to supplant this biased information with some first-hand knowledge. There are real differences in the approach of Romanian and Hungarian intellectuals but they are not even known reciprocally, mutual understanding being based on the total ignorance of the others' views. Romanian liberals -most of them- build their friendship for Hungarians on the hate for the common enemy -the national-communists - and choose to ignore the problems and aspirations of Hungarians in Romania cannot be all satisfied keeping Romania as they know it, even with them in power. On the other hand, Hungarian leadership rarely tried to make it explained.

The most telling fact is, perhaps, that a social representation of nations living like a family within Romania is simply missing, so difficult it is to imagine an in-group including both Romanians and Hungarians. When asked 'Were Romania a family, how would it look like' most Hungarian groups told us they cannot conceive it as a family 'or we would be the intruders' (intellectual, Miercurea Ciuc). Even Romanians had difficulties. 'It would be like a mother-in-law with the daughter-in-law' (classical image of conflict in the Romanian folk-stories) (peasants, Cluj). At the other extreme is this beautiful representation of a young Romanian student in Sibiu:

Germans are the most admired by Romanians of all national minorities (Kivu and Galat :1996).

In the same time we should not forget the modern Kings of Romania were of German (Hohenzollern) descent.

The most mobilizing issue of the ethnic politics in Romania as made by DAHR in recent years - and by several Hungarian NGO's and lobby groups inside and outside Romania - is the danger of extinction.

This catastrophic prediction seems as least strange considering the fact that in the last 50 years the Hungarian community resisted quite well, and is now doing better than ever. There are no facts to suggest assimilation is under way -by any means - and the slight decrease of the population after 1990 can be attributed to immigration to Hungary or to Western countries. Low fertility rate is invoked as hurting the Hungarian community only, even though after 1995 Romania on the whole presented a negative natural growth, due to poor economic and social conditions. However, Hungarians imply that this will lead to a demographic catastrophe sometimes in the future, a pattern perfectly similar to the one experienced by the French community of Quebec.(Breton; 1988; 93-102) Bishop Laszlo Tokes also went on speaking of 'cultural genocide' as in Ceausescu's times even after 1990, especially when abroad, but also at the famous Cernat meeting of September 1998. The evolution of the number of Hungarians since the unification of Transylvania to Romania is shown in the following figure:

The irrational core of this belief that Hungarians are 'disappearing' is shown in its coexistence with the belief the number of Hungarians is underscored in official census figures. Hungarians thus saw the presidential elections of 1996 as an opportunity to know 'their real number' assumed higher than the 1992 census' figures. Votes in legislative elections are difficult to trace, since Hungarian independents run beside DAHR, which has usually around 7 % of the total vote. Having a unique presidential candidate was seen as the only opportunity to do a 'honest census' (peasants, Miercurea Niraj), but the results were deceiving, Hungarians are no more than the figures of 1992, the only good news being a few Romanians voted the Hungarian candidate as well.

The danger of extinction is invoked especially associated with exclusionist demands, such as school separation, as it is common in all similar cases and therefore supports Horowitz explanation it is projection-based ((Horowitz : 1985; 80). In other words the repression of the idea that what the Hungarian community really needs is the whole space for itself in order to survive leads to the transfer of this desire to the Romanian community, accused of assimilationist policies, of an overall attempt to chase and eliminate Hungarians from Romania.

The language and the linguistic difference lie at the heart of the Transylvanian problem. In the same way territory prompts communication between the two groups the language seems to be pushing apart Romanians and Hungarians.

Language is the main instrument of self-ascription, as we have seen. It is also the key to convenience: support for language policies derive from what seems to be the determination of each group not to learn another language but have all possible facilities in itw own.

The DAHR campaign to allow Hungarians to use their own language in administration and justice is however not entirely grounded in functional reasons. As it is it is fully justified. However, weight is attached also to the demonstration that the Hungarian language is not inferior to the Romanian one (so based on prestige grounds). My experience confirms the theory of Walker Connor that fighting for objective issues such as the use of the language in administration is explained by the need for self-identification and political affirmation of a group of people who consider themselves to be different (Connor, 1972).

Language is then the crucial vehicle of ethnic mobilization (Ross, in Giles: 1992). The fist squabble in Tg. Mures in 1990 started from the fact that a Hungarian pharmacist wanted to replace the Romanian sign with a Hungarian one. In 1995 DAHR was able to gather 420 000 signatures for their project of amending the Education Law. Even peasants we talked to knew by heart the demands of DAHR 'The government must give us the language'. And when asked what do they mean by that, since in their village (Miercurea Nirajului) a large one, there were a few schools, all in Hungarian, and even a Hungarian high-school, they answered 'Yes, but history and geography are taught in Romanian. We want everything taught in Hungarian, otherwise our children, who don't know Romanian, learn by heart and then forget everything they learn'

The objections DAHR made to the Education law had this twofold legitimization. We can describe as functional the objections referring to the possibility of having vocational education in Hungarian or having a full education cycle (from elementary schools to graduate studies) in this language. We see as 'symbolic objections' those which are concerned with the creation of an equal status of Hungarian with the Romanian official language. These types of objections are directed towards the elimination of the superiority of the Romanian language, seen as depreciation in itself of a Hungarian language. ‘Second-ranked language, second-hand citizens who speak it’ this is how it runs the logical sequence behind this political attribution. DAHR claimed that the article specifying that education in the native language of all minorities regardless the level will be provided is 'canceled' by the existence of the previous article specifying that in every town a class in Romanian should be organized (Professor Szylagy, unpublished paper), insisting Romanian children should not be favored under any circumstances and that in places where there are not enough Romanians to form a class (at least 15) they should learn in Hungarian.(The Ciorbea government accepted the modification of this article as proposed by DAHR in 1997). Even in this line of argument one can notice it is not the securing of the rights for the Hungarians that make the major concern, but the care to prevent the Romanian language, the only official one, to enjoy any special status.

The origin of symbolic issues in the language campaigns is twofold. On one hand, as Walker Connor noticed, it is an attempt of self-assertion. On the other, it is based on a post-traumatic logic. That class of Romanians shouldn't exist even as a legal possibility because when a nationalist government will come he might force Hungarians to enroll ; schools must be separated in pure Hungarian and pure Romanian because otherwise, as already happened during Ceausescu, the number of classes taught in Hungarian will be reduced sometime in the future, while in a pure Hungarian school they will survive even with less students ; and so on. This post-traumatic logic is not meaningless, albeit an attempt to search for rational grounds of symbolic behavior makes no sense. One idea springs forward: that for DAHR and for most of the Hungarian elite in Romania education has one supreme task : to preserve the national identity of children. All the other roles education might and should have become secondary or subordinated to this one, and they consider the communication and interethnic socialization, not only as subordinated objectives, but actually as threats to the Hungarian identity.

Romanians, on the other hand, have their own complaints:

One objective problem is, indeed, the fact that Hungarian names for places are entirely different than Romanian and Serbian ones. This makes the issue of studying geography in Hungarian such a political issue, and this lead to the bizarre specification when liberal amendments to the Education law were proposed by the Ciorbea government that geography shall be taught in Hungarian except for denominations which will have to be given the Romanian version also. The problem is indeed a political one: should the official language be compulsory, or should it be left to the free will of citizens to decide if to learn it or not? Both ordinary Hungarians and political leaders are against the former and endorse the latter.

The autonomy to decide if one should or not learn the official language is the framed in the general philosophy of 'subsidiarity', meaning in this specific circumstance that the majority cannot decide for the minority in any matter concerning language and education (Anton Niculescu, comments on 'Pentru o democratie transetnica',unpublished paper). But in practice, learning Romanian is not seen as one of the duties implied by the Romanian citizenship, although the Romanian state, as any state, could raise this legitimate claim (Neier :1996). DAHR fights to eliminate any form of testing the knowledge of Romanian, because they say

This is why the DAHR insisted for having every possible discipline taught in Hungarian in state universities (including Law, although laws are not issued in a Hungarian version also). However, the fact that a few parents, even if they have the alternative close, will choose a Romanian instead of a Hungarian form of higher education is a constant fear of DAHR and many radicals consider this a form of national treason. In our 1998 poll the two communities were split over this issue: the majority of Romanians (78,9%) thought some test of Romanian knowledge should be undertaken by Hungarian, compared to 38 % Hungarian. The majority of the Hungarians (56 %) were however against it.

CHART 9 ABOUT HERE

In the present system Romanian is in fact learned only outside the education system, the few hours of Romanian in the Hungarian schools being highly ineffective.

If schools are to be totally separated and conscription waived if Romania joins NATO the Hungarians in Romania would be pushed to live even in a closer ethnic community than they do now since they would have no opportunity to learn Romanian from their environment. DAHR disregards this danger, consider the survival of their minority language is more important. And indeed it is: only we can't compare Hungarian in Transylvania, spoken by at least 2 million Hungarian and Romanians, with several private and state-supported magazines and newspapers, broadcasting programs, and numerous contacts with neighboring countries with extinct languages such as the Basque or the Welsh which had to be revived. The linguistic policy of DAHR is rather inspired with the policy of the seventies pursued by Le Parti Quebecois, a fight to have bilinguism official, to have the equality between the two languages officially granted. Transylvanian Romanians are aware of this and act defensively, considering the language Romanians in fact lose rights won by Hungarians. Younger people tend to look favorably upon the introduction of bilingual signs, but old people like the Greek Catholic in Cluj feel threatened:

Romanians oppose and fear bilinguism on the grounds that : i. is a step to territorial separation ii. Hungarians will not content themselves to that and they will afterwards force Romanians to learn Hungarian, since they will hire only people who know Hungarian if it's up to them.

Even Romanians who know Hungarian well, such as a group of three doctors we discussed to in Tg. Mures who approve bilinguism have a negative perception towards the language problem :

What scares Romanians so much is not even the history of Transylvania, is the Hungarian determination and constant offensive, which is strange for the 'laissez passer' life style of Romanians. This fragment from the group interview with Romanian workers in Cluj (who approved bilinguism) says it all :

Paradoxically, although Romanians have a comfortable majority they still fear Hungarians will finally eliminate the Romanian language and have only the Hungarian. Also a paradox is the fact that even if historically Hungarians were the culture with the highest assimilation potential (Verdery :1982), today their policy is justified by the fear of being assimilated. But this is only a part of the story: what runs deeper is the need to have the two languages equal, to end the supremacy of the Romanian language.

The different view was also expressed, but only once :

Legal developments had caught the reality by 1997 and amendments proposed by the Ciorbea government to the education and local administration law were intended to make Hungarian almost an official language. It was not however called so, from fear of nationalist reactions from the part of Romanians. The first Prime Minister after the 1996 victory of the centrist coalition, Victor Ciorbea, a Transylvanian Romanian, was sincerely willing to 'do justice to Hungarians'. The Hungarian language was anyway used in administration before being legalized; in Tg. Secuiesc, for instance, from the local Council only one member is Romanian, so the meetings of the Council were held in Hungarian in 1996, despite the law. In Tg. Mures the Romanian authorities and part of the Romanians population were against bilingual inscriptions although Tg. Mures has a Hungarian theater and opera (attended by many Romanians as well), Hungarian newspapers, cultural associations, and so on. When the Ciorbea government had for the first time since the Hungarian Autonomous region the name of the city written in two languages the Hungarian version was erased with paint in only a few hours after the sign was installed (July 24, 1997), while in Cluj the opening of a Hungarian consulate long prevented by Funar provoked no adverse reaction, but even applause from the population. This supports the idea that Funar's provocative nationalist behavior somehow immunized the city, but also the idea that Romanians react mostly when the Romanian language is challenged, being very tolerant for the rest.

The experience of the Hungarian autonomous region is also recalled negatively by the Romanians. Even people from outside Transylvania, claim that when crossing the region they were faced with a total refusal of the inhabitants to answer in the Romanian language. Coexistence of nationalism with a command economy led to the rejection of the others' language, since there was no incentive for communication whatsoever. Today, when private trade flourishes it is, on the contrary, exceptional that the vendor and the buyer don't find a way to communicate, despite a few complaints from Romanians in Tg. Mures. However, where this incentive doesn't exist, communication is difficult.

Hungarians, in their turn, complain that if they speak Hungarian outside Transylvania, even between themselves, people look at them without sympathy or even ask them to speak Romanian, especially at the countryside. (Sf Gheorghe, intellectuals)

The whole battle for self-government is actually a battle around language. The whole logic of self-government evolves around language:

But nobody could in fact be alive today who went to school under the Austro-Hungarian regime, so if the old lady, or anyone else, doesn't know enough Romanian to ask for a certificate it is because she did not want to know. Of course Hungarian-speaking clerks should exist in all institutions in regions inhabited by Hungarians, but this because it is obvious Hungarians living in compact areas do not know Romanian and because finally the state is meant to function, so to provide services, and not to teach the official language to recalcitrant students. However, if any form of testing the Romanian language will be exempted from the education system a young girl from the Szekely area will know in 60 years as little Romanian as the old lady mentioned, even less because she will know in every institution she will find somebody to speak Hungarian.

The stake of the second official language is that this in all probability prompts also the reorganization of the state along linguistic lines. This type of policy can be noticed in Belgium and Quebec (Ross, in Giles :1992) and implies the demand for the reform of the political system and a decisive change of the rule of the game.(Melluci :1989). If Hungarian becomes an official language in Hungarian-inhabited areas self-government is under way. For zones where Romanians and Hungarians are in similar proportion such as Tg. Mures this would probably increase ethnic resentment and bring more voters to Romanian nationalist parties. For the rest of Transylvania it would probably make little difference from the present situation. In our survey the Romanian community showed relative tolerance towards bilingual signs, an all-Hungarian section of Babes-Bolyai University or even the study of history and geography in Hungarian. Important reservations were made however towards the idea that Romanian civil servants in Hungarian dominated areas should pass a Hungarian language test when applying for the job.

FIGURE 10 ABOUT HERE

The Romanian State is of the unitary-fused type, copied after the French, with central and local government fused in the office of prefect. During the post communist years the prefect enjoyed more authority and power than the mayor did, several mayors, especially from the political opposition being dismissed by prefects by 1996. Local taxes were introduced in 1992 but they represent an insignificant amount of the taxes raised from the inhabitants. Taxes are collected by local agencies of the Finance Department and redistributed by the government. Until 1999 no law of financement of local governments existed, so each mayor's budget was at the mercy of the central government. Most local institutions are also centrally subordinated : health, police, and education. These specifications are necessary in order to understand the amount of frustrations local governments - named, by the way, 'administration' because in the view of many Romanian politicians 'local governments exist only in federal systems' (Romanian Secretary of State, Department of Information, 1996) - accumulated during the post-communist transition. Politics in Romania is a central game and due to the proportional system and the voting on party lists only Bucharest politics matters, where party lists are made. The 'national' element, be it politics, television or culture carries away in front of the local one. This political order is firmly grounded in the social structure created by the Communist system that leveled regional and social differences to a surprising extent (Botez : 1986 ; Mungiu :1995).

Hungarian respondents were unanimous in their blame for the 'state'. The state is 'nationalist' because 'They claim they want to integrate into Europe but they do just the opposite'. The state is 'sucking the blood' of the counties, because it takes large taxes and returns insignificant parts of them.

Although the complexity of these discourses varies greatly their construction is similar in many points. Both intellectuals, ignorant of the way the budget is designed but able to draw on figures to make their point, and ordinary peasants resorting to sayings in order to do the same were in fact constructing an attribution for a resentment. The resentment against the state is justified by the situation we described above. People feel little of their money come back to them in the form of some valuable service, and are willing to pay more local taxes than national ones (Mungiu and Ionita: 1988). In the view of our Hungarian respondents, duties towards the state as a citizen are tax paying and law-abiding. Since they pay their taxes they consider the state - which is usually considered the 'Romanian' state (only now DAHR is associated to government) owes them. In the Szekelys area, at least, none of our respondents considered for a moment some of the public goods the state provides reaches their area, (although except peasants and the middle class group they all worked in the state sector), via at least education, defense or public order, but considered they could live a completely autarchic life if their taxes come back to local governments. After complaining too many garrisons are located in their region and the Romanian policemen don't know Hungarian well (but Hungarians traditionally don't enroll as policemen, they told us) of course they considered these two fields unworthy of their financement. Paying for education is also frustrating, since education is subordinated to Bucharest.

Prejudices of both the Romanian nationalists and the citizens from the Szekelys area mirror each other perfectly. They are both based on stereotypes: the Romanian stereotype of the Hungarian as a traitor citizen who has to be kept under constant surveillance and the Hungarian stereotype of the Romanian state which takes from Hungarians to give Romanians. However the post-Communist state took from everybody with little discrimination in order to support the massive state sector and avoid unemployment for both Romanians and Hungarians.(Zamfir: 1994) Although Romania did not have after 1990 a strategy of regional distribution of resources (a law to this effect was passed in 1997, but with little practical consequences) inhabitants of Transylvania, not only Hungarians but some Romanians too are persuaded they support the rest of Romania. few people realize that due to a large central budget they benefit still of important subsidies in the cost of energy and gasoline and pay insignificant amounts for education or health care.

Of course, self-government is seen as the solution of all problems (excepting Cluj, where Hungarians fear Funar will become even more aggressive had he more autonomy from the central government).Here opinions are different from the working and middle class Hungarians we discussed to in the Szekelys area, who are radical autonomists and intellectuals in Tg. Mures, Cluj, and even Sf Gheorghe, who realize the matter is more complicated. The complicated system of 'autonomy steps' built by DAHR is not even known excepting Hungarian intellectuals, and not understood even by them since it is quite confuse but people we talked to knew well enough what kind of self-government they want.

How to do it is a more complicated problem. In the Szekelys area most Hungarians, regardless of education share the political model : ethnic-grounded territorial autonomy.

'We can't think of a separate solution for the Hungarians living here. We can solve it only with the Romanians living here'

But this is precisely what the Romanians fear: that normal decentralization will only further complicate the national problem, bringing an escalation of the Hungarians drive towards some form of ethnic-based territorial separation. The present structure of 47 counties is a compromise between the even more fragmented inter-war administrative organization and the Communist one. The Ciorbea government planned to return to the inter-war structure, although the project was strongly criticized. In any event, an administrative organization on larger regions and provinces is absent from the Romanian tradition, excepting a brief and failed reform of administrative organization attempted by Charles II. Steps towards normal decentralization were constantly blocked in the 1992-1996 Parliament (the most nationalistic until now) which prevented the reform of the administrative system in the whole country on the grounds that Hungarians might benefit from it in their interest. This is one of many cases, but a very significant one, of the pattern according to which development of democracy in Romania is hindered due to the national problem.

The Szekelys do not make the majority of Hungarians in Transylvania, however., although due to their compact presence they are of the the main initiators of political attitudes. The rest of the Hungarians in Transylvania, slightly more numerous, have a different point of view. According to our survey self-government of the Szekely region by itself does not meet the approval of the majority of Hungarians. It would be surprising if it did, since the majority does not inhabit there. 40 %, however, would like to see a special status region in the Szekelys. Since Romanians are against it, 77 % of our sample made of Romanians and Hungarians scored against the special status region. The opinion is much more balanced when it comes to consociative solutions: 38 % Romanians favor and 37 % oppose the appointment of Hungarian prefects in Hungarian dominated areas, although IMAS polls from 1994-1996 showed a larger opposition. The same IMAS polls made however clear that Romanians tend to endorse whatever rights minorities already have and to oppose the granting of new ones. In 1998 the Hungarian prefects had already been in place for almost one year and a half so the population had grown accustomed to them.

FIGURE 11 ABOUT HERE

Participation of DAHR to government, although strongly criticized by advocates of self-government meets the approval of Hungarians and of a minority of Romanians as well. 35 % of Romanians, however, believe DAHR participation to the government as having a negative impact on the Romanian-Hungarian relationship.

FIGURE 12 ABOUT HERE

Romanians show disbelief when it comes to the Hungarian attachment to the Romanian State :

DAHR is right in theory when explaining that asking Hungarians to prove their loyalty towards the state is similar to giving up the presumption of innocence. (Marko Bela: 1998) However even the more moderate Romanians (like the workers in Cluj) would feel better that autonomy would be a 'contract' and loyalty the trade-off. Based on the logic summed up by MR Marko Bela none of the legal proposals of DAHR does even allude to the matter of loyalty, which only feeds the anxiety and fear of the Romanians.

Politicians and intellectuals both often said that Romania's path can no longer be distinct from the general trend towards European integration. The theme was also constantly invoked in our focus groups. The European integration of Romania is by no means certain: but people's choice of a political way is nevertheless highly relevant for a certain value-system. Our survey provided three options to be chosen by respondents: option West (best foreign policy is seek speedy integration in NATO and the UE), option East (best foreign policy is seek an alliance with the Community of Independent States), and national option (best policy is to pursue its own original path unlike the East or the West).

CHART 13 ABOUT HERE

Twice as many Romanians as Hungarians, as one can notice, believe that Romania should indeed seek an 'original way' and a third of the whole sample representative for Transylvania share this belief. The majority, however, is inclined towards the option ‘West’. Of the 31 % who chose the national option the most are highly educated people. To what cause can we attribute this fact? The higher awareness of the difference between the Romanian and the Western systems? The fear of being rejected, or to compete with the West? Provincialism, higher among educated people, more eager to protect their culture and their role? Difficult to answer. But is it certain that the discourse of conservative intellectuals is directly linked with this national option. As Hungarians Romanians also noticed immigrants in Western Europe end up in the black labor market. Contact with the few multinationals landed in Romania also increased the perception that work attitudes are different in the Balkans than in Western Europe or United States. Hungarians identify themselves more with the civilized West, and most Romanians share the perception of a barbaric East. Some want to keep the differences embodied in the original 'third way. some are afraid of that:

If neither NATO nor the UE will accept us in 1999, if Westerners do not come here massively as investors as managers to compel us live with them and by them this nation will disappear or will become just a populace.(officer, Army Of Transylvania)

Transylvania wants to belong to the West but stumbles over the doubt it is 'West’:. People fear for good reason their values and attitudes might be closer tot he realities of a under-developed post-totalitarian country than to Western Europe.

6. Use and abuse of the identity need: the role of elites

The victory in November 1996 elections of the centrist coalition in Romania-the only alternative to the post-communist and nationalist alliance which had rules since 1990- brought an area premiere that remained if not unnoticed than little analyzed. As a consequence of the victory the ally-since 1991- of the winner Democratic Convention of Romania (CDR), the Hungarian alliance (DAHR) joined the new-formed government. The event has a twofold importance: in broader European terms, since DAHR is the largest ethnic party in Europe, representing the 1.7 million Hungarians and enjoying almost 7 % of the total seats in the Romanian Parliament, and in the Balkan area, where such collaboration is rarer and rarer.

One would expect that such a move would appease nationalists in both camps. However, the presence of DAHR in the government proved to be a daily struggle, of the government with the media and a rebellious Parliament, of the DAHR leaders with various discontent wings of their party, of the Romanian coalition leaders with their MP and followers. Although the major improvements in the Hungarians’ self-government promoted by the government (such as appointment of Hungarian prefects in Hungarian dominated-areas of Transylvania) brought no popular discontent, the debate on what the status should be of the Hungarian community in Romania was only reopened. The major conflict is between those who see the Hungarians participation at government as an end in itself, while others, notably the Hungarians, see it as a means towards their program of full self-government. The President of DAHR, while on one hand strongly keeping its party together and in the ranks of the larger coalition is currently describing the situation as a ‘Catch 22’ one. ^*In short, despite the major achievements of these two years nationalists on both sides find good reason to claim the experiment had failed.

This chapter will analyze by looking into this issue the composition of nationalistic elites in present-day Romania and the perception by the public of the elites’ role in the national conflict.

It is widely admitted that the elites, most notably what in Europe is called ‘intellectuals’ play an important part in the articulation of ethnic and national revival political movements, and their involvement is often a consequence of failed assimilation and frustrations over perceived rejection from the part of the dominant culture.. As Anthony Smith put it :’

Rejection or perceived rejection plays a part, but in the case of nationalists in Romania we should say rejection is only a part of a larger game, strengthened by the habits acquired during Communism, of avoiding or reducing competition by all means. The intellectual class is especially good at this game. Hungarian intellectuals feel as second class citizens often from symbolic reasons only —that their culture is a minority culture. Romanian intellectuals also have a serious inferiority complex towards Western Europe. The result is that nationalism is a common feature, the rule rather than the exception, in both camps, its fiercest accents to be met mostly in parliamentary debates and the Romanian media. But it would be wrong to assume that the top opinion leaders are cut from their base. Frustration over ethnic competition is resented quite often. One focus group participant, a Hungarian coach, complained about it in the following terms:

We would like to stress that if Hungarians feel Romanians do better with less effort Romanians, in their turn, mostly Transylvanians, still experience the complex of being politically and culturally dominated for hundreds of years. As members in a focus group of Cluj Romanian intellectuals put it.

I understand by ‘elite’ in the present work three categories of persons:

1. Leaders and political class.

Here one can find the full spectrum of the Romanian elite, comprising politicians with ideologies varying from extreme nationalist to liberal regionalism and part of a political spectrum for the Hungarian politicians, as ideological differences are less important since their main program is focused on the welfare of the Hungarian community.

2. outstanding opinion leaders (journalists, intellectuals, clergymen)
3. Opinion leaders, either regionally or locally influential (priests, teachers, other locally acknowledged intellectuals or public figures).

It is always difficult to discern between the real problem of the national or ethnic group, mirrored by leaders or elite, and the problems the leaders help subsist in order to take advantage on them and consolidate their position. Some politicians can be described as professional nationalists as they are directly interested not to solve an ethnic conflict on whose behalf their career is made. Other persons with political ambitions denied by their position in society —such as priests and journalists- also discover nationalism as a ‘cause’ they pretend to embrace in a non-political and non-partisan manner, in order to gain primarily political influence. This last category likes to show itself as prophets and defenders of some endangered cause, ranging from the protection of an extinct language (like the Welsh, the Breton, the Basque) to the protection of a well-to-do language they claim is abused (the movement to make English an official language in US; the movement to protect the French language from anglicisms; the ‘crusade’ to protect the Romanian language by writer and senator George Pruteanu. These are the voluntary soldiers of nationalist causes, the crusader nationalists. Their cause is most of the times a language — but they can also focus on a minority religion or denomination, even on the genetic heritage threatened by mixed marriages.

The third and the largest category of nationalists are, however, the conformists. Group conformity is a vital element in the understanding of the mobilization and support building of nationalism. Many influential people in a community would never have nationalist initiatives or would support personally such a movement, but since they are dependent of the group/community they are willing to pay to have their identity as good group members confirmed by nationalists who speak in the name of the group. This leads to the subordination of elites which otherwise have both the money and the wit to do their own politics to the nationalist leaders. Many middle-class and business characters find themselves passive supporters of nationalism due to this mechanism, although they are disinterested by the nature of their occupation in linguistic battles and prestige wars, favoring communication over extreme differentiation. They end by sponsoring nationalist movements by group conformity only, seeing it even as duty of the well-to-do community members towards the rest.

Each of these three categories can be found within the two elites, Romanian and Hungarian. The situation is obscured even further by the absence in Romania of a class of professional politicians. The background of people serving as politicians in these times of ‘transition’ are either as lawyers, or, quite often, as intellectuals and priests, so exactly from categories aspiring to reach political influence by nonpolitical means. It is a well known fact that writers tend to be nationalist leaders in the first stages of a nationalist movement: in the former USSR Republics Popular and National Fronts were mostly lead by writers in late ‘80’s and early’90’s, and so was DAHR (the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians Romanian). The supreme office of DAHR, the presidency, passed from one writer, Domokos Geza, to another, Bela Marko. The most popular DAHR character is still the Bishop Laszlo Tokes. The most notable characters of Romanian nationalism are poets such as Adrian Paunescu, Grigore Vieru, Leonida Lari, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, priests such as Bartolomeu Anania, literary critics such as George Pruteanu. And these are only the famous ones: Transylvania is full of people like them, but least known, school principals, union leaders, history professors and librarians, all guided by the ambition of being protectors and leaders of their community, all voluntary to share with me their view on the essence of the national problem in Romania.

The creation of DAHR in 1990, immediately after political pluralism was allowed was a natural phenomenon. Similar Hungarian parties were forming at the time in all the neighboring states including Hungarian minorities. Laszlo Tokes had had a powerful start as a hero of the Romanian Revolution, which helped him emerge as a political leader of the Hungarian community in those days. Also essential was the fact that Ceausescu's policy of denationalization of the last years had prepared the program of DAHR. While Romanians were confused and divided in their new unexpected freedom, Hungarians were united and so DAHR became the largest opposition party in the 1990 Parliament.

Its first leaders had been actually the leaders of the community already in the Communist times. Domokos Geza, the first president, had been President of the Hungarian section of DAHR, an establishment position. Others like Karol Kiraly had been members of Ceausescu's Political Bureau and had protested openly against its national policies. Despite individual contestings this group held together well: amazingly when one considers later attacks against DAHR as an ethnic party that no essential contesting was directed against it that days. The strange informal coalition governing Romania at the time, made up of Army, secret service officers, former nomenklatura and the former Communist newspapers supporting them seemed more concerned to prevent the creation of a real Romanian opposition challenge to post-communist establishment, than to counteract the creation of an ethnic party. This lack of interest from Bucharest lead to the creation in Transylvania first of 'Vatra Romaneasca', a political and cultural nationalist association, then to its political wing, the Party for the Unity of Romanians (PUNR). It is important to establish that the first Romanian nationalist post-Communist movement started in Transylvania. PUNR managed to win a few seats in the 1990 Assembly, but since they registered as a party barely a month before elections, their performance can be considered a success.

DAHR is indeed a political alliance, as its name shows. It was never recorded as a political party according to the Romanian parties’ legislation. In fact it included parties, NGO's, and cultural associations as well. Although ideological trends within DAHR vary from Christian Democrats to Liberals, DAHR acts and is perceived more as an ethnic party. Its constituency is either 'centre', or cannot say what it is (41%, UBB poll). The Hungarian community lacks an ideological orientation even more than the Romanian community, quite disoriented itself and having as only political option a party with a national more than a political program.

A large body of literature in Romania and abroad, mostly written by journalists, point to the existence inside DAHR of a 'radical' and a 'moderate' group. This discussion originated in the sanctions given by DAHR leadership to the presence of two MP at a conciliatory meeting with the Romanian government in 1993 at Neptun (organized by the American Project on Ethnic Relations). One of the MP to receive a party sanction then was the future candidate to Presidency, Frunda Gyorgy.

After Bela Marko as President of DAHR replaced Domokos Geza the alliance entered a more radical stage, which lasted from 1992 to 1996. The Alliance between DAHR and the Romanian opposition at the 1992 elections brought DAHR nothing, and Romanians electoral losses. Later on, the government party, post-Communist Party for Social Democracy (PDSR) associated itself with nationalistic PUNR and the more recent Greater Romania Party (PRM), thus leaving Hungarians no hope their claims can be resolved in the framework of the Romanian political system. During this time DAHR adopted important documents such as the Cluj Statement (1992) and the Statute of Personal Autonomy (1996). These documents proclaimed Hungarians in Romania as a separate 'political subject' and asked for the internal 'self-government' and 'self'-determination' of the Hungarians as a political community. In 1996, after becoming partners of the government coalition with their long times allies, Romanian center-right parties, DAHR abandoned this language and pursued their claim for cultural autonomy via general laws (amendments to the laws of Education, Local Government). This history helps us emphasize a distinction, which may prove instrumental to classify trends within DAHR.

We therefore consider as 'moderates' the DAHR leaders who seek the fulfillment of the Hungarian community problems in the adoption and enforcement of the legal provisions comprised in the framework of European institutions such as the Council of Europe and the European Union minority and minority language regulations. This group sees Hungarians in Romania as a minority and considers its problems can be resolved without a reform of the Romanian political system or the state structure, only by the establishment and protection of individual and derivative rights (rights deriving from the appurtenance to a community). Frunda Gyorgy and Verestoy Attila were the most outspoken representatives of this group until now.

We consider as nationalist or 'radical' the Hungarian politicians or ideologues who look upon Hungarians in Romania as a 'nation', or a separate political subject as it is specified in the Personal Autonomy Statute. This group includes Laszlo Tokes, Csapo Ioszef and Borbely Imre. They dislike DAHR being treated as a minority only; its rhetoric makes from the large number of Hungarians a decisive issue and they consider a difference should be made between Hungarians and other minorities in Romania and this difference should be embodied in the recognition of Hungarians as political subjects. The political system must be reformed in order to accommodate this separate 'political subject', either by creating a special status region on the model of South Tyrol in Italy or a federal state instead of a unitary one with Transylvania as a federal unit. This policy line was never very much agreed by the other minorities, who have presented their own draft for a minorities' law, in which, needless to say, treatment of minority group is non-differential.

Since DAHR became a member of the governing coalition incentives for a consociative formula increased and most of DAHR's MP and establishment became 'moderate'. The attempt of Pastor Tokes to organize in September 1998 a meeting to discuss DAHR leadership in critical terms and ask for a change in its policy failed as most of the Hungarian political establishment boycotted the meeting. In his speech Tokes was bitter against the moderates, whom he portrayed as 'opportunists' and the liberal Hungarian newspapers from Budapest that did not support his wing.

Bishop Tokes than criticized a Hungarians columnist for attacking DAHR leaders who want to quit the government coalition and retreat to their ethnic ‘ghetto’, and Gyorgy Frunda for playing by the rules of the European Council before concluding:

What do European documents and Western diplomats do to be so disliked Bishop Tokes? One thing mainly: they do not encourage unilateral actions, even if they are not opposed to self-government. Or the Statute of Personal Autonomy was close to turn into a unilateral action as steps were taken by radicals to organize a referendum and adopt it in the Szekelys area in 1996. Due to important international-in fact, American- effort and to the eagerness of both Hungarians and Romanian leaders to be granted international recognition as stable countries -both were applying to become members of NATO- a bilateral treaty was eventually concluded after many difficulties in 1996. The treaty included European provisions for protection of the minorities such as the Charter of Minority Languages and the 1201 Recommendation of the European Council - with the specification asked by the Romanian side that in no way interpretation of these documents could compel the Romanian state to grant ethnic-based territorial autonomy and collective rights to members of Hungarian minority. This cut the grounds from under Hungarian nationalists' feet in Romania. Happily, their allies, the Romanian center-right won just two months later the elections and they invited them to join the government.

As violent as Laszlo Tokes against moderates is Kiraly Karoly, the old Communist turned nationalist in the eighties. He accuses the Hungarian MP of controlling the Council of Representatives, the body including both central and local DAHR leaders supposed to become a ‘Parliament’ of the Hungarian minority.

The nationalists were influential enough back in 1996 to have the Personal Autonomy Statute approved. A few excerpts of this document are telling:

c. Equality of chances' (reproduced by Rompres, National Press Agency, 114/01/1996).

The most striking feature of this document is the mix of two types of rhetoric. One is the liberal rhetoric also used in the language of international law; provisions for minorities, a long list of them, make actually the opening statement of the document. Here belong unmistakably expressions such as 'equality of chances'. The other is based upon 'tradition', and 'historical and territorial specificity' -whatever that means- and is therefore a national rhetoric. Senator Csapo, considered the author of the document, volunteered some explanations in an interview with Radio Bucharest.

Senator Csapo insisted after 1997 that UDMR should quit the government coalition, but lost the final vote in the Council of Representatives (Romaniai Magyar Szo, 26/06/98). His rather complicated and wordy program was in fact inspired largely by a policy proposal written by Professor Ferenc Glatz, a President of the Hungarian Academy (Glatz:1993) and adopted also by other Hungarian parties in the region (such as in Vojvodina, part of Yugoslavia). The project for minorities’ law drafted by the Department of Minorities that I consulted in the summer of 1998 was however not inspired by these documents but rested more upon a consociative logic, securing positions for minorities inside government offices. Marko Bela, on the other side, declared in February 1997 that DAHR did not give up its autonomy program, but instead sees its participation in the government as a gradual approach towards it (Romanian daily Romania libera, 6/02/97). Along the years an approach trying to balance between the two wings of the party seemed the best policy to keep the party united around its current leaders. Despite scandals and temporary setback of symbolic issues such as the Hungarian University, most of the Hungarians claims from 1996 were resolved via participation in government. Local government appointees are now Hungarians; the Hungarian language can be used in justice and administration; local communities are better financed. All these positive developments were possible only by amending general laws such as education and Local Administration law, and by passing new laws (such as Financement of Local Governments). The mere idea of having a Hungarian prefect in Hungarian majority areas was viewed as heresy in 1996, so important steps forward were possible by consociatonalism. However, Hungarian nationalists will probably disagree with minorities' law that makes no difference between Hungarians and other minorities and abandons the self-government rhetoric. Hungarian nationalists point often to the Hungarian law for minorities, built around the concept of minority self-government. They tend to forget, however, that in Hungary minorities have no reserved seats in parliament as in Romania, and are too few to be able to have parliamentary representation. The ‘self-governments’ of minorities are therefore only able to supervise and distribute funds for cultural activities and fail to take any other actions, even when necessary (The Economist of March 19/1999). However, this attitude complies moderates to act with extreme caution.

Politics is the art of realism, but few people can be realists when it comes to nationalism. However, this makes the difference between Marko Bela and Tokes Lazslo. Back in 1990 their language was not so different as it is today. They both shared the ideas of ‘Transilvanism’, this nostalgic trend of the thirties now revived in a more political form:

Actually it became a political program because the same arguments are used for the motivation of the ‘autonomy’ program in 1994. While the concept of territorial autonomy remains obscure in the quoted document, other specifications made by Mr. Marko Bela are relevant : the fact that the ‘autonomy system' is inspired from the ‘mediaeval traditions’ of Transylvania and that present institutions only create a ‘coercive coexistence’ ‘Neither the forced coexistence nor the forced separation are practicable ways’ states Mr Marko Bela, considering therefore the current situation a ‘forced cohabitation’. (Bela Marko 1994 : The Autonomy Program of UDMR).

These difference of views inside DAHR is often mirrored by its reactions to various challenging events. In the case of Odorheiu Secuiesc orphanage, for instance, Tokay Gyorgy, minister of minorities and one of the ‘sanctioned’ MP from Neptun gave a public apology for the behavior of locals towards Greek-Catholic nuns are stated bitterly that never in their history Hungarians failed to be courteous toward women, not to speak of nuns. The official reaction of DAHR, however, signed by influential executive president Takacs Csaba slighted the fault of Hungarian local authorities for the incident and laid the blame on the intervention (late after the events) of the governmental Agency for Local Government.

The view of the Hungarian Alliance seems to have been closer to Mr Takacs than Mr Tokay. During and after a television talc-show I organised and moderated in Sfintu Gheorghe on this issue all the Hungarians present —either appointed by the Central government or directly elected- sided in declaring Remus Opris, head of Local Government Agency was the only one to blame. They all refrained to comment the fact that the government stepped in pushed by the Romanian media only months after waiting for the local authorities —for the first time, all-Hungarian- to act and censure the behavior of the Local Council of Odorheiu. Ethnic solidarity proved a lot stronger than either the desire to prove Hungarians can be objective and allowed to rule themselves, and the usual understanding of justice in a market economy (the Local Council tried to seize the building of the Swiss Foundation and use if for its own purposes). When asked about the Romanian public opinion and the negative consequences of the laws still waiting to pass and bring further good provisions for minorities they told me’ we know this is not tactful, but we can’t step back. A minority can never step back’. Six months later, in the summer of 1998 DAHR politicians present at the Cluj Council of Representatives meeting were interviewed by my team and asked about the incident. Of fifteen interviewed only four laid some blame on the Local Council, 10 blamed the Swiss Foundation, 7 Remus Opris and 6 ‘the Romanian nationalist press’. Ten of these considered South Tyrol and two Catalonia as political models for Transylvania, and chose as the main DAHR priority ‘to find a suitable territorial autonomy for regions where Hungarians have a majority).

It is difficult to speculate who has the majority inside DAHR, nationalists or moderates. Votes’ results in 1998 on staying in government showed the moderate trend grew since 1996. However, the Council of Representations looks divided and perhaps having a nationalist majority, while the MP clubs look like having a definite moderate majority. This is easily explained since MP are the main beneficiary of consociatonalism, while local political leaders see no advantages in cooperating with Bucharest and prefer to enhance their power.

Despite some differences, the entire Hungarian political class in Romania wishes that Romania will give up seeing itself s a nation-state, and consequently remove this expression from the 1991 Constitution. The DAHR leader of Tirgu Mures, Attila Szondi, explained:

The 1991 census recorded only 1.6 million Hungarians and around 400.000 Roma (although other estimations suggest 1 000. 000 may be closer to truth). Despite this fact, fantastic exaggerations like this one are necessary in order to make the point. The nationalist argument for self-government relies on the numbers when stating we cannot treat Hungarians as a minority, but as a nation.

The Romanian political system is however a democratic one. Allowing Hungarian representation in Parliament and bringing them in a close alliance with Romanian parties was worth, since at all times, when DAHR was dominated by nationalists as since it was dominated by moderates the national problem remained in the framework of the law. Only one in ten years did DAHR asked for civil disobedience, when requesting parents to boycott schools to protest against the 1995 Education Law. It was the opportunity for them to measure the ethnic mobilization. Passive mobilization had been a success: 400000 Hungarians signed for modifications to be made in the Education law. However, very few followed the appeal to civil disobedience so active mobilization failed. Parents so no reason not to take their children to schools, in almost al cases Hungarian schools.

The exercise of discovering the ideology of the Romanian political class is a difficult one. Aligica and Ionita, who tried to measure the economic vision of the Chamber of Deputies, were the first to point to the ideological incoherence of the Romanian political class. The 1996 parliament, for instance, passed with a majority of only one vote the support letter for NATO in the Kossovo business, after endless bargains and fierce nationalistic speeches made by all parties; the same Parliament had passed earlier, in 1997, the law granting foreigners the right to buy land in Romania, which would have been unconceivable a year before. The same Parliament was at least ambivalent, if not opposed, to the Ciorbea legislation meant to satisfy Hungarians’ demands on education and local government, and strong authoritarian party leadership of the government coalition was needed in order to pass the government’s drafts. The 1992-1996 Parliament, where post-Communists and nationalists formed a majority, displayed no less paradoxical behavior: it passed most of the European legislation concerning minorities, and the treaty with Hungary. The 1990-1992 Parliament, which had a strong post-Communist majority also approved an article in the Constitution that made international legislation prevail over domestic one in human rights matters. In all these Parliaments the rhetoric was far more nationalistic than the actual vote.

Taking into account as ‘Romanian political class’ party leaders who are not necessarily MP, local representatives, and top bureaucracy besides ordinary MP we can distinguish quite clearly a few well-differentiated nationalist trends.

1. The assimilationist nationalists

This group of xenophobic nationalists include the voiciest Gheorghe Funar and Corneliu Vadim Tudor, but also Ioan Gavra, Valeriu Tabara, Mihai Ungheanu, Radu Theodoru, Petre Turlea. By ‘assimilationism’ I mean the denial of any particular pluralistic claims, even if minimal’ (Simon:1990: p.209). According to the ideology of this group Hungarians are or ought to be, in fact, ‘Romanian’. They see the political organization and self-awareness of the Hungarian minority as a perpetual cause of instability and dissent inside the Romanian State. They consider ethnic parties should not be allowed to exist and cultural difference should be reduced as not to have any political implications. This political view is well matched with a paranoid theory on the political history of Romanians, considered to be the eternal prejudiced and scapegoats of international conspiracies, which leads to the rehabilitation of various authoritarian leaders, ranging from right-wing Marshall Ion Antonescu to left-wing Ceausescu, both praised in the Greater Romania weekly, the main ideological manifesto of the nationalists. This vision, unfortunately, dominates from far in many circumstances the whole of the Romanian press, due to the persistence in the Romanian press of many journalists who served Ceausescu’s national-communist ideology campaigns or to former Securitate (secret service) officers who continue to have key positions in the Romanian press. Members of this group also had during the Vacaroiu government (1992-1996) key positions in the Department of Culture. Also in those times some of this ideology could be found in the government’s own mouthpiece, ‘Vocea Romaniei’.

However the ‘assimilationism’ of this group also characterized more the rhetoric than the actual policy. Politicians of the group were never in really influential positions. Funar, who has been a mayor of Cluj since 1992 was the most influential and tried everything he could as a mayor- which was not a lot: he changed streets names from Hungarian to Romanian, threatened to evacuate DAHR from the buildings they held as tenants from the local government, However when his party was at government as an associate of PDSR this policy did not become a government policy.

Katherine Verdery ‘National Ideology under Communism’ sums up the archeology of national-communist ideology in the excellent book. Ana analysis of this type of rhetoric and its stereotypes can also be found in my previous book ‘Romanians after ‘89’.

2. Statist Nationalists

I find necessary to adapt the French word 'etatisme' (the noun), ' etatist' (the adjective) because an adequate English equivalent is missing. The term is meant to design a conception, more than an ideology in which the state is the supreme value. Romanian political class is 'etatiste'- post Communist mainly, but not exclusively, since most politicians were socialized in the Communist regime. Statist nationalists do not identify the state with the dominant nation necessarily, but they consider regions should be clearly subordinated by the center, and of course the center is the expression of the dominant culture. Their view is that control by the state is the important thing, other notions such as accountability or effectiveness being ranked under control. They see the prefects appointed by the government as the real powerful men in the regions, more powerful than elected local governments, the budget as being decided with the national priorities above regional or local ones, the army and the police playing an important political role. Sovereignty is seen as the main values in this ideology and subsidiarity a form of anarchy. Statist nationalists are against any devolution of powers and believe that as expression of the popular vote the central government is the only one supposed to have real power, the rest of the administration having only to implement its policies. In theory they accept a plural society; in practice they reject institutional pluralism. Plural societies are anyway, as Horowitz mentioned ‘pregnant with conflict’, as one culture dominates the others. The instability that characterizes plural societies is based on a conflict opposing different value-systems. The only way to maintain the balance of such societies is the enhanced control of the state over the dissent regions or areas. The Romanian post Communist State did exactly that, controlling Hungarian majority regions by appointment of Romanian nationalist prefects and maintaining a strong presence of the army in the region. These strategies cannot reduce the conflict, but only amplify the hate towards the state, seen by Hungarians as a state belonging only to the dominant nation or culture.

The favorite model of solving a national dispute quoted by this group is the solving by France and Germany of the Alsace-Lorraine German speaking population dispute. Former President Ion Iliescu used to quote this example often. Romanian Hungarians rejected it.

3. Conservative Nationalists or autochtonists

This trend is to be found mostly among aged members of the so-called ‘historical parties’, intellectuals and the Greek Catholic clergy (the Orthodox clergy is closer to the first trend described here). This residual, nostalgic trend is based upon an identity problem. The value of being Romanian is one hand overvalued, and on the other a reason for anxiety as the Romanian culture is crossing a difficult time in being recognized as a European culture. To be a Romanian, a Christian, peasant-born becomes a value in this ideology. To defend the ‘europeanness’ of Romanian and to render justice to east Europeans when compared to Western ones conservative nationalists overestimate the value of the Romanian culture as an European culture and display the belief that Romania could have been a sort of France under more favorable circumstances. Essayist and liberal senator Alexandru Paleologu made a point, for instance, from the fact that Socrates and Aristotel were also ‘Balkan’. They can be tolerant towards Hungarians if only Hungarians openly dissuade the Romanian culture under-evaluation line of the Hungarian classic nationalism. Nationalist conservatives see themselves as mere ‘patriots’ and think of themselves they are representatives of civic nationalism. However, since all the battle for emancipation of Hungarians is based upon the fact that they do not admit the cultural superiority of Romanians and do not wish that citizenship had any cultural connotation the conflict is finally unavoidable. The creed of conservative nationalism is the belief in some ‘good Romanianess’ to be showed to Europe and the world. If Hungarians reject it at home there is really little hope the rest of the world will accept it.

6.4. Crusaders and conformists

In the first line of the national battle, today as ever, we find the Church, or best, the Churches. Nothing could be more natural: of all institutions the Church is bound to be sensitive to symbolic issues, prestige and traditions. The Church perceives the national status war as a war for its own status, since the Church identifies itself with the community. Competition for restitution of real estate nationalized by the Communist regime and for state funds is also an important part of the rivalry among churches. Not only the Hungarian churches, but also Hungarian civil society protested against the preferential treatment granted by the Romanian State to the Orthodox Church (reported by Mediafax New Agency on March 21/1999). The Hungarian Churches started to recuperate their former schools and other buildings with great difficulties only in 1998. The Orthodox Church felt threatened by the coming out of illegality of the Greek-Catholic Church in 1990, since most of the Greek-Catholic buildings have passed in the Orthodox hands when the Communist regime forbid the Uniate denomination in 1948. Historically the Orthodox Church had indeed the worst situation: it was the only denomination discriminated against in Transylvania. Orthodox priests had the same obligations towards the grof as serfs did. The Orthodox Church is insecure enough to become extremely self-assertive: in 1998 Orthodox priests refused to evacuate churches and restore them to Greek-Catholics. It also likes to point at itself as the only ‘Romanian’ church. The Greek-Catholics often have to face rumors that they are ‘Catholics’, therefore ’Hungarian’.

‘This is such a shame’, a Cluj prelate confessed to me, ’when we were the ones to fight Hungarians even more than the Orthodox did’. Therefore the Uniate Church, who tries to recuperate from the Orthodox not only the churches, but the tenths of thousands believers who turned Orthodox meanwhile- is almost compelled to accentuate its difference from the Hungarian churches and Hungarians.

Cases of direct political involvement of the Church are many. The most outstanding example is Bishop Tokes himself, who often uses the Church infrastructure to combine religious with political events. Claude Karnouh also reported in ‘Dilema’ the presence of bishops of Hungarian churches at revisionist rallies in Budapest. After the expulsion of the Uniate nuns from Odorheiu Secuiesc, the Hungarian churches asked the Uniates to meet for mediation. The statement was signed 'Historical Churches of Transylvania’, an irritating fact in itself for the Romanian churches. The Uniate bishop refused, saying that the justice is called to resolve the conflict of the orphanage in Odorheiu Secuiesc. Hungarian priests were extremely active in the ‘civil disobedience campaign’ of 1995. Some of them volunteered their churches as places where hunger strikers could be observed and gathered signatures for the amendments to the Education law.

The connection between the national mission and the Hungarian churches is so deep because, in the words of the Catholic spokesperson from Cluj’ Christianism made us a nation. The Hungarian national hymn we sing in Church says: 'God, preserve the Hungarian nation’. . Church and nation are conflated in this vision so intimately they can’t be told apart. Other trends, such as Protestant priests more involved in social than political work are also present, but are less influential.

In its turn the Orthodox Transylvanian Church is involved in prestige wars and tries to make its own symbols dominant. Its most active presence is Metropolyte Bartolomeu Anania of Cluj. Anania is an outspoken partisan of Church involvement in politics and lead in 1998 a ‘Silence March’ against the ‘abandon’ of the Orthodox Church by the state (an interpretation of the winning by Greek-Catholics of many restitution trials) and was stopped only by National Heritage from building in the Cluj historical Unirii Square a new Orthodox Cathedral to defy the existing Hungarian one. Central Orthodox authorities also encouraged a campaign for the rehabilitation of churches in Covasna-Harghita, said to have decayed because of state negligence and disinterest from the part of Hungarian local authorities, Not once did they mention in this campaign that the main cause for the decay of the Churches was the absence of communities- most of the Churches involved were built by the Romanian state after 1918 in regions with little or not-at all Romanian population. Another Metropolyte, Daniel, also complained the Christian Democrat regime is doing less for the Church than the Post-Communist one, and blackmailed the Church of Transylvania, which allegedly supported Christian Democrats will retreat its support.

The priests are however not the only ‘crusaders’ of the region. Intellectuals, doctors, journalists and writers join them mainly. The mob that attacked the orphanage of Odorheiu Secuiesc was only following the lead given by the Local Council, whose meeting was broadcast live by a local television station: attackers were lead by local intellectuals. Romanian intellectuals are also present in Vatra Romaneasca, from Babes Bolyai University Professors to elementary schools teachers. Peasants from Viisoara participate to ‘Vatra’ as to a club, from conformist reasons mainly; intellectuals, however, are well aware ‘Vatra’ is more than a club and is stuffed with retired Army officers and former Ceausescu’s Securitate agents. Intellectuals also bet on ‘multiculturalism’ instead of more practical ‘inter-culturalism’. Multiculturalism is understood by Hungarian intellectuals as complete separation of the two cultures, and by Romanian intellectuals as keeping the control in the cultural affairs of the Hungarians. Both groups discourage neutrality. In 1996, when we toured the Szekelys area, school inspectors complained of the pressures put upon them by nationalists. Hungarians have trouble for not being as radicals as DAHR wanted them to be; Romanians were pressured by ‘Vatra’ to be harder on Hungarians. The pressure was especially hard on people who founded mixed families and had to face daily conflicts of loyalty.

Sometimes one can find neutrals in influential positions. It is ironical former Communists are often more tolerant towards the national problem. The mayor of Viisoara, for instance, was extremely upset to find out about our research and blamed Romanians from the village for envying Hungarians and attributing a ‘national’ correlation to their social envy. The President of the Hungarian Workers’ Group, a former Communist apparatchik, Hungarian this time, complained the good times of Communist ‘affirmative action’ are gone. ‘At least they r4espected then the percent of Hungarian’. And indeed Communist affirmative action seems to have been effective.

Participants in our focus groups have unanimously pointed at ‘political leaders’ as the main responsible of the ethnic conflict. The elite was described by terms such as ‘the bosses’, the ’press’ ‘the politicians’. On the other hand people acknowledge they are sensitive to provocations by press, mainly television, but insist they be for nothing in this conflict.

The truth is all these groups tend to form national in-groups, but are politically passive. If Romanian peasants from Ibanesti had embarked in buses to be brought to Tg. Mures they wouldn’t have had this initiative. They set to this journey blessed by the local priest and persuaded they were going to save Transylvania. Hungarian inhabitants from Odorheiu also heard from people they respected best that the presence of the nuns was part of a diabolic conspiracy meant to change the ethnic composition of the region. ‘Instead of the orphans they planned to bring here Romanian prostitutes and criminals’ a Hungarian journalist in the public broadcasting told me in 1997. If fed with this type of information the locals could not fail to run ‘save’ their town.

Beyond active or passive mobilization when summoned by elites the two communities are quite different when it comes to estimate the performance of political leaders. Hungarians consider as ‘extremists’ only Romanian politicians. The only Hungarian leader with some negative appreciation is Laszlo Tokes —26 % of Hungarians see him as ‘extremist’ in our poll, while other 18 % answer’ somehow extremist’. Results are consistent with the UBB poll, 25 % agreeing that he amplifies tensions between Romanians and Hungarians. The relative majority however denies that. IMAS polls of 1995 and 1996 also showed tokes as having the highest rate of confidence lack- 29 %, but the highest rate of confidence also, which placed him the second after Bela Marko as the most trusted Hungarian politician (by the Hungarian community).

In my survey Romanians considered as ‘extremists’ leaders as Laszlo Tokes (61%), Marko Bela (40%), Frunda Gyorgy and Tokay Gyorgy (35%), but also the Romanians Gheorghe Funar (43% plain yes, 15 % somehow extremist) and Vadim Tudor (42 % yes, 15 % somehow). 30 % consider as extremist and somehow extremists also George Pruteanu and Valeriu Tabara.

With few exceptions Hungarian attribute the conflict to Romanian extremists. They also pick as ‘extremists’ Romanian politicians such as Ion Iliescu, Adrian Nastase, Petre Roman. Romanians blame both sides. Both groups consider Emil Constantinescu; the 1996 elected President, as the political leader who does the most to appease the conflict.

Transylvanian Romanians see things under a more bilateral angle than Hungarians do. However this objectivity functions only in order to blame Romanians nationalists, and fails to make accepted Hungarian moderate politicians or DAHR, widely seen as an organization that protects only Hungarians and even has an ‘activity directed against Romanians' (IMAS, 1996).

Discontent with extremist politicians showed often in group interviews, too. People live intensely and tend to remake conflicts at the top. This discontent point to the idea that attributing the whole responsibility to leaders is not just.

If I see at TV that Tokes said something, or Funar said something, my Hungarian neighbor and I barely speak to each other the next day. (Hungarian worker, Cluj)

Appeals by extremist politicians would fail to raise such an echo if groups would not be ultra sensitive in their turn. However groups are ready to feel prejudiced, although they do not admit so. Distance from extremist nationalist policies is showed only at polls.

We would never vote a Funar here. This means afterwards we’ll have to be at Hungarians’ throats daily and they at ours. (Romanian peasants, Livezi).

Politicians are also blamed for the Tg. Mures conflict.

7. IS THERE an inter-ethnic CONFLICT IN ROMANIA?

Despite several discussions on the topic, Romania has not yet adopted a minorities' law. The life of the ethnic minorities and their entitlement to a public sphere of their own is regulated by the 1991 Constitution (quite liberal), the Law of Public Administration, and the Law on Education. The Ciorbea government coalition of which DAHR is a member proposed in 1997 amendments to the public administration law (Ordinance 22/1997) and the Education Law (Ordinance 36/1997). Amendments to the administration law legalized for the first time the use of minorities' language in the state administration, although its practice, especially in Hungarian dominated regions, was widespread. The law also specifically required all mayors in regions where minorities make more than 20 % of the population to display signs carrying denominations of towns or other important notices in the Hungarian language also. This existed previously only in the Szekelys region, where the Hungarian population makes up to 90 % in certain places. The two laws can be considered to fulfill at last the spirit of the 1991 Constitution, which granted minorities full rights of representation and education in their language, under the abstract general provision that Romania is 'a unitary, national and indivisible state'.

Both laws have had a strange fate since their promulgation as emergency ordinances. The government chose this way because ordinances start being active from the moment of their promulgation by the government : the Parliament is entitled to reject or approve them later, but it cannot discuss them article by article if an emergency procedure is required. Although the application of the ordinances in Transylvania met no opposition or unrest from the part of the Romanian population their fate in the Parliament was rather different. MPs insisted in discussing them by article and despite an agreement within the government coalition these laws brought the first major defections inside the coalition ranks and most notably inside its leading National Peasant Christian Democratic Party (PNTcd). The party's club in the Senate, authoritatively led by a Romanian literary critic and host of a popular TV show on Romanian language, Mr. George Pruteanu sided with the opposition and started a crusade for the Romanian language. The most contested article was the Department of Education proposal that history and geography should be taught in Hungarian in all-Hungarian schools. Despite the practical common sense of the provision - in Hungarian schools children simply do not know enough Romanian to be able to learn complex matters in this language - it was met with harsh opposition at the Senate. Trips were organized by the leftist nationalist opposition to Harghita and Covasna counties in 1997 in order to prove that Hungarian children have little or no knowledge of the Romanian language, which is often the case. The findings resulted from those trips were afterwards used as more arguments that the study of the official language should be enforced. The government proposed a compromise allowing the study of geography and history in Hungarian under the provision that children are compelled to learn geographic denominations in the state/official language also. However the proposal did not pass as such, the Senate reversing again to the study of the two disciplines in Romanian. Also the proposal that special textbooks be made for Hungarians allowing them to learn Romanian as a foreign language was downgraded from the secondary school level (eight grades) to the elementary school (four grades only), since senators considered ten-years old Hungarian children should be capable of addressing Romanian not as a foreign language anymore. The law is still to be discussed in the Chamber of Deputies, and if a different version is adopted it will be mediated between the two Chambers. The version adopted, however, allowed professional education in Hungarian, admitted that Romanian language education is not compulsory in a village with no Romanian inhabitants and created a framework with practically no examination of the Romanian language, since all important exams (capacity, high-school graduation and university admission) can be taken in the maternal language. Hungarians consider this version still inferior to the Communist Constitutions of 1948, 1952 and 1965 which all provided mother tongue education at all levels, judiciary and administration in the language of minorities. This is perhaps the logic behind Lazslo Tokes' demand that the 1991 Constitution be revised and terms and paragraphs directed against minorities be eliminated (Press Agency Mediafax, February 22 1997), since there are no such terms or paragraphs. However, the 1991 Constitution only makes the general statement :' The state acknowledges and protects the right of persons belonging to different nationalities to preserve, develop and exercise their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity.'(Article 6 - The right for identity).

The 22 Ordinance suffered a worse fate. Despite being adopted with relatively mild discussions, a provision concerning ex Prime Minister Victor Ciorbea -granting the right of enjoying simultaneously the position of Prime Minister and Mayor- lead to the rejection of the Ordinance in the Senate. Also the Court who ruled in its favor accepted a petition to the Constitutional Court denying the ‘emergency’ character of this emergency ruling. The Ordinance was still applied in 1998, although the government had turned it into an ordinary bill and submitted it again to the Parliament. It is worth mentioning that the article allowing Hungarians to use their language in the public administration and compelling authorities to hire Hungarian-speaking personnel were passed encountering no serious difficulties.

Besides the chronic ineffectiveness of the Romanian Parliament - which alone justifies the approach of the government to make such provisions emergency rulings - the debate on education exposed the deep cleavage in the battle for bilinguism. Romanians are not prepared to accept Hungarian as a second official language. Hungarians do not present their claim as such, being aware of this fact. But, in fact, their attempt of having the papers of the schools, Courts and the administration written in Hungarian and the general idea that the learning of the Romanian language should be a right, not an obligation (Szilagy N. Sandor : 1998 : 135) points to the real issues : making Hungarian an official second language. 'It is like one would put a provision asking citizens not to waste their money needlessly' claims Szilagy Sandor, who says that the phrasing of the Education Law 'The study and learning of the Romanian language in school as a state official language is compulsory for all citizens regardless the nationality' - article 8:3) is insulting for the minorities. Lobby has been going on concerning another provision of the Education law, that Romanian-language education should not be organized if there are too few children to make a class. The government finally agreed with this and established Romanian children in a Hungarian environment should group from different villages to form a class, but the argument had been that they should accept to go to a Hungarian language class if a Romanian one was not at hand. In short, the fight is to make the two languages equal, that is, having Hungarian as a second official language.

The language battles were the toughest of the past years. The diabolization of the Education Law 84/1995 as an instrument of 'cultural genocide' for introducing a test of Romanian at the admission exams in the University was however an exaggeration. It was a poor law, making steps back, which could only lead to revolt. The Hungarian political elite decided at the time to make it an example. People were instigated to civil disobedience, white flags hanged above Hungarian schools and 420 000 signatures gathered to support DAHR amendments to the law. However, a referendum of the boycott of schools was dropped because DAHR had clear signals there would be no mass following on this issue. Hungarian leaders went so far as to ask Hungarians to go on hunger strike in order to obtain the amendments debated. Although few registered as required as strikers the protest form is no less radical. The protest also showed the deep alliance between Hungarian educators, politicians and Church - the Church lead the Crusade against the education law recording people who decided to strike and encouraging people to take part in the protest. A group of youngsters marched on foot across Europe to protest in front of the Council of Europe at Strasbourg.

The Education law was a mistake of the Vacaroiu government. But the debate and the unrest surrounding it only worsened the daily, usual relations between Hungarians and Romanians. Romanians mention always with fear this exceptional mobilization of the Hungarian community. The exaggeration also laid ground for the quest for 'defending' and 'preserving' the Romanian language of PNTcd Senator George Pruteanu already mentioned. When Pruteanu was expelled from the party in April 1998 at the request of DAHR the public television, host of his grammar show, was invaded with protests and accusations it did not take his part more because being subordinated to the government, subsequently to PNTcd and their allies, the DAHR.

The masterwork inspiring every Hungarian community, Professor 's Ferenc Glatz of the Hungarian Academy policy proposal towards minorities 'Principles for a Code of Conduct' (Glatz ;1993) is clear on this point. Minorities ought to have, in his view, full language autonomy regardless their number in a community. This includes addressing in their mother-tongue the officials, judges, and the media, the costs of translation being supported by the state and/or local budget. When a minority makes more than 51 % the minority language should become the first language in the specific territorial unit the minority lives on, and the majority language -state language- is to be treated as a minority language. Glatz mentions in his proposal, however, that knowledge of the language and culture of the majority is important, although not compulsory. The system conceived by Glatz is equitable, although great costs are required in order to protect minorities from learning the majority language. In a richer country and with a stable political situation it could eventually be tried. In a country with a bankrupt state and nationalist parties always accusing minorities for their refusal to learn the official language, a government attempt to set up the Glatz system will probably bring votes to nationalist parties only.

A resolution of the Hungarians' demands via special laws has indeed a weak spot Hungarian usually point out. A nationalist government to revert these modifications or pass even more restrictive amendments can use the same way a liberal government modified the education Law to serve its purpose. A minorities law would be harder to modify from fear of international scandal if not from other reasons. Hungarians do not agree within DAHR and do not agree with other minorities on the contents of such a law. The draft of the Law concerning National Minorities and Autonomous Communities proposed in 1994 by the DAHR club in the Chamber of Deputies is based upon the Personal Autonomy Statute, claiming that:

This paradigm change from a state made of individual citizens to a state made up by nations and communities stands little chance of being adopted. Its main problem is that it practically forces the reorganization of the Romanian unitary state into a federal state. Romania was, however, an unitary state during its whole existence as a state. Regions have a weak identity and even the designation of a region capital would create controversy. Furthermore, despite well-grounded critiques directed against the Bucharest bureaucracy in a state of this size devolution of powers to the regions might mean more bureaucracy and more corruption before anything else occurs. The current system enjoys legitimacy, and its fundamental challenging can only bring about controversy but not compromise. Questioning the regime (republic or constitutional monarchy) and the state structure (unitary or federal) is unpopular. No referendum is needed in order to find out what Romanians think about that. Polls show clearly they endorse the current system and consider destabilizing the endless discussion on its essential revising. This revising was debated without being even possible during ten years: a law on referendum is only now, in 1999, ready, and without it any modifications of the Constitution would have been impossible.

How could DAHR refrain from proposing constitutional modifications, when the change of the paradigm 'nation state' from the Romanian Constitution is one of their main goals? What was the point to push this claim instead of, more modestly, push for a referendum law? Only symbolic and prestige motives can serve as a justification for this policy. Unfortunately its side-effect was an escalation of nationalist rhetoric on both sides, and for little reason. Had the 1991 Constitution a different phrasing PDSR would have still allied itself with nationalist parties and DAHR would have acceded to government also via its alliance with Romanian centrists. But unfortunately the energy invested in symbolic politics and national assertiveness seems to surpass by far the more applied policies, with immediate consequences on people's lives.

The national topic dominated the political debate since 1992 till 1996. The conclusion of a bilateral treaty with Hungary represented a major setback for nationalists, deprived in the electoral campaign of 1996 of their major asset. Ironically, among the consequences of the treaty the immediate one was the loss of power by the Romanian party, notably by President Ion Iliescu. His party tried until the last day to impress voters with the old fear-arousing appeals. For instance a map was published from Samuel Huntington's article 'The clash of civilizations' showing a line separating Transylvania- considered as belonging to Central Europe, from the 'Orthodox' rest of Romania, with a note saying that if the centrist coalition wins the Western powers would divide Romania along the line. 1997 was a year of détente- as the treaty had left weaponless the Romanian nationalists, the participation of DAHR to government did the same for the Hungarian nationalists. However, the inability of the government coalition to pass the two government ordinances in due time and form led to the reemergence of nationalist dissent within DAHR, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. The position of DAHR moderate leaders became difficult as nationalists asked them to leave the government. Despite carrying the vote on this by the moderates the nationalists grew in influence and managed to have the minorities minister, Tokay Gyorgy, sacked in early 1999.

The main conflicting issue remains the claim of a part of DAHR to have Romanian Hungarians as a separate 'political subject'. In this respect the Personal Autonomy Statute was inspired by the Hungarian legislation, but it entirely disregarded the fact that Hungary practically has no minorities, so in the context of the Hungarian political system the minorities law has no practical importance. What can however be considered only minor legislation in Hungary would pose a serious challenge in the case of Romania, which accommodates the largest minority in Central Europe. According to this draft, the regulatory body of Hungarians in Romania would become the Council of Representatives, directly elected on a four years term. The Council would decide over budget subventions, propose judges, control Hungarian public media, organize and supervise the autonomous educational network of all-Hungarian schools, deal with Hungary and the Romanian officials, and oppose a veto on the decisions concerning Hungarians it disagrees with. It is not clear what would be the relationship of this body with the large number of MPs directly elected in the national elections. The problem did not exist in Hungary, where the Constitution, unlike the Romanian 1991 Constitution does not grant seats for each minority and minorities are not large enough to pass the electoral threshold. Echoes of this debate became more familiar since the granting of a Scottish Parliament. Analysts and conservative politicians opposed it on the grounds that Scottish MP in the House would have the right to vote in matters concerning England, while pure Scottish matters would be confined to the Scottish Parliament, thus giving Scots a privilege over the English.

The main political problem is however the claim of a part of Hungarians that this group constitutes a 'nation', not a 'minority', and must be accepted as a constitutive unit of the state in corpore. This claim is not entirely groundless. It is based on the fact that the first Transylvanian state was Hungarian, so it is a historical claim. Although Hungarians have been in minority in Transylvania for over at least 300 years, princes of Hungarian descent ran the state between 16-17th centuries, and after the Habsburgs (1867-1818). It is on this basis that Kiraly Karoly, in a public letter addressed to Laszlo Tokes in 1998 asks DAHR to revive its claim to the self-government of the Szekelys. Although the Szekelys region accommodates roughly half of the Romanian Hungarians it is the only region where their presence is more compact. The Szekelys are anyway a highly isolated and parochial community. The train from Brasov, the most important city in the region, makes seven hours to Sf. Gheorghe/Covasna because of detours and needs two transfers (the same distance by car is of only one hour). Romanian governments keep complaining the region is isolated but do nothing to help it out. NGOs organize summer camps, but these help little, being disconnected from the life of the population.

Drinking is so much part of the local culture in this isolated villages or small towns off the Szekelys that each of the focus groups had to end in a sot of on spot party. It was sometimes difficult to persuade participants to postpone drinking alcohol and try our Cokes instead until the end of the interview. Sharing at least one drink with them became afterwards compulsory and we had trouble trying to protect at least our driver from the local brandy.

Poor communications and infrastructure links, different language and culture, and a terrible weather on top of it- the Szekelys are the 'North Pole' of Romania, temperatures falling easily to -30C only isolate further this region. This increases the perception of inhabitants they are different from the rest of Romanian and makes the rest of Romanians look upon them as different as well. Even within the Hungarian community an endless debate is going on between those who side with the 'scattered' versus the 'gathered' Hungarians. Local authorities after 1996 were almost entirely of Hungarian descent.

Both the demands for a special status for the Szekelys and the refusal to grant it are politically grounded. Romanian politicians oppose it from the following reasons:

i. the general perception of Romanians is that Hungary and Hungarians were the traditional enemies opposing the unification of Romanian-inhabited regions. Any attempt to fragment the Romanian state, even through a mild federal formula is seen as an anti-state attempt. Since Romanian regions show little or no cultural difference, such an attempt would single out the Hungarians as being the only interested in 'dismantling' the unitary state. A more regional approach towards the administration of Romania would be the only one to make acceptable such an approach towards the Szekelys. At the present time this is still quite an unlikely approach.

ii. a minority of Romanians inhabit the Szekelys (proportions vary between 30 % in Miercurea Ciuc and under 10 % in Tg. Secuiesc or Odorheiu). In the event of a special status zone on the model of South Tyrol this group would become a minority. According to the Glatz proposal they would be then treated as such and granted the same rights Hungarian have. Or, as we showed, the times of the Hungarian Autonomous Region bring about bad memories. Rather the consociative way of the Ciorbea-Radu Vasile governments that tries to accommodate Hungarians in the framework of the existing system - appointing Hungarian prefects in the Hungarian dominated districts could work if Hungarian bureaucrats would consider themselves public servants, not only Hungarian public servants, as in the Odorheiu case.

Since we live in a post-modern world, however, communication across borders is common. The isolated from Romania Szekelys are in fact connected and well connected with towns and villages from Hungary. The Romanian governments do not oppose it. Things go so far that the City Hall of Tg. Secuiesc displays the Hungarian flag in the meeting hall, for instance. Local authorities explained 'this is the flag of the Hungarian nation, not of the Hungarian state'. Indeed besides the Hungarian flag they had the Romanian and the county flags. However the Romanian government fears that if this happens without any special status the special status would practically make the Szekelys a 'Hungary' inside Romania.

The theme of the separation drive of Hungarians is a dear one for Romanian nationalist or post-Communist leaders. After blaming DAHR for years for a policy of promoting a 'ghetto' for the Hungarian community former President Ion Iliescu launched in 1998 the 'Transylvania Proclamation' accusing DAHR of separatist plans (Oradea, June 19). The appeal of this type of discourse is less grounded in the rhetoric of Mr. Iliescu as in the experience of Transylvanians. Small-scale separatism such as the school separatism laid out a pattern of one ethnic group retreating in order to leave the space to the other not very different from the general pattern people fear would follow the special status granting. Hungarians claim with good right the school belonged to the Hungarian community and should be returned regardless the number of students today. Romanians claim Hungarians had so many schools because they were in control before 1918, discriminating the Romanian majority. The appeal to the past only makes more resentments surface.

Romanian dislike the separation even in instances when the space is not an issue. Romanian students complain of the perfect segregation between Romanian and Hungarian students, and blaming it most on the graduates of pure Hungarian high-schools. Romanians claim that if the University would split Romanians and Hungarians would not get together at all. Hungarian students admitted it is a risk but explained the risk is not important considering the other advantages a pure Hungarian university would grant them. The French anthropologist Claude Karnoouh who taught at Babes Bolyai University is favoring its separation, saying that students are already perfectly segregated even in the present form. (Karnoouh, 1996).

The topic of a separate University also fuels conflict. It almost pushed DAHR out of the government coalition in the fall of 1998. The attempt to solve it by making a Hungarian-German university failed. Germans refused to be used as cover saying they are happy with the current system, and the institutions involved in the evaluation of the project had been in fact opposed for a long time. Unfortunately the debate was again centered on symbolic issues. Data show proportions of Hungarians in key disciplines inferior to Romanians (there are fewer Hungarian than Romanian lawyers, for instance). But the argument was not built on equality grounds, but again on the past. It mattered less the idea that such an university is necessary in order to solve the disadvantage Hungarians are at, but the idea it is the old Hungarian university finally recuperated. In 1918, this pure Hungarian University had no Romanian students, although Romanians made the majority of Transylvanian inhabitants. The Rector not only refused to swear allegiance to the new Romanian state, but declared no Romanian will ever learn there (Livezeanu : 1997) The University was therefore nationalized by the Romanian state, while Hungary settled at Szeged across the border a 'Cluj University' which became a symbol of revisionism. When Horthyst troops occupied Cluj in 1940 after the German arbitrage, the Romanian University, still bearing the same name, retreated at Sibiu. Communists put the two universities together after 1956, and event seen as a drama by the Hungarian community: a vice-Rector committed suicide in protest. Since 1990 due to a liberal Rector the University multiplied its languages (including now a Romani language section) and denominations (it is the only University in Romania where a theology student can graduate from a Reformist, Uniate, Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic section).

NGOs and independent analysts favoring the restitution of a Hungarian university used mainly affirmative action arguments. DAHR MP we interviewed were against setting it anywhere else but Cluj. So the German-Hungarian Petofi-Schiller, this sad compromise of the Radu Vasile government failed without regrets, since it satisfied nobody. The idea of splitting Babes Bolyai also failed, because Romanian professors opposed it and Romanian students threatened with rallies. Had Babes Bolyai being split it would have been the end of this multicultural university, since Hungarians would have probably enrolled all in the new Hungarian one.

These two topics are far from settled. The majority of Hungarians want a separate university, although they do not endorse a special status region. One certitude emerges, however: if the issue is not addressed focusing on its practical side but on the symbolical side, if is seen as a flag-issue, in other words, then chances of a resolution look dim. More advocacy and less appeal to mass mobilization would be a good start. If mass mobilization remains the real target we shall continue to have a dramatic split in the public opinion. Our survey showed Transylvanian Romanians against a separate Hungarian university (72%) and Hungarians in favor (84%).

Figure 14

Hungarians would perhaps accept easier the existing system would the 22 ordinance and the Law of local budgets be finally passed by the Parliament. Romania still needs badly the normal, ordinary decentralization of a contemporary state. Not to be mistaken, however, the 'autonomy' DAHR asks is not, as even many Hungarians in our groups seemed to think, ordinary decentralization, but an attempt of modifying the existing territorial administration.

The most serious issue, however, lies in the future. The decision of the EU to invite Hungary to join, while keeping Romania on the black list of visas could well turn into a nightmare. If joining the Schengen agreements Hungary will have to introduce a visa for Romanian citizens, including the 1.6 million Hungarians the situation might get out of hand. Since no Hungarian government - and especially not Fidesz, a rightist party, would forbid access to Hungarians, the solution proposed might be what radicals from DAHR had been long asking for : the granting of double citizenship for Romanian Hungarians. The Hungarian government is aware of this problem and advocates for a Hungarian integration simultaneous with a removal of Romania from the 'black' visa list. Opinions inside DAHR are split between the radicals' group, which long advocated the granting of double citizenship to the 1.6 million Hungarians in Romania, and the opinion of the moderates who oppose it..

The status wars make the strangest part of the conflict. They have the largest popular mobilization, at least from the Hungarian part, and they meet the more lasting resentment. Romanian newspapers on March 15, 1990 when Hungarians for the first time were allowed to celebrate reminded that 40 000 Romanians were killed on the occasion of the historical event celebrated. On the list of claims Lazslo Tokes makes the teaching of history ' of the Hungarian nation' (Mediafax Press Agency) can be found, in a phrasing quite different from the official one of DAHR that mildly asks for a 'history of minority groups'. The DAHR claim that the Constitution be modified in order to specify Romania is a multinational state shows that 'nation', in Hungarians view, means 'ethnic' and cannot under any circumstances have a civic meaning. This might be based on the Hungarian elite's belief that the Romanian state is identifying with the dominant ethnie without admitting so, but shows also the ideological conviction that generally speaking the state cannot fail to be an ethnic state so multinational states are the only democratic states.

Ordinary Romanians had little participation to the status war. Instead, Romanian authorities such as Mayor Gheorghe Funar helped to escalate it. An outspoken assimilationist in his propagandistic speeches, but a pragmatic local governor, Funar changed street names from Hungarian to Romanian and built Romanian statues while on the other hand encouraging business regardless of nationality and contributing to the city's development. Funar's attempts have been mocked constantly in the Romanian press. But his policy was doomed even without that, since he tries to fight a spontaneous mass behavior (45 % of Hungarians declare in the UBB poll they participated to the March 15 celebration in 1991, a figure decreased to 36 % in 1997) with a top-down state organized national enthusiasm, In the same poll only a handful of Romanians declare they take part in ceremonies celebrating the Romanian national day, which is an official celebration. It is natural that the Hungarian minority shows a superior mobilization when it comes to national events, since Hungarians feel a superior need to assert themselves, living in another state. The Romanian authorities, both local and central, regard with enough suspicion this type of manifestations - mostly because leading Hungarian politicians from Hungary, such as Geza Jeszensky and Viktor Orban attend them. Even democrat President Emil Constantinescu felt the need in 1997 and 1998 to endorse celebrations of the Romanian 1848 Revolution - in order to balance the large attention given to March 15 by the Hungarian leaders, This type of escalation, however, does no good to the cohabitation and explains why both Romanians and Hungarians answer in polls (IMAS) that cohabitation was better during Ceausescu, when manifestations of this kind were simply forbidden. Communities cannot see on television examples of mobilization from rival communities without this raising their anxiety. Even if organized with the best intentions, the ostensible display of national celebrations and anthems have something offensive for the other community, especially in a region where history is so mutually exclusive - when not really offensive. It is relevant that the Hungarian participation to the March 15 events decreased significantly from 1996 to 1997 and 1998 (UBB poll), so the participation of DAHR to the government led to a decrease in national mobilization. The participation of Romanians in celebrations such as Tebea and Blaj has always been reduced. These celebrations are always state-organized. While Hungarian nationalism is grass-rooted, even if lead by the elite, Romanian nationalism is mostly formal and centralized. On December 1 except for the big rally at Alba Iulia attended by the President and the Patriarch there is no spontaneous manifestation from the part of the Romanians : rather, as a multiplication of Alba Iulia, prefects, mayors and the Army all over the country enlist themselves in the boring ritual of deposing flowers to some official monument.

Hungarians in Romania consider themselves a 'nation'. Attempts made by Ceausescu to 'ethnificate' them, to use the excellent term of T.K.Oomen (Omen : 1996), that is, to de-territorialize them, failed. The Hungarian community in Romania considers itself a nation, has a homeland it has been inhabiting for centuries - Transylvania - a common language, culture, a myth of common descent, a strong nostalgia for the times when they were the dominant culture, and so on. According to Oomen they would qualify as a nation, although according to Anthony Smith (1979 : 48) or Anthony Giddens' definitions they would not (Giddens 1985 : 116) The only thing missing to Hungarians of Romania is their own state, which in various forms is what some leaders feel is missing and what they seek. The essence of the ethnic conflict between Romanians and Hungarians lies here : to the fact that people of Hungarian descent seek, lead authoritatively by their political elite, that the whole Romanian political system be reorganized in order to accommodate them better, that Romania becomes if not a federal state at least something close so the 1.6 million Hungarians enjoy full self-government, and the Romanians give up the claim Romania is a national state on the model of France or Britain.

To sum up, can we say that a perceived conflict is real ? After all, besides this perception we have only elite-engineered issues. Some specifications and distinctions will perhaps help us clear this issue:

1. Is it right to confound the Romanian state with the Romanian people, since most of the struggle of DAHR is directed against the state ? I think it is, from two reasons: i. Romanians, although not very involved or interested in the conflict, are nevertheless supportive towards the state policy when it comes to minorities : all the polls since 1990, with the notable exception of the Tg. Mures conflict, when the population blamed the government for not intervening in time, showed clear support for the government's status quo policy. All these polls, notably the IMAS and CURS, but also in ours, the most recent one, showed that the Romanian people is endorsing the government even if slight changes of policy occur, in the same time considering the claims of the Hungarians exaggerated. ii. most of the struggle, due to the strong presence of DAHR in the Parliament, is located in the two Chambers, as, for instance, the battle around the 36 ordinance in the Senate. Or, proportionally elected Romanian MPs can be considered representative for the Romanian people

2. Is it right to consider the 'rivalry' aspect, despite the fact that most of the Hungarians claim policy pretends to be only a legitimate exercise of rights, without impeding on the rights of the others ?

Yes, it is, since most is not all. If several Hungarian rights claimed are in fact rights that can be exercised without affecting others' rights (the right to have a University ; the right to professional education in Hungarian; the local autonomy ; the use of their language in local government), others fall far beyond this category and are closer to a nationalist policy than to the quest for equal opportunities. In this category fall the demand for separating schools into pure Romanian and pure Hungarian, eliminating the system of parallel classes in either one of the two languages functioning in the same school ; reorganizing the entire Romanian administrative system in order to accommodate the Szekelys area better, although this affects many Romanians living there ; modifying symbolic constitutional wordings such as 'national state' and considering it directed against minorities ; campaigning against the fact that Romanian is the official language, that its study must remain compulsory and can be checked when applying for certain positions in Romania without considering that a discrimination; creating political structures to prepare and govern the future autonomous region when its creation is not decided yet and it cannot be decided by unilateral decision only.

3. Is the mobilization along ethnic lines present at all times and issues of conflict ?

Yes, it is. The mobilization on the Hungarian side is 100%. The mobilization of the Romanians is weaker, but however consistent. As the case of Odorheiu shows, it is indeed evidence of mobilization along ethnic lines regardless the particular circumstances or the responsibilities that come with it.

4. Does this elite-dirven conflict enjoy mass support ?

Again the answer is: yes, it does, with some amendments. i. in most polls Hungarians and Romanians complain of the same social and economic issues; the ethnic issue is rarely mentioned spontaneously and most of the people have no initiative in this direction ii. most of the people are afraid of conflict and feel that the politicians go too far iii. however, when an issue is present, such as Odorheiu, people endorse their politicians and their positions and they would do the same in a referendum.

5. What are the chances of this conflict to become violent ?

Chances of ethnic violence are scarce, but real. If border regions and Cluj display more tolerance, in Tg. Mures or the Szekelys area violent conflict may yet occur. Triggers of violence are always the same : attempts of one side to occupy the territory of the other. So it started at Tg. Mures, when Hungarians pushed Romanians to retreat from a school which had been a pure Hungarian school before ; at Odorheiu, where fear Romanians will 'invade' the town by means of the orphanage lead to the mobilization of the local community and the expulsion of Romanian nuns.

6. Is the claim of DAHR that Hungarians in Romania are 'a distinct society' a reality, or merely a political program ? If so, what bearing does it have on the conflict ?

We think DAHR is wrong here, Hungarians in Romania are not a different society, although they are obviously a distinct culture. Most polls show a remarkable similarity between concerns, anxieties and values of Romanians and Hungarians inhabiting Transylvania. We could not find between the two groups a deep division. Some communities in the Szekelys area, it is true, are extremely isolated, but this is why such isolation shouldn't be encouraged. Their isolation is not just one from the Romanian society, but, as the Odorheiu case proves, shows all the characteristics of parochialism.

The Romanian-Hungarian conflict is a basic one, and satisfying one or the other of punctual demands may improve people's lives but it will not solve the conflict, as it did not in Quebec after constitutional changes made French the first language of the province. The conflict is not a recent one, it has centuries of history, and has a major motive : two peoples are forced to share a state. Quebec is indeed the closest model for Transylvania. In both cases, a past-oriented minority considering itself as 'state builder' and owner of an older, alternative culture felt as a second-rank participant in the state and engaged on a process of national revival and finally separatism ( Breton : 1992). Of course, Hungarian Transylvanians are not so outspoken on separatism: with the Hungarian state close at hand any such open policy would not be regarded favorably by the international community.

The Romanian debate around Hungarians is centered on two basic ideas, each excluding each other, each wrong : i. either that they want Transylvania to return to Hungary (Romanian chauvinistic parties and journals, nationalist Romanians), ii either that they seek 'normal, ordinary, human rights' (Romanian and Hungarian intellectual journals). None is true, although each would simplify somehow the matter. The matter is not simple at all, it involves two countries, a strong ethnic party with a national project to accomplish, several post-Communist groupings with roots in the secret services and the Communist propaganda in bad need of survival tactics - and what can be better than turning nationalistic ? - and at least 6 million inhabitants of Transylvania. Minimizing the issue is only enhancing chances of deterioration in the future.

The experiment of governing with the Hungarian alliance since 1996 is a remarkable one. The presence of Hungarians in the Romanian government is not limited to the seats DAHR had in the Ciorbea and Vasile governments starting with 1996. A permanent board made of parties heads or their deputies in fact settled important matters. What this Political Council decides (the name changed repeatedly, but the attributions stayed the same) is what the government turns into policy.

However, this experiment in itself cannot be considered a 'model' of solving the minorities problem. Even if one is inclined to see it as a success one cannot fail to see its frailty. By 1999 polls already showed serious drops of support for the coalition, mainly because of its inability of solving economic problems. If centrists lose elections, which is a plausible development and cannot fail to happen sometime in the future, the whole experiment is endangered. It is highly unlikely post-Communists will govern with DAHR: for ten years they were allies of nationalists and displayed strong nationalistic attitudes themselves. Both DAHR radicals and the Romanian nationalists wish the experiment to fail, and unfortunately even the initiators of the experiment have little idea what to do next.

I believe that the temporary participation to the government did not succeed in solving the conflict-and it could not have even if things had worked out more smoothly. This conflict depends on the political and economic situation and will evolve with it. Since Romania has the worse economical situation of east Europe many hardships are yet in store so populist nationalist rhetoric may have a future still.

This is why a more permanent solution of the Hungarian problem is desirable. The regime settled in 1996 provided a détente between Romanians and Hungarians, despite conflicting issues. Moderates still hold the leadership of DAHR although they shall lose it if Romanian nationalists return to power. It is perhaps the last time that such a solution can be sought. A nationalist government will immediately eliminate the Hungarian prefects and all administrative forms of consociatonalism and may start legal procedures to revise the laws of Education and Local government as well. This is why is so important to move before that, to negotiate an agreement between Romanians and Hungarians, a roundtable as DAHR asked for in its 1999 meetings, and have the blessing of the international organizations for it as well. Hungarian radicals need Romanian radicals, and vice versa. This would be the best way of eliminating both.

However such a proposal does not exist. DAHR asks for a round table, while being accused by leaders of other minorities of speaking on behalf of all the minorities when making anti-constitutional statements (reported by Mediafax on May 17,1999). To design a model acceptable for all the parts one has to establish a few minimal objectives to be solved. We have to assume, however, that no proposal can entirely satisfy everybody. In my view the objectives of a permanent solution should be the following:

1. to secure the right of the Hungarian minority to a shared public sphere of its own, that meaning 'a communal domain that is constructed not only as an arena of cooperation for the purpose of securing one's interests but also as a space where one's communal identity finds expression' (Tamir: 1993: 74). This space already exists to a large extent: all that is needed are supplementary legal guarantees.

2. to eliminate by a policy of affirmative action the disadvantages Hungarians still experience (proportion of Hungarian students compared to Romanians; proportion of Hungarian policemen, and so on) This was started in 1997, when the University of Cluj (babes-Bolyai) reserved seats for Hungarians applying for the Law School: this allowed them to be accepted with a much lower threshold than the Romanians.

3. Creating incentives for the Hungarian elite to choose moderate instead of radical policies

4. The same for the Romanian Transylvanian elite

5. Eliminating unnecessary competition between the two national groups as groups wherever this can be avoided

6. Preventing a deepening of the division between the two national groups and keeping a decent level of communication and interactivity between them in order to create at least occasionally a 'in-group' of both Romanians and Hungarians, instead of having them permanently exclude each other.

7. Eliminating the Hungarian theme from the Romanian internal political debate

8. Adjusting the political system in order to satisfy the listed requirements with reasonable costs and at a pace that would not endanger the stability of the political system (so often threatened both by ethno-regionalism and by the Romanian nationalist reaction).

Everybody agrees there are no universal models for the solving of ethnic conflicts. There are no permanent solutions, either: constitutional modifications in Canada and self-government for the Germans of South Tyrol did not prevent them from seeking separation. Ideal linguistic equality is also a passing dream: the French became the first language of Quebec, and the Catalan is on its way to make the Castilian a second language in Catalonia. In the name of times when it was discriminated the regional language is pushing the national language or the language of the majority in a second position. Or, the language of the majority is the main language of communication. In the case of Quebec or Catalonia it is a language of universal circulation, much more useful than the regional language. In the case of Romania, its is the language 20 millions speak, compared to just two. Even if Transylvanian Romanians should know some Hungarian the Romanian language cannot be replaced as language of the state. Pure bilinguism is a delusion: the case of Brussels is relevant in this respect. If people are given a choice people will stick to their own language.

Ethno-regionalism is on the rise. Even former terrorist movements had found a way in the legitimate part of the political spectrum. Political wings of terrorist movements, both in Ireland and the Basque country have become associated with government parties. This shows mainstream parties consider they can no longer allow this trend to remain isolate and eventually turn against them. These developments occurred in the framework of institutional Europe: it is obvious separatist movements find here rather favorable grounds for their policies (Lynch: 1996; p.14-15). The 'liberation' of east European states from either the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia also provided further legitimacy to minority nationalism in Western Europe, as one nationalist leader puts it:

Despite the varying circumstances three models are worth discussing in an European context and in the context of Transylvania as we described it. Those are multiethnic democracy (other authors name it quite properly hegemonic control), federalism and consociatonalism.

1. THE ARGUMENT FOR HEGEMONIC CONTROL

Hegemonic control or multiethnic democracy is the most common way of solving an ethnic conflict. The term 'hegemonic control’ belongs to Lustick (quoted by O'Leary and McGarry: 1993: 23) and it coins regimes which either by coercion or cooperation manages successfully to control an ethnic challenge to the political order. Combining some degree of domination with some degree of inclusion of the elites seems to be a successful formula. Its undemocratic variant is the regime described by Linz as the ‘multiethnic democracy without consensus’, a regime which makes use of force in order to contain an ethnic minority that challenges the Constitution. Common examples are Northern Ireland and Israel (Linz: 1977).

This was also the form the Communist states used in the last period, after the great repression had passed. This is true even for the Ceausescu regime: Ceausescu did not imprison nationalist leaders and until the attempt to compel Pastor Tokes Lazslo to change his parish only moderate coercion was necessary in order to keep Romanian Hungarians under control. Hungarian leaders remained in the running bodies of the Communist Party until the end, with the notable exception of Kiraly Karoly.

The inheritance of this model showed its limits after 1990. The Romanian post-Communist leaders tried to respect the framework of procedural democracy; in the absence of other repressive policies the nationalist and anti-minority discourse expanded until it became the official discourse (since 1992 to 1996). The state, represented at first by the party-state transitional National Salvation front, then by the Party for Social Democracy (Ion Iliescu's party) was characterized by the hypertrophy of a nationalist discourse, centered on the theme of state protection in front of separatist Hungarian movement. This was however mainly a reaction to the impossibility of making further use of the hegemonic control the way the Communist regime had done.

Chances of the dark side of this model have not vanished. A return to the government of the coalition that ruled in 1993-1996 (socialists with nationalists) would throw Romania further out from Europe. But one must consider the admiration many Romanian MP expressed for the courage of Serbs to confront the whole world, expressed during the Kosovo crisis on 1999. As former President Ion Iliescu, perfectly positioned to win next elections as well, put it during a gathering of peasants in Baragan in May 1999, discussing the Yugoslav situation: 'A man beats his wife and here comes one who calls himself a friend of democracy and knocks him down (reported by Adrian Ursu in Adevarul).

2. THE ARGUMENT FOR FEDERALISM

Since 1993 - although unofficial demands are older - the Hungarian elite has constantly asked for a 'special status'. This 'special status' can be understood in various ways, although we think the Glatz document gives us a fair and more detailed account on how this should be interpreted. Being a general document, made to fit every state, the Glatz documents doesn't say what modifications specific political systems should undergo in order to adjust to the system it proposes. This is left for each state to evaluate. As we see it, the Glatz proposal, and the Czapo Ioszef proposal for a minorities' law (making the Hungarian community a 'political subject') can be accommodated only in a cantonal-federal type of political system (Switzerland was often pointed to us in discussions with Hungarian politicians as a suitable model). The key word of this system is subsidiarity, the Catholic word for devolution of powers to the lowest, most appropriate level in the political hierarchy. Edmund Burke was the first to explain subsidiarity that is not equal to the modern decentralization of a liberal state, but it is closer to the Middle Age philosophy and organization. Mr. Marko Bela pointed again and again the model of mediaeval autonomy was useful in constructing DAHR's own model of autonomy. The difference between cantonisation and ordinary decentralization or devolution is its organization 'on an ethno-territorial basis.(...) Cantonisation must be distinguished from mere administrative decentralization, common in unitary states : it is built upon the recognition of ethnic difference and allows for asymmetrical relations between different cantons and the central government' (O'Leary & Mc Geary : 1993;31).

Cantonalization and its larger version, federalization presuppose the existence of geographically clustered communities. Where communities are well segregated indeed the experience often shows 'good fences make good neighbors'. Problems usually arise when communities which are not well ethnically segregated try to become so in order to seek some political design, as was the case of former Yugoslavia. 'The reason why federalism proved totally insufficient as a conflict-regulating device in Yugoslavia was because the insufficient geographical clustering of the relevant ethnic communities.(O'Leary & McGeary : 1993:33).

The model of Switzerland is quoted ignoring a few essential facts. Among 'prejudices or errors contained in the 'Swiss model' one can count:

1. implying this model was attained peacefully, a historical error; many wars were needed to create Switzerland as we know it today

2. confusing the stability and endurance of a state formula reached organically compared to an artificial model imposed on a society, as we've often seen it happen in the Third World

3. confusing between a regional-ethnic identity and nationalism. Nationalism tends to stop only when he nation-state is attained. Or, in the Swiss case there are many linguistic and ethnic identities, buy none of a national intensity.

At the opposite extreme of the Swiss model federalists in Romania constantly bring up the 'Gagauzia' model. Gagauzia is a small region in Southern Moldova(135.000 inhabitants). Its inhabitants have a remote different ethnic origin (presumably Turkish), but Russian is their native language. Due to separatist tactics supported by the 14th Soviet -than Russian - Army between 1991 and 1993 both Gagauzia and the Dniestr Republic broke free from Moldova and were finally granted a 'special status' embodied in the new Moldovan Constitution.

The mention of these models in support of Hungarians' claims for autonomy is at least surprising. The legal framework for Gagauzia and The Dniestr Republic - whose main fear what the possible union of Moldova with Romania (a highly unlikely possibility) was not meant to accommodate the national identities of the two regions, since they have none, but only to secure post-Soviet elites that Moldova's freedom to choose the reunification path with Romania is reduced. The two regions were visited by several Western journalists, especially during General Lebed' stage as Commander of the Fourth Army and was rightly depicted as the last bation of hard-line Soviet Unionists, eventually combined with most wanted criminals who became leaders of paramilitary troops in this wonderful refuge place (see for instance coverage of the Dniestr war by French journals Le Monde, Le Point and the International Herald Tribune). I interviewed president Topal of Gagauzia personally in 1991 ; the President spoke no Gagauz language, admitted he was a former apparatchik, complained Turkey is not answering properly to the Gagauz friendly tentatives and strongly recommended to the group of Western journalists to visit the National Gagauz Museum, (which we did). The museum contained a rather limited stock of Soviet-times displays such as medals and awards for surpassing the production plan, but nothing more : it was the typical Soviet-type identity revival attempts made only in order to control the real attempts for national emancipation of nations, which Helene Carrere d'Encausse so masterfully described in her books ( ). Since then efforts have been made to reinvent the Gagauz language, but the population remains closer to the name it is usually given in press agencies reports : Russophone. In any event, theoretically and practically, comparing a post-Soviet environment with the rest of Europe is a mistake. Nowhere else in Europe (until Kosovo) have entire populations been displaced, deported, eradicated, cleansed and denationalized in the recent past- to amount finally to an artificial, unstable ethnic composure- as in Stalin's Soviet Union. During his most oppressive time Ceausescu went so far as to compel University graduates to take jobs outside their native areas, an experiment which failed, since refusal did not lead to prison, but only to the loss of the job. Comparing post-Ceausescu Romania with post-Soviet Moldova is therefore groundless, while comparing Romania with any other European country where national and ethnic groups evolved naturally, and national feelings are genuine can be useful. The models of Gagauzia and the Dniestr are even less worth mentioning because they represent attempts of institutionalizing by undemocratic means undemocratic regional units - leaving a helpless population at a mercy of the local oligarchy, living on arms' and drugs' deals. In the case of this artifact to speak of 'the practical application of subsidiarity' as Renate Weber does (Weber :1997) makes little sense. Subsidiarity, a concept understandable in Germany due to the tradition and organization which allowed the survival of 'lander' cannot apply to Southern Moldova, a strong Russified region with no political tradition of the local (non-Russian, but Russian speaking population) and where even the term of traditionalism makes no sense. Abstract models help little in the solving of an ethnic conflict : rather, it is the ground conditions that impose the solutions. Furthermore, self-determination is justifiable if seen as democratic collective rights seeking. But often, as Tamir points out, it 'is not a search for Millian liberties and civil liberties, but for status' and this is done 'At the cost of relinquishing their civil rights and liberties' (Tamir 1993: 71). This is obviously the case of the two regions mentioned.

The most important argument for federalism cannot be found in Gagauzia. Rather it is made by the commitment of an important part of the Hungarian elite to it, as the case of Odorheiu showed. Local authorities behaved in their dispute with Mr. Remus Opris as if the Szekelys area is autonomous already: his arbitration was seen and is seen by the Hungarian elite as the gravest offense. The local tradition is in favor of cantonalism: a town like Tg. Secuiesc again displays the Middle Age flags of the 'Three Chairs' together with the Hungarian and the Romanian flags. Larger towns with larger Romanians minorities do not dare to do so openly but the spirit is there.

The second important argument, connected closely to the first, is the presence of an ethnic regional party. After the disappearance of the Communist party the new political system was unable to create trans-ethnic parties. One reason is the prompt, almost immediate founding of DAHR, but also the lack of interest of the Romanian parties for this problem. Interest in shown either in the worst possible way by nationalist parties, or in electoral years as Romanian parties remember they need the votes of Hungarians for their presidential candidate. Hungarians voted in fact at each presidential elections (1990, 1992,1996) with the Romanian challengers to Iliescu agreed by DAHR. Rumors about a split of DAHR on doctrinal or ideological lines have been going on for years, but despite the existence of ideological clubs inside the Alliance it is highly unlikely one day the Liberal Club, for instance, would join the Romanian Liberal Party. The structures DAHR created in 1995 -like the Council of Representatives- were also seen at the time with good reason as anticipating a federal organisation. These structures have functioned within the limited possibilities of the existing legal and administrative framework. The Council gained some experience to be able to function as a regional Parliament, for instance. But of what region?

The main advantage of federalism as Hungarians see it is the elimination at least for a restricted area of the continuous bargain with Romanian authorities over various issues. Strict delimitation of powers between central and regional government is the main incentive of federalism, while the structure of the Romanian unitary state allows even the most liberal government a strong hand in local affairs, or at least the need for the local government to communicate to the center if not seek approval for many regional matters. Where the local authorities seemed to have abused their powers the government, in the person of Mr. Opris stepped in immediately.

The argument against federalism is also strong enough. Most important, the geographical segregation is not complete. Even if homogenous Hungarians pockets can be found in the Szekelys area, other Romanian pockets, mixed villages and towns, and the fact that half of the Hungarians live in Romanian majority areas outside the Szekelys' complicate and attempt to cantonalization. The 'special status' area would create two categories of Hungarians and two categories of Romanians - the ones inside and outside the special status area. Would democracy and cohabitation profit from this or rather would new problems arise ? The most outspoken promoter of a federalist solution, Will Kymlicka, cannot fail to notice that while federalism offers ethno-cultural minorities the best conditions possible, it stops short from providing the bonds of solidarity necessary to keep together even a federal state: ethnic-based federations seem doomed to separation sooner or later.(Kymlicka: 1998)

The Romanians, not only the Romanian government, do not agree to this solution. Even the liberal Ciorbea government had reserves. Besides obvious reasons, the most likely outcome of such an attempt would be a strong nationalist mobilization on the Romanian side, to the benefit of Romanian nationalist parties. Public opinion is against federalism both from fear of irredentism - the interwar revisionist times are not so far - and also from conservatism. Reshaping the Romanian entire administrative organization in this radical form never experienced before, in order to find a solution to provide the Szekelys area with some form of territorial autonomy would be unpopular, regardless the guarantees the Romanian minority in the area might receive. Even now the Romanian press runs strong campaigns accusing the government it does nothing to prevent the denationalization of Romanians in the area.

Some Hungarian leaders in favor of decentralization hope that the next years will bring an increase in the regional identity feelings of Romanians and somehow and agreement can be reached among Transylvanians to seek a special status together. Despite minor incidents such as the attempt of the mayor of Iasi to create a 'Moldovans Party' (with no following) this development is highly unlikely. the Romanian situation rather verifies the theory of Walker Connor. Connor was amending the Deutsch model by pointing out that while' increased sectional contacts tend to dissipate sectional differences among diverse ethno-national conscious groups appear more apt to cement and reinforce the divisive sense of uniqueness'(Connor :1994; 171). In this respect the assimilationist attempts of the Communist regime directed against Hungarians failed, while the policy of the Romanian monarchy and then the Communist Republic to create a homogenous Romanian population succeeded. Where exposure to communications revealed a minor difference, as among Romanian regions, the difference was gradually eliminated. Where it made people (Hungarians and Romanians) aware of an important difference (as in the case of a common University) the exposure to the others only enforced the separate group identity.

3. THE ARGUMENT FOR CONSOCIATONALISM

Consociatonalism arose at first an extraordinary enthusiasm, only to be then submitted to hard trials. In its complete form as Lijphart described it is rather a complicated mechanism, which can accompany or not the federal organization of the state. In any event, consociatonalism does not equal federalism as some authors think, pointing to the case of Belgium. Belgium is rather a model of conflicting federalism -at least constitutionally, but also politically. We side with Mc Geary and O'Leary that consociatonalism is rather an alternative to federalism, also it can be a complement sometimes as well. The essence of consociatonalism is power sharing, and it was tried by Dutch and Lebanese politicians mainly, but also experimented in Malaysia, Fiji and Northern Ireland. Under consociative rule as Lijphart described it (Lijphart: 1977) minorities enjoy community autonomy in matters that concern them and have the right to a constitutional veto. The country is governed by a grand coalition featuring every sector of the divided society, and the same rule applies to employment in the public sector. As it was often pointed consociatonalism can function only in proportional systems, being difficult if not impossible to accommodate with Westminster-type democracies.

What are the arguments is favor of consociatonalism in Romania ? The strongest one is that it is already under way. Consciously or not, completely or not, this was the way tried by the winners of the November 1996 elections when inviting DAHR to the government coalition and dividing public positions proportionally in order to accommodate them. The fact that this was done rather on a party basis than on an ethnic basis - since DAHR was not the only party invited to participate, but the Social Democrats also, is another proof of consociatonal rule, since the most important cleavage of the Romanian society after 1990 was between the post-communist left and the anti-Communist right.

Consociatonalism rises serious objections as well. The main one is the lack of knowledge surrounding it. While both Romanians and Hungarians have some understanding of federalism - Hungarians to praise it, Romanians to fear it - Romanian politicians have never debated the advantages and disadvantages of consociatonalism. The politicians of the centrist coalition are no longer committed assimilationists as the post-Communists, but they are little aware of what they are. No party ever organized a serious debate on the accommodation of the Hungarian minority in Romania. Party programs address very superficially the problem, in a few lines usually encouraging the conservation of the present situation. Consociatonalism requires the absence of a will to assimilate the minority and a commitment of politicians to make it work (Mc Garry and O'Leary :1993 :34). Admitting the first point is met now to an extent still unprecedented in Romania, the second raises doubts. Romanian politicians are only vaguely committed to governing with Hungarians -the Democratic Convention, their old allies, the most, and the Democrat Party, as their votes in the Parliament show, the least. Hungarian politicians, in their turn, are divided. Most of them favor the cantonalization-federalization solution, although they realize it is not a realistic one. Hungarians intellectuals also push for more radical approaches, as Bela Marko reproached them in his June 27, 1998 speech at the Council of Representatives meeting at Cluj. The commitment for consociatonalism is thus reduced only to Hungarian politicians involved directly with the government, the division line cutting across parliamentary clubs as well, as Mr. Marko admitted in the same speech (quoted by Rompres News Agency). However, if cultural autonomy could be achieved and, some form of veto for the Hungarian community institutionalized, consociatonalism would become more popular. Its main advantage remains its feasibility, while Cantonisation is difficult and risky.

DAHR itself might be the main obstacle in front of consociatonalism. Mr. Marko was right to say that DAHR is the 'the main achievement' of the Hungarian community after 1990, due to its unity, so unlike the other Hungarian communities in the Carpathians, bitterly divided over power. However, what was an advantage during the post-communist regime might turn into a disadvantage in the long term. Ethnic parties, as Horowitz showed, start by mirroring ethnic conflict, but end by giving it more depth it (Horowitz :1984). The presence of a strong DAHR as a permanent partner, a third partner in what should be a state to state relationship between Romania and Hungary, discourages any attempt at any organizations cutting across the ethnic line. Few of these are now left. Since the main goal is not inter ethnic communication, but the preservation of the Hungarian cultural identity common cultural organizations are not encouraged. It is obvious this strong policy of cultivating the national identity only increases the division between the two national groups. Neither DAHR, nor the Romanian state have made from ethnic cross-cutting organizations and inter-culturalism a policy. DAHR openly avoids this, while the Romanian state confuses it with an organization dominated some way or another by Romanians.

It may seem as quite a long shot, still cohabitation based on power sharing and civic nationalism looks like the only solution possible. In this formula a new form of communication between the two groups needs to be designed. In contemporary Europe we should conceive communication as something more than just acknowledgment of some innate difference. The policy of escalating national celebrations and displaying national anthems, encouraged by politicians of both groups, should be given up and left to extremist nationalists only. Separation of borders only mirrors the psychological separation: preventing the latter is essential in order to keep the peace between the two national groups. A joint effort to create that 'larger circle' which avoids clashes of 'loyalties of identical scope' (Allport :1954 : 43) is not only necessary, but has a historical opportunity to be fulfilled in the present political conditions. Consociatonalism has the advantage of not referring to territory in any way, henceforth it can stand easier attacks from Romanian nationalists. But in order to succeed it needs the full commitment of the Hungarian elite, and of the Romanian centrist parties. Neither of these exists today.

Will Transylvania find finally the peace and become only the legendary cradle of vampire stories, or will it turn into another Kosovo? The answer to this is difficult. Looking at Transylvania as it is now, a peaceful region where inhabitants share both rewards and hardships it would be tempting to say Transylvania will never again see another nightmare as the ones in its past. However not much is needed to make this peace vanish. Increasing economic and social hardship, nationalistic elites, and a self-government program of the Hungarian minority are not elements of a good prognosis.

Nationalism is there in Transylvania. It exists on the Hungarian side, in the desire to circumscribe a territory where Hungarians should not have to share power with Romanians. It exists on the Romanian side, in the attempts to hinder the expression of national identity of Hungarians and deny them the right to use their maternal language in administration or any other part of the public sphere. Both can be controlled in normal times, both can escape control if some international development creates exceptional situations, in which anything becomes possible. The commitment of the entire Romanian political class to European and NATO integration is a positive element:, but the entire Romanian political class, including democrats, would unite against a Hungarian attempt to proclaim self-government unilaterally of some part of the Transylvanian territory^*. Transylvania is, unfortunately, more a part of the Balkan area due to its present ethnic configuration than a part of Central Europe. Its problem can be solved only if Romania succeeds in politically becoming 'Central Europe' and escaping the 'Balkans'. Attempts of shaping a separate destiny for its Hungarian minority would only trigger disaster. The effort to find a common solution for all the national groups may however create a new successful model of solving an inter-ethnic conflict.