Southeast Europe

a national minority. This was an attempt to cope with the new situation. On the one
hand, Hungarians considered themselves as belonging to the Hungarian ethno-cultural
nation; on the other hand, they are aware that under Romanian rule they have to adopt
strategies to reformulate their identity. Such attempts may be considered a “situational
ideology.” Transylvanianism considers the reciprocal cultural influences among
Hungarians, Romanians, and Germans that developed into a common sense of
civilisation. It suggests that there are more commonalties than differences between these
peoples. However, only Hungarians claimed Transylvanianism; there was little response
from Romanians. Accordingly: an important writer, János Székely, notes that this is the
ideology of the losers. In conclusion, we may say that the Hungarian identity of
Hungarians in Transylvania was powerful long before 1918, and it was accentuated
when meeting the new situation. The basis of that identity remained the same, but was
reformulated. This also led to a discrepancy between Hungarian identity in Transylvania
(see 2.1.3) and in Hungary, but was not accompanied by a lessening of the distance
between Hungarians in Transylvania and Romanians. The Hungarisation of the region
described in section 2.2 ensured a strong sense of identity among Hungarians even
before Transylvania became a part of Romania.
The communist regimes, Ceauşescu’s in particular, worked to destroy the independent
identity of Hungarians and other minorities in the country (see 5.1). With the use of fear
in the form of the Securitate (secret police), he ensured a notable lack of dissent.
However, the voice of dissidents was not completely absent in the country. In 1988,
citizens from the majority and the minority population wrote a letter to express their
discontent with the regime. It was the third open letter by a Romanian named Doina
Cornea, a lecturer at Cluj University. Twenty-seven individuals signed the letter to
Ceausescu that was broadcast on Radio Free Europe in September of that year. In
substance, the letter condemned the policy of “systemisation”, a plan conceived by
Ceauşescu to halve the number of villages in the country. Systemisation was seen by
many members of the Hungarian minority to be a direct attack on them (Deletant,
1995:267-268). Such shows of protest, however, were rare, as the regime tried to
eliminate opposition of any sort.
Since 1990 however, the Hungarians’ awareness of “being different” has shown itself
not only through the usual outlets of culture and media, but also in a growing
participation in the political arena. The “difference” acknowledged by the state between
the Hungarian minority and other minorities in Romania, as described in section 2.3.1,
has also been a factor in this.
2.1.3 Identifying this difference as ethnic or national
Probably the article of Gusztáv Molnár, who assumes that there is a Transylvanian
identity, raised the most important debate on identity (Molnár, 1997). He bases his
arguments on the clash of civilisation theory of Samuel P. Huntington. Molnár states
that in Transylvania, both the Romanians and Hungarians are part of western
civilisation, while Romanians living in other regions of Romania belong to the orthodox
civilisation. He argues that Romanians belong to a different civilisation. He considers
this difference much more important than any ethnic differences. Nevertheless, his
Romanian partners (Andreescu, 1998; Capelle-Pogăcean, 1998) claim that even if such
a cleavage of civilisations exists between the two groups, ethnic differences are more
important. This is partially a political debate seeking for political solutions such as
federalism, autonomy and devolution (the Scottish case was Molnar’s favourite
example). The visions of the authors on the possible solutions of the issues regarding
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