Southeast Europe

During the inter-war period Hungarian churches assumed responsibility for education.
The nationalisation of church properties in 1948 therefore meant that 150,000 pupils
lost their schools for Hungarian language education (DAHR, 1998:2). Of the 1593
confessional nationalised schools, 1,033 had taught in Hungarian, and 266 in German
(Nagy, 2000).
Under communism, minority education suffered as a result of the assimilationist policy.
Although this did not happen until after 1956, the Hungarian uprising and the
receptiveness among Hungarians in Romania frightened the Romanian government into
the pursuit of a tougher policy. Much of the open-mindedness concerning Hungarian
education in Romania came prior to 1952 while Petru Groza was Romanian Prime
Minister. Groza spoke Hungarian and was therefore personally disposed toward
Hungarian language education. Government policies at the time, however, were very
much a mixture of good and bad. It was during this period that the medical university
was established in Târgu Mureş. At the same time, the Romanian language was
introduced into all schools of higher learning and a new interpretation of Romanian
history was established (IHF, 1988:37). Therefore, as István F. Nagy (Nagy, 2000)
specifies, “the wise” teaching policy of Petru Groza was nothing but a necessary
propaganda for peace negotiations after World War II. Soon after the Peace Treaty was
signed, the assimilation process increased. It was the first time that the regional
educational inspectorates were suppressed, and the number of Hungarian inspectors in
the decision-making process decreased.
Following the merger of the Hungarian Bolyai and the Romanian Babeş universities in
the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca in 1959, the number of subjects that could be
studied in the Hungarian language at the university level shrank drastically (László,
1993:19). Applied sciences, for example, were not taught in the Hungarian language.
Thus, Hungarians who wished to complete their degree in their mother tongue were
restricted to careers in teaching and medicine. Following the so-called “voluntary”
merger, in fact a forced one, the Hungarian pro-rector of the university committed
suicide in protest of the further destruction of Hungarian culture in Romania (Pilon,
1992:63).
The beginning of the Ceauşescu regime in 1965 heralded worse things to come. The
regime’s policy of forced assimilation was extended to all aspects of life, education
being one of the most important fields. There was never any ambiguity about how the
leader felt concerning multi-lingual education. In 1973 he stated clearly that, “we cannot
set up special institutes of physics, chemistry, or other specialities for young people who
do not know Romanian” (Deletant, 1998:182). There was dissent among the Hungarian
population in Romania on this subject (see Section 1.3) but abuses continued and
unofficial reports claimed that by the mid-1960s all formerly independent Hungarian
language education institutions were suppressed in Romania. School curricula also
suffered under the changing policies. History textbooks were gradually re-written to
focus exclusively on the Romanian contribution to Transylvanian history, excluding the
Hungarians completely (Pilon, 1992:63, 64).
While the 1965 Constitution guaranteed minority language education at all levels, this
was rarely if ever the case in practice. Decree No.278/1973 set a quota level for students
in minority-language classes. Twenty-five students were required at elementary level
and 36 at secondary. Romanian classes did not come under this restriction, and there
were reports of Hungarian classes that met the requirements being cancelled
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