Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

DRAGOº PETRESCUnationalists went further and made use of the most bizarre arguments. Forinstance, Radu Ceontea, a co-founder of the Romanian nationalist organizationVatra Româneascã (Romanian Hearth) declared:I came from a pure Romanian village in the Mureº Valley. My village sufferedin every possible way under the Hungarians. My father was the villagebutcher, and my mother had four years of schooling. The only bookI knew before my school textbooks was the Bible. Even as a small childI was told by my father not to trust Hungarians. He told me that “everysingle Hungarian carries a rope in his pocket.” The cord with which theywould strangle Romanians. 38Such arguments were inspired in many respects by the nationalist rhetoricthat accompanied the late realization of the nation and by the idea ofa Romanian nation continuously contested and threatened. However,such attitudes were reinforced by what László Fey named the “anti-Romanianchauvinism of the Hungarians,” rooted in a complex of cultural superioritytoward the Romanian majority. 39 Some of the elements of sucha discourse can be identified, for instance, in a fragment by Attila Sántha:For me, as a child, “Romanians” were an abstract notion, having to dowith the virtual realm; they were the TV actors who would constructsocialism. At the age of eight, this was a nice thing. Being born in a smalltown with a ethnic Hungarian population of over 98% (at that time), thefirst Romanian in the flesh I saw was the teacher of Romanian language,who was striving to teach us a language spoken only on the TV. …As every Hungarian living in Romania, upset for having to live in a poverty-strickencountry, in poverty (while the luckier Hungarians from Hungaryare already joining the European Union), sometimes I really thinkthat there must be some problems with the Romanian people itself. 40The Iliescu regime did little to prevent an escalation of the ethnic conflictin Transylvania. In March 1990, a violent conflict occurred in Tîrgu Mureº,between Romanians and members of the Hungarian minority. 41 Apartfrom the way in which the Iliescu regime treated the democratic opposition,the minorities’ issue and the violent events of Tîrgu Mureº led to theinternational isolation of Romania and the loss of the widespread internationalsupport gained in December 1989. March 1990 was a crucialmoment in diverting and delaying political and economic reforms, andtherefore hampering a rapid transition to democracy in Romania. Thisfavorably changed after the general elections of November 1996, when thedemocratic opposition (the Democratic Convention) won the largest284