Causes of the Liberation and National Reunion War (1916-19)

[Najroda]

QUOTE

Najroda, I went to the site you mentioned: http://www.net.hu/corvinus/lib/kosztin/kos...sztin.pdf[/url] I went directly to page 133, were the \"after 1989\" part starts. Do you know how do I feel? Frightened... Or like after a cold shower. You said: QUOTE I admit: not an impartial source. The way I felt it: Blindly partisan. Aggressively partisan.

Yes, I can imagine that. That's why I immediately acknowledged that this author isn't really interested in the other (Romanian, Saxon) side of the story (but that does not make what he says untrue per se, only unbalanced, and personally I do not approve the tone of his writing, but that's not the reason why I quoted him). But perhaps now you can imagine how Transylvanian Hungarians feel the average, equally one-sided, aggresively partisan Romanian history book (including the ones their own children have to learn history from) like a cold shower and aggresively partisan. The fact that you know of many periods and acts of Hungarian aggression against Romanian (you just don't have the time and patience to translate them, which is OK with me, I believe that they, or at least some of them happened), but basically none against Transylvanian Hungarians says enough.

[Najroda]

Thank you dead-cat, thank you!

Yes, that is exactly the point I wanted to make. Two wrongs do not make one right. You cannot discount the Romanian with the Hungarian treatment of nationalities in Transylvania and say "now we're quits". The only humane thing to do is to acknowledge and then condemn the malpractices on both sides, without an a priori attitude that one is by definition the lesser evil of the two.

[Florin]

QUOTE

.............. nor does it help a member of an ethnic minority in post 1945 Romania, who is digging with a shovel the \"danube-black sea channel\", and whose parents had their assets confiscated in 1921, to know that the treatment of minorities in Romania is actually better than it was in pre-1918 Hungary. ..........

As your post is like an appeal for peace, it is time for peace... once again in the Forum. :?
I wouldn't quote your post, but the foreign reader has to know that the arrested Romanians also were digging with their shovels at the "Danube-Sea Channel", and moreover, the Romanians were the majority of the arrested people working there.

Also the foreigner has to know that, yes, the Hungarian noblemen lost their land after 1918, but this also happened in all Romanian Kingdom. It was a policy against all big land owners: to share their land to the peasants who worked it before. I think this made Romania unique in in-between war: She was capitalist, she was a kingdom, but the land belonged to 6 million land owners, and not to few hundreds of super-rich people, like somewhere else.

This is something I do not like in some foreign sites: It is omitted (I guess with intention) to mention that unjust things happened to a minority (after 1918, or after 1947, or after 1975) also happened to the Romanians. So there was no discrimination, but was like an equality in being oppressed and being abused.

[dead-cat]

but of course there were romanians at the channel (or whatever compulsory labour site) and of course there were more romanians than minorities, but the romanians were there because they were politically undesirable, while the minorities were OFTEN there because of the ethnicity.

example:
when i was called to the army recruiting center for the first time (before 1989) i was asked during the interview, by the conducting officer various questions, among which my nationality. i said german. the guy looked at me and asked me again. i repeated. since he wanted to be nice and tried to help me he asked again, explaining with a low voice that insisting on my choice would have at least unpleasent consequences for me.

i can give you several examples, of friends of mine, belonging to the hungarian minority which "served" their entire army time digging at the channel, while their romanian friends and classmates (of the same promotion) were send somewhere else.

i'm sorry, but if you say there was no discrimination (even in opression) i don't buy it (i wish i could) having witnessed it several times myself. that's why i'm saying, you have to be a minority to know how it's like.

as for the reform of 1921, it did make sense in certain regions indeed, but, as there is always a but and this applies to Banat only as i don't know how it was in the rest of Transsylvania, there wern't many big landowners. There were richer ppl and poorer ppl. but there was no boyar and certainly no indenture servants, this relict having been abolished in Austria during the 1780ies. there was no comparable situation like the agrarian problem of 1907 in the kingdom. so the reform didn't do any good in that region but giving allmost everybody the feeling that the new state they suddenly belonged to, would prefer to exist without them.

[Dénes]

QUOTE

This is something I do not like in some foreign sites: It is omitted (I guess with intention) to mention that unjust things happened to a minority (after 1918, or after 1947, or after 1975) also happened to the Romanians. So there was no discrimination, but was like an equality in being oppressed and being abused.

That's not quite true. Despite general hardships being equally shared by all citizens of Rumania, nobody was punished for being.... Rumanian. Yet, many ethnics were beaten, arrested, deported, etc. for alleged "anti-Rumanian activity", or "irredentist activity", simply for listening, for example, a music LP made in Hungary. I know this first hand, from a case in my enourage. However, it's no wonder the Rumanian majority, particularly in Wallachia and Moldavia, don't know much about such events, as the only ways to obtain such news during those times was the word of mouth and even that was dangerous. Ignorance was/is also to blame.

A Hungarian MP in the Bucharest Parliament used the following methaphore when referring to the additional burden of ethnic minorities in Rumania: "Under Communism, except for the ruling class, every citizen was slapped on the face due the general hardships and opression. However, Hungarians and other ethnics received two additional slaps".

[Dénes]

QUOTE

i'm sorry, but if you say there was no discrimination (even in opression) i don't buy it (i wish i could) having witnessed it several times myself. that's why i'm saying, you have to be a minority to know how it's like.

Wise words, "Tote Katz".

I could also tell stories from the (pre-1989) Army, although I wasn't "pre-selected" to serve in a "special" unit.

[Florin]

QUOTE

...i can give you several examples, of friends of mine, belonging to the hungarian minority which \"served\" their eintire army time digging at the channel, while their romanian friends and classmates (of the same promotion) were send somewhere else.

OK, I took note. Let say I even learned new things.
My only question: were the Romanian and Hungarian from the same high school class in the same situation - both admitted by exam at a university, or both failed the exam ? Even so, the Romanian Army was not sending the people from the same close community in the same unit. Even more, the idea was to avoid of having somebody serving in his native village/town/city. However, I had colleagues who enjoyed this, by luck.
(By the way... I personally knew 2 of 100% Romanian who also spent their army time digging channels, or in construction building detachments. On the other hand, I had Hungarian and German colleagues trained together with me in a top high-tech weapon: Radiolocation.)

And as you are German... I think you are well informed about what happened with various German communities all over Eastern and Central Europe, after 1945. As a non-German, I know that yes, there were 100,000 young Germans sent to work in USSR for few years, there were Germans relocated by force from Banat to Baragan (all their belongings left in Banat). But in other countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) the German communities were completely wiped out. And after several years, the Germans forced to move to Baragan were allowed to return to Banat. Am I wrong?
The resume of my point: maybe the Romanians were bad, but the others were much worse.

[Najroda]

QUOTE

The resume of my point: maybe the Romanians were bad, but the others were much worse.

Perhaps, but only Romania got paid by Germany for it's "services to the German minority :wink:

[dead-cat]

the story i told you is about regular folks, no university no nothing, 12 classes and then the army. i heared of romanians who spend their army time at the channel myself. but not those i know, while most but all of my hungarian friends (they were about 50-50) ended up ferrying earth with a wheelbarrow every day. of course they could buy themselves out too etc etc. but what i'm saying is that, as a general (unofficial) policy regular members of an ethnic minority (more so in the case of "undesirable" ethnic minorities, like germans and hungarians) were used to such activities.

as friends told me, there were batallions made up to 90% of ethnic hungarians (from all over transsylvania).

[dragos]

The discussion is getting off-topic here

[Florin]

QUOTE

Perhaps, but only Romania got paid by Germany for it's \"services to the German minority :wink:

As Dead-Cat may confirm to you, the wave of persecutions about the German minorites started immediately after 1945. (In USSR they started in 1941.)
In Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia all members of the German communities were forcely sent to Germany. Some of them, as in Poland and Czechoslovakia, lived on the same place for more than 1000 years, before being forced to leave. What happened in Romania, I mentioned in my post above (please read). I am not ultimate authority in this problem, but it is a start.

What you are mentioning in your quote was a policy generated in 1970's, or in 1980's. I think the Federal Republic of Germany paid 2000 Reichmarks for every German allowed to leave. That was a deal with the Communist regime. No money were needed after 1989.

So, Najroda... Do not mix apples with oranges, because there was a gap of 30years between them. It is not fair of your behalf to suggest that by comparison the fate of the Germans was better in Romania than in the rest of Eastern Europe or Czechoslovakia, just because of money. :nope:

PS: You know, Najroda... I think you are not a bad man. You just try (and succeed) to interrupt my daily routine and to neglect other parts of my daily life, by answering to you.

PPS: Sorry, Dragos, you finished your post before mine. I had no chance to see the warning.

[Najroda]

Florin, my last post was tongue-in-cheek. I had no intention to mix mellons wit bananas

[Victor]

QUOTE

April 26, 1884, a new influential Rumanian newspaper was created in Sibiu/Nagyszeben, titled 'Tribuna', with Ioan Slavici as director. Reportedly, it was very critical towards the Hungarian rule. And it wasn't the only Rumanian-language newspaper in Transylvania.

Between April 1893 and April 1903, the Tribuna had paid 56,948 crowns in fines and its journalists had received in total 207 months of prison.

16 March 1903 – V. B Moldovanu was arrested and later sentenced to 4 months in prison for an article in Foaia Poporului from Sibiu/Hermanstadt/Nagyszeben

February 1905 – I. Ioanoivici was fined with 1,000 Crowns for an article in Libertatea

December 1905 – journalists from Drapelul in Lugoj were sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of 1,000 Crowns; Poporul Roman was fined with 500 Crowns and Foaia Poporului with 370.

14 November 1906 – D. Donga from the news paper Unirea (from Blaj) was sentenced to 8 months in prison and a fine of 1,200 Crowns and M. Gaspar from Drapelul (Lugoj) to 10 days.

12 June 1907 – Voicu Nitescu was sentenced to two years in prison for an article in Tribuna

3 October 1907 – Vasile Macru from Lupta was sentenced to 8 months and 800 Crowns

November 1907 – I. N. Ioja from Tribuna was sentenced to 6 years and 500 Crowns; prof. Dr. I. Lupas received 2 months and a 200 Crowns fine for an article in Tara noastra (Sibiu); Dem. Lascu received 6 months and was fined 500 Crowns for an article in Tribuna

17 September 1908 – I. Spuderea from Gazeta transilvaniei was sentenced to 3 months in prison and fined 300 Crowns

24 September 1908 – S. Moldovanu from Foaia Poporului was sentenced to 4 months and a fine of 400 Crowns

12 November 1908 – V. Macru, from Lupta was sentenced to 28 months and fined 5,200 Crowns.

And the examples could go on.

[Victor]

QUOTE

How could the Transylvanian Romanians have survived a millenium of Hungarian rule if it wasn't extremely tollerant.

Medieval nations had nothing to do with ethnicity. The problem was nobility and religion. The Hungarian and Catholic Romanian nobles could not care less if the peasants that worked their lands were Romanians or Hungarians. They did not count, only the barons did.

QUOTE

Yet it seems as if you Romanians can only equate Hungary with the less tollerant period 1867-1918 (less tollerant than pre-1867 but not less tollerant than elsewhere in Europe, Romanian kingdom incluis), and ignore or dismiss Romania's own poor treatment of it's new minorities after 1918 at the same time. In any case, that's about all I hear here.

Nobody sad that the minorities were treated very well in post-war Romania. However poor the treatment was in the inter-war period it was better than what the Twin Monarchy had for the Romanians. And this was demonstrated to you with arguments. It is your choice to consider them or not.

QUOTE

Or have you ever wondered how a Romanian (Hunyadi Mátyás/Matei de Hunedoara) could become the king (one of it's finest!) of the country that allegedly oppressed him?

As I said before, do not mix up the ages. The religion and the nobility were more important in medieval times than the ethnicity. And btw, Matia* was only a quarter Romanian as Iancu de Hunedoara/Janos Huniady was half Romanian, half Hungarian. I would also doubt that Matyas was such a good king. His father, however, was a great man. Hungarian-Romanian cooperation at its best, probably.

*Matia is in fact the correct translation in Romanian, even though there are many Romanian books/articles that use the wrong translation; Matei means Mathew; Matia was a different apostle than Mathew.

QUOTE

Yes, that is exactly the point I wanted to make. Two wrongs do not make one right. You cannot discount the Romanian with the Hungarian treatment of nationalities in Transylvania and say \"now we're quits\". The only humane thing to do is to acknowledge and then condemn the malpractices on both sides, without an a priori attitude that one is by definition the lesser evil of the two.

True, but you must also recognize the positive sides and not level the wrongs.

[Najroda]

QUOTE

The Hungarian and Catholic Romanian nobles could not care less if the peasants that worked their lands were Romanians or Hungarians. They did not count, only the barons did.

True. Before the 19th century people were rather persecuted for their religion and oppressed because of their social class than because of their ethnicity.

QUOTE

Nobody sad that the minorities were treated very well in post-war Romania. However poor the treatment was in the inter-war period it was better than what the Twin Monarchy had for the Romanians. And this was demonstrated to you with arguments. It is your choice to consider them or not.

I see both simmilarities and differences in the goals and methods. But I can't judge which was the lesser evil. Anyway, I would not use the word "better". It is totally inapropriate in this context.

QUOTE

I would also doubt that Matyas was such a good king.

I don't think he was called "Mathias the Righteous" for no reason, although there is probably also some mythologization involved, but it is a fact that he thoroughly reformed the judiciary, and seperated it from the administration, thus creating independent courts, quite revolutionary at the time! As a military leader he was extremely succesfull, probably the most succesful Hungarian king of all (he defeated the Turks at Belgrade and extended his rule to such territories as Silesia, Czechia, Moravia, Austria, Serbia and Bosnia). He was also a great humanist of the renaisance, architecture and litearure flourished, and under his rule he "kocsi" (=carriage type from the village Kocs, halfway Budapest and Vienna = coach, Kutsche, coche etc.) was invented. Also, he was very socially empathic, therefore he had a remarkably broad supporter base in society.