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National Minority Problems in Romania: Continuity or Change?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Stephen Fischer-Galati
Stephen Fischer-Galati*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado (Emeritus)
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Extract

The national minorities question in Romania has been one of crises and polemics. This is due, in part, to the fact that Greater Romania, established at the end of World War I, brought the Old Romanian Kingdom into a body politic (a kingdom itself relatively free of minority problems), with territories inhabited largely by national minorities. Thus, the population of Transylvania and the Banat, both of which had been constituent provinces of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, included large numbers of Hungarians and Germans, while Bessarabia, a province of the Russian empire, included large numbers of Jews. While the Hungarian (Szeklers and Magyars), Germans (Saxons and Swabians), and Jewish minorities were the largest and most difficult to integrate into Greater Romania, other sizeable national minorities such as the Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Serbians, Turks, and Gypsies also posed problems to the rulers of Greater Romania during the interwar period and, in some cases, even after World War II.

Type
I Eastern Europe Reconsidered
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 22 , Issue 1: Special Issue - Ethnopolitics in Poland , Spring 1994 , pp. 71 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR 

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References

Note

1. The essential study on national minorities in Romania is by Elmer Illys, National Minorities in Romania: Change in Transylvania, Boulder, Colorado, 1982. For further bibliographic references, see Stephan M. Horak, Eastern European National Minorities 1919–1980, Littleton, Colorado, 1985.Google Scholar

2. Important contributions to these subjects are contained in Henry L. Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State, New Haven, 1951, and Stephen Fischer-Galati, Twentieth Century Rumania, New York, 1970.Google Scholar

3. See in particular Stephen Fischer-Galati, “Fascism, Communism, and the Jewish Question in Romania,” in Bela Vago and George L. Mosse, Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918–1945 (New York, 1974), pp. 157–175 and Radu Ioanid, The Sword of the Archangel, Boulder, Colorado, 1990, passim.Google Scholar

4. Illyés, ibid.Google Scholar

5. See especially the fundamental work edited by Franz G. Eckhart and Martin Broszat, Das Schicksal der Deutschen in Rumänien, Bonn, 1957.Google Scholar

6. Roberts, op.cit., pp. 20 ff.Google Scholar

7. The evolution of the extreme right and its relationship with the Jewish question is admirably discussed by Eugen Weber, “Romania,” in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley, 1966), pp. 501–574 and by Ioanid, op.cit., pp. 98 ff.Google Scholar

8. Fischer-Galati, Twentieth Century Rumania, pp. 46 ff.Google Scholar

9. The inaccuracy of statistical data has been recognized by the present rulers of Romania in various statements contained in the contemporary Romanian press. The estimates used in this study are also based on recent information contained in the press.Google Scholar

10. Fischer-Galati, Fascism, Communism and the Jewish Question, pp. 173 ff.Google Scholar

11. See the important data provided by Trond Gilberg, Nationalism and Communism in Romania, Boulder, 1990, pp. 166 ff.Google Scholar

12. Illys, op.cit., passim; Gilberg, op.cit., passim.Google Scholar

13. Stephen Fischer-Galati, “Trianon and Romania,” in Béla K. Király et al., Essays on World War I: Total War and Peacemaking, A Case Study of Trianon, New York, 1982, pp. 423 ff.Google Scholar

14. Ibid. See also Gabor Barta et al., Kurze Geschichte Siebenbürgens, Budapest, 1990, pp. 659 ff. and Stephen Fischer-Galati, “Smokescreen and Iron Curtain: A Reassessment of Territorial Revisionism Vis-à-Vis Romania Since World War I,” East European Quarterly, XXII, No.1, 1988, pp. 37–53.Google Scholar

15. Illyés, op.cit., pp. 71 ff.Google Scholar

16. Gilberg, op.cit., pp. 137 ff.Google Scholar

17. Stephen Fischer-Galati, “Rumania in Transition,” Current Issues, No. 1, 1991, pp. 1–15.Google Scholar

18. See the valuable study by Hans Hartl, Das Schicksal des Deutschtums in Rumänien, 1938–1945, Würzburg, 1958.Google Scholar

19. Gilberg, op.cit., pp. 166 ff. See also Supra, note 9.Google Scholar

20. Valuable new data is contained in David Crowe, “The Gypsy Historical Experience in Romania,” in David Crowe and John Kolsti, The Gypsies of Eastern Europe, Armonk, New York, 1991, pp. 61–79.Google Scholar

21. See repeated articles and editorials in the contemporary Romanian press.Google Scholar