Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947)

Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

Universitatea Babe-Bolyai din Cluj-Napoca

Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947)

Tolerance and Intolerance in Romania and Hungary

25

Tamas Lonhart is assistant professor in the Department of Contemporary History and International Relations, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. He teaches the seminars on Contemporary World History, European Integration an History and Theory of International Relations in the Hungarian language. Virgiliu Tr , u is lecturer in the Department of Contemporary History and International Relations, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. He teaches courses at the undergraduate level on Contemporary History of Romania, Political Regimes and International Relations

In the autumn of 1944, in Cluj, the main city of Transylvania, there were only a few members of the communist party and they lived together with their families in a building in the centre of the town. Many of them were Hungarians, but there were also a few Romanians and Jews living there. Even if the number of the members of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) grew to 10,000 at the beginning of 1946, their leaders continued to live and work in the same building. From there they ruled the political life of Cluj. They named it the cafeteria, and accordings to their recollections, it was a space not only for domestic life, but also for politics and a lot of gossip. In a meeting in May 1946, some of these leaders were convoked to Bucharest, in order to end this style of work and living which made possible a lot of political disturbances with an interethnic character in the town. A number of those who lived in the building left it; some of them left the party. Their destiny was, of course, different. Some of them were to meet again at the beginning of the 1950s in the same place of confinement, others, on the other side, found themselves in good political positions, in the Securitate and in the Government, in Cluj or in Bucharest. This short story can illustrate how a group of people animated by the same political ideals and working hard to fulfill them, against the wish of the majority of population, were finally victims of the ideals of those who wanted to build a new society in which there was no room for national identities. The strange connection between communism and national minorities, especially the case of the Jews and Hungarians, has been subject disputed at length in western historiography since 1945. In general, it was considered that because of the particular needs of these minorities, and the principles and solutions advanced by Leninist policies toward national
26 Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

Fig. 1 Teodor Bugnariu, mayor of Kolozsvar/Cluj in autumn 1944.

question a large number of the constituencies of the communist parties in Central and Eastern Europe in the interwar and post-war period had an important contingent of such minorities. Here we wish to discuss a particular period and a specific political situation, which could be illustrative of the way in which in their road to power communist parties used and manipulated the national question and national minorities to their advantage. It is a story about tolerance and intolerance in Romania, in the Transylvania region, in which political and social conflict was used by the communists not only for conquering the political and administrative power, but also for integration, and, in fact, dissolution of the national question in the communist paradigm. The structure of this chapter will be as follows: In the first part we will discuss the evolution of Romanian legislation concerning minorities, then we will focus our attention on the evolution of the communist party the Cluj branch which was during this period the center of communist movement in Transylvania, in order to explain the way in which national question was, so to say, resolved inside the party structures, and, finally, we will focus on the institutional relations between the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and the Popular Union of Hungarians (UPM).

Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947)

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The project for the political platform of the National Democratic Front (FND), published on 26 September 1944, had pointed out the basic communist position on the minority question, declaring
full equality for all the citizens, without making difference on the basis of nationality, religion or gender; creating a regime of friendly coexistence between all the nationalities; the necessity of attracting the masses of coexisting nationalities to the FND; obtaining by revolutionary pressure from beneath the abrogation of discriminating legislation and enforcement by law of the minority nationalities status.

The FND had used the question of Transylvania as well as that of the national minorities for conquering political power. After the Soviet Army had not allowed the Romanian authorities to settle in Northern Transylvania and had established a military occupation structure, in November 1944, they organized here an administrative system by sustaining local authorities with a massive presence of communists and left wing politicians, dominated by the representatives of the FND, but with notable support from the local communities also to create an autonomous structure. The Soviets and their local partners, the Communist Party of Romania and its strategical ally, the FND, had used the problem of Northern Transylvania to blackmail the Romanian central authorities, forcing the resig-

Fig. 2 Teofil Vescan, leader of the FND in Cluj, 1944. 28 Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

nation of the government that finally lead to the establishment of the first Communist-led government in Romania, on 6 March 1945. The marxist-leninist heritage, proletarian internationalism, the thesis on the imperialism of the Romanian national state over the minorities and the soviet stalinist experience in solving that problem, did not give sufficient solutions for the representatives of the Romanian Communist Party. On the other side, the episodes which confirm the perpetuation of interethnic conflictuality in Transylvania imposed a different strategy for the national problem, which should have integrated internationalistic ideals and the discourse on equality and real democracy with the idea of securing the basic interest of the Romanian national state. This challenge was ingeniously met by discourse connecting the necessity of providing security and peace for reuniting the country and maintaining the national borders with the idea of securing the interests and future of the national minorities inside the united and communist Romanian state. As Ana Pauker one of the leaders of PCR pointed out on 24 January 1945 during a meeting with the representatives of the party in Cluj, the administrative situation of Northern Transylvania is very usefull for a rapid democratization of the region until integration in the Romanian state 1. The Radescu government established the Ministry of Minority Nationalities by the law n. 7 of 30 December 1944. That was followed on 6 February 1945 by the Decree on the Status of

Fig. 3 Timofi Gheorghe, leader of the workers union, member of the Communist Party of Romania. Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947) Tolerance and Intolerance in Romania and Hungary 29

Minority Nationalities 2. This had provided the right of self-defining nationality and language for all citizens, according to which, in the localities that had 30% of a specific nationality, it had to be possible for the language of that group to be used in the contacts with all authorities. The names of institutions, localities and streets had to be written in both languages: both the state language and that of the minority. All the laws and decrees had to be officially translated into languages spoken by any minority that formed 5% of the total number of Romanian citizens. The Romanian state had assured its material support to all the educational efforts of the minority nationalities. The Minister of Minority Nationalities, Gh. Vldescu Rcoasa member of the PCR tried to present all these benefits provided by the law as a result of the sustained efforts of the FND in that direction. After establishing the FND government, the Commmunists had been careful to change the Minority Nationalities Status by the government report n. 2440 3. They had eliminated the denomination Minority Nationalities from the title and content of the decrees n. 7 of 30 December 1944 and n. 86 of 6 February 1945 4. In the place of the denomination minorities, a new one was introduced, that of co-inhabiting nationalities, officially defined in the Stalinist paradigm as ethnic formations that have a cultural specificity and benefits from a territorial-national organization: autonomous region or national district. Even if in Romania there were many nationalities that interpretation refers, as a matter of fact, only to Hungarians, because the others were perceived as not so important for political reasons. On the one hand this policy was supposed to confirm the cooperation between UPM and FND (i.e. between Romanians and Hungarians on the left political platform), and on the other, to initiate the procedures through which the Romanian government could assure before the Peace Conference and for the Great Powers that it had solved the minority question by giving the broadest rights and securing the future of those national groups inside its national territory. In fact, the FND government had initiated the elimination of negatively discriminating legislation and institutions, creating positive discrimination, enacting reparatory measures and even preparing the new law on the Nationalities Status, asking the representative organizations of the national minorities to take part in the realization of that law. In spite of all the legislative evolutions, inside the communist movement, the internationalist soviet pattern prevailed in connection with the political role and functions which were to be performed by national minorities. As a matter of fact, the communist leaders were more absorbed by the problem of Hungarian population. In a way, we could consider illustrative in that direction a statement by Vasile Luca, the executive of FND, made in January 1946 during a meeting in Bucharest with the regional secretary of the party 5:
the Jewish people didnt fulfill the conditions to be an people, and that [position] is in contradiction with the Stalinist theory of the nation. When I spoke to the Conference 6 it was on the same dialectics. We cant build a nation artificially. We explain that fascism and the persecutions against the Jews had a contribution to the creation of a certain national feeling 7. And if this is true, than our fight must be for establishment of a federative republic in our country, and for autonomy. But, in fact, we have here, only a single people, the Romanian one, and other populations On the other side, the Jewish population is not unitary, in Transylvania they are Hungarians and here, in the rest of the country, Romanians.

On the other hand, the communists needed to be attentive to this problem because they were perceived by a large part of Romanian society as a party mainly formed of and ruled
30 Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

Fig. 4 Mrton Aron, Romano-Catholic bishop of Transylvania.

by Hungarians and Jews 8 with the generous support of Soviet Union. The reality was that within the small number of the members of Romanian Communist Party (around 1000 in September 1944) there were numerous representatives of those nationalities, and until 1946, in Northern Transylvania, according to Nicolae Goldberger, who was the communist executive in the 11 counties from that region, around 70% of the members were not Romanians 9. If we take into consideration the fact that, even in the new legislative context, in Cluj from summer 1945 conflicts between Romanian and Hungarian population appear, and in the first months of 1946 there were numerous incidents which led to an explosive situation, we can understand the preoccupation of the PCR leaders in order to find solutions for the national problem. In fact the dynamics of party structures and cadres within the town of Cluj can illustrate the difficulties met by the communists from that point of view. As we emphasized in our introduction, when the soviet military authorities arrived in Cluj in the town there were only a few communists. They were organized in a cell 10 in mid-October, after a visit of a well-known Hungarian, Zoltan Vass, who was on his way back from Moscow. Only at the end of October did the leadership of PCR have the first contact with the local communists.
Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947) Tolerance and Intolerance in Romania and Hungary 31

Then, from Bucharest there arrived in Cluj two former local members of the party, who had been in Romania during the war, Teofil Vescan and Missovici. With them arrived, as the executive of the party for all the counties in Northern Transylvania, an experienced leader of the PCR, Nicolae (Miklos) Goldberger. He found in Cluj only two local communist leaders, Jakab Sandor and Jordaky Lajos. After one week, in a meeting, they defined and separated their competences. Vescan was named county administrative leader by the soviet authorities; Jakab and Jordaky became responsible for the county branch of the PCR, and Goldberger for the rest of the counties having Missovici as his assistant. Even if they were in full power before the establishment of the FND government in March 1945, the local communists from Cluj did not succeed in strengthening the structures and increasing the number of party members. As a matter of fact, according to the particular administrative and political situation of that region during the period of soviet administration, ideas and autonomous structures were developed by the group who led the PCR in Transylvania. As a consequence, the majority of the persons who joined the party were of Hungarian and Jewish extraction. An illustration of that situation could be a dialogue, which took place in Bucharest in January 1945 during a meeting between Ana Pauker, Vasile Luca, Alexandru Sencovici and the local leaders from Transylvania. In his concluding remarks at that meeting, Alexandru Sencovici said: If you go to the local headquarters of the party, you will find there a lot of mysticism. It is easier to make a camel pass through the eye of a needle, than someone in our offices there. And, in the end, we can see a Jewish comrade coming out from there. Now you will tell me that Im an anti-Semite. The answer came from Nicolae Goldberger, who admitted those realities, but declared that it is our luck that in Northern Transylvania we do not have Jews anymore 11. The sectarianism and

Fig. 5 Kurk Gyrfs, leader of the UPM (19441947). 32 Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

mysticism of the local branches of the party was perceived in Bucharest as a result of the actions of the local leaders and the lack of their experience in politics of the party. Consequently, after the integration of that region into Romania, some of the local leaders were removed from their positions by activists coming from Bucharest. They had to destroy sectarianism and change the organizational structure of the local branch of the party. It took one year to change the ethnic character of the membership of the Cluj county organization of the party 12. The romnizare [romanianisation] of the party was the main task for the PCR in Transylvania, even if in this way some of the local identities would be destroyed, in order to achieve some political support. This strategy led to a growing dispute between the Romanians and Hungarians, developed at three different institutional levels: between Hungary and Romania in the context of the negotiations regarding Transylvania in 1946; within the structure of the PCR and inside the FND, between the Hungarian Peopless Union and other political organizations. The Hungarian Peoples Union (Magyar Npi Szvetsg/Uniunea Popular Maghiar; from now on: UPM) was one of the main institutions that shaped Hungarian public opinion after the Second World War. In searching for the roots of the UPM we observe the predominance of left wing intellectuals and activists like Bnyai Lszl, the Czik brothers, Kacs Sndor, Kurk Gyrfs, Cskny Bla) from the very beginning in the leadership of this organization 13. The UPM, founded on 16 October 1944, on the old structures of the MADOSZ the Hungarian mass organization of the Communist Party led by Kurk Gyrfs, who had played a leading role from the beginning, enlarged by some representatives of the national democratic center, who accepted the main lines of the program traced by the left wing leadership, had ensured the National Democratic Front (Frontul National Democrat) of its support from the first moment of its birth 14. These left wing intellectuals and activists had enforced a strategic alliance with the communist-led real democrats from the very beginning according to the old strategy of Popular Front, under the sign of marxist internationalism. The leaders of the UPM had spread the idea according to which the minority problem would be solved certainly only through assuring equal rights of the national minorities, allied with the Romanian political left, on the grounds of proletarian internationalism in accordance with their ideological beliefs. To reconstruct these ideas of the leaders of the UPM about the Romanian-Hungarian relations and the future of Hungarians from Transylvania, we must turn back to the roots of that new generations beliefs. The conference and the Credo formulated in Targu Mures in the year 1937 can be identified as the ultimate source of those projections and strategies 15. The central idea of that programme was that the representative body of the Hungarian community from Transylvania had to be reshaped as an integrated, functional corpus that could institutionalize, coordinate and represent the entire community, a representative structure that would reunite all the contending inner groups, the economic, social and educational institutions as well as the leaders of the Hungarian churches of Transylvania. Until that project could be realized it was important to shape an organization that could fulfill the role of giving political expression of the community and organising economic, social and cultural life. According to the political beliefs of the left wing intellectuals concerning the solution of the minority question, antifascist proletarian internationalism and the strategy of Popular Front had to be linked with the aims of institutionalizing the rights of minorities in a truly democratic Romania and the economic
Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947) Tolerance and Intolerance in Romania and Hungary 33

cooperation in the Danube region, that would lead, because of the common sense of economic interest, to confederation and the spiritualization of borders 16. These intellectuals had launched a discourse on the bridge-building role played by the Hungarian community of Transylvania between the Romanian and Hungarian nations, as parts of the culture of the Danube region. The representatives of the extreme left wing had thought they could find the assurance of the historical certitude of the dissolution of any form of national oppression 17 in the paradigm of proletarian internationalism. They had believed that: The solution for the Hungarian communities problems could only come from here, from that country. Peacefull coexistence can be assured against any threat from inside or outside the country only by minorities as well as universal democratic rights 18. The experiences of the atrocities made by the Maniu Guards, the realities of internment camps and several declarations with profound nationalistic and anti-Hungarian character in the press, correlated with the catastrophic projections carried by the news that came from Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, created a psychosis that doomed the image of the near future present in Hungarian public opinion from Transylvania. The postwar atmosphere aggravated by the conflictual ethnic relations of the Second World War, the general atmosphere of revenge for national wounds and the atrocities that had come about on the ground of the generalized appeal to nationalism in the circumstances of the struggle for political power could only be eased by moving the debate from the conflictual ethnicist debate to the problems of democracy, rights and postwar rebuilding. The Soviet Armys intervention in fall 1944 in Northern Transylvania, the image of that Northern Transylvanian autonomy and the experience of an administration which appeared very permissive towards national sensibilities and identities of the minorities 19, the experience of cooperation with the Communist-led FND and the official discourse of the PCR contrasted with the conflictual image brought by the press of the National Peasants Party and the image of the Maniu Guards, as well as with the appeal to national pride when faced by the Bolshevisation of the Radescu government 20. These realities had provided the background for a very positive image of the FND and the PCR imprinted on the local Hungarian public opinion. Contrasting with the experience of ethnic atrocities and of a bad post-war climate, heavy with national wounds and a basicly conflictual perception of national interests, this experience created the image of an alternative that could provide security, peace and common effort for rebuilding the common home, with a great sense of mutual interest for realizing mass support for the alliance. So, this experience that lasted from fall 1944 to spring 1945 had provided a major argument for the Hungarian Peoples Union for supporting the cause of a FND government, identified with the only political force that really could enforce the rights of national minorities by law, providing a legal basis for institutionalizing the economic, social and educational system of the Hungarian community of Transylvania. Kurk Gyrfs, the first president of the UPM, concluded that only an alliance with the Romanian political left that could form a new government could ease the pressure and threat that lay over the head of the Hungarian minority like the sword of Damocles, offering the opportunity of realising the institutionalization of the Hungarian communitys interests, securing its future by building a real democracy on the basis of internationalism and Central European cooperation in the Danube region. This strategy had to be con34 Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

Fig. 6 Kacs Sndor, leader of the UPM (19471952).

firmed by the acts of the Groza government for creating the legislative background for the collective rights, economic, cultural, social and political institutions of the Hungarian community of Romania. The gestures towards the minority question of the Groza government had strengthened those beliefs and projections of the UPM leadership, convinced once again of the efficiency of cooperating with the Romanian political left that held political power after 6 March 1945. On the other hand, the North Transylvanian autonomist experience had given strength to the autonomist groups that thought within the paradigm of territorial administrative autonomy of the parts of Transylvania where the Hungarian population formed a majority, institutionalizing the self-government of those territories of the Romanian state. In North Transylvania the local organizations of the reborn MADOSZ had been reestablished on 22 October 1944. In the concrete situation these local organizations could not be entirely controlled by the centre of the UPM, located in South Transylvania. In the first weeks, for a short time after the foundation of the UPM in North Transylvania on 23 November 1944, these had a slightly different evolution. Among the local structures of the UPM, of
Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947) Tolerance and Intolerance in Romania and Hungary 35

the Social Democratic Party and the North Transylvanian Communist Party, several alternative groups had been identified: under the soviet military administration, according to their subjective perception of the realities, had formed their own opinion on the problem of Transylvania, different from that of the centre of the UPM, for whom this problem was an appendage of the alliance with the communist-led FND 21. After the establishment of the Groza government, the Soviet Unions generalissimo I.V. Stalin had ordered the dissolution of the interregnum system and the resettlement of the sovereignty over Norther Transylvania of the Romanian central authorities, creating an image of the new government, as led by the communists in the role of defenders of the Romanian national interest. As a result, on 9 March 1945 Romania regained the authority over the entire Western territories and soon reestablished its local administrative system. But the autonomist group had thought that all the gains of the previous period could and should be retained, providing several memoranda on that issue. The group of local leftwing politicians and leaders of public opinion had formed an internal opposition to the leadership of the UPM. The leaders of the UPM understood that the new realities the seizure of central political power by the communist-led FND meant that the FND government remained the only one that could assure a better future for the Hungarian minority, in accordance with their strategies and their ideological beliefs. The unaltered Romanian sovereignty over Transylvania was a cornerstone of the FNDs discourse on its own legitimacy, so the leaders of the UPM saw in any territorial debate a threat towards the success of its strategy, and a threat towards the security of the Hungarian communitys future, though as a minority in the Romanian state. The unaltered unity and active support of the entire Hungarian community from Transylvania for the UPM as a single, unitary and exclusive organization of that national minority proved to be vital. In the same line, any fragmentation of the community revising the frontiers or granting territorial autonomy to the Szeklers, that would not embody all the Hungarians would have alienated the strength and the weight of the Hungarian minority from Romania, threatening the strategy of the leaders of UPM for securing the future of the Hungarians that had lived and should continue to live in Romania as a minority. And a territorial or autonomist approach to the minority problem not only would have weakened the Hungarian community, but also would have brought conflictuality with national interests, competing for national territory in the middle of public and political debate, itself constituting a major threat for the security of the national minorities future 22. Thinking in the paradigm of a unitary and centralized Romanian national state, the Groza government had dissolved the local administrative structures built under the soviet military occupation, isolating and stygmatising the autonomist group 23. At the same time we can see a come-back of the discourse on the cooperation of the Danube region and the prospects of a confederation 24. The leaders of the UPM in parallel had confronted and isolated the autonomist and revisionist groups, supporting the cause of the FND government. The Declaration from Marosvasarhely/Targu Mures of the leadership of UPM concerning the Transylvanian question came to confirm the unaltered support given to the FND government, perfectly integrated in the vision on the Hungarian communitys future that these leaders held, within the paradigm of a Hungarian minority of Romania 25.
36 Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

The situation grew more difficult as the government had to face the problem of the Hungarian wealth sequestered as enemy goods and wealth, according to the law n. 91 of 10 February 1945, that created the House of Administration and Surveillance of Enemy Wealth (Casa de Administrare i Supraveghere a Bunurilor Inamice). Several abuses occurred, with confiscation of goods of members of the Transylvanian Hungarian community that could not be located in the town of their home. As an effect of the state of war between Romania and Hungary, a considerable part of the Hungarian community from South Transylvania, citizens of the Romanian state, were interned in concentration camps from which even after the end of the war they were not released. Even at the end of 1946 this remained a sensitive issue in the relations between the leaders of the Hungarian community and the Romanian government. These camps were finally dissolved and those detained regained their freedom under the FND government, as a result of sustained activity of the leaders of the UPM. Another sensitive point was the problem of citizenship of a considerable part of the Hungarian community from Transylvania that remained unsolved for the time before the Communist-led government had secured its power. In the same time there were signs of anxiety and indignation in public opinion 26. The UPMs Declaration on the question of Transylvania of 17 November 1945 unleashed waves of protest. Several leaflets cried for revenge against the leaders of UPM, called traitors, and spoke about an imminent conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the year 1946 27. The decision of the Great Powers on that issue, made on 7 May 1946, astonished those who put had placed their faith in an imminent conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers 28. Inside the Hungarian community there were the prerequisites for a real public debate on the strategy to be adopted by the organizations that represented the community. The alternative groups had never reunited, remaining on the periphery of the official media: in this way they failed to counterbalance the overwhelming influence of the leadership of UPM that orchestrated the official press against them, tearing them apart and always dealing with them from a dominant position. The contacts between the inner opposition groups and the Romanian democratic opposition, represented by the National Liberal Party , remained sporadic, the negotiations for an (PNL) and the National Peasant Party (PNT) agreement unfinished 29. The UPM leaders had stygmatized and eliminated all those who showed the slightest scepticism, using the categories of fascists, chauvinists, reactionaries to isolate them. The official position slowly became imperative and exclusive 30. In the meantime, not only had the leadership of the UPM tried to subordinate and line up the Hungarian community, but the UPM itself had been controlled tightly by the Communist Party of Romania, through its infiltrated elements inside the leadership of what it considered to be its own mass organization 31. Some of the leaders, who became aware of the situation later were isolated and eliminated in the late 1940s. The leadership of the UPM had to face the contesting voices of a coagulating inner opposition at the moment in which the electoral campaign of 1946 began. Perceived as a battle for
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securing the communist-led government, which represented the guarantee of its own strategies for success in assuring the future of the Hungarian community, the UPM had done all that was possible to unite the Hungarians of Transylvania in support of its electoral efforts. This meant that eliminating the contending groups became imperative, as was the rebuilding of the image of the UPM as the organization representing the real interests of all members of the Hungarian community. For this reason the leaders of UPM initiated a campaign of promoting the demands of the Hungarian minority, entering even in conflictual situations with the Communist leadership. The UPM had initiated the integration of the local leaders of the community, priests, intellectuals and popular personalities, diluating considerably the presence of the extreme right wing intellectuals on the public scene. At the Conference of the Executive Commission of one hundred of the UPM the leading body of the Union held in Brasov, on 18-20 March 1946, the debate on the subject of electoral strategy ended with the decision to enter the electoral fight on its own lists, separate from the Communistled alliance 32. The objectives of the campaign initiated by Kurko had been made public at the National Conference of the UPM, held in Tg. Secuiesc, on 27-30 June 1946. The programme entitled What do the Hungarians of Romania desire? 33 (Mit kvn a romniai magyarsg? / Ce doresc maghiarii din Romnia?) had been formulated at the Brasov meeting on 20 March 1946 and was concieved as a response to the Social Democratic Partys Hungarian Committee, that won great support with a plan of a Hungarian electoral block, conceived as an alternative to the UPM lists, which were contested as being unrepresentative. This had been interpreted as a reshaping of the UPMs policy, shifting it from the influence of the extreme left into a more centered and balanced position, represented by Kurko Gyarfas, seen as a president of the Union who spoke out for the cries and demands of Hungarians instead of the alliance with the Romanian left, a real leader of the community 34 . The atmosphere of those month was severely affected by news about Patrascanus affirmations at Cluj, denouncing the rise of Hungarian demands; news about atrocities perpetrated against the Hungarians of Yugoslavia; as well as the first images of population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary a tragic experience that meant a collective trauma for people who had to leave behind all that they had gained with the work of a lifetime. The campaign initiated by Kurko Gyarfas, the president of the UPM, brought its result: the UPM had realized its real meaning, eagerly activating for the interests of the Hungarian minoritys interest, fulfilling the aim of reuniting the community for supporting its electoral efforts. At the dawn of election days those efforts appeared to be successful. The members of the Hungarian community responded to the appeal of the leadership of UPM and voted massively on 19 November 1946 on the lists of the Union. The PCR had evaluated the lists of the UPM as the best solution for gaining support from the Hungarian community for the programme proposed by the alliance. It was a solution also for eluding the contestations that conflicted with the non-Romanian profile of the party 35. At the same time the PCR was not at all delighted at the success that the UPM had gained by building an independent and national image of the union 36. The electoral fraud had touched even the interests of the UPM. In some parts of Transylvania on the wave of protest by the local leaders of the UPM several adjustments took place after the elections, as part of UPM-PCR agreements. The mass organization report on the PCRs County Commitee of Cluj reflects that attitude of the local communist leaders, pointing out that the institutionalization of control over the UPM had to enter its final phase which meant total subordination at all levels
38 Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

was to be carried out in the shortest time possible right after the elections 37. After the election results were made public, the UPM saluted the communist-led alliance. The hopes of the leaders of the union lay on the certain belief that the new National Assembly would implement the legislation concerning the revisited and enlarged interpretation of the status and collective rights of the Hungarian community from Transylvania, in conformity with the promises made by the PCR in the period of the electoral campaign. The political situation had been dramatically altered with the enactment of the new National Assembly, dominated by communists, and with the signatures placed on the Peace Treaties of Paris. There was no pressure on the PCR to enact the legislation promised for its fellow travellors. Even the project for cooperation in the Danube region soon faded away from official discourse. The first pages had been filled with the exclusive imperative of broadening the class struggle. The UPMs efforts at strengthening the Hungarian communitys identity and institutional background had been denounced as reactionary and subversive activity 38, the PCR promoting, instead of the projected unity of a national community, the idea of instructing the masses according to the imperatives of class struggle. The leaders of the union who were thinking according to the national community paradigm had been isolated and eliminated in the period between 1947 and 1949, the Union itself had been brought to the brink of (self)elimination in 1953. That was the logical conclusion in a totalitarian regime that considered its primary security interest the anihilation of any alternative source of legitimity and autonomous identity, be it collective or individual.

NOTES

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Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

SOURCE

42

Tamas Lonhart, Virgiliu Tr , u,

Remember!

When you take into your hand the stamp to contribute to the process of shaping the future of the country. Remember the eleven thousand peasants slaughtered in 1908 1. Remember the bloodbath of the workers of Grivi_a and Lupeni and Remember the horrendous war of Antonescu and Brdossy. And then remember the bloodshed of the rooster feather gendarmeries in rdgkti and Kissrms, as well as the neckcutting campaign of the Maniu guards in Szrazajta s Egeres.

In the end, remember

that if the reactionaries ever come to power again, all the results of our two year fight for freedom will vanish: the land reform, the freedom to organize, the rights of the workers, the national freedom, thus 2 could eliminate the peoples democracy, so hard-gained, and there will come wretchedness and jail 3. that shall come to your memory, When you give your vote for securing your family, people and nation! 4

For these reasons vote for The Hungarian Peoples Union

This electoral message was revised by Bnyai Lszl, who gave it its final form. The results of that process can be seen on the original document. For example this sentence was been eliminated. It concerns the massacre of the pesants involved in the 1907 uprising. 2 In the final version, the right of national education.
1

Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947)

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hffjfhj

Minorities and Communism in Transylvania (1944-1947)

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