Separating Myths and Facts in the History of Transylvania

Separating Myths and Facts

In the History of Transylvania

Dr. Sandor Balogh

Much has been said and written lately about the Human Rights Issue concerning Rumania.* It

can be said, without any exaggeration, that the entire civilized world is upset and ready to condemn

the treatment of native ethnics who achieved minority status after World War One with the stroke of

a pen in Transylvania, now part of Ceaucescu.s Rumania.

For most people it is hard if not impossible to even understand the policies that Ceacescu

carries out in Transylvania, and for many of the Rumanians abroad it is both upsetting and embarrassing.

The United Nations has been investigating the problem. The prestigious Reader.s

Digest in its February 1989 issue has a compilation of articles from newspapers the world over that

condemn the events in Rumania and Transylvania. The Rumanian dictator is the most despised

person in international politics next to Hitler and Stalin.

Without attempting to explain the entire Rumanian culture and national character, using the

tools of the historian and the political scientist, I would like to clarify a few issues concerning the

history of Transylvania and the Rumanian attitude toward Transylvania.

The Rumanian Bias.

The Union and League of Rumanian Societies in America publishes in Cleveland America, a

monthly periodical. Not every Rumanian living in the U.S. agrees with its editorial policy and the

articles. Yet, it has a great deal of influence both in American and Rumanian circles, and does a

great deal of harm by presenting the problem of Transylvania and the Hungarian Rumanian

relationship through the distorted lens of this paper and its articles (some in English), which are full

of half truths, and often outright, irresponsible lies.

This .official organ. of the Rumanian Union and League carried a large map of .Greater

Rumania. on its front page in the November 1988 issue based on the 1938 boundaries of Rumania.

The title of the accompanying article, written in Rumanian, is .Dela Nistru pan la Tisa,. suggesting

that Rumanians (at least the editors of this paper) claim all territories between the rivers Dniester

(now part of the Soviet Union) and the Tisza (Hungarian territory since 896).

2

The two other lead articles, written in English, deal with the 60th Anniversary of December 1,

1918. In one of the articles the Rev. Fr. Vasile Hategan, a Cleveland clergyman, begins his article,

which is full of the usual historical distortions, with this statement:

.All nations have some special dates to commemorate and glorify the most outstanding

events in their history. December 1 is such a date for all Romanians. On this day in 1918,

Transylvania, the cradle of the Romanian nation, was finally united for all times with its mother

country, Romania (emphasis in original)..

Following the Daco-Romanian theory, Hategan starts Rumanian history before 107 A.D.,

when the troops of Emperor Trajan.s Roman legions first occupied. Transylvnia, then part of Dacia.

Accordingly, Hategan claims that

.the inter-mingling and inter-marriage of the native Dacian population with the Roman

colonists gradually gave birth to a new nation, whose inhabitants were eventually called

Romanians . . . By the time Emperor Aurelian withdrew the Roman legions, the new

Romanian nation was already established..

Hategan readily admits that this theory is