■MB
MINORITIES
IN £ AST-CENTRAL EUROPE
HISTORICAL ANALYSIS AND A POLICY PROPOSAL
Including a data-bank
on Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania,
BUDAPEST 1993
Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania
Table of Contents
PREFACE 5
MINORITIES IN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE
(Nation and State, Area and Administration, Individual and
Community in the Countries of the Former Soviet Zone) 7
Centuries-Old Principles Questioned? g
I. Ethnic Mixing in Central Europe (Ninth through Twentieth Centuries) (Settlement, Migrations, Work Organization) 11
The State-Nation Approach Imposed in Retrospect • Reassessment of History
• The Middle Ages — Ninth through Fifteenth Centuries • Early Modem Age Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries • Modern Age 1848-1920 • Contemporary Age 1920-1990 • Conclusions in Regard to the Compilation of the Code of Conduct
II. Possibilities for Adjustment in Central Europe (1867-1992) (State and Nation) 15
German-Austrian-Hungarian Interests (1867-1918) • Liberalism and Its Shortcomings • French and Anglo-American Interest (1919-1938) • Small Nation States • The German Sphere of Interest (1938-1945) • Triumph of the Ethnic Principle: Boundary Adjustments 9 Buffer Zone • Collective Responsibility — Deportations • Sphere of Interest Policy Again (1949-1990) • Soviet Internationalism • Disintegration of the Soviet Regime • Conclusions for the Code of Conduct
III. New Forces of Community Development
and Regional Planning in Europe 20
A Global Challenge and the Interests of Production • Regionalism • Individualization in Public Thinking • Looser State Ties • Nation State and Classic Liberalism • Nation State and Its Bureaucracy • Anti-Fascist Traditions • The German Threat • Protection of Small Nations • History Never Ends • New Types of Integration? • The Future: Culture Nation • Conclusions for the Code of Conduct
IV. What Kind of State to Build?
New Political Systems and the Principles of Minority Policy (A Proposal) 24
Ethnic Diversity is a Human Value • The State Also Responsible for Preservation of Diversity • To Assuage Minority Conflicts • Blind Alleys of History
• New Forces of Community Development, Regional Frameworks of Administration • Change of Regime in Public Thinking • New Approach Claimed to Nationhood • Code of Conduct in Regard to the Minority Issue.
V. Principles of a Code of Conduct To Address the Minority Issue (A Proposal) 26
Citizens and Constituents of the State • Belonging to a Minority • Minorities are Constituents of the State • The Nature of Minority (Collective) Rights • Freedom of Organization on a Minority Basis ♦ Personal Autonomy • Regional Autonomies • Communal Autonomies • Regional Minority Autonomy • Mutual Assistance of the States • International Institutions and Guarantees
APPENDIX (DATA BANK) 33
Poland 34
Czechoslovakia 39
Hungary 44
Romania 48
Yugoslavia 53
Bulgaria 59
Albania 62 (Documentation, tables and maps by Läszlö Biro, Ferenc Glatz, Zsolt Horvath,
Emil Niederhauser, Lajos Palovics , Istvän Soos, Läszlö Szarka, Zoltan Szäsz)
Preface
The citizen huddles, chilled to the bone by the storms of ideologies crisscrossing Europe for the last century and a half. He is frightened. He had lost his orientation long before in the whirlpool of conflicting collectiuist principles.
He was forced to subject his personal interests at the time of the organization of the national state during the last half of the previous century to the proud streams of the ideals of citizenship demanding equalization. Then came the turn of the century, the age of the masses, and the emerging classes of society began to criticize rather loudly the structure of the liberal state built on the foundation of the equality of taxpayers. In its place they proposed to establish one based on the principle of social stratification. The citizen was now being classified in society as a member of a collective based on his occupation. Then came those who proclaimed the primacy of ethnic collectives. They wanted to determine the shape of the state on the basis of ethnic identities; they redrew the borders of the state and expelled millions from their birthplace, from their communities. The citizen — especially during the time of madness that was National Socialism — reached into his desk drawer with shaking hands to search for his papers testifying to his origins. He who had his papers in order, or had his origins "approved" by the authorities and was not among the collectively condemned people who were to be deported, was soon frightened for other reasons. Perhaps he, too, had to pick up his bag because he had a "disapproved" class background. Or, perhaps, his children were forced to speak of their ancestors with their eyes trained on the ground, being ashamed of them.
Soon, however, new ideals emerged with the arrival of the mid-century whose advocates honestly wanted to break with the burdens of the past; they were true optimists who promoted the belief in world citizenship and waged a ruthless struggle against all discrimination be they ethnic, religious or social. Thus, a new fear emerged from the fad of the age: a fear that the old prayer book belonging to a grandmother, jealously guarded in her small room, or pride in one's nation that was received through education in childhood, or respect for the religion of one's ancestors, could result in exclusion from society or, at best, would be received with a condescending smile. In the eastern half of Europe the same optimism prevailed in the name of proletarian internationalism, as it was interpreted by the Soviet leaders.
Beginning in the 1980's, a new sort of collectivism seems to have emerged: it is manifest in a renaissance of ethnicity, in the new fad of the age, an excessive pride in one's "national roots."
T
JL he citizen is looking around once again in fear. He feels that he is probably a liberal. He thinks that the purpose of all collective action should be the promotion of dignity for and good will among human beings during the one life that they live on this earth. He admits that those who maintain that the structure of the state should be built on notions securing individual rights, are correct. Such a structure will surely create equality of conditions for all citizens under the protection of the law. It will provide individual freedom, equality before the law, and equality of opportunity for all. At other times,
he feels that he is really a conservative, because as his years pass by, he recognizes ever more clearly the significance of the continuity of principles of existence that endured for thousands of years; they have secured conditions of life for himself and for his community. He respects his friends who continue to abide by notions underscoring the importance of the family circle, of the value of friedenship, of steadiness in ideological constraints, and he values the presence of centuries-old institutions and customs that are present, almost imperceptibly, in his life. However, he also believes that his feelings of patriotism are not without foundation; he loves his homeland, he finds pleasure in beautifying it, he lovingly reads the classic works of national literature in the free time left to him and is proud of the language-culture that is able to transmit the literatures of all peoples of the world to him without diminishing their beauty. He believes, correctly so, that he surely has a social conscience because he considers it absolutely necessary to have a safety-net extended for those who fail in the free competition between individuals.
He would like to call out to society at large to care more for individuals when he observes that economic — and production — problems and the crisis of unemployment dumped unseemly evidences of poverty — and the unemployed — onto the streets. But he does not call out, he remains silent...
Around the collectivist ideals of Europe's past century and-a-half political parties have been formed. The citizen selects his choice among these parties and votes for it. He chooses either a so-called Liberal, or a so-called Socialist, or, perhaps, even a so-called Conservative party; he might select a Nationalist, or a Christian, or a party of some other label, and so on and on. He recognizes the fact that each of these parties separately represent one of the many threads tying him to his community. He observes that each party proclaimes the certainty of its own truth and, at least in this part of Europe, the exclusiveness of that truth. This is only natural, the citizen murmurs to himself, since a lot of people make a living out of this process.
Is there anyone representing the synthesis? Do the organizers of the community, the state or the self-governing municipalities fulfill the task? But these organs are usually under the control of vested interests or dominated by those who are devoted to one or another of the collectivist ideologies...
Are we to have a new synthesis, a new kind of individualism? Do we want new systems of institutions that are devoted to the proposition that the only purpose of society's political organs must be to secure the fulfillment of the individual's sense of affinity with his community? Do we want to prevent the expropriation of controls over the institutional system that directs the lives of every individual in a community by any apostle of collectivism? Should they represent us in the chaotic — and most important — community forums, in the local assemblies and national parliaments?
These issues raise questions in the West only during long, friendly discussions among those who live in and by the current regimes. Many of them are apathetic and yet, they are also full of complaints...
These are also issues that we raise with all sorts of doubts in our minds here, in the countries of the former Soviet zone, when discussing our possible future. We are optimists still, hoping for the possibility of changing the process of transformation for the better...
Or are we going to have to resort to sending messages in floating bottles once again? The same as we did in previous decades?
Here, at the top of the mountain there is peace and tranquility after we have surveyed Europe's perspectives for the past several weeks. The first snow has already fallen, and it hides the wounds and clods of the freshly plowed lands...
Zebegdny, November 1992
MINORITIES
IN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE
(Nation and State, Territory and Administration,
Individual and Community in the Countries of the Former Soviet Zone)
OLD PRINCIPLES QUESTIONED
8
GLATZ: MINORITIES
Centuries-Old Principles Questioned?
"The fact that the issue of the rights of national minorities has not been settled for centuries could halt the process of the change of political regimes in the region of Central Europe. State-territory and national homeland have never been identical in the region. Attempts at solving this contradiction have turned out to be failures during the past one century and a half. Neither the supranational state (1867-1918, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy), nor the small states (1920-1989) offered a solution. Neither shifting borders (1918, 1938-41), nor the resettlement of nations (1945-49) can be applied according to moral standards. There is one single solution left: to declare the invulnerability of borders and guarantee the different types of autonomies for national minorities. This can not be achieved without international guarantees. The new state system that is in the process of emerging shall have to accept a Code of Conduct, compliance with which may be set as a condition of acceptance by the various intergrative institutions of Europe. The aim is not to introduce the constitutions of West European or of American countries, but to persuade the states of Central Europe to agree to a set of principles to be followed. It should be of great concern for Europe and for the entire world to make the region an integral part of European economic and political processes in the next decade. Otherwise it will be beset by tribal wars, by strife among neighbours, or even by civil wars." We wrote this in November 1991 when we participated as a member in the work of the All-European Commmittee on the future of the former socialist countries, proposing strategies for European politicians concerning the Central European societies. Two functionaries of the European Community, several political scientists, university professors, a banker and a journalist, a few economists, diplomats representing international institutions, and an expert on military strategy participated and continue to work as members of this Committeee. The team was set up by Bertelsmann Foundation, with the special support of Liese Mohn, under the leadership of Prof. W. Weidenfeld, head of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Mainz.
A New Era in European Civilization
It is evident that the European integration processes received a stunning jolt by the national and minority conflicts emerging in the wake of the transformation of the former socialist countries. The documents of the European Community and of the United Nations issued between 1989 and 1992 provide plenty of evi-
dence that these problems need greater and closer attention. In particular, work must be focused on generally recognized and approved guarantees of minority rights. Once the issue was raised, autonomy was granted to Austrians in South Tyrol in a short time (a move that would have been strenuously opposed by all serious politicians barely two decades earlier) and, simultaneously, the mass media stopped referring to Basque and Irish terrorists.
"Those who noted the explosive force of national minorities in states," we further said, were inclined to consider the phenomenon as part of the spirit of the times. To be sure, it has been customary to speak of an ethnic renaissance taking place in the last decade and a half and, more recently, of the revival of conservative ideals. However, in our view the significance of the changes go much deeper than that.
In fact, European civilization has entered a new age. There emerges the need for the rearrangement of the relationship between individuals and the community, between human community and. the territorial — administrative boundaries of dwelling areas — in general between state and nation.
Political and Historical Explanations
"Without doubt," we continued our argument, "the conflicts in Central Europe resurfaced as the result of the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The camp's discipline — the so-called "internationalist** camp discipline —prevented the free discussion of disagreements among nations. At the same time, the discipline formerly imposed from above and the ever-present Soviet pressure gave even the most outdated nationalism the dubious attraction of temptation and the flavor of a forbidden fruit. Affronts to national sensitivities and obfuscation on issues of national interests — legitimate or believed to be so — prevented the peoples of the area to resolve the psychological problems produced by centuries-old antagonisms and obsessive xenophobia. These issues were settled in Western Europe after 1945. Nationalism turned out to be quite efficient as a means of resistance against a great power.
Adding to the political explanation we also want to offer a historical perspective. A reassessment of the peace treaties of 1919-1920 concluded that a spectacular failure in imposing its avowed principles occurred. Or, conversely, could it be simply a coincidence that the continental conflicts of recent years are being fought on the former territories of former-Turkey and of the Austro-H ungarian Monarchy, both carved up by the peace treaties following World War I? Insistence in the treaties on the observation
GLATZ: MINORITIES
9
of principles of national self-determination, then ignoring them in the case of the defeated nations led to abject failure in both the Near East and Central Europe."
Need for a Vision of the Future
The question is whether it is wise to attempt to explain lessons of history when we consider the future of the region. In our opinion it certinly is not! The political forces and the politicians — and ordinary people as well — are captives of their history. In their struggle for advantage, as a kind of self-justification, they frequently reevaluate themselves as persons and reassess the role of their nation during the last few decades. When they do so, it becomes obvious that their vision of the future is very sketchy indeed.
Some attention should be paid to the all-European — in fact, universally recognized — forces that are currently at work transforming society in the West. It is only through such an examination that compatibility between the West European processes and our newly formed political forces can be established. The shaping of a new vision of the future of Central Europe is the task on which intellectuals and politicians should concentrate their thoughts.
New State Structures and Their Aims
"What could be the aims of the recently created state structures in society?" We asked ourselves and were forced to admit that any vision of the future is bound to rest, at least partly, on subjective criteria. Our answer was and it can only be: they must provide opportunities, through the self-realization of the individual in his community, for self-fulfillment within his family and among his firends, and must also provide opportunities for political, regional en-viromental as well as social and ethnic identification. Looking at the current incongruities between the territorial dimensions of the state and the actual distribution of ethnic groups within it, we regard the. observance of minority rights as only one of the rules that might solve the problem. By the same token, we also observe that ethnic and national identity are only some of the various factors that connect the individual to his community.
The argument stated above was accepted by the leaders of the Working Committee at its December 1991 session, including all the questions that it raised. They commissioned the present author to draw up a survey and a Code of Conduct that appeared necessary for further discussions.
In response, we created a small working group with the assistance and cooperation of the Europe Institute in Budapest and the Institute of History functioning under the aegis of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. On the basis of a work schedule prepared in advance, preliminary documentacions were produced dealing with countries of the former socialist camp. István Soós dealt with Poland and Albania, László Szarka discussed the former Czechoslovakia, Zoltán Szász examined the case of
Romania, Ldszlo Bird looked at the former Yugoslavia, and Ernil Niederhauser considered Bulgaria. A young colleague, several well-known scholars, and Emil Niederhauser (a world-renown expert on the nationality question and a mentor whose assistance was highly appreciated by the less-experienced members of the team), constituted the working group. Ldszlo Bird and Zsolt Horvdth compiled the statistical tables and Lajos Palovics created the maps. Our special thanks go to a young geographer, Kdroly Kocsis, a personal friend, who made his colored chart on the distribution of ethnic groups in Central Europe in the 1980s available for us, and also checked the data provided in its sources.
Incongruities...Incongruities...
The questions of assimilation or dissimilation were prominent right at the start of the work. Is it possible to take an unequivocal stand in support of national reawakening, as some Western experts suggest? To do this in full knowledge of the fact that, only a few years before, the same colleagues were enthusiastic supporters of assimilation? Is it just possible that, by tomorrow, all of us shall have to begin looking for our ancestral ethnic roots as a consequence of our stand? After all, not a very long time ago one's class origins were also a matter for close scrutiny.
What should be the role of the state in protecting collective rights? Will not the enforcement of collective rights lead in the current situation to a revival of the so-called principle" of collective responsibility? After all, individuals who had certain rights as member of a collective were also held accountable for acts with which they had nothing to do. (Just remember the forced resettlement measures of the Middle Ages and similar processes that followed World War II; or the collective persecution of Jews when ordinary people were categorized by their alleged race.)
There is another question to be considered: are racial or ethnic origins or ancient historical privileges the proper bases for including anyone in a particular minority group or in any given community? Such notions are diametrically opposed to the European upbringing of my entire generation. We know quite well the odious arguments inflicted on human beings whenever and wherever the question of "Who settled here first?" was raised, usually by pseudo-scientists. (Many official Western documents have been offering such arguments until this very day. Not only that, but the first draft Hungarian law on minority rights — which otherwise, at least in our judgment, is an excellent document — also uses the Western model as a point of reference.)
Is it right for minorities to demand proportional representation in public offices and functions under the law? Is this not a back-door way of returning to the infamous practice of restricted admissions to schools and jobs on the basis of an artificial quota system, where not talent and ability but social and ethnic origins are the decisive considerations?
GLATZ: MINORITIES
11
ETHNIC MIXING
I
Ethnic Mixing in Central Europe
(Ninth through Twentieth Century)
Settlement, Migrations, Work Organization
Today's textbooks fail to pay attention to the ethnic diversity of the region between the former Holy Roman Empire and the realm of greater Russia.
The State-Nation Approach Imposed in Retrospect
The educational systems of the states that exist in the region today teach their national history each as the prehistory of the present regional and administrative system (state), emphasizing aspects that correspond to the ideology of the nation-state of today. To consider the history of the national community as the binding material for civic consciousness, is an intellectual heritage that has persisted for centuries. This is the method that has been sought and developed to research the ancestry of the majority nation of today, an ancestry that existed here centuries and even millennia ago. The peasants and farm owners who tilled the land, the craftsmen who made the tools, are each presented as citizens vested with a kind of modern nationality awareness they hardly possessed.
It is forgotten that, before the era of modern nation-states, society and its institutional system were developing in more diverse patterns than in the Modern Age. The communities living in these areas that spoke the same language, practiced the same customs and were therefore each organizing themselves on an ethnic basis, did not strive for absolute hegemony over the territory they occupied. It is forgotten, or the wider public has no knowledge of recent research results, proving that territorial and state divisions were based on a system of feudal services and allotments, and the language and nation of serfs and tenants was but of secondary importance. This is similar to modern historical thinking nurtured on atheistic views, which does not pay much attention to the fact that it used to be the tradition of faith, religion that functioned as a cohesive agent if a sense of community awareness was expected on the given state territory or feudal estate.
Ignored is the difference of conditions in the Middle Ages from state organization in the Modern Age where everyday coexistence, organized administration and complex production processes require
* In our definition Central Europe means the territory of the countries of the former Soviet zone. This, of course, is only one of the possible definitions in the literature on the topic.
the type of social contacts possible only with the use of an agreed semantic system, and where skilled administration and training demand that the linguistic culture and habit patterns of the coexisting persons and groups be integrated. That is why civil work organization brings along a golden age of national development and strives for having its admired regional and administrative organization — the modern state — being placed on national foundations. That is the way in which the intelligentsia — these architects and administrators of the modern state — so naturally acquire a decisive role in the development of national cultures.
Reassessment of History
Painting history in national colours in retrospect has been a long-standing illness of European historiography and and history instruction. In the Western part of Europe this practice is frequently mentioned today when continental and global problems occupy the minds of historians and citizens alike. Citizens, and also the State, are getting more and more interested in the prehistory of continental and global phenomena. Even in the textbooks and even with reference to the Middle Ages, the earlier nationalistic subtitles are being replaced by references to efforts to improve the waters, forests, and the soil, to laws on their cleaning up, and to descriptions of environmental actions by rulers and civic groups. To be sure, nationalist errors are much less frequently committed when dealing with the histories of regions where the population was ethnically unified or less diverse.
Already in the Middle Ages and in early modern times travellers and people of erudition — that is, those who were at all interested in such patterns on the continent — knew about the ethnic diversity of the population occupying the area stretching between the Holy Roman Empire and Russia. As the political map in the sense of Western European nation states developed but late in the region, this ethnic diversity did not become a victim of ethnic levelling in the area. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, czarist Russia, or the Ottoman Empire may each be blamed of backwardness in comparison to the Western European (French) regimes, but the ethnic minorities were doubtlessly better able to preserve their separateness — and thus their own world of traditions — in any of these countries than the Occitans in France, or the Welsh in Britain.
GLATZ: MINORITIES
11
ETHNIC MIXING
I
Ethnic Mixing in Central Europe
(Ninth through Twentieth Century)
Settlement, Migrations, Work Organization
Today's textbooks fail to pay attention to the ethnic diversity of the region between the former Holy Roman Empire and the realm of greater Russia.
The State-Nation Approach Imposed in Retrospect
The educational systems of the states that exist in the region today teach their national history each as the prehistory of the present regional and administrative system (state), emphasizing aspects that correspond to the ideology of the nation-state of today. To consider the history of the national community as the binding material for civic consciousness, is an intellectual heritage that has persisted for centuries. This is the method that has been sought and developed to research the ancestry of the majority nation of today, an ancestry that existed here centuries and even millennia ago. The peasants and farm owners who tilled the land, the craftsmen who made the tools, are each presented as citizens vested with a kind of modern nationality awareness they hardly possessed.
It is forgotten that, before the era of modern nation-states, society and its institutional system were developing in more diverse patterns than in the Modern Age. The communities living in these areas that spoke the same language, practiced the same customs and were therefore each organizing themselves on an ethnic basis, did not strive for absolute hegemony over the territory they occupied. It is forgotten, or the wider public has no knowledge of recent research results, proving that territorial and state divisions were based on a system of feudal services and allotments, and the language and nation of serfs and tenants was but of secondary importance. This is similar to modern historical thinking nurtured on atheistic views, which does not pay much attention to the fact that it used to be the tradition of faith, religion that functioned as a cohesive agent if a sense of community awareness was expected on the given state territory or feudal estate.
Ignored is the difference of conditions in the Middle Ages from state organization in the Modern Age where everyday coexistence, organized administration and complex production processes require
* In our definition Central Europe means the territory of the countries of the former Soviet zone. This, of course, is only one of the possible definitions in the literature on the topic.
the type of social contacts possible only with the use of an agreed semantic system, and where skilled administration and training demand that the linguistic culture and habit patterns of the coexisting persons and groups be integrated. That is why civil work organization brings along a golden age of national development and strives for having its admired regional and administrative organization — the modern state — being placed on national foundations. That is the way in which the intelligentsia — these architects and administrators of the modern state — so naturally acquire a decisive role in the development of national cultures.
Reassessment of History
Painting history in national colours in retrospect has been a long-standing illness of European historiography and and history instruction. In the Western part of Europe this practice is frequently mentioned today when continental and global problems occupy the minds of historians and citizens alike. Citizens, and also the State, are getting more and more interested in the prehistory of continental and global phenomena. Even in the textbooks and even with reference to the Middle Ages, the earlier nationalistic subtitles are being replaced by references to efforts to improve the waters, forests, and the soil, to laws on their cleaning up, and to descriptions of environmental actions by rulers and civic groups. To be sure, nationalist errors are much less frequently committed when dealing with the histories of regions where the population was ethnically unified or less diverse.
Already in the Middle Ages and in early modern times travellers and people of erudition — that is, those who were at all interested in such patterns on the continent — knew about the ethnic diversity of the population occupying the area stretching between the Holy Roman Empire and Russia. As the political map in the sense of Western European nation states developed but late in the region, this ethnic diversity did not become a victim of ethnic levelling in the area. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, czarist Russia, or the Ottoman Empire may each be blamed of backwardness in comparison to the Western European (French) regimes, but the ethnic minorities were doubtlessly better able to preserve their separateness — and thus their own world of traditions — in any of these countries than the Occitans in France, or the Welsh in Britain.
ETHNIC MIXING
12
GLATZ: MINORITIES
The Middle Ages — Ninth through Fifteenth Centuries
Western Christianity and Orthodoxy. The region is split politically and ideologically according to whether it belonged to Western Christianity — and thereby to the Western European system — or to the sphere of interest of Byzantine Orthodoxy. This is the case with regard to community organization and to the character of the ethnic consciousness of the individual inhabitants of the area. Raising itself above nations and state administrations, the Church of Western Christianity — which represented a definite intellectual current in those countries
— soon detached itself from the nation. The Orthodox Church on the other hand, which — for theological reasons — does not require a high level of intellectuality from its clergy (basic teachings only have to be passed on and not explained) continued to strengthen its links with the communities of its adherents on all levels — both with the State and the nation. The Orthodox priest is the top functionary of the local community — both in the religious and in the ethnic sense. To this day, the Church carries a much more marked role in being an agent of ethnic cohesion in the countries in which Orthodoxy is the majority religion than in areas where Western Christians constitute the majority.
Western Settlers and Peoples of the Steppes. In the 11th through 15th centuries migrations from the West and the inflow of Eastern steppe peoples became established in the region. For instance, following their missionaries, groups of German, French and Italian settlers arrived from the tenth century on. Especially from the German-Roman Empire did a large number of people come to the area of present-day Poland (once East Prussia), Bohemia and Slovakia (once the Hungarian Highlands or North Hungary) and to the entire area of present-day Hungary as well as to Transylvania (part of Romania today).
The new colonies of these peoples on sparsely settled territories enjoyed certain legal privileges
— hospes rights and exemption from certain obligations and from the tough requirements of servitude. The immigration of manpower with higher culture and more advanced skills was in the interest of feudal lords. The new settlers did not come as if they had been believers in a Drang nach Osten or some kind of ethnic conquest; they arrived because they found favourable conditions here. It was only later historiography that represented the urban Saxons (and the rural Swabian farmers and agricultural labourers as exponents of German culture — or German colonizers if you will.
At the same time, from the East newer and newer waves of semi-nomadic peoples kept arriving in small groups —■ and in some cases in tribes. They came to the states of Western Christianity and also to Bulgaria, then a strong state in the Balkans.
Antagonistic customs and religious faith often assume the form of ethnic conflicts. The first appearance of opposition to aliens targeted communities
of Western settlers who had received privileges and jealously guarded these special rights. Another manifestation was deriding the still semi-nomadic peoples from the steppes who lived as vagabonds and did not adjust to the life style of society. (They let their cattle graze at random and showed no respect for privately held land.)
Regional Ethnic Autonomies. Following the intentions of their ethnic (linquistic) community as well as of the landlords who had invited them, significant proportions of the new immigrants came to live in separate colonies in the Middle Ages. There were entire Italian and German villages. It is generally known that a good many towns of German settlers had a separate legal status or full-fledged autonomy from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Some ethnic settlements of feudal times had extensive autonomy, but present-day historical literature does not devote sufficient attention to their study. Not only Germans, Westerners, but also Cuma-nians, Jazygians, and the Secclers of Transylvania noted for their special detachment, have maintained their autonomies — administrative, political and economic — until the rise of the bourgeoisie in the second half of the 19th century.
Starting with the 14th century, there were significant migrations in a northwestern direction to escape the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. The earlier arrivals of Eastern merchants (Armenians, Greeks, etc.) were followed by large-scale collective migrations in the squeeze of Serbs and Romanians fighting the Turks. The refugees settled in the Carpathian Basin, but they remained markedly separate including religious differences.
Ethnic mixing — mingling individually as well as on a family basis — was particularly evident in the leading strata. The royal courts and the nobility included a majority of assimilants in the countries of the region; and the ruling dynasties — as else there in Europe — reflected a complete mixture. At the decline of the Hungarian House of Árpád (founders of the Hungarian state), for instance, only a very few rulers were of Magyar blood.
The coexistence of various ethnic groups was taken for granted in the Middle Ages. The administrative units (feudal estates, counties and state) did not become organized along ethnic lines. Many settlements and regions were autonomous.
Early Modern Age — Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries
Weakened States. The state organizations of the area, strong earlier, saw their power diminish.
The Kingdom of Poland spent the 17th and 18th centuries amidst the struggles of the Russian, Swedish and Prussian principalities and the Hapsburgs, and was dismembered in 1795. (Poland regained its sovereign statehoood only in 1920.)
The independent state of the Czechs dissolved in 1620. (They regained their sovereignty only in 1920 in the framework of Czechoslovakia.)
The Hungarian state suffered under the impact of the Turkish attacks (1526) and soon broke into three parts.
GLATZ: MINORITIES
13
ETHNIC MIXING
As the Ottoman Empire expanded south-eastward, the Turks occupied the Balkans.
The Bulgarian and Serbian states had collapsed, and the Romanian principalities were reduced to vassalage. (That was the case until the first gradual and then final retreat of the Turks (1856-1912.)
The region became a buffer zone between the Turks and the Holy Roman Empire, with constant wars and the transformation of the pattern and culture of settlements.
Buffer Zone and Ethnic Mixing. Ethnic mixing grew prevalent in the buffer zone. To the North (Kingdom of Poland), there was a growing influx of Russians and Germans, and the the territory of Bohemia was subject to increasing Germanization.
The Hapsburg dynasty extended its rule to Hungary, and in consequence most towns and industrial centers of North Hungary (today Slovakia) became almost fully Germanized settlements.
In the central area of the Hungarian Kingdom, a very large proportion of the earlier dominant ethnic group of Magyars perished. Apart from the inflow of South Slav peoples, there was virtually daily general migration as customary under Turkish occupation.
In Transylvania various ethnic groups developed autonomies of a unique character in Europe. For instance, the Romanians in the mountain regions of the area engaged principally in pastoral and military pursuits.
The earlier ethnic islands remained in existence on the Balkans. The Turks also set up colonies. In certain areas the Slavic groups converted to the Moslem faith and began to consider the Turkic customs as special ethnic behavior patterns (e.g. Bosnians). The ethnic effects of religious conversion were also evident elsewhere. For instance, the Pomeranians of Poland developed their own ethnicity under Ukrainian influence through the Uniate Church.
Settlements and Internal Migration after the Turks. After the Turks were forced to withdraw (following 1699), there was large-scale migration in the territory of the Hungarian Kingdom. As a result of a purposeful settlement policy, Swabian, Bavarian and Prankish elements were settled in the area of all of present-day Hungary and former Yugoslavia, which were by then under Habsburg domination (area along the Danube, Southwest Hungary, and the vicinity of Bacska and Tokay). The newcomers were welcome on account of their work culture being higher than that of the locals, and they were given privileges similarly to the medieval practice.
From the area of North Hungary, Slovaks move toward the southern part of the Great Plains left uninhabited by the Turks.
The South Slav and Romanian settlements along the boundary toward the retreating Ottoman Empire were developed by the King as a Frontier Zone enjoying a certain degree of autonomy. The privileges granted to that Zone included ethnic and religious autonomy, and the services expected of the
inhabitants — largely military — were fundamentally different from the burdens of other subjects of the state.
It should not be forgotten that the Romanians of Transylvania, or the Serbs who moved from the south toward the heartlands of the country, came into this area, then largely deserted and left almost unfertile by its population, as excellent animal keepers and brave soldiers. The Swabians pulling in from the west were industrious tillers of the land, whereas the Greeks, Armenians and Jews had been professional merchants for centuries. The ethnic problems that appeared at the time consisted principally of conflicts between the Hungarian county system and the Frontier Zones — with their privileged population of mainly Serbs and Romanians wanting to maintain their autonomy in the face of the counties — and did not represent antagonism to living in the Hungarian Kingdom.
Modern Age — 1848-1920
Failure of Aspirations toward Nation States. The emergence of national states in Europe stirred the leading national strata of the region, and there were Polish, Hungarian, Slovakian, Serbian, and Romanian movements in the Russian and Hapsburg empires. The Polish movement failed at the time, but the Hungarians achieved success when in 1867, for the first time since 1526, the territorial integrity of medieval Hungary was reestablished. (The policy towards minorities will be discussed in the next chapter.)
In the northern areas, the industrial revolution and the demand for provisions by the towns strengthened the productive large estates and through them the Prussian leading groups of the population that was settled there. There were strong denationalizing campaigns both in the Russian and Prussian areas, with the Roman Catholic Church leading the resistance against the Protestant Prussians and the Orthodox Russians. Again the interlacing of religion and ethnicity.
By this time, the hereditary provinces of the Monarchy received marked territorial autonomy. This enabled the local ethnic groups to become more aware of their nationality. Under the impact of the industrial revolution, the development of mining and industry in the southern fringe areas, and the upswing of agricultural production in the south — especially in the territory of former Yugoslavia — reared a new middle class of the national minorities in Hungary.
Balkan States and Their Population. The Turks were gradually pushed back in the southeast partly on account of the weakening of the Ottoman Empire and partly through the growing national awareness of the Slavic peoples and the Romanians (Romanian, Bulgarian and Serbian statehood, and later Montenegro and Albania). When directly after the liberation of the area from the Turks, recurring nation-state wars broke out on account of territorial claims (the Balkan Wars), Europe failed to take note
ETHNIC MIXING
14
GLATZ: MINORITIES
that these were the first series of conflicts caused by the spread of the nation-state formula in a region of diverse ethnic groups.
Industrial Revolution, Ethnic Mixing. Another wave of ethnic mixing swept across the region. Civil work organization demanded industrial labour and office workers, financial and administrative experts. Fast bourgeois development in the eastern regions of Europe and in the Kingdom of Hungary attracted German, Austrian, Hungarian and Czech tradespeople and artizans to these areas. They spread from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. As the development of the towns and of their administration drew large sections of the population from the provinces, there was considerable internal migration also (e.g., the large number of Slovak and German labourers to the new construction sites). Money markets in big and small city centers helped the ascension of a Jewish and a German middle class. With the language of the administration defining the character of the state, the development of modern state administration ensured preferential treatment for the German and Hungarian ethnic groups, and there was a strong assimilation trend.
In a bourgeois state ethnic mixing is of a new type: of a personal character. The bourgeois state dissolved ethnic privileges in the various types of settlements. The separation of the German autonomies in towns as well as the Yazygian, Cumanian and Transylvanian Seccler autonomies ended. The civil state of the bourgeoisie is not cognizant of collective rights, but it does not know the meaning of collective denationalization either.
Cosmopolitan Towns and National Villages. The towns mould assimilation on the level of individuals. The new circumstances for making a living, the new work order and the new patterns of settlements crumbled ethnic customs whose traditions reached back through the centuries. There started in the region a marked separation of the cosmopolitan towns and of the national villages. Shut off from industrial development, the villages safeguarded and kept their traditions, whereas the industrialized towns received and absorbed alien cultures.
Peasant societies developed in the area. Orthodoxy had a role in the national struggles on the Balkans. Societies which had been accustomed to fighting on military battelefields for about five-hundred years, did not refrain from cruelty in ethnic conflicts. The tradition for autonomy weakened in the region. In the territories of Orthodoxy and in the Byzantine type of state, the individual and the state came to be locked in a peculiar relationship, with the administration exerting unrestricted power over civil society.
Small States — Minority Protection. World War I turns into a war of nations from a war of states. It is in the natural interest of the parties engaged in the war to mobilize all internal adversaries of their enemies. (See the next chapter on nationality policies.) The treaties concluded after World War I bring into existence small states and the need for minority protection in the region.
Contemporary Age — 1920-1990
On the Regional Level Migration Halts. The
final dismemberment of the region into so-called national states eliminated the possibility of free migration and free employment in the region. Maps of the region record the state boundaries of today (of yesterday). The new states are not without internal conflicts. In Poland the Ukrainian and Belorussian minorities, in Czechoslovakia the Czechs and Slovaks, in Yugoslavia Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Albanian and other ethnic groups, and in Bulgaria Turkish and Macedonian ethnicities rarely forget about their antagonisms. (See the descriptions of the individual countries in the Data Bank.) There are also ethnic metamorphoses; interesting is the case of the Macedonians; centuries of territorial struggle between the Bulgarian and Serbian states go together with the development of a new ethnicity by the turn of the century. The settlement policies of the new national states stumble over the Gypsy problem. (There has been no hint to this day of a viable policy on this question manifest in differences in social patterns, ethics and tradition; in fact physiological discrimination makes its development and pursuit difficult.)
The Use and Disadvantages of Nation. From the point of view of the citizen, the state organizations of the region are judged according to whether they have brought the citizen closer materially and intellectually to the level of advanced cultures or not. In other words, they are judged on how advantageous any new order is for the office worker, peasant and labourer. The new state territories show tremendous development in the cultures of the new majority nations and marked advantages for those belonging to the majorities. New values of national culture emerge. The new (national) middle classes profit the most from the new development (new national and state offices, perks).
In the pursuit of state policy against the new minorities the earlier spontaneous ethnic conflicts rise to the level of conflicts in state representation and national antagonism. Research leaves a number of question marks.
Internal Migration. Migration continues within the states. The new nation-state centers exercise a draining effect. The delayed arrival of the industrial revolution to the south-eastern region sets off considerable ethnic mixing on a personal level. (Experts estimate that in former Yugoslavia the last fifty years resulted in 7 million citizens living in mixed families.) Now it is above all the former architects of the state, the members of middle class, who are leaving former state territories.
Fascism and Ethnicity. The ethnic programme of fascism in the region. Positive discrimination achieved for the German diaspora with state assistance. Fascist theory turns ethnic status into a value category. Ethnic and race theory. The plan for a new Europe.
The effects of the state boundaries that were to be adjusted to ethnic boundaries; the effects of ter-
GLATZ: MINORITIES
15
POSSIBILITIES FOR ADJUSTMENT
ritorial revisions on ethnic mobility. (The effects of war and power changes will be mentioned later on.)
Small States and the Soviet Zone. The political system of the Soviet zone. Describing the Soviet idea on abolishing racial categories. Ethnic status must not be a disadvantage, but neither shall it carry any kind of value. The programme of social equalization and the destruction of national and religious traditions. The last big state projects of the Era of Iron and Steel; the development of industrial centers and the reorganization of agriculture.
Ownership Change and Opposition to the Church. Dissolution of village society. The change in ownership, the liquidation of private property at the same time destroyed the possibility of the individual remaining in his way of thinking at least inwardly independent of the state. The earlier economic foundation of minority cultures is getting liquidated. The ousting of the churches and their forced dissolution breaks another pillar of ethnic heritage. Poland is an exception. The role of the Orthodox church along with the majority nation and the dictatorship.
Surviving Ethnic Groups. The last cohesive minority settlements break up. Minorities living in solid integration over larger areas — that is, fully structured minority societies — constitute an exception. Such are the Hungarians in Slovakia, Romania, the Ukraine and in Yugoslavia, and certain areas inhabited by Germans who were not disloca-
ted. The forced spread of state culture is a means of providing an advantage for the culture of the majority nation. Small autonomies — either of small communities or personal autonomy — have no place in this political system.
Attempts To Begin Anew and Their Failure. In 1989 there was an attempt at rapprochement by anti-Stalinist forces in the area in regard to the minority question producing initial results. Then the first free elections brought ethnic struggles into the multiparty system and many votes for the revivification of some of the pre-1945 reflexes.
Conclusions in Regard to the Compilation of the Code of Conduct
The region is inhabited by a population of the most strongly mixed ethnicity in Europe. Regional and personal autonomy is still a tradition and part of the mentality of the people here who have been influenced by Western-type Christianity.
Thousands of years of ethnic mixing are evident in all the peoples of the region. The minority policies of the political systems to develop here have to count on extremely mixed societies on the personal and family levels. Support should be given to radical and full personal autonomy, and, in addition, the preservation of the surviving regional autonomies should be encouraged.
Possibilities for Adjustment in Central Europe 1867-1992
(State and Nation)
1989-1992 — these three years marked a great opportunity in Central Europe to sort things out again. Those in 1989-1990 who saw this opportunity opened by the revolutionary processes starting in the region were certainly not mistaken. For the first time in the modern history of the region the possibility arrived for the people living in the area to readjust their relations with each other, earlier perpetually spoiled, but now free at last of dependency on the Great Powers.
German-Austrian-Hmigariaii Interests (1867-1918)
During the history of the past 150 years, territorial situation and the location of a nation — that is, the state borders — were always determined principally by the Great Powers. First, the settlement of the German question (1866-1871), and then the events affecting the Turks (1878-1913) in the southeast and the Russian Empire in the east cut the peoples apart according to the pattern of state borders. At other times, the relationship of the Great Powers of
Western Europe to each other (1918), or the conflicts of the world powers (Soviet-American relations after 1948) were in the spotlight.
The boundaries of states from the North Sea to the Balkans were determined between 1866 and 1878 by the settlement of the German question. After the Hapsburgs had been pushed out from the Reich (Koniggratz, 1866), they were left the possibility of turning the existing personal union between the hereditary provinces of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary into a constitutional commonwealth. (The Hapsburgs had ruled over Austrian territories for six hundred years, and more than three-hundred years in Hungary.) In 1867 the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and then in 1871, with Prussian leadership, the second German Reich came into being. The Austrian-Hungarian state determined the fate of the many small peoples — Slovaks, Serbs, Romanians, and Croatians — living in the area, strengthening their national awareness exactly during the decades in question. Right from the beginning, these peoples saw the segregated Hungarian state as an enemy.
POSSIBILITIES FOR ADJUSTMENT
16
GLATZ: MINORITIE
After each of them had been under Turkish rule for several hundred years, the gradual withdrawal of the Turks made possible the formation or re-constitution of Bulgaria (1878), Serbia (1816-1878), and Romania (1859-1861), and the occupation of Bosnia--Herzegovina by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. In the period of the emergence of the modern European states when the framework of regional administration developed and became directly tainted by modern bureaucracy, the principles of ethnicity were hardly attended to. The large Polish population living in the area stretching from the North Sea to the Carpathians did not regain the kingdom they lost in 1795. Apart from extensive autonomy for the Croatians alone among the diversity of peoples living within the Hungarian Kingdom, no other ethnic group received any kind of intrastate regional or administrative autonomy in the Carpathian Basin. The Croatians, who had had segregated estates and territories within Hungary (since 1102) were declared an autonomous part of the Hungarian Kingdom in 1868. True, at that time the small peoples in Hungary did not yet have movements championing autonomous regional administration, and the large numbers of Germans living in the country considered themselves at home in the Monarchy.
However, as the Romanian and Serbian kingdoms were set up close by, the other peoples living in the Monarchy also began to entertain the hope to share the same regional unit with the people who spoke their language. Since the contemporaneous Western European states had also big nationality minorities, the eastern region regarded the minority problem as settled if civil liberties were introduced within the traditional framework of the state. The southeastern states (Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia) showed no political tolerance at all; they failed to form a minority policy to deal with the other nationalities within their territories.
Liberalism and Its Shortcomings
The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was the only country to think of legally regulating the rights of national minorities on the state level. Austria, with its diversity of nations, recognized the equality of ethnic tribes in its constitution of December 1867. In the Hungarian law framed in 1868, the mentality of the liberal policies of the times was asserted, for it provided that all individuals were free to use their own language within the state and the minorities as collectives had the right to form cultural organizations. At the same time, liberal European thinking rejected the special political rights of collectives as something left over from feudalism. The charting of the regional and administrative boundaries of the region reflected Great Power interests, and the internal system of the state followed the French model of state administration.
At the turn of the century when collective aspirations strengthened in the large-scale societies of
Europe, the lower strata of society began to mak their voice heard in the political life of the state partly with social welfare demands and partly wit, national claims. Among the peoples of Central En rope, the desire for the organization of national com munities broke out with elemental force. By thi. time, liberal ideas were no longer enough; in fact the most liberal election law of the region (Austria 1907) brought about a degree of political organiza tion on the part of the national minorities that al most paralyzed the political life of the state.
The leadership of the Monarchy viewed incomp rehendingly the demands of the minorities who wen by now asking for regional autonomies. Several conceptions emerged to deal with the situation, most of them never becoming, however, more than plans, Best known among them was the comprehensive plan postulating rights on the basis of personal autonomy and federation of the Austrian social democracy, and the proposal of the Hungarian bourgeois Left, a group limited in size, which envisaged cantons in the Monarchy according to the Swiss pattern. The Left — because of its onesided social welfare demands — did not gain sufficient political power to give clout to its ideas.
By 1918, it was too late to take any constructive action at all. While the leaders of the Monarchy faced the national aspirations in a numb daze, all the leaders of the southeastern states understood was that their respective territories might be expanded to accommodate nationality members living beyond their borders. Romania and Serbia started to demand areas for themselves from the southern and eastern parts of the Monarchy as soon as the lines of force the Great Powers represented in the war made this possible.
Of course, at the end it was not the regional population patterns but the superior force of the Great Powers that determined the restructuring of the region in 1918.
French and Anglo-American Interests (1919-1938)
Because of the dissolution of the Monarchy and the weakening of Russia in 1918-1920, the French wielded the strongest great power interests in the region.
With Germany being the principal loser, French and Anglo-American political strategy championed the power ambition of preventing the creation of an alliance that might be friendly to the Germans. This favoured those among the internal forces legitimately dissatisfied with the regional and administrative policies of the Monarchy who worked for its dismemberment rather than for any federative transformation. By the same token, preferences were given to Serbia against a Bulgaria that had fought on the side of the Central Powers. As a result, Czechoslovakia was created out of Bohemia, the largely Slovak-inhabited Northern Highlands of Hungary, and from the Carpatho-Ukraine; and the
GLATZ: MINORITIES
17
POSSIBILITIES FOR ADJUSTMENT
Serbian-Croatian-Slovene state (known as Yugoslavia after 1929) was put together from Serbia, Croatia, the Slovene areas, from the southern part of Hungary, from Bosnia-Herzegovina and other Balkan areas. Romania almost doubled in size by a similar process, acquiring all of Transylvania and part of the Banat as well as the mixed population of these areas, and occupied toward the east Dobrudzha and Moldavia.
After 123 years of subjugation, the Poles won their independence, receiving areas including non-Poles who were inhabitants of the feudal Polish Kingdom of the 18th century from Germany and the Monarchy, both losers in World War I, and from weakened Russia.
Small Nation States
Called nation states by the victorious powers of World War I, the new states were in fact hardly more homogeneous ethnically than the dismembered regional administrative units of earlier times. Although it was known that the lack of correspondence between state territories and the ethnicity of their population had caused tensions that strained the region for centuries, Great Power interests to ignore this factor still ruled supreme. In truth, small multinational countries as were even the Monarchy and Russia, were formed whose own political power considered them nation-states. To neutralize ethnic tension, the Great Powers forced on the new states (Czechoslovaia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Poland) agreements regulating the rights of national minorities, while the centralized state organizations were maintained.
Never before studied in detail, it should be the subject of a separate research project to examine what the results were of copying the model presented by the French state when the former near eastern areas of the Ottoman Empire were restructured, and to what extent the principles guiding terrrito-rial reorganization in 1918 operated as a source of the present conflicts both in Central Europe and in the Near East.
Similarly, no comprehensive comparative study has as yet come out on the minority agreements of 1919-1920. The texts of the agreements demonstrate much more modern principles than the Western Great powers dictating them — above all France — had followed at home with respect to their own minorities.
It is a different question how, in societies not at all schooled in civic tolerance, the internationally prompted provisions would have worked. The persecution of the Ukrainians and ethnic civil war in Poland (1930-1934), letting loose pogroms against the Jewish nationality, the evasions and circumventions of the law in Romania and in Yugoslavia, ;he anti-Hungarian measures in these countries, -ecurring atrocities, confiscation of the lands of the brmer ruling ethnic group, and so on, are known ;ven though today's historiographies conceived in he state-nation spirit keep silent about them.
Hungary perhaps exactly because it had become an almost pure nation-state regarded nationality policy as an unnecessary bad thing. In Czechoslovakia the Czech political line managed to restrict expression of anti-minority feelings to some extent and allowed the enforcement of international agreements.
The German Sphere of Interest (1938-1945)
Between 1938 and 1941, it seemed that the ethnic-oriented readjustment of state boundaries was to begin. National-socialist Germany appeared in Europe under the guise of fulfilling collective as well as of social and national principles. It disrupted the peace system of 1920, and annexed to the Reich Austria, where the language and the culture were German. First, having detached the German Sude-tenland, it reduced Bohemia to a Czech autonomous area that was its protectorate. To Slovakia it gave independent statehood, but relinquished to Hungary the areas where the Magyar population constituted the majority, and a small area with Polish majority to Poland. The Western Great Powers accepted the new settlement — declared to be an ethnic one — the same way as they did in 1918 the introduction of the centralist state principle. However, Germany5 s great-power ambitions were soon evident under the proclaimed ethnic principle as became clear in 1918 that the bare interests of the Western Great Powers were at work behind the nation-states. In the case of Yugoslavia, independence was given to Croatia, whereas Hungary received a significant proportion of the Hungarian-inhabited areas — more precisely, those where the Serbs were a minority in comparison to the Hungarians and Germans. Romania was forced to yield areas from multinational Transylvania where Hungarians constituted the majority (northern Transylvania). (In the meantime, the Soviet Union took back Moldavia, which the Romanians had grabbed from Russia in 1918 but which now again had a Romanian majority.) And Poland was split between the Soviet Union and Germany - with no concern at all for the ethnic principle. While Germany shattered the system produced by the Versailles peace treaties, the Soviet Union started to build its power bases in Central Europe.
Triumph of the Ethnic Principle: Boundary Adjustments
The Great Powers made attempts to solve with territorial alterations the contradictions between territory and nationality (ethnicity) as apparent in the minority problems, which they, too, found troubling. The social effects of the border revisions between 1938 and 1941 are but little known; here they have been studied only as part of a line of imperialist policy. There are virtually no data on how a simple peasant or clerk of broken Poland was deprived of home and country, or how an ordinary German peasant settled after 1940 in the western half of
POSSIBILITIES FOR ADJUSTMENT
18
GLATZ: MINORITIES
Poland started his new life on unfamiliar ground to become himself a displaced person in just a few years. The same way, there are no surveys on the victims of the introduction in 1918 of Romanian rule in previously Hungarian territories, or of the effects of the temporary restoration of the Hungarian domination in some areas of the south and in Transylvania though these events uprooted and forced to flee many ordinary Hungarian, Romanian and Serbian peasants, workers and employees. Not to speak of the Jews who had to tremble for mere survival.
Buffer Zone
In the restructuring of the region in 1945 through 1947, again great power considerations had the only say. Forgetting when they punished the losers that the repatterning of the area began in 1938 with the full agreement of Britain and France, the victors acted as a bureaucratic schoolmaster. Even England started to speak up only when Poland was attacked. This is not to speak of the Soviet Union, which played a rather ignominious role in the region until 1941. Now all of them celebrating victory, they returned to the territorial divisions of 1920, a solution which they had already admitted was wrong.
The area from the Baltic to the Black Sea was turned into a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers. The bourgeois left was looking for federative solutions in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Neither Peter Groza of Romania, nor Yugoslavia's Tito or the Bulgarian Dimitrov, both of them communists, were averse to the approach. However, lacking support from the Great Powers, and then, after 1947, because of definite opposition on the part of the Soviet Union, these initiatives never came to anything.
Collective Responsibility — Deportations
Just as did their professors, the intellectuals, the Great Powers regarded the minority problem simply as a source of conflicts that may even lead to war. European political thinking in the period failed to notice that the expansionism of Germany and of national socialism was more and different than simply the breaking loose of hell and deviation from the French and English models of state organization that were widely regarded as ideal. They failed to note that, with the defeat of fascism, the ethnic principle lost its importance, and, even earlier, the French centralized nation-state had proven its incapacity to function. That was true even if this dis-functioning was shouted about and turned to good advantage by the national socialists.
However, the Great Powers did not move an inch from the ideology of the nation-state. After 1938 Germany and its allies expected to ease the administrative and ethnic contradictions of the region by rectifying the boundaries, the Allies were now experimenting with the relocation of minority populations and wanted to create state territories of pure ethnicity. (In the era of fascist extermination
camps when people were brutally slaughtered, it apparently did not seem inhuman to force millions of peoples to leave their homes and chattels, the settlements where they had lived for centuries, with just a few bundles. Today we see this differently. We recognize the shortcomings of the nationality policy of liberalism, its failure to provide collective rights; we see the impossibility of border modifications which had reduced additional millions of people to minority existence in the countries with mixed ethnic groups. But none of this destroyed people who proved capable of recreating their circumstances or of adjusting to new circumstances. It was amazing how peasants and workers adjusted to hardships and bore up with the rule of politicians and the military who kept redrawing borders. Power and the prevailing language changed, but the inhabitants who formed the landscape, who tilled the land and produced goods, stayed on. On the other hand, deportation rendered impossible life itself and broke up families. Without a doubt, after the extermination camps and the notorious political work camps this was the most inhuman act against minorities. The deportations were started by the fascists, but they were allowed to happen by the Western Allies and the Soviets. Moreover all of this was done by the political intelligentsia of Europe in the spirit of the French revolution's nation-state, a cause they championed as holy.)
The answer of liberal state organizations to the requests for collective rights and the observation of the ethnic princples was to declare and enforce collective responsibility. Apart from deportations, the results included deprivation of people of their civic rights on the basis of ethnicity. (In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania from Germans; in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia from citizens who were classified as Hungarians.)
Restoration of territorial and administrative statuses as they existed in 1920 was the joint decision of the Great Powers and it was generally accepted even by the local bourgeoisie. But now it occurred without the safety valve of provisions for the protection of minority rights. The alternative of creating pure nation-states by means of deportation and likewise the feeble plans for federative solutions were thwarted by cold war and the introduction of the Soviet system.
Sphere of Interest Policy Again (1949-1990)
In 1949, the Stalinist Soviet Union formed its own military, economic and political zone. It largely closed the region for 40 years to western economic and political influence and thereby shut off the area from the workings of the economic forces that were operating in the West. Its political system reinforced state and regional boundaries. Both the economy and culture relied on only the resources of the state and the nation, with the administrative controlling role of the capital cities being further strengthened within the state, partly for security and military reasons. As against the decentralization of the re-
GLATZ: MINORITIES
19
POSSIBILITIES FOR ADJUSTMENT
gional economy and culture that reached Western Europe in the period between 1950 and 1970, regional centralization was enforced in this part of the world. Village and town, which are today the strongest units in the Western pattern of settlements, became here subordinated to artificial administrative regions. Central state bureaucracy, which is interested in preserving a centralized nation-state and in preventing the development of regional self-administration, was strengthened.
Soviet Internationalism
Characteristically, even economic integration was conceived as the integration of state-controlled directive bodies. Travel was made difficult even within the zone — allegedly because of security reasons. All this, while the Western middle classes enjoyed all the benefit of international contacts in their choice of employment and holiday accommodations. Within the zone, however, communication between allied countries was more difficult than before 1938 when the states now making up the zone were openly hostile to each other. (In the meantime, the eventual transparence of the borders was an integral part of Marxist teachings on the image of the future.)
Parallel with this, the nationalisms still present in the region were repressed forcefully and by ideological means, proletarian internationalism and the equality of all humans being loudly proclaimed. In fact, insistence on Soviet political dominance called to life a vigorous anti-Soviet nationalism, or, more precisely, opposition to everything the Soviets wanted. (In this way internationalism gave rise to antipathy, and the really obsolete nationality ideas of hatred became forbidden fruit in which people wanted to indulge.) Minority problems were treated as internal affairs. The different states saw different solutions for the management of minority conflicts. (Between 1952 and 1968 in Romania there was an area where Hungarians benefited from regional autonomy, whereas elsewhere even Hungarian universities established earlier were closed. In Poland the life of the German minority was imperilled while the Lithuanians and Belorussians enjoyed cultural autonomy.)
As pressure from Moscow relaxed, relative autonomy increased within the region from 1961 on, the local nationalisms strengthened, usually assuming the form of state nationalism. The triumph of the principle of nation-states was regarded as a dictate of the times, and the disappearence of minorities was considered merely a matter of time. Only believing in the social identity of the individual, faithful communists accepted and proclaimed this; and the nationalists went along with the idea because it gave a pretext for eliminating instruction in the mother tongue of the minorities (e.g., in Hun-ary, Bulgaria and Poland), or offered a chance for laming the minorities as scapegoats for the internal problems of the state and thus suggested a way for limiting their rights (Romania, Czechoslovakia).
Following the stance of liberalism in regard to the importance of the individual citizen and after the later failure of the collective principles of eth-
nicity, the Soviet interpretation of proletarian internationalism likewise failed to cope with the incompatibility between territorial organizations and ethnic groups. In fact, some representatives of the minorities think back with a sense of nostalgia of the minority policy that was pursued between the two wars in Czechoslovakia or Romania.
Yugoslavia was the only state in the region that tried out new experiments in its state organization. In the structures that developed in the 1960's, it divided the state and population into republics (constituent nations) which were also entrusted with working out ways for minority autonomy. Today when there is heavy fighting in Yugoslavia, we are apt to speak about the ruthlessness of the previous system. Still, no objective observer will deny that Yugoslavia — with its great diversity of minorities, living in some cases scattered widely over the territory of the state and in other cases coexisting in cohesive blocks — was the state where the largest number of alternatives were worked out to cope with the problem. The great question is whether it was because of the dictatorial (communist) methods of the political system that the experiment failed or whether it was actually the centralization that encouraged the strengthening of the dissenting forces.
Disintegration of the Soviet Regime
In 1989-91 a lot of things were very different from 1920, 1938, or 1947.
In 1918-1920 and then again in 1938-41, the big political changes were generated by the tension between the nation and the state, in other words partly by the minority issue. The present restructuring was caused by the internal disintegration of a poitical regime, of the Soviet system, the sharpening of the minority issue being only one consequence of the changes.
Conclusions for the Code of Conduct
In the 19th and 20th centuries politics failed to hit on the proper framework for coexistence in administration and regional or state government, one that would be acceptable for the ethnic groups and nationalities who have lived in the region in a mixture for the past thousand years. The state boundaries were again and again readjusted through external force, pushing in this way tens of millions of people into the disadvantageous state of minorities, and then, with the intention of ensuring homogeneity within the boundaries of the states, forcing millions again to leave their ancestors' dwelling places. Though educated at the best universities of Europe and having had access to mountains of books as teaching aid, the intelligentsia of the 19th and 20th centuries did not come up with much that was of use for ordinary everyday people living in the area.
Therefore, it is necessary to rethink again the relations between individual and settlement, between nation and state (regional government).
NEW FORCES IN EUROPE 20 GLATZ: MINORITIES
III
New Forces of Community Development and Regional Planning in Europe
Whose Europe is it that we wish to build? Is it a Europe for citizens, the middle classes, the Europe of nations and of states? That was one of the first questions we raised in 1989 when witnessing the acceleration of the decline of the Soviet regime in the Central European region.
What will that integrated Europe be like? And why do the Western European societies raise questions in regard to the traditional (substantially 19th century) institutions of regional administration?
A Global Challenge and the Interests of Production
It is a commonplace thing to refer to a global challenge today, but here in this part of Europe, in Central and Eastern Europe, it doesn't hurt to call to mind routine things that are commonplace in the West. It is a hackneyed fact of reality that the solution of the ecological problems that are a threat to the Globe is impossible in societies whose view of mankind is defined by the particular interests of areas buttressed by state boundaries and the wish to act in accordance with the one-sided interests of one's own nation. The same way it is inconceivable to realize the international control of modern weapons of world destruction if the present divisions are maintained. It is also a hackneyed assertion to say — though we may not acknowledge it — that the state divisions formed in the 17th through 19th centuries and still in existence are at present the greatest obstacle to successfully dodging the global dangers threatening us. (All this is particularly important today when the Soviet system has collapsed putting an end to the military and political cleft in the world which we used to consider the only obstacle in the way of overcoming global perils.)
The economic sphere has since the turn of the century expressed everyday dissatisfaction with the regional divisions of European states. The rise of Europe was in the past a result of there being a lot of well-established small territorial entities and a subtly differentiated social framework of life in each. Now, in this period of the industrial revolution, the existence of all these little regional units (states), each protected by tariffs and difficult to get to relate to the others, present barriers to further development. The idea for a united states of Europe was inspired at the beginning of the century partly by the shift in industrial production to methods of serial manufacture in recognition of the advantages of large units for production, the division of labour and for the free mobility of manpower. (At that time
averting wars was the principal aim.) The breakthrough effected by the United States of America and later by the Far East in automated production and eventually in computer-controlled serial production has since then made it clear to everyone that regions cut apart by state boundaries hinder the development of economic production.
Regionalism
With its ambition to see the formation of relatively small units independent of state boundaries and freely crossing them, regionalism presents a threat to the existing territorial organization of states from an entirely different direction. Technical advancement and the internationalization of commercial and production relations call into being economic and regional interdepencies of an entirely different nature than those established by centuries-old state boundaries. Though separated by boundaries, the neighbouring regional units of two or three states are more dependent on each other than the eastern and western ends of the same state. (Any Central European state, Hungary included, may be cited as an example. South Hungary and the former Yugoslavia, and the same way North Hungary and the new Slovakia, or East Hungary and the western areas of the Ukraine, and the southern areas of Poland could constitute areas more integrated economically than the present state of Hungary, Ukraine, or Croatia.) As a unit of management and production, the territory of a state seems not just too narrow, but also entirely obsolete and artificial today at the end of the 20th century.
Individualization in Public Thinking
It seems less of a routine statement than the above stereotypes to call attention to the fact that in public thinking certain ideas have appeared that are radically in confrontation with the traditional principles applied in the territorial organization of European states. A new type of individualized awareness is now present in the thinking above all of the postwar generation who are now gaining positions in the various institutions.
In the past five decades there has been meteoric advancement in the general development of the public culture of European societies. This became evident first in education and then in the development of the mass media. All this increased the demand for the greater cultural and intelllectual independence of the individual. After the large-scale expan-
GLATZ: MINORITIES
21
NEW FORCES IN EUROPE
sion of the press, the radio and then television helped to promote the individualization of the masses. Although the new media actually transmit schemes, slogans and stereotypes and thereby simplify the image of the world, they make the individual believe that they are unprecedented means for the fullest possible serving of self-realization. In fact, there is some truth in this. Perhaps the standards of public thinking are sinking lower than, seeing the shallow messages of the media, people assert, but there is no question that society reads these messages. The individual picks and chooses and tries to find his or her place in the community with increasing deliberation, seeking more and more self-reliantly for identification with persons of similar thinking.
Often-mentioned ethnic renaissance is also an ambivalent process. It does not simply mean seeking for the ideal of collectivity — for ethnic belonging — but it also means that the individual is becoming distanced from the civil classification attempts of an overbearing state and gives priority to other links of identification with the community — thus ethnic, religious and ideological ties — over the need for his or her identity image as a citizen. Individual choice rather than compulsion, and seeking for identity ties more suited to ones's personal views indicate that a new kind of individualism is developing.
In the USA, ethnic renaissance became in the 1980s tantamount to relating to one's roots, to looking for new forces of integration — community forces that are independent of the state. What seems the most natural thing to do in Europe is to relate to those who speak the same language, to the given ethnic group, or to various microcommunities — regional communities or communities of people who think similarly to the given person.
Looser State Ties
The consciousness of citizenship as the No. 1 framework for thinking in terms of the community identification of the individual, is beginning to weaken, that is other identities tying the individual to the community — identity with family and friends, the region and its landscape, with the ethnic group, with a certain ideology, and with social and work organization — are growing stronger. (This is enhanced by the freedom of travel and the mass media bringing alien cultures into close proximity, etc.) The individual is feeling a stronger and stronger desire to see through all the processes taking place in his environment, to understand them all. This involves at the same time a rejection of non-transparent structures and organizations. (We hardly need to explain in detail that the various movements in England, Spain, or Italy demanding that the state should convey some of its competencies to regional organizations are in essence manifestation forms of this type of general development. Envisaged is the passing on of competencies in the fields of public health and health care, in siting industries and in tourism.)
We could go ahead listing the special technical and infrastructural aspects of the pattern of development in the 20th century that render the states but relative frameworks for the movements, industrial activities and thinking of their citizens. These frameworks are seen increasingly as barriers to be replaced by new factors of identity awareness.
We think that although the citizens of Europe may be reluctant to say this day after day, they do sense that technical production and development in public culture may by the end of the century rearrange the earlier regional framework of their lives. Global tensions and the economy keep expanding the boundaries of the states, expand and push to transgress them, while the growth of individualization in society is also prying apart these. On the other hand, the citizen is trying to find bases for identity that are different from the territorial framework of the state (ethnic, regional, etc. bases).
Nation State and Classic Liberalism
While the need for the unification of the continent is generally recognized and the only dispute is about the area and levels to which integration should extend, many people and groups reject the demand for reducing states to smaller territorial units and perhaps depriving them of some of their earlier competencies for administration and guidance.
What are the orientations and what are the arguments that question the aspirations in Europe to dissolve state boundaries?
1) Those of the intelligentsia who are attached to the classic liberal principles of the previous century oppose these aspirations because they were raised under the spell of the French ideals of liberty and revolution that reject all collective rights or privileges. This approach considers ethnic affiliation everyone's private affair and does not accept community aspirations based on the above-mentioned principles. The chain of thoughts involved is well known: the individual is linked to the community through his consciousness of citizenship; the state is the most important institution, and it is the state thate guarantees political equality and equality before the law. Allowing too much importance to ethnicity is seen as a manifestation of tribal collective ideals. (It is not without reason that the critics of such liberals say that the consciousness of citizenship is just as collective an idea as ethnic awareness except that it relies on different bases. Nor is it an illegitimate objection that, when they assume that identity defined acoording to citizenship is the only community-building principle, these liberals leave the basic position of liberalism and are curbing free personality growth.)
Nation State and Its Bureaucracy
2) The bureaucracies of European states repudiate aspirations for autonomy, particularly regional autonomy. State bureaucracy organized the admi-
NEW FORCES IN EUROPE 22
nistration of society in Europe in the 17th through 20th centuries; and its development was doubtlessly an important precondition for the rise of Europe in the Modern Age. (Public safety, transport, schooling, public health and the social welfare net.) This role ensured social rise for the bureaucracy of the state but it also distanced it from everyday life, particularly in states relying on a central organization. The capital city and the omnipotence of the government have for a hundred years been targets of endevours to promote the cause of regional autonomy. Central government bureaucracy will at best consider cultural autonomy, and it certainly holds that regional autonomy ambitions for ethnic and economic purposes shall lead to anarchy in both production and in political administration. (Critics say with some legitimacy that allowing for regional autonomies on various levels ensures the proper functioning of administration.)
Anti-Fascist Traditions
3) The possibility of the regional administrative reorganization of European states is attacked by some of the present-day exponents of antifascist political traditions. Especially south-Tyrolean autonomy, the recognition of Croatian and Slovene autonomy to the detriment of a unified Yugoslavia, and finally the institution of an independent Czech Republic and an independent Slovakia within the Czechoslovak Republic have been causes for anxiety. Reference is made to the Europe of 1938 when the center of Europe was restructured in celebration of the victory of the ideal of the ethnic principle in a way as it is happening today. (Cf. with the content of the previous chapter.) Moreover, mentioned is the extraordinary strengthening of Germany as the start of the process — again similarly to what happened in 1938. (The critiques of the exponents of these views — the latter often called the Conservative Left — regard with some right as a traditional weakness of the European Left the fact that it considered disproportionately important the awareness of social identity in the relationship between individual and community and fashioned political identity on it, while it underestimated the importance of ties to the ethnic community and the native land. These views are objected to for giving preference to the traditional urbanite outlook and remaining insensitive to the national principle being part of the pattern.)
The German Threat
4) Fear of an increase in the German threat crops up regularly in the views of the defenders of state centralism. This anxiety is just as truly present in the region of East Central Europe as it is in the case of England. The argument is that both the separation of Scotland and the establishment of new Central European autonomies, small territorial units would result in a rule of the Deutsche Mark over these territories.
GLATZ: MINORITIES
This anxiety and argument indicates that the present balance in Europe is after all a product of the power relations as they existed in 1945 and is built on the political and military power relations of the times. This equilibrium received a jolt when the Soviet Union collapsed and also with the gradual withdrawal of the United States. A more independent Europe may express the actual power relations on the continent, which may tip the balance to show the overweight of Germany. (Of course this holds only if Germany claims the same omnipotence as was the case in the 1930s. In that case the anxiety would not be unfounded.) By the logic of this argument, if the present state domination over a given regional unit that is relatively small ceases, its place will be taken by Germany as possessing already the strongest economy in Europe. By the same line of logic, state administration has to be protected against German expansion. (The critics of this view very well say that Germany shows in fact greater understanding for regional autonomies than France or Britain, though this does not derive from imperialist ambitions but from the traditions of her principles of state organization. Germany and Austria are federal states where the autonomy of certain areas developed even before the nation was established and is in this way already a national tradition. This tradition of autonomies was, of course, repudiated by national socialism which intended to establish the unified administration of the Reich. However, the principles of German state organization espoused after 1949 express a criticism of national socialism; they express democratic political aspirations, the recognition of a certain deegree of autonomies of the smaller territorial units within the same state — in this case within the federal republic.)
Protection of Small Nations
5) Finally, we must not leave out from among the supporters of nation-states a proportion — a probably increasing proportion — of small nations. The small nations ask the not entirely illegitimate question: If the nations in the integrated Europe of the future may in fact retain their cultures and their ethnic (and linguistic) attributes, is that proof against the inroads of the bigger nations? Won't integrated Europe become a Europe of British, French and German (possibly Italian) culture? In their view the nation-state which provides preferential treatment within its boundaries for national traditions through the educational system of the state and the state subsidies granted to culture, is the principal means for ensuring the survival of small national cultures. If citizens lose their own state, their children will also lose the institutions of national culture.
The idea of an integrated Europe mustered large--scale agreement in principle as it was seen that it would in fact put the culture of the continent in a competititve position, but when a real start is made for the. dissolution of the earlier regional administ-
GLATZ: MINORITIES
23
NEW FORCES IN EUROPE
rative framework and of national institutions, many-people realize that they want to protect the nation state.
History Never Ends
A summary of the present situation (after Maastricht), suggests that integrated Europe makes the states gradually yield up their own sovereignty in regard to military, foreign and financial affairs. In the economic field the continental or regional principle would prevail over the state approach. But let us add that it is not at all inevitable for the regions to emerge with permanent administrative boundaries, that is as general units of regional administration with competence over all aspects of political, economic and cultural life as are the classic states of today. As to culture, there the revitalization of small ethnic and religious communities may coexist with being world citizens. (In other words, cultural autonomy will survive as regional organizations — possibly even under the persent framework of states, sectioning the states according to autonomies existing on the different levels.)
History, however, never ends. The decisions of today give prevalence to forces that started to work decades ago and mustered enough strength by now to become determinative for a shorter or longer time. But it must not be forgotten that additional forces arose yesterday and are arising today that may play a part in shaping our immediate future. Is it really to be precluded that integrated Europe may fade as an aim for European societies? It it really impossible that European intelligentsia simply fails to hit on the proper principles of regional administration and is unable to make the programme of a unified Europe attractive enough for the centrifugal forces represented by the various national and social interest groups that would prefer to leave alone the Community? It is an additional problem that the pressure of the two Great Powers, of the USA and the USSR, bound the states of Western Europe more closely together. Will the ending of this pressure reduce the cohesion of these states, their sense of needing to rely on each other?
New Types of Integrations?
The really big question is, however, posed again by the possible emergence of new technical and economic factors that may eventually become determinative forces. The fast advances in informatics, a further leap ahead in the chips era which has already begun, are such factors. May they not turn the continent away from the earlier dreams of an integrated Europe? And may they not make people forget that inevitably it is the economies of peoples living in close regional proximity that should rely on each other? Will not the development of intercontinental economic systems start a new type of integration — an intercontinental integration in which, while the
present state and regional organizations may continue to underpin the larger integration, the units of the larger integration are not cultures that originated on the continental level but constitutent entities locked in global dependence?
(In other words, not only the Czech Republic and Poland, but also Poland and South Korea might enter into close production contacts.) And the present interstate agreements and the army of well-groomed diplomats and experts characteristic of the present forces of integration as they developed in Europe from the 16th century on may give place to analogues that will be in fact entirely different in type. Who would dare say today that future history
— even the short-term history of the next ten years
— shall not contain any of the above processes?
The Future: Culture Nation
Whichever alternative will become effective, thinkers about the history of the next decades ahead have to do some constructive thinking about the possibilities. In our opinion the preservation of the nations of Europe in their full diversity is in the universal interest of mankind. At the same time, these nations ought to give up their insistence on their economic and political confinement, to oust from the interpretation of the concept of nation the tenets of nation state and national economies. A nation is above all a culture nation, the community whose people share the same language and traditions, and that is how it should survive for the 21st century.
Conclusions for the Code of Conduct
The vision, the image, of the future is very important for every society. This is also the case with the societies of Central Europe. If these societies expect to keep abreast with the world, more precisely, with Western Europe, they should understand rather than copy what is happening there. I think that the inflammable stuff in the tensions between the states and between the nations of the region could be diminished if the key strategies of our regional policy gave up the heritage of the nation state and would acknowledge the presence of forces that urge the new restructuring of regional and administrative units and if we want to preserve ourselves for the 21st century as culture nations proud of our respective national traditions and cultures.
Whether the Europe of free citizens — that dream of the intellectuals, particularly of arts and economic science graduates — is a feasible proposition could be the subject of another study. The questions is whether this thin stratum of the European intellectuals won't itself crack in the clashes between the various community-building principles — views and tenets on state and administration, on the meaning of a culture nation, on social welfare and on religion and ideology.
PRINCIPLES OF MINORITY POLICY
24
GLATZ: MINORITIES
IV
What Kind of State to Build?
New Political Systems and the Principles of Minority Policy (A Proposal)
1. Ethnic Diversity is a Human Value
We propose that the new, democratic states recognise national and ethnic diversity — similarly to religious diversity and colourfully different cultures and customs — as a universal human value.
This diversity is embodied in national communities and in individual persons. National traditions and the awareness of affinity are in themselves subject to change. All the natural phenomena of national assimilation and dissimilation are regarded as so many signs of change in the course of which additional human values arise. States refrain from resorting to any administrative means that would force assimilation on any part of the population and at the same time they provide possibilities for dissimilation. The cultural policy of the state is deliberately used to make people conscious of the national values deriving from the ethnic diversity of the region.
2. The State Also Responsible for Preservation of Diversity
Let the new, democratic states declare their awareness of the fact that the preservation of the national and ethnic diversity of the region is a political, cultural and social question. Using all available means at their disposal to preserve this diversity, they shall assure for all peoples and groups, whether of the majority or minority, the conditions for preserving, developing and renewing their national cultures. They shall provide the conditions through legislation for the political equality of national minorities. If necessary, they will employ positive discrimination in the field of social welfare and culture to enable citizens to overcome the social disadvantages that are often concomitant with minority existence, and will practice positive discrimination to make the survival of the cultures of minority nations possible. They shall willingly undertake the greater than average extra budgetary expenditures involved in providing instruction in the mother tongue for minorities and in keeping up minority customs.
3. To Assuage Minority Conflicts
Let the new, democratic states declare that they realize national and ethnic minority conlflicts have
been generated in the region, conflicts that obstruct general social, political and economic development for each state in the region and hamper the development and observation of universal humanistic standards of ethics. They realize that these conflicts will not ease spontaneously with the normalization of social and economic contacts but that state administration is also to share in soothing such hostility. They are aware of the fact that the conflicts in question result from combinations of social, cultural, political, emotional and moral tensions. They wish to make efforts to solve these problems or at least to treat and manage them politically.
They will show patience and understanding whenever hurts surface that have accumulated in the nations living in the area as a result of the state and national struggles of the past century. They regard it as their duty to use the means of political power to take the sting out of the emotional antagonisms that have developed in the course of the past centuries dividing the nations living here from each other. They regard it as an obligation to use public instruction,  cultural and scientific works, and programmes enjoying state support to eradicate enemy images. They undertake to legally ban all forms of anti-alien acts and incitations against other nations and to apply to the court to punish such behaviour. According to our proposal, states should refrain from playing off the nations living in their territories against each other, and should devote special attention to creating harmony between minority and majority nation(s). Their minority policy shall focus on guaranteeing equal starting chances politically and socially for the minorities rather than granting advantages to either side. Without gaining the good will, empathy and understanding of the majority nation any minority policy — whether international or on the state level — is doomed to failure.
4. Blind Alleys of History
We propose that the starting point for the minority policies of the democratic states living in the region should be the realization that there is no correspondence — and never was any — between the territorial administrative (political) units (states) and the areas where the nations in the region dwell or have settlements. They should realize that until now all attempts to achieve the ethnic homogeneization
GLATZ: MINORITIES
25
PRINCIPLES OF MINORITY POLICY
of the area of the states have only led to additional conflicts. They should realize that neither the adjustment of state borders to ethnic boundaries (territorial revisions) nor the resettlement of ethnic groups to the so-called mother country will solve the problem according to the norms of constructive action in the Europe of our century. Therefore the states have to look for political frameworks that allow the coexistence of a national majority and national minorities, and ought to explore regional forms of administration that ensure the free development of the identity of each nation living in the territory of the given state.
5. New Forces of Community Development, Regional Frameworks of Administration
We recommend attention to the fact that, parallel with the development of these new forms and frameworks, changes are taking place over the entire continent of Europe in the organization of the state as a regional unit of administration.
When states wish to give free way to the growth of national and ethnic identity awareness, when they are looking for various types and frameworks of autonomies they realize that the national and ethnic principle is but one of the forces that shape the new European community and the regions of the continent. It is generally realized that these regional forces must be allowed free movement because otherwise there will be a decrease in the capacity for human achievement of European societies.
It is also known that the transformation of the political system of the region is taking place after the fall of a regime that did not recognize that there were some alternative possibilities of patterns when regional and community organizations were transformed in the course of history, and that several alternatives will exist in the future as well. Moreover, the big change in the region is taking place at a time when not even Western Europe can show up well-designed, finished models for the development of new systems of regional administration.
6. Change of Regime in Public Thinking
In the past century, the forms of community organization that could have provided a sound civil framework for the coexistence of various ethnic groups, social strata, denominations, and even sexes and age groups (civil unions, societies and clubs, etc.) were weak in the societies of East Central Europe. Therefore, in the last one-hundred years, ethnic and social aspirations appeared in more extreme forms in this region than in Western Europe. The past 45 years definitely discouraged any initiative or popular action from below.
The state has assumed too great a role in the life of the individual person in the societies of the region. Strong traditions of private enterprise likely
to ensure the material foundations for personal liberty are missing particularly in the area of the economy (in the field of ownership). The exaggerated interdependence between the life of the individual and the state did not favour the self-organization and administration of little autonomies (small ethnic communities — the minorities included) independent of the hierarchy of the state.
In consequence of state organization in the societies of the region assuming the pattern mentioned, state bureaucracies have played an important role. They are no longer satisfied with organizing and managing the life of communities; they have turned into a force that is vitally interested in the assertion of the excessive force of the state (nation-state) and that hampers the development of autonomies as new forms of communities. It is a difficulty today that the new type of citizenship  consciousness  has  to  develop,  to be achieved, in societies that are not prepared for the open outlook to the world that is characteristic elsewhere at the end of the 20th century.
A large part of the societies of the region lived for centuries artificially removed from the leading technical and intellectual civilizations of the world in empires that proved to be blind alleys as a type of state organization (Ottoman Empire, Greater Russia). The Soviet system of the past 45 years tightened the shackles of this isolation by the administrative means employed by the military and by political power. Isolation went together with the prohibition of free trade and free communications. The peoples living in the region were shut out from the internationalization of the world and thus missed out on getting to know foreign cultures and learning to appreciate the distinctive traits of other nations.
Technical and industrial underdevelopment gained expression also in the pattern of settlements. The societies of the region remained largely agrarian in character — so much so that their outlook on life has been restricted by the backwardness and isolation that has become synonimous with the agricultural sector and rural existence in the village. The administrative organizations of the states of the region now see a need for using all means at their disposal to speed up the change of regime in public thinking and to promote the emergence of a new world of thought on citizenship and nationhood.
7. New Approach Claimed to Nationhood
A change of regime in public thinking is also tantamount to shaping a new type of national consciousness — the recognition that every ethnic group living within the territory of a given regional unit of administration is a builder of the social and cultural unit that constitutes a modern nation. The national cultures that have developed in the region are pro-
CODE OF CONDUCT
26
GL ATZ: MINORITIES
ducts of the interaction of the various ethnic groups that have lived here. The present-day nations of the region are anthropologically the products of a thousand years of mixing — and this is especially true in the cultural sense. The equivalence of national cultures means at the same time that no majority nation on the present-day (or one-time) territory of a state can claim for itself any kind of primacy or supremacy. The truly vital tradition of the nations living here, which makes them outstanding on a world scale, is precisely their ethnic diversity and tolerance and not their ambition for exclusiveness.
8. Code of Conduct in Regard to the Minority Issue
As citizens of states experiencing transformation, we are aware of the fact that the change of regime in public thinking can only take place if emotions and manifestations of deformation associated with centuries of suffering can be eradicated as a result of decades of inside struggle and a cleansing process in society and in the economy. Nonetheless, we are certain that politics can not simply mean following processes occurring automatically according to their own inner laws, but must also be interpreted as the
art and science of influencing these processes. That is why we propose to the leading exponents of the states living in the region to promote the development of international norms that may serve as a guideline for the treatment of minority problems. We think that it is in the interest of every state in the region (of the administration of each) to see the development of a code of conduct that gains international acceptance. This final code may only derive from several different drafts and will probably represent the views of various nations or states.
Drafting codes of conduct is expected to set off a process of clarifying the various outlooks and may later become a contribution undertaken as a condition for admission to the various European or regional integration organizations. Our present proposal for the code of conduct is aimed at promoting a clarification of views. Perhaps it may also be instrumental in taking out the disputes from the arenas of internal political struggles, the forums of heated barrel demagogy for votes, and from the offices of state administration which are anyway overburdened with tasks and responsibilities.
v
Principles of a Code of Conduct To Address the Minority Issue
(A Proposal*)
1. Citizens and Constituents of the State
Every citizen of the democratic state is a constituent of the given state, regardless of when he or she received citizenship, or settled on the territory of the state, and regardless of religious or national (minority or majority) affiliation.
By granting citizenship for an individual living in a given country, the community recognizes, and attaches importance to, the person's constructive participation in building the institutions of the community and in creating the material and individual wealth of the community. Recognition of one's being a constituent of the state is not a historical question and not even a question of family roots but a matter of considering whose work is needed in the present and future of the community. (Citizenship — including multiple citizenship — is regulated by the constitution of the given state.)
*The straightforward wording of the ensuing text aims at making the points of this code of conduct clear and does not at all mean that the author would believe in the easy acceptability of his proposals.
2. Belonging to a Minority
It is the civic right of any person who holds citizenship in a given country to classify himself in the national or ethnic group (minority) to which he feels he belongs. The minority has collective rights. No birth certificate or any other cultural or community certificate is needed for identification with a minority.
Time spent on the territory of the given state can not be considered as a condition for recognizing minority status.
In other words, such categories as native, have lived here for a hundred years, etc. are to be eliminated as conditions of membership in to the minority. The minimum number given in the constitution establishes how many citizens have to have declared themselves (have to be registered) as affiliated with a minority for recognition of their minority status, that is, being legal persons enjoying certain collective rights.
The states go on record that ethnic or other distinct identification does not involve discrimination and guarantee equal treatment for those who belong to this type of community within the state.
GLATZ: MINORITIES
27
CODE OF CONDUCT
The states declare that they shall not act on behalf of any majority nation to increase the number of minorities in any adjoining country — not even with reference to allegedly complex measures. Declaring one's belonging to a minority shall be considered a most sacred right of the individual and is strictly a matter of personal decision.
The states of the region make efforts to achieve that the statistical figures on minorities should be compiled and arrived at on the basis of the same principles in every state. The states declare that they shall abandon attempts to promote or speed up assimilation. They also declare their intention not to carry on propaganda for dissimilation in the name of some majority nation on the territory of an adjoining country. Natural assimilation and natural dissimilation are regarded as one's own affair, and it is considered impermissible to rush either deicision by administrative means or propaganda.
3. Minorities are Constituents of the State
The state is inhabited by nations (ethnic groups) that form the majority group and minority groups. Although the state is named after the majority nation, it does not discriminate between those who belong to the majority or minority category. The culture, economic production results and institutions of any present-day state are the fruits of the labour of all the nations that have ever lived there or live there today. In other words, every nation — majority nation and minority nation — in the state are equally constituents of the state.
The time or manner (immigrant invited to settle, etc.) of settlement must not influence exercising the rights of those who live in a given state today. It is suggested that the examination of these factors be left to historical study. Similarly, it is a topic for historical science which nation (minority or majority) spent a longer time in the territory of the present-day state due to various territorial restructurings and waves of emigration and immigration. Questions such as who was here first? are also subjects for historical studies and must not serve as grounds for any present privileges.
4. The Nature of Minority (Collective) Rights
Minority rights extend to the freedom of organization on a minority basis (5), personal autonomy (6), and in particular cases to the question of regional autonomyil).
5. Freedom of Organization on a Minority Basis
a) The states ensure that the national minorities may establish organizations of various levels (local, national and international) on their territory.
Within the state, citizens may organize themselves according to various criteria in order to live up to their personal identity image. The states regard these aspirations as a sign of a high developmental level of civil consciousness, a kind of manifestation that strengthens the community.
The state undertakes the obligation to have for the organizations in question the same legal provisions in force on its territory that apply to associations, societies and clubs. Only unconstitutional activities may be restricted. The legal status of the minority organizations is determined by the constitution or other laws.
Legislation decides whether the given social institutions are to be given budgetary or any other kind of support. The states accept that it is in their interest to have citizens manifest their (ethnic) differences in an organized form. However, spontaneous and community organizations (voluntary and civil associations, etc.) do not have strong traditions in the region and were banned during the past forty years. Thus, the operation of minority organizations indicates the unfolding of democratization in the region.
b) The autonomous organizations of minorities may be associations or societies whose activities extend to representation of special interests of the given minority, preservation of the historical and cultural heritage that hold together minorities, and also to discussion of the social tensions connected with minority existence.
These organizations are autonomous institutions of the minorities; they represent the political, cultural and social interests of minorities, expose tensions and make recommendations on easing and treating them. The states acknowledge that a good many forms of organizations may still emerge. It is generally recognized that the various national minority organizations in the region look back on different traditions. In a number of cases it is the churches that keep up ethnic separation (as this is the case with Bosnians and Pomeranians). The Jews living widely dispersed over the area (diaspora) and generally carrying a significant role in the economic, cultural and politicial development of the region, define their identity and community and thus their minority affinities in various ways. (Identity according to their common derivation, identity on the basis of religion, Jewish identity on the basis of feeling a bond with the distant state of Israel.) There are distinct differences between the identification efforts of the Gypsies whose significance is growing in the region. Historical experience calls attention to the need for efforts being made by the states to provide assistance for the organizations of Gypsies.
CODE OF CONDUCT
28
GLATZ: MINORITIES
c) In political life the state makes it possible for minorities to form independent parties organized along minority (ethnic, religious, etc.) lines on the local or national level.
In the parliamentary and political life of the state all taxpaying citizens — minorities included — may participate, vote or be elected only on the basis of each individual person having the right to one vote. In the case of parliamentary elections, registration with a minority party precludes registration with a political party organized on a different basis.
d) State power as the embodiment of all citizens (and not only of the majority nation) treats national minorities as partners. It undertakes the obligation to strive for arriving at a general accord with these organizations on all questions of conscience, politics and economy that concern the special interests of the minorities. The partnership between state and minority (interest representation), and their respective share in decision-making is regulated by law.
The states of the region stress that they do not regard the representation of collectives as solved under the present parliamentary system, but do consider a solution desirable. (E.g., Assembly of Nations, National Parliament of Interest Groups etc.) They do not exclude the possibility of setting up (as discussed in the general part) a Special, Second chamber of Parliament for the representation of the various groups of interest.
6. Personal Autonomy
Minority citizens are entitled to personal autonomy. This includes the totality of rights, social welfare and cultural provisions that ensure the equality of opportunity for all citizens regardless of minority or majority status.
When they chart their own democratic transformation, the states of the region should build on their own traditions and consider the practices that have proven valuable in other parts of the world. They pay special attention to the results of social development in Europe and to the autonomy of the individual, which is a fundamental principle in the organization of communities in Europe. They take it for igranted that all citizens are to be insured of the fulfilment of their various identities on the personal level — national and ethnic idenitities included.
The states of the region accept the fact that the society living in their territory is nationally and ethnically extraordinarily mixed on the personal level and on the level of small communities. Often even the different members of the same family have different national identities and this can hardly be reflected by statistical data.
Ensuring full personal autonomy is the most important principle to be observed for smoothing the coexistence of ethnicities that are, in certain areas mixed even within families and are regionally and administratively almost inseparable.
The states declare that they consider the national and ethnic diversity of the population valuable. Therefore they want to ensure the preservation of this diversity and build the most extensive personal autonomy possible for the individual.
a) Personal autonomy — right of self-government for minorities
Personal autonomy includes the right of citizens of minority status to elect their own political, cultural and interest organizations, and propose the establishment of new institutions to be organized on a minority basis. (See Points 5 b) and c) on this issue.)
b) Personal autonomy — right to use the mother tongue in all situations
Minority citizens may freely use their mother tongues regardless of the percentage of the population (of the village or of the country) their minority group represents. Freedom of using the language of one's choice extends to all aspects of private and social life, to communication in all organizations and in administrative offices (including the parliament), and to the mass media. Citizens of minority status have access to the services of interpreters paid from the state budget.
Fostering the mother tongue and the culture it represents is not only a way to preserve national and ethnic attributes. Language is, above all, the general means of contact within any community and between communities. There is evidence that even today, at the end of the 20th century, the vast majority of mankind are able to educate and express themselves effectively only in their mother tongue. In the past when the states did not support the absorption of culture in the mother togue, the members of the majority nations gained unjustified advantages in comparison to the national minorities in the fields of culture and economy. It is actually in the interest of citizens belonging to majority nations that all persons living in their proximity, in the same regional, administrative or industrial community should be well qualified both vocationally and culturally. All this is particularly important in the region of Central Europe, where the standards of labour and the efficiency of production are significantly lower than the levels already achieved in the most advanced parts of the world. Without overcoming this disadvantage, the region will never be able to catch up with the production standards of advanced cultures. The states in the region are aware of the fact that, in the present phase, significant positive discrimination is required in favour of the minorities
GLATZ: MINORITIES
29
CODE OF CONDUCT
if they are to be assured full access to the benefits
of culture in the mother tongue.
The fact is that, in contrast to practices in the Western European states, many small languages are still in literary use in Central Europe at the end of the 20th century. While the Scottish and Welsh speak English, and the Occitans and Bretons are best able to express themselves in French, the peoples living in this region can communicate only in their mother tongues well enough to become effective members of modern industrial society. Moreover, as opposed to the multilingual federations of Western Europe (Switzerland, Alsace, and South Tyrol), the languges of the nations living in the region of Central Europe are spoken by comparatively too few people to exist as major world languages. Keeping up these lanuages is actually costly and in some ways contrary to the interests of international integration. Still, their contributions are clearly valuable, the world would be poorer without them. As there are on both sides of the state borders minorities that speak the language of the adjoining state as their mother tongues, they and the languages they speak may easily function as adhesive material for the new types of ethnic and regional communities in the area.
c) Personal autonomy — right to the use of the mother tongue on all levels of education
Ensuring the various levels of instruction in the mother tongue means that in every type of state institution for education, definite conditions should be set by law (law on education, minority law) for the provision of facilities from the Budget for mastery of the mother tongue in local or national institutions. Special attention is to be given to the development of a system of minority instruction in the mother tongue in kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, and in state institutions for the training of skilled workers. The states should be aware of the fact that the problems in this field, which inevitably impose an extra burden on minorities, may only be eased by means of positive discrimination.
In the region — above all, in former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia — sound practical methods have been developed for training in the mother tongue for dispersed ethnic groups. The state — even if it is one where the licencing of private educational institutions is not part of the legal system — shall allow the founding of institutions of minority education and culture. States and their national representations of minorities should strive for ensuring that instruction in the private educational institutions of the minorities be compatible with state-determined curricula. If the respective private educational institution prefers a different course of study, the state must show readiness to accept the differences. Private schools for
minorities shall receive the same subsidy per student from the central budget as is granted to each state or public community institution according to the number of its pupils. Special consideration is to be given to ensuring the possibility of using the mother tongue in higher education. It must be obvious that the training of an intelligentsia whose members are capable of functioning in the other tongue is a most effective way of improving the general education of minorities. Local possibilities should be optimally utilized in agreement with the minority representations. (Autonomous universities, departments and faculties, and special majors.)
d) Personal autonomy — the right to cherish customs and traditions
Regardless of the proportion of the population the minority represents at the given settlement and within the country, its members should be enabled to practice their historically developed customs freely, to observe their holidays, cherish the symbols that are part of their heritage, and to display their national colours in public.
As every citizen of the state, members of the minorities should be enabled to choose the way of celebrating the rites associated with turns in their personal lifes (baptism, funerals, weddings, initiation of a boy into adulthood, etc.); they may freely opt for the secular and religious holidays of their ancestors, and may keep anniversaries as they wish. No one may prevent anyone from doing so, and no one may discriminate against anyone on that basis. Any discrimination against a person for such reasons is punishable by law. Anyone is free to spell his or her name according to personal preference.
e) Personal autonomy — positive social and cultural discrimination Through its administrative and social welfare policy, the state pays special attention to the rehabilitation of minority citizens who find themselves on the peripheries of society on account of the past disadvantages involved in minority existence. In this field the state shall rely particularly on the autonomous organizations of minorities.
Parallel with the principle that all citizens are equal before the law, the state professes that in the fields of social and moral education the principle of positive discrimination is valid. States that are currently building their democratic institutions are aware of the shortcomings of the institutions that should serve these goals and of the lack of traditions in this type of rehabilitation in social and moral education for minorities. Even the noble principles for the treatment of minorities so often voiced during the past forty years by the dictatorship of the proletariat fell short of their avowed aims.
f) Knowing the culture of the majority nation At the same time, minorities ought to realize that
knowledge of the language and culture of the
CODE OF CONDUCT
30
GLATZ: MINORITIES
majority nation is in the interest of all citizens. Consequently, in (state-controlled) educational institutions for minorities, or in schools or divisions where the language of instruction is a minority language, it is compulsory to teach and study as a second language the tongue of the majority nation(s) of the given state. (See also reference to this in the section below on regional autonomies.)
Minorities recognize that the majority language^) in use in the territory of the state are necessary for forming and keeping up human relations and for the functioning of technical and economic organizations. It is the vital interest of minorities to maintain sound and close relations with the majority nation. Minorities regard the majority language(s) as well as their own tongue as the most important instruments of communication and also appreciate them as means for conveying the culture and customs of the other nation.
7. Regional Autonomies
The state enables its minorities to set up regional autonomies. A regional autonomy provides the totality of rights that are valid within a geographically (and administratively) defined area. Certain rights and licences are vested by the state in the local self-government of an area inhabited largely by the given minority.
Regional autonomies do not (must not) represent divisions in the territorial unity of the state. On the contrary, they strengthen bonds between citizens and the state where they live. The state should be aware of the fact that it is in its own interest that all citizens living within its territory should be bound both in sentiment and in consciousness to their native community or to the smallest productive unit of the country where they spend their everyday lives.
Despite the historical processes that affected the settlements and increased ethnic mixing or mingling in the region, there are areas where minorities constitute the majority in certain settlements. Such areas are formed, for instance, by the Belorussians in Poland, the Hungarians and Carpatho-Ukrainians in Slovakia, the Hungarians in Romania, as well as Germans and Slovaks in Hungary, Serbs in Croatia, Croats and Hungarians in Serbia, Turks in Bulgaria and so on. A regional autonomy as a regional administrative unit is either vested with the same rights by the state as are given to administrative units organized in accordance with a principle other than ethnic or national, or the state regulates the status of regional autonomies by a separate law.
A regional autonomy means political administrative and full linguistic cultural autonomy.
Both the majority and minority nations in the region shall be aware of the fact that the
regional administrative framework is undergoing transformation in Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe. (Cf. previous parts of this work.) They recognize that the regional autonomies now being formed on national and ethnic bases may be a new type of regional administration but are not the only new forms and the territorial organizational principle of the region might also change. It is the responsibility of the state to set up in any given area administrative units that correspond to the intention and interests of the local majority. The administrative pattern and general political structure of autonomous areas must be compatible with the political and administrative order of the state.
The states shall be aware of the fact that the administrative order and general political structure of the regional and communal autonomies (self-governments) each represent widely different traditions. Therefore, they hold that when the internal order of the minority autonomies of any area is to undergo detailed regulation, the views of the local national and other interest organizations as well as of the church organizations should be brought into accord with each other and with the administrative order of the state. (Cf. Point 5/b on the different traditions of organizations and autonomy for the different minorities.) A minority autonomy may be a communal autonomy (8) or a regional autonomy^).
8. Communal Autonomies
Communal autonomies form the basis for all regional autonomies — including ethnic ones. The village or commune is the most natural unit of settlement. The state shall yield certain rights of various levels to the self-governments of these units.
The state may ensure in the villages autonomies of various types for the minorities. It grants — according to existing conditions — linguistic annd cultural autonomy, or political and administrative autonomy with complete linguistic and cultural freedom. The former is partial, and the latter is complete communal autonomy.
a) Partial communal autonomies
In communities where the minorities represent a significant statatistical proportion — amounting to as much as 10-20 per cent — the local self-government gives the minority relative communal autonomy;. This means that in the official language and in the signs in public places attention is given to bilingual designation, and at communal functions and events and on public buildings to the use of the seal and colours (symbols) of the local minority. The local government in consultation with the minorities in the area insures the organization of
GLATZ: MINORITIES
31
CODE OF CONDUCT
instruction in the local (regional) schools. If the minority represents 10-20 per cent of the local population, assistance is also to be provided for the maintenance of a local paper and cultural associations functioning in their language. The Budget — local and state budgets — should set aside proportionate allocations for the requirements of the minority or minorities.
The community ensures (from the budget of the local government or of the state) maintenance of the proper institutions for the survival — as the minorities desire — of traditional customs (funerals, weddings, baptism, observation of their own holidays, etc.). The state regulates the relationship between the mother tongue and bilinguality in the law (education and minority laws).
b) Complete communal autonomy
In case 51 per cent of the population of a settlement belongs to some minority registered in the given state, the community is to be given full minority autonomy extending to political and administrative self-government and full linguistic-cultural autonomy.
If the minority representing at least 51 per cent of the local population so desires, the mother tongue of this 51 per cent is given the status of the first language of the community in administration, political life, education, and in the mass media supported from communal funds.
The majority of the community undertakes the obligation that no criteria of ethnic affiliation other than knowledge of the local majority language is to be required of the employees who make up the office apparatus. The laws of the state — including those concerning paid employees — are obligatory under self-government as well.
The 51% majority of the community shall treat the minority inhabitants of the commune in the same manner as the treatment due to minorities in any other part of the state. (See Point 8/a)
9. Regional Minority Autonomy
In areas where several communities whose populations consist in 51 per cent or more of the same minority in a cohesive unit, the states shall strive to create regional minority autonomies and yield to them various licenses as regulated by legislation. Regional autonomies are vested with the same rights as provided for full community autonomies for minorities. (Cf. Point 8.) In other words, these rights extend to the political-, administrative and linguistic cultural territories. (Cf. Point 7.) The national autonomy of a community that happens to have a different majority than that of the regional minority autonomy where it is located, remains, of course, intact.
As it has been pointed out, regional minority autonomies  are  compatible  with  the political
administrative system of the given state as a whole. Internal order — including the interrelationship of the communities, the effects of changes in the majority patterns of given communities on regional autonomy, and the system of representation in villages — is determined by legislation in agreement with the minority organizations and the local self-governments.
10. Mutual Assistance of the States
The states hold it self-evident that their citizens may be members of national communities that constitute the minority nation in the adjoining state. (Cf. what was written earlier on the concept of culture nation.) It is their intention that the national minorities should form links between regional administrative units and states. Consequently they make it possible for their citizens to carry on cultural and associative or club activities in a neighbouring (or more distant) state. The states take it for granted and welcome that minorities living in their territories receive help from the majority nation of another state for ensuring the functioning of their autonomies of various levels, above all improvements in instruction in the mother tongue and in maintaining customs and traditions. The states recognize that minority affairs are not internal affairs.
At the same time, the states refrain from using possible problems appearing in minority policy in the territory of another state for purposes of agitation against the political system of that state violating thereby the principle of the sovereignty of states.
They hold it their responsibility to build interstate institutional systems (multilateral and bilateral working committees on minority affairs; interparliamentary or joint standing committees of experts, etc.) that on the one hand plan and assist the formation of new frameworks for the coexistence of culture nations, and on the other hand, address the conflicts arising to relieve interstate relations from this burden.
The states give up any intention to hamper the distribution in their own territory of the cultural products of nations living in other countries. On the contrary, guided by the need to preserve the minority cultures in their territory, they support the import of books, periodicals, films and other means necessary for keeping up the culture and traditions associated with the mother tongues of minorities. The free distribution of cultural and intellectual products is a means of guaranteeing human rights and at the same time relieves the state budget from part of the extra expenses necessary for preserving minority cultures. Only an open violation of the constitution of a given state is regarded as reason for restricting the free flow of cultural products.
CODE OF CONDUCT
32
GLATZ: MINORITIES
11. International Institutions
and Guarantees
The states of East Central Europe are aware of the fact that the fundamental principles of handling the minority question may be formulated only through international cooperation. They also see the need for calling into existence international coordinating institutions whose participants are experts from the states of the region, representatives of parliaments and governments, and delegates of autonomous minority organizations of the region. These organizations may be associated with the integrative European (regional) institutional systems that are essential for speeding up European integration. The states do not exclude the creation of a European Council on Minorities, Council on Minorities of the States of Central Europe, etc.
It is commonly known that the traditions of interstate integration are weak and fraught with blind alleys in the region. Partly the authoritarian organization of the political system and partly politics based on a sphere of interest hampered the emergence of truly integrated systems. Not even the organizations of international cooperation (economic, military, foreign affairs, etc.) within the system offered institutions designed for the treatment of minority problems. The states recommend the elaboration of a system of guarantees for the legal protection of minorities
parallel with setting up international minority institutions of an integrating character. Apart from the independent courts existing within the individual states, the creation of an international minority court — or several courts of this kind — is deemed necessary.
Regrettably, independent courts — an important institution in advanced democracies — rely on but weak traditions in the states of the region; moreover the Soviet system eroded the foundations under even these shaky traditions. Neither the proper legal institutions nor intellectuals trained in the field are available.
The states of the region realize that centuries of national enmities and lasting periods of confrontation between state and nation are bound to remain for a long time sources of danger for political and everyday life. Political administrations are to survey these threats, to form long term conceptions, and then call to life and maintain the proper institutions. This intention as well as the sharpening of minority conflicts are at once products of the transformation of political systems and conditions for the material, intellectual, and social advancement of the region. Mutual goodwill and benevolence on the part of political administrations and the intelligentsia are the main requirements for easing the tensions.
(DATA BANK)
MINORITIES IN POLAND
34
APPENDIX
Republic of Poland AreaJ 312,677 sq. km Population (1991): 38,220,000
M^xmttiiimt Germans Uteaiiitams^ B^loms«iaiis^ Gypsies, Kttthei£iftns> Lithuanians, Slovaks, Greeks, Tartars
I. TERRITORY OF THE STATE , BOUNDARIES
The sovereign Polish State was restored by the peace treaties of 1919. In the Early Modern Age, the Kingdom of Poland was divided on three occasions — for the last time in 1795. The independent Polish state wished to restore the territory as it existed prior to the divisions of 1772, the status most favourable for the country. After
World War I, Poland received areas from the dissolved Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (Western and Eastern Galícia), from Russia (parts of the Ukraine and of Belorus-sia, Polesia and Volhinia), from Germany (Western Prussia and Poznan, and Upper Silesia), from Czechoslovakia (part of Teschen and the area along the Olsa River), and from Lithuania (Vilna and its vicinity). As to the nationalities of its population, old Poland was anyway one of the most most diversified states in Europe as to nationalities, and the population in the newly acquired further increased the proportion of large nationalities. In this way, 3.9 million Ukrainians, 1 million Belorussians, 2.1 million Jews, and 1 million Germans lived in the territory of the new state as compared to 18.8 million Poles (68%). In the northern part, Danzig-Gdansk remained a free city, largely with a German-nationality population.
In the Versailles Peace Treaty, the Great Powers obligated Poland to ensure the rights of the minorities in its territory. The Republic of Poland included the rights and protection of minorities in its constitution. (The sta-
THE THREE GREAT POWERS AND THE POLES UNTIL 1918
\
AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN
Poles: Dark shade
MONARCHY
APPENDIX
35
MINORITIES IN POLAND
ETHNIC AND LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION OF POLAND
Nationalities	1921*	1931**	1946**	1956***	1958***	1961***	1975***	1990
Poles	18 814,239 69,2%	21 993,444 68,9%	20 520 200 85,8%	27 240 000 99,0%	26 887 000 94,2%	29 342 000 98,5%	33 142 000 97,9%	-37 720 000 98,7%
Ukrainians	3 898,431 14,3%	3 221,97s1 10,1%	—	150 000 0,5%	200 000 0,7%	180 000 0,6%	—	-230 000 0,6%
Jews	2 110,448 7,8%	2 732 5732 8,6%	—	45 000 0,2%	60 000 0,2%	31 000 0,1%	—	—
Belorussians	1 060 237 3,9%	989 852 3,1%	—	—	120 000 0,4%	165 000 0,6%	—	-190 000 0,5%
Germans	1 059,294 3,9%	740 992 2,3%	2 288 300 9,6%	65 000 0,2%	950 0005 3,3%	3 000 0,0%	284 000 0,8%	—
Lithuanians	68 667 0,3%	83 116 0,3%	—	—	10 000 0,0%	10 000 0,0%	—	—
Russians	56 239 0,2%	138 713 0,4%	—	—	150 000 0,5%	19 000 0,1%	—	—
Czech and Slovaks	30 629 0,1%	38 097 0,1%	—	20 0004 0,0%	100 000 0,3%	23 000 0,1%	—	—
Others (Tartars, Karaits, Armenians)	78 634 0,3%	11 119 0,0%	399 600 1,7%	—	60 000 0,2%	10 000 0,0%	420 000 1,2%	-80 000 0,2%
Unclassified	13 000 0,0%	39 169 0,1%	417 4003 1,7%	—	—	—	—	—
„Tuteisy" (Hiesigen)	—	707 088 2,2%	—	—	—	—	—	—
Gypsies	—	—	—	30 000 0,1%	—	12 000 0,0%	—	
Unregistered	—	—	304 300 1,3%	—	—	—	—	—
Total	27 189 818	3 0 696 138	23 929 800	27 550 000	28 537 000	29 795 000	33 846 000	-38 220 000
* According to other calculations, the figures were higher for the Ukrainians (4,5 and even 6 million [19.2%], Jews (3,202,389 [8.0]); Belorrussians (the low number is due to the fact that those of them of the Catholic religion were counted with the Poles, but their proportion within the population reached 4.0%); and Germans (number estimated at 1.7 million [3.0%].
** According to other data, the total minority population according to mother tongues: 32,133,000 in 1931 and 32,107,191 in 1946. *** Estimated figures.
1 Ruthenians (1,219,047 [3,8] are to be added to the Ukrainians. The number of Ukrainians thus adds up to 4,441,622, that is 13,9%.
2 2,489,034 of them spoke Yiddish and 243,539 Hebrew; 3 Persans being screened. 4 Slovaks only; 5. 850,000 of them are so called autochtones.
with its new neighbours in regard to Upper Silesia, Eastern and Western Prussia, and had minor wars with the Ukrainians and Russians.
In 1938, after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, Poland — with Germany's approval — put her hands on the Czech areas already disputed in 1920. Then, in September 1939 when World War II broke out, the territory of Poland was divided up between Germany and the USSR, with a few villages given to Slovakia.
The peace treaties that closed World War II significantly changed the boundaries of Poland and altered its ethnic conditions. From the eastern areas the districts inhabited by Ukrainians, Belorussians and Lithuanians were almost completely (180,000 sq.km) annexed by the Soviet Union. Poland received some compensation at the cost of Germany, from which country she received 103,000 sq.km — on her western frontiers, and, through the addition of Eastern Prussia and Gdansk, to the north. In consequence of the new regional divisions some three million Poles were caught in the Soviet Union (prisoners of war, and people deported in February 1940 and June 1941). At the same time, some nine million, or according to other data — probably exaggerated — 10.5 million Germans were living in new Poland. (No reliable data are available.) Many of the Germans from inner Germany had moved to the one-time German areas of Poland in course of the Gesamtssiedlungsplan anounced in 1942 or of the other German settlement drives between 1939 and 1944, and now, after 1945, were finding themselves in Polish territory. In consequence of the anti-German campaigns only about 2.3 million Germans were in Poland by February 1946 out of the 9 or 10.5 million who lived there earlier. Even after 1946 (when 85.6% of the people of the country were Poles), the Germans constituted the only significant minority in Poland. Today, with the pas-
tistical data on minorities do not show their actual proportions, which were considerably higher than the figures in Polish statistics, our source here.) Poland had disputes
MINORITIES IN POLAND
36
APPENDIX
POLAND (in World War II)
The arrows mark the detachment of territories
sing of 70 years of history, once multinational Poland has become a "national state" in which Poles make up 98.7% of the population.
II. MINORITY POLICY
In 1920 Poland accepted, and then in 1921 fitted into its constitution, the international provisions for minority protection. Ensured were equality before the law and concrete collective rights (organization of clubs and associations, establishment of schools). Under the minority agreement, special measures were taken to protect the rights of Jews in Poland (possibility to observe the Sabbath on Saturday, question of schooling). It is to the special merit of minority protection in Poland that the protection of minority properties was declared. (In Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the post-1920 land reforms hit the German and Hungarian minorities very hard). These rights were also guaranteed in the second Polish constitution, of April 1935. The 1947 constitution of the Republic and the 1952 one of the People's Republic on the other hand, though guaranteeing nationality rights in principle, did not make detailed provisions as did the constitution of 1921. The present Constitution (of 1990) likewise contains only generalized rules about minorities. After 1920, the minority protection provisions continued to be kept only in part. Between 1920 and 1931, the minorities of the country submitted 247 petitions to the League of Nations (104 of them German, 85 Ukranian, 33 by Jews, 19 Lithuanian, and 6 Belorussian). The League of Nations had no means at its disposal for remedying complaints, and in some cases it rejected minority claims.
For Eastern Galicia, the Seim voted autonomy (1922), which, however, never went into effect. Most Governments did not hide their wish to see an ethnically homogeneous Poland develop. In the 1920s the cultural autonomies of the Germans were tolerated, the German-language schools and even two German-language university faculties were left in existence for a while. But after 1924 the number of German elementary schools was gradually reduced (by one third) and German peasants were forced to give up their land and homes (about 500,00 hectares of land passed into Polish hands).
Under the impact of increasing political presure by National-Socialist Germany, the Polish authorities step-
Eed up their anti-German measures: German shops were oycotted, Germans were suspended or ousted from their jobs, and the number of German students allowed to attend university was cut. In September Poland went on record condemning the provisions of the Versailles Treaty it found inconvenient.
Growing anti-Semitism in the 1930s resulted in Jewish protests and large-scale Jewish emigration, and also caused violent clashes with other nationalities — chiefly Ukrainians. In 1938 the anti-Semitic wave crested in the introduction of a strict quota system that limited the number of Jewish students allowed at the universities. The proportion of Jewish students dropped from 24.6% in 1921 to 8.2% by the school year of 1938-39. In university lecture rooms, the Jewish students were seated separately in "ghetto benches".
Cultural associations were left intact for all minorities after 1922. However, the Ukranians were aggressively treated. The Polish lex Grabski (school law) of July 31, 1924, left only the educational institutions with bilingual instruction unmolested, and the total figure for Ukrainian schools diminished from the prewar 2,496 to 460 by 1928. (In 1938 the figure was down at 452.) Out of the 20 prewar gymnasiums [academic secondary schools preparing for university admission] only five survived as long as 1934. Ukrainians were compelled to leave their homes and land, and invalid Polish war veterans and local Poles were moved into their houses. About 800,000 hectares of land earlier belonging to Ukrainians, was
parcelled and distributed among Poles. As attempts were made to liquidate the Ukrainian Orthodox and Uniate Churches, over 500 church buildings were taken from the Ukrainians. Between 1930 and 1935 civil war broke out in the Ukrainian-inhabited areas in which the League of Nations supported the Polish government.
The same Polonizing policy — dubbed "pacification" — was pursued against the Belorussians (1924-1934). First their Hromaaa organizations were dissolved (1928), then 56 of their leaders were tried in court and the majority incarcerated in the Bereza Kartuska concentration camp. From 1935 to 1939 a cultural and religious struggle was waged against the Belorussian Orthodox Church.
During World War II, National-Socialist Germany set up two administrative areas in the territory of Poland. Gdansk, Poznan and Upper Silesia formed and was in charge of one of them, in North and West Poland. The other, including the Warsaw, Lublin and Krakow areas, was under the control of what was called the General-gouvernment Polen. Approximately 1 million Poles were driven away from these districts, and some 1.5 million
APPENDIX
37
MINORITIES IN POLAND
Polish citizens were deported to forced labour camps in Germany. In place of those driven away or deported, Germans were settled from Germany, East European and Southeast European countries, and from the USSR chiefly in Generalgouvernement territory (partly in accordance with Soviet-German agreements).
The Ukrainians and Belorussians hoped for more favourable political treatment from the German occupiers. At first they did receive special treatment: the Ukranian Uniate Church was given autonomy (1939-1941) and in the local organs of public administration some Ukrainian civilians joined the German military authorities. However, when the organization of Ukrainian nationalists had set up the Ukrainian National Committee in Cracow and
{iroclaimed the sovereign Ukrainian State (under the eadershipof Stepan Bandera) on June 30, 1941 in Lvov, the German government started to act aggressively against the Ukrainians. Bandera and his associates were arrested and the place in public organizations of Ukrainian civil leaders was taken by German soldiers. In 1945 Hitler himself ordered the dissolution of the Ukrainian Holichina Division, which had participated in the war under the German Army.
After the war, the ethnic features of Poland showed considerable changes. The immense casualty figures of the war, the loss of the population of the areas annexed to the Soviet Union, the repatriation of Poles from the West and resettlement from the Soviet Union as well as the mass-scale expulsion of non-Poles from Poland were among the principal reasons.
After 1945, the Polish government, similarly to the administration in other Central European countries, decided on the deportation of Germans. (We have no precise data on how many millions of Germans were deported by the Soviets.) In 1945 most Germans were deprived or their citizenship and were for a while required to wear a mark to set them apart. In 1946 a decree declaring the collective guilt of Germans was passed — to be withdrawn only in July 1950. Some of the autochthonous German minority — who lived in Poland prior to 1939 — received differentiated treatment even after World War II, and most of them were confirmed in their citizenship.
The deportation to the Soviet Union of the Ukrainians left in the territory of Poland (some 800,000 people) and the resettlement of Poles who had been trapped in the Soviet Union were decided in a 1946 agreement between Poland and the Soviet Union. From 1944 to 1950 a regular civil war was going on between the Polish State and the Ukrainian Patriotic Army. The Polish government received assistance from Czechoslovakia and from the Soviet Union and was in this way able to defeat the Ukrainian resistance. During this civil war approximately 160,000 Ukrainians were forcibly moved from the eastern areas to western Poland which used to have a German majority.
Between 1960 and 1980 there were sharp disputes between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland on Poland's denial of the existence of minorities — above all the German minorities. The German minority no longer exists within the boundaries of the present State of Poland", declared the Polish Communist Party in 1987.
Today's Poland is ethnically a substantially homogeneous state. The minority issue is now just a matter of historical sensitivity in the country. Earlier, however, as this was the case more or less generally in each of the young states of Central Europe, minorities were not so much treated as minorities but they were regarded as dangerous domestic representatives of adjoining states. They were not considered integral parts of the state, constituents of the state, but enemies of the state. There is today no minority law; official measures in regard to minorities are regulated by legal provisions and decrees on various ministerial and cabinet levels. This minority policy was asserted between 1920 and the 1980s - though not always in the same form.
III. MINORITIES
We have no precise data on the minorities living in Poland today. It is notable that according to the 1990 estimate there are, apart from the Poles, only 230,000 Ukrainians, 190,000 Belorussians, and 80,000 "other" minorities living in Poland. Nothing is said about Germans, Lithuanians and Jews; moreover the earlier collections of data are likewise unreliable. (E.g., a 1961 sociological survey speaks of 3000 Germans, and by 1965 the figure suddenly leaps to 140,000.) As to other surveys, it is interesting to note, that sometimes 3000 (!) and at other times 140,000 Germans are mentioned, whereas foreign estimates speak of between 500,000 to one millon Germans living in the country in the 1960s. Conse-quently,due caution is recommended in reference to data whether taken from Polish handbooks or from information published elsewhere.
Germans
After several waves of emigration, the one million Germans of 1921 melted down to 741,000 by 1931. In 1939, however, the figure was again more than one million. During World War II (more precisely between October 1939 and May 1944) and particularly on the basis of the Gesamtssied-lungsplan approximately 7-8 million Germans were settled in Poland partly from western German locations and partly from southeast European states (from the latter area over 800,000 persons). After the conclusion of the war, the Polish government — actually in harmony with the peace treaties — ordered the deportation of Germans. Already as early as in 1940 the Polish government in exile in London considered it inconceivable that the Poles should be living together with a German minority again after the war. During the war, the question of deportation was raised several times. The Provisional Government formed in January 1944 took a stand again in support of the "removal" of the Germans, in other words all Germans were to leave Poland in the northern and in the western part of the country (August 1944 programme). A government decree of 1945 referred to the Germans as hostile elements. The deportations affected nearly 3.5 million Germans, who were deprived of their citizenship on September 13,1946, in postwar Poland. (The rest fled with the retreating German troups to the German areas in the West.) In the course of the deportations between 1946 and 1949, some 1.5 million Germans were to be deported to the British occupation zone of Germany, and 2 million to the Soviet zone. Until the end of 1949 a total of2,275,000 Germans were actually transported across the Polish border (1,616,555 from February through December 1946, and 65,822 from January through April 1947) and then a further 380,000 from Gdansk. The deportations continued until 1951. In course of the evacuations, the fleeing and deportations, some 1.3 million Germans died. The number of autochthonous Germans who were screened and given credentials was around 900,000-1,000,000, most of them living in Upper Silesia and by the Masurian lakes.
In the 1960s and 1970s the official data from Poland speak about a few thousand people in the German minority, information that is refuted by the Polish surveys of recent years. It is known that from February 1, 1955 to December 1970 the Germans who settled in Germany numbered 368,824. In the 1970s the figure was raised with the addition of 185,000-1900,000. Several German minority representatives were elected to parliament in 1990. As the Germans were traditionally hated by the Polish population at large, few of the remaining Germans admitted their German nationality even in unofficial surveys.
Ukrainians
Some 180,000-200,000 Ukrainians live in the eastern parts of Poland today. After 1958 the decree on the re-
MINORITIES IN POLAND
38
APPENDIX
settlement of Ukrainians and depriving them of their property was put out of effect. Still, only a few dozen families managed to get back to their original places of domicile. They have basic minority rights. Since 1958, Ukrainian is the language of education in villages where a minority constitutes the local majority. The reopening of Uniate churches has been permitted in localities where more than a thousand people adhere to the religion. Instruction in the Ukrainian language has been made possible again in elementary schools if they have more than 200 pupils, and two Ukrainian colleges have resumed teaching. Resettlement and the return of land has been progressing only very slowly. Ruthenian-Ukrainian cultural clubs have sprung up again since 1956. The Ukrainian cultural association has several hundred local organizations. Since 1958, emigration has been made possible to the Soviet Union, but very few people availed themselves of this right.
Belorussians
With the redrawing of the boundaries in 1945, the Belo-russians together with the Lithuanians found themselves in the Soviet Union. Out of the 190,000 Belorussians 90 per cent live in the same district, in the vicinity of Bialystok. Their relations with the Polish state has been less antagonistic than those of the Ukrainians. They enjoy cultural autonomy, and their linguistic and cultural clubs and societies show considerable development. (The Belorussian Social and Cultural Society has some 5,500 members.) Some 2,400 students attend the 34 schools teaching in Belorussian. The University of Warsaw has a Department of Belorussian Studies.
Ruthenians
The hatred of the Ukrainians that flared up during the Polish-Ukrainian civil war made life difficult for the Ruthenians too. The campaign of reprisals given the code name Akcja Wisla was launched in the spring of 1947 against them. Many of their Uniate (Greek Catholic) churches were destroyed, and their earlier educational autonomy was restricted. By 1961, their schools run in the mother tongue fell back from the earlier 17 to 7. The Ruthenian population is estimated at about 30 to 35 thousand.
Lithuanians
There were about 83,000 Lithuanians living in Poland in 1931. Although they were more favourably assessed than other minorities in Poland, getting them gradually assimilated was never given up. This was the objective of Polish minority policy in closing down a number of Lithuanian schools. Already between the two world wars the Lithuanians were active in their own cultural clubs and associations, and published their own periodicals which were liquidated after the German occupation of Poland (1939). Following the border modifications in 1945, only about 10,000 Lithuanians remained in Poland. They decided to stay, and now they are upholding an extensive culture inspired by the mother tongue and have won for themselves considerable autonomy.
Czechs and Slovaks
During the period of "harsh treatment", the position of Czechs and Slovaks — whose numbers are estimated to run into a few tens of thousands (2,000 Czechs and about 20,000 Slovaks are registered as minorities) — deteriorated considerably in comparison to that of the Polish minorities in Czechoslovakia. Their position has since then normalized, and now they have their own primary schools, one academic secondary school (gymnasium), and their own press functioning within rather narrow bonds.
Jews
The over three million Jews who lived in Poland after 1919 constituted 20 per cent of the Jews in the world. The holocaust killed ninety per cent of them. Different from the other successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in Poland Jews were regarded as a nationality. The statistical surveys of the late 1950s estimated their number at about 45 to 60 thousand. On account of sharpening anti-Semitism a lot of them emigrated by the end of the 1960s, and today their number is estimated at about ten thousand.
Kashubs
This is a Polish-speaking ethnic group which has been living in the territory of former East Prussia since the 13th century. Their number is put at about 200,000 people today.
Russians
The Russians constitute a minority of about 19,000 people living chiefly in the cities of Eastern and Northern Poland. Their significance is defined by their low proportion.
Greeks
The Greeks and Macedonians who fled after the 1946-1948 civil war in Greece to Eastern European countries, among them Poland, take a unique place among the minorities of the country. Poland accepted some 10,000 refugees from Greece, allowing them to preserve their language and maintain their own schools. Unlike other nationalities they were not threatened by the assimilation attempts of the Polish state. They were treated as exiles from their own country rather than minorities, and were encouraged to set up their own clubs and associations for cultural purposes.
Tartars
The Tartars, who settled in Poland in the 16th century, are more of a religious than an ethnic minority. They numbered about six thousand between the two world wars and their cultural activities were supported by the Polish state. The position of the Tartars, believers in Islam, changed during the past forty years or so. From the eastern areas of the country they were displaced to Western Poland, their mosques were closed or pulled down, and altogether they were subject to a deliberate assimilation policy. Consequently, their number — 17 between 1918 and 1939 — decreased to two in the 1970s. Although there is in Warsaw a Muslim league that holds religious meetings from time to time, it does not carry a substantial role in the preservation of the identity of the Tartar ethnic group.
Gypsies
The number of Gypsies who have settled in Polish areas since the 16th century are now estimated to run into 500,000. Similarly to many other states, Poland does not really know what to do about their legal status.
IV. CONFLICTS
As deportations, war and intimidation eliminated or crumbled the identity image of the originally large German population in Poland; as the Holocaust destroyed and anti-Semitism drove out the Jews; as the Ukrainians were in part annexed to the Soviet Union together with the area where they were born and were partly shattered by arms; and as the Polish Communist Party was successful in continuing a policy of denationalization against minorities pursued by earlier regimes, Poland has no ethnic concflicts today.
APPENDIX
39
MINORITIES IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Czech and Slovak Bohemia: f 8*869 sq. km
Bohemia: 11,302,21s
Slovakia S»274yS35 Minorities in Bohemia: Moravians, Slovaks, Silesians, Germans, *ľ:yi'9. K ix'-<?'.:'- x). ľíí':r-1'*: iř_v. Minorities in Slovakia; Hungarians,
nians, Moravians, Germans, Poles
I. STATE BOUNDARIES, POLITICAL SYSTEM
The Republic of Czechoslovakia came into being as a successor state on grounds of the St. Germain Peace Treaty of September 10, 1919 which closed World War I when the Austrian parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia the historical provinces of the Czech Crown that had constituted parts of the Austrian Empire largely inhabited by Slovaks and Ruthenians, became unified with the northern and northeastern counties of the historical Kingdom of Hungary. The areas mentioned existed within the constitutionally unified Republic of Czechoslovakia as separate principalities under the names of Slovakia (Slovensko) and Carpatho-Ukraine (Rusinsko, Podkarpatská Rus). However, neither the Carpatho-Ukrainian autonomy provided for in Article 10 of the Treaty of St. Germain, nor the formulation of the special minority status for the German minority constituting almost 25 per cent of the country's total population of 13.5 million was accomplished though the former figured as an obligation for Czechoslovakia in the Article of the Peace Treaty referred to, and the latter was promised by the Czech statesmen who founded the Republic of Czechoslovakia. In the first Republic of Czechoslovakia, which had an
area of 140,408 sq. km, the unsettled nature of the Slovak issue constituted the most serious problem. The Prague government failed to fulfil the promises for autonomy about which T. G. Masaryk, later president of the Republic, agreed in the Pittsburg agreement in Pennsylvania with Czech and Slovak politicians living in America and which was made the subject of a verbal contract between Czech and Slovak politicians in utumn 1918.
The unsolved state of the nationality and minority issues was to a great extent responsible for the fact that Czechoslovakia became politically isolated and internally destabilized by 1938, and consequently became an easy prey for Germany. First, areas with German, Hungarian, and Polish majorities became detached and the Slovakian and Ruthenian autonomies were formed (October 1938), and later the autonomous Slovak Republic came into being (March 14, 1939), completing in effect the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
In 1945, Czechoslovakia was considered a state that came out of World War II among the victors. The country was formed anew in accordance with the boundaries of 1937. It lost, however, the Carpatho-Ukraine, which was annexed to the Soviet Union, and on the other hand acquired, at the expense of Hungary, three additional villages at the Bratislava bridgehead. Between 1945 and 1948 German and Hungarian minorities were deprived of their citizenship because in the spirit of President Benes's conception of developing a Slavic nation-state, they were declared collectively responsible for the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39. Following this, nearly 3 million Germans were relocated to occupation zones in Germany, and some attempts were also made to get rid of the Hungarian minority.
On October 28, 1968 Czechoslovakia became a federal republic. Relations between the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic were provided for in Constitutional Law 143 of 1968.
In spring 1991 the name of Czechoslovakia first changedto Czech-Slovakia, and then to Czech and Slovak Federative Republic. With these changes, a new phase began in the constitutional relations between Czechs and Slovaks, which already carried the danger of divorce between the two sides of the common state. After the July 5 and 6, 1992 parliamentary elections, the leading political parties of the two member republics agreed on the gradual dissolution of the Czech and Slovak federation and on the establishment of an independent Czech Republic and independent Slovak Republic with January 1, 1993. The two Republics have a customs union.
ETHNIC STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Nationalities	1921	1930	1950	1961	1970	1980
Czechs	6 831 120	7 406 493	8 383 923	9 069 222	9 318 019	9 791 122
	51.1%	55.4%	67.9%	67,9%	64.9%	64.1%
Slovaks	1 967 870	2 282 277	3 240 549	3 836 213	4 199 902	4 676 378
	14.7%	17.1%	26.3%	26.3%	29.3%	30.6%
Ukrainians					48 754	47 121
	461 849	549 169	67 615	54 984	0.3%	0.3%
Russians	3,5%	4,1%	0,6%	0,4%	9 897	7 461
					0.1%	0.1%
Poles	75 853	81 737	72 624	67 552	65 132	68 176
	0.6%	0.6%	0.6%	0.5%	0.5%	0.4%
Hungarians	745 431	691 923	367 733	533 934	570 478	579 166
	5.6%	5.2%	3.0%	3.9%	4.0%	3,8%
Germans	3 123 568	3 231 688	165 117	140 402	85 663	61 129
	23.4%	24.2%	1.3%	1.0%	0.6%	0.4%
Jews	180 855	186 642				
	1,4%	1,4%	_			_
Other	25 871	49 636	40 889	43 270	47 142	52 542
	0.2%	0.4%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%
Total	13 374 364	14 479 565	12 388 450	13 745 577	14 344 987	15 283 095
MINORITIES IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
40
APPENDIX
II. MINORITY POLICY
The nationality figures in the Czechoslovak Republic created in 1918 hardly changed between the two world wars though the German minority increased and the other minorities remained more or less stable.
According to the provisions of the Treaty of St. Germain concluded on September 10, 1919, Czechoslovakia undertook compliance with the international provisions for the protection of minorities and also committed itself
CZECHOSLOVAKIA (1920-1938)
Hungarians Y~7\ Ukrainians EEE3 Poles
The position of the minorities was gradually improved after 1949. The Constitution of 1960 and then, in greater detail, constitutional law No. 144 of 1968 settled their status constitutionally. To this day no separate minority law has been passed. The Czechoslovakian deed of constitution of 1991 — differently from the 1968 law on the constitution — does not declare that minorities are constituents of the state, though it does proclaim the right of individuals to the culture associated with their mother tongue and to instruction in the mother tongue. The Slo-
_ vakian language law of
1991 makes the use of the minority language in units of public administration dependent on whether the minority represents at least 20 per cent of the local population.
III. MINORITIES
Poles
in favour of granting autonomy for the Carpatho-Ukraine. Moreover, it concluded with Austria on June 7, 1920 in Brno (Briinn) a bilateral agreement which ensured the development of German minority education in Czechoslovakia. A similar bilateral minority agreement was concluded on April 13, 1925 with Poland.
Minority rights were regulated in Czechoslovakia by the language law (No, 122 of February 29, 1920; the enactment clause appeared on February 3, 1926). Accordingly, in administrative units where the number of a given minority reaches 20% of the population, the citizens of that minority may transact their business with the authorities in their mother tongue. On December 31, 1928, the law was supplemented by a government decree providing that in units of public administration where minorities made up the local majority, the given minorities' languages were on the level of individual use fully of the same rank as the majority language. Where the ratio was higher than 75%, it was up to the local authority to decide whether the minority language was to be the official language. (The parallel acceptance of the use of the State language continued to be compulsory.)
After World War II, the members of the German and Hungarian minorities were deprived of their citizenship as collectives that were guilty of the dissolution of the Czechoslovak State in 1938-39. (Those who had themselves registered in the framework of the re-Slovakization programme as Slovaks were permitted to regain their citizenship rights and properties. 344,609 persons re-Slo-vakized in this way.) Almost the entire German minority was displaced to Germany during the three years of 1945, 1946 and 1947. In a similar way, there were attempts to get rid of the Hungarian minority through population exchanges. Approximately 90,000 Hungarians were settled in Hungary and the same number of Slovaks from Hungary to Czechoslovakia. At the same time, under the pretext of labour recruitment programmes, the redistribution of the Hungarian population — or their deportation to the fringes of Czechoslovakia just across from the German border zone — was started (some 40 to 45 thousand people).
Poles lived in the Silesian territories that were annexed to Czechoslovakia in 1918 and in twelve villages along the pre-1918 boundary between Poland and Hungary. They spoke the Goral dialect. Poland suffered a loss when the League of Nations award-tsed these areas to Czechoslovakia in 1924.
Following the Munich Decision of 1938, the Polish military occupied the disputed areas in Bohemia and Slovakia. When the Germans started the war invading Poland, the independent Slovak Republic joined Germany and was enabled to annex as a reward the Polish villages in northern Slovakia (October 1939). There was another change in 1945 when the settlements concerned became again the territory of Poland.
The Cultural Association of Polish Working People was set up in Czechoslovakia in 1948. Since 1989 the federative and the Czech parliament each have one representative of Polish nationality, nominated by the Polish political movement Wspolnota (Coexistence).
Hungarians
Almost 90 per cent of the Hungarians who were annexed by the Czechoslovak Republic in consequence of the Trianon Peace Treaty (June 4, 1920) live in the zone of the border with Hungary. There was a sizable Hungarian population in the northern part of the country, but a lot of them moved particularly from the cities settling in Hungary or becoming assimilated.
Despite the existence of communities where the Hungarian minority constituted a cohesive majority, no autonomy based on the ethnic group was ever established. Representing ethnic and political interests in the Parliament in Prague and in local administration, Hungarian political parties were active in Czechoslovakia between 1920 ana 1938. The Hungarians also had a large independent business organisation of their own (Hanza Cooperative), and numerous local and country-wide cultural organizations.
In November 1938 the first Vienna Award returned 90 per cent of the Hungarians in Slovakia to Hungary. The status of the 70,000 Hungarians left in Slovakia remained unaltered, they even maintained a political party of their own.
After World War II, the number of Hungarians became reduced by about half. The reasons lay in the exchanges
APPENDIX
41
MINORITIES IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
CZHECHOSLOVAKIA (in World War II)
The Dismemberment of Czechoslovakia (1938-1939) /
i.
r
.•J
o Prague
Czech-Moravian Protectorate
GERMAN EMPIRE
Austria
o/"respective minoritypopu-lations between Hungary and Czechoslovakia according to the agreement concluded on February 27, 1946 in the re-Slovakiza-tion efforts, and the general deprivation of property, cultural and political rights. As these measures relaxed, the number of people who professed to be Hungarians kept increasing again until 1960. CSEMADOK (Cultural Association of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia) is the cultural organization of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia but has not the same rights it had prior to 1937.
In 1989-1990, after the revolution, the movement and activity of political parties gathered momentum. The Hungarian parties won a total of 16 seats in the Prague Parliament, and in 1992 the joint parliamentary group of the Coexistence Political Movement and the Hungarian Christian Democrats consisted of 11 Hungarian and Polish representatives. The Hungarian parties have 14 representatives in the National Council of Slovakia.
Germans
According to the figures of the 1921 Census, more than 3.1 million persons of German nationality lived in Czechoslovakia at that time, most of them as majority groups of compactly German-inhabited districts in the border zones of Bohemia close to Germany (Sudetenland). Positive legislation in regard to minorities in Czechoslovakia temporarily stabilized the German problem. German minority schools and cultural institutions in the Sudeten-land remained virtually intact. A German university was active in Prague and also in Brunn (Brno). German political parties represented the minority's interests in Parliament, and were active even on the minority forums of the League of Nations. Between 1926 and 1931 the German Smallholders' Party and the German Social Democratic party were in the coalitions of several Czechoslovak governments.
In 1933, however, the political role played by the German minority changed radically. With 1.25 million votes, the Sudeten-German political party became in 1935 the strongest political party in Czechoslovakia, and in the nationality statute prepared but not completed between 1935 and 1938 demanded full regional autonomy for the German minority. This became, however, wholly unacceptable (though the demand for German autonomy was almost fully acknowledged during the weeks of the Munich crisis) when in the Karlsbad Programme (April 24, 1938) freedom of observance was demanded for the National Socialist ideo-
^ GENE R A L— j GOUVERNMENT
Sudetenland r\
A J. V_.
/Bratislava \>>i... . —•
/>—•
Germans
Hungarians Ukrainians
Poles
logy on Hitler's personal request. The Four-Power Accord of Munich (September 30, 1938) awarded the areas where the ratio of the German population exceeded 50 per cent to Germany, and Germany completed their military occupation in a brief six weeks. And then, on March 14, 1939 Germany launched an attack against the remainder of Czechoslovakia and annexed the Czech provinces under the name of Czech-Moravian Protectorate.
139,000 Germans were living according to data deriving from 1930 on the territory of the independent Slovak Republic proclaimed on the same day. Under the Kar-patendeutsche Partei they constituted a privileged minority group in the Slovakian state.
In 1945, in accordance with the KoSice Government Programme (April 5), Germans and Hungarians living in Czechoslovakia were deprived of their citizenship. As the front was moving westward, hundreds of thousands of Germans fled, particularly after the news spread of the atrocities committed by the Czechoslovak and Russian armies against the German civilian population. The May 19 and June 21 decrees of President Benes of the Republic of Czechoslovakia ordered that the German and Hungarian minorities be deprived of all their rights and properties. In the summer of 1945 the hundreds of thousands of voluntary refugees were joined by the Germans who had been ordered to leave their homes. Until 1949 approximately 2.9 million Germans left their native land
CZECHOSLOVAKIA (after 1947)
>
*****%
I
if
TTT"
Slovaks
(in Bohemia)
Czechs
(in Slovakia)
Vi:
: •        o Prague
BOHEMIA (CZECHLAND)
.p_r». <-
"N
'J
r
., I    SLOVAKIA  /A    © •<
I ! , 1 . .w x7    05 to
AUSTRIA       l|1 Bratislava
Others 1,4 % Germans 2,1 % Slovaks 6,3
NORTH BOHEMIA
J    I 167 200
Others 1,0% ) Slovaks j ^,1,8%
\ .PRAGUE
1 178 600
LANGUAGES AND PEOPLES IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
(According to the administrative divisions of 1990)
^   — Others 1,2% y   < Slovaks 2,3 Slovaks 2,4 % Others
Others 1,0 % Poles 2,9 %
Slovaks 5,2 %
V7
WEST BOHEMIA |
fCENTRAL BOHEMIA *1 1 151300 \_
/EAST BOHEMIA )
1 248 500
f
879 900
Others 0,6%
5 Irir °*ers °'8 % j   Slovaks 1,8 ^
■A
U
s
SOUTH BOHEMIA; >  689 200
NORTH MORAVIA*-
~   1 932 700 r > Others 0,3 %
Others 1,3 %
Ukrainians 2,5 % Hungarians 6,5 %
^-    Czechs 1,1 7    /Hungarians 5,7 % SOUTH MORAVIA^-/ 1    2 040 900 ^
: Others 0,4% Czechs 1,0 %
V
Others 1,3 %
Czechs 3,2% Hungarians 4,9 %
EASTERN SLOVAKIA
Slovaks/^
90,6 %\^y BRATISLAVA
380 259\\ WESTERN SLOVAKIA 1 683 891
l_f^ CENTRAL SLOVAKIA /
1 402 252
(
1 524 766
APPENDIX
43
MINORITIES IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
in Bohemia. Of the Germans living in Czechoslovakia more than 300,000 people were killed during and immediately after the war.
It was the remainder of the Germans in Czechoslovakia (in 1950 approximately 165,000 of them were left there) whose legal position remained unclarified the longest. Even the "socialist constitution" of July 11, 1960 gave prospects of cultural development only to the Ukrainian, Polish and Hungarian minorities.
The German minority was first mentioned as number two after the Hungarians in Constitutional Law No. 144 (Article 3) on Nationalities, adopted on October 28, 1969. In the same year was formed the Cultural Association of Germans in Czechoslovakia, which had 8000 members by 1988. To this day, there is no school for minorities with German as the language of instruction.
After the turn in 1989, there was one German representative in the Czech and in the federative parliament each.
Ukrainians (Ruthenians)
Between the two world wars, the Ruthenians, who lived earlier in Hungary, had the support of the government in Prague to restore their nationality school system and cultural institutions. They were, however, given the autonomy promised in the peace treaty only after the Munich decision, and soon afterwards, in 1939, Hungary placed the area under its military occupation.
The only injuries inflicted on the Ruthenians left in the territory of Czechoslovakia (in Slovakia) were of a religious nature: the Greek Catholic Church was banned, placed completely out of bounds.
After World War II, the Cultural Association of Ukrainians in Czechoslovakia was in operation right from the beginning. Their cultural aspirations and cooperation with the Ukraine were not restricted by measures similar to those that hit the Hungarians. In 1968, however, the Ukrainians demanded regional autonomy, and consequently their cultural organization was expelled from the People s Front and placed under the supervision of the Slovakian Ministry of Culture. Ninety per cent of the Ruthenians, who are being quickly assimilated, live in two districts (Homonna and Bartfa) of eastern Slovakia.
IV. SOURCES OF CONFLICT
1) The constitutional relationship between the two majority nations, Czechs and Slovaks, unresolved to this day, is the most serious national conflict. It has been seen for some time as having a destabilizing effect over the Federation. The Czech and Slovak Federation existing since January 1, 1969 is no longer enough for the Slovak parties who are demanding greater independence and wish to pursue their own line of foreign policy. In course of the CzechSlovak negotiations of 1990-92, proposals were made for an "extended" federation or confederation. The strengthening of the parties that urged Slovak independence was accompanied by similar independence ambitions in Czechland, and in the summer of 1992 a decision was made on the divorce of the two republics.
As a result of the population mixture, nearly 370,000 Slovaks live in Bohemia, and almost 60,000 Czechs, Moravians and Silesians in Slovakia without having separate law to regulate their linguistic and cultural rights on either side. The separation of property and assets of companies and military units urged by radical Slovakian national parties may be a serious source of conflicts.
2) As vividly predicted by the nervous overtones of the parliamentary debate in Prague on April 22, 1992 about the Czechoslovak-German Treaty, serious tensions may be caused in Czechland between the national and ethnic minorities particularly on questions connected with the material indemnification and support from Ger-
many of the German minorities left after the deportation of Germans between 1945 and 1949.
With the passage of time, the revival of the traditional Czech-German border-zone disputes and perhaps in certain cases of controversies directly connected with the boundaries cannot be excluded either; they may easily arise with the resettlement of Sudeten Germans. At any rate, fear of the onslaught of German capital indicates a marked persistence of Germanophobia in Czech society.
3) The problem of the Silesian Poles, another significant minority in Czechland, is not likely to become a source of conflicts unless it is influenced that way by Czech(Slovak)-Polish relations.
Rising regional identity awareness leading, particularly in Poland and Germany, to the image of the area as a supra-national "Euro-region" may be a special source of conflict.
4) From among the possible nationality conflicts in Slovakia, doubtlessly the problems deriving from the position of the Hungarian minority are the gravest. Even now there are 413 communities in Slovakia where the Hungarian minority constitutes a majority. (The census of 1980 reports on 399 settlements of this kind.) In 1960 the villages of the area were allocated to regional administrative units (districts) in such a way that the communities with Hungarian majorities should be in the same district with Slovak villages. In this way the number of districts of Hungarian majority was reduced from eight to two. In the villages of the area to the south of the Hungarian-Slovak linguistic borders along the Hungarian boundary, the ratio of Hungarians is higher than 90 percent, except for the towns.
Today the three relatively compact and extensive Hungarian regions (Csallókóz-Matyusfóld-Vicinity of the southern reaches of the River Garam; Palócfóld [the split Nograd-Gómór district] and the Hungarian part of the Bodrog Interstice south-east of Košice do not form a cohesive ethnic unit today because the Hungarian-inhabited area stretches out lengthwise and therefore the plan for dividing the Hungarian minority districts into autonomous areas meets with difficulties. The demand of the Hungarian minority is focussed on educational and cultural autonomy and the setting apart of the respective funds in the budget. The majority media and the state organizations accuse the Hungarian minority of exaggerated demands, separatism and intentions to disintegrate Slovakia. These are the "grounds", for instance, for the decrees of the Ministry of Interior prohibiting the use of bilingual place-name signs and placards indicating the nature and location of firms and institutions.
5) The other most significant national minority in Slovakia, the Ukrainian Ruthenians (Carpatho-Ukrainians) seem to be losing their importance despite the "model policy" pursued in regard to them during the past decades. Some 14,000 Ukrainians, 17,000 Ruthenians and 1,600 Russians make up the population that togethether constitutes the Eastern Slav minority group. The separation of the Ukranians and Ruthenians which, after a rather long interval, became manifest again in the census of 1991, is owing primarily to the influence of the Greek Catholic Church, now free to function again. The Ukra-nian-Ruthenian minority is the most rapidly assimilating minority in Czechoslovakia, there is hardly any linguistic difference noticeable on the level of the spoken dialects between the two peoples.
Sources of conflicts are likely to surface in regard to Slovakian-Ukrainian relations only on the local and religious levels, but they are not likely to have far-reaching effects.
6) The conflicts inherent in problems related to the Gypsies in Slovakia are a separate question incidentally also faced by other countries in the region. There are officially 80,000 Gypsies in Slovakia, but reliable observers speak about figures running into 150 or 200 thousand.
MINORITIES IN HUNGARY
44
APPENDIX
HUNGARY
:r-^f    ■ ''«3 O? i^i ;«^'
Areas SSsOOO s$. km
Mi..    - sf: 0 - '    -.Jint i . • '"a, ■■-
I. STATE BOUNDARIES AND MINORITY POLICY
The boundaries of present-day Hungary were drawn in 1920 by the Peace Treaty of Trianon.
What is generally called Historical Hungary and what had filled the Carpathian Basin from the 10th century on thus lost two thirds of its area of 280,000 sq. kms and of its population in 1920. (The nationality distribution of the population was determined by the ratio of the Magyars or Hungarians, which was between 45 and 51 per cent in the 19th century.) The Hungarians populated the central areas of the state, constituted a few large blocs elsewhere, and in addition they were scattered throughout the entire territory of the state. In 1920 when the new borders were drawn, one third of the ethnic Hungarians who lived here became minorities under the sovereignty of the successor states of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania. Today 580,000 Hungarians live in Czechoslovakia, 1.62 million in Romania, 346,000 in Yugoslavia, 22,000 in Croatia, and 9,000 in Slovenia;
and 160,000 in the Ukraine — according to official statistics. New Hungary became ethnically much more homogeneous than it was earlier, though it still had a non-Hungarian population of 8% in 1930. The Germans were the only minority that lived in large cohesive patches — namely, around the fringes of Budapest and in South and West Hungary. (The total German population was 550,000 in 1930.)
The 142,000 Slovaks in South-East Hungary lived over a small compact area in South-East Hungary and were scattered over other areas of the country.
Under the Peace Treaty of Trianon concluded on June 4, 1920, Hungary pledged to honour minority rights. Prime ministerial decrees (1919, 1923) ensured freedom in the use of language for ethnic communities where the minority population exceeded 20 per cent. Government policy referred to the scattered incidence of the nationalities and spontaneous assimilation processes that had started long ago. This served as a good excuse for not encouraging minority schools and obstructing political self-administration. (A somewhat different policy was pursued when, between 1939 and 1941 in the period of the return of certain areas detached by the Trianon Treaty, the Government favoured a new, mutually tolerant nationality policy in the Carpathian Basin.) Public opinion, traumatized by the heavy territorial and population losses, was indifferent, or definitely hostile, to the minorities left in the country. The fact that the Hungarians stuck in the detached territories did not have the chance to preserve themselves as Hungarians seemed shocking to the people of the mother country, but they forgot about the need to treat the domestic minorities the same way as they would have the Hungarians treated in the
Ml ii i
IISiBlililfiW
S
v--7
'r>.......fylf~*-~
ft! Italians 1 /j
Budapest
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
oil!
Koln/ivär (Cluj)
\ -I
\
NATIONAL MINORITIES THL AiJSl RO-HUNGARIAN MONARCHY
APPENDIX
45
MINORITIES IN HUNGARY
ETHNIC STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION OF HUNGARY
Nationa-	1920	1930	1941		1949	1960	1970	1980	
lities									
	Mother	Mother	Mother	Nationa-	Mother	Mother	Mother	Nationa-	Mother
	tongue	tongue	tongue	lities	tongue	tongue	tongue	lities	tongue
Hungarians	7 155 973	8 000 335	11 367 342	11 881 455	9 076 041	9 786 038	10 166 237	10 638 974	10 579 898
	89,6%	92,1%	77,5%	80,9%	98,6%	98,2%	98,5%	99,3%	98,8%
Germains	550 062	477 153	719 762	533 045	22 455	50 765	35 594	11 310	31 231
	6,9%	5,5%	4,9%	3,6%	0,2%	0,5%	0,4%	0,1%	0,3%
Slovaks	141 877	104 789	268 913	175 550	25 988	30 630	21 176	9 101	16 054
	1,8%	1,2%	1,8%	1,2%	0,3%	0,3%	0,2%	0,1%	0,1%
Romanians	23 695	16 221	1 100 352	1 051 026	14 713	15 787	12 624	8 874	10 141
	0,3%	0,2%	7,5%	7,2%	0,2%	0,2%	0,1%	0,1%	0,1%
Ruthenans	—	_	564 092	547 770	—	—	—	—	—
	—	—	3,8%	3,7%	—	—	—	—	—
Croats	58 931	47 337	127 441	12 346	20 423	33 014*	21 855	13 895	20 484
	0,7%	0,5%	0,9%	0,1%	0,2%	0,3%	0,2%	0,1%	0,2%
Serbs	17 132	7 031	241 907	213 585	5 158	4 583	7 989	2 805	3 426
	0,2%	0,1%	1,6%	1,5%	0,1%	0,1%	0,1%	0,0%	0,0%
Wends and	6 087	5 464	69 586	20 336	4 473	_	4 205	1 731	3 142
Slovenes	0,1%	0,1%	0,5%	0,1%	0,1%	—	0,0%	0,0%	0,0%
Gypsies	6 989	7 841	57 372	76 209	21 387	25 633	34 957	6 404	27 915
	0,1%	0,1%	0,4%	0,5%	0,2%	0,3%	0,3%	0,1%	0,3%
Others	26 123	18 946	30 835	29 210	14 161	14 534	17 462	16 369	17 172
	0,3%	0,2%	0,2%	0,2%	0,1%	0,1%	0,2%	0,2%	0,2%
Yiddish,	_	_	131 971	139 041	—	_	_	—	_
Hebrew	—	—	0,9%	0,9%	—	—	—	—	—
Total	7 986 875	8 685 109	14 679 573		9 204 799	9 961 044	10 322 099	10 709 463	
* Wends and Slovenes included
neighbouring countries. This contradiction is still at work in Hungarian public thinking when the minority question is addressed.
Because of the disintegration of the Versailles peace system and the Hungarian territorial revisions between 1938 and 1941, the territory of the country increased to 171,500 sq. kms and its population to 14.6 million. The reannexations pushed out the boundaries more or less to the ethnic borders, adding, however, a large non-Hungarian population to the people living in the country. With this additional territory, the ratio of Hungarians to the total population within the new boundaries of the country fell back from 92% in 1930 to 77.5 per cent. (This was still a more favourable majority ratio for Hungarians
HUNGARY (1920-1938)
,   Hid Budapest
SLAVIA
than the 73% proportion of Romanians, 77.4% of the Ser-bo-Croatians, and the 72.5% ratio for the Czechs and Slovaks in their adjoining homelands during the period of 1920 to 1938.)
After World War II, the boundaries of Hungary, a loser country, were restored to the contours of 1937. Because of the deportation of a significant section of the Germans and the population exchange between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the number of minorities went down by almost 350,000, and a further 200,000 persons did not admit in 1949 their mother tongue (nationality) — which they still professed in 1941. That explains why the proportion of minorities within the Hungarian state dropped to 1.4 per cent in 1949. After 1949, the Hungarian nationality policy followed the doctrine of the Soviet bloc: declarations on full equality but actually the pretense of believing in the fiction of the nation state. Until 1993 Hungary had no minority law. Communist nationality policy reflected the fluctuations of politics. For instance, in the 1960s, tacitly accepting, as it were the irreversible assimilation of the nationalities in Hungary, the schools carrying on their instructions in the mother tongues of the minorities were largely wound up and replaced from 1961 on with bilingual schools or schools where the language of instruction was the majority language but courses were provided in the minority language. This was not enough to halt spontaneous assimilationThough the minorities were not confronted by administrative measures, they weore not encouraged in dissimilation endeavours.
Setting self-government models, the minority law of 1993 is making efforts to preserve and strengthen again the minority communities.
Germans
Slovaks
Serbs & Croats
Romanians
MINORITIES IN HUNGARY
46
APPENDIX
II. MINORITIES
HUNGARY (in World War II)
✓
>
As in the rest of the former socialist countries, in Hungary, too, the statistical surveys were largely unreliable. There are two dominant views about how to determine the number of a minority. Any person who speaks the language of the minority and professes to belong to it is a minority person. (This is the basis for the Tables in this study. According to this view, from 2,000 to 13,000 persons belong to the individual minorities, and the various minorities together total 61,000 persons.) According to the other approach, all people of minority descent are to be considered to belong to that particular minority even though they have lost their minority awareness. In this case we can put the figure at about 200,000 for the Germans, and at about 100,000 for the Slovaks in Hungary. (In 1980 and 1990 supplementary data collections were arranged on the nationalities — independent of self-classification. These surveys verify the estimates of minority figures arrived at if descent is taken for the main criterion.)
Special attention should be given to the Gypsy population. The draft of the Hungarian nationality law of 1992 is the first in the Central European zone that speaks about them as a minority. Estimates put their number at 500,000 in Hungary.
Germans >
As a result of their colonies established in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Germans — principally the Donau-schwaben-constitute the largest minority in Hungary. Today there are only a few enclaves of Germans, those in the Transdanubian region west of the Danube, but individuals of German descent are widely scattered throughout the country. Since the mid-1970s, the earlier political fears no longer trouble people. Hungary's good interstate relations with the FRG provided an added sense of security for the Germans in Hungary. Since the second half of the 1980s their identity awareness has been growing. This was particularly noticeable until 1991 — as long as they were able to count on special treatment if they certified their Germandescent.
The post-1945 deportations affected approximately 260,000 Germans, that is nearly 50 per cent of the entire minority then living in Hungary. An additional 30 or 40 thousand Germans were taken by the Soviet Army to labour camps in the USSR. Because of fears that they might lose their livelihood, only about 15 to 20 per cent of the Germans left in Hungary said in 1949 that their mother tongue was German. Out of the Germans by descent, estimated at 200,000 to 220,000, the ratio of those who now openly profess their German nationality rose above 20 per cent in only 20 settlements. Fear is probably no longer a factor; the reason may well lie in the
SOVIET UNION
f
(1939-1941)
Kassa" V (Košice) —
p Budapest
Ujvidék '~">
\
(Novi Sad)
>
Ukrainian
process of urbanization and assimilation.
At any rate, the returns of the 1990 census suggest that, at least in the case of the Germans, the process of growing nationality awareness may still reverse the complete Hungarianization of a good number of local communities.
Slovaks
The Slovaks set out for the south from the northern, Slovak regions of Historical Hungary and formed their populous enclaves largely in parts of Hungary that had been ravaged by the Turks. At the time when the Slovak nationality emerged as a minority, there was as yet no Slovakia as a territorial or national formation, nor was there a standard, unified Slovak literary language. In 1920 a total of 399,176 people said in Hungary that they spoke Slovak, too, but out of them 243,955 considered Hungarian their first language, and only the remaining 150,000 persons named Slovak as their mother tongue.
HUNGARY (after 1947)
\K1 A
4 VIA
Germans
Slovaks
Serbs & Croats, Slovenes
Romanians
Gipsies
APPENDIX
47
MINORITIES IN HUNGARY
MOTHER TONGUES AND PEOPLES IN HUNGARY (1980)
The delay in the achievement of nationhood, the scattered nature of Slovak settlements and unsubstantial contacts with the original ethnic bloc speeded up assimilation. The Hungarian government helped along the process by deliberately eroding the educational network.
The process was then dramatically accelerated by the Hungarian-Czechoslovak population exchange of 1946 which caused that nearly 60 per cent of all those who professed to speak Slovak as their mother tongue left for Czechoslovakia. The Slovak minority has not been able to make up for the losses incurred through the population exchange scheme; moreover the fast urbanization marking the period from 1950 to 1980 made its effects felt even in the remaining settlements where Slovaks formed a local majority. The Association of Slovaks in Hungary, which has been in existence since 1949, and the further organizations formed since 1989 have been unable to rally the minority living in various stages of assimilation, which has made irreversible advances by now when there are gaps of one or two generations in passing down the mother tongue. It is regrettable that some government exponents in Slovakia still speak about this process as genocide and often even call for retaliation by a similar treatment of the Hungarians in Slovakia.
Still, the model for cultural autonomy provided by the Hungarian minority bill offers sound bases for enhancing law Slovak cultural aspirations.
Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes
According to the estimate made by the Democratic Federation of South Slavs in Hungary, which discontinued its existence in 1990, there were approximately 80 to 100 thousand people of South Slav nationality (Croats Serbs, and Slovenes) in Hungary in the past decade. At the time of the 1980 census, 27,000 people professed to be Croats, Serbs, or Slovenes. Eighty-nine per cent of those who said they were South Slavs were Croatians, and in their case the estimated figures are only three times as high as the census data — as against the five-fold gap between census numbers and estimates for the Germans and Slovaks. Another important feature in the case of the South
Slavs in Hungary is that they give nationality and mother tongue data that are much closer to each other than the two figures for other national minorities, indicating a stronger national identity bond and greater love of the mother tongue at least among those who have not become assimilated than shown by other minority groups.
Under the impact of the war between Serbs and Croats and the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the South Slav Nationality Association, which was artificially created but for practical reasons still continued to present a unified image, dissolved and has been replaced by separate Croat, Serb and Slovene associations. On account of the favourable trends in Hungarian-Croatian and Hungarian-Slovene interstate relations, excellent contacts developed between the South Slav minorities in Hungary and the adjacent majority nations.
III. SOURCES OF CONFLICT
It gives rise to tension that certain political circles in the adjoining countries (principally in Romania and Slovakia) make use of the principle of reciprocity to find excuses for their own national policy, their own restrictive measures at home. At the same time, they exaggerate the problems of the nationalities in Hungary, which are different both in structure and substance from what exists in their respective countries — as if the hardships of over 2 million Hungarians, for instance, in Romania could be compared to the problems of 15 thousand Romanians in Hungary.
Hungary still has not developed a sound state policy in regard to the Gypsy minority. This may easily become a source of conflict. During the Communist era (1949 to 1956), the very utterance of the term "Gypsy" was forbidden, that is, positive discrimination was favoured. With support from the liberal politics of the 1970s and 1980s, Gypsy cultural forums, associations, and periodicals emerged, and a Gypsy intelligentsia arose. The Romany language achieved literary status. However, the assimilation or adjustment to society of the Gyspsy minority as a whole is still an unsolved problem and leads to increasing numbers of internal conflicts — causing as yet only minor difficulties in Hungary.
MINORITIES IN ROMANIA
48
APPENDIX
ROMANIA
Jews, Ttarks, Tartars
I. STATE BOUNDARIES AND POLITICAL SYSTEM
The Romanian national state came into being in 1859 when Moldavia and Wallachia were unified. In 1877 the country achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire, and, starting with 1881, it was a kingdom. After World War I, through the peace treaties of 1919-20 concluded in the vicinity of Paris, Romania acquired Greater Transylvania from Hungary, Bukovina from Austria, and Bessarabia from Russia, and was thus able to increase her territory from 140,350 to 297,000 sq. kms. (The present area is 237,500 sq. kms.) This growth meant at the same time the addition to its population of a large number of non-Romanian people. Hungarians and Germans have been the two most significant minorities in Romania.
Up to 1938, the country was a constitutional kingdom, and between 1938 and 1940 a royal dictatorship. From 1940 to 1944, a military dictatorship reigned over the country. Romania suffered significant territorial losses in 1940 when the pre-1918 state of the country was re-
stored as the Soviet Union was returned Bessarabia, Hungary received back Northern Transylvania, and Bulgaria gained control over South Dobrudzha. The country took part in World War II on the German side, but after 1944 it ended up fighting on the Soviet side.
The peace settlements following World War II endorsed Soviet sovereignty over Bessarabia and North Bukovina and Bulgarian sovereignty over South Dobrudzha. Northern Transylvania, however, was reannexed to Romania. At the end of 1947 the monarchy of Romania changed into a "People's Republic" and from 1965 into a "Socialist Republic". Beginning with 1974, the monolithic party rule operated in combination with a presidential system until this formation was terminated by the Timisoara-Bucharest revolution in December 1989. The treatment of the nationalities (28% of the total population in 1930 and at least 12% in 1977) fluctuated parallel with domestic political developments and to a lesser extent in accordance with the trends in the international balance of power.
II. MINORITY POLICY
In 1919 Romania also signed a minority agreement with the Great Powers within the framework of the peace treaties. The agreement put on record the equality of all nationalities (religions, races and languages) in the state, provided for the free use of the language of one's choice in private and business life, religious practices, and in the press and publications. A promise was made on permitting teaching in the mother tongue and on allocating a fair share of public wealth for the cultural purposes of the nationalities. It was agreed that local self-government would be permitted under the supervision of the Roma-
ETHNIC STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION OF ROMANIA
Nationalities	1930		1948	1956		1966		1977
	Mother tongue	Nationalities	Mother tongue	Mother tongue	Nationalities	Mother tongue	Nationalities	Nationalities
Romanians	13 180 936	12 981 324	13 597 613	15 080 686	14 996 114	16 770 628	16 746 510	19 207 491
	73,0%	71,9%	85,7%	86,2%	85,7%	87,8%	87,7%	89,1%
Hungarians	1 554 525	1 425 507	1 499 851	1 653 700	1 587 675	1 651 873	1 619 592	1 670 568
	8,6%	7,9%	9,4%	9,5%	9,1%	8,6%	8,5%	7,7%
Germans	760 687	745 421	343 913	395 374	384 708	387 547	382 595	332 205
	4,2%	4,1%	2,2%	2,3%	2,2%	2,0%	2,0%	1,5%
Gypsies	101 015	262 501	53 425	66 882	104 216	49 086	64 197	75 696
	0,6%	1,5%	0,3%	0,4%	0,6%	0,3%	0,3%	0,4%
Jews	518 754	728 115	138 795	34 337	146 264	5 143	42 888	24 667
	2,9%	4,0%	0,9%	0,2%	0,8%	0,0%	0,2%	0,1%
Ruthenians	641 485	594 571	37 582	68 252	60 479	59 803	54 705	51 503
	3,6%	3,3%	0,2%	0,4%	0,3%	0,3%	0,3%	0,2%
Serbs, Croats	47 724	51 062	45 447	43 057	46 517	41 897	44 236	38 252
	0,3%	0,3%	0,3%	0,3%	0,3%	0,2%	0,2%	0,2%
Russians,	450 981	409 150	39 332	45 029	38 731	40 526	39 483	17 480
Lithuanians	2,5%	2,3%	0,2%	0,3%	0,2%	0,2%	0,2%	0,1%
Turks	288 073	154 772	28 782	14 228	14 329	17 453	18 040	20 750
	1,6%	0,9%	0,2%	0,1%	0,1%	0,1%)	0,1%	0,1%
Gagauz	—	105 750	—	—	—	—	—	—
	—	0,6%	—	—	—	—	—	—-
Slovaks,	43 141	51 842	35 143	25 131	35 152	26 136	32 199	25 020
Czechs	0,2%	0,3%	0,2%	0,1%	0,2%	0,1%	0,2%	0,1%
Bulgarians	364 373	366 384	13 408	13 189	12 040	10 439	11 193	9 267
	2,0%	2,0%	0,1%	0,1%	0,1%	0,1%	0,1%	0,0%
Poles	38 265	48 310	6 753	5 494	7 627	4 699	5 860	3 481
	0,2%	0,3%	0,0%	0,0%	0,0%	0,0%	0,0%	0,0%
Others	67 069	132 319	32 580	44 091	55 598	37 933	41 665	83 530
	0,4%	0,7%	0,2%	0,3%	0,3%	0,2%	0,2%	0,4%
Total	18 057 028		15 87 624	17 489 450		19 103 163		21 559 910
APPENDIX
49
MINORITIES IN ROMANIA
ROMANIA (1920-1940)
\
nian state to the Transylvanian Seccler and German communities in religious and school matters.
As, however, the minority agreement did not constitute a higher-level law, later laws and decrees still allowed the pursuance of policies oriented toward the opposite direction. Neither a separate minority law nor a language law was framed.
The constitution of 1923 proclaimed that the country was a "unified and indivisible nation state", and laid down personal rights of civil freedom, but did not treat the nationality issue itself. Nor did the constitution of 1938, introduced by the dictatorship under the king, address the minority question.
In 1938 the Minority Statutes was issued, which, as it was in effect a summary recorded by the Council of Ministers on the political considerations to be followed in dealing with the wishes and requests of the minorities, did not have the validity of a law but actually served the purposes of propaganda addressed to foreign countries. Still, the Statutes did promote the rectification of some local injuries in the fields of religion, education and culture.
The Nationality Statutes of 1945 (and its 1946 Supplement) besides guaranteeing equality before the law and the free use of the language of one's choice, prescribed that wherever 30% of the population belonged to a given minority, administrative and court officials had to be familiar with their language and accept their petitions in their own mother tongue. Although the full range of the Statutes were never actually introduced, this was the first instance of ensuring a direct collective right of political meaning for the minorities in Romania and providing a basis for the schools (state and religious) of the national minorities receiving equal rights with the majority schools.
The communist constitution of 1948 laid down in a separate provision the right to be schooled in the mother tongue, which was then confirmed by the constitution of 1952. The latter constitution created the Hungarian Autonomous Province which existed between 1952 and 1960 in the Seccler Land in Eastern Transylvania (the Ma-ros-Magyar Autonomous Province surviving until 1968 was the legal successor). It should be noted that the Province did not have its own charter and statutes and did not have self-government, and thus it differed from other units of administration in the country only through
the guarantees it enjoyed in regard to the full right to use the Hungarian language in all aspects of life. The constitution of 1965 also ensured the free use of the mother tongue in principle, and nationality instruction "on all levels". After 1948, there were a declining number (with some improvement from 1968 through 1970) of schools, kindergartens and culture houses maintained by the state, in which the teaching was in the minority tongue maintained by the state. Official propaganda frequently repeated data — often manipulated data — on the population figures for the minorities. There were also newspapers and periodicals, publishing activity, some radio and television programmes by and for the minorities, and there were at all times non-Romanian state, party and trade union officials — generally in proportions corresponding to the national statistics of the ratio of each minority. Communist nationality policy tried to sustain the appearance of being against all manifestations of nationalism, and preached equal cultural support for every ethnic group. However, the cultural institutional system supposedly serving the minorities did not keep pace with the development of the Romanian institutional network and had no autonomy. Therefore, its existence and everyday life depended on the fluctuating favours of the central power, and thus this institutional system became detached from the minorities it should have been designed to protect. In this way, under the communist regime the actual use of the legal measures allegedly taken for minority regulation as well as of the minority-language institutions was only to conceal the lack of nationality rights from the outside world.
III. MINORITIES
Hungarians
Hungarians are one of the largest national minorities in Europe. What the official census of 1992 registered as 1.62 million Hungarians was generally estimated as standing for 2.1 million persons. About one third of the Hungarians in Romania live in one bloc in the area called Szekely (Seccler) Land, where they make up a large majority of the population. One fourth of the Hungarians live along the western borders of Romania, and the rest are scattered in villages and towns. In most towns and in a long list of villages the Hungarian and Romanian ethnic groups coexist in a traditional manner. As a result
MINORITIES IN ROMANIA
50
APPENDIX
of the natural modernization processes and the deliberate demographic policy of the state there has been a significantly growing trend of mingling.
Historical preliminaries: tenth-century Hungarian settlement in the Carpathian Basin, the territory between the Carpathians from the east and the present Hungarian-Romanian boundary to the west (Transylvania) constituted an important part — in certain periods the roost significant part — of the Kingdom of Hungary. With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the end of World War I and with the Peace Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, Transylvania was annexed to Romania. More than 200,000 Hungarians fled or emigrated from Transylvania at the time.
Hungarians in Romania were in a particularly difficult position becasue they became a "national minority" in the 20th century, well after the culmination of Hungarian national development.
The building of the Romanian "national state" went together with the maiming of the wealth and traditional institutions of the Hungarians there. As large a proportion as 84.5% of the landed estates of four Hungarian religions (Roman Catholic, Reformed Church, Unitarian, and Lutheran) were expropriated in the course of the land reform of 1921. The historical change of regime weakened the economic standing of the Hungarian bourgeoisie and particularly of the leading sections. Out of 2,543 primary and secondary schools, there were only 1,226 by 1930, and the Hungarian university of Kolozsvar (Cluj) was turned Romanian. The number of subjects that could be taught in the mother tongue was limited in the curriculum, and the final matriculation examination had to be taken in the "language of the state". Between 1920 and 1941 there were only three occasions when Hungarian schools received funds from the state and even these grants were insignificant.
Between 1918 and 1940-44, the Hungarian minority in Romania still had economic institutions, schools maintained by its own churches, with numerous smaller cultural associations and with the Transylvanian Museum Association, which functioned as a central institution of scholarship. There were also Hungarian literary publications, books and periodicals. The National Hungarian Party was the main political organization of the Hungarians in Romania; it participated in nine elections and the elections of 1928 returned it as the second biggest party of the Romanian parliament. The Hungarian Party worked for getting injuries to the minority remedied through the League of Nations, but out of the 34 complaints submitted between 1920 and 1937 by Hungarians in Romania, redress — in most cases only partial redress - was effected in not more than 19 cases.
After the outbreak of World War II when Romania and Hungary passed into the German sphere of interest with the Second Vienna Award, Berlin and Rome awarded Northern Transylvania to Hungary. Half of this district of 43,000 sq. km area and a population of 2.6 million inhabitants was Hungarian and half Romanian. The Romanians made up 41.5% according to Hungarian data, and 49.1% according to the Romanian figures. The division of Transylvania poisoned the already strained relationship between Hungary and Romania. Some one-hundred thousand Romanians fled from Hungarian rule, and the same number of Hungarians from Romanian domination. Because of the unsolved disputes and the war, both sides put off action on minority rights.
The Romanian governments pursued a moderate nationality policy between 1945 and 1947. The Hungarian university was reopened in Cluj.
After the communist takeover was completed in 1947, the Hungarian institutions in Romania began to be liquidated or uniformed as part of the restructuring of the entire political system. The liquidation of private property
ROMANIA (after 1947)
and the restrictions imposed on the churches were particularly hard on the Hungarian and German minorities. The Hungarian cooperative movement was terminated, and practically all the Hungarian cultural organizations were eliminated. The only Hungarian political organization still operating, a leftist organization called Hungarian People's League, was dissolved, and in 1950 frame-up trials were ordered against exponents of the Hungarian minority, both communists and noncommu-nists. At the same time, in the spirit of "Stalinist nationality policy" the four Seccler counties were turned into the so-called Hungarian Autonomous Province, which, however, ensured only the freedom of using the language of one's option. Most Hungarians lived outside of this province though not in compact blocs, and they lost more and more of their schools and had less and less possibility to use their mother tongue. The few existing papers published in Hungarian had been put into the service of party politics and were not permitted to address minority
Eroblems. Hungarian cultural life and the publication of ooks and periodicals were all under strict party control. After 1956, nationalism (its communist variant) strengthened. This was latently directed against the Soviet Union but had an open edge against the Hungarians. Largely with reference to the consequences of the revolution in Hungary, arrests, trials and the amalgamation of schools where the language of education was Hungarian, were effected. In 1959 the Hungarian university was closed though the measure was called a merger with the Romanian university.
Following a brief period of relative mildness from 1968 to 1970, campaigns were started in the press against "Hungarian nationalism". In form this campaign was aimed at the "exposure of the doings" of Hungarian rule in old Transylvania, or the "irredentism" of Hungarian emigrants in the West, but actually all this was addressed to Hungary. Any and every act on the side of Hungarian society that expressed the slightest interest in the life of the Hungarian minority in Romania served as a pretext for official Bucharest to come out with anti-Hungarian words and action. In addition, the Romanian policy of trying to isolate the entire people of the country from all foreign contacts and to ban Romanian citizens from travelling abroad hit the Hungarians in Romania with particular severity.
In the second half of the 1980s, by which time the economic situation was disastrous in Romania, there were already open polemics in the press in both countries. In 1987 the use of Hungarian place and other geographic names was prohibited. Hungarians started to flee in large
APPENDIX 51 MINORITIES IN ROMANIA
numbers accross the strictly guarded borders, and the Romanian authorities did not refrain from brutality to prevent escape.
After the December 1989 revolution in Timisoara and Bucharest, Romanian society — insufficiently prepared for change — became fractured as soon as the promising conciliatory mood of the first weeks petered out. However, significant political forces still held on to the ideology of state nationalism as a reliable means for exercising their power. This type of nationalism, which culminated under Ceausescu's dictatorship but which was then carefully controlled, now broke loose in the free press. No effective trends that could give a sound new direction to public thinking in Romanian society are in view as yet. To survive as Hungarians and especially to be able to rebuild their institutions, Hungarians living in Romania need support from the Romanian state and from Romanian society.
The Democratic Association of Hungarians in Romania, which is working for this, has grown into a significant political factor in society. Side by side with its efforts to protect the interests of Hungarians, it is also working for the internal consolidation of Romania.
Germans
Living in relatively compact blocs, the Germans constituted the second biggest minority of Romania until World War II (761,000 or 4.2% in 1930). The Germans in Transylvania (Saxons) became naturalized in the area through the settlement policy of Hungarian kings in the 12th and 13th centuries. Their society — advanced for the times — enjoyed political autonomy until 1848, and, in the modern Hungarian state, church and cultural autonomy after 1867. A larger German bloc of agricultural character (Schwabians) who did not constitute an
independent social stratum formed as a result of Habsburg colonization in the 18th century. The Germans were able to preserve their ethnic and cultural identity in the post-1920 Romanian Kingdom.
At the end of World War II, a lot of Germans fled from the area, some 75,000 of them were deported to the Soviet Union for forced labour, and the rest were deprived of all their rights. The land reform expropriated the land of even the German poor peasants, and the Church schools of the Germans were nationalized in 1948. The Germans in Romania did not become equal citizens until 1956, but then the kolkhoz system and the full nationalization of the economy broke up the German communities, which had until then consisted of private trades and businesses in 85 per cent; assimilation grew stronger; and after the 1960s emigration started to the FRG and gathered momentum following 1978.
Although the number of Germans has by now sunk to a frighteningly low number (119,436 according to the official data and only 70,000 according to the Germans' own estimate), their religious organizations and Churches — Lutheran and Catholic — are standing^ and some of their schools are making ends meet. The Democratic Organization of Germans in Romania, their political organization since the revolution of 1989, has been able to carry on its political activity in freedom and count on the moral and political support of the FRG (since then Germany). The latter is the subject of a separate provision in the German -Romanian Treaty.
Other Minorities
The other minorities make up only a very small part of the population. The number of Jews, still 451,000 in 1930, went down to 25,000 by 1977. This can be attributed to the ravages of World War II (the majority of the Jews
MOTHER TONGUES AND PEOPLES IN ROMANIA
i
MINORITIES IN ROMANIA
52
APPENDIX
were deported to German concentration camps from
North Transylvania, and large numbers of Jews perished in Moldavia and Bessarabia) and to significant emigration after 1945. The loss of the Jews was a distinct cultural loss for both Romanians and Hungarians because they had been well under way to assimilation and were significant factors in the intellectual life of both national groups.
The number of Ukrainian Ruthenians (Transcarpa-thian Ukrainians) is around 67,000.
Some 40,000 Serbs (and Croats) live in the Southwest Romanian Bansag district, and there are the same number of Slovaks (and Czechs) in the country.
According to the census of 1977 some 50,000 Turks and Tartars live in Dobrudzha. They are, as far as it is known, free to practice their religion.
In the past decades these minorities were enabled to study partly in their mother tongues in primary school, and they had a few culture houses to help them preserve their traditions. Their book publishing has been insignificant. These nationalities are subject to a natural assimilation process.
IV. SOURCES OF CONFLICTS
The integration of the Gypsies — officially 410,000 but actually probably nearly two million in number — is today still a problem of endless scope and at the same time a source of tension. The majority speak Romanian and some of them speak Hungarian.
The position and future on the one hand of the Transylvanian Hungarians and on the other hand of Moldavia are regarded as two major problems today.
The rebuilding of the Transylvanian Hungarians' own institutions clashes against the politically manipulated nationality feelings and opposition of the majority people. They are against the return of the pre-1945 Hungarian institutions and wealth. Since 1990 they have made the question of free use of the mother tongue the subject of endless disputes.
The Hungarians in Romania consider themselves culturally part of the Hungarian nation. However, any and all ties with the mother country give rise to periodic outbursts of aggressive anger as something that threatens the "unity of the state" — especially in foreign politics. This is something that definitely hampers the development of sound neighbourly relations between the two countries. The Hungarian claim for cultural and personal autonomy or the indistinctly outlined wish for partial regional autonomy (applying to the Seccler area) can not be expected to be satisfied within a short time. Unless a reassuring solution is soon found, local conflicts and mass emigration — virtual flight — are a real threat.
The Moldavian question — as a question of unification — is not an "internal affair" of Romania. Apart from Romania, Moldavia and the Ukraine, Russia is also directly concerned, and indirectly — as boundary changes are involved — it is an all-European matter. The issue is complicated by the separate dispute on the future of the East-of-the-Dniester area. There the arguments of one-time history and ethnic majority speak against the Romanian position, whereas — since the Soviet era was shorter in time — the principles of history and international law may support the Romanian standpoint.
Until a solution is found for the Moldavian issue — probably a long period of time — Romanian society has to overcome its serious modernization problems and deal with the question of internal minorities which, in an atmosphere of national agitation, tax patience and tolerance.
The Question of Moldavia
Moldavia is a former Soviet republic inhabited by a Romanian majority between the Prut and Dniester rivers. The area is 33,800 sq. kms, and the population 4,335,000 (1989).
Moldavia (Bessarabia) formed the eastern part of one of the two Romanian principalities, the one called by the same name at the end of the Middle Ages. After several Russian-Turkish wars the Ottoman Empire exercising the principal power, ceded it to Russia in 1812. (In 1856 Romania, which was after the Crimean War in the process of being established, received the Southern Part of Moldavia, a 10,000 sq. km area that belongs today to the Ukraine. In 1878, however, Russia took back this area and Romania received Dobrudzha instead.) There was at that time a tough Russanization policy taking place in Bessarabia with attempts to isolate the Romanians constituting the majority from Romania.
At the end of 1917, the Moldavian Democratic Republic came into being in this area and declared its full sovereignty in January, 1918. The Romanian troups marched into the Republic, and on April 9 the National Council proclaimed the unification of Bessarabia and Romania. According to official data, out of the 2,863,409 inhabitants of the province, then 44,422 sq. kms in area, 56.2% were Romanians, 12.3% Russians, 11% Ukrainians, 7.2 % Jews, 5,7% Bulgarians, 3.4% Gagauz, and 2.8% were Germans. In this area of markedly agricultural character 89% of the population lived in rural areas, and 38.1% of the adults were literate. — In June 1940, a Soviet ultimatum following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact forced Romania to return Moldavia to the Soviet Union, which annexed it to the other "Moldavia" (8,434 sq. kms, of symbolical name), established in her own territory beyond the Dniester in 1924, detaching at the same time and linking with Ukraine the Southern zone. Moldavia became in form an autonomous Soviet federal republic. (In 1941, participating in the eastern campaign of the Germans, Romania reoccupied Moldavia, which became again part of the Soviet Union in 1944.)
Beyond the economic and social transformation it saw fit, the Soviet regime made the Cyrillic alphabet compulsory again, renamed to "Moldavians" the Romanians who made up probably as much as 65% of the population, and had its scholars work out the theory that Moldavians were a people of different ethnicity than the Romanians. (Belonging to the Orthodox religion, the Romanians used the Cyrillic alphabet until the middle of the 19th century.) The Soviet authorities allowed no personal contacts with people living in Romania. Formally, Bucharest did not claim the area (this was not to be thought of in connection with the neighbouring great power, the Soviet Union).
At the end of 1990 Moldavia terminated its union with the Soviet Union and Romania recognized the sovereignty of Moldavia. Today strong federative aspirations are evident between Romania and Moldavia.
The area is not unified ethnically. All parts are inhabited by both Ukrainians and Russians. The Germans emigrated already in 1940; and the Ukrainians made up 13.8% of the population in 1989, and the Russians 13%. The Gagauz people of 300,000, who seek independence, live in the southern part of Moldavia and in the Ukraine. In the part beyond the Dniester in the vicinity Tiraspol, which is in fact the most advanced area, the Moldavian Romanians are a minority while the Russians and Ukrainians constitute the majority. This provides the ethnic grounds for the indepence aspirations of the areas beyond the Dniester, where the so-called Dniester Republic has been formed. Ukraine is inclined to support the Dniester Republic's wish to receive autonomy within the framework of Moldavia, and the Moldavian parliament is promising a special status to the city of Tiraspol beyond the Dniester and the local Russian and Ukrainian inhabitants. The population figures of the ethnic groups in the area are still subject to disagreement. The Ukrainian view is that 500,000 Ukrainians live in the Trans-Dniester area concerned; the Romanians hold that the Ukrainians and Russians together account for 330,000 people and there are 250,000 — circa 40% — Moldavian Romanians.
All in all, three powers are directly concerned in the "settlement" of the nationality issue here, namely Romania, Ukraine and Russia.
APPENDIX
53
MINORITIES IN YUGOSLAVIA
YUGOSLAVIA
R&paMiss (Until 1990) Population (1989): 23,750,01)0
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bswsasiasss,, Macedoadaus Minorities: Albanians, Hungarians,
BmT&Efai&ts&s, ItaHaro, Slwufe, Cmch®,
I. ESTABLISHMENT AND STRUCTURE OF THE SOUTH-SLAV STATE
When the South-Slav state was formed in 1918-1919, nearly 16% of its population was made up of national minorities, that is peoples who did not belong to the Serbian, Croatian and Slovene nation. Antagonism between the Serbs and Croats, constituting the two main nations of the state, assumed crucial importance right from the beginning. Conflicts started already in the 19th century on which nation should lead the unification of
the South Slavs. (Both the Serbs and the Croats wanted to link Bosnia-Herzegovina to their own country.)
The Serbian state (re-formed in 1816) started in the 19th century to unify in a single state the areas inhabited by the South-Slav ethnic group whom they regarded as Serbians. After the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), the territory and population of Serbia nearly doubled as significant numbers of Albanians, Turks and Macedonians settled in Serbia.
In the autumn of 1918, Crna Gora became united with Serbia, moreover Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Uj-videk (Novi Sad) community of South Slavs living in South Hungary also joined Serbia. The Serbs belong to the Orthodox Church, whereas a significant proportion of the new population — Bosnians and Turks — were Muhammadan s.
Croatia had since the 12th century its own feudal constitution. At the end of World War I, those political forces tipped the balance which wanted to unify all South --Slav peoples in a single state. Seeing the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, they decided for unification with Serbia. Almost all Croats were Roman Catholics, and the Slovenes likewise. Still, it seemed that the "South Slav national identity would be stronger than religious and regional economic interest.
Ever since the establishment of the state, there was struggle between the federalism represented by the Croats and the centralism of the Serbian leaders and dynasty who had no intention to cede any of their power. Croatia, which enjoyed wide-ranging autonomy within the Monarchy, lost this in the new state. The constitution of 1921 did not recognize any type of autonomy. The
ETHNIC STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION OF YUGOSLAVIA
Natio nail ties	1921	1948	1953	1961	1971	1981
	Mother tounge	Nationalities	Nationalities	Nationalities	Nationalities	Nationalities
Serbs		6 547 117	7 065 923	7 806 152	8 143 246	8 140 507
		41,5%	41,7%	42,1%	39,7%	36,3%
Croats		3 784 353	3 975 550	4 293 809	4 526 782	4 428 043
		24%	23,5%	23,1%	22,1%	19,8%
Moslems	8 911 509 74,7%	808 921	998 698	972 960	1 729 932	1 999 890
		5,1%	5,9%	5,2%	8,4%	8,9%
Macedonians		810 126	893 247	1 045 516	1 194 784	1 341 598
		5,1%	5,3%	5,6%	5,8%	6,0%
Montenegrins		425 703	466 093	513 832	508 843	579 043
		2,7%	2,8%	2,8%	2,5%	2,6%
Slovenians	1 019 997	1 415 432	1 487 100	1 589 211	1 678 032	1 753 571
	8,5%	9,0%	8,8%	8,6%	8,2%	7,8%
Albanians	439 657	750 431	754 245	914 733	1 309 523	1 730 878
	3,8%	4,8%	4,5%	4,9%	6,4%	7,7%
Germans	505 790	55 337	60 536	20 015	12 785	8 712
	4,2%	0,4%	0,4%	0,1%	0,0%	0,0%
Hungarians	467 658	496 492	502 175	504 369	477 374	426 867
	3,9%	3,2%	3,0%	2,7%	2,3%	1,9%
Romanians	231 068	64 095	60 364	60 862	58 570	54 955
	1,9%	0,4%	0,4%	0,3%	0,3%	0,2%
Turks	150 322	97 954	259 535	182 964	127 920	101 291
	1,3%	0,6%	1,5%	1,0%	0,6%	0,5%
Slovaks	115 322	83 626	84 999	86 433	83 656	80 334
	1,3%	0,5%	0,5%	0,5%	0,4%	0,4%
Czechs	_	39 015	34 517	30 331	24 620	19 624
	_	0,2%	0,2%	0,2%	0,1%	0,1%
"Yugoslavs"	—	_	—	317 124	273 077	1 219 024
	_	—	_	1,7%	1,3%	5,4%
Gypsies		72 736	84 713	31 674	78 185	168 197
	_	0,5%	0,5%	0,2%	0,4%	0,7%
Others	143 384	320 760	208 608	179 306	295 343	375 051
	1,2%	2,0%	1,2%	1,0%	1,4%	1,7%
Total	11 984 910	15 772 098	16 936 573	18 549 291	20 522 972	22 427 585
MINORITIES IN YUGOSLAVIA
54
APPENDIX
YUGOSLAVIA (1920-1941)
Serbo-Croatian conflict made the operation of the parliamentary system virtually impossible because the strongest parliamentary parties had been organized on national bases. The royal dictatorship introduced in 1929 eradicated the ethnic organization of parties but was not able to find a solution to the Croatian issue. (It was the royal dictatorship that changed the name of the state to Yugoslavia.) Croatia turned into an autonomous banate but soon the entire state was swept away by the World War. After the onslaught of the German offensive in 1941, Yugoslavia fell apart. The Ustasha-led Sovereign Croatian State, which included Bosnia-Herzegovina, formed within the area of Croatia. The Ustashas passed anti-Serbian and anti-Jewish laws, and drove out the Serbs, or deported them into camps and deprived them of their wealth. The Serbian Chetnic troups on the other hand, committed atrocities against the Croats within the territory of Serbia, and thus, apart from the struggle for power, there was also ethnic fighting during World War II. The Ustashas considered the Muslims Croatians, and tried to reconvert them to Christianity by forceful means. (In consequence of military occupation, Macedonia beca-
me part of Bulgaria; Kosovo and the Albanian inhabited parts of Crna Gora were passed to Italian-controlled Greater Albania, and Voivodine became Hungarian territory.)
The second congress of the communist-led liberation movement (Jajce, 1943) passed a resolution on a federative system for Yugoslavia after the war.
The constitution of 1946 provided for six federative republics, and then in 1948 the two autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Voivodine were created within the Serbian Republic. Afterwards, the rights of the member republics and autonomous provinces were gradually enhanced. The constitution of 1974 summarized these rights. The member republics were now permitted to use more and more of their material wealth as they saw fit. They developed their state organizations and set up their ministries; the constitution referred a good many questions like instruction and minority problems to the competence of the republics. The two autonomous provinces within Serbia had veto rights in Serbian parliament. Although they had never exercised this right, the Serbian leadership objected to this right as detracting from the sovereignty of Serbia.
In the socialist period, Tito managed to keep in check nationalist ambitions even at the cost of removing high-ranking figures.
II. MINORITY POLICY
Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Turks, Ruthenians, Bulgarians, Italians, Czechs, Slovaks and Albanians made up the national minorities which constituted 16% of the population of the Serbian-Croatian Slovene Kingdom proclaimed in 1918. The Serbs and Croats together constituted 74.7% of the population, and the Slovenes 8.5 per cent.
Official nationality politics addressed separately the minorities — Albanians, Turks and Macedonians — which belonged to Serbia already prior to 1914, and they were able to achieve, with French assistance, that the minority protection provisions of the Peace of St. Germain should not apply to them. Although the Serbian-Croatian-Slovene government (similarly to Poland and Romania) was reluctant to ratify the minority protection agreement, minority protection was put into effect as a provisional law on May 10, 1920. The law declared that minorities had the right to set up religious, cultural and charitable institutions and schools. The constitution of 1921 guaranteed the equality of individuals before the law and held up the prospect that a separate law would provide for the educational institutions of minorities. (The latter law was passed in 1929.)
The nationalization with a government decree in 1920 of the assets of religious and commune schools was detrimental to the interests of minorities. As there was no primary school available with Turkish and Albanian instruction, most of the Albanian children did not attend school.
The government tried to undermine the economic strength of the minorities as well. The nationalization of banks hit the minorities the hardest. The land reform had the same effect. The Agrarian Law of 1919 liquidated the relatively large Hungarian church and lay estates, but at the same time the Hungarian section of the poor peasantry was not allotted any land because of their Hungarian descent. (Frequent reference was made to the fact that the Option Law made it possible for Hungarian land owners to settle in Hungary.)
At the second Jajce conference of the Liberation Movement, in 1943, apart from the federal restructuring, a resolution was passed on ensuring national minority rights. The Germans, however, were not entitled to such rights because they were collectively blamed for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1941. Their citizenship was terminated in 1944 and their properties were con-
APPENDIX
55
MINORITIES IN YUGOSLAVIA
fiscated. Retaliation was applied against all the national minorities whose mother countries participated in the maiming of Yugoslavia. Thus tens of thousands of Hungarians and Albanians were killed or removed to labour camps. (Hungary and the Albanians fought against the Serbs on the side of the Reich and Italy in World War II.)
After the consolidation of the state, the Executive Committee of the League of Yugoslav Communists pronounced that the national minorities would be regarded as equal with the Yugoslav peoples. The federal constitution of 1963 rendered the legal regulation of the nationality issue the task of the constituent republics. The constitution of Slovenia made separate mention of the Hungarian and Italian peoples as indigennes to the land. Determination of the communities where the nationality tongue was to be the official language was subject to the
YUGOSLAVIA (after 1947)
Hungarians NNSd Romanians Y//\ Albanians
Czechs
• -. Area with several nationalities . _ ,• Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks
Ruthenians, Montenegrins, Albanians, Macedonians
decisions of Community Statutes. The system of districts governed by voivodes ensured extensive rights in regard to school instruction and the use of the language of one's preference. The constitutional amendments of 1969 ensured the equalities of the Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, Ruthenian and Slovak languages in the organizations of the respective provinces and also in public administration. (On the territory of the Voivodine, Hungarian was the official language in 29 communities, Slovak in 12, Romanian in 9, Ruthenian in 6 villages, and in one settlement Czech was an official language, in 1991.) The constitution of Kosovo ensured similar rights to the Turkish language. The constitution of 1974 contains the equal legal status of nationalities and renders the guarantee of these rights the tasks of the organs of the republics and of the provinces.
III. MINORITIES
("NON-CONSTITUENTS OF THE STATE)
The minorities living in the territory of Yugoslavia moved into the areas of the later South-Slav State in various periods. The Turks, Albanians and Bulgarians are the
ethnic groups who made their homes in Serbia before 1914.
Numerous small ethnicities live in the areas that were annexed to the South-Slav state in 1919 from the Aust-ro-Hungarian Monarchy. Some of these ethnic groups have inhabited this area since the Middle Ages, other
Soups of peoples were settled in the deserted areas of ungary after the country had been liberated from Turkish occupation. (It should be noted that, during the Turkish occupation and the struggles against the Ottoman Empire, a large Serbian population settled in Croatia or the southern areas of historical Hungary. They were given certain privileges and were able to keep their religious [Orthodox] autonomy. Their congregations were in the 19th century the No. 1 exponent of Serb national demands.) Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Ruthenians,
_ Romanians and Italians moved into the South-Slav State from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
The constitution of 1974 recognized six nations as "constituents of the state". In this way, the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Macedonians and those of Crna Gora had their own territory of political administration or republic. (As the aim of the present study is the description of the position of national minorities, the nations which are "constituents of the state" are not treated in detail here.)
Of course, the national antagonisms in Yugoslavia caused tensions not only between the state and the minorities but also — in fact most of all—between the Slovene and Croatian population (Catholic) and the Serbs (Orthodox).
The rigid distinction between the two categories — constituents of the State and nonconstituents of the State — will need special explanation for those who are not directly familiar with the issue. The constituent Serbs are entitled to every right — autonomy included — whereas non-constituents are not. According to the Serbian attitude any autonomy infringes on the sovereignty of the state; the survival of nationalities is ensured by the rights guaranteed in the constitution.
Albanians
Most of the Albanians in Yugoslavia live in Kosovo and West Macedonia. The Albanian people were subjected to Turkish domination in the 13th century and adopted the Muslim religion afterwards. Their majority are still Mu-hammadans, but there are also among them believers in Orthodoxy and the Catholic faith. Areas inhabited by Albanians were incorporated into Serbia first through the Berlin Congress of 1878, and then after the London Conference of 1913 which closed the Balkan Wars.
Between the two world wars the Albanians had neitherminority rights nor schools. During World War II the partisans killed several thousand Albanians. The measures of negative discrimination instituted against the Albanians ended only after 1966.
MINORITIES IN YUGOSLAVIA
56
APPENDIX
After World War II, the Albanians received nationality status in socialist Yugoslavia. The autonomous province of Kosovo-Metokhia was founded within the framework of the Serbian Republic in 1948. The institution of an Albanian school system and, starting with the second half of the 1960s, the training of Albanian graduates (University of Pristina) strengthened Albanian national identity. This was no longer welcomed by the Serbian Republic whose leaders were afraid that enhanced national awareness might persuade the Albanians to join their original country again.
Bulgarians
The Bulgarian inhabitants settled chiefly in Serbia. There are no precise data on the size of their population between 1920 and 1945 because they were registered in the censuses as part of the Serbo-Croatian population. The minority protection rules were not made applicable to them either. They had no schools of their own. Since World War II there have been primary schools functioning in the Bulgarian mother tongue, but the Serbs preferred to "experiment" with bilingual instruction in regard to the education of Bulgarians. In the period between 1971 and 1981 a significant drop was noted in the number of Bulgarians, and the census of 1981 recorded only 36,000 Bulgarians in Yugoslavia.
Hungarians
In former Yugoslavia Hungarians have been living since the 11th century, in three republics — Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. It is only in the Voivodine in Serbia that they form an ethnic bloc. (The proportion of the Serbs in the Voivodine was only 35% in 1921, but today, together with the people of Crna Gora, they account for 59.4% of the population.) Today Hungarians number 346,000 in Serbia, 9,000 in Slovenia — and 22,000 in Croatia, where 82,000 Hungarians lived in 1921. With almost 500,000, the number of Hungarians was, according to the census figures, stable until 1961. Since then, the figure has been decreasing for reasons of low birth rates and high national assimilation rate (there are a lot of mixed marriages with one spouse Hungarian) and also for reasons of seeking jobs elsewhere.
The territory of the present-day Voivodine was awarded to the South Slav state by the Treaty of Trianon.
In socialist Yugoslavia nationality rights extended to Hungarians. They have their own daily newspaper (Magyar Szd) and periodicals as well, and 81% of the Hungarian primary-school children are taught in divisions where Hungarian is the language of instruction. The universities in Novi Sad and Subotica have Hungarian faculties.
With the shift to a multiparty system, The Democratic Community of Hungarians in the Voivodine was established as an interest organization. Its political aims are to work for personal — for practical purposes cultural — autonomy and regional autonomy for the Hungarian-majority villages along the Tisza river. The Hungarians won eight mandates at the 1990 paliamentary elections and two in 1992. During the civil war, old Serbian anti-Hungarian sentiments revived, Hungarians are now regarded as a threat to the unity of the state, Hungarian settlements have been subject to attacks, and tens of thousands of people emigrated to Hungary.
Germans
By today, Germans, who numbered 505,000 in the country in 1921 — are fewer than ten thousand in former Yugoslavia.
Germans used to be inhabitants in almost every area of Yugoslavia. Generally they belonged to the middle class — the rural or urban middle class. They were sett-
led by Hungarian kings in the territory of the Voivodine after the Turks were driven cut from Hungary in the 18th century. In the 19th century a significant propotion of the townspeople in the Voivodine of today and over the territories of Croatia and Slovenia were Germans (tradespeople and white-collar workers). The nationalization of the banks and the land reform brought considerable deprivation for the Germans; they lost a lot of their land and wealth, and therefore many people of German descent opted for emigration. Their well-equipped, high-standard schools were nationalized in the 1920s. Only after 1931 were they able to establish private schools of their own, generally backed by foundations.
In the course of Word War II, over seventy per cent of the German population fled with the retreating German troops. The refugee figure is estimated at 300,000. The number of Germans killed or removed to camps by partisans is put by some at 100,000 and others at 170,000.
Ruthenians
The Ruthenians were settled after the expulsion of the Turks in the 18th century on the territory that was then the southern part of Hungary. Between the two world wars, attempts were made to assimilate them into the majority South-Slav peoples. They were not allowed any minority rights. _
After World War II, the Kuthenian population in Yugoslavia ranged between 35 and 40 thousand. Today they nave primary school divisions run in their mother tongue, and their own weekly and radio programmes. However, few Ruthenian children receive their education in the mother tongue. Because of the low attendance figures, the number of classes in which Ruthenian is the language of instruction has gone down. There are a number of villages where the Ruthenian tongue is an official language, but, because of their low number, Ruthenians have less and less chance to exercise their minority rights.
Slovaks
The Slovaks moved from what was then north Hungary to the areas of the Voivodine and Croatia as part of the 18th-century settlement policy of the Kingdom of Hungary. At the Census of 1921, they were classified in the same category with the Czechs, and the joint figure was then 115,000. Between the two world wars they had a few schools of their own in the area. Considered Slavs if there were any South Slavs in their ancestry, the Slovaks — like the Czechs — were required to transpose their family names into Serbo-Croatian. Accordingly, their children could only be enrolled in schools of the majority language of the state. After World War II, there were 50-85 thousand Slovaks in Yugoslavia, but recently the figure has started to decline. In the Voivodine Slovaks have primary and secondary schools of their own, and the Hlas L'udi is their weekly. Today in the Voivodine 78% of the Slovak children attend schools where their mother tongue is the language of instruction.
Turks
Following the 15th-century conquests by the Ottoman Empire, Turks made up the majority of the population in several relatively large towns (Sarajevo, Mostar, Skopje). The Turkish population of the towns turned the Serbs and Bosnian Slavs into adherents of the Muhammadan religion. The Turkish population was particularly large in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the Novipazar Sancaks and there were a large number of Turks living in the Serb towns of Belgrade and Smederevo as well.
The impending success of the liberation struggle against Turkish occupation made the Turks begin to leave. The largest-scale migration of the Turks took place
APPENDIX
57
MINORITIES IN YUGOSLAVIA
after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. After 1920, the minority protection rules following the provisions of the peace treaties excluded the Turks, too. According to the 1921 census (of low reliability) there were 150,000 Turks in the new South Slav state. (In all probability they numbered a lot more than that.)
World War II was followed by another wave of emigration in the framework of the Yugoslav-Turkish interstate agreement. The census of 1953 — when at least 100,000 Albanians were counted as Turks — showed a Turkish population of 160,000. Emigration continued throughout the entire period of "socialism". At present it is in Macedonia and Kosovo that the largest numbers of Turks live.
Since World War II, the Turks have had partial cultural autonomy, and have a few primary schools, newspapers and radio programmes. There is a Turkish department at the University of Pristina, which is the center for professional Turkish people. There are a few communities in Kosovo where Turkish is among the local official languages.
Czechs
A large number of the Czechs in the country came to the territory of Croatia after 1867 as skilled workers. They settled mainly in towns, and in the villages of West Slávenia. After World War II, Czechs began to be treated as a separate nationality distinguished from the Slovaks. Their number fell from 40 to 20 thousand in the period between 1948 and 1981 — largely through natural assimilation.
Italians
Italians have been living in the former territory of Yugoslavia, especially in the towns on the Adriatic coast (Zara, Dubrovník and Split) and on the off-shore islands. Although the border agreements between the Serbo-Croatian and Slovene Kingdom and Italy (Treaty of Rapallo, 1920; Treaty of Nettuno, 1925) are not minority protection agreements, they contain certain rights for the Italian minority. The new South-Slav State expected Italy to grant similar rights for the Slovene and Croatian minorities there. In this way, the position of the Italians was the best among the minorities.
After World War II, the Italians in Yugoslavia gradually moved back to Italy, and consequently, while the 1948 census still reported on almost 80,000 Italians, the 1991 census recorded only 24,000. The great majority of the remaining Italian population lives today in Istria (Croatia). They have partial cultural autonomy; they run their own cultural organizations, primary and secondary schools, and publish Italian papers.
Romanians
The Romanians in Yugoslavia live chiefly in the Ban at. When the Banat district, which was part of pre-1918 Hungary, was divided up by the Paris-vicinity peace treaties between Romania and the Kingdom of Serbo-Croatia and Slovenia, 230,000 Romanians found themselves in the new South-Slav state. There was considerable migration between the two world wars. The census of 1948 reports only 65,000 Romanians, and their number has been going down since.Between the two world wars, the Romanians had their own schools — or more precisely divisions — in the mother tongue and they still have their own classes, though 35% of the Romanians study in other primary schools. In some areas of the Banat, where there is local community autonomy, Romanian may be used as an official language.
IV. PRESENT-DAY CONFLICTS AND THEIR PRELIMINARIES
Serbs and Croats
The revival of the antagonism of the "constituent nations" was crucial in the crisis in Yugoslavia. This was part of the collapse of the political sytstem led by the Communist Party. A several-year-old economic crisis added to the problem. Slovenia and Croatia demanded federal or confederate transformation, which was, however, stubbornly rejected by the Serbs. The Croats and Slovenes — the richer republics — expected that greater independence would bring them higher living standards. They repudiated the idea of federation and pulled out of the unified state.
From 1988 on, the local Serb national movement in Serbia insisted on the strengthening of Serbian positions both against the autonomous provices and within Yugoslavia. The Serbian constitution of 1989 virtually terminated the rights of autonomous provinces.
The increasing independence of the member republics further sharpened the national conflicts between Serbs and the former constituent peoples. Out of the two former member republics, Serbs make up 12% of the population of Croatia and 31% of Bosnia. Saying that their national existence was imperilled in the new independent states, these Serbs set up little Serbian republics in Croatia and Bosnia in 1990-1991. Thus, in the course of the new territorial restructuring, ethnic groups that earlier belonged to the constituent nations of the state became national minorities. Ensuring the rights recommended by the Conference on Yugoslavia in The Hague, a nationality law to go into effect after the conclusion of the war was adopted on Decenber 4, 1991 in Croatia. The law guarantees the right to use the mother tongue, and cultural autonomy; it promises local self-governments in areas inhabited by minorities — thus also in the territories inhabited by the Serbians in Croatia — and proportionate representation in political life.
It is not known to what extent the position of the Serbs will be settled in the newly independent states (of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina), whether they accept the regional autonomy proposed, whether they will get autonomy at all, or the struggle continues for the unification of the small Serbian republics with Serbia.
Albanians and Serbs
It is one of the big fears of Serbia that the Albanians are determined to break away from Serbia. That is why they passed a law last year strengthening the position of the Serbian language and why the new bill on education proposes to reduce the possibilities of getting instruction in the mother tongue.
Since 1988 there are everyday skirmishes in Kosovo. In February 1989 a state of emergency was announced. In December 1989 the opposition coalition named Democratic Association of Kosovo was formed. In July 1990 the Kosovo legislation proclaimed Kosovo as Yugoslavia's seventh equal republic, and as such independent of Serbia. Serbia's reply was to dissolve the Kosovo legislation. Since then the province has for all practical purposes been engaged in passive resistance, the area is administered with the assistance of Serbian police forces, instruction has been suspended or is continuing at the residence of the teachers because the Albanians refuse to accept Serbian rulings and Serbian textbooks. On May 24, 1992 the Albanians held parliamentary elections in Kosovo and elected a president for the republic (Ibrahim Rubova). The Albanians boycotted the June elections for the parliament of the third Yugoslavia.
The outcome of the Albanian-Serbian conflict is uncertain. The question is whether Albania remains a passive onlooker in case of war.
MINORITIES IN YUGOSLAVIA
58
APPENDIX
Hungarians and Serbs
Hungarians are another minority in Serbia that is numerically significant and lives in part in compact territorial units. The Democratic Association of Hungarians of the Voivodine (DAHV) was formed in 1989. At the 1990 elections the Association won eight seats and at the 1992 elections two seats. DAHV went on record several times to the effect that the Hungarians have no intention to participate in the disputes of the South-Slav peoples and that it opposes the sending of Hungarians into the civil war. In reply official Serbian politics commented that DAHV calls on Hungarians to desert and to refuse military service and that the Hungarians have no wish to defend the shared homeland of Serbia. At its third congress (April 25, 1992), DAHV drafted its demand for autonomy, basing it on the documents of the Yugoslavia Conference in The Hague. (Following this, the Serbs, living in compact patches, were given extensive autonomy within Croatia.) At the same time reference is made to the fact that the Serbs claim the same kind of collective rights for the Serbs outside of Serbia as the Hungarians now demand for themselves within Serbia. The Hungarians base their demand on the Croatian law of December 1991 (1. personal autonomy, 2. association of the self-governments of special-status communities [regional autonomy], 3. autonomy for villages of Hungarian majority when they are not cohesive in area).
The Hungarians in the Voivodine regard the area as
their native land and are loyal to it, the question remains, however, what rights they and the other minorities in the Voivodine will have in the third Yugoslavia. The immediate question is: will the demands further stir up the current antinationality anger or make the Serbs see the need for empathy.
Macedonians
The problem in regard to the Macedonians is whether the view dominant between the two world wars according to which the Macedonians do not form an independent nation but are Serbians will revive. Another question is how viable a possible independent Macedonia would be economically. Furthermore, over 20% of the population of the area are Albanians likewise demanding autonomy.
PEOPLES AND MOTHER TONGUES IN FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA
4 124 008
Serbs 2,3%
MACEDONIA
1 912 257
Serbs
What kind of leadership assumes power in Serbia and to what extent they realize the dangers inherent in an unfavourable international assessment of Serbia may be a decisive factor in the future of former Yugoslavia and also of the adjoining countries. A loose new kind of confederation of various independent states and republics can not be excluded either. It need not necessarily be a political and administrative federation.
Finally let us add a subjective editorial comment. As we said, the second Yugoslavia was in a way an experiment to harmonize a dictatorial political regime and the democracy of national minorities. This did not look' possible. Nevertheless, of all the former communist countries, it was in post-1945 Yugoslavia that the minorities were vested with the most extensive rights.
APPENDIX
59
MINORITIES IN BULGARIA
BULGARIA
Bepiafelfe of Bulgaria Arvr '■ sq. ^
Vvp\i!: lion (1989): S,^?,000 Minorities: Turks (Muslims), Macedonians, Gypsies
I. MAKING OF THE STATE
The territory of present-day Bulgaria has since A.D. 679 been inhabited by Bulgarians of the Ural-Altaic family of peoples, who have become strongly influenced by Slavic features. The area was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1396. The statehood of Bulgaria was first guaranteed by the Berlin Congress which closed the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78. In 1908, the Kingdom of Bulgaria was proclaimed and became recognized by Turkey in a 1909 treaty. (These accords contained some rights for the Turkish minority, such as free practice of religion, property rights, the maintenance of religious courts of justice, and the right to have the Chief Mufti elected by the mufties. These rights were not fully observed, and, owing to this, more than 300,000 Turks emigrated from Bulgaria up to 1912. In other words, modern Bulgaria — just as every
SMALL STATES ON THE BALKANS BEFORE WORLD WAR I
Arrows refer to territories annexed during the Balkan wars
new state in the area — had to contend wih the obligation to settle the minority question.)
A number of minorities live in Bulgaria. According to the census of 1934, Bulgarians constituted 86.8% of the population, the Turks accounted for 10.2 per cent, Gypsies for 1.3%, Jews for 0.5%, Armenians for 0.4%, Romanians for 0.3%, Russians for 0.2%, and others for 0.3 per cent. Arameans (Saracens) lived in the area since ancient times, but they numbered only 763 people in 1965. A good many minorites moved into the country during the Ottoman conquest. The Jews, who also arrived at that time, survived the Holocaust in Bulgaria (they were removed only from the German-occupied areas) and after 1944 most of them emigrated, and their number was reduced to 5,108 (0.1%) by 1965. A significant proportion of the Armenians likewise opted for emigration — to the USSR — and they numbered 20,282 (0.2%) in 1965, a good many of them on the way to assimilation. The Russians — largely White Russians, who emigrated after 1917 — numbered 10,815 in 1965. According to the census of that year there were 6,430 Tartars (0.1%). The Gypsies (148,874 or 1.8% in 1965) do not count for minorities but as Bulgarians. (The numbers are estimated figures.)
Except for the returns of the 1956 census referring to mother tongue, the data of the censuses taken during the Socialist period are unreliable.
II. MINORITIES AND MINORITY POLICY
The minor ethnic groups did not signify any special problem because of their small numbers. On the other hand the Turkish and Macedonian minorities did and do constitute a problem for Bulgaria.
Macedonians
Up to 1944 there was no Macedonian question. Until that time the Bulgarians regarded the Slavic population in geographical Macedonia as Bulgarians, and they had their reasons. The 1878 Peace Treaty of San Stefano annexed Macedonia to Bulgaria, but the Berlin Congress (1878) returned it to the Ottoman Empire. From then on, Bulgarian foreign policy constantly endeavoured to regain the area. In 1913 the peace treaty that closed the Balkan Wars divided Macedonia in three parts, giving to Serbia the largest section, to Bulgaria the eastern part, and to Greece the southern section. In the course of World War I, Bulgaria temporarily (from 1915 to 1918) occupied the Serbian part, which was, however, taken back by the Peace Treaty of 1920 from defeated Bulgaria, attaching it to Yugoslavia. While the Macedonian territories were contested by Bulgaria and Serbia, and later by Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, a generation of Macedonian intellectuals grew up and developed theirliterary language: molding together the dialect of southwestern Bulgaria and certain features of Serbian.
Between the two world wars, Bulgarian irredentism claimed several areas, including Macedonia.
MINORITIES IN BULGARIA 60 APPENDIX
The Macedonian population was declared Serbian in Yugoslavia, but probably the great majority considered themselves Bulgarians. A good many of them emigrated to Bulgaria and had no problem integrating into the Bulgarian nation.
From then on, Macedonia was a bone of contention in Bulgarian-Yugoslavian relations. (The communist movement played a peculiar role in the Macedonian issue. The Comintern passed a resolution in the 1920s acknowledging the existence of the Macedonian nation, and Bulgarian and Yugoslav communists were then expected to toe this line. When between 1941 and 1944 the area was taken under Bulgarian occupation, the Comintern passed a resolution to the effect that the Yugoslav communist party rather than the Bulgarian party was to lead the resistance movement in the area.)
In World War II when Yugoslavia was dismembered (1941), Bulgaria, fighting on the German side, immediately marched into the western (Serbian) Macedonian areas. However, after defeat in the war, Bulgaria had to agree that the pre-1939 boundaries held again as the dividing line from Yugoslavia. They also acknowledged the existence of a separate Macedonian nation.
This problem-free relationship with Yugoslavia lasted until 1948. During this period the Bulgarians recognized that Macedonians were a sovereign nation and recognized their cultural autonomy. The Republic of Macedonia in Yugoslavia — where in the meantime the Macedonian tongue became accepted — sent Macedonian teachers to Bulgaria. Macedonian-language newspapers began to appear in Bulgaria and cultural clubs and associations were formed.
After the break with Tito in 1949, the teachers were sent home and the Macedonians came to be regarded again as Bulgarians. (Thus, while the Macedonians were progressing toward independence and Yugoslavia recognized them as a constituent of the state, there was no sign of advancing toward Macedonian autonomy in Bulgaria.) In 1956 when the Macedonians in Bulgaria were last counted in an official census, they numbered 187,789 and accounted for 2.5% of the country's population.
Until the turn that came in 1989, the Bulgarian government kept the problem very much on the agenda, insisting that Macedonian Bulgarians were living in Yugoslavia though always adding that it would, of course, respect the borders. On February 14, 1990, the Yugoslav parliament sent a Note to Bulgaria raising the question of the Macedonian nation in Bulgaria, but the Bulgarian parliament repudiated this on March 5.
BULGARIA (1920-1940)
ETHNIC STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION
OF BULGARIA
Nationalities	1920	1934	1956	1965	1990
	Mother tounge	Mother tounge	Mother tounge	Nationality	Mother tounge
Bulgar-rians	4 036 056 83,3%	5 274 854 86,8%	6 506 541 85,4%	7 231 243 87,9%	7 670 000 85,4%
Macedonians	—	—	187 799 2,5%	9 632 0,1%	220 000 2,4%
Turks	520 339 10,7%	618 268 10,2%	656 025 8,6%	780 928 9,5%	760 000 8,4%
Rómovia	98 451 2,0%	80 532 1,3%	197 865 2,6%	148 874 1,8%	230 000 2,6%
Romanians	57 312 1,2%	16 405 0,3%	3 749 0,0%	763 0,0%	
Greks	42 074 0,9%	9 601 0,1%	7 437 0,1%	8 241 0,1%	—
Armenians	11 509 0,2%	23 045 0,4%	21 954 0,3%	20 282 0,2%	30 000 0,3%
Russians	9 080 0,2%	11 928 0,2%	10 551 0,1%	10 815 0,1%	20 000 0,2%
Jews	43 209 0,9%	28 026 0,5%	6 027 0,1%	5 108 0,1%	—
Others	28 941 0,6%	15 280 0,2%	15 761 0,3%	11 980 0,1%	50 000 0,7%
Total	4 846 971	6 077 939	7 613 709	8 227 866	8 980 000
The Macedonians in Bulgaria have been manifesting independence aspirations since 1989, starting with an ethnic club. It is to be noted that the declaration of the independence of Macedonia in Yugoslavia failed to elicit a strong response in Bulgaria. According to present estimates, a Macedonian minority of 220,000 people live in the southwest corner of Bulgaria adjoining to Macedonia and Greece.
Turkish Ethnic and Muslim Religious Minorities
Problems connected with the existence of a Turkish minority of about 760,000 people is a constant source of conflict in Bulgaria.
The ethnic Turks settled in Bulgaria from the 15th century on, principally as artisans and merchants in the
BULGARIA (in World War II)
APPENDIX
61
MINORITIES IN BULGARIA
towns. Later on, up to the mid-19th century, the Ottoman administration itself settled Turks in the area. In the present-day territory of Bulgaria, Turks are found chiefly northeast of the Balkan Mountains (Razgrad and vicinity), and along the Bulgarian-Greek border. Consequently Bulgaria regarded every Turkish national or religious event as part of Turkish endeavours to revise the boundaries. The ethnic Turks in Bulgaria profess to be Turks today — even those who were originally not of Ottoman-Turkic descent.
A special problem is represented by the question of the Pomaks who speak Bulgarian as their mother tongue and are probably descendents of Bulgarians who were once converted to the Islam. However, because of their Muslim religion they considered themselves Turks, though their being Turkic was never recognized by the Bulgarian government, which launched a campaign calledRebirtn with the aim of reintegrating the Pomaks with the Bulgarian nation. The Rebirth process has been extended even to the Turks who are genuine ethnic Turks.
After the restoration of the Bulgarian state (1878), the Great Powers obligated the Bulgarian government to meet the religious, educational and cultural demands of the Turkish minority. Autonomy in the said fields was also among the requirements of the peace treaty (1920) following World War I. In fact the Turks did have autonomous religious communities some of which ran schools. A national congress of Turks in Bulgaria was held in 1929.
After 1944, the position of the Turkish and Muslim minority further deteriorated through the fact that the communist party and the government conducted large-scale antireligious campaigns, starting a coercive assimilation process. Bulgaria was regarded as a unified nation state. The religious schools were nationalized in 1946, and Turkish-language instruction was stopped in about 1970 though in the school year of 1949-50 there were still 1,199 minority schools with 100,376 students. In 1965 the Bulgarian parliament had 14 and in 1971 fifteen Turkish representatives. However, setting up organizations on a religious and ethnic basis was prohibited. (The number of Turks was 675,500 or 9.6% in 1946. In 1965 the figures of 746,755 or 9.1% as well as 780,928 or 9.5% were in circulation.)
Part of the Turkish population chose emigration to Turkey in order to improve their position. Already between the two world wars some 177,000 people emigrated, and after 1949 another emigration wave crested. Up to 1951 some 160,000 people left the country. The Bulgarian propaganda of the times alleged that the Turkish government had persuaded the emigrants to leave — though in fact it welcomed the emigration wave as a way to get rid of the country's principal minority. There was another upsurge of emigration (about 130,000 people) between 1969 and 1978. Another measure was taken at the turn of 1984/85 against the Turkish minority when at the end of 1984 the Communist Party Central Committee passed a secret resolution stating that the Turks were to change their names to Bulgarian names. The implementation of this drive involved the deployment of troups and a number of fatalities though the exact number is not known. It was said that 250,000 people were arrested, but this figure may be exaggerated. (The military were deployed already in 1972 when even poison gas was used and the number of victims was estimated as 8-10,000, though no official data were available. In 1989 when the Turks started additional demonstrations and hunger strikes, the Bulgarian authorities expelled some 300,000 people between June 2 and August 22. On August 22 the Turkish authorities closed the frontiers. According to some data, about 11-12 thousand emigrants came back to Bulgaria, and according to other sources the resettlers numbered 148,000. Those who returned were, however, not able to settle at their old places of residence, for the Central Com mi tee
decision of 1984 declared the southern border zone a closed district where only people of Bulgarian nationality were allowed to settle. This was an attempt to prevent the acquisition of autonomy for the area, which might result in eventual strivings to join Turkey.
The turn in 1989 created only a partially new situation. On December 29, 1989 the Central Committee of
the Bulgarian Communist Party adopted a resolution on the religious and cultural rights of the Turkish minority. The formation on December 7 of the Movement for Rights and Liberty helped to bring this about. In March 1990 the restoration of the original Turkish names was made possible through recourse to the courts, and in November the until then complicated name-change process became possible through simple registration. School instruction is, however, still not provided in Turkish. At the free parliamentary elections of June 1990, the Movement for Rights and Liberty ranked third. Officially, the Movement is not Turkish, for creating organizations on a religious or ethnic basis is not tolerated. The 23 representatives who were elected to parliament in 1990 from the Movement are actually Turks — though the majority of its candidates for parliamentary membership were of Bulgarian nationality.
III. SOURCES OF CONFLICT
1) The activization of the Macedonians in Bulgaria in the case of international conflicts can not be excluded. There is, however, no sign to indicate that claims are brewing for territorial revision. Not even the stirrings for independence of Macedonia in Yugoslavia have triggered off this effect,
2) Partly because of the earlier insensitivity of the government in Bulgaria, the nationality movement of the Turks is still generating tensions. Speaking about the danger of conflicts, one must not ignore the intensive anti-Turkish feelings based on centuries of tradition of the Bulgarian population. When for instance, the restoration of Turkish names was made permissible, there were big mass meetings in Sofia to protest the decision. In Razgrad a separate local Bulgarian republic was proclaimed in November 1990 just to rescind the decree. The authorities soon put an end to this attempt, but still the anti-Turkish sentiments were there to stay.
3) We know but little about the position of Gypsies in Bulgaria, but, until some solution is found, it may give rise to internal tensions as this is the case in most countries of the area. The Gypsy population in Bulgaria is estimated at 250,000 people.
BULGARIA (after 1947)
MINORITIES IN ALBANIA
62
APPENDIX
ALBANI/
Republic öf Albania Areas 28,74ß sq. km PopÄte (1986): 3,022000
I. TERRITORY OF STATE, BOUNDARIES
Albania was the last country of the Balkans to be liberated of Ottoman rule, which lasted for several centuries there. The country declared its independence on November 28, 1912. The European Great Powers recognized the new Albanian state on July 29, 1913 as an autonomous principality, and it became during World War I a battleground of the struggles between opposing political and military alliances.
During World War I the country lost its independence again and was occupied by Serbian and Italian troups. In 1921 Albania became a free and sovereign country. On April 7, 1939 the Italians ran down Albania and compelled it to join Italy under a personal union (April 12). The German troups — rushing to the assistance of the Italians — occupied the country in September 1943 and were driven out by Albanian partizans in November 1944. The independence of Albania was proclaimed on November 29, 1944 for the third time within the lifespan of a single generation.
The Albanian Communist Party (later: Albanian Workers' Party) which played an active role in the liberation struggles, had, under the leadership of Enver Hoxha, set the ending of ethnic and religious differences as a principal aim. The minority question was more of a foreign policy problem than a domestic issue. The fact is and was that 35% of the ethnic Albanians speaking Albanian live outside of the country in Yugoslavia (1,039,523 in 1971 persons; while in Albania 2,550,000). This proportion is the highest among all the peoples living divided as a majority at home and minority abroad.
II. MINORITY POLICY
There are three distinct ethnic and religious regions in Albania:
1) The small Catholic population in North Albania, 2) the Orthodox and Greek Orthodox communities living in the central and southern parts of the country, and 3) the Muslim population which accounts for about 70% of the population of the country. (The different religions showed the following proportion between the two world wars: Muslims 70%, Orthodox 20%, and Catholics 10%.) The ethnic or religious minorities are estimated to have numbered about 88-90,000 (according to the 1961 census). Out of this figure 35,000 or 2.2% were Greeks, 35,000 or 2.2% Wallachians (Romanians), 10,000 or 0.8% Macedonians and Montenegrins, 5,000 or 0.4% Gypsies, and about 3-5,000 others (Jews, Armenians, etc.).
The proportion of Greeks in Albania remains unclar-ified because of the unreliability of statistics. Some researchers think that the Greek minority consists of 40,000 people while others put them at 400,000 (the former figure comes from official Albanian sources and the latter from estimates by the Greek authorities and Western scholars). The number of the Greek minority falls probably between the two extremes, in other words it is likely that about 200-250,000 individuals of Greek descent and mother tongue live in Albania today.
The Albanian governments from 1946 on carried on the general policy of denationalizing the ethnic minorities for the sake of a unified nation state. This is clearly indicated by the fact that the ratio of nationality persons to the population at large dropped speedily (it is about 3% today), and that the institutions of education in the mother tongue were dissolved. The "cultural revolution" that unfolded in 1967, virtually annihilated religious life (especially that of the Greeks) in Chinese-influenced Albania: 2,169 churches, mosques and monasteries were shut down or converted for other purposes. This included 630 large Orthodox churches that were torn down or were made to serve other purposes. The observance of religious holidays and the reading of religious books was prohibited. Although Article 43 of the Constitution of December 28, 1978 guarantees such Greek ethnic rights as the protection and free development of Greek culture, free use of the language and the teaching of Greek in primary school, the "cultural revolution" caused irreparable damage, and the relevant provisions of the constitution remained more or less unobserved. Minorities considered particularly injurious Government Decree No 225 of 1975, which obligated nationality persons to change their family and first names provided that the "citizens" had names unknown to Albanian usage and their first names were found politically, ideologically or morally "offensive". The Government had the organs of local administration circulate the list containing the names that were considered permissible. Geographical names that had religious connotations were also affected. Towns and villages bearing the names of saints and religious martyrs were renamed. The Greeks raised in the traditions of long centuries found the decree very insulting. They were the people the worst hit also by Government Decree No. 5912 of June 26, 1979 providing that special measures should be taken against those who "constitute a danger for the social system" and by the fast succession of other atrocities. A ban was put on the use of Greek in public places, in the army and in prisons (visits to prisoners were an exception), and attempts were made to disrupt firm Greek communities by settlling among them Albanians or people of a third ethnicity. These actions were, however, of but little effect.
In the 1980s, after Enver Hoxha's death, some relaxation was experienced. For instance, the Greek-Albanian frontiers were opened, travel became possible, the publication of a Greek-language newspaper (To Vima) was allowed, and Greek radio transmissions were arranged. However, minority rights in the European sense were not ensured.
III. MINORITIES
Greeks
Greecks present in the territory since the 16th century are the only significant minority in Albania. They live
ETHNIC STUCTURE OF THE POPULATION
OF ALBANIA*
Nationalities	1945	1950	1955
Albaniens	1 075 467 95,8%	1 186 123 97,3%	1 349 051 97,1%
Greks	26 535 2,4%	28 997 2,4%	35 345 0,4%
Macedonians-Montenegrins	14 415 1,3%	3 474 0,3%	5 770 0,4%
Others (Gypsies, Jews, Armenians)	5 627 0,5%	349(!) 0,0%	1 333 0,1%
Total	1 122 044	1 218 943	1 391 499
On the basis of the Soviet Date Handbook. Estimated data.
APPENDIX
63
MINORITIES IN ALBANIA
in an almost closed unit in South Albanian areas adjoining Greece. Military and political contentions along the borders continued for decades after the Greek civil war. This tension between the two countries eased when in 1971 the Greek government officially abandoned its territorial claims in South Albania.
Although the "cultural revolution" was directed against all nationalities, the Greeks were the worst hit. Their churches and cloisters were destroyed or closed, and even their priests were subjected to long series of humiliations. In April 1967 for instance, forty Greek Orthodox priests were divested of their frocks and were made to submit to have their beards and hair cut. Children were taught in school to report religious friends and family members. The decree on compulsory name changes tore into centuries of Greek literary and cultural traditions. The Greeks were made to change the names passed on from fathers to sons to Albanian names, and children were permitted to use their Greek first names only in the closest family circle whereas in school they had to call each other by their new Albanian names. If only a single Albanian family lived among the Greeks, Albanian was the only language in the given settlement. Greek could only be spoken in villages and towns that were inhabited exclusively by Greeks. The number of class hours for the teaching of Greek was limited in school, and many Greek schools were liquidated. (The 36 Greek primary schools that functioned in 1922 were cut to one third of their earlier number.) General instruction in the Greek language is permitted only in the first four grades.
Macedonians
Their position is similar to that of the Greeks but their political rating is worse because of the steadily deteriorating relations of Belgrade and Tirana — chiefly on account of Kosovo. At the end of the 1970s, a strict quota was imposed on books from Yugoslavia, and in the next decade the teaching of works in the Macedonian language was completely stopped in school.
Wallachians
They have become almost completely assimilated. They are not in touch with Romania, they have no press, no literature and no educational institutions in the Walla-chian language.
IV. SOURCES OF CONFLICT
More significant than the latent ethnic tensions is the Albani an -South -SI av conflict which developed since 1988 in connection with the self-determination aspirations of the Albanians in Kosovo. Until now Albania has been unable to do anything for the interest protection of Albanians living beyond the borders of the country, but if the conflicts in Yugoslavia become prolongued, strong reaction by the Albanian state may easily cause additional international complexities.