Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

The Idea of Independent Romanian National Economy in Transylvaniaa significant transfer of landed property, which generated, mostly on the Hungarianside, a polemic literature. A stratum of Romanian large estate holdersstarted to be formed, though it was proportionally much less significant in theRomanian society than in the case of their Hungarian counterparts. However,as far as the middle estates between 50 and 100 Hungarian acres were concerned,their social weight did not differ that much: within the Hungarian societythey represented 0.74%, while in the Romanian one 0.49%. But 47.4% ofthe total middle estate territory of Transylvania was owned by Romanian farmers,while their Hungarian counterparts held only 40.8%. See Zoltán Szász, “Azerdélyi román polgárság szerepérõl 1918 õszén” (On the role of the Romanianbourgeoisie of Transylvania in autumn 1918), Századok 2 (1972), p. 305.12 See Vasile Dobrescu, Elita româneascã în lumea satului transilvan, 1867-1918(The Romanian elite in the world of Transylvanian villages, 1867-1918) (TîrguMureº: 1996), p. 22.13 In 1907, among the 715 members of the Romanian agricultural association ofSzeben county, there were only 128 rich peasants, while the remaining 587 personsearned a living as priests, teachers, lawyers, doctors and officials, althoughmany of them joined the association in their quality of landowners. Sometimesthe very term middle class appears in these sources in the sense of a landownerof an estate of 100-200 acres. See Dobrescu, Elita româneascã în lumea satuluitransilvan, 1867-1918, pp. 23-24.14 Dobrescu, Elita româneascã în lumea satului transilvan, 1867-1918, pp. 27-28.15 See Ernõ Éber, Fajok harca: Adatok az erdélyi nemzetiségi kérdéshez (The fightof the races: Contributions to the nationality question in Transylvania)(Budapest: 1905), p. 168. Antal Bodor, a well-known financial expert, helda similar opinion in his study on the bank system of Transylvania: the Hungarianpeasant, when he is in difficulties and “he is not given more money by theHungarian bank, goes to the Romanian savings bank, where he always getsenough money at a high interest rate.” In his opinion, Romanian banks wereruining Romanian and Hungarian peasants alike. “Because of their high operationalexpenses, two third of them offer to their clients of low income loans at15-20% – by adding various fees – instead of the legal 8%. In fact, land couldbe disencumbered only through mortgage, but this category represents onlysome 9.5 million koronas from the actual credit stock of Romanian banks,while the quantity of bill credits with guarantors that are extremely disadvantageousfor farmers amounts to almost 26.5 million. In such a way, people aremade vagabonds, dangerous elements for public safety. The reason for this wasthe fritterness of the financial institutions: they are founded to offer a stableexistence, moreover a quick way of getting rich for the unpropertied membersof the minority intelligentsia.” Antal Bodor, “Az erdélyrészi pénzintézetek”(The Transylvanian banks), Közgazdasági Szemle (December 1904), p. 932.16 The sociologist Petru Suciu underlined the personal responsibility of peasants:“Our banks started their activity not very succesful as for our peasants who didnot understand the importance and role of borrowed money. ... With an infantilerashness they wasted it for unnecessary things and they forgot to pay theinterest in due time.” Then came the executors and the peasants “went toAmerica. But the situation changed at the turn of the century: loans were usedrationally, invested in large proportion in land” often through the medium of219