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

Nationalizing Minorities and HomelandPolitics: The Case of the Hungarians inRomaniaZOLTÁN KÁNTORIntroductionThis paper develops an interpretative framework for the study of theHungarian national minority in Romania that could help one understandthe ongoing social and political processes, and explain the processof nationalization of a national minority. My ambition is, nevertheless,broader. I hope that this theoretical framework can also be utilized for theanalysis of analogous cases. Obviously, many possible frameworks can beemployed to analyze a national minority. However, to understand theessence of the issue, one has to concentrate on questions related tonationhood and nationalism.The politics of national minorities is rooted in the principle ofnationality. Also, their organizations are based on national or ethnicgrounds. In order to understand the nationalizing policy of a nationalminority, one must analyze the process through which a particular groupbecame a national minority, and the institutionalization of that nationalminority on ethnocultural basis. Approaches that focus on particularissues, such as inter-ethnic conflicts, the use of national symbols, ethnicparties, multiculturalism and minority rights, cannot be understood withouta comprehensive analytical framework.Following World War I, Romania acquired Transylvania. As a result,a sizeable Hungarian population became a national minority in this country.In other words, a part of an already formed nation, which had beeninvolved in the process of nation-building, suddenly became a nationalminority. Up to 1918, the Hungarians considered themselves the rightfulmasters of Transylvania, and acted on the basis of this idea. Consequently,after 1918, while being backed ideologically by the revisionist politics ofthe Hungarian state, the leaders of the Hungarian national minority inRomania organized their political and cultural organizations on an ethnoculturalbasis and promoted a policy of self-defense in regard to thenationalizing thrust of the enlarged Romanian state. The essential point is249