Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0299/02994.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 35KB | 597 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02994}
$Pretitle{360}
$Title{Romania
Chapter 4.    Social System and Values}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Eugene K. Keefe}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{population
social
romanians
romanian
family
hungarian
percent
society
ethnic
hungarians}
$Date{1972}
$Log{}
Country:     Romania
Book:        Romania, A Country Study
Author:      Eugene K. Keefe
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1972

Chapter 4.    Social System and Values

     Since the end of World War II Romanian society and its values have been
in a state of flux. The aim of communist social and economic policies has been
to destroy the old order and replace it with a new one that will reflect
communist ideology. The resulting changes have been fundamental and far
reaching, particularly in the structure of the society and the place occupied
in it by particular individuals. The effect on values has been less easy to
determine.

     The extent and the pace of change have been slowing down since the early
1960s, and some aspects of the old social order were beginning to reemerge,
although in different forms. The changes that were continuing to affect the
society in the 1970s were more the result of economic growth than of conscious
efforts to bring them about. This was particularly true of the changing role
of the family, which has come about as a consequence of increased
industrialization and urbanization as much as by government design.

     Least affected by the social upheaval since 1945 have been the ethnic
composition of the country and the relations between the various ethnic
groups. Although the population has always been predominantly Romanian,
Hungarians and Germans constitute a majority in some areas of the country and
remain a source of potential political and social problems. The Hungarian
minority in particular, making up more than 8 percent of the population in
1966, has always been very sensitive to what it considers Romanian domination
and has at times harbored irredentist feelings.

ETHNIC COMPOSITION

     The population of Romania is basically homogeneous, although it includes
elements of almost every ethnic group in Central and Eastern Europe. At the
time of the 1966 census, Romanians constituted 88 percent of the population.
The largest single minority group were the Magyars, or Hungarians,
constituting 8.4 percent of the population. They were followed by the Germans
with 2 percent of the population. All other ethnic groups-Serbs, Croats,
Slovenes, Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs, Slovaks, Turks, Tatars, Bulgarians,
Jews and Gypsies-were simply listed as "other" and together made up only 1.6
percent of the population.

     The Constitution of 1965 guarantees equal rights to all citizens
regardless of nationality or race and stipulates legal sanctions against both
discrimination and instigation of national or racial animosities. National
minorities are guaranteed the free use of their mother tongue in education,
the communications media, and their dealings with government authorities and
unrestricted perpetuation of their cultural traditions.

Romanians

     The origins of the Romanians and their language have been the subject of
differing interpretations and controversy. Romanians are related to the
Vlachs, a pastoral people speaking a Latin-derived language who are found in
the mountainous regions of northern Greece and southern Yugoslavia.

     According to Romanian tradition, Romanians are the direct descendants of
the Dacians, who inhabited the territory of modern Romania before the
Christian Era. The Dacians were conquered by Roman legions under Emperor
Trajan in A.D. 106 and became romanized during 165 years of Roman control.
When Emperor Aurelian abandoned control of Dacia in 271, in the face of Gothic
invasions, the romanized Dacians sought refuge in the rugged Carpathian
Mountains, where they preserved their Latin language and culture until more
settled conditions allowed them to return to the plains in the tenth century
(see ch. 2).

     The period of Roman rule of Dacia is well documented, but the absence of
any firm indication of the presence of a Latin-speaking population in the
territory of contemporary Romania until the tenth century has given rise to
another theory of the origin of Romanians, developed mostly by Hungarian
historians. This theory maintains that the Dacians withdrew with the Roman
legions south of the Danube. There they absorbed elements of Thracian and
Slavic culture, in addition to that of their Roman rulers. Starting in the
tenth century, a people speaking a Romance language moved northward across the
Danube as far as Slovakia and settled in the area that later became Romania.

     The Romanian theory of their origin stresses that a people speaking a
Romance language continuously occupied the territory claimed by the Romanian
state, thus rendering legitimacy to the claim. The other theory stresses the
absence of a Romance-language-speaking people in Transylvania at the time of
the Magyar immigrations into that region, thus giving legitimacy to the
Hungarian claim to Transylvania.

     Whatever their origin, Romanians have occupied the territory of their
present state since the Middle Ages. In 1966 they numbered 16.8 million and
formed the majority population in most of the country (see fig. 5).

     Romanian, a Romance language, differs sharply from the languages of
neighboring countries which, with the exception of Hungarian, are all Slavic
tongues. The basis for Romanian seems to be the Vulgar Latin of ancient Rome.
Long contact with Slavic-speaking peoples has left its mark on the vocabulary
but has not affected grammar or syntax, which remain similar to those of other
Romance languages. The vocabulary of literary Romanian is more purely of Latin
origin than that of the spoken dialects. Frequently, parallel words of Latin
and Slavic derivation exist for an object or concept and are used
interchangeably. Turkish, Albanian, Hungarian, and German have also
influenced the vocabulary of the spoken language in various parts of the
country.

Hungarians

     In the 1966 census Hungarians numbered 1.6 million, constituting 8.4
percent of the total population. Since 1947, when Romania acquired its present
borders, the number of Hungarians within its borders has remained relatively
stable, although their percentage in the total population has been declining.

     Hungarians form the majority population in parts of Transylvania and in
pockets along the Hungarian border. They form a significant minority of the
population in the rest of Transylvania and in the Banat region. In 1952 the
area of greatest Hungarian concentration in eastern Transylvania was
designated the Hungarian Autonomous Region (Mures-Magyar) and was given
considerable degree of self-government to deal with complaints of political
and cultural oppression by Romanians. The region was eliminated in the
administrative reorganization of 1968 (see ch. 9).

     In 1971 it was estimated that slightly more than half of Romania's
Hungarian minority still lived in rural areas. Several Transylvanian
cities-including Cluj, Oradea, Baia-Mare, and Tirgu Mures-also have a high
percentage of Hungarian inhabitants.

     Hungarians first moved into the territory occupied by modern Romania in
the ninth century as part of the Magyar invasion of the central European
plain. Their number grew through colonization during the period of Hungarian
rule of Transylvania, which began with the conquest of the area in the
eleventh century and ended in 1918. One group of colonists-the Szeklers, or
Szekelys-were settled in the eastern borderlands of Transylvania in the first
part of the twelfth century to protect the plains from invaders. The ethnic
origin of the Szeklers is in dispute. Some authorities claim they are Magyars;
others claim they are non-Magyars who absorbed Magyar culture over long years
of contact. During the Middle Ages, Szeklers were distinct from Magyars in
political and social organ