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Stefano Bottoni
Lexington Books

Stalin's Legacy in Romania: The Hungarian Autonomous Region, 1952-1960

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AuthorStefano Bottoni
PublisherLexington Books
PublishedMay 29 2018
Book FormatHardcover
ISBN-139781498551212
Dimensions9 X 6 X 0.94 inches
Weight 1.62 pounds
BISAC
CategoriesHistory > Eastern Europe - General
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

This study explores the little-known history of the Hungarian Autonomous Region (HAR), a Soviet-style territorial autonomy that was granted in Romania on Stalin's personal advice to the Hungarian Sz�kely community in the summer of 1952. Since 1945, a complex mechanism of ethnic balance and power-sharing helped the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) to strengthen-with Soviet assistance-its political legitimacy among different national and social groups. The communist national policy followed an integrative approach toward most minority communities, with the relevant exception of Germans, who were declared collectively responsible for the German occupation and were denied political and even civil rights until 1948. The Hungarians of Transylvania were provided with full civil, political, cultural, and linguistic rights to encourage political integration. The ideological premises of the Hungarian Autonomous Region followed the Bolshevik pattern of territorial autonomy elaborated by Lenin and Stalin in the early 1920s. The Hungarians of Sz�kely Land would become a titular nationality provided with extensive cultural rights. Yet, on the other hand, the Romanian central power used the region as an instrument of political and social integration for the Hungarian minority into the communist state. The management of ethnic conflicts increased the ability of the PCR to control the territory and, at the same time, provided the ruling party with a useful precedent for the far larger nationalization of the Romanian communist regime which, starting from the late 1950s, resulted in ethnicized communism, an aim achieved without making use of pre-war nationalist discourse. After the Hungarian revolution of 1956, repression affected a great number of Hungarian individuals accused of nationalism and irredentism. In 1960 the HAR also suffered territorial reshaping, its Hungarian-born political leadership being replaced by ethnic Romanian cadres. The decisive shift from a class dictatorship toward an ethnicized totalitarian regime was the product of the Gheorghiu-Dej era and, as such, it represented the logical outcome of a long-standing ideological fouling of Romanian communism and more traditional state-building ideologies.

Author Bio

Stefano Bottoni is a senior research fellow at the Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a visiting fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg, Jena (March-November 2015). Between 2005 and 2013, he held courses on the history of contemporary Eastern Europe at the University of Bologna.

His main fields of interest include the political and social history of Eastern Europe under the socialist regimes, with a special focus on national policies in Romania and the Hungarian minority of Transylvania. He has taken part in several international research projects, including “Schleichwege”: Inoffizielle Begegnungen und Kontakte sozialistischer Staatsbürger 1956 – 1989 (Volkswagen Stiftung), and Physical Violence in State Socialism (Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung).

His list of publications include five monographs including
Long Awaited West. Eastern Europe since 1944. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, October 2017),
Stalin’s Legacy in Romania. The Hungarian Autonomous Region, 1952-1960.
Langham: Lexington Books, Harvard Cold War Series Book Series, 2018),
as well as several articles published in peer-reviewed international journals.

Stefano Bottoni was a Visiting Fellow at Institut Montaigne in April 2019.

Stefano Bottoni, PhD in Modern and Contemporary History (University of Bologna, 2005), is senior fellow at the Institute of History of Research Centre for the Humanities at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Source: Wilson Center and Institut Montaigne

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Stalin's Legacy in Romania: The Hungarian Autonomous Region, 1952-1960

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Eastern Europe - General

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