Romania in the Age of Glasnost

...The same kind of neglect is suffered by the other non-Romanian ethnicgroups, such as the Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Tartars, or Ukranians, who together number 200,000...

...Of the 25,000 Jews still in Romania, more than a third currently hold exit visas...

...Soviet reform has been received enthusiastically in Poland and Hungary, and even Czechoslovakia is beginning to act on Moscow's cue to liberalize domestic policies...

...Romania's Jews, for example, receive far better treatment than their brethren elsewhere in Eastern Europe because of the country's diplomatic and trade relations with Israel...

...The growing separation of Romania from both the East and the West has produced no changes in this despotically ruled Balkan country...

...Given what Gorbachev has publicly referred to as the "weak development" of Soviet-Romanian cooperation, it is not surprising that the problem of the minorities—specifically that of the ethnic Hungarians—was not addressed in the joint communiqué issued by the two countries after the Soviet leader's departure...

...Gorbachev hopes the aging leaders of Eastern Europe will begin to overhaul their countries' deteriorating social and economic programs, rather than simply pass them along to the next generation...

...Yet if there are no signs of glasnost, neither has there been an increase in reprisals and crackdowns on minorities...

...At stake in the dispute are 1.7 million native Hungarians—8 per cent of Romania's population, and Europe's largest ethnic minority...

...The question now is whether diplomatic pressure from the USSR will succeed...

...True, East Germany and Bulgaria are holdouts, but Romania alone has rigidly retained the nationalist, Stalinist posture it has held for over 20 years...

...More recently, it was the only Warsaw Pact participant in the Los Angeles Olympics...

...At this point the claims of the many ethnic minorities to non-Romanian nationality emerged as an international embarrassment for Bucharest...

...During his three-day visit in May, the Soviet Party chief discovered that this most peculiar and independent of the East bloc nations will continue to be an obstacle to his plans for the region, if not a downright ideological embarrassment for his reform programs...

...failed to force Ceausescu to address them...

...The 250,000 Germans who remain constitute a powerful community, with representation in the National Assembly...

...The matter of minorities generally, in fact, adds one more peculiar twist to the dynamic of this country, which rivals the Soviet Union in ethnic diversity...

...His program of national communism appealed to Romanian patriotism: There was a sudden revival of interest and pride in the Latinate origins of the language and culture...

...They are concentrated in Transylvania, a region of centurylong contested ownership between the two countries...

...He knows, too, that the Romanian leader is ill and is rumored to have made provisions for a dynastic succession by his wife Elena or son Niku— a development that would be the ultimate embarrassment for Gorbachev...

...a new contributor to the NL, is free-lance writer who reports frequently on Eastern Europe...

...The government continues to take pride in having reduced its national debt and maintained a higher figure for per capita steel production than France, Great Britain or the U.S.—while the crushing domestic austerity programs that have funded those advances have left Romanians without heat and light in the winter, not to mention gasoline or fresh vegetables...

...But Ceausescu seems to have passed up his opportunity...

...FIGHTING CHANGE Romania in the Age of Glasnost By William Fisher Bucharest Unlike dramatic events in Poland or the gradual liberalization of Hungary, developments in Romania rarely make Western headlines...

...Although the Hungarian minority has posed difficulties since the USSR gave Transylvania to Romania after World War II as a reward for siding with the Soviet Army, the whole issue was exacerbated when Ceausescu came to power on a wave of nationalism unequaled anywhere else in Eastern Europe in recent times...

...Indeed, that has been the country's greatest problem, and now it has become Mikhail S. Gorbachev's concern as well...

...Considering the circumspect pronouncements made during the three days, Bucharest's expulsion of eight journalists slated to cover the event was itself more of an embarrassment than whatever it was intended to forestall...

...William Fishkr...

...No one doubts, though, that it was among the principal concerns he took with him to Bucharest...

...Very little ever seems to change here...

...But current differences with Moscow are less a matter of foreign than of domestic policy...

...As populations originating from what are now the Socialist republics of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, they receive no benefits at all from pressure by Romania's Western trade partners...

...Under the leadership of Nicolae Ceausescu, who was named Communist Party General Secretary in 1965, Romania became the first comecon country to sign trade agreements with the European Economic Community...

...Historical enmity between Romania and Hungary, and the latter's lack of hard currency, prevent the Hungarian minority's demands of repatriation from being taken as seriously as those of the Jews or Germans...

...Gorbachev's presence was a golden opportunity for Romania to assert its place in the new pluralist Soviet camp, if only for the sake of appearance...

...During his stay in Bucharest, Gorbachev witnessed a 45-minute Ceausescu speech delivered to a large auditorium of Communist Party officials, who rose 19 times to clap and chant Ceausescu's name...

...Romanians joke that while the ideal of "socialism in one country" was abandoned in the USSR after the death of Stalin, Ceausescu still cleaves to the notion of "socialism in one family...

...In the last year alone, Ceausescu has watched his country become increasingly isolated ideologically from its newly progressive neighbor to the East (even though trade has picked up between the two countries and the USSR has adopted some points of the Romanian leader's agenda, notably arms control...

...Ceausescu's penchant for central economic planning, his ironfisted control of society, and the cult of personality he has let grow up around him represent everything opposed by the Soviet leader (whose references to "openness" and "restructuring" are censured in Romania's press...

...and critiques appeared of Soviet historians who belittled Romania's role in the War...

...Still, the visit was of more than ceremonial significance...

...unflattering scenes in the country's history (from the Dracula legend to the Fascist Iron Guard) were deleted from official chronicles...

...In addition, Moscow's overtures to the nonaligned countries, and East German and Polish visits to China, have made Romania's relations with those countries seem less privileged...

...Economic pressure from the U.S...

...Like the Germans, the Hungarian minority has resisted assimilation, but with considerably less success—despite official Hungarian and Soviet support...

...That this requirement is waived for those going to West Germany or Israel bears possibly the most telling witness to the effect of Western trade—and hard currency— on Bucharest...

...Last April, shortly before Gorbachev's arrival, a Hungarian government spokesman issued a formal condemnation of the Ceausescu regime for causing "a disturbance in the cooperation between neighboring Socialist countries"—an unprecedented event within the Warsaw Pact...

...It was German leaders of the tiny yet potent Evangelical Church here who successfully pushed the government to begin the publication of Bibles this year...

...Perhaps of greater importance, the West has also begun to lose interest in this outpost of heterodoxy in Eastern Europe: This month the U.S...

...It similarly declined to participate in Nikita S. Khrushchev's centralized economic plan for comecon (which would have turned it into the vegetable patch of theorganization),choosinginstead to pursue its own industrialization...

...For both Eastern and Western observers, Gorbachev's first official trip to Romania was something of a disappointment...

...These disparate groups include roughly 1 million Romanian-born Germans, Gypsies, Slavs, Turks, and Jews, who make up another 4 per cent of the country's 22 million population...

...finally suspended its Most Favored Nation trade agreement with Romania, citing the country's dismal human rights record as sufficient reason for the step...

...One out of every five Romanians reportedly remains in the employ of the secret police...

...Thus emigration was opened up, with the result that one out of every 20 Romanians has applied for a passport...

...Ceausescu is therefore suddenly no longer able to play off one side against the other, as he has done so successfully for two decades...

...Emigration remains a long, difficult process, however, and the government demands repayment of $20,000 for primary and secondary education from would-be expatriates...

...This was a response to Bucharest's denunciation of an official Hungarian threevolume History of Transylvania...

...Probably few await that step more eagerly than Mikhail Gorbachev...

...Daily life goes on pretty much the way it did before as Ceausescu plans his next step...

...And with the introduction in the West of provisions linking trade to yearly appraisals of the partner country's human rights record, the regime was forced to face up to the discontent of non-Romanian nationalities as the price of Western participation in its display of independence...

...Bucharest also denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan 11 years later...

...There have even been reports of the beating and disappearance of Hungarian dissidents...

...Of all these countries Romania—with its worsening ethnic situation, the lowest standard of living and the most repressive state apparatus— has the biggest troubles...

...Romania's uniqueness has always rested on intransigence...

...Since the Soviet occupation ended in 1958, it has refused to permit Warsaw Pact troops on its soil and built a fighting force second in size only to Poland's in Eastern Europe...

...Nevertheless, Romanian-born Hungarians are better off than the country's 230,000 Gypsies, who receive as little attention as possible and are now counted simply as Romanians in the census...