Language Politics and the Divergent Outcomes in the Policy of Romania and Ukraine WPSA conference paper, first draft Comments and criticisms most welcome, efedotov31@gmail.com Egor Fedotov Fellow Researcher at the Institute for Ethnic and National Minority Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences March 16, 2012
Summary of the Paper Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, some countries of the former Soviet bloc have witnessed an easing in the political relations between language groups, for example, between the Hungarians and Romanians in Romania. Yet others have witnessed a deterioration in the political relations between language groups in the arena of politics, for example, between the Russian and Ukrainian speakers in Ukraine. The purpose of this paper is to compare the contrasting cases of Romania and Ukraine in order to ascertain why in Romanian political relations between the Hungarians and Romanians normalized over the course of the last twenty years, while in Ukraine political relations between the Ukrainian and Russian speakers continued to remain tense. The paper poses two interrelated questions. First, which theories of human action can best explain the behavior of minority elites in these countries? The second question concerns the causes underlying the divergent policy outcomes in Romania and Ukraine. Why did political relations between the Hungarians and Romanians normalize in the last twenty years? How can we explain why in Romania the state language policy toward the Hungarian minority was more tolerant compared to that in Ukraine? Why is the Hungarian language protected in Romania in the de jure and de facto sense while in Ukraine the same cannot be said with regard to the Russian language? To explore these questions, I pursue two lines of inquiry below. First, we briefly discuss the political strategies that minority elites in the above countries used in order to bring about a more effective policy of language rights protection. Second, we evaluate the plausibility of two explanatory frameworks to see how well they can explain, and predict, the behavioral patterns of the minority elites. In particular, we touch on two theories of human action, namely the structural and ideational theories of human action. 2
To explain the divergent policy outcomes in Romania and Ukraine, I examine the strategies pursued by minority elites. I argue that those strategies that are sensitive to compromise and politically-deemphasized solutions have the greatest potential for bringing about a positive change in state language policy vis-à-vis non-titular speakers. Minority elites may, in principle, elevate the importance of either of the following two political demands. They may put forward grand bargains that give rise to opposition among titular elites. Often such demands involve unrealistic policy measures that in fact may need considerable time to be implemented and may require the building of political trust between main language groups. As we shall see, in Romania such grand bargains involved calls for territorial and cultural autonomy for the Hungarian minority, while in Ukraine such demands concerned the granting of second official status to the Russian language. On the other hand, minority elites may opt for a step-wise and moderate approach to protection of minority language rights. For example, they may focus on implementation of minority rights in education, government, and so on, such that these demands do not provoke immediate political controversy. While they may still give rise to nationalist opposition and may be strongly opposed by titular elites, such demands nevertheless have the greater potential to depoliticize the issue of rights protection and channel the language conflict in a more manageable direction. In Romania, political demands that were sensitive to compromise and politically deemphasized solutions were focused on the specific aspects of the language use in the Hungarian-populated areas, for example, the number of Hungarian-language classes in education, the use of Hungarian in local governance in areas that had a certain percentage of the Hungarian population, and so on. In a striking contrast to Romania, in Ukraine similar calls for a specific regulation of the Russian language use in the Russian-populated areas in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine were conspicuous by their absence in the political discourse of Russian speaking elites. That is, in the arena of politics the 3
central question concerned the de jure, rather than de facto, status of the Russian language. As already noted, in Romania, in contrast, the rights of the Hungarian minority were placed on the political agenda by the Hungarian minority elites both in the de facto and the de jure sense. In what follows I first present an exceedingly brief compass a summary of main patterns of interest looked at in Romania and Ukraine. This summary foreshadows a more extended treatment of the empirical material later in the paper. Next I discuss how well structural and ideational theories of human action can explain, and predict, the behavioral patterns and strategies of minority elites in the above countries. The third section presents empirical evidence in the form of a narrative analysis in order to highlight several salient episodes from the post- Communist history of Romania and Ukraine. The aim of this section is not to trace the development of political relations between language groups since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, but rather to focus attention on particular time snapshots in which the main patterns of interest can be discerned most clearly. In conclusion I briefly suggest a counterfactual scenario for how political relations between the Ukrainian and Russian speakers in Ukraine could have evolved. Language Politics in Romania and Ukraine: Divergent Policy Outcomes Romania and Ukraine are arguably two most contrasting cases in post-communist Europe when it comes to the level and extent of cooperation between two main ethno-linguistic groups, that is, the Hungarians and Romanians in Romania and the Russian and Ukrainian speakers in Ukraine. The dependent variable in this paper has two interrelated components. One of them is the apparent degree of tension evident in the extent to which the above groups are willing to cooperate in the arena of politics. This cooperation may take the form of government coalition 4
or informal cooperation in parliament to secure legislation that is beneficial to both sides. The second component is related more directly to the state of rights protection, that is, the official policy of the state toward non-titular speakers. In this paper I focus attention more directly on the former aspect because ultimately it is the level of cooperation between language groups in politics that affects foremost the policy of rights protection. It is important to note that both Romania and Ukraine have seen a resurgent titular nationalism in the 1990s after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Yet, as noted, twenty years hence we see a striking improvement in the political relations between language groups in Romania, but a considerable degree of tension between language groups in Ukraine. In fact, in Romania the relations between the Hungarians and Romanians normalized to such an extent that some parties in Romania (e.g., the Social Democratic Party under former President Ion Iliescu), which spurned the Hungarians in the 1990s, cooperated with them in parliament in a critical, European-Union accession period between 2000 and 2004. What is striking about this finding is that there was nothing inevitable about this turn of events in Romania. In particular, I argue that if it were not for the moderate and gradualist politics pursued by the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) under the leadership of Béla Markó, the political relationship between the Hungarians and Romanians would have been considerably tenser. This counterfactual is supported by the fact that the moderate policy of the UDMR was continually challenged by the more radical and confrontational approach of László Tőkés. So far, this challenge did not leave a significant imprint on the Hungarian mainstream policy in Romania. Yet it has always been a threat, not least because Romanian parties encouraged centrifugal tendencies in the Hungarian community by funding and otherwise supporting the schisms in the Hungarian elite. More important, the possibility of tenser relations between the Hunga- 5
rians and Romanians in Romania is illustrated by the fact that in Ukraine such radicalization, in fact, happened. Ukraine started off after the break-up of the former Soviet Union in a roughly similar way to that of Romania. Although there was no violence or bloodshed in Ukraine like in Romania after the fall of Ceauşescu, during the March unrest in 1990 in Târgu Mures, political relations between language groups in Ukraine were tense. Not least, this was because of resentments held by many Ukrainian elites about the legacy of Russification left to Ukraine by the former Soviet Union and tsarist Russia. These resentments were considerably deepened by the enhanced claims to language parity in the official or public life posed by Russian speakers. As noted earlier, the main bone of contention in Ukraine in the arena of politics concerned primarily the de jure, rather than de facto, status of the Russian language. Given the large number of Russian speakers in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine (e.g., 75 percent in the Donetsk region and 91 percent in Sevastopol in Crimea), 1 it is no wonder that Russian may be occasionally used as the de facto official language in some issue-areas (e.g., in education and local administration). However, the de jure status of the Russian language has never been regulated in Ukraine. Perhaps not surprisingly, this had the effect of strengthening political confrontation between two main language groups, which crystallized most recently in a political standoff between President Viktor Yushchenko and then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in the wake of the Orange Revolution in 2004. In a striking parallel to Romania, some Russian speakers in Ukraine in fact called for depolitizing the issue of second official language for the Russian language. Some of them, for example, argued that granting Russian second official status along with Ukrainian via constitutional amendments was unrealistic and would have anyway exacerbated political tensions between two main language 6
groups. However, these elites remained in minority. Furthermore, they rarely offered concrete proposals how to manage the language conflict. And finally, it remains doubtful, as the interview data corroborate, that their position was a reflection of genuine beliefs rather than political opportunism and expediency. Still, the fact that in Ukraine some Russian speaking elites called for managing the language conflict in a different, or more moderate, manner shows that alternative courses of action were imaginable. In sum, by pursuing a politics of moderation, rather than a politics of confrontation, some non-titular groups in the above countries managed to build cooperative relations with mainstream titular parties by supporting each other in a quid pro quo. The Romania case illustrates this pattern well. By contrast, some minority elites in both Romania and Ukraine emphasized the political aspects of language conflict and used the issue of rights implementation as a resource in politics which helped them to politic their way forward in domestic power struggles. The Ukraine case approximates this pattern well. Theoretical Summary To explain the political behavior of minority elites in Romania and Ukraine, and their strategies, I rely on the typology developed by Craig Parsons in How to Map Arguments in Political Science. 2 In this paper I use structural and ideational theories of human action to make sense of the behavior of minority elites. In brief, structural explanation posits human action to be the product of interaction of structural constraints and opportunities on the behavior of minority elites and rationality which they use as a cognitive mechanism to optimally match ends with means. 3 As Parsons writes, structural claims explain what people do as a function of their position vis-à-vis exogenously given material structures like geography, a distribution of wealth, or a distribution of physical power. 4 7
Structural explanation would thus lead to expect that minority elites who face similar political constraints and opportunities would act in broadly similar ways to achieve the same shared goal of rights implementation (or more specifically, territorial autonomy). It should be noted that in structural explanation it is not rationality per se that does the explanatory work. For that matter, as Tsebelis puts it, rationality is nothing more than an optimal correspondence between ends and means. 5 Rather, the explanatory work in structural explanation is performed by the configuration of structural opportunities and constraints which make rational calculus meaningful. In other words, given their preferences, these configurations allow actors to choose one or another optimal course of action. As Margaret Levi notes, utility-maximising behaviour does not come from the internal considerations of the actor but from the constraints on her behavior. 6 Yet rationality is a necessary component of structural explanation because, as noted, it serves as a cognitive mechanism which helps actors to choose the optimal responses to variations in the structural environment. It is thus from variation in this environment that structural claims derive their explanatory power. 7 The second potential source of variation in structural explanation is, of course, the differing preferences of actors. Yet these are usually taken for granted or assumed in rational choice work. Thus they do not provide a source of variation under the temporal scope of the researcher s argument. 8 In turn, ideational explanation posits human action to be the product of interpretative material or ideas which minority elites use to analyze and diagnose the structural environment in certain and often non-obvious ways. As Parsons writes, [i]deational claims explain what people do as a function of the cognitive and/or affective elements that organize their thinking, and see these elements as created by certain historic groups of people. 9 Ideas in this sense are therefore best understood as referring to any particularistic interpretative material of any scope. 10 We can thus speak of ideas as causing people to behave in certain ways 8
and binding their behavior in certain ideationally-defined limits. The ideational logic draws on intersubjective understandings enacted and created by certain people at a certain point in time. For these understandings to have ideational effects, therefore, they must have been created with some range of autonomy from preexisting objective conditions. 11 This is because if ideational elements were strongly explicable themselves if they followed as the obvious or unavoidable responses to preceding conditions then their effects are just the derived effects of the preceding conditions. 12 Structural conditions, however, are likely to exhibit some (perhaps significant) range of ambiguity regarding which action course is likely to be more appropriate. According to Parsons, One way to make space for an ideational causal segment is to assert that the objective conditions around certain people are highly ambiguous or uncertain, such that even rational people depend to some degree on interpretive filters to organize their preferences, priorities, and problems. 13 Parsons uses the term a-rationality to refer to (potential) multiple rationalities that people may use in order to reduce uncertainty in their surrounding environment. People are rational in that they want to optimally match ends with means, but they rely on interpretive filters in order to arrive at a rational appraisal of the situation. Consequently, it is the interpretation of structural conditions that ultimately indicates the way forward. 14 Other people parachuted in with other interpretive filters might still see the situation as ambiguous, or could see it as pointing in other directions. 15 Mark Blyth captures this point nicely with his famous dictum: Structures do not come with an instruction sheet. He writes that [t]here is still plenty of room for agents to make history apart from their structurally given interests. 16 For the purposes of this paper, I define structures to mean an opportunity for leverage or resources available to minority elites in politics. Such resources may take a variety of different forms. They may refer, for example to whether minority 9
elites perceive that there is a chance, or perceived opportunity, to press their demands for language rights implementation in a more vigorous and confrontational manner, in hope of obtaining more rights. Given that all minority elites in Romania and Ukraine by and large share the same goal whether territorial or cultural autonomy, as is the case in Romania, or the de jure official status for the Russian language, as is the case in Ukraine they should place demands for this goal on the political agenda once they see an opportunity to do so. In turn, I define ideas to mean beliefs regarding appropriate strategies of action held by minority elites in the above countries. I argue that it is upon these interpretive assumptions that they base their behavior and political strategies. Such premises and assumptions thus lead them to pursue markedly different strategies of action to bring about a more comprehensive policy of rights protection. That is, they may opt for a more consensual or more confrontational style of politics. Elkins and Simeon have posed this question well some time ago, though at a level of generality which I seek to avoid in this paper. [I]s politics seen as a zero-sum game or as an expandable-sum game? Each of these outlooks has a different implication for one s willingness to seek solutions through compromise with political enemies. 17 That is, some minority elites are likely to believe that it is more realistic to achieve a more effective policy of rights protection through compromise and political cooperation with titular elites. Whereas others may think that confrontational tactics and muscle-flexing may hold a greater promise. More specifically, structural conditions, defined here as leverage in politics, may take the following salient form. Minority elites may perceive that titular elites or mainstream titular parties are vulnerable at a certain point in time or under certain conditions. Hence they may exploit such openings and press their agenda in a more aggressive manner. In Romania, for example, the clearest example of this situation was when the Hungarians cooperated with the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Ion Iliescu between 2000 and 2004. As we shall see, the Hungar- 10
ian UDMR did not enter into coalition with the PSD even when it had a chance to do so. The Hungarians believed that they would be able to press their Romanian partners to implement their pre-2000 promises in a more effective manner. This made sense because the UDMR was not in government. Thus, had the government fell, for example, then the UDMR would not have shared the blame for government failure. In other words, the Hungarians reaped the benefits of parliamentary cooperation with the PSD without sharing the responsibility for possible governmental failure. To be sure, the UDMR did this precisely because it realized that it would be able to arm twist their Romanian partners if they had reneged on their promises. The UDMR did exactly that and, as a matter of fact, the 2000-2004 period of cooperation has been the most fruitful for the Hungarian minority in terms of rights implementation. Yet, and here is the nub, the Hungarians in this period did not press for more controversial policy demands which had not been agreed upon in the 2000 parliamentary partnership negotiations. That is, the UDMR had a perfect opportunity to press for more rights like territorial or cultural autonomy or the Hungarian-language university yet the Hungarians refrained from doing so. Instead, they focused on those demands which were negotiated and agreed upon with their Romanian partners. I argue that, due to certain ideas and beliefs they shared, they interpreted the situation in a particular way, which was markedly different from that emphasized by their political opponents within the Hungarian community. The radicalization scenario, in which the more confrontational wing of the UDMR could have upped the ante in politics and pressed more vigorously for language rights protection, is not implausible. Such ideas were certainly put forward by László Tőkés, for example, who continually called for holding referenda on the autonomy in several Hungarian-populated areas in Transylvania. The possibility of such radicalization would have been disastrous for the critical, EU ac- 11
cession cooperation between the PSD and UDMR in 2000-2004. The main reason is that between 2000 and 2004 the ultra-nationalist Greater Romania Party (PRM) had a whopping quarter of seats in parliament. The PRM would thus have most certainly did everything it could in order to stoke perceptions of domestic threat emanating from PSD concessions to the UDMR. As the interview data show, the UDMR was aware of such a possibility and therefore kept watch on what the PRM was after. In this precarious situation, where cooperation with the Hungarians was politically unpopular, the otherwise fruitful cooperation between former (and in fact future) enemies, that is, the PSD and the UDMR, would have likely turned to dismal failure. The second, not unrelated way in which political leverage may benefit minority elites is when they perceive that they may draw on international support in order to enhance legitimacy of their demands and press more vigorously for language rights protection. Such international leverage, of course, may also be used in combination with perceived vulnerability of titular elites. The Ukraine case, we will see, approximates this pattern well. In Ukraine the major bone of contention concerned the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) of the Council of Europe (CE) in Strasbourg. In brief, this treaty called upon Ukraine to regulate the use of the Russian language in the official or public life. Perhaps not surprisingly, Russian speakers used it to politic their way forward and legitimate their claims to language parity in the official or public life. In particular, we shall see that they did this when their political opponents were at their weakest following the 2004 Orange Revolution. At the time, the Party of Regions, headed by then Prime Minister Yanukovych, was able to mount a concerted attack against the Yushchenko allies who soon proved disunited. The structural incentive was clear and arguably strong in that elites pressing the language rights agenda used the language cleavage as a resource helping them to po- 12
litic their way forward. As in the case of Romania, however, we will see that some political elites in Ukraine called for depolitizing the issue of official status for the Russian language. In other words, they interpreted differently the structural conditions which they faced. As noted above, however, these elites remained in distinct minority and it is doubtful that their arguments carried any political significance. The challenge for ideational explanation in the Ukraine case then is that any potential development in the direction of a more moderate way of managing the language conflict was likely to be swamped by language politics. Both language groups in Ukraine, that is, Ukrainian and Russian speakers, pursued confrontational politics. The incentive structure for Russian speakers was in particular such that they profited from maintaining the language conflict for electoral reasons. In light of the political circumstances in Ukraine, therefore, the prima facie case can be made that structural conditions held greater explanatory purchase than ideational ones. Given the large number of Russian speakers in Ukraine, it arguably made sense for them use muscle-flexing as the predominant political strategy. At the same time, however, we will see that Russian speakers in Ukraine, not unlike Hungarians in Romania, often could not go it alone. For example, for some important legislation they needed the support of Ukrainian speakers. Yet this potential for cooperation rarely served as a proverbial opening wedge that both language groups could have adeptly used. As noted, the pull of politics was too strong. For this reason it rendered any attempts at cooperation futile. Second, even though it arguably made sense for the Russian speakers to pursue a politics of confrontation (due to their size and power), the confrontational politics they pursued brought more negative than positive results at the end of the day. We can see this both in terms of the apparent amount of tension in the political relations between two language groups and the continuation of protectionist language policy under the Yushchenko presidency. For this reason, while the dominant strategy 13
of Russian speakers based on confrontational politics might have been seen as a- rational at the beginning, at the end it became demonstrably irrational. As we shall see, this latter fact probably led some elites in the Party of Regions to interrogate their beliefs regarding the appropriateness of the dominant strategy based on confrontation. This possibility is intriguing because if it is true (and presently only a tentative assessment can be made), then at least some Russian speakers might have changed on the margins their beliefs and attitudes toward the language conflict. This possibility is flagged here to highlight an interesting pattern that is worth study but which cannot be pursued here at length. In sum, I have argued in this section that structural conditions in Romania and Ukraine differed in terms of the amount of ambiguity regarding which course of action minority elites should have pursued to match ends with means. Correspondingly, minority elites relied on interpretive frameworks in order to make sense of their surrounding conditions and chart the course of action which they thought held the greatest potential to bring about a more effective policy of rights protection. Romania: Managing Language Politics As the first case study, Romania sets the tone for comparison with Ukraine. The Romania case captures especially well the salience of substantive causes underlying the political behavior of minority elites by setting up a clear contrast between two competing ideological strategies. In methodological terms, we can make the strongest possible case for the power of ideational explanation in this case. The reason is that in Romania there have arguably been the clearest structural incentives and constraints for a choice of one single strategy based on compromise and moderation, because this strategy worked. 14
The fact that the Hungarian minority by and large pursued a moderate political strategy can be prima facie explained by structural conditions which set Romania on a course of political cooperation. Yet as we look closer, it becomes evident that these conditions exerted such an influence only because they were interpreted in a particular way by some minority elites. Other minority elites, in light of similar structural constraints, interpreted them in a different way. In sum, the Romania case offers the strongest possible support for the causal independence of ideas which minority elites use as filters to analyze and diagnose their surrounding structural conditions. Importantly, the same filters shared by more confrontationally-minded minority elites continued to be used in Romania despite the salient changes in the structural conditions which they faced: most important, positive change in state language policy. Hence, by breaking with structural conditions, these ideational filters increased the salience of irrationality as an organizing template for the political behavior of some minority elites in Romania. In what follows I present the story of Romania and the struggle of the Hungarian minority for protection of minority language rights. I focus on three broad patterns: the divergent strategies of minority elites, changing structural conditions, and a clear positive change over time in policy and political relations between language groups. I focus on several discrete episodes and do not trace the entire history of political relations between the Romanians and Hungarians since the collapse of the former Communist regime. Nationalism and Split in the Minority Elite Romania s anti-communist revolution in 1989 inspired a brief unity of purpose among the Romanians and Hungarians in the face of the falling communist regime of Ceauşescu. Both the Hungarians and Romanians rallied, perhaps ironical- 15
ly, behind the figure of Hungarian bishop László Tőkés, who would later become a prominent challenger to the Hungarian mainstream policy in Romania. Tőkés sparked the revolution in the city of Timişoara in 1989 and was the primary target of attacks from Ceauşescu s secret services. Political relations between the Hungarians and Romanians, however, soon took a turn for a worse. In March 1990, tensions rose sharply in the Transylvanian city of Târgu Mureş, central Romania, culminating in communal violence. Meanwhile, the National Salvation Front (NSF), an interim governing body led by former Communist and now perestroikist Ion Iliescu, promised on January 6, 1990, that individual and collective rights for national minorities would be protected in the new constitution. Yet the NSF rejected out of hand any calls for territorial autonomy in the Hungarian-populated areas. 18 Significantly, at the time, several prominent Hungarian leaders were on the NSF roster, for example, Géza Domokos and bishop László Tőkés. 19 This helped create a short-lived atmosphere of inclusiveness in which the umbrella organization representing the Hungarian minority, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), accepted the legitimacy of the NSF. 20 Before 1990, this led several Hungarian language schools to be restored to their original status before the start of Ceauşescu s assimilation policy in the 1970s. The NSF however soon began to centralize powers of the new postcommunist elite. On January 25, Iliescu already spoke of separatist tendencies in Transylvania. 21 His earlier promise of collective rights for the Hungarian minority evoked a sharp response from ultra-nationalistic parties. 22 In order to consolidate the powers of the ruling elite, the NSF began to promote ethno-nationalism as the main binding ideology. 23 Shortly before Romania s first parliamentary elections on May 20, 1990, Iliescu condemned fledgling opposition and denounced any possible attempts at separatism in Transylvania. 24 16
Bilateral relations between Romania and Hungary remained tense as well. In late February 1990, a ban was placed on the use of school textbooks imported from Hungary to Romania. 25 The more confrontational wing of the Hungarian UDMR, represented by László Tőkés, aggravated an already tense atmosphere. On March 2, 1990, Tőkés accused the Romanians of pursuing Ceausescu s policy of forcibly assimilating minorities even after the dictator s death. 26 Two weeks later, communal unrest erupted in Târgu Mureş as the Romanians attacked a local pharmacy shop for putting up a sign in the Hungarian language. The unrest led to several deaths and several hundreds injured. 27 Significantly, most Hungarian elites in Romania saw the Târgu Mureş unrest as a signal that only political cooperation with the Romanians would be a viable political strategy. As one former minister from the UDMR told me, for example, the crucial decision taken in March was that as a response to the violent approach of the authorities, we choose the way of non-violence, we choose the way of democracy, of parliamentarism, and of dialogue. 28 The Târgu Mureş unrest thus unleashed a centripetal force in the Hungarian community by leading the Hungarians to unite disparate ideological currents under the umbrella union of the UDMR. Officially created on December 25, 1989, the UDMR was continually pulled by an ideological split in two different directions, however. This was due foremost to different interpretations shared by the UDMR elites regarding the adequate rhetoric and tactics in pursuit of the common goal of cultural autonomy. 29 As one analysis puts it: The radicals focus more on the desired outcome (autonomy) than on the domestic political process. Striving for the intervention of international actors, they try to exercise pressure on the domestic majority actors, with the purpose of creating situations rather than waiting for adequate opportunities The 17
group of so-called moderates have tried to use the Romanian political system - through alliances and internal pressure - to accomplish the objectives of the RMDSZ [UDMR]. According to the logic of their incrementalist tactics, they seek to set up a system of political relations and to maintain a process of negotiation with the Romanian political parties in order to establish a framework wherein the particular interests of the RMDSZ can be promoted. For this tactical line, a rather low level of conflict, as well as close ties with every mainstream government, are essential. 30 At the same time, however, it should be noted that in the context of the early 1990s both approaches to managing the language conflict could have been reasonably interpreted as an a-rational response to the prevailing structural conditions at the time. Following Parsons, a-rationality in this case means that multiple rationalities can make sense in light of the prevailing political constraints on the behavior of minority elites. Yet, over time, as we shall see below, interaction of ideational frameworks and actual policy implementation set one strategy increasingly at odds against the other. Following the Târgu Mureş unrest, the first UDMR congress, held in April 1990, called for writing collective minority rights for the Hungarian minority into the new Romanian constitution. 31 The time until the watershed participation of the UDMR in government coalition in 1996 was marked by widespread political isolation of the UDMR in the political scene in Romania. The period from 1996 to 2000, when the government of Constantinescu was formed with the help of the Hungarians will not be discussed below, however. For several reasons, which cannot be examined here, this period of opposition rule was a political failure in particular but exclusively in terms of rights implementation for the Hungarian minority. Below, then, we continue to examine in some detail the tense political relations between the Hungarians and Romanians in the first half of the 1990s. Then we fast-forward to the 2000-2004 cooperation period. 18
The Red-Brown Coalition and the Uncertain Joining of the Family of Europe Following the first parliamentary elections in Romania in 1992, the UDMR found itself widely isolated in the political arena. In fact, until 1996, the Hungarians had difficulties to find partners who would be willing to talk to them. 32 In large part, this was because of the UDMR s stance on autonomy. On October 25, 1992, while coalition negotiations among Romanian parties were under way, the UDMR issued the so-called Cluj-Napoca Declaration which called for collective rights for the Hungarian minority and regional autonomy. 33 This provoked a series of strong reactions from ultra-nationalistic parties in Romania, with the Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR), for example, calling for outlawing the UDMR. In 1993 and 1994, the use of the Hungarian anthem and flags were both made illegal in Romania (unless in the presence of a foreign delegation) and subject to prison terms. 34 The 1992 elections ushered in a period of unstable rule by Iliescu s PDSR (future PDS) and the government of Nicolae Văcăroiu. Văcăroiu s government was supported by three extremist parties the PUNR, the Greater Romania Party (PRM) and the communist Socialist Party of Labor (PSM). The coalition was called the red-brown coalition. 35 By early 1993, however, the UDMR announced that it would be using lawful methods in order to achieve decentralization in the Hungarian-populated areas rather than seek autonomy, in an apparent attempt to defuse political tensions. 36 In January 1993, the third congress of the UDMR elected with an overwhelming majority new chair, moderate pragmatist Béla Markó. 37 Yet Tőkés (who was now the honorary president) continued to accuse Iliescu of pursuing ethnic purification. 38 In response, the small but increasingly popular Greater Romania Party called for outlawing the UDMR. 39 19
On the bilateral level, Romania and Hungary held the first contact meeting in March 1993 since the collapse of the previous regime. Hungarian Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky supported Romania s integration in Europe in exchange for minority rights protection. 40 On the agenda was the signing of the so-called basic friendship treaty, which was a prerequisite condition for both countries joining NATO and the EU. The Hungarian side argued that the treaty should protect the rights for the Hungarian minority, while the Romanian side called for guaranteeing the inviolability of existing borders (regardless of whether through violent or non-violent means). 41 The first bilateral meeting between Hungary and Romania failed. Already in April 1993, Romania began to accuse Hungary of delaying the treaty s signing. 42 By the end of May, talks were stalled. In February 1993, however, Romania signed the European Agreement with the EU, thereby signaling a turn toward a more pro-european orientation. 43 Since 1993 the Romanian government tried to strengthen this orientation with the support of moderate parties, including the UDMR. 44 Significantly, as it came closer to joining the Council of Europe (CE) in 1993, the Romanian government on several occasions expressed support for the so-called Recommendation 1201 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). 45 Foreign Minister Meleşcanu, for example, referred to it positively, once. 46 In education, the PACE called on Romania to introduce as soon as possible, in keeping with the commitments they have made and with Assembly Recommendation 1201, legislation on national minorities and education. 47 Below, we will see that Recommendation 1201 fanned nationalistic resentment in Romania due to its reference to collective rights for national minorities. Counterfactually, and relying on comparative evidence from Ukraine, I argue that had this Recommendation been included in the basic treaty with Hungary, then it would have likely played into the hands of some UDMR members, who most likely would have used it to press more vigorously for territorial and cultural autonomy. 20
Interestingly, with respect to Romania s joining the CE in 1993, the Hungarian minority elites sent a memorandum to the CE with a complaint that Romania failed to ensure even minimal minority protection. 48 The memorandum exploded like a bomb on the Romanian political stage and complicated further political relations between the PDSR and UDMR. 49 Both parties continued to accuse each other of not showing any constructive communication. 50 Importantly, Recommendation 1201 mentioned above served as a source of inspiration for a new bill on National Minorities and Autonomous Communities prepared by the UDMR in November 1993. 51 So, Article 11 in Recommendation 1201 stated that in the regions where they are in a majority the persons belonging to a national minority shall have the right to have at their disposal appropriate local or autonomous authorities or to have a special status. 52 The UDMR bill further called for creating a system of local governance and regional autonomy. 53 Although the bill was not put to debate in parliament and contained only a vague reference to autonomy, it encouraged media attacks [against] the Hungarian minority. 54 One analysis concludes that the bill s timing indicated that [it] was a strategic proposal which was tactically used [in order to contribute] to the radicalization of the political discourse in order to get the attention of the international community and strengthen the position of the Hungarian minority. 55 The UDMR thus became isolated from other political parties in Romania while, in what Andrew Janos calls a political gamble, Iliescu courted nationalistic parties. 56 In late 1993, the minority government of Văcăroiu barely survived a no-confidence vote due to nationalist blackmailing. 57 Some members of the PUNR voted with opposition to show how badly the cabinet needed them. 58 The PUNR threatened to call another no-confidence vote. 59 In early 1994 the government acquiesced by entering into a coalition with two ultra-nationalist and two pro-communist parties. 60 Between 1994 and 1996, the coalition was to rule with the support of the PUNR, PRM and PSM. 21
In this section, we have seen that structural conditions in Romania in the early 1990s permitted multiple interpretations of the optimal strategies for the Hungarian minority. Given the spread of nationalism in Romania, the Hungarians in Romania faced an important political dilemma. Should they have turned for help to international organizations and Hungary? Should they have instead waited for an appropriate political moment while cultivating ties to opposition? Both of these strategies were prima facie plausible. Hence they can best be characterized as a-rational, since none of them have yet brought positive results for the Hungarian minority. Signing of the Basic Treaty: Nationalism at Bay As negotiations on the basic treaty with Romania were under way, new Socialist government in Hungary of Gyula Horn now sought a rapprochement with Romania. 61 Horn was ready to accept inviolability of the borders (the main bone of contention concerned a possible peaceful change in the borders) and subordinated the minority policy to the objective of Western integration. 62 By September 1994, Hungary and Romania agreed on 90 percent of the treaty. 63 The UDMR meanwhile called for a more comprehensive protection of minority rights in the treaty, which evoked criticisms from the PUNR and other parties. 64 Iliescu was now urging real reconciliation with Hungary. 65 In January 1995, Iliescu signed a pact with the PUNR and PRM to support the government. Yet he distanced himself from the PUNR calls to outlaw the UDMR. 66 Head of the PUNR Funar charged Iliescu with selling out Romania through the treaty and threatened to withdraw his ministers. 67 The Romanian foreign ministry hoped that the treaty would be signed before the deadline in March 1995. 68 Because of disagreements over Recommendation 1201, however, the treaty was not signed by the deadline. 69 At the same time, this was arguably not a 22
hindrance but rather a facilitate factor which bought time and helped to bring about a more speedy ratification of the treaty in both Romania and Hungary after the controversial provisos had been removed from the treaty. In April 1995, PACE President Miguel Martínez called on Romania and Hungary to sign the long-delayed basic treaty. 70 On April 24, the PACE upheld Recommendation 1201 and called on all governments to observe [it]. 71 Political elites in Romania now feared that this recommendation would endanger the stability of the state by offering a legal basis for the autonomy movement. 72 Recommendation 1201 was seen as an unbalanced source of minority empowerment, as a commitment enforced from outside to raise the standards of minority protection. 73 Political parties across the board launched a harsh campaign against it. 74 Member of parliament and future Prime Minister Adrian Năstase called the recommendation a political instrument of pressure and threatened with an open war against the [CE]. 75 He said that Recommendation 1201 would open the Pandora s box. 76 As we shall see in the Ukraine case, this was arguably not an unwarranted concern on the part of the Romanian parties. In Ukraine, a similar international document the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was in fact used by Russian speakers in order to press more vigorously for language rights implementation. Significantly, in this regard Iliescu called on the Hungarians not to follow the extremist path, which never brought anything positive anywhere. 77 Yet Markó pledged to press for autonomy in an attempt of maneuver between different ideological currents in the UDMR. 78 Yet some opposition parties acknowledged that a moderate leadership in the UDMR continued to play an important stabilizing role. 79 Still, in June 1995, the Democratic Convention, the opposition umbrella group, officially severed political relations with the UDMR. 80 In spite of several meetings, Romania and Hungary continued to stay wide apart on the question of recommendation 1201. 81 In February 1996, US diplo- 23
mats called on both countries to sign the treaty. 82 The following month, the Romanian foreign ministry expressed support before the fall elections in order to take the steam out of nationalism. 83 However, it continued to reject Recommendation 1201. 84 To break the deadlock, Hungary and Romania approached the Venice Commission, the legal judiciary body of the CE, with a request to reinterpret the collective rights clause in the recommendation. 85 On June 25, 1996, the PACE finally agreed to the Venice Commission s report that international law cannot in principle impose on States any territorial solutions to the problem of minorities. 86 In early August 1996, Romania and Hungary moved closer. For Horn, Romania s position was acceptable. The watershed compromise paving the way for the treaty s signing was a famous footnote in Recommendation 1201, apparently prepared by Max van der Stoel. This footnote said that [t]he Contracting Parties agree that Recommendation 1201 does not refer to collective rights, nor does it impose upon them the obligation to grant to the concerned persons any right to a special status of territorial autonomy based on ethnic criteria. 87 In this way, the PACE removed both any reference basis for collective rights and any obligation by states to introduce measures of territorial autonomy. 88 In other words, it defused Recommendation 1201 by working out an authoritative interpretation of some of its controversial articles, while High Commissioner Max van der Stoel concentrated on the practical side of the negotiating process. 89 Though not without dissent, Hungary thus compromised on the collective-rights clause and quickly ratified the treaty. 90 Yet the Hungarians in Romania denounced the treaty, which served to reinforce their political isolation. 91 Meanwhile, in early September 1996, the PDSR cut loose from the nationalistic UNPR. 92 The treaty was signed under heavy pressure from US diplomats on September 16, 1996, in Timişoara. 93 Revealingly, Tőkés called anything short of collective rights for the Hungarians crumbs. 94 The treaty was ratified in Romania with an overwhelming majority in less than 24
two weeks. 95 Iliescu s former allies the PUNR, PRM and PSM voted against, and so did the UDMR. 96 The UDMR criticized the treaty for restrictive notes, which delegitimized certain forms of (territorial) autonomy, and [because it] was adopted without the participation of the [UDMR]. 97 Significantly, the side effect of the treaty was to undercut popular support for nationalistic parties, in particular the PUNR, in the elections of November 1996. 98 As one analysis concludes, the period between 1994 and 1996 represents the climax of inter-ethnic tensions. The RMDSZ was widely isolated within the opposition alliance [while] government experienced growing contradictions between its nationalistic domestic politics and its Western-oriented foreign policy goals. 99 The penultimate section below examines a watershed period of political cooperation between Iliescu s PSD and the UDMR. As we have seen, these two parties had a tense political relationship in the 1990s and their profitable cooperation between 2000 and 2004 may appear as an astounding instance of successful political cooperation, which, however opportunistic it may have been, prepared Romania for accession to the EU and brought more rights to the Hungarian minority than the entire decade of the 1990s. The PSD and UDMR Form a Parliamentary Partnership In fall 2000, Markó said that he did not rule out a post-electoral alliance with Iliescu s PDSR. 100 In turn, the PDSR was now determined not to govern alone (even with a 50-percent majority in parliament) in order not to repeat the experience of today s divided coalition (in reference to Constantinescu s coalition between 1996 and 2000). 101 Strikingly, in the elections, the PDSR avoided inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric and peddled instead the discourse of multiculturalism and ethno-cultural diversity. 102 25
According to one observer, a post-electoral alliance between the PDSR, the PNL (National Liberal Party) and the UDMR the latter had 7 percent of seats in parliament was seen as impossible a few years ago. 103 The parliamentary partnership between the PSDR and the UDMR was seen as a bonus for [Romania s] image in the West. 104 This time the PDSR rejected entering a coalition with the PRM, which alone among nationalistic parties entered the new parliament (with almost a quarter of seats!). 105 The PRM s rise in popularity was in large part the result of the failures of the previous government. Again strikingly, Iliescu positioned himself as the opponent of xenophobic views. 106 The opposition challenged Iliescu to provide evidence that his split with the [PRM was] definitive, after 10 years of cooperation. 107 PDSR vicepresident Adrian Năstase admitted that there was a need for a consistent stand in line with European norms on the issue of the Hungarian minority. 108 At the time, Năstase was seen as a resolutely pro-european politician. 109 The majority of seats that the PDSR now had thanks to support of the UDMR allowed Prime Minister Năstase to serve the full term until 2004. Significantly, at the time of the elections in fall 2000 Markó called Tőkés s political stance schizophrenic, given that Tőkés called on the UDMR to run on separate ballot lists. 110 Tőkés riposted by arguing that schizophrenic better captured the new relationship between the UDMR and PDSR. 111 As argued earlier, the more radical challenge has always been evident in Romania to the Hungarian mainstream policy, if only at the level of rhetoric. Yet, if anything, rhetoric always plays an important role in politics. Given that the PRM had a large number of seats in parliament, any radicalization on the part of the UDMR would have most likely caused strain in the relations between the PDSR and UDMR and led to an early disintegration of their parliamentary partnership. It was in December 2000 that the PDSR signed an extra-coalitional agreement with the UDMR, significantly, without protracted negotiations and weighing 26