International Herald Tribune on Project on Etnic Relations
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International Herald Tribune on Project on Etnic Relations
Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Peacemakers show the way
William Pfaff International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Romania's Hungarians
PARIS - While the war makers make war, there are peacemakers at work,
although theirs is the less popular undertaking. The war in Chechnya
put Vladimir Putin into the presidency of Russia, so he has an active
interest in it not being demonstrated unnecessary.
However, that is what the former Russian prime minister Yevgeni
Primakov claims. He was Putin's only serious rival for the Russian
presidency. He says the Chechens deserve a special status inside the
Russian Federation. He implicitly argues that you don't solve a
problem of internal affairs by waging a war against a part of your own
population, as President Putin is doing.
Human Rights Watch, in a report issued in February, characterizes
Russia's continuing military actions there as arbitrary sweeps
conducted in a climate of lawlessness, with continuing civilian
victims.
Primakov notes that a precedent exists for special status for minority
peoples in Russia, even for quasi-autonomy. Finland had such a status
as a grand duchy of the old Romanov Russian empire, before the
revolution.
Finland had its own parliament and army. "During the time of the
czars," Primakov says, "the Finns wouldn't even arrest Russian
revolutionaries who crossed over into Finland to hold meetings and
their congresses. The Finns wouldn't even hand over terrorists."
He proposes that the Chechens today should have independence "within a
common economic and military framework with Russia."
His advice is unlikely to be taken by the current Russian government,
but is obviously the only realistic course for it to adopt. It is the
lesson of virtually every modern precedent of nationalist insurgence
against foreign occupation.
Saying as much to Putin today would seem as useless as saying it to
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Nonetheless, ethnic nationalism
continues to be a more powerful political force than ideology - the
ravages of communism and fascism notwithstanding. Only reason can work
against it.
Reason sometimes even succeeds
Take the case of Romania, a Balkan country with a grave internal
ethnic problem. The treaties following World War I gave Romania a
considerable ethnic Hungarian population, mainly in Transylvania.
Today, in a population of some 23 million, more than 1.6 million
Romanians are ethnic Hungarians. The history of relations between the
two peoples is very troubled.
After the fall of communism, the political leaders of the two
communities barely spoke to one another. The Romanian majority
suspected the ethnic Hungarians of disloyalty and separatism, and the
Hungarians considered themselves, with their distinct culture,
oppressed by the Romanian majority and government.
Thanks in very large measure to skilled intervention and arbitration
by a small American nongovernmental agency, the Princeton-based
Project on Ethnic Relations, a dialogue was opened which, a decade
later, has led to formal protocols of agreement between the current
ruling party in Romania, the Party of Social Democracy, and the
Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR).
A durable and politically sophisticated structure of ethnic agreements
has been developed, unique in the region, which already has survived
one change of government and is supported by all of the major parties.
The Romanian government has also reached a successful compromise with
Hungary concerning a controversial "status act" that Hungary has
adopted, giving ethnic Hungarians who are citizens of neighboring
countries special privileges in Hungary. One reason the Romanians
dealt successfully with this was that leaders of their own Hungarian
minority helped to forge the agreement with Hungary.
The situation contrasts painfully with that in Slovakia, where there
is an ethnic Hungarian minority of more than a half-million people in
an overall population of some 5.3 million, and where there will be
national elections in September.
Relations between majority and minority have always at best been
fragile, and the populist and authoritarian former prime minister,
Vladimir Meciar, who calls himself the defender of the Slovak people,
has a good chance of being returned to office.
Still, south-central and southeastern Europe has been greatly changed
by the influence of the European Union, the Council of Europe and
NATO, the activities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,
and by the sophisticated interventions of individual groups like the
Project on Ethnic Relations, which can say things to the national
participants in ethnic dialogues that none of them individually can
afford to say.
Domestic politics in these countries have to a degree become
international politics. This change in dimension has made an important
difference in a region in the past isolated and haunted by histories
of past injustices.
If this process of honest and honorable dialogue could be transported
to the Caucasus and the Middle East, it would be a great blessing.
International Herald Tribune Los Angeles Times Syndicate International
Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune
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