Irrational rationality in the Carpathians

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Subject: Irrational rationality in the Carpathians

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Irrational rationality in the Carpathians


RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 2, No. 148 Part II, 4 August 1998
 
END NOTE
 
IRRATIONAL RATIONALITY IN THE CARPATHIANS
 
by Michael Shafir
 
The dispute over establishing a Hungarian-language state university in
Romania is laden with "irrational rationality." An outsider will have
difficulty in comprehending what drives the two opposing sides to take
positions that apparently defy the rationality of their own interests.
By insisting on the setting up of the university, the Hungarian
Democratic Federation of Romania (UDMR) is - in the eyes of most
members of the ethnic Romanian majority - betraying first and foremost
the interests of the electorate it represents.

Why, ask Romanians, should an ethnic Hungarian complete his or her
education without being capable of integrating himself or herself into
the Romanian labor market and into Romanian society as a whole owing
to language comprehension difficulties? And why, they add, does the
country's large ethnic Hungarian minority (1.6 million) not accept the
solution advocated by Education Minister Andrei Marga? That solution
is namely one of "multi-culturalism," such as has been pursued over
the past years at the Babes-Bolyai Cluj University. In this context,
"multi-culturalism" refers to teaching in several languages, with
Romanian, Hungarian, and German being the main ones on offer.

At first glance, the argument is a sound one, the more so as all
parties involved are well aware of the high costs of setting up a
separate institution of higher education. Such costs involve not only
buildings but also the training of qualified faculty.

"Rationality," however, is in the eyes of the beholder. What may look
"irrational" to one group is perfectly "rational" to the other. The
bulk of the ethnic Romanian majority, including many of the UDMR's
coalition partners, view the ethnic Hungarians' demand with suspicion,
regarding it as proof of Hungarian "segregationism" and, moreover,
"separatism." Marga said that in so many words when responding to the
recent announcement by Zsolt Nemeth, state secretary at the Hungarian
Foreign Ministry, that Budapest is willing to finance the
establishment of the Hungarian university in Transylvania.

At this point, one is forced to ask: "Who is actually more
"irrational?" Nemeth's statement had at least invalidated some of the
"rational" Romanian arguments against Hungarian "irrationality."

Some, but not all, one should hasten to add. In his announcement
(released to the press as a "personal declaration" rather than an
official government statement), Marga himself said that the
establishment of a Hungarian-language university was an issue that is
"mainly symbolic" in essence. Symbols, however, cannot carry the same
meaning for all people. They are "irrational" to those for whom the
symbols are meaningless and highly important to those for whom the
symbols have significance. For Romania's ethnic Hungarians, a separate
university symbolizes the restitution of their cultural rights, which
they considered to have been abolished in the late 1950s, when the
communist regime merged the two universities in Cluj into one. It is
precisely for this reason that many in the UDMR believe the university
must be set up in Cluj and only in Cluj.

In addition, a separate university is considered by some members of
the Hungarian elites as a symbol of ensured "cultural reproduction."
Cultural reproduction is at the core of ethnicity, for it goes beyond
individual rights (indeed, it may even contradict them) to convey a
collective sense of ensured trans-generational communion of values as
well as inter-generational communication. And the latter is also
trans-border communication.

However, such a separate university may question (openly or otherwise)
the concept of the "nation-state". It is no accident that in only one
European country, namely Finland, do minorities (in this case the
Swedish minority) benefit from such extended cultural rights. Owing to
the suspicion that the Hungarian-language university is laying the
groundwork for demands that would go well beyond those of cultural or
even territorial autonomy, most ethnic Romanians (consciously or
otherwise) tend to reject the university.

Viewed from this perspective, statements made by Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orban during his private visit to Romania last week
have probably exacerbated, rather than alleviated, such suspicions.
His comment that "if the [separate] university is not set up, there is
nothing to talk about" was obviously taken out of context by his
Romanian critics. He made that comment in connection with rejecting
"multi-culturalism" as an alternative to the proposed university.

But Orban is certainly not unaware of the mutual historical suspicion
and of the fact that the nationalist-inclined press in Bucharest would
read it as "blackmail" and as a threat to relations between the two
countries precisely at a time when Hungary is about to join NATO and
Romania is being left out. The same applies to Nemeth's earlier
statement while attending the traditional "summer university" at
Balvanyos, in Transylvania. According to Nemeth, the "nation-state" is
a thing of the past and the "Hungarian nation's borders do not
coincide with Hungary's borders."

Orban and Nemeth, of course, are remaining faithful to their election
promise to promote more forcefully the interests of Hungarians abroad
than did Gyula Horn's cabinet. The question is whether this
"rationality" is "rational" in the post-electoral context. In turn,
the UDMR's partners in Romania's ruling coalition may wonder now
whether they were not the unwitting midwives of "irrational
rationality" when they procrastinated over satisfying the "rational"
and less radical demands of the UDMR in education and local
administration.
 
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