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This article is about the socio-political term. For localization of computers and software, see Romanianisation (computers).

Romanianization or Rumanization is the term used to describe a number of ethnic assimilation policies implemented by the Romanian authorities during the 20th century. The term often refers to Romanian government policy in several periods toward the Hungarian minority in Romania and the Ukrainian minority in Bukovina or Bessarabia.

Romanianization in Transylvania

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In the period between the two World Wars

At the end of World War I, Transylvania, at the time a territory of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was occupied by the Romanian army, then the Romanian National Council (representing the majority of the population), and representatives of the Germans took the decision of unifying the province with Romania. The decision was contested by the Hungarian minority. The Treaty of Trianon established the Romanian border with the new Hungarian state. However, Transylvania had a large Hungarian minority, of 25.5% according to the 1920 census. A portion of them fled to Hungary after the union; however, most remained in Romania, as by 1930 their number increased to 26.7% of the Transylvanian population. While Romania included large national minorities, the 1923 Constitution declared the country to be a nation-state.

After the second World War

After 1948, the industrialization of towns made the number of inhabitants in some urban areas to double or even triple, most of the newcomers being ethnic Romanians from the rural areas. The urbanization policy, natural phenomenon as the urbanization being required by the economic development and by the intention of transforming the predominantly agrarian country into an industrialized one, was followed throughout Romania, including in areas inhabited by minorities although much less significant.

Results

According to census data, the Hungarian population of Transylvania decreased from 25.5% in 1920 to 19.6% in 2002. Changes were more significant in cities/larger settlements, where Hungarians used to be in majority, especially in Northern Transylvania such as Oradea (Hungarian: Nagyvárad) and Cluj-Napoca (Hungarian: Kolozsvár).

Romanianization of the Transylvanian population was also affected by the fact that 300,000 Germans chose to emigrate into West Germany for economical reasons. The West German state paid to Romania the equivalent of US$2,632 per ethnic German emigrant, as of 1983. Also, about 50,000 Jews who survived the Holocaust, emigrated to Israel on similar terms. These mass emigrations were however an example of positive discrimination of the German and Jewish populations, as the rest of the Transylvanian population (Romanians, Hungarians, Romas) were not allowed to take part in this economical emigration.

Romanianization was less sustained in the compact Székely areas of south-eastern Transylvania (the Székelyföld), where even now Hungarians make around 80% of the population, the capital city of the former Hungarian Autonomous Province (covering mostly the Székely areas) being an exception: the percentage of Hungarians in Târgu Mureş decreased to 46%, as the industrialization of the city led many people from the surrounding rural areas (largely Romanian) move into the city. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989 a confidential document issued by the Târgu Mureş communist party organization was found and published in the local newspaper Népújság, stating the main objectives for changing the ethnic structure of that town in favor of Romanians.

Policies toward the Ukrainian minority in Romania

According to the 1930 census, Ukrainians made up 3.2% of the population of Romania. The territories historically populated by the Ukrainians and Romanians for hundreds of years are not designated by clear natural divides. In fact their merger is seamless. For a long time, in Bukovina, both nations were sharing the same political formation - Austro-Hungary, which pursued somewhat balanced ethnic policies in Bukovina, the Austrian province where both Romanian and Ukrainian (or Ruthenian, as it was called at the time) populations were significant.

In 1918, following the collapse of the Austria-Hungary and Russian empires the control over the entire Bukovina fell under the Kingdom of Romania. The takeover was followed by the policies of Romanization of ethnic minorities, mostly Ukrainians, being pursued by the Romanian authorities. The policies were built on an increasing sentiment spread in Romanian media and historic works that all of Bukovina was inherently a Romanian ethnic territory. Ion Nistor, a prominent Romanian historian and one of the most vocal proponents of Greater Romanian nationalism, was made a rector of the University of Cernăuţi (Chernivtsi), the main university of the province. Enrollment of Ukrainians in the university fell from 239 out of 1671, in 1914, to 155 out of 3,247, in 1933, while Romanian enrollment in the same period increased several times, to 2,117 out of 3,247.

The Romanization policies not only brought the closures of the Ukrainian public schools (all such schools were closed until 1928) but also the suppression of most of the Ukrainian (Ruthenian) cultural institutions. The very term "Ukrainians" was prohibited from the official usage and ethnic Ukrainians were rather called the "citizens of Romania who forgot their native language" and were forced to change their last names for the Romanian sounding ones. As such, according to the Romanian census, of the total population of 805,000, 74% were called Romanians; the number included the Ukrainians and other related ethnic groups referred to as "Romanians who forgot their native language".

The declines in Ukrainian population between the censuses of 1919 and 1930 illustrate the dynamic of assimilation of the Ukrainian minority in Greater Romania. The first one indicates a population of 16,250,000, of which 763,750 (4.7%) were Ukrainians; in 1930, as the total population had increased by 11% (to 18,025,896), the Ukrainian community had dropped to 576,828 members (75.5% of the previous total).

Notes and references

1. Democracy and Governance Assessment of Romania (Microsoft Word document), USAID/Romania, 24 September, 2001. Accessed 11 Feb 2006.
2. István Pávai, "The Folk Music of the Moldavian Hungarians", Hungarian Heritage 2002 Volume 3 Numbers 1-2. Extract online at , accessed 11 Feb 2006.
3. James Fuchs, "Averescu: Rumania's Mussolini", The Nation, Vol. 122, no. 3175, May 12, 1926. A relatively early citation for the term "Rumanization" - a policy attributed, among others, to the Romanian government of Ion I. C. Brătianu, one which would have contributed to an alliance between nationalist forces hostile to Brătianu and representatives of ethnic minorities, as the pseudo-fascist People's Party (led by Alexandru Averescu)
4. Bukovina - Handbook, part of the Yizkor Book Project on JewishGen.org. In particular, see the section "The Church Question". Accessed 11 Feb 2006.
5. Raffay Ernő: A vajdaságoktól a birodalomig-Az újkori Románia története = From voivodates to the empire-History of modern Romania, JATE Kiadó, Szeged, 1989, pages 155-156); Kovrig, Bennett (2000) ‘Partioned nation: Hungarian minorities in Central Europe’, in: Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), The new European diasporas: national minorities and conflict in Eastern Europe, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, pp. 19-80. Ernő indicates an exodus of about 197,000 Transylvanian Hungarians fled to Hungary in 1918–1922, Kovrig estimates a further 169,000 over the remainder of the interwar period.
6. "Relations with Noncommunist States" in Library of Congress Country Study: Romania, based on data as of July 1989. "In 1979 West Germany's Chancellor Helmut Schmidt visited Bucharest and extended credit guarantees of approximately US$368 million in return for Romanian pledges to facilitate the reunification of ethnic German families. The issue resurfaced in 1983 when the socalled education tax would have increased West Germany's payment of the equivalent of US$2,632 per ethnic German emigrant to US$42,105. After visits by Bavarian premier Franz Joseph Strauss and West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, an agreement was reached whereby the West German government increased its payment per emigrant to approximately US$5,263." Accessed online 12 November 2006.
7. ^ Oleksandr Derhachov (editor), "Ukrainian Statehood in the Twentieth Century: Historical and Political Analysis", Chapter: "Ukraine in Romanian concepts of the foreign policy", 1996, Kiev ISBN 966-543-040-8
8. Mariana Hausleitner, "Cernauti University, 1919-1940: Concepts and Consequences of Romanization". Presented at ""Culture and the Politics of Identity in Modern Romania", May 27-30, 1998, Elisabeta Palace, Bucharest, Romania
9. A. Zhukovsky, Chernivtsi University, Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 2001, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Accessed 11 Feb 2006.

See also

• Hungarian minority in Romania
• Bukovina
• Chernivtsi Oblast

External links

• The Situation of Hungarians in Romania in 2005
• The Union of Ukrainians in Romania
• Ukrainian deputy in Romanian Parliament
• Scrisoarea lui Adolf Hitler către regele Carol al II-lea (Letter from Hitler to Carol II, calling for the revision of Romania's borders according to ethnic criteria) (in Romanian); note the reference: "After the World War, Romania, favored by an exceptional opportunity, has acquired territories from three states, which, in my opinion, she cannot maintain for long through a forceful policy. The situation would have been different were Romania to have succeeded in accomplishing the internal, ethnic and political, assimilation of these territories, or if the military weakness of neighbouring countries would have remained permanent."
• Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

• History of Romania
• History of Hungary
• History of Ukraine
• Romanian language
• Cultural assimilation