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Historically, anti-Romanian discimination has been present in the policies of countries bordering Romania towards the Romanian-speaking population or minorities residing in these countries. The term is also known as "Românofobia" (Romanophobia) in the Romanian language.
Kingdom of Hungary and Austria-Hungary
The Romanian population of Transylvania was never directly represented in the Transylvanian Diet which consisted of German, Hungarian and Szeckler nobles (the Unio Trium Nationum), despite the fact that the three groups were minorities, whilst the Romanians comprised an overwhelming majority of the Transylvanian population. Moreover, in Medieval times, the Romanians were not allowed to reside within the walls of some Transylvanian cities such as Sibiu or Braşov. This led to extensive persecution against the under-represented Romanians. For example, in the 16th century Transylvanian laws of justice separated the rights of the Hungarians and Saxons from the rights of the Romanians.
As a consequence, Romanian peasants would sometimes revolt and demand better treatment. These revolts, such as the 1784 Romanian peasant-uprising, would be ruthlessly suppressed by the Hungarian nobles who would execute peasant leaders and their admirers by breaking on the wheel. This method of execution consisted of the victim being laid on the ground whilst the executioner would break the prisoner’s bones with a spiked wheel. Other peasants would be forced to watch the executions in order to frighten them from attempting future uprisings.
After Transylvania became part of Hungary in 1867, a policy of assimilation (see Magyarisation) of the minorities was employed by the Hungarian authorities and one of its major targets was the Romanian population of Transylvania.
The Romanian national movement lead to the 1892 Transylvanian Memorandum, a document sent by the leaders of the Transylvanian Romanians to the Austrian Emperor which asked for Romanians equal national rights with the Hungarians and demanding the cease the persecutions and the attempts of denationalization of the Romanians. The memorandum was turned down and the leaders of the movement were sentenced to prison for "homeland betrayal".
Russian Empire and Soviet Union
Following Bessarabia being annexed in 1812 by Russia, a period of autonomy followed after which all Romanian government institutions, schools and press were closed down and replaced by a Russian style provincial administration. Russification was implemented to the point where church services were performed in Russian as opposed to Romanian.
After the Russian Revolution, Bessarabia was reunited with Romania for a brief period until 1940 when the USSR re-annexed the territory as well as Northern Bukovina. It is reported that over 12,000 Bukovinian-Romanians were deported to Siberia in the year 1940 alone. The Soviet action culminated at the Fântâna Albă massacre when 5,000 to 12,000 Romanian refugees who were attempting to leave Bukovina for Romania were cought by Russian border troops and executed at a place called "Fântâna Albă" (White Fountain) in the Romanian language. This policy resulted in a substantial shrinkage of the Romanian element in the province. By 1941 out of 250,000 Romanians in Bukovina, only 192,000 were left.
In Bessarabia the Soviet government, pursued a policy of denationalization of the native Romanian population, firstly by dividing the province in a "Moldovan" Socialist Republic and a southern region known as Budjak which was renamed Izmail oblast and annexed to the Ukrainian SSR. Elite elements of the Romanian population were then deported to Siberia much like their Bukovinian counterparts. Russian and Ukrainian settlers were used to fill the vacant areas caused by the deportation of Romanian deportees. The language was renamed Moldovan and the Cyrillic script was introduced. Romanians who continued to identify themselves as Romanians and not Moldovans were severely punished by the Communist regime.
Post-USSR Moldova and Transnistria
After the break-up of the USSR, many native Romanians hoped that their situation inside the newly independent Republic of Moldova would improve. Although this was true in the beginning, the Russification process started once again, after the 2001 elections which saw the Communist party of Moldova took power.
After 2001, the Moldovan leadership has reinforced the thesis whereby the natives of Moldova are named Moldovans rather than Romanians. History books were replaced with new anti-Romanian ones whilst a move was made to reintroduce Russian as an mandatory language in schools. This latter move angered many Moldovan-Romanians who took to the streets to protest the decision in 2002.
The Moldovan government and president Vladimir Voronin has simultaneously accused Romania and the Romanian population inside Moldova of "imperialism", while at the same time putting extreme pressure on Romanian language newspapers.
After the 1992 war between the pro-Russian breakaway republic and Moldova, in Transnistria at least 5,000-10,000 Romanians fleed the region. Although the Romanians of Transnistria still comprise a plurality of the population, the Romanian language is almost never used in public.
Romanian schools comprise about 11% of the total schools in Transnistria, despite the fact that according to the latest Transnistrian census of 2004, Romanians make up about 32% of the population. Most of these schools are forced to teach in the Cyrillic script and use outdated, 40-year-old, communist-era books. 6 schools are permitted to teach in Romanian using the Latin script, however pressure is often put on these institutions to close. The 2004 school scandal is a prime example of this, when the pro-Russian government in Tiraspol forcefully attempted to close down 2 of these schools. In the orphanage of Tighina, Romanian children were beaten by Transnistrian and Russian troops and forced to sleep in the streets for a few months, until, due to the pressure of the Moldovan and Romanian governments as well as the OSCE, they were allowed back in. Numerous Romanian parents were arrested or fired from their jobs due to their political views and their determination to keep their children in Romanian-language schools.
Citizens who express pro-Romanian or pro-Moldovan attitudes are likewise persecuted in Transnistria. The Ilie Ilaşcu group is the most commonly known and well-documented of these organisations.
Ukraine
Ukraine has inherited the regions of Southern Bessarabia or Bugeac as well as Northern Bukovina from the USSR, albeit the fact that Ukraine herself is not guilty of Stalin's agreement with Hitler in 1940 to devide Romania in Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence.
The Ukrainian government has followed a policy of Ukrainization from 1992 until today, which among others requires minority students to learn Ukrainian rather then their own languages. This measure affects almost 7 million Russians but also 385,000 Romanians who inhabit the historical regions mentioned above. The Ukrainian government likewise divides its Romanian minority into Romanians and Moldovans, something which is perceived as an attempt to downplay the importance of Romanian culture in Ukraine.
Dispite the 1997 treaty with Romania, which among others requires the two countries to respect each others minorities, Ukraine has continued to close down Romanian schools, while reports show that Romanian recruits in the Ukrainain army are systematically persecuted and humiliated.
Yugoslavia and modern Serbia and Montenegro
Romanians living in the Vojvodina province are very well represented at the provincial level despite their small presence (about 30,000 people), and their language is one of six official languages of the province.
In eastern Serbia (mainly in Timok Valley region) live people who speak basically same language as Romanian. These people declare themselves in census as ethnic Vlachs and their number is about 40,000. These Vlachs are bilingual, they are fluent in two languages, Serbian and Vlach/Romanian. In everyday communication Vlachs mainly use Serbian language, while their native language is used mainly at home. Since many Vlachs declare themselves in census as Serbs, the real number of the people of Vlach origin is unknown (This number could be as high as 135,000, since that is a number of people whom declared Vlach language as their mother tongue in 1981 census).
Some Romanian nationalists accusing Serbia for not providing autonomy, schools or churches for Timok Vlachs, despite the fact that these Vlachs do not ask such rights for themselves, since most of them consider Serbia to be their native country, and many of them declare themselves as Serbs in census. Also, the majority of Timok Vlachs regard themselves as a distinct nation, different from both, Serbs and Romanians.
A smaller number of Timok Vlachs also regard themselves as Romanians, but this view is not widelly accepted among Vlach community.
The year 2004 as well as 2005 saw a dispute between the local Serbian authorities in Negotin and the Romanian priest when a priest decided to build a small church where he would hold services in Romanian. The problem was that the priest have builded a church with no permission from local authorities. The priest also has been subjected to threats while children attending the mass with their parents have been humiliated in the village school by their Serbian teacher.
In the town of Negotin, the Romanian Cultural Association has been vandalized in the year 2004 when Serbian ultra-nationalists wrote "Romanians go home" on the windows of the main doors.
References
Transnistria
USSR
- Grenoble, Lenore A (2003). Language Policy in the Soviet Union, Springer, ISBN 1402012985
Transylvania
- Pop, Ioan-Aurel (1997). Istoria Transilvaniei Medievale, ISBN 9739261248
Serbia
- Crăciun, Gilia. BBC - "Minoritatea românilor din Serbia este nemulţumită" (in Romanian)
- Mihalcea, Florian. BBC - Biserica românească din Malainiţa ameninţată din nou (in Romanian)
- Petrovici, Georgeta. Evenimentul Zilei "Românii nimănui" (in Romanian)
- Ursuleţu, Lucian. Evenimentul Zilei - "Slujbă clandestină pentru românii de pe Valea Timocului" (in Romanian)
- Dolha, Viorel. ROST - "Românii din Timoc" (in Romanian)