RANSYLVANIAN EVIEW Vol. XXVIII T R No. 4 /REVUE DE TRANSYLVANIE Winter 2019 Contents/Sommaire ROMANIAN ACADEMY Chairman: • Paradigms Academician Ioan-Aurel Pop The Evolution of the Ethnic and Political Romanian-Hungarian Border As Reflected CENTER FOR in Sources 3 TRANSYLVANIAN STUDIES Radu Sãgeatã Wartime Diaries from the First World War: The Chronology of a Collective Destiny 23 Rodica Frenþiu • Concertatio Il comunismo ripensato: Ceauşescu, il regime romeno e la storiografia italiana 38 Francesco Guida Illusion, Disillusion... and Hope: Thirty Years Since the Fall of Communism in Romania, 1989–2019 50 Paul E. Michelson • Transsilvanica A Motif from the Pugillus Facetiarum Painted Inside a House in Sibiu (1631) 60 Dana Jenei Astra et les officiers roumains de Transylvanie avant et après la Grande Union (1910–1920) 74 Vlad Popovici Ion I. Moþa: An Atypical Leader of the Petru Maior Student Center in Cluj 90 Maria Ghitta • Tangencies Transylvanian Cultural Landscapes Promoting Rural Development 106 On the cover: Oana-Ramona Ilovan Queen MARIE of Romania Zoltan Maroşi watching the Romanian troops as they • Interculturalism cross the Tisza River (July 1919). Photo in the collection of the La formation de la communauté chiite en Belgique 127 Þara Criºurilor Museum (Oradea), Marius Lazãr album inv. 6289. • Book Reviews Transylvanian Review continues the LAURA MESINA, Uitarea Romei: tradition of Revue de Transylvanie, Studii de arheologie a imaginarului founded by Silviu Dragomir, which was published in Cluj and then in Sibiu (reviewed by Robert-Marius Mihalache) 143 between 1934 and 1944. LAURA MESINA, Imaginarul medieval: Forme ºi teorii Transylvanian Review is published (reviewed by Robert-Marius Mihalache) 145 quarterly by the Center for Transylvanian Studies and the Romanian Academy. DIANA MARIA DÃIAN, Activitatea misionarã ofensivã a ordinelor catolice în Transilvania secolului al XVII‐lea EDITORIAL BOARD în contextul Reconquistei catolice post‐tridentine: Perspective CESARE ALZATI, Ph.D. Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Istituto asupra ordinului franciscan în Principatul calvin di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea, (1604–1690) Università Cattolica, Milan, Italy (reviewed by Ferenc Páll-Szabó) 146 MATHIAS BEER, Ph.D. Institut für donauschwäbische Geschichte IOAN POPA, Românii din Transilvania, Banat, Criºana, und Landeskunde, Tübingen, Germany Sãtmar ºi Maramureº în Primul Rãzboi Mondial: KONRAD GÜNDISCH, Ph.D. Ancheta ASTREI: “Tablourile nominale” Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte (reviewed by Mircea-Gheorghe Abrudan) 148 der Deutschen im östlichen Europa, Oldenburg, Germany IOAN LUPAª, Prãbuºirea Monarhiei Austro‐Ungare HARALD HEPPNER, Ph.D. ºi importanþa istoricã a zilei de 1 Decembrie 1918 Institut für Geschichte, Graz, Austria (reviewed by Florian Dumitru Soporan) 154 PAUL E. MICHELSON, Ph.D. Huntington University, Indiana, USA CÃTÃLINA ILIESCU GHEORGHIU, MoMčilo Pavlović, Ph.D. Un model polisistemic de analizã comparativã a textului Director of the Institute of Contemporary dramatic din perspectiva traductologiei descriptive History, Belgrade, Serbia ALEXANDRU ZUB, Ph.D. (reviewed by Mioara Adelina Angheluþã) 156 Academician, honorary director of A. D. Xenopol Institute of History, Iaºi, Romania EDITORIAL STAFF Ioan-Aurel Pop Daniela Mârza Ioan Bolovan Robert-M. Mihalache Raveca Divricean Ferenc Páll-Szabó Maria Ghitta Alexandru Simon Rudolf Gräf Florian D. Soporan Virgil Leon George State Translated by Bogdan Aldea—English Publication indexed and abstracted in the Liana Lãpãdatu—French Thomson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index® Desktop Publishing and in Arts & Humanities Citation Index®, Edith Fogarasi Cosmina Varga and included in EBSCO’s and ELSEVIER’s products. Correspondence, manuscripts and books should be sent to: Transylvanian Review, ISSN 1221-1249 Centrul de Studii Transilvane (Center for Transylvanian Studies) 12–14 Mihail Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania. All material copyright © 2019 by the Printed in Romania by COLOR PRINT Center for Transylvanian Studies and the 66, 22 Decembrie 1989 St., Romanian Academy. Reproduction or use Zalãu 450031, Romania without written permission is prohibited. Tel. (0040)260-660598 [email protected] www.centruldestudiitransilvane.ro paradigms The Evolution of the Ethnic and Political Romanian- Hungarian Border R ADU S ÃG EA T Ã As Reflected in Sources Introduction HE ROMANIAN-Hungarian bor- der was set after the First World TWar along the line that separates the ethnic Romanian bloc in Transyl- vania from the Hungarian one in the Tisza Plain. The borderline became a legal provision of the peace treaty be- tween the Allied and Associated Powers and Hungary, signed at Trianon (Ver- Paris, 15 Jan. 1920, Count APPONYI, sailles) on 4 June 1920, and was recon- the head of the Hungarian delegation, firmed in the Treaty of Understand- arriving at the Quai d’Orsay to receive ing, Cooperation and Neighborliness the Paris Peace Treaty. between Romania and the Hungarian SOURCE: Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rol 57645, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ Republic, signed in Timişoara on 16 ark:/12148/btv1b53036032b. September 1996. The total length of the border is 448 km (out of which 415.9 km territorial border and 32.1 km water border), which means 14.2% of Romania’s state border length. Radu Sãgeatã Researcher at the Institute of Geography, The research for this paper was conducted Romanian Academy. Author, among under the research plan of the Institute others, of the vol. The Urban Systems in of Geography of the Romanian Academy the Age of Globalization: Geographical “Geographic Studies on the Population Studies with Focus on Romania (2014). Dynamics in Romania.” 4 • TRANSYLVANIAN REVIEW • VOL. XXVIII, NO. 4 (WINTER 2019) Immediately after signing the Treaty of Trianon, an intense revisionist media campaign was launched, claiming the Hungarian rights over the territories lost in 1920. Thus, in 1896–1899, Hungarian historian Benedek Jancsó propounded a theory whereby the large number of Romanians in Transylvania was allegedly due to the massive immigration of Wallachians from the two extra-Carpathian principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) in the 17th and especially 18th centuries, who tried to escape the excessively high taxes imposed during the Phanariot period. This theory was taken up, after the treaty had been signed, in an Eng- lish-language work on Transylvania (Ajtay et al. 1921), in A román irredentista mozgalmak története (The history of Romanian irredentist movements) (1920), and in Erdély története (The history of Transylvania) (1923), all these writings being refuted with scientific arguments and following field research undertaken by the Romanian geographer Ion Conea (1941; 1942 a, b). Another representative work on this subject (Ethnographical Map of Hun‐ gary Based on the Density of Population) is authored by Count Pál Teleki, geog- rapher and former prime-minister of Hungary, who presented it at the Paris Peace Conference (1920). Later on, at the Second Vienna Arbitration (1940), where they decided on the annexation of Northern Transylvania to Hungary, István Tarnóczi presented a map of Hungarian territories annexed by Roma- nia on the basis of the Trianon decision (Deicã 1999, 36). Within the same context, András Korponay (1941) showed that border tracing is not a ques- tion of surface area, but of population, launching an appeal to a rapid birthrate growth (Golopenþia 1942, 25–33). Along the same lines we can also mention Péter Vida’s title, “The Carpathian Basin Should Be Populated by Hungari- ans” (1941), the author suggesting both an increase in birthrate and the re- turn of the Hungarians living abroad. These ideological theses lay at the ba- sis of the reprisals taken against the Romanian population during September 1940–October 1944. That same period witnessed the studies produced by András Ronai, the author endeavoring to justify Hungary’s rights over the ter- ritories lost at the end of World War I (Deicã 1999). The end of the Second World War and the instauration of Kremlin-loyal communist regimes in Bucharest and Budapest brought Hungary’s revision- ist demands to a standstill, concealing them behind a policy of understanding and neighborly relations between the two friendly countries (Berend and Buga- ric 2015). However, as of 1970, Hungary’s geopolitics became ever more vo- cal against the Central European “border opening” concept. It is the period in which writings re-substantiating the ideas of the “Carpathian Basin” relying on “Greater Hungary” and of Hungarian-inhabited regions started being published. This concept would later (1993) be used in outlining the Carpathian Euroregion (Deicã and Alexandrescu 1995; Deicã 1999–2000), the Hungarian ethnic bloc and the Hungarian community in Transylvania (Kocsis 1994 and 1997). PARADIGMS • 5 In 1990, with the collapse of the communist regimes, interethnic tensions would surge in both countries, reactivating political and social nationalistic movements (Nedelcu and DeBardeleben 2015). As early as the 1990s, the first civic political organization, the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania, came into being with the aim of representing the interests of the Hungarian community in Romania. In order to counteract the Hungarian activists, a cul- tural organization, Vatra Româneascã (The Romanian Hearth), was founded, and after a month they set up its political wing, namely, the Romanian National Unity Party. In the first months of 1990, these organizations kept agitating the spirits