CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Timár, Norbert |
|---|---|
| Title | Dissidents Among the Hungarian Minority in Romania: The Interpretation and Creation of Transnational Actors, 1977-1989 |
| Summary | This thesis is about dissidence and dissident figures among the Hungarian minority in state-socialist Romania. Its temporal framework covers1977 to 1989 when the 1975 Helsinki Accords offered an opportunity to the nascent resistance in East-Central Europe to use the human rights language to which, at the same time, the Western media was also receptive. How did dissidents emerge in the context of the Hungarian minority in Romania? I restrict the study to this ethnic group because of its complex situation having a transnational connection to its national homeland and the Hungarian diaspora in the West while under the increasing nationalizing attempts of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime in Romania. I draw my methodology from current historiography that argues for a study of dissidence that considers oppositional activities, individual actions, and perception of state-socialist regimes and Western media. In a study of newspapers, letters, pamphlets, reports, and hearings, I offer a complex analysis of dissident activities and their interpretation. Although this is a story on a single Hungarian minority from the region, this thesis argues that ethnic Hungarian oppositional figures had similar characteristics to their colleagues from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Similarly, through Western interpretation, they were depicted as dissident figures. However, Western media’s inability to pay attention simultaneously to more than one dissident from a national context and the domestic situation did not allow them to become equally known. For ethnic Hungarian dissidence to become understandable and important in the West, it was necessary for interpretation. An advocacy group, called Hungarian Human Rights Foundation (HHRF), organized from members of the diaspora, interpreted oppositional activities through transnational networks and cast five dissident actors as dissidents: Károly Király, Géza Szőcs, László Tőkés, and editors of the Hungarian samizdat in Romania, Ellenpontok (Counterpoints). Their interpretation served as legitimization for both the dissidents and HHRF. |
| Supervisor | Siefert, Marsha; Trencsényi, Balázs |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/timar_norbert.pdf |
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