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# {3-669.} The Romanians' Road to Passive Resistance

The Compromise dealt a heavy blow to the Romanian national movement. Only recently, the autonomy of Transylvania had seemed to be guaranteed for a long time, and even if the Romanians did have some foreboding, they expected gradually to win political predominance in the former principality. Instead, union deprived them of the fortress to which they felt entitled, offering in exchange constitutionalism and the gathering of the Romanians in Hungary and Transylvania into one camp; but for the time being, they were not able to take advantage of these opportunities, precisely because of the sudden blow they had suffered.

The growing tendency of Romanians to avoid political participation was already evident at the time when elections were held for the 'coronation' parliament. Believing that a separate Transylvania was the best guarantor of their national existence, they refused to accept the new status quo. Ioan Raţiu, one of the most influential of the fourteen Romanian deputies, vowed that he would not go to Budapest, for a self-governing Transylvania had no business participating in the parliament of a foreign country. Those who did go to Budapest tended to ignore the Romanian deputies from Hungary proper in their attempts to salvage some autonomy for Transylvania. They now advanced the same proposal that Deák had considered feasible as late as 1864–65: a provincial assembly, elected by the rules prevailing in Hungary, which would deal with purely Transylvanian issues. If they had earlier allied themselves with the liberals, the Romanians might have obtained this concession. But since the Hungarian liberals had fought and won their battle for the Compromise without any support from the Romanians, who, if anything, opposed the project, they saw no need or reason to seek alliance with the latter. The Romanians' plan to obtain recognition as Transylvania's fourth nation failed for the same reason. Although this status carried little practical significance in a liberal {3-670.} state, the Romanian nationalist intelligentsia had pursued it for reasons of principle and history. On 3 June 1867, a few of them belatedly raised the matter with Deák, only to be told that they had missed their chance: autonomy was now out of the question, and all that he could promise the Romanians was equality of political rights.

When Count Manó Péchy, the government commissioner charged with implementing the administrative integration of Transylvania, arrived on a fact-finding visit, he was met in many places, notably Torda and Nagyszeben, by Romanian intellectuals who solemnly protested against the Compromise. He told them that they could hope to secure rights and cultural as well as economic progress only by accepting the fait accompli of union. Péchy refused to enter into negotiations, and he rejected the request of the archbishop of Balázsfalva that a {3-671.} Romanian national assembly be convened. None of that stopped a newly-invigorated Romanian cultural and social organization, the ASTRA, from organizing a meeting in Kolozsvár; indeed, municipal authorities put the Redout hall and the National Theatre at its disposal. Péchy and his assistant attended the first session as well as the ensuing concert; on the other hand, due to internal squabbles, the meeting was boycotted by the secretary of ASTRA, Bariţ, by the vice-president, and even by the president, Şaguna. The latter was voted out of office and replaced by an advocate of the growing 'passivist' orientation, Vasile Ladislau Popp, who had held several government posts and was serving as high court president. That orientation inspired the political guidelines adopted by the meeting, which were to wait for the Dualist experiment to fail, and in the meantime to protest against the Compromise and union at every opportunity. The passivists clung to the hope that eventually they could obtain for Transylvania a status similar to that of Croatia.

This was followed in spring 1868 by the Pronunciamentum, a declaration issued to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Romanian national assembly in Balázsfalva. The authors called for Transylvanian autonomy, a separate parliament, and application of the rights ratified at Nagyszeben in 1863–64. In response, the government launched judicial proceedings against them as well as against the editors of the newspapers that published the proclamation, including the deputy and Budapest university lecturer Alexandru Roman. Ioan Raţiu, the energetic lawyer from Torda, hoped for a spectacular trial that would arouse sympathy throughout Europe, including that of Napoleon III, for the Romanians' cause. However, the authors of the declaration took fright, while the emperor instructed the government to halt proceedings. The Romanians still hoped to win the support of Napoleon III and, ultimately, great-power guarantees for Transylvania's autonomy and their national rights. To this end, they briefly toyed with the idea of electing Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon III's cousin, to the post of Uniate archbishop of Balázsfalva in replacement for Şuluţiu, who had died in 1868.

When, in 1868, the parliament came to debate the nationalities bill, Romanian deputies from Hungary proper and their Serb colleagues took a joint initiative. Without questioning the need to preserve the country's territorial integrity and political unity, they proposed that all ethnic minorities be treated as distinct nations and endowed with a separate political and administrative institution. Even Mocsáry refused to support the proposals, although he agreed that the country's multinational character had to be recognized and that there was a need to expand the scope of linguistic rights. For his part, Dániel Irányi, a noted democrat, tried to draw the Romanians to the independence-minded opposition by calling for an expansion of minority rights. Deák, too, rejected the proposals for autonomy, and the ethnic minorities' deputies found themselves isolated in the debate over the bill concerning the modalities of union between Hungary and Transylvania.

{3-672.} The futility of their efforts and their community's low level of political organization disheartened the Romanian intelligentsia and reinforced the influence of those who favoured a tactical passivism in parliament. The setbacks sharpened the Romanians' perception that the pre-1867 régimes had freely exploited their national–political aspirations, then left them in the lurch. In this respect, at least, it may be argued that Dualism had changed things for the better, since Hungarian politicians, whether in government or in opposition, gave up trying to seduce the nationalities with false promises — not so much because their political principles differed from those of Austrian statesmen expert at manipulation, but because Hungary's homogeneous national ideology, which coincided with class interests, limited their scope for manoeuvre. The monarch, for his part, was constrained by the constitution of the Dualist system, which cut him off from the nationalities and prevented the latter from dealing directly with Vienna. This isolation may have helped to reinforce the myth of the 'good monarch and bad advisors' and induce loyalty to the dynasty, but it also drove minority leaders to reassess their tactics in favour of greater self-reliance and a quest for new allies. Among Hungarians, the new constitutional order induced the opposite tendency: they came to overestimate their strength and find comfort in being part of an apparently powerful, unified empire.

Nurtured in a different historical environment, the Romanian politicians of Hungary proper, and particularly those from the Banat, continued to pursue an active policy of opposition. They wanted to secure minority rights within the existing political system and within a unified Hungarian state, a choice that allowed them to seek tactical alliances with Hungarian parties. Transylvania's Romanians, on the other hand, rejected the new order and turned to passive resistance. Many factors conspired to drive the politically-conscious intelligentsia into a passive stance: the deterioration of the political situation, internal divisions and {3-673.} disorganization, and financial insecurity. Mocsonyi, who owned a vast estate in the Banat, had no financial problems, but Romanian politicians in Transylvania lacked such resources and were hard put to cover their most essential expenses. They had to pass the hat to finance Raţiu's trips to Vienna. The latter observed that at times they could not even afford to send a registered letter. Romanians who held senior posts in state and local administration were reluctant to give money for political purposes, and so were Church leaders who feared for their posts and institutions.

The Romanian political movement gradually threw off the tutelage of Church leaders. Significant steps were taken in this direction at a conference in Szerdahely on 7–8 March 1896. Bariţ was the moving spirit behind the meeting, which had been preceded by long series of consultations and was chaired by a layman, the deputy Elie Măcelariu. The government-sanctioned gathering had the quality of a Romanian national assembly. A few political activists, including Iosif Hossu and Ioan Puşcariu, warned that by adopting a passive stance, intellectuals would betray their nation, leaving the peasantry vulnerable to other political influences, and fail to make full use of the parliamentary forum. In the event, only four of the 300 participants voted for a more activist approach. Şaguna, the spiritual leader of the activists, did not wish to lead his followers into internecine struggle; indeed, he calculated that the existence of a strong radical faction would induce the government to deal more favourably with the Romanian Churches. Most participants shared Canon Micu-Moldovan's passivist creed: 'Twenty or thirty years in the life of a nation are like a drop in the ocean. We know that in the enlightened nineteenth century, one has to be crazy to believe that the realm of injustice will last for decades.'[30]30. Quoted in V. Netea, Lupta românilor din Transilvania pentru libertatea naţională 1848-1881 (Bucharest, 1974), p. 381. Driven by the optimistic notion that 'it cannot last long,' the participants endorsed the petition that Raţiu had submitted to the emperor in late 1866, in a desperate attempt to forestall the Compromise; in this, Raţiu denounced the union and several legislative acts of 1848. {3-674.} A call from the independence-minded Irányi for joint action aroused no interest. A committee consisting of 25 passivists was charged with organizing a Transylvanian Romanian National Party. The principal result of the conference, said one of the organizers, was that 'we will no longer be bothered by Şaguna's party, which will not recover soon from its shattering defeat.'[31]31. Ibid., p. 383.

There was, however, a more immediate consequence: that same month, the government disbanded the newly-elected committee on the grounds that it was preparing to obstruct the implementation of several basic laws. In any case, the authorities would not give legal recognition to parties formed to represent a national group. For much of the remaining period of Dualism, the Romanians' party existed on the fringe of legality; it was periodically banned by the authorities, but the prohibition was not enforced with any vigor, for succeeding governments tended to regard the party — overtly or covertly — as a political force to be reckoned with. The passivist orientation was only reinforced by this ban, and a large proportion of Romanian voters abstained from participating in elections. In the event, two activist and two passivist candidates were elected; the latter ostentatiously boycotted the parliament, where Romanians were represented by fifteen deputies of the national party from Hungary proper and eight deputies who belonged to the government party.

Circumventing the official ban, Transylvanian activists set up in early 1870, at Torda, a six-member 'delegation' to act as a party leadership and organize resistance — not in parliament, but at county council meetings. However, unity remained elusive, and relations between the two camps only worsened when, in 1872, Prime Minister Menyhért Lónyay, on a visit to Transylvania, invited passivist deputies to present their demands. They produced a 12-point memorandum outlining the conditions on which they would accept the union and the Dualist system. These were the administrative subdivision of Transylvania along nationality lines; legal recognition {3-675.} of Romanian as an official language; introduction of a more democratic suffrage; and the appointment of a number of Romanians to official posts. For the Lónyay government, which in any case was on the brink of collapse, these demands went beyond the limits of the negotiable. The 1872 elections were marked by a high abstention rate among Transylvania's Romanians. In Hungary proper, there were two new members of parliament who would come to play a major role: Gheorghe Pop de Băşeşti (György Illésfalvi Pap), a member and sometime vice-president of the Independence Party, soon to become leader of the Romanian party, and Partenie Cosma. However, even in Hungary the Romanians suffered some painful losses. Two of their leaders, Alexandru Mocsonyi and Vincenţiu Babeş, failed to get elected, as did three other members of the Mocsonyi clan. Dispirited by the failures and discord, and observing the growing impotence of the activist wing, Şaguna abandoned all political activity. He died the following year; it is said that, in his last breath, he asked his entourage to stop quarreling. Şaguna's successors lacked his experience and political sense, not to speak of his prestige. Some Romanians in Nagyszeben wrote to Bariţ, warning that 'we will no longer tolerate interference by Church leaders.'[32]32. K. Hitchins and L. Maior, Corespondenţa lui Ioan Raţiu cu George Bariţiu 1861-1892 (Cluj, 1970), p. 125. In fact, Şaguna's death freed the Romanian national movement from the tutelage of the Church hierarchy.

In 1875 elections, the passivists triumphed in Transylvania; once again, the activists caved in, and only one of them was elected to parliament. While Tisza's Liberal Party forged ahead, the Romanians in Hungary won only 14 seats that year, and 12 in 1878. The fight against the so-called Trefort Education Act of 1878, which limited the freedom of private school sponsors, induced greater political cohesion within Hungary's Romanian intelligentsia, whose national sentiments had been intensified by Romania's war of independence in 1877–78. In 1880, meetings were held to plan for a unified national party, and local electoral clubs were founded. Following consultations with politicians in {3-676.} Budapest and Bucharest, some 117 delegates from Transylvania and 34 from Hungary proper assembled for a conference at Nagyszeben on 13 May 1881. They agreed to maintain the tactics of passivism in Transylvania and of activism in the rest of Hungary, then formally founded a unified Romanian National Party under the presidency of Partenie Cosma, a rising figure who was the lawyer of the Albina bank. When, in 1887, Mocsonyi withdrew from politics, passivism became — for close to a generation — the dominant orientation of Romanian national policy throughout Hungary.

The unified party's program held no surprises; it reiterated the earlier demands focusing on Transylvania's autonomy and failed to address the problems of the peasantry or other social issues. Although a few of its members had steadfastly defended the rights of former villeins, most of the Romanian elite showed little interest in these problems. It was also decided at the Nagyszeben meeting to prepare a memorandum that would convey to local and foreign audiences the grievances of Romanians living under the authority of the Hungarian Crown. 'Never, under any circumstances, can the Romanian nation resign itself' to the Dualist system, said the memorandum, which was published the following year, in several languages, with assistance from Romania.[33]33. Emlékirat (Nagyszeben, 1882), p. 121. Although this assertive but isolationist program offered little tactical guidance, it served as the Romanian national movement's charter until 1905.

The policy of passivism emerged concidentally with the Austro–Hungarian negotiations for a compromise, and it gained strength after the conclusion of the Dualist pact. The tactic rested on an assumption that, at the time, was plausible and commonly held, particularly in Austria — that the experiment with Dualism would be short-lived. In the event, the system issuing from the Compromise survived all challenges to become fully consolidated by the early 1870s. In these circumstances, the policy of passivism, which at the start was a misconceived tactic, became a fundamental strategic mistake. By inducing political abstention and occasional, ceremonial {3-677.} protests, the passivist tactic played into the goverment's hands; the latter was free to promote the slow but relentless Magyarization of public administration and entrench the new structure of the state. Political activity had become concentrated in the national legislature, at the expense of the counties; in such a situation, it was obviously counter-productive to boycott the parliament. Romanians were left with no alternative but to vote for the government's nominees, who always included some patriotic members of their ethnic group. Transylvania's electoral constituencies thus became an increasingly safe hunting ground for the ruling party.

Although the passivist orientation prevailed, its critics were not wholly justified in evoking the ailing Gypsy who just lay down to await death. The Dualist system did impose severe constraints on the political activity of self-conscious Romanians, and it was abetted by the Romanians' peculiar passivity. Yet change did come with the passage of time. Romanians shared in the economic revival of the Dualist era. Their numbers grew, a new generation of intellectuals emerged, and new external forces came into play, all of which helped to add substance to what had been an unproductive political program.