AFnewsRESTITUTIONS
June 4, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Trianon by the victorious Allied Powers in the First World War and Hungary, as the successor state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We have an honorable duty to publish a series of scientific studies on this topic in order to counter media manipulation.
“He who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it” (George Santayana)
The historian Camil Mureşanu, full member of the Romanian Academy, university professor, president of the Cluj branch of the Romanian Academy, called by his students and colleagues “the Lord” due to his erudition and finesse that characterized him, was born on April 20, 1927, in Turda. His works include the following: ”Ioan de Hunedoara and his age”, Bucharest 1957, ”The Bourgeois Revolution in England”, Bucharest 1964, ”Erdély története”, vol. 2, Bucharest 1964, [in collaboration], ”Historical Monuments from Turda”, Bucharest 1968, ”Beziehungen zwischen der rumänischen und sächsischer Forschung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert”, in:” Wege landeskundlicher Forschung ”, Köln-Wien 1988, Nation, nationalism.”The evolution of nationalities”, Center for Transylvanian Studies, Cluj 1996, John Hunyadi. ”Defender of Christendom”, Iași-Oxford-Portland 2001.
The historian from Cluj, Varga Attila, who was his student, writes about Camil Mureșanu that he was “the model of the erudite teacher and of the exceptional speaker who left behind unforgettable memories. At a time when the Romanian school is still struggling intensely with a series of hindrances and anomalies, and its crisis of reference models is extremely acute, the memory of a scholar, who always tried to teach his students how to build strong bridges between people and cultures, is more than welcome”.
He died on February 21, 2015 in Cluj-Napoca, honored and regretted by the entire community of Romanian historians.
We publish here one of the most representative essays of the distinguished historian both by the approach “sine ira et studio” and by the accuracy of the documentation.
DORIN SUCIU
ACAD. CAMIL MUREȘANU: THE TREATY OF TRIANON – VOLUNTARY AMNESIA
There are no few events and things available that are constantly and lengthily discussed, without being known well enough. This is how it is happened in moments of current conversation, in scientific or political speeches. The frequency and intensity of the phenomenon are proportional to the interest in doing one or another. Focusing attention on it entails a unilateral image, sometimes distorted by the inflammation of spirits, but which is thus installed in the public consciousness. Sometimes it can have harmful consequences, sometimes only unfortunate.
However, it is a duty for the public to be properly and accurately informed, in particular about significant events.
Between Hungary and the rest of the world
Among the above cases may be included the Treaty of Trianon. Ever since its signing, on June 4, 1920, in the elegant palace built in 1687, near Versailles, by the famous architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, this peace treaty with Hungary aroused fierce contradictory political passions. Those directly targeted by it attribute to it the exclusive role of a kind of “dissection manual” of the former great Hungarian state, reconstituted within the Habsburg monarchy, between 1867-1918.
That it confirmed the dismemberment of this state and the annexation of its parts, inhabited by nationalities other than the Hungarian one, to the states that were formed then or completed their national unity – this fact is undeniable.
But it is necessary to know that the Treaty of Trianon was a very complex act, which regulated much more than the issue of borders between Hungary and its neighboring countries.
The treaty contained a preamble and 14 parts, in 364 articles, the length of which covered 164 pages of print, in octavo.
It was signed by 36 plenipotentiaries on behalf of 23 states. Of these, 11 were European states from the Entente side, and 12 from outside Europe. From Europe, the signatories were: on the one hand Hungary, and on the other the former belligerent states – France, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Montenegro, Greece, Romania, and the three new states: Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom, as Yugoslavia was originally called. Among the non-European countries, the treaty was signed by the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the South African Union, India, Japan, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama and Thailand (called Siam in the text).
Trianon – this is the first reality that needs to be known about it – was therefore not a treaty between Hungary and neighboring countries, as it appears, simplified, in the journalism interested in suggesting that it was a “settlement of accounts” imposed by several countries, eager to benefit from the defeat of Hungary in the First World War and the “historical injustice” of which it would have been the victim.
Trianon was a treaty between Hungary and the rest of the world.
The regulation through it of the contentious issues between Hungary and Romania occupies a limited place in the whole treaty, although, of course, not unimportant.
We will exemplify this way of presenting the treaty through a glance, even if only brief, on its content, but having the quality highlighting its unseen face, the one that practically does not enjoy any attention, a matter that is incorrect from the point from the point of view of scientific knowledge.
The preamble to the treaty contains a list of the signatory states and their proxies. It is noteworthy that the Hungarian government had appointed, for purposes of representation, two low-rank personalities: a Minister of Labor and Social Security and an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the rank of ambassador. Both had played only subordinate roles in the political life of Hungary until then. In diplomatic practice, a gesture like this has a meaning that no observer can escape.
According to a rule adopted by the final acts of the Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Trianon reproduced, in its first part, the text of the Covenant of the League of Nations, included as an organic component of the Treaty of Versailles, with Germany. The procedure was generalized to signify the placing of major international policy acts under the authority of the League of Nations and to oblige all signatories to peace treaties to explicitly recognize the pact.
The second part specifies the routes of Hungary’s new borders with Austria, the Serbo-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom, Romania and Czechoslovakia. In the 164 pages of the treaty, the whole issue of the Hungarian-Romanian border occupied about a column of text, on a single page.
The third part was entitled European Political Clauses. Within them, in articles 45-47, is inscribed the recognition by Romania of the need to insert in its legislation provisions to protect the interests of inhabitants of another race, language, religion, from the territories that had known the transfer of sovereignty in favor of the Romanian state.
This clause (in article 47) resulted from a separate treaty that Romania had concluded with the allied powers on December 9, 1919, being signed on its part by General Constantin Coandă, the then president of the Council of Ministers.
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