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(At Trianon, at Trianon! A century of revisionist political mythology, Şcoala Ardeleană Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2020)
The last decades have shown mankind that the world is not only very complex, but also that the events of social life are unfolding with great speed. That is why every citizen feels the need to decipher the paths of evolution as quickly and extensively as possible. The international crises that follow each other at shorter and shorter intervals have relativized to the maximum the mathematical models of forecasting. Therefore, nowadays we resort even more frequently to contemporary historical phenomena and processes to find explanations for present facts and to make possible the serial reconstructions that indicate at least the immediate future.
The initiative to edit this volume came thanks to the interest shown by students, but also by the general public opinion upon receiving from the media the launch of the subject of the Treaty of Trianon (1920). After, in previous years, it was written about the Centenary of the beginning of World War I (1914), of the end of the conflict (1918) and a century since the completion of the Great Union (1918), the aggressive revival of the subject of Trianon as a reply to the historical moments mentioned above puzzled consumers of news released by the media and especially social media.The environment for receiving such opinions has been much tainted by the intensification of populist, nationalist, xenophobic political discourse that has proliferated in European public space and especially in central and south-eastern Europe. While professional historians have addressed these issues in small conferences or specialized publications, the so-called „journalistic history” has emphasized only aspects that newsrooms or broadcasting circles considered to correspond to „market demand”. Hence the need to come to the general public with historiographical or social sciences opinions to provide readers with support for rational thinking.
In this volume we propose the opinions of some experts in the fields of historiography, sociology, law, political science and international relations, etc., because we wanted to facilitate an interdisciplinary analysis that associates the historical approach with elements of knowledge and understanding of contemporary phenomena. was intentionally sensitized by the undisguised politicization proposed by some parties, cultural groups, public figures in search of electoral glory and power built on the skeletons of the past. In other words, we wanted to draw attention to the fact that the peoples of this part of Europe should also constructively relate to the zonal, continental and global context. Only weak political and state leaders always see a danger in everything that happens around them and seek to save only themselves, attaching themselves to unidirectional power structures, sacrificing chances of long-term partnerships they could gain through sincere and systematic cooperation.
More than two decades ago I published a volume (The Pulse of History in Central Europe, 1998) in which I tried to explain why history is so important for defining the identity of the nations of Central Europe. The main message of that volume was inspired by Robert D. Kaplan’s famous book, Balkan Ghosts (1993). In the first decade after 1989, Europe and the world were horrified by ethno-religious violence in the Balkans, and Kaplan warned regional and European leaders not to succumb to historical political fantasies such as those that upset the continent’s southeast.
Then I warned the leaders of Romania, as well as those in Central Europe, to pay attention to the words of Robert D. Kaplan, to be careful not to let the European „undead” loose, because even in this area some politicians were tempted to bring in the foreground of social life the fantasies of past conflicts. Once the desire of post-communist leaders in Central European countries to join NATO and the EU has subsided, the recourse to the „undead” of history has returned, and what was hoped to become the European way of life in the West is becoming clearer today: a move towards the path inspired by old Eastern customs. An occasion in which some Central European leaders show a political orientation similar to those who launched the „undead” in the Balkans at the end of the twentieth century, proving the lack of will to learn from the lessons of the two world conflagrations that bled the last century and the suffering of nations in this region due to fascism and Bolshevism.
For Romania, the signing of the Treaty of Trianon (1920) meant the international recognition of post-war borders, mostly a consequence of the application of the principle of national self-determination, which was considered the main pillar of the Peace Doctrine at the end of World War I. But a peace treaty also contained other arrangements between the signatory parties, which intended to place future developments on a legal, political, economic, financial, social, cultural, etc. path. The state of peace was only open from the moment of signing the Peace Treaty, the “dynamics of peace” – as Nicolae Titulescu called it – depending on the way in which the parties adopted a constructive or destructive attitude. This is an obvious conclusion of the parties’ reference to the system of the Treaties of Versailles (1919-1920), including the Treaty of Trianon.
This volume includes several studies that present the history of the idea and construction of the modern nation-state in Central Europe, as well as the European and Central Southeast European contexts at the end of the First World War. As this contextuality was dominated by systemic events, I proposed an analysis based on formal analytical methods to circumscribe as logically as possible the decisions of the Paris Peace Conference (1919 1920). A legal reading of the Treaty of Trianon and the principle of nationalities, as it operated immediately after the end of the conflagration, is followed by several studies showing some cultural, political and institutional state consequences of the elaboration and application of the same treaty.
A consistent chapter is dedicated to the historical-historiographical analysis of the political myths built in Hungary on account of the Treaty of Trianon, in order to support a revisionist and revengeful policy that has extended its manifestations to the present day. Two analyzes belong to sociologists who evaluate the political discourse and attitude of contemporary currents, groups, contemporary political figures who have made the Treaty of Trianon not only a critical target, but especially a support for launching radical policies for domestic electoral consumption, but also with certain tendencies to destabilize the Central European region. A reason to remind of the possibility of conflict in the region, with continental and international effects still unsuspected, but especially a reason to relaunch cooperation and cooperation between the states and nations of Central Europe, which today have a common goal of great importance – European integration.
Cluj Napoca, 10 March 2020
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