Trent Leinenbach and Dr. Stephen Tuttle, Department of Humanities
Our purpose in collecting folklore was to examine what happens to a society when the people can no longer identify themselves by nationality. Transylvania is a particularly good case study, because the borders have been disputed between Hungarians and Romanians essentially for as long as both nations have existed—so you’ve had plenty of time for national borders to sink deep into the social consciousness and subconscious. There have been generations of tradition, folklore, and education to instill a strong sense of nation-and-boundary-based identity. Within the borders of Hungary, there was a real sense of “Being Hungarian,” and a real sense that while Romanians may claim a historical attachment to the land—the key thing was that Transylvania was, by political consent, Hungarian—was part of “Being Hungarian.” To be Transylvanian was to be Hungarian. Then, suddenly, you have the traumatic rupture—the loss of WWI. In an instant, the colors on the map changed—to be Transylvanian was, according to the world, to be Romanian. Sure, for a while, you can call it a scandal—you can say, “the Truth is still the Truth—we’re Hungarians—there’s no changing that.” But that’s where the influence of dominant culture comes into play: economics comes into play—as well as politics, education, etc. This happens on both sides of the border.
Let’s talk about economics first: economics is one of the key pillars behind the ideology of a community. E.g. the serfs work for the noble, the noble adopts the serfs into his community, and they get the political benefit of the noble’s protection. This economic-political exchange becomes one of the key components of their community. In modern nation states, a prevailing economic system dictates the terms of work, production, trade, and taxation—the nation is united economically by this system—so that oil fields in Alaska are expected to be a benefit to people all the way down in Florida. But goldmines in Transylvania are of no benefit to modern Hungary—there are no legal or ideological ties between these separate nations—and Hungary lacks the ability to enforce those ties. So economically, Hungary must operate as a separate nation. Their new political system, in order to remain economically efficient, cannot concern itself with the wellbeing of Hungarian-Romanians living in Transylvania. Someone could start a charity, but it will only do so much—the system is competitive and won’t sustain long term provisioning for people living outside your national borders. So whichever side of the border you’re living on, it won’t take long for you to feel the significance of that border. A good example of this is a referendum in Hungary which proposed extending certain Hungarian citizenship rights to ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania. Of course, the referendum could only be voted on by citizens of modern Hungary—and surprise, surprise, it was voted down.
This border comes into play in a lot of ways. Romanians expect Hungarians to assimilate, so they can contribute to the Romanian nation. That means a lot of pressure to learn fluent Romanian and to speak it publicly—something which can be enforced by social means—stereotypes which attempt to smother Hungarian culture by depicting it as backward—or legal means—requiring Hungarian-Romanians to take exams in Romanian. The point is, there’s a gravitational pull toward the ideological center of a nation—on one side of the border, you get pulled one way—but step across the border, and you’ll be pulled the other way. Imagine the border as the jagged peak of a snow-capped mountain. As you’re climbing up one side, gravity seeks to pull you back down in the direction you came, but as after you cross the summit and reach the other side of the mountain, gravity will begin pushing you down that new side. It’s hard to remain on the summit indefinitely. For the nation to survive, it must do whatever it takes to support itself, and so the system is set up for assimilation—liminal spaces are fleeting. Transylvania as a liminal space probably can’t go on indefinitely without becoming an independent nation, which at present seems unlikely. This is another reason why the research is urgent.
When the full effect of the separation sinks in, the trauma is complete. It affects everybody, of course. For modern Hungarian citizens, the feeling is one of amputation or castration. For the new Hungarian-Romanian-Transylvanians, the feeling is that you have been uprooted, jettisoned—cut off—you’re adrift, floating, unattached. You can’t help but feel the disconnect with your old nation—this works on the subconscious and conscious levels, until you reach the point that it’s difficult to define yourself as Hungarian, even ideologically. Furthermore, for a thousand reasons, you may feel loath to identify yourself as a Romanian. Your sense of “Being something” has been stripped from you—at least your sense of Being as it pertains to national identity. So what do you do? You must find a new culture, and in most cases, a new community, to establish identity.
When the full effect of the separation sinks in, the trauma is complete. It affects everybody, of course. For modern Hungarian citizens, the feeling is one of amputation or castration. For the new Hungarian-Romanian-Transylvanians, the feeling is that you have been uprooted, jettisoned—cut off—you’re adrift, floating, unattached. You can’t help but feel the disconnect with your old nation—this works on the subconscious and conscious levels, until you reach the point that it’s difficult to define yourself as Hungarian, even ideologically. Furthermore, for a thousand reasons, you may feel loath to identify yourself as a Romanian. Your sense of “Being something” has been stripped from you—at least your sense of Being as it pertains to national identity. So what do you do? You must find a new culture, and in most cases, a new community, to establish identity.
In the most conservative examples, of which we found many, people gravitated toward the next largest and most culturally intact community they could find, which was the Szekely community. This refers to one of the original Hungarian tribes that moved into the Carpathian basin during the honfoglalas. They largely remained in Transylvania, and maintained a unique culture and community there until they were finally drawn by the gravitational pull of Hungary into assimilating. (This assimilation was less traumatic than what we have now, because they had an attachment with the other Hungarian tribes from the beginning, and the assimilation was therefore more mutual.) So you see a lot of Szekely folklore. Another tradition, somewhat less conservative, is to embrace the culture of your local town, village, or hamlet—or of your ancestral one—and let that establish your identity. This mode of identification can be adopted as a subset of the Szekely identity, or it can embraced independently. Another approach, only slightly less conservative than these, is to adopt the Romanian national identity. I say only slightly less conservative, because while you have indeed opened yourself to the Romanian culture, the move is made with the intention of eliminating the trauma of exile—to become again, as quickly as possible, a member of a nation—to “Be,” nationally. We didn’t really encounter anyone who took this approach—so as far as our research shows, it remains theoretical.
By far the most radical move, which we encountered only a few times (and only with young people), was to shirk the community aspect of identity entirely—at least in theory. That is, to disassociate yourself with nation-ness, tribe-ness, town-ness, village-ness, and so on. Their identity was their own body, and the scope of their lived experience. Their cultural identity was one—the self—and their “community-based identity” was, at most, on the familial level. As far as how this radically limited construction of identity plays out ideologically, we can only speculate, until we have more research. Of the many people we talked to, the few who took this approach seemed to also be individuals who were very “open” to other cultures, ideologies, etc. This would be one excellent topic for future research, i.e. is it possible that without borders, no one “Is Not” (Is Not Hungarian, Is Not Romanian)—and does this mean that everyone “Is”? By stripping the presence/absence (or “being/not-being”) binary down to “yourself v. everyone else,” are you less likely to assume your is the dominant “culture”?