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Collectivization in the Odorhei District (The Hungarian Autonomous Region) SÁNDOR OLÁH Historians from Hungary and Romania have generally neglected the postwar social history of ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania.1 As a consequence, research on the collectivization of areas inhabited by this ethnic group is barely nascent. There is no theoretical or empirical academic literature to speak of on the topic, and the few relevant sources published after 1989 are generally limited to memoirs , interviews, a few articles and several manuscripts under review.2 Recently, an interdisciplinary research group has initiated a project on the history of the shortlived Hungarian Autonomous Region (HAR, formed in 1952 from the presentday counties of Covasna, Harghita and Mureş),3 in which they also tackled aspects of the process of land collectivization. I myself have approached this topic indirectly in a study of the struggle of peasants living the Homorod Valley to defend their traditional autonomy during the 1949–1962 period.4 This chapter provides a general overview of the history of collectivization in the Odorhei district, an administrative unit that was part of three different regions during the 1950–1962 period: the Stalin region between 1950 and 1952, the HAR between September 1952 and December 1962, and the Mureş-Hungarian Autonomous Region until 1968. The purpose of the chapter is to identify the impact of ethnicity and of administrative autonomy on the collectivization campaign in this Hungarian-dominated region. To this end, it explores the district’s administrative and geographical characteristics, the organization of households, the pace of the local collectivization campaign relative to the process of collectivization at the national level, as well as the manipulation of class cleavages by authorities in order to further their objectives. 1. ETHNICITY AND ADMINISTRATIVE AUTONOMY IN THE COLLECTIVIZATION CAMPAIGN The HAR was established at the suggestion of the Soviet Union in 1952, along with the ratification of a new Constitution of communist Romania. Stalin and Molotov had personally reviewed the constitutional draft (published on July 18, 1952), including a proposition concerning the administrative reorganization of the above-mentioned region. Center and Periphery in the Collectivization Campaign 230 The HAR was a predominantly ethnic Hungarian land. In the February 1956 census, the region’s 731,387 inhabitants (4.2 percent of Romania’s population) had the following ethnic distribution: 77.32 percent Hungarian (565,510), 20 percent Romanian (146,830), 0.43 percent German (3,214), 0.41 percent Jewish (3,023) and other ethnic groups. Out of Romania’s total Hungarian population, about a third lived in the HAR. Most of the region’s inhabitants (71.5 percent) lived in villages , while the urban population accounted for less than half a million people (208,782). Migration to towns increased sharply during the 1950s, albeit mostly towards Târgu Mureş, the region’s capital, whose population increased from 48,596 to 69,962 (so that by 1959, five HAR districts had smaller populations than the city of Târgu Mureş).5 The establishment of the HAR was meant to better facilitate the integration of ethnic Hungarians into the Romanian socialist state. The chief target population was that of the Szeklers [in Hungarian, the Székely], an ethnically homogeneous Hungarian group who engaged in actions deemed chauvinistic by the state leadership during the 1950s. The creation of the HAR was followed with great interest both by ethnic Hungarians in Romania and by the Hungarian state. In a report entitled “The Reverberations of the HAR,” Wasner János, an attaché of the Hungarian Embassy in Bucharest wrote: The constitutional draft containing the establishment of HAR was received with enthusiasm by ethnic Hungarians, notably by the Szeklers […]. The right to use the Hungarian language in any state institution located within the HAR sparked the joy of many, particularly of those Hungarians who do not speak Romanian. At the same time, the establishment of HAR is expected to be detrimental to the interests of Romanian chauvinists who were rather put off by the granting of minority rights and who are now likely to be eliminated from public office (especially those living in the Szekler Land [in Hungarian, Székelyföld]). Some fear that the HAR might be plagued by economic difficulties, that transfers from the central budget might be insufficient for its needs. So far the funds necessary to start operations have not reached the coffers of the region. Members of the working class point to the fact that Romanian chauvinists in various ministries, particularly those working with Vasile...

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