Word: transylvania
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wooden clubs, rival groups of Romanians and ethnic Hungarians closed in on each other on a balmy spring evening last week. For a while only taunts and epithets were hurled. Then weapons flashed, and blood stained the Square of the Roses in downtown Tirgu Mures, an industrial city in Transylvania. By the time the army intervened, three people were dead and scores wounded...
...Romania's provisional government and a brutal reminder of how easily ethnic tensions can explode in Eastern Europe. Freed from the iron rule of the Ceausescu regime, Romania's 2 million ethnic Hungarians (in a total population of 23 million) have begun to campaign for greater autonomy in Transylvania, where most of them live. Their demands have outraged Romanian nationalists. Several clashes, including the savage beating of four local leaders of the Hungarian Democratic Union, led up to the latest hostilities...
Like what? A neo-Stalinist backlash in the U.S.S.R. restarts the cold war and threatens a hot one? Or a secessionist warlord in Belorussia grabs some nuclear weapons from Soviet stockpiles and brandishes them? Or Hungary presses revanchist claims to Transylvania? Astonishing developments might not always be as welcome as they were last year. The Administration's warning is deliberately vague. It invites listeners to fill in the blank with their own worst fears. The American manifesto for the '90s is that a specter is haunting Europe, the specter of "unpredictability" and "instability." Those were the words that Bush used...
Neighboring Rumania is emerging from the Ceausescu tyranny with two ethnic traumas. In the west, almost half the country consists of the disputed region of Transylvania, where most of Rumania's ethnic Hungarians live. Ceausescu regularly accused them of sabotage and planned to destroy their villages and force them into housing complexes. Delighted at Ceausescu's fall, the Hungarians still wonder if the new government will treat them fairly. Case in point: the handling of Laszlo Tokes, the dissident Hungarian clergyman in the town of Timisoara whose harassment by Ceausescu's forces in December helped spark the revolt that eventually...
...Bucharest, Ceausescu appeared before a contrived propaganda rally outside the presidential palace. Thousands of workers had been assembled to applaud and wave flags on cue as he called for unity and tried to blame the riots on Hungarian "revanchists" bent on recapturing Transylvania. His rasping voice was rising to a shout when the crowd suddenly drowned him out with boos, jeers and demands for the truth about Timisoara. Visibly astonished by this face-to- face encounter with rebellion, Ceausescu froze. He quickly ended the rally and darted into the palace...