[CivilSoc] Chechnya, Hungary, Romania and the Project on Etnic Relations

[Civil Society International]

This article, from the International Herald Tribune, comes from the list
<minelres@mailbox.riga.lv>. Apart from a dubious analogy between Putin and
Sharon--the former does not face an enemy whose militant extremes wish to
obliterate his country from the map--it tells an interesting story about the
work of the Project on Ethnic Relations and the position that former Russian
prime minister Yevgeny Primakov has taken on Chechnya.
Holt Ruffin
CivilSoc moderator
--------------------
Original sender: Alex Grigor'ev <alex.grigorev@per-usa.org>
Subject: International Herald Tribune on Project on Etnic Relations
Copyright � 2001 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Peacemakers show the way
William Pfaff International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Romania's  Hungarians
PARIS - While the war makers make war, there are peacemakers at work,
although theirs is the less popular undertaking. The war in Chechnya put
Vladimir Putin into the presidency of Russia, so he has an active interest
in it not being demonstrated unnecessary.
However, that is what the former Russian prime minister Yevgeni Primakov
claims. He was Putin's only serious rival for the Russian presidency. He
says the Chechens deserve a special status inside the Russian Federation. He
implicitly argues that you don't solve a problem of internal affairs by
waging a war against a part of your own
population, as President Putin is doing.
Human Rights Watch, in a report issued in February, characterizes Russia's
continuing military actions there as arbitrary sweeps conducted in a climate
of lawlessness, with continuing civilian victims.
Primakov notes that a precedent exists for special status for minority
peoples in Russia, even for quasi-autonomy. Finland had such a status as a
grand duchy of the old Romanov Russian empire, before the revolution.
Finland had its own parliament and army. "During the time of the czars,"
Primakov says, "the Finns wouldn't even arrest Russian revolutionaries who
crossed over into Finland to hold meetings and their congresses. The Finns
wouldn't even hand over terrorists."
He proposes that the Chechens today should have independence "within a
common economic and military framework with Russia."
His advice is unlikely to be taken by the current Russian government, but is
obviously the only realistic course for it to adopt. It is the lesson of
virtually every modern precedent of nationalist insurgence against foreign
occupation.
Saying as much to Putin today would seem as useless as saying it to Israel's
prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Nonetheless, ethnic nationalism continues to
be a more powerful political force than ideology--the ravages of communism
and fascism notwithstanding. Only reason can work against it.
Reason sometimes even succeeds
Take the case of Romania, a Balkan country with a grave internal ethnic
problem. The treaties following World War I gave Romania a considerable
ethnic Hungarian population, mainly in Transylvania. Today, in a population
of some 23 million, more than 1.6 million Romanians are ethnic Hungarians.
The history of relations between the
two peoples is very troubled.
After the fall of communism, the political leaders of the two communities
barely spoke to one another. The Romanian majority suspected the ethnic
Hungarians of disloyalty and separatism, and the Hungarians considered
themselves, with their distinct culture, oppressed by the Romanian majority
and government.
Thanks in very large measure to skilled intervention and arbitration by a
small American nongovernmental agency, the Princeton-based Project on Ethnic
Relations (www.per-usa.org), a dialogue was opened which, a decade later,
has led to formal protocols of agreement between the current ruling party in
Romania, the Party of Social Democracy, and the Democratic Union of
Hungarians in Romania (UDMR).
A durable and politically sophisticated structure of ethnic agreements has
been developed, unique in the region, which already has survived one change
of government and is supported by all of the major parties.
The Romanian government has also reached a successful compromise with
Hungary concerning a controversial "status act" that Hungary has adopted,
giving ethnic Hungarians who are citizens of neighboring countries special
privileges in Hungary. One reason the Romanians
dealt successfully with this was that leaders of their own Hungarian
minority helped to forge the agreement with Hungary.
The situation contrasts painfully with that in Slovakia, where there is an
ethnic Hungarian minority of more than a half-million people in an overall
population of some 5.3 million, and where there will be national elections
in September.
Relations between majority and minority have always at best been fragile,
and the populist and authoritarian former prime minister, Vladimir Meciar,
who calls himself the defender of the Slovak people, has a good chance of
being returned to office.
Still, south-central and southeastern Europe has been greatly changed by the
influence of the European Union, the Council of Europe and NATO, the
activities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and
the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and by the
sophisticated interventions of individual groups like the Project on Ethnic
Relations, which can say things to the national participants in ethnic
dialogues that none of them individually can afford to say.
Domestic politics in these countries have to a degree become international
politics. This change in dimension has made an important difference in a
region in the past isolated and haunted by histories of past injustices.
If this process of honest and honorable dialogue could be transported to the
Caucasus and the Middle East, it would be a great blessing.
International Herald Tribune Los Angeles Times Syndicate International
Copyright � 2001 The International Herald Tribune