 |
| Visit of Romanian leaders to Budapest in the mid-1960s |
During the late
1980s allegations of Romania’s terrorism-provoking nationalism and aggressive
military impulse were so persistently repeated and widely disseminated as to
persuade many Western intelligence services that a domestic military coup and chauvinist attack against ethnic Hungarians (and other
minority groups) in Transylvania were quite possible.[i]
According to a mid-1988 assessment by the CIA,
for example, a “widespread uprising” resulting in “near-anarchy could lead to a
seizure of power by the military,” while domestic violence could “turn into
ethnic violence directed at the Hungarian minority in Transylvania.”[ii]
The assessment continued that only “incipient anarchy” – or a threat “to remove
Romania from the Warsaw Pact” – would render Soviet
military intervention a “plausible contingency.”[iii]
 |
| Kadar and Ceausescu, May 1967 |
CIA analysts also expressed
the belief that succession “may invite East-West rivalry as Moscow attempts to reassert influence” over the
regime “most defiant of Soviet strictures,” and that even moderate disorder
“would offer [Moscow] opportunities for restoring lost influence.”[iv]
However, the CIA then affirmed somewhat contradictorily that “Romania’s
problems were homegrown,” as if Soviet efforts to impose its influence and
control on Bucharest were unrelated to Romania’s problems.[v]
In mid-June 1989,
Hungarian Politburo member and reform economist Imre Poszgay publicly confirmed one of the circumstances
that would provoke an incursion by the Soviet Army within the Soviet Bloc:
 |
| Imre Pozsgay |
"A Soviet military
intervention could occur in only one case: the outbreak of
a civil war, which would threaten the
security of Europe by upsetting the balance of forces. This is a danger that we can
avert if we here are able to bring about a phase of peaceful transition."[vi]
Privately,
Hungarian authorities suspected as late as November 1989 that an attempt to leave
the Warsaw Pact would provoke Soviet military intervention.[vii]
Indeed, Soviet military standing orders for its units in the Odessa Military District,
which Romanian intelligence obtained during the mid-1980s, indicated exactly
the same two precipitants for a military (or paramilitary) intervention into
Romania identified by the CIA – an attempt to leave the Warsaw Pact or general
instability.[viii] According to former Deputy Soviet Foreign
Minister Ivan Aboimov, who in December 1989 was also the Warsaw Pact Secretary
General and the head of the Crisis Cell on Romania (together with the Chief of
the General Staff Mikhail Moiseyev and KGB foreign intelligence chief Leonid Shebarshin),
the Romanian debate over the possible public release of this document prompted
Moscow to uncharacteristically rush the declassification of the December 24,
1989 meeting in which Ambassador Jack Matlock expressed U.S. understanding of a
possible Soviet intervention following U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s
apparent acknowledgment of the same on U.S. television earlier that day.[ix]
 |
| Ivan Aboimov |
Moscow quite
evidently became so dedicated to this bit of “transparency” as a means of preempting
reputational and possible political repercussions should knowledge of Soviet
contingency plans regarding Romania were made public.[x] Aboimov
failed to note that the White House officially denounced (i.e. “clarified”)
Baker’s statement (thus underscoring the questionable nature of the State
Department instructions to Matlock to make that approach) the following day.[xi] The
controversy over how those instructions were generated and transmitted
continued to be debated among U.S. principals within diplomatic and
intelligence circles into the new millennium.[xii]
At the end of the
1980s there was – and, interestingly, continues to be – a generalized
reluctance to acknowledge that Moscow (or other bloc members) had contingency
plans for intervening militarily that would become operational in case general
instability ensured (or was provoked) within other members of the Warsaw Pact. In
contrast, an entire mythology was created regarding alleged Romanian violence
against its citizens seeking to escape the country. The Hungarian media printed
numerous reports claiming that scores and even hundreds were killed while
attempting to flee Romania, even after they had reached the Hungarian side of
the frontier.[xiii]
Such reporting in the local and central media, common enough during 1988 and
1989, implied that Romanian authorities were responsible for killing refugees within Hungary – an act of war requiring forceful response – consequently
inciting anti-Romanian sentiment.
On more than one
occasion Hungarian authorities publicly denied these reports. The Hungarian
police did so, for instance, regarding a January 1989
accusation made by the Hungarian Democratic Forum to the head of the Hungarian National Assembly that the
bodies of eighteen “escapees from Romania” had been found at the frontier.[xiv]
However, such denials by necessity appeared in later editions and broadcasts
and rarely as lead stories. In the meantime, the damage had been done and
Hungarian audiences were imprinted with images of refugees stumbling across the
bodies of dead children on the Romanian-Hungarian border,
where crows were “already picking at their corpses.”[xv]
Soviet, Hungarian
and other Warsaw Pact sources reported a “rush to the exits” that
had Romanians of all ethnicities fleeing the country under a hail of fire.[xvi]
These reports then re-surfaced in Western media, including Radio Free Europe analyses,
alleging, for example, that “the Romanian-Yugoslav border had become the bloodiest in Europe” and that
some 400 Romanian citizens had been shot while trying to escape to Yugoslavia.[xvii]
According to one RFE analyst there was even a “spill-over effect across the
Romanian-Soviet border” that confronted “Soviet
authorities with the unprecedented problem of how to deal with refugees from a
neighboring communist country” and compelled Moscow to seek “solutions to the ethnic and social
tension behind it.”[xviii]
However, as another
journalist noted, it was “difficult to reconcile these stories with the fact
that some 6,500 people managed to escape illegally in 1988 by crossing the
border into Hungary.”[xix] Rather
than questioning why such allegations might be made, given that so many similar
reports regarding the Hungarian border had proven false repeatedly, the
journalist suggested instead that the “inconsistency itself could possibly have
been devised [by Bucharest] to keep the would-be
escapees as insecure as possible.”[xx]
Thus, Romania authorities were alleged to be responsible for spreading false
stories of their own brutality at the border in the international media in order to discourage citizens from
attempting escape. The simpler explanation, that those reports were intended to
discredit Romania and to advance the interests of Budapest and Moscow as opposed to those of Bucharest, was deemed
far-fetched.
Of course,
successful propagation of the image of Romanian violence, especially anti-minoritarian
violence, suited those members of the Hungarian leadership in Budapest seeking
support for a transfer of sovereignty over the region of Transylvania; if not to Hungary than at
least away from Romania. Such allegations were anchored to a scenario of
increasing violence, and neither Hungarian nor Soviet sources were reticent in
making explicit references to its inevitability. Indeed, throughout this period
Soviet and other Warsaw Pact media were consistently prejudicial in their
coverage of Hungarian-Romanian tensions, ignoring or deriding Romanian
positions and denials while giving full voice and support to Hungarian
allegations.[xxi]
In August 1988,
for example, Hungarian television invited Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister
Vladimir Petrovsky and Soviet Historian Roy Medvedev for a
discussion regarding the necessity of territorial autonomy for the ethnic Hungarians of Transylvania.[xxii] The Soviet diplomat likened “Romanian-Hungarian tension and the nationality situation in Transylvania to the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh,” over which Azeris and Armenians were already violently clashing in 1988.[xxiii]
Devolving into full-scale war, the death toll of that conflict would reach
28,000-38,000 by the early 1990s.
 |
| Vladimir Petrovsky |
Medvedev took the
Romanian regime to task for alleged “repression of the Hungarian minority” and then advocated the
reconstitution of Stalin’s “Autonomous Region in
Transylvania” as the solution the problem.[xxiv]
Reinstatement of the autonomous region thenceforth became a slogan that Hungarian
leaders would repeat through Romania’s December 1989 Revolution and well into the new millennium. Stalin had
originally imposed the Hungarian Autonomous Region on Bucharest in order to
better control the Romanians (and Hungarians); not to extend human and civil
rights guarantees to beleaguered populations.[xxv]
In July 1989,
after insisting that the extension of Hungarian sovereignty over Romania’s
ethnic Hungarians “did not imply revisionist intentions” – Budapest having
proclaimed its “duty to feel responsible for Hungarians who had found
themselves living outside Hungary’s present borders after the
First and Second World Wars” – International Department chief Mátyás Szűrös, who since March was also speaker for the Hungarian
Parliament, expressed to a Radio Free Europe journalist his belief that “the best solution
to the problem would have been to grant Transylvania ‘autonomy’ after World War II.”[xxvi]
Seemingly lost to the Hungarian speaker was the fact that the wartime
occupation of that region by Hungary had resulted in the
complete disenfranchisement of the Romanian majority, the confiscation of their
property, and a systematic execution of the elites in Romanian settlements.[xxvii]
 |
| Mátyás Szűrös and Istvan Csurka |
Szűrös avoided specifying “what kind of autonomy he
had in mind” when pressed by the journalist, claiming instead that Hungary did not suffer from the blight of extreme chauvinism while insisting that Romania pursued such
policies towards its minorities and towards all of its neighbors. According to
Szűrös:
"We must do
everything to protect the equal rights of the Hungarian national minority in
Transylvania …In Hungary there are, in fact, no truly irredentist or
revisionist tendencies. It is, however, possible that nationalism is present in the minds of some individuals or
within small groups. This is not the problem. The problem begins when
nationalism is raised to the status of official policy. This is what has
happened in Romania. Romanian policies are not only anti-Hungarian but are also
directed against the Soviet Union and against the southern Slavs."[xxviii]
One of the first
measures undertaken at the start of Romania’s December 1989 Revolution by then-ad
interim Hungarian President Mátyás Szűrös was to unilaterally abrogate the 1948
Hungarian-Romanian Friendship and Cooperation Treaty that formally established the frontier between
the two states.[xxix]
According to President Szűrös, Hungary could now with “clear conscience” support and
assist Transylvania to “become an autonomous region”
with its “rightful independence.”[xxx]
Side-stepping the question from a New
York Times correspondent as to the aim and consequences of abrogating the
only agreement in which Budapest officially recognized the post-World War II Hungarian-Romanian border,
Foreign Minister (and former International Department security section head) Gyula Horn claimed that the “the bases which created the
agreement have ceased,” rendering its further existence “untenable.”[xxxi]
 |
| Gyula Horn |
A principal active
measures theme propounded throughout 1989 was that of
the rising Romanian military threat towards various other Warsaw Pact members. In discussion with his Western and
Israeli colleagues in Bucharest, for example, Hungarian
Ambassador Szűcs insisted on an impending Romanian armed
aggression against his country, claiming that the Romanian Army had been placed
on alert “several times” in preparation for such an offensive.[xxxii]
First introduced during the Polish crisis of 1980, by May 1989 the Soviet active
measures theme that Ceauşescu secretly advocated military intervention against other alliance members in the service
of ideological orthodoxy was now becoming a regular feature of Western
analyses.[xxxiii]
During the spring
and summer of 1989, Mátyás Szűrös, Gyula Horn, Géza Kótai, and Csaba Tabajdi; all senior alumni from the
Hungarian communist party’s (HSWP) International Department – the Central Committee’s coordinating center
for Hungarian active measures – repeatedly claimed on-going atrocity and
aggressive Romanian military preparations, setting the stage for
confrontation and justifying beforehand forceful counter-measures. In mid-June
1989, Tabajdi, the deputy chief of the
International Department’s section for relations with ruling parties, told the
Italian journal La Stampa that “the
great majority of Hungarians know that an attack would not come from the west
but from the southeast,” in other words, from Romania.[xxxiv] HSWP Politburo
member Imre Poszgay, soon to become deputy head
of the HSWP in its new incarnation as the Hungarian
Socialist Party, seconded Tabajdi, explaining that the “radical
revision” of Hungarian Defense Policy had been driven by Budapest’s “recognition that any
foreseeable attack” would originate from Romania and not from NATO.[xxxv]
 |
| Csaba Tabajdi |
[i]
President Antall told a German journal that “Romanians simply need an enemy
[and] that’s us.” He further claimed
that Romanian nationalists sought to annex parts of eastern Hungary and the Soviet Union. Der Spiegel, 21 May 1990,
pp. 172-176; Foreign Broadcast
Information Service, Joint Publications Research Service, East Europe (FBIS, JPRS-EER)-90-092, 26 June 1990,
pp. 18-20.
[ii]
“Romania: Impending Crisis?” in Soviet
Policy Toward Eastern Europe Under
Gorbachev: National Intelligence Estimate (NIE
11/12-9-98), 26 May 1988, p. 16, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/at-cold-wars-end-us-intelligence-on-the-soviet-union-and-eastern-europe-1989-1991/16526pdffiles/NIE1112-9-88.pdf.
Even after the revolution American intelligence believed that
“chronic political instability” would be “accompanied by
outbreaks of ethnic violence.” Outlook For Eastern Europe in 1990: Interagency Intelligence Memorandum
(NI IIM 90-10001), 8 February 1990,
p. 37, http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000265642.pdf.
The single outbreak that occurred in Târgu Mureş in March 1990 was evidently orchestrated to
portray Romanians as the aggressors to international opinion. See the candid
interview with British director Patrick Swain describing that orchestration and his unwitting role in it, in Mihai
Mincan, “Culisele manipulării conflictului româno-maghiar din 20 martie 1990”
[Behind the Scenes of the Manipulation of the Romanian-Hungarian Conflict of 20
March 1990], Adevărul,
14 March 2010, at http://adevarul.ro/news/eveniment/exclusiv-culisele-manipularii-conflictului-romano-maghiar-20-martie-1990-1_50ad49937c42d5a663924d61/index.html.
See also Dorin Suciu, “Postscriptum la o manipulare” [Postscript to a
Manipulation] at http://roncea.ro/2010/03/22/dupa-20-de-ani-post-scriptum-la-o-manipulare-dorin-suciu-prezinta-noi-dovezi-de-la-targu-mures-ungurii-au-reusit-sa-blocheze-pe-youtube-documentarul-despre-ororile-din-1990/
. For the portrayal of Romanians as extreme chauvinist aggressors see e.g., Blaine Harden, “Hungary Protests Romanian Mob Action; Ethnic
Hungarians Slain, Injured in Transylvania, Budapest Says,” The
Washington Post, 21 March 1990; “A
Bitter Blood Feud: Angry Mobs Attack Ethnic Hungarians,” The Washington Post, 22 March 1990; Elöd Kincses, Marosvásárhely
fekete márciusa [Black March in Targu Mures], Püski Kiadó, Budapest, 1990, (English)
Black Spring: Romania’s Path from
Revolution to Pogrom December 1989-March 1990, Budapest-Munich, Present, 1992.
[iii]
Romania: Impending Crisis?” in Soviet
Policy Toward Eastern Europe Under
Gorbachev: National Intelligence Estimate (1988),
p. 16.
[iv] Ibid,
pp. 14-16.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Kevin
Devlin, “Hungary’s New Defense Doctrine:
‘Enemy Not The West But Romania,’” RAD Background Report/101, Radio Free Europe
Research (RFER), 16 June 1989, p. 3. Likewise, Szűrös noted that Moscow would not tolerate Romania’s departure from
the Warsaw Pact. As he told an RFE journalist
in July 1989, “the Soviet Union considers it essential for Romania to remain a
[member of] the Warsaw Pact.” Moscow’s “priority is to maintain the [present]
system of alliances for as long as NATO exists.” Interview of Hungarian Parliamentary
spokesman and former HSWP CC International Department chief Szűrös by Nestor Ratesh in Michael Shafir, “Matyas
Szűrös’s Interview with RFE’s
Romanian Service,” RAD Background Report/127, RFER, 20 July 1989a, p. 6.
[vii] See
e.g. Jacques Lévesque, The Enigma of
1989: The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe, Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1997, pp. 139-142.
[viii] The
Soviet standing military order was discovered in 1993 and its public release
debated in several meetings of Romania’s Supreme Defense Council (CSAT) at the
beginning of 1994. This author, then working as security sector reform
consultant with the Romanian defense ministry, general staff and foreign
intelligence agency, was made aware of that debate. Several CSAT members
subsequently confirmed the main elements of the Soviet standing order.
[ix] Interview by correspondent Marina
Kalashnikova with former Deputy Foreign Minister Ivan Aboimov, “The Country's
Leadership Regarded the GDR as Self-supporting Unit,” Vlast (Moscow), 26 April 2005. http://www.kommersant.com/p570876/r_1/The_Country_s_Leadership_Regarded_the_GDR_as_Self-supporting_Unit”/.
[x] To quote
Aboimov: “When I became the Ambassador in Budapest, I was informed that Iliescu
was about to accuse the USSR of preparing intervention in the Romanian affairs
during the revolution in 1989. Then the Russian
Foreign Ministry decided to declassify the record of my talk with
the US Ambassador Jack Matlock.” Ibid. Aboimov served as Soviet and then
Russian Ambassador to Hungary during 1990-1996.
[xi]
Statement by the Press Secretary, White House, December 25, 1989 cited in
Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy
and the End of the Cold War: An Insider’s Account of U.S. Policy in Europe,
1989-1992, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Woodrow Wilson Center Press and
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, p. 381; Thomas Blanton, “When Did The
Cold War End?” Cold War International
History Project Bulletin, No. 10 (March 1998): 184-191. Evidently unaware
of Aboimov’s revelation that Romanian actions prompted the uncharacteristic
voluntary declassification, Blanton observed that: “In 1994, the Foreign Ministry
of the Russian Federation declassified and published these selected documents,
for the obvious reason that the Soviets come off quite well in the exchange
with the Americans.” (p. 185.)
[xii]
Blanton presents the basic elements of this debate with Robert L. Hutchings, at
the time the U.S. National Intelligence Officers responsible for coordinating
the National Intelligence Estimates issued jointly by the U.S. intelligence
community, criticizing the message as “unfortunate,” and the U.S. Ambassador in
Moscow, Jack Matlock, defending the message (despite the official White House
disapproval at the time). Blanton (1998), pp. 185-188, footnote 17. See also
Hutchings (1997), p. 86.
[xiii]
Judith Pataki, “The Problem of Transylvanian Refugees,” Hungarian Situation
Report/3, RFER, 24 February 1989, pp. 35-36. Radio Budapest, 18 December 1988, 2400
hrs; Nepszabadsag, 25 December 1988; Magyar Nemzet, 9 and 14 January 1989.
[xiv]
The Gyula branch of the Hungarian Democratic Forum sent the letter on 9 January 1989. “Weekly
Record of Events in Eastern Europe,” RFER, 13 January 1989, OSA,
Box 120, Folder 2, Report 293, p. 7. There was a shooting incident at the
Romanian-Hungarian border in May 1988 that resulted in at least one
casualty. However, the cause of the incident and the identity and location of
the victim(s) remain unclear. Ceausescu referred to the incident briefly in the
18 June 1988 Central Committee meeting in a manner that suggested its
singularity.
[xv] Radio Budapest, 18
December 1988, 2400 hrs; Nepszabadsag,
25 December 1988; Radio Budapest, 10
January 1989, 2200 hrs; Pataki (1989), pp. 35-36.
[xvi] See
e.g. the statements of ethnic Hungarians in the Ukrainian SSR. Interview with Magyar
writers from Uzhgorod, Radio Budapest, 16 July
1988, 4:00 P.M.; Erdelyi Magyar
Hirugynokseg [Hungarian Press of Transylvania] (Satu Mare/Szatmar Nemeti),
22 June 1988, as cited in Vladimir Socor, “Soviet Reactions To The
Hungarian-Romanian Dispute,” RAD Background Report/162, RFER, 18 August 1988, OSA,
Box 37, Folder 5, Report 60, pp. 2-3.
[xvii]
Magyarorszag, 20 January 1989; Pataki
(1989), p. 36.
[xviii]
Socor, “Soviet Reactions to the Hungarian-Romanian Dispute” (1988), pp. 3-5.
[xix] Magyarorszag, 20 January 1989; Pataki
(1989), p. 36.
[xx] Ibid.
[xxi] Socor,
“Soviet Reactions to the Hungarian-Romanian Dispute” (1988), pp. 3-5. See also
Budapest Television,
24 June 1988, 7:30 P.M.; “Vremya,”
Moscow Television, 1700 hrs, 28, 29, and 30 June
1988; Pravda and Izvestia,
23, 29 June and 1 July 1988;
“Standpoint,” Ekho Planety,
no. 12, June 1988, p. 24; “From Differing Positions,” Ekho Planety, no 15, July 1988, pp. 18-19; “Romania-Hungary: What Is Going On?” Moskovskie Novosti, no. 28,
July 1988, p. 5; “Hungary-Romania: Stating the Case,” Novoe Vremya, no. 29, July 1988, pp. 37-38; “Hungary-Romania:
Problems and Prospects,” Literaturnaya
Gazeta, no. 30, July 1988, p. 9. For the partisan coverage from the other
Pact members see Vladimir Socor, “East European Media Treatment of the
Hungarian-Romanian Dispute,” RAD Background Report/161, RFER, 19 October 1988,
OSA, Box 37, Folder 5, Report 56, pp. 1-4.
[xxii] See
the comments of Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Petrovsky and historian Roy Medvedev to Hungarian Television in Socor, “Soviet
Reactions to the Hungarian-Romanian Dispute” (1988), p. 3.
[xxiii]
Ibid, p. 3; Hungarian Television, 5 August 1988, 9:30 P.M.; see also Hungarian
Situation Report/13, Radio Free Europe Research, 17 August 1988, item 3.
[xxiv]
Socor, “Soviet Reactions to the Hungarian-Romanian Dispute” (1988), p. 3;
Hungarian Television, 5 August 1988, 9:30 P.M.
[xxv] See
e.g. Larry L. Watts, With Friends Like
These: The Soviet Bloc’s Clandestine War Against Romania, Bucharest,
Military Publishing House, 2010, pp. 103-111. See also, Stefano Bottoni, “The
Creation of the Hungarian Autonomous Region in Romania (1952): Premises and
Consequences,” Regio- Minorities,
Politics, Society, no. 1 (2003), Teleki László Intezet, pp. 71-93.
[xxvi]
Shafir (1989a), p. 4.
[xxvii] See
e.g. the reports of the German-Italian commissions of inquiry
(Altenburg-Roggeri, October 1940, and Roggeri-Hencke, February 1943) presented
in Vasile Puşcaş, Al doilea Război
Mondial: Transylvania şi aranjamentele europene
(1940-1944) [The Second World War: Transylvania and European
Arrangements (1940-1944)], Cluj, Fundaţia Culturala Română [Romanian
Cultural Foundation], 1995. The United States also obtained the final report of the second,
Roggeri-Hencke commission inquiry. See “Report by the Special Italo-German
Commission sent to Hungary and Romania.” Berlin, 8 February 1943, U.S.
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), General Records of the
Department of State, Division of South-East European Affairs, No.
871,000/1-3045, U.S. Consul in Geneva, Paul Squire, to Secretary of State,
30 January 1945.
[xxviii]
Shafir (1989a), pp. 4-5.
[xxix] The
intention to unilaterally abrogate the Hungarian-Romanian Friendship Treaty was
floated publicly in July 1988, almost a year and a half earlier, as a
recommendation to the Hungarian National Assembly’s Foreign Relations
Committee. The reason given at the time was the closing of the Hungarian
Consulate in Cluj. Reuter, 29 June 1988; AP, 30 June 1988. See
also Dan Ionescu, “Chronology of Hungarian
Protests at Romanian Rural Resettlement Plans,” RAD Background Report/129,
RFER, 9 July 1988.
[xxx]
Arpad Zengo interview with Szűrös on Budapest domestic radio in Hungarian, 20 December 1989,
0545 hrs GMT, in FBIS-EEU-89-243, 20 December 1989, p. 47. The day before,
soon-to-be-named deputy defense minister of Hungary, Ernő Raffay, stated to the
same journalist that since the Hungarians in Transylvania “have never wanted to live on Romania’s
territory,” he could say, “as a National Assembly deputy, that I will do everything to fulfill,
sooner or later, this wish of Magyardom in Romania.” Op. cit., p. 46. See also Costache
Codrescu, coordinator, Armata Română în
revoluţia din decembrie 1989: Studiu documentar [The Romanian Army in the
Revolution of December 1989: A Documentary Study], revised 2nd
edition, Bucharest, Editura Militară, 1998, p.
43. This call was echoed by the former senior Romanian Communist Party official, Károly Király.
[xxxi]
“Officials Give Briefing,” Budapest Domestic Service, 21 December 1989, 0950 hrs
GMT, FBIS-EEU-89-245, 22 December 1989, pp. 39-40. Having opened up the issue
of new border delineation, Hungary did not formally renounce territorial claims against Romania (or Slovakia) until after the
mid-1994 Conference on Stability in Europe.
Nicholas Denton, “Hungary Acts on Borders,” Financial Times, July 15, 1994, p.
2; Patrick Worsnip, “Talks On Stability Fan Old Enmities,” The Independent, May
28, 1994, p. 7; Cyrus R. Vance and David A. Hamburg, co-chairs, Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1997 Final
Report, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Commission on Preventing
Deadly Conflict, p. 205.
[xxxii]
Yosef Govrin, Israeli-Romanian Relations
at the End of the Ceausescu Era, New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 8, 119.
[xxxiii]
See e.g. Michael Shafir, “Revisionism under Romanian General’s Fire:
Ceauşescu’s Brother Attacks Hungarian Positions,” RAD Background Report/86,
RFER, 17 May 1989b, OSA, Box 53, Folder 11, Report 32, pp. 6-7. For similar
interpretations during the 1980 Polish crisis see Larry L. Watts, Extorting Peace: Romania and The End of The Cold War, 1978-1989, Bucharest, RAO, 2013, pp. 278-303. Regarding allegations of Romanian aggressive intent see Larry L. Watts, Dennis Deletant and Adam Burakowski, Did Nicolae Ceausescu Call for Military Intervention Against Poland in August 1989?, Cold War International History Project e-Dossier No. 60, February 3, 2015 at
[xxxiv]
Kevin Devlin, “Hungary’s New Defense Doctrine:
‘Enemy Not The West But Romania,’” RAD Background Report/101, RFER, 16 June
1989, p. 1; Interview of Csaba Tabajdi by Guido Rampoli, “Friends of Moscow, but in Command of our Army,”
La Stampa, 14 June 1989.
[xxxv]
Devlin (1989), p. 1; Rampoli (1989).
[xxxvi]
Devlin (1989), p. 1.
When is the final book of your trilogy on Romania coming out?
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