Exactly right about Roma & Sinti, too. Didn’t know enough about Turks in Bulgaria to use as an example.

I’d be interested, too, to find out more if Galicians or Navarre-ese see themselves as not-Spaniards. From this distance, those situations look more like Bavarians, Rheinl?nder or East Frisians in Germany than, say, Albanians in the former FYROM.

Short version: the Royalist government oppressed hell out of them, because it could. Then, the Communists under Dej actually treated them OK. Dej was an old-fashioned “internationalist”. Sort of like Stalin — he oppressed, imprisoned, terrorized and murdered more or less without discriminating. Even gave the Hungarians (well, some of them) their own autonomous region.

Then Ceausescu, who — among his many other striking characteristics — was a dickhead nationalist. He abolished the special autonomous region in 1968, and proceeded to slowly but steadily grind the Hungarians into the dirt. The usual crap — couldn’t use Hungarian in courts or official business or on street signs, no universities, informal but officially sanctioned and relentless discrimination, etc.

As a result, by 1989 there were actual refugee camps (the only ones in the Communist world) in Hungary, housing roughly 20,000 Hungarians who’d fled Romania.

Then since 1990, to make a very complicated story short, it’s been okay. Pretty good, even. A couple of nasty incidents near the beginning, but all Romanian governments since 1992 have been keeping a nervous eye on Brussels. So, universities, street signs, and a sharp decrease in overt discrimination.

Additional wrinkle: the aforementioned refugees were neither the first nor the last Hungarians to leave Romania. The Hungarian population has been gradually declining. It’s down to about 8% now, from a historical high of about 12%.

If you’re looking for a minority that’s traditionally been treated like dirt without anyone much caring… well, Gypsies, of course. But I’d point to the Bulgarian Turks. The targets of attempted ethnic cleansing as recently as the 1980s, and still poor, neglected, underrepresented, and the target of consistent discrimination at all levels.

The Bulgarians say that there isn’t a problem; and, remarkably, the EU seems willing to take their word for it. Strange but true.

Doug M.

Historically speaking (sorta post-1848), it’s been difficult for titular nations to share “their” nation-state with another national minority. It’s also been difficult for national groups to accept living in a nation-state that is not their own.

States set up as confederations — Switzerland (CH, anyone?), Canada, Belgium for all I know — may have a better chance than your garden-variety nation-state.

Cyprus has actually shown the usual method for solving this issue. If the two halves re-form the state as a confederation, that will be something new.

Now that I think this through a little more, I should add that thorough repression of the minority is another traditional response. Here I’m thinking particularly of Hungarians in Romania, but other examples may spring to mind.

DSW

A better question, perhaps, might be: is there an example of a successful state where the majority and minority get along as badly as Macedonian Slavs and Albanians do?

Doug M.

DSW

What exactly is it they’re asking that you think is unreasonable?