Avram Iancu, a National Hero or War Criminal?
This year, 2024, is declared in Romania as the Avram Iancu Memorial Year, with countless celebrations, processions, wreath-laying, folk- and military music, and many red-yellow-blue flags. Why?
Let me share a gap-filling guest post, the work of Szilágyi Szilárd.
Avram Iancu, a National Hero or War Criminal?
This year, 2024, is declared in Romania as the Avram Iancu Memorial Year, with countless celebrations, processions, wreath-laying, folk- and military music, and many red-yellow-blue flags.
In Transylvania, you can find almost no town in which his statue is absent, and also at least a street, square, or institution does not bear his name. His full-figure statue was erected on a tall stone column in Kolozsvár (Cluj) in December 1993 on the 75th anniversary of the Gyulafehérvár assembly that declared the union of Transylvania with Romania, on the square which today bare his name (former Bocskai).
In Marosvásárhely, his statue on horseback was erected, while on the site of one of the most brutal massacres in Abrudbánya, his bust was placed in a central location.
The parliamentary group of the National Liberal Party time to time prayed on their knees in front of his statue in the Romanian Parliament.
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His portrait was printed on the Romanian 5000 lei banknote in 1992…
Avram Iancu’s name is nowadays borne by two municipalities in Romania: one in his native village (Felsővidra) in Fehér (formerly Lower Fehér County), and the other (the former village of Keményfok) in Bihar County. The airport of Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca), Transylvania’s capital, is named after him. In 2023 a movie was made about him named Avram Iancu Against the Empire.
Avram Iancu today is regarded as one of the greatest national heroes, part of the Romanian historical pantheon.
Why all these? Because he is the national hero of the Romanians, the revolutionary, who fought against Hungarian oppression and defeated the Hungarians, who wanted to suppress the Romanians’ fight for freedom. This is what you hear in Romania about him, this is how he is described and presented to the world. But to speak about the thousands of Hungarian civilians (women, children, babies alike) killed by him, his subalterns, and his troops, the dozens of villages, and towns burned, people left without anything, hundreds of years old schools, libraries turned into ashes, is a taboo in Romania, and the Romanians do not know about this, because speaking about all these is a taboo.
But let’s see who he was.
His early life
In the Romanian national conscience, many myths and legends exist. But who was he in reality? He was born in Vidra in 1824, the second child of peasant parents.
His father was a wealthy serf, a forest ranger of the state manor of Topánfalva.
Avram Iancu started his learning in his village, then in 1837 he attended the Zalatna gymnasium, and between 1841 and 1844, he was an excellent pupil at the Piarist grammar school in Kolozsvár. In the atmosphere of the Transylvanian Diets of Kolozsvár, he became acquainted with Hungarian reformist politics. After 1844, as a law student, he expresses his hatred of the serf system with youthful enthusiasm and fervent revolutionary spirit.
The young jurist followed the debates of the Diet of 1846 closely and reacted with fervor to any reactionary attempt to delay the serf question. After graduating from the Law Academy in Kolozsvár, he went to Nagyszeben (Hermannstadt, Sibiu) as a civil servant, but here, in the capital of the Saxon self-government, a son of serfs had no chance of promotion. So he went to Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mures), the capital of the Székely Hungarians where about 34 Romanian lawyers worked alongside Hungarian lawyers from Transylvania.
Among them were many of his later comrades-in-arms, like Alexandru Papiu-Ilarian, Amos Tordăşianu, Vasile Fodor, Ilie Măcelaru, Samuil Poruţiu and others. The Romanian and Hungarian lawyers enjoyed close friendship and cooperation and the revolution of 15 March 1848 from Pest inspired the young lawyers from Marosvásárhely.
The Hungarian revolution and the Romanians’ reason why the Romanian revolt started
The problems and misunderstanding started when Avram Iancu and the other Romanian intellectuals saw that in Hungary, as a result of the April Laws of the Hungarian Revolution, the serfs were liberated while in Transylvania this did not happen immediately. Another problem was that the Romanians felt oppressed, had no political representation in the Transylvanian Diet, and were not part of the so-called Unio Trium Nationum together with the Hungarians, Székelys, and Saxons, and because of this, they demanded to be recognized as the fourth nation of Transylvania. They also demanded national and linguistic rights for the Romanians.
This is why in their first national assembly from Balázsfalva (Blaj) held in May 1848:
They declared that until their national demands were not fulfilled, they were against the union of Transylvania with Hungary, which was one of the main goals of the Hungarian Revolution. But they did not understand that the Union could resolve in the quickest way their national and social demands!
First of all, the eradication of serfhood was part of the April Laws in Hungary, but before Transylvania did not unite with Hungary, that was legally impossible to implement in Transylvania. So only after the Union could be put into effect in Transylvania.
Secondly, the recognition of Romanians as the “fourth nation” in Transylvania was impossible, because the Hungarian revolution put an end to the medieval-feudal concept of nations from Transylvania which were the “three nations”, based not on ethnicity, or common language, but on appurtenance to nobility or a group of special status, as the Saxons and Székelys were, although during the 16th century, the majority of the Székelys already lost their special status, many of them becoming serfs, so we can say that until 1848, these “three nations” mostly lost their meaning and importance.
The revolution of 1848 brought the modern concept of nation, based on ethnicity and citizenship, abolishing the “three nations” of Transylvania, declaring that from now on all the citizens of Hungary, regardless of their ethnicity, mother tongue, or religion, are equal, and they are all parts of the Hungarian nation, like in the modern states. For example in France, based on the same modern concept of nation, there is no Briton, Basque, or German nation, but only the French political nation, or in Romania also today the Hungarians are not recognized as a nation, but as a minority.
Also in Hungary from 1848, only the Hungarian nation existed and no other nation could be accepted, because would mean the partition of the country. The people of other ethnicities were recognized as different ethnicities, that could keep and develop their language and culture freely, but they were recognized not as nations but as nationalities.
So, Hungary, which based on the modern conception of a nation, abolished the “3 nations” of Transylvania, could not establish a new one, the Romanian. But, as Hungarian citizens, they had the guarantee that all their language and nationality rights would be respected.
Thirdly, the Romanians demanded national and language rights. Indeed, some of the Hungarian politicians were afraid of this, fearing that this could break Hungary apart, but already by the end of August 1848, the Hungarian political class was ready to implement very important rights for the Romanians and the other nationalities. From the elections in July 1848, there were many Romanian representatives in the Hungarian parliament, with the help of whom, the Union Commission of the parliament elaborated a nationality draft law, which gave very important rights to the Romanians. These were, as follows:
It permitted the use of the Romanian language in primary and secondary schools and seminaries and in church administration.
In villages of the Romanian tongue and in the parishes, it recommended that the records should be both in Romanian and Hungarian, while it stipulated only Hungarian correspondence with other authorities.
In counties, seats, and cities inhabited by Romanians it allowed speeches in Romanian at official councils and assemblies.
In the language of command of the national guard, Romanian would be also used besides the Hungarian.
The acts and royal and ministerial decrees would be published in Romanian as well.
Official documents, requests, and petitions written in Romanian would have to be accepted everywhere.
Even those Romanians could be elected in the county assemblies and commissions who could not speak the Hungarian language but only understood it.
Administrators of the Romanian tongue paid by the state would be employed at the royal courts of justice for the free representation of the poor people of the Romanian tongue.
The Romanians were to be employed in a “fair proportion” in every branch of public administration.
It promised that Transylvanian acts and laws prejudicial to Romanians would be repealed.
Concerning educational affairs, the bill promised that the Romanian-tongued population would be taken into account at the establishment of public schools.
A department of Romanian philology and literature would be established at the university. You can read more about it here: https://epa.oszk.hu/00400/00463/00005/pdf/152_katus.pdf pp 159-160
The very fact that, despite that they were informed about this draft law, the Romanians joined the Austrian forces against the Hungarians, as well the fact that the emperor dissolved the Hungarian Batthyány Government, and from now on the parliament had to deal with war issues, made, for the moment, pointless, but also impossible the implementation of this law. But the law of the nationalities eventually will be passed and implemented on 28 July 1849 by the second Hungarian government, the Szemere Government.
Another proof of the Hungarian goodwill was that on the Hungarian money (called the Kossuth bankó) issued by Lajos Kossuth, then the minister of finance, there were also German, Slovak, Serbo-Croat, and Romanian (with Cyrillic letters) inscriptions.
If we study all these carefully, we can see that even today in the world are very few countries that give such important rights to the national minorities. For example, if we summarize the points regarding the Romanian language, we can conclude that practically, the Romanian was recognized as an official language in the regions where the Romanians lived.
Today for example in Transylvania, the Hungarians only dream about the language of the police and military units, official documents, and petitions to be in Hungarian or on the Romanian money to have also Hungarian inscriptions. It is also a requirement that the Hungarian representatives in the local and national legislative forums be able to speak Romanian.
It is noteworthy that the leaders of the Romanians from Transylvania knew about the very generous nationality bill. In early October, after Timotei Cipariu had reported to him on the developments in Pest, Nicolae Bălăşescu wrote to George Bariţ: “We will get everything we want from the emperor. But I want you to know that the Hungarians’ parliament in Pest has granted us all the attributes of nationhood.” Read more about it here: https://mek.oszk.hu/03400/03407/html/369.html
The Romanians rejected the Hungarian proposals and sided with the Habsburgs against the Hungarians, starting with the revolt in October, of the commander of the troops in Transylvania (composed mostly of foreign and ethnic Romanian soldiers) Lieutenant General Anton Puchner, who declared himself loyal to the emperor and the enemy of the Hungarian government, they allied themselves with him and with the counter-revolution led and organized by the Habsburgs.
This is how the civil war in Transylvania started, during which, mostly in Western Transylvania the Hungarians were the subjects of attacks by large Romanian armed militias, that, supposedly were organized by Avram Iancu and his subalterns in legions and cohorts, threatening them with extermination.
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