Interethnic contradictions in Transylvania (middle of the nineteenth — early twentieth centuries) as seen through the eyes of Russian observers

Abstract

Reorganisation of the Austrian Empire into the dual Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1867 was followed by an attempt to cancel the special status of the Grand Principality of Transylvania, which had a long tradition of autonomous statehood, and absorb it into the Kingdom of Hungary. This caused a reaction by the Romanian nationalist movement in the region that intensified decade by decade. That this movement became a threat to the integrity of Austria-Hungary could not help but become an object of observation for Russian diplomats in the neighbouring Kingdom of Romania, where the issue of the status of Transylvanian Romanians was gaining more and more political attention. In this essay, based on archival and published sources, it is shown how Russian observers, first and foremost Russian diplomats in Bucharest, described not only the complex interethnic relations at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also the attitude of the Romanian political elite and Romanian public opinion towards the status of Romanians in Transylvania - subjects of the Habsburgs. The author comes to the conclusion that a glace thrown from outside on this remote region, loosely con-nected with Russia, nevertheless allows conclusions to be drawn that help to reassess issues that concerned the Russian Empire (such as the Bessarabia question).