This book, frankly, is a disgrace – not only for the East European Monographs series or for Romanian studies in general, but also for modern history writing per se. Its only advantage is the fact that the main text ends after a mere 150 pages.
The almost six hundred volumes in the East European Monographs series include some fine examples of historical scholarship. With this publisher, however, the author always carries the burden of editing and proofreading. In the case of volume DXCVIII the typo “Translyvania” on the cover does not bode well for the quality of the manuscript. Any native speaker could have told the author that English sentences habitually do not run over seven or more lines. Every PC user is familiar with the annoying rectangles on screen indicating that the software is unable to display certain unicode characters, but one rarely encounters those rectangles in a printed book.
Not even the most meticulous and conscientious editor (or translator, in this case) could have saved Sălăgean’s book. The composing of the book has been handled as carelessly and hastily as the proofreading. None of the many personalities mentioned in the exposé is introduced properly to the general reader. Conversely, any reader with a background in Romanian studies or the history of the Eastern block will search in vain for new insights or even snippets of new information from the archives used (the National Archives in Bistrița, Târgu-Mureș, Oradea and Cluj-Napoca, the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Central National Historical Archives).
Not even a Pulitzer Prize-winning author could have saved this book, as it comes without even an inkling of a research question or an open-minded approach to history. The informed reader will probably wonder why – more than a decade after Ceaușescu’s demise – so many old topoi of Romanian historiography refuse to die. Firstly, the author assumes a national perspective, i.e., by implying that Transylvania stopped being an issue as soon as it was returned to Romanian sovereignty in March 1945. The author abhors communism, but gives Romanian comrades like Pătrășcanu the benefit of the doubt. Secondly, the author deplores the political control over history-writing under communism, but merrily copies most of the historical myths produced in that era: the heroism of August 23, 1944, and the tabooing of Romania’s previous alliance with Nazi-Germany. To refer to the German-Romanian military positions vis-à-vis the advancing Red Army as “defensive” is correct only in a strictly limited military sense.
The Romanians, according to Sălăgean, rejected (Soviet) communism; whereas part of the Hungarian and Jewish minorities were all too ready to strike a bargain with the enemy. In history, the Romanians strove to save their nation-state, but were time and again defeated by the treacherousness and cynicism of other nations and great powers. The Soviet occupation of Northern Transylvania is but a case in point of this eternal historical truth. In the conclusion, it reads: “…Romania could but to influence, as much as possible, the decisions of the Great Powers, fructifying [sic], with maximum of efficiency and at the right time, the few trump cards it had in hand. … The developments of the following months, however, have brought out the huge discrepancy existing between the aspirations of the democratic political forces from Romania and the cruel geopolitical reality” (P. 152).
Starting with a preordained answer rather than a research question, the author presents the events largely as they unfolded, and skips from one archival document to the next. As she fails to adequately distinguish the various layers of the complex events (e.g., between central strategic decisions in Moscow or Bucharest and realities on the ground in Cluj or Maramureș), the resulting narrative is as chaotic as reality must have been. After a rather subjective restating of “objective history” in the first chapter, the second chapter uncritically follows the US policy-makers’ debate on the post-war future of Transylvania. The interesting, but little known fact that the Western allies apparently considered the option of an independent Transylvania while weighing the conflicting principles of historical rights, ethnic homogeneity and political viability is only mentioned in passing. After a fourth chapter with a kaleidoscopic collection of political decisions and events in the various cities of Northern Transylvania, the fifth chapter presents the apotheosis, the restoration of Romanian sovereignty.
The only party involved in this book that should not be blamed is the archival collections. A selection of primary sources is reprinted (in poor translation) in a 30-page appendix. Its relevance for the book is at best doubtful, as the author never refers to the appendix in the text, and the selection of sources is never explained.
A modern approach would consider this episode in the history of Northern Transylvania as an ideal opportunity to study the interaction of state institutions and societal groups in a situation of near political vacuum, or at least the temporary breakdown of state authority (be it Romanian or Soviet). The final sentence of the book demonstrates that the author focuses on historical hindsight rather than the openness of the actual situation, and thus completely misses the opportunity to analyze the local political authorities’ struggle to control the situation on the ground and the strategies of local groups coping with political and military uncertainties firsthand on the basis of the archival sources: “The Moscow’s [sic] implacable will has made that, in the end, none of them would enjoy the satisfaction of a complete success. That thing has remained, for a long period of time, an exclusive privilege of the representatives of the Stalinist communism” (P. 152).
Apart from being an insult to the historically interested reader, the author also fails to do justice to the interesting material available in the archives that would have enabled her to really rewrite this historical episode (along the lines of new Cold War history), rather than to repeat ad nauseam well-known facts from a conventional perspective. Regrettably, this historical study was not “lost in translation,” but much, much earlier.