From Proletarian Internationalism to Transnational Consciousness

Abstract Following the Treaty of Trianon, in Transylvania, which had been detached from historical Hungary and attached to Romania, besides the Romanian majority, there lived a considerable Hungarian- and German-speaking minority. Although in the last two decades of the communist dictatorship – in the 70s and 80s – as a consequence of emigration to Germany, the number of ethnic Germans decreased substantially, the number of Hungarian speakers is over one million even today. Regarding the characteristics of the post-World War II literary discourse and cultural policy, in the second half of the forties, the communist power gained control over all manifestations of community life in Romania. It regulated culture and the arts, banned, abolished, or restructured all forums that had enjoyed some kind of independence, and completely revised the literary and artistic canon. In this era, the discourse emphasizing the aspects of revolutionary transformation and radical policy change decisively builds on the enemy image; the fault-line between past and present and the necessity of continuous political struggle prevail in both poetry and prose. In order to achieve the intended social goals, this kind of communist sacrifice ethics regards the annihilation of resisters, protesters, and even of the internal opposition not only as a possibility but as an assumed necessity. This paper aims to present the ideological/political and aesthetic/poetic tendencies that determined Transylvanian Hungarian literature and cultural policy from the mid-40s until the end of 20th century.