EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL POLICIES IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIA AND THE MINORITIES
Aneta Mihaylova, Etudes balkaniques (Sofia) 2018 N 4
Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
Abstract: The collapse of communism in Romania in 1989 has left its imprint also on the minority policies. The article tries to outline the factors that influenced the minority policies of the Romanian governments and their development over the past quarter of a century, while laying a major focus on education and the use of the mother tongue. The Romanian legislation in these fields in the post-communist period gives good grounds to conclude that there has been a considerable progress towards the extension of minority rights. A major role for that has played the need to harmonize the Romanian legislation with the European rules and directives. A significant factor for the change was also the active policy of the UDMR, which firmly defended the rights of the Hungarian minority. At the same time, it should be noted that while making numerous concessions, the Romanian government had made it clear that these concessions could only be made within certain limits.
Keywords: Minority Policies, Education, Minority Language Rights
Aneta Mihaylova, Etudes balkaniques (Sofia) 2017 N 4
THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE OF 1946 AND THE REDRAFTING OF BORDERS IN EUROPE: THE BITTER EXPERIENCE OF TWO FORMER GERMAN SATELLITES
Institute of Balkan Studies & Centre of Thracology
Abstract: The Paris Peace Conference, which lasted from July to October, 1946, was convened to decide on the peace terms for Germany’s five allies in World War II: Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland. The article focuses on two of these former German satellites, namely Bulgaria and Romania, which, like many other times in their history shared a common fate. It explores the expectations and ambitions of the two states, the way they justified their causes and asserted their positions and how successful they were in achieving their goals. It comes to the conclusion that regardless of the fact that both countries were very active and had managed to present their positions well, their experience was bitter, for they were just figureheads in the tricky games of the major victorious powers, each of them having its own aims and ambitions that were to decide their fate. The decisions reached at the conference were the result of mutual compromises between the Soviet Union and its Western Allies, while Bulgaria and Romania, although being given the opportunity to have their say, were actually in the position of voiceless spectators.
Keywords: Paris Peace Conference 1946, Postwar Settlements, Reparations, Bulgaria, Romania