Századok – 2002
Tanulmányok - Makkai Béla: A kivándorolt magyarság anyaországi támogatása a 20. század elején Ploiesti példáján I/3
30 MAKKAI BÉLA border in order to maintain the minority Hungarians were not capable of housing all the children to be educated.) The policy of promoting the interests of the entire Hungarian nation was reflected in the possibility offered to minority Hungarians of pursuing their studies in the mother country, as well as in the support given to the Romanian-based Hungarian organisations and press. In the absence of this assistance the Hungarian enclaves, divided by religious and political dissent, would not have been able to resist the increasing administrative pressure which manifested itself in their constant vexation by the authorities and in the extremely xenophobic public opinion that characterised contemporary Romania. During the Balkan wars an ever growing number of articles in the Hungarian Review of Romania reported of demonstrations and insults against the Hungarians. (The instinct of survival led many Hungarians to ask for the Romanian citizenship, and hardly surprisingly, few of them were now rejected.) During World War I the Hungarian schools were confiscated and ruined by various armies, whereas the Hungarian priests and schoolmasters were first interned and later expulsed by the Romanian authorities. (In Ploie§ti the bonds of the foundation for the construction of the Calvinst church were seized, and the registers attesting the physical presence of Hungarians were lost without trace.) The mass reflux of emigrees, although in keeping with the national-political aims of the Hungarian government, speeded up the dissolution of the Hungarian colonies in Transalpine Romania, which had been existing for several decades. After the lost war, dismembered by the victors, Hungary was no more able to bear the burden of maintaining the Hungarian minorities over the Carpathes. Consequently, the Hungarians in Ploie§ti, deprived of their intellectual leaders and cultural institutions, were on the long run dependent on the organisation and property of the autonomous Calvinist church as a basis of survival.
