Eastern Europe

By Kenneth W. Banta/Debrecen

After walking five miles in the dark from the Rumanian village of Valea lui Mihai, Karoly, his wife Agnes and their two children crouched for hours in thick underbrush near the Hungarian border. Finally, after a group of Rumanian border soldiers marched by, the couple dashed across the so-called Green Line, children clinging to their backs. Once they were on Hungarian soil, the refugees were driven 30 miles by local police to Debrecen and given food, clothing and beds in a government-funded shelter. The police issued the family temporary residence permits, while other officials began organizing jobs and permanent housing. Said Karoly: "After so much fear, we feel as if we have a future again."

This scenario illustrates a striking new development: Hungary has become the first nation in the Warsaw Pact to offer sanctuary to citizens of a Communist ally. Since January more than 4,500 Rumanians have received permission to settle in Hungary, and officials predict that the number will swell to at least 12,000 by year's end. Virtually all the newcomers belong to the large ethnic Hungarian minority (more than 1.7 million) that lives in the western Rumanian region of Transylvania. The immigrants complain that ethnic Hungarians are the victims of official discrimination. Hungarian authorities agree: in April, Budapest protested a new Rumanian program to uproot hundreds of ethnic Hungarian villagers in Transylvania as a deliberate policy of "weakening the identity of national minorities."

Hungary and Rumania were never very neighborly, but relations have worsened since 1974, when Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu launched a nationalistic campaign to distract Rumanians from economic problems. As Rumanian authorities closed Hungarian-language schools in Transylvania, changed Hungarian place names to Rumanian ones, and forcibly relocated families, Hungarian diplomats quietly attempted to intervene.

By 1986 a growing number of ordinary Hungarians, one-third of whom have relatives in Transylvania, called for more decisive action. With the approval of reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev, Budapest endorsed vitriolic attacks on the Ceausescu regime in the semi-official press. In January the Hungarian government legalized the status of the refugees already spilling across the border; two months later parliament voted $6 million to pay for resettlement programs in cooperation with church groups and the Hungarian Red Cross.

Although Rumania has angrily denounced its neighbor's actions as an unjustified intrusion into its internal affairs, Ceausescu receives no support from other East bloc allies. But with Hungary in the midst of its own economic crisis, including a severe housing shortage and growing unemployment, officials fear that public opinion could turn against the emigres. Says Gabor, a teenage Budapest mechanic: "Why should they get jobs and apartments when we don't have enough for ourselves?" With no sign that Rumania intends to rescind its policies in Transylvania, the refugees may soon become not only a foreign policy issue but a domestic political problem for their new hosts as well.