Hungarian nationalists rewrite Romania’s history on Wikipedia?
A Reddit user complained that a group of Hungarian nationalists rewrote history articles about Romania and the Romanian nation on the English Wikipedia. The group aims to present Romanians as immigrants in the Carpathian Basin, arriving from the Balkans only in the 12th century. The official Romanian historiography says that Romanians are the descendants of the Romans, who conquered Dacia in the 2nd century and remained there until 271 AD.
Romania consists of four historical regions: Wallachia, Moldavia, Dobruja, and Transylvania (with Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș). Out of those four regions, Transylvania belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary for more than a millennium (896-1918), populated by Hungarians, Germans, and Romanians.
In 896, during the Conquest of the Carpathian Basin by Árpád, the Hungarian conquerors found Romanians in Transylvania, Romanian historians claim. They regularly refer to the Hungarian Anonymus’s Gesta Hungarorum, which depicts the conquest of the Carpathian Basin as fights and victories against the indigenous people. They forget that Anonymus made up a lot of things in his gesta to make Árpád and his leaders bigger heroes than they were in reality.
The official Romanian historiography promotes the Daco-Roman continuity, which says that the Romans Romanized the entire populace of Dacia in less than two centuries. When the legions left the province, the Romanized population remained and survived for centuries. Therefore, when Hungarians arrived, they found Romanians in Transylvania and defeated them, just as Anonymus wrote in his gesta.
Meanwhile, the immigration theory says that Romanians arrived in the Carpathian Basin only in the 12th century from the Balkans. The theory claims Romanians did not exist north of the River Danube until the 12th century.
Hungarian Wikipedia users and admins promote the immigration theory?
According to a Reddit user, a circle of Hungarian Wikipedia users promote that theory in many articles about the history of Romania or Romanians. The Reddit user says they delete or rewrite everything that says Romanians were in the Carpathian Basin before the 12th century.
Furthermore, the Hungarian nationalists promote false narratives about Romanians, the Reddit user says. “They either try to give the appearance that Romanian is derived from a Slavic language or Albanian, or rewrite historical events where they were oppressors and turn it on Romanians as if they were oppressed by the Romanians or to portray the Romanians as robbers, subhumans, etc.”, he wrote.
The Reddit user brought the “Vlachs” article as an example. He claims that 53.9% of the article has been rewritten by two Hungarian users, CriticKende and OrionNimrod. They delete everything that would put Romanians (Vlachs) north of the Danube before the 12th century and support their theories with various sources to comply with Wikipedia rules.
The Reddit user claims the two Wikipedia users are part of the Hungarian nationalist network. Thanks to their work, Romanians who think about Wikipedia as a reliable source start to believe that they came only in the 12th century to the Carpathian Basin.
He also writes about two Wikipedia admins operating under the usernames Borsoka and Fakirbakir. Those users also rewrite everything on Wikipedia and promote the immigration theory, the Reddig user says.
Read also:
- Why are more than a million Hungarians very sad today, while Romanians celebrate? – Read more HERE
- Was Hungary’s greatest king Romanian? – Details in THIS article
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