Scandalous: Hungarian nationalists rewrite Romanian History? – Here is the rebuttal

We wrote last week that a Reddit user stated that a group of “nationalist Hungarians” rewrote Wikipedia articles related to the History of Romania and the Romanians following the immigration theory instead of Bucharest’s official Daco-Roman Continuity Theory. Days later, we received a detailed rebuttal concerning the issue. Its essence was that “rewriting Romanian history on Wikipedia is fake news and agitation”.

Busa78, another Reddit user, submitted the refutation on the website three days ago, which you can read HERE, but unfortunately, it is in Hungarian.

He calls himself a Wikipedia editor and said everything started with THIS Romanian-language article covering the topic and stating Hungarians try to rewrite Romania’s history and erase the Daco-Roman continuity from it.

Hungarians do not accept the Daco-Roman continuity theory

In short, the continuity theory says Romanians are the descendants of the Dacians and their conquerors, the Romans. Despite the Roman legions leaving Dacia in 271, the Dacians remained there Romanized, using Latin language and preserving the culture. They became the Romanians.

Another theory, the immigration theory says Romanians only arrived in the 12th century to the north of the Danube. The dispute is crucial for Bucharest because the former theory is one of their supporting arguments for why Romanians are superior to Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin (Hungarians came “only” in 895-896).

Busa78 says that the Wikipedia report the Romanian Reddit user refers to is from 2021, and they already lost the case. In the report, they were against two Hungarian Wikipedia users, Borsoka and Fakirbakir, who represented the official Hungarian standpoint in the debate, the immigration theory. Busa78 highlighted that the English admins of Wikipedia rejected the claims against two Hungarian users, and even Romanian admins did so. Finally, the user submitting the report withdrew that.

Only full victory is an acceptable outcome

In the 2021 debate, a Romanian user summed up the aim of some Romanian nationalist users as they wanted a 100% victory. Otherwise, they believe they will lose Transylvania. That is why they want to conduct 100% nationalist propaganda, even concerning the genesis of the Romanian people on Wikipedia.

Borsoka said Romanian nationalists tried to remove immigration theory from the relevant articles, so they wanted to create unbalanced texts depicting only the continuity theory and excluding everything else. They tend to transform King Mathias (1458-1490) into a Romanian monarch or write that Transylvania always had a Romanian majority.

Fake Romanian maps, stories

For example, Romanian nationalists even tried to upload a map showing Romanians populating all corners of the Carpathian Basin between 800 and 1400, even in Croatia, Serbia, or Czechia. Even Transdanubia is full of Romanian place names. The map’s title suggests it is the area where Romanians dwelled according to the names of settlements. Its creator is N. Draganu. Here is it is:

Photo: Creative Commons

And here is another map about the “Romanian states” between the 9th and 13th centuries. Of course, these states never existed. A Hungarian chronicler, Anonymus, wrote about e.g. Menumorut in his Gesta Hungarorum. But we know that Anonymus made that name up to make the Conquest of the Carpathian Basin a much more heroic deed than in reality.

Photo: Creative Commons

Wikipedia editors keep complaining that some Romanians regularly redraw academic maps to promote such ideas.

Having written all that, we may conclude there are no Hungarian “nationalists” rewriting Romanian History. But Hungarian Wikipedia editors do not follow Bucharest’s non-academic continuity theory and its exaggerations. Therefore, they may become an enemy in the eyes of those Romanian nationalists. Such people tend to believe that their theory’s victory is a must, provided they want to hold Transylvania and other former Hungarian lands within their country’s borders.

Read also:

• Hungarian nationalists rewrite Romania’s history on Wikipedia? – HERE is our previous article in the issue
• World’s highest denomination banknote is Hungarian: it’s worth a small fortune – Details in THIS article