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:
Painful for Romanian nationalists as it maybe, there is no support for the Daco/roman continuity fairytale. The facts contradicting this `theory`as follows:
1. The Dac population was mostly exterminated after their repeated betrayal of treaties with Roman conquerors. 2. The time necessary for Romanisation in other provinces (Germania, Gallia etc.) was more than 3 centuries, while the Romans dwelt in Dacia less than 2 centuries. 3. There are no Dac ames on the stele discovered in Dacia. 4. There are no material cultures/objects left behind by Dacs after the withdrawal of Roman legions. 5. There are only Slavic geographic names (e.g. Tirnava, Toplica etc.) on the territory of Transylvania. 6. Most of the Romanian names of dwellings are derived from Hungarian (Oradea, Timisoara, Arad etc.) indicating the Hungarian population arrived earlier than Romanian. 7. Hungarians are believers of the Western Catholcism, Romanians are orthodox. 8. There are no Romanian buildings dating earlier than the 13th century. 9. There are strong linguistic similarities with Albanian language.
Can we call this “The War of the Words.”
In all reality, Hungarians are by far more obsessed with “Dacians” and Romanian “history” than the Romanians themselves. Romanians obviously speak a Romance language very similar to Italian, Portuguese, French and Spanish; however, Hungarian nationalists (there are too many of them) claim that Romanian was created sometime in 1860 in order to “replace their Bulgarian (or) Albanian language” (because that just somehow makes a whole lot of sense). All of this is due to the Treaty of Trianon of 1919 in which Hungary was forced to sign over many parts of their now-dissolved Austro-Hungarian empire which fell apart after the first world war. In over a century, most Hungarians still can’t get over the fact that their great grandfathers willingly signed over Transylvania; which if we look at from a historical perspective, belonged to the Romans who conquered the region in 106 AD. It’s a very sad realm most Hungarians choose to live in…
Wikipedia is not a valid source of research, since it is politicized by both its administrators and its contributors. Many other online data sources are more believable.
I guess those Hu nationalists are just trying to escape from the pain of the present. They must feel very frustrated not only since Romania is far larger than Hungary, for surface and population, but because ethnic Hungarians are sharply declining in numbers practucally everywhere, in Hungary as well as in the pre-WW1 territories. Even in Transilvania their number must have probably dropped from almost two million to, I suppose, less than one million. And, at present, Romania’s economy is performing fine, whereas Hungary’s economy ( except for Orbán and his clan ) is in ruins.
Samuel Zalanyi, i sense strong hungarian bias coming from you, not to mention you dont state facts, but rather unverified information. quoting city names that were clearly named later is not a fact, romanians being orthodox is not a fact that hungarians were in Transylvania before..also, romanians, slavs and other orthodox people were considered tolerated, without rights or anything connecting them to the land, so stop trusting only hungarian documents.
Interesting fact. Another interesting fact is that the ROMANIAN POPULATION WAS ALWAYS in majority across the time.
@Samuel Zalanyi all the claims you made can easily be refuted, let’s go one by one:
1. Dac population extermination : Archeological evidence and written evidence contradicts what you’ve said. We know for a fact that Ulpia Traiana Sarmisegetuza was at least occupied till late 5th century by a sedentary population and also there is written evidence of free dacs attacking the Roman empire( carpii, costoboci, etc.). I hope this is enough evidence to refute your first claim.
2. The time necessary for romanisation. Even if the time necessary for romanisation is big, we know that the contact between the roman world and Dacia started well before they were conquered and finished well after the withdrawal of the roman administration. Also, romanisation occured by population displacement, a lot of settlers from all the roman world were invited in their newly conquered Dacia.
3. I don’t quite understand your third point so i’ll leave it as it is.
4. Again, archelogical evidence supports the fact that some of the population remained there.
5. There are some other geography names that contradicts your saying( Olt, Mures, Cris, Tisa, Somes, Timis, etc.)
6. Romanians were a rural civilization till recent history, that is why our term for city comes from hungarian (Varad).
7. Romanians were influenced by the Bulgarian empire so that is why they adopted Orthodoxy. It doesn’t prove anything.
8. Again, romanians, were a rural civilization and most of their buildings were made from clay and straws. Still, some things were built during the 9th century( Dăbâca stronghold).
9. Romanians share 160-200 words with Albanians. That is not a lot of words. And the theory about this is that Illyrians shared a close language connection with dacian or another theory is that the current albanians lived in present day Serbia and were pushed further south during the Slavic migration.
The actual truth is that BOTH theories have big plotholes(immigration theory- if romanians migrated north starting 12th century, were is the written evidence?) and we simply don’t know for sure based on current evidence were the ethnogenesis of romanians happened. That is the scientific consensus at the moment, not the politically driven views from both sides.
I think some Hungarians still think they are living in the XIX century. And certainly so does its current leader and his mandarines. How can you succeed in the XXI century if your mind frame is the one of 150 ago? That may explain why Hungary is so backward in many aspects.
As Wiki editor I was curious, I checked the story, the fake news, it started here:
https://solidnews.ro/alexa-ungurii-rescriu-istoria-romaniei-pe-wikipedia/
This is the admin noticeboard where users report incidents. This is an old failed report from several years ago from 2021:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1073#User:Borsoka_and_User:Fakirbakir
It is good to read the full report and comments: the English Wiki admins refused it, and even Romanian users said that is a baseless report. Finally, the reporter user (who has about 100 Wikipedia edits, he is not an admin!) withdrew his own report:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=1035287779
The Daco-Roman theory is fundamentally a Romanian nationalist theory, while the entire Hungarian historiography rejects it. Therefore, it does not mean a “network of nationalist Hungarians” if Hungarian editors add content to Wikipedia that is not the Romanian nationalist view. Hungarian editors will not automatically become “nationalists” just because they have a different view than a nationalist Romanian theory. By the way, the Romanian point of view is also presented on the English Wiki regarding Romanian related articles, check yourself.
I don’t think Hungarian editors will be “members of a nationalist network” if they revert such edits, like King Matthias of Hungary is “Romanian king” or that “always majority Romanians” in Transylvania:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matthias_Corvinus&diff=prev&oldid=1211827243
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Transylvania&diff=prev&oldid=1211522374
I checked the debate on the talk pages about this report, I find interesting things:
For example a Romanian editor wanted to put a map to Wikipedia where even Austria (Burgenland) + Croatia + Serbia + full Hungary is an “ancient Romanian land between 800-1400 with hundred of Romanian settlements”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vlachs&diff=prev&oldid=1152091631#/media/File:Romanian_settlements,_9th-14th_Century.jpg
Here Romania is a very big country between 800-1300:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Romanian_states_in_the_9th-13th_centuries.svg
2023:
https://media.szekelyhon.ro/pictures/0000001/0000095/nn_uzvolgye_2k23_ok_21_pnt_01.jpg
Tilte: “Barbarian Hungarians came from Mongolia and robbed our lands in 1290. After that, the Mongol-Hungarians also brought their families here.”
Editors in the talk page showed those maps based on the Romanian national-communist history teaching:
https://stefanteris.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/atlas-istoric-geografic-al-neamului-romc3a2nesc_07.jpg
https://tortenelemportal.hu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/roman-9-13-sz.jpg
Which is the national-communist Romanian history teaching with ethnic slur. In the discussion I see that users are complinaning that some Romanian users are changing history maps:
https://imgpile.com/images/xv3Slk.jpg
https://imgpile.com/images/K1Iof1.jpg
Detaching Transylvania from medieval Hungary is clearly a falsification, if we check the international English history maps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_mediterranean_1097.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_mediterranean_1190.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_in_the_14th_Century.jpg
I think, a Hungarian editor will not become a Hungarian nationalist because Romanian nationalists say “Hungary occupied Transylvania only in 1300” if they know it different and international maps show us a different story.
I also checked randomly some accusations of current editors:
The original report accuse this editor to removing Romanian historical thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1182605334
I see the editor commented “remove duplicate” and we can see that content still in the article, it was no content removal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlachs#13th_century
I think there are just cherry picked edits, but who collected them does not see the whole picture. I think it is not a good thing to incite people each other.
The Daco-Roman theory is fundamentally a Romanian nationalist theory, while the entire Hungarian historiography rejects it. Therefore, it does not mean a “network of nationalist Hungarians” if Hungarian editors add content to Wikipedia that is not the Romanian nationalist view. Hungarian editors will not automatically become “nationalists” just because they have a different view than a nationalist Romanian theory. By the way, the Romanian point of view is also presented on the English Wiki regarding Romanian related articles, check yourself.
Debunking this in Hungarian and English: https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1b73sbh/álhír_és_uszítás_terjed_hogy_magyar_szerkesztők/
In the Wiki talk page the editors say, the radical followers of the Daco-Roman theory not tolerate if other historian views presented in English Wikipedia than their narrative. That is why they are complaining that “Hungarian nationalist network rewriting wiki” if not exclusively their narrative presented there as ultimate truth.
Why should this matter anyway? The issue, if any, is for historians. The pool of idiots is endless.