"Romanians believe they show less positive personality traits than the "European person". They even admit having outright negative traits such as being somewhat insensitive to others, leaning towards aggressiveness, and authoritarianism, behaving like followers rather than leaders, reacting tensely, walking on the thin line between honesty and dishonesty, being rather disorganized, idealistic, superficial and conservative."

Funny: I seem to remember a similar study here in Hungary, with the exact same result! I believe this is part of the effect of the EU, the EU representing some ideal in neighbor states' citizens' heads.

There are some horrifying statistics contained therein - 38% of population believe that "Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals" for example, and 46% think "Superior and inferior races are a reality".

Hm. The surprising part for me in this is that these two numbers aren't the other way. Homophobia seemed to me more widespread in our region than open (and conscious) racism. On the other hand, the second number may be another manifestation of anti-Gypsy racism, which regrettably is majority opinion throughout Central-Eastern Europe. (The opinion was not uncommon here in Hungary that expelling Gypsies from the country would have increased Hungary's chances of joining the EU...)

Some surprising ones - 64% say that there are "Too many foreigners in the country at the expense of Romanians" (in truth this may only be surprising to someone like me who lives in a town with practically no immigrants).

I beg to disagree on two counts. First, some may include ethnic minorities among the 'foreigners'. Second, from studies in Germany, I know there is actually an anti-correlation between the number of foreigners and xenophobia: the explanation is at hand, preconceptions are built on cluelessness.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

This is also a big problem in the US.  There is a widespread perception that Spanish speaking immigrants are taking over the country, when in fact, every teenager in those immigrant families can speak English.

For (ethnic) Romanians non-Romanians are all "foreigners", minorities, immigrants and all. I don't think there are that many recent immigrants in Romania, and most of them would be Westerners, who would generate the exact opposite of resentment. Minorities are a different issue altogether: according to the propaganda of the seventies and eighties they are vagrants who abused Romanians' hospitality. This was read as an anti-Hungarian barb: as opposed to Romanians, who'd lived there from time immemorial, Hungarians were these loose migrating tribes that made Romania their home. (It doesn't matter that this took place more than 1000 years ago, and it is debatable whether that territory would have qualified as Romania back then.) At any rate, this was the propaganda I grew up with: as Comrade C. pandered more and more to nationalism, one of the main "arguments" against Hungarians was that they are an inferior, vagrant bunch. As with all official propaganda, some bought it, some didn't. Some Romanians, who were not so fond of Hungarians in private, nevertheless resisted gov-t induced chauvinism, because they resented the government for other reasons. (Not to mention decent Romanians, for whom all this was a constant shame.)

I would not be surprised that many Romanians still have mistaken notions about minorities: under the old regime there was NO unbiased official information, there was no official effort to raise the awareness of ethnic Romanians (from homogeneous areas), to make them acquainted with the culture and history of these groups. On the contrary, all an average Romanian would hear about minorities would be that they are abusive guests, parasites, you name it. Things have been VERY SLOWLY improving since 1989, but it will take a long time until Romanians come to fully accept the fact that R. is a multicultural, multilingual society. In this process, the differences between R's regions are bound to become deeper. On my sporadic visits Transylvania does seem to be proudly multicultural, with many Romanians voluntarily learning the once-derided Hungarian language, but I am a bit sceptic (and uninformed) about the other regions.

P.s. For the record, I'm an ethnic Hungarian who grew up in Transylvania. Some stuff I wrote about Ceausescu's propaganda may sound harsh and biased, but unfortunately  those texts and manifests WERE pretty awful. One good thing was that many people were just deaf to all this, out of a healthy E-European distrust for officialdom.

A dog's a dog. A Cat's a Cat. (T.S. Eliot)

Could you tell us who Basescu and Becali are? I must admit I am not familiar with the names, to my probable shame when you will tell us!

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

please correct me if I am wrong, but I heard that there was/is a deathpenalty on homosexuality in Romania. Is that still the case?

"They even admit having outright negative traits such as being somewhat insensitive to others, leaning towards aggressiveness, and authoritarianism, behaving like followers rather than leaders, reacting tensely, walking on the thin line between honesty and dishonesty, being rather disorganized, idealistic, superficial and conservative."

The perennial speculation in the USA is what territory will become the 51st state.  Sounds like Romania would fit right in.

Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.

Thanks for the comments. It's interesting that two people assume that the "too many foreigners" comment is aimed at the ethnic minorities - of which there are many groupings in Romania with Hungarians making up the majority.  I'm guessing that many of the people who answered "yes" to that question were also those who answered "yes" to the question "Ethnic groups should be required to learn Romanian".  So are they foreigners or are they not?

Agnes, I live in Csikszereda (Miercurea Ciuc in Romanian) which as you know is a Hungarian town in Transylvania (one of the few majority Hungarian communities left) - I have a regular blog at szekely.blogspot.com if you're interested.

Aplogies for the "in-joke" tone of some of this piece.  It was my first attempt at writing something at EuroTrib and I basically copied something I had posted on my own blog.  I will make sure that in future what I post here is written (or at least edited) exclusively with a different slant.

Thanks again.
Andy

Musings on life in Romania and beyond