THE FORMATION OF THE TRANSYLVANIAN PARTY AND ITS LOCAL BRANCHES IN NORTHERN TRANSYLVANIA AFTER THE SECOND VIENNA AWARD

Abstract

The study deals with an unfairly forgotten party, named Transylvanian Party, a political mass organization, existing between 1940 and 1944 in Northern part of Transylvania, reannexed to Hungary after the Second Vienna Award. This party was an ethnic based political organization, which collected the Hungarians from Northern Transylvania together. The Transylvanian Party was founded in the period when Hungarians represented the majority in the region. It had strong regionalist characters, but in the same time it made an organic part of the Hungarian national political life. The Transylvanian Party tried to reach a dominant position in the region in order to stop the expansion of the Hungarian, mainly extreme right parties in Northern Transylvania, and became the most comprehensive party in this part of the country. Among the 1,340,000 Hungarian inhabitants of Northern Transylvania 243,500 were active members of the party in January 1942. The study presents the foundation of the Transylvanian Party and tries to give an overview on the building up of the party structure in Northern Transylvania during 1941, focused especially on the local branches. There are described the relation between the Northern Transylvanian population and the Transylvanian Party, the composition of the membership and the financial situation of the local branches. The source material of the study consists of archival data, publications of the Transylvanian Party, special books, studies and publications in the contemporary press.