Zabola Summary
Zabola
Summary
Summary
The community of Zabola is the easternmost group with a Hungarian majority in Transylvania and the Carpathian basin. The Hungarians settled in the East-Carpathian curve as early as in the age of Arpad. Later, at the end of the XII century, our kings re-settled them east of the mountain range, in Moldavia, where a significant network of villages was created for defence purposes.
Our kings replaced the Hungarian communities with the Székelys – the Magyars of Eastern Transylvania -, who played an important defence role in the middle ages, in exchange for which they received favourable privileges, as well as economic and social self-government.
Feudalism could only take root in this area in the middle of the XV century, when more and more families became serfs also in Zabola. As the Ottoman-Turks endangered the frontiers of the country, the defence force of the Székelys was needed again, therefore king Matthias took some conscious steps to prevent the people of the village from sinking into serfdom.
After the disruption of the Hungarian Kingdom, the formation of the autonomous principality of Transylvania was started after 1542. In the second half of the XVI century, the Basa and the Mikes families took possession of a large number of serfs. During the period of the principality, both families played a significant role in the political and social life of Transylvania. The members of the Mikes family took an active part in the freedom fights led by Imre Thököly and Ferenc Rákóczi II. at the turn of the XVII and XVIII centuries.
In the XVIII century, Transylvania and the Székely land got under the control of the Hapsburg Empire. The Austrian authorities forcibly organised the border guard service on the Székely land in 1764, which fundamentally contravened the earlier feudal self-government of the Székely communities. The people of Zabola also took part in the revolt of Madéfalva to protest against this act in 1764. After this movement was defeated, many people from our village fled to Moldavia.
Several young people from the village fought in the battles of the 1948– 1949 revolution and freedom fight. After the compromise of 1867, Zabola also embarked upon the fast road of bourgeois development in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. A railway line was constructed, sawmills were created, the land area of the village was distributed, and several civil societies were formed. The Mikes family had a major role in the development of the village until the middle of the XX century. They set a social, economic and intellectual model to be followed for centuries by the local and neighbouring villages.
The peaceful construction work was interrupted by the 1st World War and the subsequent changes in the empire. The powers of the Triple Entente adjudged Transylvania to the Rumanian Kingdom. Rumanian administration was soon established also in Zabola. This power shift upset the earlier ethnic proportions.
During the 2nd World War, Transylvania with Zabola in it was re-annexed to Hungary on August 30, 1940. In spite of the ordeals of the war, the local Hungarians lived through these years with strength, faith and hope. Rumania pulled out of the war on August 23, 1944, and changed over to the Soviet-Russian side, its enemy until then. The peace treaties closing the 2nd World War once again adjudicated North-Transylvania to Rumania.
The communist dictatorship, which started to establish itself after the end of the 1940-ies, conducted an increasingly intolerant minority policy, which mainly afflicted the Hungarians. This was especially so after 1965, when Nicolae Ceauşescu became the leader of Rumania. Mistrust for
the minorities was deepening even more, and the official power applied newer and newer tools of national oppression. Severe disturbances could be witnessed in the population’s food and consumable supplies. The dissatisfied Rumanian masses succeeded in defeating the inhuman dictatorship in December 1989.
The greatest achievement of the political changes so far has been the return of the land areas to the previous owners in Rumania and in Zabola. Nonetheless, the democratic, civil transformation of the country is very slow. The unfavourable impacts of this are naturally felt in Zabola, with its Hungarian, Rumanian and Roma population.
