Reframing Ethnic Advocacy. Détente and Human Rights Activism in the Hungarian Western Diaspora, 1975-1978

This article addresses the issue of ethnic lobbying during the Cold War by presenting a case study of the strategies employed by the Hungarian diaspora in the West to draw attention to the situation of the large Transylvanian Hungarian population in Romania. The mistreatment of Hungarian minorities in Central and Eastern Europe had long provoked passionate but politically ineffective reactions among the Western Hungarian diaspora. After the Helsinki Conference in 1975, new transnational action groups emerged within the Hungarian diaspora, acting in the name of respect for universal human rights. The emergence of an ideologically neutral and inclusive political language allowed ethnic advocacy to become a legitimate issue for a wide range of liberal-minded actors in the West.