As economic and political conditions deteriorate in Romania, the position of Romania's minorities becomes increasingly precarious.

The regime has sought to weaken community solidarity among the Hungarians of Transylvania by curtailing education and publication in their own language and by promoting the immigration of Romanians into cities with large Hungarian populations.

The Hungarians fear especially an extension to their rural communities of Ceausescu's “village systematization” campaign, which has as its primary objective the destruction of the peasantry as a distinct social class and has already caused the leveling of numerous Romanian villages.

The Saxon and the Jewish communities, on the other hand, have long ceased to be significant political problems for the regime.

Both had suffered heavy losses as a result of the Second World War, and afterward their numbers had steadily declined through emigration—the Saxons to West Germany and the Jews to Israel.