Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian & Hungarian ...

Searching for Common Groundsized in the educational and cultural systems in Eastern-Europe, the editorsof the present volume believe that there is a real historical opportunity toovercome the prevalent ethnocentrism and parochialism of the “nationalized”cultures in the region and to propose new theoretical and methodologicalperspectives.It is with this hindsight that the conference “Nation-Building, Regionalismand Democracy: Comparative Perspectives on Issues of Nationalism inRomania and Hungary” was organized in Budapest on 14-15 December1999. * The conference created an opportunity to reconsider some of thekey issues of the intertwining history of these countries. It was characteristicof the atmosphere of the conference that the major debate was notabout the compatibility or incompatibility of the “Hungarian” and“Romanian” narratives of history, but about the methodological dilemmasof studying nationalism from the perspective of social or intellectual history.The essays included in the present volume concentrate on issueswhich were generally left out of the national historiographical canons forbeing potentially harmful to the carefully polished images of nationalexcellence and of “demonic others.” In order to get a more balanced pictureof the politics of national identity, the authors seek to transgress theframework of “national” narratives, and to enhance a dialogue betweensocial and intellectual history, as well as between the present-centeredsociological and politological perspectives and the diachronic perspectiveof historiography.To this end, the first part of the volume, entitled Modernity andNational Identity: Approaches, Dilemmas, Legacies, analyzes variousmodalities of the relationship of nationalism with other doctrines andvalue-systems such as liberalism, democracy, or moral universalism. Thissection documents a significant shift in this relationship during the last 150years. The nineteenth century saw the parallel emergence of liberalismand nationalism; these two ideologies were not only compatible, but, incertain cases, mutually conditioned each other. In contrast, the twentiethcentury saw the collapse of this fragile harmony, with nationalism perceivedas antagonistic to personal and institutional liberty. That is why itis instructive to begin the survey of these problems with an analysis of “liberalnationalism.”Mónika Baár’s essay is a case study on the intellectual sources ofEast-Central European national-romantic historical writing. The author* The conference was hosted by the Teleki László Institute. Besides the contributors of thepresent volume, the list of participants comprised Alexandru Zub (Director of “A. D.Xenopol” Institute of History, Iaºi) and Gusztáv Molnár (senior researcher, Teleki LászlóInsitute) as keynote-speakers, as well as Viorel Anastasoaie, Liviu Chelcea, MargitFeischmidt, László Fosztó, Károly Grúber, József Lõrincz, Martin Mevius, Attila Z. Papp,Emil Perhinschi, Levente Salat, Mátyás Szabó and Botond Zákonyi.11