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

exclusion of the “national” attributes from the orthodox church, and,finally, destroying the past with the help of the new history textbooks,these are the chief enemies of Romania as identified by Popescu.The last article written by Popescu, “The textbook that makes theteacher feel ashamed,” 54 is also illustrative. One of his claims was thata textbook should be a normative reference for a given discipline; anotherone was that the reform of education in Romania was supported bysome privileged intellectuals who neglected the cultural level of ordinarypeople. What is interesting in this article is that the main objects of hiscriticism turned out to be the new literature textbooks. One has to addthat in Romania literary studies are a more advanced field than historiographybecause the leadership was more tolerant with it in the 1970-1980s,as it was much less intertwined with the legitimacy of the regime. Therefore,the field of literary studies was much closer to contemporary Westerndevelopments than its historical counterpart.In this context, Popescu was outraged by some texts belonging to theyoungest generation of authors, which were introduced in the literaturetextbooks for the eleventh grade. In Popescu’s opinion, these texts are notappropriate for educational purpose. It is “trash put next to a diamond[Ion Creangã] to prove that the diamond is shining.” Modern literature istoo abstract, nonfigurative, illiterate, and idiotic. The authors of the textbookswere guilty because they introduced “the 1980s group.” 55 ProfessorsNicolae Manolescu and Mircea Martin are accused of subverting thenational canon: “the biggest danger is the obstinacy of prestigious specialistsinvolved in this affair of alternative textbooks, trying to support whatis evidently bad, wrong, dubious, and fraudulent. That they will be dishonoredand dismissed is the smallest possible harm.” 56Popescu’s reaction against the educational reform and the new textbooksmay be seen as trivial to this discussion, but his ideas provide a perfectexample of the still very powerful ethno-national “vulgata.” Theseideas were reiterated in some other journals, much more politicallybiased, as well as in the parliamentary debates.ConclusionsNational Prejudices, Mass Media and History TextbooksCultural reproduction is an important element of the cohesion and stabilityof a society. At the same time, for those societies that are in transition,cultural reproduction is a highly conservative element and anobstacle for societal change. Cultural reproduction, in this case, reproducesthe former structures of power and becomes cultural capital inthe hands of the former elite. What is more, in the particular case ofhistoriography, cultural reproduction is enforcing the inherent conser-111