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

Contrasting/Conflicting Identities7It should be noted that the territory of the current Republic of Moldova is slightlydifferent than that of the former province of Greater Romania. The southernparts of the latter were incorporated by Stalin into Ukraine, whereas the Transnistrianparts, roughly equivalent with the territory where, in 1924, the first everRepublic of Moldova, the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic wasestablished, were added, in 1940, to the newly occupied zone to form theMoldovan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1990, the Dnestr Moldovan Republic wascreated in the Transnistrian territory. This political entity remained unrecognizedinternationally until today.8Western observers of Romanian and Moldovan history, without neglecting therole of the Soviet propaganda in forging a Moldovan identity for the Romanian-speakingpopulation between the rivers Prut and Dnestr, have started tolook further back in history and take into account the inappropriate way theRomanian governments administered this territory during the time when thiswas a province of Greater Romania. In this respect, see the above-mentionedwork of King, The Moldovans, especially chap. 3, pp. 36-62. With respect to theprocess of nation-building in Bessarabia and its critiques, see Irina LivezeanuCultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building & EthnicStruggle, 1918-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 89-127. However,it should be noted that critical voices regarding the harshness of theRomanian administration in Bessarabia were heard already in the 1920s. SeeHamilton Fish Armstrong, The New Balkans (London: Harper and Brothers,1926), pp. 158-160.9The group under scrutiny is composed of teachers, priests, village clerks andsimple peasants from Northern Bessarabia, from the following communes:Sofia, Hãsnãºeni, and Alexãndreni, all from Bãlþi county. They are all survivorsof the generation that left Bessarabia in 1940 or 1944 to come to Romania.In judging their criticism of the Romanian administration, it is worth keepingin mind that they were among those who have kept the hope for reunificationalive.10 This paper discusses the causes that hampered the integration of the Romanian-speakingpopulation of Bessarabia. The status of minorities in Bessarabiais a different issue, which needs a separate discussion.11 For the relation between the type of social cohesion in society and collectiveidentity, see Ernest Gellner, Culture, Identity and Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1987).12 Originally, the name Bessarabia was used for the southern parts of medievalMoldova, near the Danube Delta and the Black Sea, which in the 14 th centurybelonged, for a short time, to the Wallachian dynasty of Basarab. The view,supported by some sources according to which the origins of this name wouldbe the Russian bez Arabov (without Arabs), which alluded to the flight of theMuslim Ottomans from the steppe in southern Moldova, being chased by TsarAlexander II, was widespread at a popular level, but is historically inaccurate.This erroneous view was diffused even among the Romanian-speaking population.See Paul Goma, Din Calidor: O copilãrie basarabeanã (From the terrace:A Bessarabian Childhood) (Bucharest: Albatros, 1990), p. 44. In drafting theBucharest Treaty of 1812, being in need of a specific name for the parts ofMoldova to be incorporated into the Russian Empire, the Russians proposed167