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

Contrasting/Conflicting Identities68.3%, Bukovina 65.7%, and Criºana-Maramureº 61.5%. The provinces of theOld Kingdom were ranked around the country average: Wallachia had 57.6%of literate population, Moldova 57.0%, Dobrogea 52.9%, and Oltenia 49.5%.See the data reproduced in Gheorghe Iacob and Luminiþa Iacob, Modernizare-Europenism: România de la Cuza Vodã la Carol al II-lea (Modernization-Europeanism:Romania from Cuza Vodã to Carol II), vol. 1 (Iaºi: Editura UniversitãþiiAl. I. Cuza, 1995), p. 63.47 As some of my informants suggest, the initial frenzy of school-building couldbe explained in terms of prestige. Usually, the peasant community decided thatthey needed a school not because they necessarily thought of its utility in theeducational process, but because they had heard that all the surrounding villageswere constructing one. After all, it was part of the tradition to build houseswith several rooms, although only the kitchen was used as sleeping room forthe entire family, while the rest was kept full of beautiful hand-made carpets,as a proof of the family’s wealth.48 All the Bessarabian teachers I interviewed, although they were themselvessons of Bessarabian peasants, encountered the same hostile attitude towardsschooling among villagers.49 These professions did not enjoy much esteem in peasants’ view because theyimplied a different life-style, away from the farm and its fresh home-grownproducts, making the family’s nourishment dependent on the products boughton the market.50 Only slowly, with the returning of the first university graduates, who were successfullyintegrated into cities, people understood the importance of education, butthis happened only in the late 1930s. For instance, in the case of Sofia or Alexãndreni,the first university students of peasant background graduated only in 1938.51 See Dimitrie Gusti, ªtiinþa realitãþii sociale (The science of social reality)(Bucharest: Paideia, 1999), p. 87.52 For a detailed inventory of the roads, bridges and railroads constructed andmodernized under the Romanian administration in Bessarabia, see Nistor,Istoria Basarabiei, pp. 323-331.53 In 1938, 86.06% of the arable soil of Bessarabia was cultivated with cereals.See Virgil Madgearu, Evoluþia economiei româneºti dupã rãzboiul mondial(The evolution of Romanian economy after the world war) (Bucharest:Independenþa Economicã, 1940; reprint, Bucharest: Editura ªtiinþificã,1995), p. 45 (page citations are to the reprint edition). Cereals occupied thelargest part of the arable land in the whole Greater Romania, but the overallpercentage was only 66.05%. See the statistics reproduced in Henry L.Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1951; reprint, n.p.: Archon Books, 1969), p. 376 (citationsare to the reprint edition).54 See Anton Golopenþia and D.C. Georgescu, 60 de sate româneºti (60 Romanianvillages) (Bucharest: Institutul de ªtiinþe Sociale al României, 1941;reprint, Bucharest: Paideia, 1999), pp. 205-267 (page citations are to thereprint edition). The same data are analyzed in Madgearu, Evoluþia economieiromâneºti, pp. 33-36. Moreover, the Bessarabian peasant family, as comparedwith peasant families in other regions, was the poorest in terms of cattle andagricultural tools, even basic ones, such as ploughs. See Golopenþia and173