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

CRISTINA PETRESCUGeorgescu, 60 de sate româneºti, pp. 124-204, and Madgearu, Evoluþiaeconomiei româneºti, pp. 49-53 and 54-60.55 Geo Bogza, a leftist writer, provided a very telling description of Bessarabia,especially in view of the poverty that dominated the region. Bogza observedthat most of the tailors did not have the chance to make a single cloth in theirlife-time. Their only job was to turn old coats inside out. See his Basarabia:Þarã de pãmânt (Bessarabia: Land of soil) (Bucharest: Ara, 1991), pp. 64-66.56 For households with 0.1 to 3 hectares of land, the most significant part of thefamily expenditure went for clothing. By comparing the amount from the familybudget spent for clothing in Bessarabia (206 lei) with the average spent inTransylvania (3663 lei), one realizes how poorer Bessarabia was in comparisonwith other regions of Romania. Even for families with up to 10 hectares, themoney spent on education was not significant (around 9 lei for the school andbetween 13 and 162 lei for books and journals). See Golopenþia and Georgescu,60 de sate româneºti, p. 289.57 As compared with the other provinces of Greater Romania, Bessarabia’spoverty can also be seen from the taxation statistics. By comparing the directtaxes paid by the historical provinces, which included agricultural, property,commercial, professional, turnover and military revenues, it can be seen immediatelythat the inhabitants of Bessarabia contributed with the lowest averageamount, that represented only half of that paid by the Old Kingdom. For theyear 1929, the average direct taxes paid in the Old Kingdom amounted to 450lei, in Transylavania to 300 lei, in Bukovina to 274 lei and in Bessarabia to 223lei. See Forter and Rostovsky, The Roumanian Handbook, pp. 223-224 and 238.58 As Roberts notes, between July 1917 and the end of the same year, the Bessarabianpeasants succeeded in seizing two-thirds of the large estates. See Roberts,Rumania, p. 33.59 Moreover, 1917 was remembered as a heavenly time, when everybody ateonly pancakes made from the finest wheat flour, grabbed from the landowners’depots. By contrast, in the following years – the first years withinGreater Romania – due to a severe drought, the crops were very poor andmany people actually starved. I owe this information to my grandmother,Antonia Zavat.60 According to the modernist-constructivist view, the emergence of the moderntype of state administration, which establishes direct links between every citizenand the central authority, is a prerequisite of the process of nation-building. Forthe relation between the emergence of the modern state and the rise of nationalism,see Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1789, pp. 80-100.61 The Bessarabian peasants elected their leaders from among the most respectedpeasants, who were usually the wealthiest. This was no source of dissensionwithin the peasant community, since it was usually acknowledged by all thatthe wealthiest were also among the most diligent, wisest and hard-working. Aslong as all lived from the land, only those who worked more could gain moreand, by spending wisely and parsimoniously, they could save more and, consequently,own more land than others. Land represented the only valued asset inthe rural world and the only criteria to build hierarchies in a peasant community.This view was expressed by most of the interviewed peasants. They wereconvinced that the best people in a community must be its leaders. For this rea-174