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

Transylvania RevisitedTransylvania and Again TransylvaniaIn modern times, the representation of Transylvania identified this region:a) politically – as an expression of a particular ethnonational group (mainlyRomanian or Hungarian); and, b) geographically – as coterminous withthe people’s homeland. 8 Not surprisingly, by imagining Transylvania aseither Romanian or Hungarian, intellectuals have endlessly legitimizedpower and reproduced conflict. After almost a century of the Romanian“unitary nation-state” or post-Trianon Hungary, there remains a pathologicalneed to enhance arguments for either a “Romanian” or “Hungarian”Transylvania. It seems that this region acts both as a filter through whichRomanian and Hungarian cultural, social and political items areexchanged and as a barometer of the real functioning of the Romanianand Hungarian states.Thus, within many scenarios presented to the public, Transylvaniaoccupies a central place and categorically shapes the idea Romanians orHungarians have about each other. To say this, however, is not simply toidentify the centrality of imagery in the nationalist discourse. Althoughthese assumptions refer to the specific context of Romanian and Hungarianhistorical imagery, they express, I would argue, a more general perspectiveconcerning the relationship among different forms of nationalhistories and the problems that emerge when one narrative (such as “theTransylvanian problem”) is appropriated by another (such as nationalism).How did this happen?According to the dialectic of the homogeneous state (the nationstatepar excellence), ethnically and religiously heterogeneous regions suchas Transylvania are politically disfunctional. After 1918, tremendousefforts were spent to articulate a new conceptual repertoire that placedTransylvania on the map of Romania. 9 In other words, Transylvania had tobe internalized as part of the new state. Similarly, the very idea of “Romania”– defined by the 19 th century Romantic nationalism as the spiritualhome of all Romanians – and of Transylvania – regarded as the “cradle ofRomânism” – dramatically changed after the Union, as did different politicaland administrative functions the new state had to perform in order toacquire consistency and legitimacy.Romania’s long political history of assimilating Transylvanianotwithstanding, I refer to recent variations of the subject. As federalismand national autonomy permeated Romania’s public discourse after 1989,Romanian nationalists regarded them as symbols meant to illustrate nothingmore than old revisionist themes (as those espoused by Hungary, Bulgariaor the Soviet Union in the interwar period). The pivotal associationthese terms imply threatens the very essence of the Romanian state, i.e.,199