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

BARNA ÁBRAHÁMintelligentsia is concerned, they thought rather of persons in practicalcareers, in liberal professions, because they were the only ones capable ofleading the national movement. 28The strenghtening of this stratum was considered by contemporariesas a national mission and they called for creating a new, more practicalWeltanschauung. This is clearly expressed by the insurance expert, Ioan I.Lãpedatu, in his speech held in Kronstadt (Brassó/Braºov) in 1904. Heurged the Romanian intelligentsia to abandon the purely theoretical orientationand to study instead the actual problems of political economy,finances and statistics. 29 He referred to the example of Germany wherethere were many good soldiers, merchants and craftsmen who had beentrained in the modernized schools, so that Germany became a fearful rivalof England. However, due to their “idealism,” Romanians did not evenrealize how much could be done through every-day work, although thiswas the only way they could join the struggle for the natural treasures andcommerce of Transylvania. According to Lãpedatu, the natural focus ofthis national revival was Kronstadt, a city that had become a Romaniancultural center half a century before, due to the generosity of its citizens(through the foundation of the orthodox grammar school). 30Besides the renewal of the urban middle class, the material andmoral “revolution” of the villages was outlined by the contemporaries.They had a common slogan: “Let’s found co-operatives!” An article inRevista Economicã referred to the example of other nations in order todemonstrate the backwardness of Romanians, and to encourage them. 31Similarly, in his speech quoted above, Ioan Lãpedatu summarized the historyof the co-operative movement that had started in Rochdale, England,in the middle of the 19 th century. What deserves attention is the emphasison spiritual and moral development as much as on material benefit:“members of the co-operative learn order, discipline and solidarity.”Looking at this problem from a national perspective, the consumptionprocess of the Romanians should be taken into their own hands, not to bedependent on the expensive products of foreigners. The supervisory boardof these co-operatives should have been the economic sections of ASTRA(Literary and Cultural Association of the Romanian People), which wasthus given a new function besides its merely theoretical and linguisticactivities (i.e., permanent reforms of commercial and legal terminology). 32At the turn of the century, an entire branch of literature was born concerningthe co-operatives, consisting of mainly popularizing articles andbrochures for the peasantry. Among these works, the most characteristicone is Romul Simu’s utopian booklet on the rebirth of the imaginary village,Viitorul (Future). The author, schoolteacher in Orlat, based his book on hispersonal experience. In the preface, he clearly expressed that intellectuals212