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

DRAGOº PETRESCUalism still exists. This can lead to significant population movements, withsevere consequences on the political and economic stability in the region. Disenchantment,frustration, alienation and segregation may lead to the “exit”solution, that is, to large masses of overwhelmingly illegal emigrants headingtowards the core countries of Europe, unless the “voice” of national and ethnicminorities are listened to and taken into consideration in order to providea common ground for a minimal “loyalty.” 77NOTES1J. F. Brown, Surge to Freedom: The End of Communist Rule in Eastern Europe(Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 1.2Regarding the concepts of complete democratic transition and consolidateddemocracy, I follow the interpretation of Linz and Stepan: “A democratic transitionis complete when sufficient agreement has been reached about politicalprocedures to produce an elected government, when a government comes topower that is the direct result of a free and popular vote, when this governmentde facto has the authority to generate new policies, and when the executive,legislative and judicial power generated by the new democracy does not haveto share power with other bodies de jure.” Respectively, a consolidated democracyis “a political situation in which ... democracy has become ‘the only gamein town.’’’ See Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transitionand Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-CommunistEurope (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 3, 5.3In May 1990, József Antall, the head of the first freely elected government ofpost-communist Hungary made his famous statement: “In my soul, I considermyself to be the Prime Minister of 15 million Hungarians.” The remarkimplied that the Antall government was responsible not only for Hungary’spopulation of 10.5 million, but also for the 3 million ethnic Hungarians livingin the neighboring countries and the alleged 1.5 million Hungarians fromaround the world. Such a statement angered especially the governments inBucharest and Bratislava, and seriously damaged their relations withBudapest. See Péter Kende, “The Trianon Syndrome: Hungarians and TheirNeighbors,” in Béla K. Király, ed., Lawful Revolution in Hungary, 1989-94(Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1995), pp. 475-492.4Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),p. 69.5Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), p. 3.6See Charles A. Kupchan, “Introduction: Nationalism Resurgent,” in CharlesA. Kupchan, ed., Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1995), p. 4.7Tamir, Liberal Nationalism, p. 6.8Ústí nad Labem is a city of approx. 106,000 inhabitants in the northwesternpart of the Czech Republic, capital of the region of North Bohemia. The local292