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

AFTERWORDMore Than Just Neighbors: Romaniaand Hungary Under Critical ScrutinyIn September 1995, in the Alpes Maritimes, the wonderful old town ofDie was busy celebrating Albania for a whole week, in the frameworkof a cultural festival focusing on (the region formerly known as) EasternEurope. Before 1989, the same festival was promoting French pedestriantourism; ironically, while high-profile pundits were heralding the End ofHistory, the organizers of the popular gathering decided to welcome EasternEurope back to history as usual, and mark the end of brutal decadesof Communist utopianism. With generous support from genuinely caringcitizens, the local government, and many NGOs, dozens of Albanian writers,painters, filmmakers, musicians, academics, public intellectuals, andthe like were (re)presenting their country, introducing it to eager audiencesof “natives,” Paris-based Eastern Europe specialists, and a sizablecohort of fellow Eastern Europeans. As usual, the latter were still meetingmainly in the West, on Western money, to debate what Westernersthought they should debate. It was under those stereotypical auspices ofthe “East-West dialogue” that I have first met Balázs Trencsényi, possiblythe crucial character in the short story I am about to tell.In the Alpes Maritimes, even inordinate quantities of the local wine,the Clairette de Die, would never prepare a Romanian for the (otherwisehighly symbolic) close encounter with a Hungarian. Sober by nature andhabit, I was even less prepared to meet a kindred spirit. However, I understoodthat it was exactly what was happening to me when, after many pleasfor Eastern European brother- and sisterhood had bored everybody out ofany fledgling sympathy for the countries of the former Soviet bloc, Balázsstood up and, never pausing to breathe, offered the following: a sharp critiqueof the whole “East-West” routine; a limpid indictment of the sentimentaloid,patronizing rhetoric of the Western partners, together witha lucid scrutiny of its opportunistic counterpart “volunteered” by Easternerslong trained in the langue de bois. I immediately knew it: that youngHungarian was no ordinary student. Since we instantly befriended eachother, I found out he was one of Hungary’s rising academic stars nurturedby the Budapest Collegium Invisibile (a Castalian model I tried, and failed,302