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

BALÁZS TRENCSÉNYIconsidered as the common denominator of different political options innineteenth-century Eastern Europe: the conviction that the upsurge ofpolitical-institutional modernity goes together with the painful dissolutionof pre-modern structures of life.The archetypical canons of the nineteenth century, representing thisjuncture of identity and modernity, were the “Westernizers” and“Autochthonists.” 2 The Westernizers took this process of dissolution asunavoidable and beneficial at the same time, opting for a vision of the gradualmerging of parochial identities into a “cosmopolitan” harmony, andstrongly supporting urbanization. From this point-of-view, the dissolution ofpre-modern structures was perceived as a necessary price to pay for achieving“higher” forms of life, or was praised straightforwardly, without anyreservation whatsoever, as the disappearance of something loathsome.In contrast, the Autochthonists – although sharing the vision about the powerfulupsurge of modernity – considered this price too high to pay and choseto slow down and counteract the process of importing “foreign” patterns ofcivilization, marshalling the vision of the “uniqueness” of their nationalcommunity, and advocating the interests of groups threatened by the forcesof social-political modernity. They claimed that these pre-modern patternsof existence were the loci of “national peculiarity,” and their conservationwas essential to the survival of the political community. 3In the interwar period, the structure of this discursive conflictbecame significantly modified. The case of the Romanian politicalthinker, philosopher and sociologist, ªtefan Zeletin, is interesting fromthis perspective: contrary to the ideal-typical model sketched above, thenormative counter-positions were arranged differently and one facesa curious blurring of the two symbolic canons. My analysis of Zeletin’s chiefworks, Burghezia românã (1925) and Neoliberalismul (1927), seeks to contextualizehis ideas concerning the formation of a national bourgeoisie inview of the specific nature of Romanian liberalism. 4 As Henry L. Roberts,one of the most perceptive witnesses of interwar Romania, observed, thistradition had some specific characteristics, which were rather unusual inthe case of liberal movements in Europe (although not so unusual if wetake Eastern-European liberal parties). 5 According to Roberts, the liberalismof the Brãtianus fused ideological elements of nationalism, etatism,economic protectionism as well, and was generally characterized as fallingshort of becoming a classical middle-class party (i.e., the social stratumthat was taken to be the social basis of liberalism in the West).Otherwise, this ideology of “liberalism from above” might be consideredas one of the specific phenomena of Eastern-European politics at theturn of the century. This was usually a transitional discourse. While thenationalist projects of the romantic period were usually rooted in a gen-62