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

National Prejudices, Mass Mediaand History Textbooks:The Mitu ControversyRÃZVAN PÂRÂIANUIntroductionAt the end of the First World War, Western public opinion greeted theemergence, after a long period of imperial domination, of the newnation-states in East Central Europe as the triumph of liberalism. Very soon,however, this initial sympathy was followed by disillusionment as, except forthe Masarykian Czechoslovak Republic, none of the new “nation-states”proved to be liberal. Nobody expected that the young national intelligentsiain these countries, marked by such an impressive and, sometimes, heroic historyof opposing the autocratic regimes, would turn out to be less liberal anddemocratic than the imperial political culture they so ardently fought against.The annus mirabilis of 1989 is a similar historical moment. Communismis gone and new regimes, which presented themselves as democraticand liberal, have been installed in the former East-European satellites ofthe Soviet Union. These countries are striving for integration in the EuropeanUnion and NATO, all of them are trying hard to escape their communistpast and, most striking, all of them are seeking to “overscore” theirneighbors, considering them unpleasant competitors. At the same time,East-Europeans turned to ideas from the interwar period as the most convenientcultural references to counteract the legacy of communism. Thus,nationalism came to be identified with the program of returning to the gloriousdays of the interwar period, described as a National Heaven on Earthin view of the subsequent ordeals.In this uncomfortable situation, the requirements of European Unionto relax state centralism, national homogenization, and nationalizing educationalpolicy in view of the minorities are in most cases perceived as anunpleasant interference of outsiders in internal affairs. More than that, thisuneasiness to renounce the main ingredients of nation-state building isa salient point of reference for those political forces that do not dare to displaytheir nostalgia for communism, but choose to express the frustrationsof their transitional societies.93