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

RÃZVAN PÂRÂIANUIn the first half of the nineteenth century, Romanian intellectuals“invented” the modern Romanian nation, in other words, they wrotea beautified history of the nation, a history centered on the common originsand unity of all Romanians. They devised grammars and dictionariesin order to create a unique and coherent literary language. They constructedthe self-image of the nation, identifying those traits thatdifferentiate Romanians from other nations. They were searching thisspecificity predominantly in the popular culture, considering that peasantsexpressed most accurately the way of being Romanian. All thesetraits came to form the Romanian national identity. 13In a country, where the recent academic discussions in the West are largelyunknown, where there was virtually no public debate about the processof nation-building and nineteenth-century romantic nationalism, theseexpressions shocked the audience. No argument was brought against theseclaims except for the like of “how do you dare to call people like Kogãlniceanuor Bãlcescu romantics?” For the interlocutor, “romantic” isapparently only a person who is daydreaming, absent-minded, silly, andgiddy. The ultimate question posed by this critique was: “What are thesepeople, romantics or patriots?” 14F. The last point concerns the image of the Revolution of 1989 in thetextbook. Considering that it is not legitimate to come so close to the presentand to politicize history, many commentators, most of them politicallyengaged, criticized the way in which the Revolution was described by the textbooks.The clue to this debate was the presumption that the high school studentswho used these textbooks during the academic year of 1999-2000 wereto vote in the general election of October 2000. The Revolution is obviouslyan important element of social legitimacy for many parties and politicians,especially in the case of PDSR and Ion Iliescu, the first president of post-communistRomania. 15 For Iliescu and his party it was quite embarrassing to readthat no revolution took place, but a revolt, subsequently seized by the secondechelon of the former communist party and reinforced by a military diversion.This interpretation is not new or unusual. Most of the supporters of the oppositionduring the ascendance of the Democratic Convention, between 1990-1996, shared this opinion. 16 It is not surprising that, one year before the elections,PDSR did not want to let its image be spoiled by a textbook.The Legacy of the National-Communist DiscourseIn the following section, I will concentrate on three public figures: a filmdirector, a professor of legal studies and a journalist; the first two areactive politicians. Their cases are relevant because they launched the most98