New Europe College Regional Program Yearbook 2001-2002

N.E.C. Yearbook 2001-2002
If the primordiality is attached, then the direct implication is that
Moldovan oriented discourse also attributes ineffability to some givens.
If the same primordial givens generate different primordial attachments,
then the primordialist approach fails to distinguish pure constructs –
Moldovan identity – from long-term processes – “true” Romanian identity.
Despite the “blut und boden” 88 language, the Moldovan nationalist
movement cannot be understood as an atavistic reaction; it is a
quintessentially modern sentiment and phenomenon. “Nationalism, as a
sentiment, could arise only in modernity” and, as Isaiah Berlin noted,
mainly as a “result of humiliation” perceived acutely by “the most
conscious members of a society”. 89
As many authors have underlined, 90 unlike western political
nationalism, based on the civic participation of citizens, nationalism in
Central and Eastern Europe is the creation of intellectuals whose social
mobility was restricted. For these reasons, Eastern nationalism is considered
to be a “cultural nationalism” which appeared as an answer by
intellectuals to western modernity. For Charles Taylor, the modernity
can be felt as a threat to a traditional culture. It will remain an external threat
to those strongly opposed to change. But there is another reaction among
those who want to take on some version of the institutional changes…
What they are looking for is a creative adaptation, drawing on the cultural
resources of their tradition that would enable them to take on the new
practices successfully. In short, they want to do what has already been
done in the West. But they see, or sense, that it cannot be done by simply
copying the West. 91
Gellner, the author who has most convincingly argued for the link
between modernity and nationalism, also denies that his theory is
reductive in the sense that it neglects the psychological authenticity and
depth of the emotional power of nationalism. In his later works, 92 Gellner
emphasizes that his theory seeks to explain why these emotions exist,
why they are invested in nations, why they are felt authentically and
powerfully in the hearts of nationals. 93 Thus, while feelings of humiliation
might be socio-economic or the result of ethnic/linguistic difference,
they might also be the result of political arbitrariness. And all these
become sources of nationalism only in modernity:
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