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

RÃZVAN PÂRÂIANUare different (political) structures, the Romanian element being only oneamong others. This declared dichotomy between the two Romanianstates and the third, non-Romanian one, is almost a leitmotif of the “textbook,”and it is not just an allusion but an explicit statement, if we takethe map titles no. 2 and 3 at the end of the “textbook”... To treat Transylvaniain this manner means to promote the idea of so-called “Transylvanism,”through which the Hungarian revisionists are supporting theidea – a commonplace for many people today – that Transylvania has itsseparate history, tradition, constitutional and juridical life. For centuries– they claim, such as the authors of this “textbook” – Transylvania developedits “own soul,” a certain specificity in the preservation of which theHungarians as well as the Romanians are interested. 27This issue of rejecting any idea that may lead to a fragmented vision of theRomanian nation-state is related to the problem of envisioning this stateas a unitary entity long before its historical emergence. Mapping Romaniais not an easy task for a Romanian historian and not at all free of ideology.A map was for a very long time, and still is, a political statement.Two collateral observations might be interesting. There is a popularconfusion between Ardeal (Transylvania) and the entire territory acquiredby Romania from the Hungarian half of the Habsburg Empire in 1918.The reason for considering such an expanded version of Transylvania is toacquire historical legitimacy for a map that was drawn on ethnic principles.Second, there is a popular anxiety against any kind of autonomy. Thenationalist creed in the unitary nation-state was extensively used by totalitarianregimes to enforce the monolithic understanding of society.By default, the present discourse of Nãstase seems to allude to preciselythis register. It is not surprising that the emergence of the Romaniannation-state is in the center of Nãstase’s incriminatory monologue:There are two essential moments of the Romanian evolution, the treatingof which proves that this “textbook” is a deliberate attack against thefoundations of Romanian identity:1. By asserting that the creation of the Great Union of 1918 was primarilydue to the European ideological, politic and military context, andthe right of Greater Romania for the territory inhabited by Romanianswas equal to the “consecration” of an “extremely advantageous situationfor the Romanian Kingdom,” by the Peace Conference of Paris, theauthors promote another favorite thesis of Hungarian revisionists whoask for the “revision” of the decisions taken at the Peace Conference,claiming that the union was due to military force and not to a populardecision. It is exactly what the “textbook” is saying.104