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

Contrasting/Conflicting Identitiesof only 10 industrial and 11 commercial societies in 1937. 37 In the absenceof industry, urban development was insignificant and the rural character ofthe region was maintained throughout the entire interwar period. 38Aware of the problems posed by the integration of the new subjectsfrom Bessarabia, the Liberal governments that dominated political lifeuntil 1928, and especially their Minister of Education, Constantin Angelescu,concentrated on implementing a schooling system similar to the onealready functioning in the Old Kingdom, counting on teachers as “apostles”of Romanianness. 39 This represented a major change in village life ascompared with the educational system that functioned in Bessarabia underthe Tsarist regime. Before 1918, according to the zemstvo system, not thestate but the local administrative council took care of education in everylocal community. As a result, the council of elders in each village annuallyhired a teacher, who was usually a more learned peasant. By rotation, eachfamily with children had to assure accommodation, board and a modestpayment for the teacher, an arrangement similar to that used for employinga cattleman. 40 In fact, the teacher was seen as a less useful person thanthe cattleman, because the latter was indispensable, whereas the formerwas often regarded as an unjustified expenditure. 41 All that a teacher hadto do was to teach the children to read, write and count; that was anywaymore than they needed in their traditional way of life, in which no writtencontracts were used, and only small amounts of money were handled bypeasants, since every household produced the basic needs and everythingbeyond this level was considered a luxury. Actually, there were villages thatdid not even hire teachers, because peasants could not see any immediatebenefits of literacy in the household economy. On the contrary, they preferredto keep children on the farm, to help with the agricultural work,most peasants considering their own descendants just a useful workforce inthe household. 42As shown above, due to this system of education (or rather to its nonexistence),the Bessarabian peasants remained untouched by Russification,a process that, at first glance, seemed, especially to teachers who camefrom other regions, to be an advantage in the process of nation-buildingthrough cultural propaganda and education. In the beginning, there wassome enthusiasm for the program launched by Constantin Angelescu tobuild as many primary schools as possible, using local resources as much aspossible. 43 School committees were established in every commune, includingthe local notables: the mayor, the priest, the most respected peasantsand the newly-appointed teachers. The state provided only a small amountof money and some building materials, but the rest was supplied by localefforts: every villager contributed something, the wealthiest donated landand money, those less wealthy provided their labor. 44 159