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

DRAGOº PETRESCUwhile in 1938/1939 only 14% of the pupils went beyond the primary level,by 1965/1966 the percentage increased to 59%.Nevertheless, it was not only the schooling of the overwhelmingmajority of Romania’s inhabitants, but also the content of the curricula,particularly the teaching of a “national” history, that supplemented theregime’s efforts. In fact, such a strategy was not employed only by thecommunist regimes. In his work on the modernization of rural France,Weber emphasizes the use of history teaching in the nation-buildingprocess. As Weber puts it, “there were no better instruments of indoctrinationand patriotic conditioning than French history and geography,especially history.” 31 In the Romanian case, the importance of history increating the “socialist” nation is suggested by the centrality of the debateson the ethnic origins of the Romanians. With regard to the process ofRomanian ethno-genesis, communist historiography went through threestages between 1948 and 1989. During the first stage, 1948-1958, asa result of the Russification campaign, official historiography placeda strong emphasis on the Slavs and their role in the formation of theRomanian people. The second stage, 1958-1974, was characterized bya relative ideological relaxation and a return to the theses of the interwarperiod, concerning the role of the Romans and their mixing with the localDacian population in providing the Dacian-Romanian essence of theRomanians. The third stage, 1974-1989, was characterized by “Dacomania,”that is, a special emphasis on the fundamental role of the“autochthonous,” Dacian element in the formation of Romanian people.32 This last period deserves a closer look since it was crucial in establishingthe idea of a national history for the overwhelming majority ofpresent-day Romanians.The return to the Dacian origins, i.e., the third turn of Romaniancommunist historiography was announced by Ceauºescu’s “Theses of July1971,” a radical attack against the cosmopolitan and pro-Western attitudesin Romanian culture. 33 After the “Theses,” the regime began toplace an emphasis on the importance of history-writing in building the“socialist” nation, and the most important step to be taken was to providethe party guidelines for the writing of a “national” history. Three yearslater, in 1974, the founding document of Romanian national-communismwas issued: the Romanian Communist Party Program (RCPP). 34 This officialdocument opened with a 38-page concise history of Romania, which,in fact, became not only the blueprint for a single, compulsory textbookutilized in every school, but also the model for every historical writingpublished in Romania. Four main ideas, which became sacred themes ofthe “national” historiography, emerged from the RCPP: (1) the ancientroots of the Romanian people; (2) the continuity of the Romanians on the282