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

to present his nation as a “living being.” The dilemma between the nationallyspecific and foreign imitation, as well as the problem of organic versusnon-organic development were fundamental elements in almost every significanttext and debate in political and social theory of the period.The Nationality of PhilosophyThe Nationality of ReasoningRegarding the interwar period, Zigu Ornea points out that the negativeeffect of autochthonism lies in its normative character. 12 The organicistconceptions of cultural homogeneity formulated a program of establishingan “ethical state,” a model opposed to that of the constitutionally understood“state of law.” In this view, the ethical power of the state was supposedto lead towards national progress. 13 The ontological element in thedefinition of national specificity acquires an ethical dimension when criticalattitudes towards the ontological unity are labeled not simply as differentviews, among many other possible views, but as signs of non-authenticmembership.As already mentioned, the social-political environment of the countryradically changed after 1919. In this new context, there was a competitionbetween the emerging Romanian elites and the elites of ethnic minorities.In these circumstances, a sharper ethno-national definition could serve asa criterion to restrict the number of eligible competitors. Any labeling as“non-Romanian” could lead to the exclusion from the benefits of the political-economicscheme of the nation-state. Instead of a scheme of cooperationbased upon constitutional consent, an ethical and/or aesthetic understandingof the unity of those who had the right to compete and cooperatewas promoted. This was the context in which the ethno-national and themodernizing schemes could be unified in one common political scheme.According to Ornea, behind the premise that modernity was alien toautochthonism, one can find a belief in “ethnocracy” and in the political willof the autochthonous species understood in biological terms. This reachedits most radical formulation in the assumption of the radical right that“blood is tradition.” 14 Accordingly, the ideologues of the most prominentradical right-wing political movement, the Legion of Archangel Michael,created a fusion of biology and metaphysics in defining the nation. 15The most representative sources of this broad intellectual directionwere the reviews Gîndirea (Thought) and Cuvîntul (The Word). The biologicalconception of the nation, which was supposed to set the organicist conditionsfor cultural identity and national membership, was ideologically, religiouslyand racially exclusive. In the Gîndirist movement, Orthodoxy was notjust a national religion, but the Romanian national ideology itself. Accordingto this perception of Orthodoxy, even the Greek-Catholic Romanians were87