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

RÃZVAN PÂRÂIANUCeauºescu. In the case of Romania (most known otherwise), the communistpractice of developing nationalist themes and rites became perfect. ...An essential instrument of power was the maintenance and fortification ofthe governmental structures on a national basis, with the help of nationalcommunistcentralized parties. This was independent of the centralizing ordecentralizing pressures manifested within the communist block. The systemof the communist power was implemented through breaking the oldsocial forms and through replacing them with others, adjusted to the projectof totally controlling all social activities. The communist regime createda culture of social seclusion that did not negate but, on the contrary, adoptedthe nation-state. The nation-state represented one of the levels of thisstructure and one of the rare edifices of power to preserve the prestige offormer symbols. 18Paqueteau refers to the national politics of the communist parties and totheir cultural policies. Nicolaescu received political and public recognitionprecisely during the period when the Romanian party nationalized itselfwithout any previous de-Stalinization. This period started in the late1960s, with the first nationalist deviations of Ceauºescu, and culminated in1974, when the Program of the Romanian Communist Party includeda preamble with an outline of the history of Romanians.From that moment, historical interpretation ceased to be a matter ofacademic research. Paqueteau was correct in indicating the nation-state asthe instrument of totalitarian control. This ideology reinforced a siegementality in a large part of the society. It is not accidental that in the sameyear, 1974, Edgar Papu developed the theory of Romanian “protochronism.”19 The historical meta-discourse was conquered by the totalitarianstate. Historians were doomed to deal with small and more or less insignificantdetails, and to perpetually negotiate their “micro-historical” discoursewith the all-encompassing national meta-discourse. The place ofNicolaescu is thus very significant. Cultural personalities like him createda sensibility toward statehood and leadership. In spite of the Marxist theoryfocusing on class struggle, dilettante and “nonconformist” historianswere busy forging a traditionalist reinterpretation of history. Romanticheroes entered the canon in order to substantiate the Idea, and this ideawas that of a unitary and independent nation-state.This historical narrative became one of the most important, if notthe only, source of social identity. It was extremely suitable for the national-communistideology. The first crucial feature is the inherent teleologyof historical interpretation. The rationalist Marxian “law of historicalchange” was substituted by a revealing continuity of a spiritual substance,the dream of national independence, which came true in the present.100