Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

INTRODUCTIONRomania, which was considered by Romanian historiography as the secondstage of the creation of the unitary Romanian state, after the 1859union of Wallachia and Moldavia. The author points out that the mechanismsof assimilation used in Dobrogea by the Romanian political elitesprefigured the more complex and arduous process of administrative integrationand cultural homogenization that took place in interwar GreaterRomania. The paper argues that Northern Dobrogea served as a kind of“internal frontier” for Romania – a dynamic zone for expanding thenational economy and ethnic boundaries. In order to foster the incorporationof the province, Romanian political elites designed a threefoldmechanism composed of ethnic colonization, cultural homogenizationand economic modernization. Consequently, Iordachi explores the peculiarprocess of implementing the “Romanian” legal and political system inthe province, its impact on the nationalist imagery, and the effects of thislegislation on the ethnic and social-political transformation of Dobrogea.It is an intriguing question what made certain projects of nationbuildingand national homogenization more successful than others. Providingan instructive case study of this problem, Cristina Petrescu discussessome aspects of the national identity formation in the case of theRomanian-speaking population in the territory between the rivers Prutand Dnester. In the last two centuries, this region was continuously disputedby Russia – then the Soviet Union – and the Romanian nation-state inthe making, and changed repeatedly its state affiliation, until it emergedin 1991 as an independent republic. From the Romanian point-of-view, itis often argued that the Moldavian national identity was forged by Sovietpropaganda. However, the overwhelming majority of Moldavians asserttoday that they represent a different national community, based on specificcultural traditions. This essay seeks to cut through this dilemma, pointingout that the current Moldavian national identity has its roots in theinterwar period, when the Romanian homogenizing state did not succeedin transforming the pre-modern regional identity of the Romanian-speakingpopulation of Bessarabia into a modern, Romanian national identity.The impact of nation-state building projects in the interwar periodis also the subject of Zoltán Pálfy’s historical case study of the structureof Transylvanian Hungarian university student body migrating to Hungaryin the 1920s. Leaving aside the apologetic tone of traditional interpretations,the paper elucidates specific aspects of the strategic migrationof students from the University of Cluj/Kolozsvár to the alreadyovercrowded academic market of “Trianon Hungary.” Though not significantin size, post-World War I migration of Magyar high status groupsfrom the “successor states” into Hungary made a long-lasting impact oninter-war Hungarian society. Their presence further destabilized the job14