Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

“The California of the Romanians”ulations of the 1880 law met significant opposition in the Romanian Parliament.Deputy D. Ghica considered that the law “gives material life, buttotally refuses public life to Dobrogea,” while another deputy claimed thatit “treats the Dobrogeans as a herd of slaves.” 38 Kogãlniceanu counteredthis criticism and won the Parliament’s approval for the bill only by underlyingits national priorities: “This law is made for nothing else but forDobrogea to become part of Romania, and its inhabitants to slowly assimilateand become Romanians.” 39What did Kogãlniceanu mean by assimilation? Judging from hisoverall political activity, Kogãlniceanu was a liberal-democrat. 40As a prominent leader of the 1848 revolution in Moldavia, he militated forthe socio-political emancipation of the lower classes, pleaded for religioustolerance toward non-Orthodox Christians, and for the abolition of slaveryof the Gypsies in Moldavia. However, one can detect an underlyingtension between liberalism and nationalism in Kogãlniceanu’s politicalvision, most evident in his conception of the “assimilation” of Dobrogeaput forward during the parliamentary debates over the Law on the Organizationof Dobrogea.On the one hand, Kogãlniceanu backed a liberal organization of theprovince, in order to observe the religious and cultural autonomy of all ethnicgroups, convinced that, on the basis of reciprocity, a showcase wouldhelp to improve the national rights enjoyed by ethnic Romanians in neighboringcountries as well. On the other hand, Kogãlniceanu pleaded for theimplementation of a “Romanian political order” in Dobrogea, which wasmeant to extend in the province the jurisdiction of the institutions of theRomanian nation-state and to favor the political and economic dominationof ethnic Romanians. These objectives set limits to the degree of culturalautonomy allowed to ethnic groups in the province: Kogãlniceanu defendedthe rights of ethnic minorities in Dobrogea to education in their own language,providing that they study courses in Romanian as well, to practicingtheir own religion, with the provision that they accept the jurisdiction ofRomanian civil laws, and to a minimum standard of civil rights and liberties,except for cases in which this endangered the “public order.” The meanschosen to implement a “Romanian order” in Dobrogea further highlightedthe tension between liberalism and nationalism in Kogãlniceanu’s conceptionof assimilation. First, Kogãlniceanu believed that the success of theprogram of “Romanianization” of Dobrogea depends on the implementationof a temporary separate administrative organization in the province:We want, therefore, this province to be overwhelmingly [eminamente]Romanian, but who is saying assimilation is saying a labor period, anepoch of transition; it is a work to assimilate. If we are to give this131