Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

Contrasting/Conflicting Identitiesthat resulted in the making of a high national culture and a Romanian languagecapable of expressing it. 16It is also important to note that, unlike in the case of the otherregions united with Romania in 1918, in Bessarabia, the Romanian-speakingelite eager to advocate national ideas represented just a tiny minority.The role of Russification, however, must not be overrated. Indeed, theRussian language was gradually imposed in administration, then in churchservice, while Romanian was taken out of the schools. Nevertheless, whendiscussing the results of this process, one must take into account that itaffected very differently the aristocracy, largely Russified, and the peasantry,which remained more or less untouched. In 1901, speaking to theFrench ambassador in Bucharest, Take Ionescu – a member of the progressivewing of the Conservative Party at the time, and, later on (in 1908),a founding father of the breakaway Conservative Democratic Party –underlined the social differentiation regarding the national problem. Heacknowledged that the Romanian landlords were Russified through a policyof cooptation, the government allowing them to maintain leading positionsin the administration of the province, whereas the peasantry wasindifferent to the national problem: there were no schools for de-nationalization,and, although the church service was held in Russian, this wasactually of little significance. 17Indeed, since no university existed in Bessarabia, the local aristocracyof Romanian background completed its higher education in Russianuniversity centers. It is true that there were some Bessarabians who leftthe province and settled in the Old Kingdom, becoming important culturalfigures, such as Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and Constantin Stere, but noimportant ties were established between Bucharest or Iaºi and Chiºinãu. 18However, ironically it was the influence of Russian liberalism that contributed,at the beginning of the 20 th century, to the emergence of a pro-Romanian young elite. 19 After the 1905 Revolution, three main politicalcurrents emerged in Bessarabia: the radical nationalists, who supportedthe full autonomy of the province, the moderate nationalists, who wantedto initiate a national movement while preserving the status of the provincewithin the Empire, and the pro-Russian loyalists. Although, in the beginning,the first two were more active and influential, after the conservativeturn of 1907, the third one succeeded to surpass them. However, after theFebruary Revolution of 1917, the radical nationalists organized themselvespolitically, founding the Moldovan National Party, 20 which formulateda program that seems to be inspired by the aims of the ProvisionalGovernment: universal suffrage, freedom of speech, assembly and religion,introduction of Moldovan language in education, and the preservationof the autocephalous status of the Orthodox Church in Bessarabia.155