Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

CRISTINA PETRESCUBesides the priest, the teacher was the only one who sometimes enjoyed theesteem of the population, or at least of the most “enlightened” part, whounderstood the benefits of education. However, as shown above, for the rest,who saw him as a threat to the working force of the household, the teacherwas just a lazy peasant, who went to school in order to avoid the hardships ofagricultural work.ConclusionsObviously, it is hard to make generalizations from the experience of severalvillages. However, these memories illuminate the complex combinationof factors that hampered the incorporation of the immobile, overwhelminglyrural, and illiterate Bessarabians into the Romanian nation. Inspite of the educational efforts to transform the Bessarabians into loyalRomanian citizens, the results were far below expectations. The commonlanguage, an ingredient of the national identity that can be acknowledgedeven by those who did not pass through the process of standardized education,was not enough to make the Bessarabians identify themselves withRomania. Moreover, the Romanian administration did little to improvetheir everyday life, but, through some representatives, did much to alienatethem. Therefore, the isolated and immobile Bessarabians, as some ofthose interviewed recalled, perceived the Romanians as an occupyingforce, similar to the Russians. The difference was that they had bettermemories from the Russian period than from the Romanian one. Withoutknowing what profound political and social transformations occurredacross the Dnestr, in 1940 some greeted with joy the return of what theythought to be the Tsarist regime. Only a part of the local elite – teachers,priests, clerks and wealthy peasants – fled across the river Prut when theSoviet army entered Bessarabia in 1940. 68 In 1944, already knowing thatSoviet occupation meant deportation to Siberia, the number of refugees washigher. However, most of the peasants remained “at home,” being preoccupiedwith grabbing as much as possible from the belongings of those whowere leaving without knowing whether they would ever return. 69 The socialinsertion of the refugees in post-war Romania was a slow and painfulprocess. The new regime suspected them of anti-communism because oftheir refusal to stay in Soviet-occupied Bessarabia and tried to send themback, while the population considered them Soviet spies and avoided closecontacts with them. After all, in their eyes, the refugees were “second class”citizens, not Romanians, but just Bessarabians.If the Romanian state had more time, it would have possibly completedthe transformation of the Bessarabians into Romanians. But in theshort period between the two World Wars, in the given conditions illus-164