Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

The Idea of Independent Romanian National Economy in Transylvaniathe responsibility and harmful customs of peasant debtors: endless holidays,laziness, irrational entertainment and luxury. The article recognized thatpeasants often used the money for “non-productive” purposes (baptism,entertainment, cloth and the schooling of their sons – in order to “makegentlemen of them”), and called upon the banks to publish informativebooklets on rational investment and, the dangers of excessive loans. 17As for Romanian historiography, in his study on the role of theRomanian banks in strenghtening the bourgeois strata, Bujor Surdufocused on the policy of the bank Albina regarding the credit associations.18 In his opinion, banks did not pursue a national policy, they aimedat profitability. 19 The author underlined the political power of the banksas well: due to the open ballot, the Romanian voters, “especially the richpeasants,” voted for the candidates of the bank because of their debts anddependence of future borrowing. The urban middle class was also dependent,because many of its members earned their living as lawyers and legaladvisors to the bank. 20 Vasile Dobrescu, who researched the Romanianelite, provides a subtle analysis of the land estate policy of the banks. Theypassed over many large estates to the hands of the rich peasantry, but, atthe same time, they regularly made their debtors’ lots come under thehammer. 21The Romanian banking networks could not become a nationalfinancial system because of their insufficient capital: they could not satisfyall the requests for credit, and, in cases of increased risk, they did noteven want to do so. 22 It was mostly the urban middle class and the Romanianpolitical elite they sought to promote. 23 How broad was this middleclass? It is difficult to determine, because the very notion of a middle classwas not clear to contemporaries. Sometimes, it denoted the rich peasantry,while Petru Suciu, for example, applied this concept to craftsmen,giving a number of over 26,000 wage-earners (or 50,000 with their dependants).24 The economist Ioan Roman, however, broadened this notion andstated that “the middle class consisted of the so-called honoratiors, clergy,lawyers, teachers, the so-called gentry and, in addition, craftsmen, manufacturersand merchants.” 25 These different conceptions can be explainednot so much by a methodological divergence, rather by the amorphousstate of the Romanian society, where bourgeois elements, landowners andprofessionals could hardly be sociologically dissociated, as one and thesame person often pursued two or three ways of living. 26Irrespective of the actual numbers, contemporaries considered themiddle class to be extremely weak, moreover, they called its very existenceinto question. A decade after the Compromise, Ieronim G. Bariþiu urgedthe rise of the peasantry in order to bring forth the missing bourgeoisieand intellectual class without which progress is impossible. 27 As far as the211