Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

BALÁZS TRENCSÉNYIEastern Europe (New Haven: Yale Center for International and Area Studies,1995); Katherine Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and CulturalPolitics in Ceausescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press1991), pp. 27-71; Sorin Antohi, Civitas Imaginalis: Istorie ºi utopie în culturaromânã (Civitas Imaginalis: History and utopia in Romanian culture)(Bucharest: Litera, 1994); and Robert B. Pynsent, Questions of Identity: Czechand Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest: Central EuropeanUniversity Press, 1994).4My analysis owes a lot to the extremely insightful interpretations of Zeletin’sworks, proposed by Daniel Chirot, “Neoliberal and Social Democratic Theoriesof Development: The Zeletin-Voinea Debate Concerning Romania’sProspects in the 1920’s and its Contemporary Importance,” in KennethJowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Developmentin a European Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 31-52; and Cristian Preda, “Zeletin nu a fost liberal, ci socialist” (Zeletin wasnot liberal, but socialist) – introduction to ªtefan Zeletin, Burghezia românã.Neoliberalismul (Romanian Bourgeoisie. Neoliberalism) (Bucharest: Nemira,1997), pp. 23-51. I tried to accentuate, however, certain aspects ofZeletin’s works which were not in the focus of these authors’ interest. Chirotsought to locate Zeletin – who, in his opinion, exemplified an unusuallysophisticated formulation of the uniformitarian theory – in the debate concerningthe nature of development in belatedly modernizing societies. Therefore,the author focused on Zeletin’s macro-sociological considerations, anddescribed his neoliberalism in view of the ideologies characterizing the oligarchicmodernizatory elites from Brazil to South Korea, combining certainelements of a market economy with measures of economic protectionism andwith strong restrictions on the democratic institutions. In contrast, Preda’saim was to dissociate Zeletin’s intellectual heritage from liberalism, assertingthat his repudiation of market economy and support for an authoritarianpolitical option disqualifies him from the liberal tradition. Although Predamentions Zeletin’s striking nationalist considerations (pp. 41-47), he tried tore-describe him mainly in terms of the socialist system of values. My aim inthis paper, however, was to establish an interpretative link between Zeletin’ssocio-economic references and the most crucial ideological theme characterizingthe East-European political cultures in the interwar period, namely theproblem of nation-statehood.5See Henry L. Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1951; reprint, n.p.: Archon Books, 1969).6Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992), pp. 116-180.7The main ideologues of this new etatist trend were Béla Grünwald andGusztáv Beksics, while its main political figure was István Tisza. On the transformationof Hungarian nationalism at the turn of the century, see MiklósSzabó’s classic study: “Új vonások a századforduló magyar politikai gondolkodásában”(New features in the Hungarian political thought at the turn of thecentury), in Miklós Szabó, Politikai kultúra Magyarországon, 1896-1986 (Politicalculture in Hungary, 1896-1986) (Budapest: Atlantisz-Medvetánc, 1989), pp.109-176.76