Conflict and diversity in East European nationalism, on the basis of a Romanian case study

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 2003, Pages

  Dobrescu, Caius ^a  

^a TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY OF BRASOV   (Romania)

Author keywords

Communalism; Communism; Conflict; Conservatism; Elites; Enlightenment; Fascism; Intellectuals; Intelligentsia; Liberalism; Managerialism; Modernity; Modernization; Mystical nationalism; Nationalism; Pluralism; Post communism; Radicalism; Religion and politics; Romania

Indexed keywords

EID: 0042026340     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325403255306     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. Here is a random sample of this type of discourse: "The disintegration of multiethnic states and empires, and the accompanying spectacle of archaic tribal wars on the European periphery, have made West Europeans wonder whether their pursuit of continental unification might not be a doomed defiance of history's will" ("The Revival of Long-Dormant Vendettas in the Balkans and the Caucasus has frightened onlookers in Western Europe," Boston Globe, 15 June 1994, 18).
2. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).
3. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
4. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek is, in my view, a typical representative of the uncritical emulation of Said's theories. See his "Multiculturalism, or, The Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism," New Left Review, no. 225 (1997): 28-51. To a certain extent, this attitude is visible also in Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
5. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek is, in my view, a typical representative of the uncritical emulation of Said's theories. See his "Multiculturalism, or, The Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism," New Left Review, no. 225 (1997): 28-51. To a certain extent, this attitude is visible also in Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
6. See R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1963), 341-53. The phenomenon is also seizingly expressed in P. Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound (London: McGibbon and Kee, 1968): A spurious unity is projected onto other people's belief systems by outside observers - sociologists and anthropologists - even though they are often familiar with that kind of sociological theory which relates exaggerated awareness of the compulsions of social norms to the observer's "external" position, (p. 25)
7. See R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1963), 341-53. The phenomenon is also seizingly expressed in P. Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound (London: McGibbon and Kee, 1968): A spurious unity is projected onto other people's belief systems by outside observers - sociologists and anthropologists - even though they are often familiar with that kind of sociological theory which relates exaggerated awareness of the compulsions of social norms to the observer's "external" position, (p. 25)
8. Keith Hitchins, The Rumanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1780-1849 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).
9. Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy: Studies in the Culture and Political Thought of South-Eastern Europe (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Variorum, 1994).
10. David Prodan, Supplex Libellus Valachorum; or, The Political Struggle of the Romanians in Transylvania during the 18th Century, translated by Mary Lazarescu (Bucharest: Publishing House of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Romania, 1971).
11. Alan Sked, The Survival of the Habsburg Empire: Radetzky, the Imperial Army, and the Class War, 1848 (London: Longman, 1979).
12. The most significant moment of the militancy of Romanian intellectuals of Transylvania is the so-called Memorandist movement of the 1890s, a form of legal protest for civic rights that applied the same strategy as the Czech and Slovak 1977 movement: playing the actual policies of restricting public liberties against the foundational principles of the state legislation. For a substantial collection of documents related to this movement, with French, German, and Hungarian translations, and with English résumés, see Corneliu Mihail Lungu et al., eds., De la Pronunciament la Memorandum: 1868-1892: Mişcarea memorandistǎ, expresie a luptei nationale a românilor (Bucureşti: Arhivele Statului din România, 1993).
13. Sorin Antohi, Civitas imaginalis. Istorie şi utopie in cultura românǎ (Bucureşti, România: Litera, 1994).
14. Mihai Zamfir, Din secolul romantic (Bucureşti, România: Cartea româneascǎ, 1989).
15. Vlad Georgescu, Istoria ideilor politics româneşti (1369-1878) (Munich, Germany: Jon Dumitru Verlag, 1987).
16. M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971).
17. Among them, Ioan Slavici, unanimously considered as the founder of the Romanian novel, and the federalist theoretician Aurel C. Popovici.
18. Sorin Alexandrescu, Paradoxul român (Bucureşti, România: Univers, 1998), 68.
19. The most interesting phenomenon of this kind is a literary group that evolved in Banat, the western part of Transylvania. In the traditional capital of Banat, Timişoara (Temeswar), a number of poets, novelists, and literary critics developed, since the 1970s, a subtle discourse of tolerance and multicultural identity. The representative names of this movement are Sorin Titel, Viorel Marineasa, Daniel Vighi, Şerban Foarţǎ, Livius Ciocârlie, Mircea Mihǎies, Cornel Ungureanu, and Adriana Babeţi.
20. The most widely publicized event of this type was a kind of manifesto, written by the young Transylvanian journalist Sabin Gherman, bearing the Intentionally provocative title, "I've Had Enough of Romania" (1999). The main goal of Gherman was to create a public scandal. Eventually, he is trying to organize a Transylvanist party advocating for the political autonomy of this province. During the past decade, the theme of a substantial cultural, administrative, and political decentralization of Romania was supported predominantly by elected local authorities and public intellectuals from Transylvania. Among the most important actors of this process, one should mention the Third Europe Foundation in Timişoara; the periodicals Vatra, issued in Tîrgu-Mureş, and Familia, issued in Oradea, that offer a public floor for Greek-Catholic intellectuals; and the Romanian-Hungarian monthly Provincia, issued in Cluj. The Provincia group published a ten-point Memorandum (called so in the memory of the 1892 Memorandists) inviting the civil society and the Parliament to discuss the reform of the Romanian administrative system to allow for a substantial regional autonomy (the possibility of introducing regional parliaments was also mentioned).
21. For the birth of the Romanian bipartisan political system (Liberals vs. Conservatives), see Keith Hitchins, Rumania: 1866-1947 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).
22. For understanding the pan-European liberal high culture that also influenced Romania, see Alan Kahanc, Aristocratic liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
23. The first elections after the 1918 Unification brought about the debacle and the eventual extinction of the Conservative Party.
24. For an analysis of "resistance through culture," see Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauşescu's Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
25. A lucid case study is Adrian Marino's, "Cazul Noica," in Politicǎ şi culturǎ (Iaşi, România: Polirom, 1996).
26. Some of the representative names of the aristocratic nostalgia are Alexandru Paleologu, Constantin Bǎlǎceanu-Stolnici, and Neagu Djuvara. The major (even if not necessarily compliant) continuators of Constantin Noica's conservative legacy are Andrei Pleşu and Gabriel Liiceanu. The Straussian touch is brought by Horia Roman Patapievici.
27. An attentive analysis of the Romanian public education system, including an attentive discussion of the issue raised here, can be found in Adrian Miroiu et al., Învǎţǎmîntul românesc azi: studiu de diagnozǎ (Iaşi, România: Polirom, 1998).
28. There is a certain difference between the status of what was called "intelligentsia" in the Tsarist empire and the status of the groups that could be brought under this label in the Hapsburg territories or in the Balkan, post-Ottoman states. The difference resides essentially in the higher degree of public recognition and of civil rights and liberties that were granted to the educated classes in the latter areas as compared to the former. For an analysis of the difference of status between the Russian and the Serbian intelligentsia at the end of the nineteenth century, see Hugh Seton-Watson, "Revolution in Eastern Europe," in P. J. Vatikiotis, ed., Revolution in the Middle East and Other Case Studies (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), 185-97.
29. The conservative rebellion against the cultural domination of the 1848 generation is expressed in Titu Maiorescu's classical pamphlet "Beţia de cuvinte," which approximately translates as "Inebriation with Words" or "Wordcoholism" (1873). This title is extremely suggestive of the nature of the conservative social and cultural criticism.
30. A perspective on the research ethic of conservative historical criticism, can be found in Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, 2001).
31. Statistical surveys around the turn of the nineteenth century clearly indicate a low degree of urbanization and low levels of literacy, a situation that did not essentially change after the 1918 unification with Transylvania. See Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 17-21.
32. Ovid Densusianu, "Folclorul. Cum trebuie înţeles, " 1910, in Flori alese din cîntecele poporului: Vieaţa pǎstoreascǎ în poezia noastrǎ popularǎ: Folclorul, cum trebue înţeles: Graiul din Ţara Haţegului (Bucureşti, România: Editura pentru literaturǎ, 1966), 45-50.
33. Z. Ornea, Sǎmǎnǎtorismul (Bucureşti, România: Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române, 1998).
34. Dumitru Micu, Poporanismul şi "Viaţa româneascǎ" (Bucureşti, România; Editura pentruliteraturǎ, 1961). For the Russian sources of this movement, see Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia, translated from the Italian by Francis Haskell, with an introduction by Isaiah Berlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
35. Dumitru Micu, Poporanismul şi "Viaţa româneascǎ" (Bucureşti, România; Editura pentruliteraturǎ, 1961). For the Russian sources of this movement, see Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia, translated from the Italian by Francis Haskell, with an introduction by Isaiah Berlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
36. Even if there is a rather substantial literature on interwar anti-Semitism in Romania, the scientific interest being aroused by the extreme brutality of the movement and by the uncommonly high number of its victims, the origins of this ideology in the Romanian 1900s "Belle Epoque" are by far less investigated, For a historical perspective, the best reference would be Carol Iancu, Jews in Romania, 1866-1919: From Exclusion to Emancipation, translated by Carvel de Bussy (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1996). For a cultural interpretation, see Andrei Oişteanu, Imaginea eweului în cultura românǎ (Bucureşti, România: Humanitas, 2001).
37. The analysis of the apparition and evolution of this notion undertaken for the German context by Fritz Stern is a good introduction to the understanding of similar evolutions in Romania. Stern rests his argument for the explosion of nationalist violent fantasies in Germany on the defeat and humiliation suffered at the end of World War I. See Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair; A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1961). But a comparison with the Romanian case, characterized by the same feeling of "despair" (a cult book of the generation of the 1930s was Emil Cioran's 1934 Pe culmile disperǎrii (On the Heights of Despair), translated and with an introduction by Ilinca Zarifopol Johnston (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), would put this explanation in serious difficulty, since Romania stood, at the end of the war, with the winners, having realized its maximal political objective of integrating Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina.
38. Ornea, Sǎmǎnǎtorismul.
39. For an attentive survey of the events undergone with the means of social history, see Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. For the concept of "mystical nationalism," see Vladimir Tismaneanu, "Romania's Mystical Revolutionaries," in Edith Kurzweil, ed., A Partisan Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 383-92.
40. For an attentive survey of the events undergone with the means of social history, see Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. For the concept of "mystical nationalism," see Vladimir Tismaneanu, "Romania's Mystical Revolutionaries," in Edith Kurzweil, ed., A Partisan Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 383-92.
41. Trond Gilberg, Nationalism and Communism in Romania: The Rise and Fall of Ceausescu's Personal Dictatorship (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990).
42. An analysis of the phenomenon in Tom Gallagher, Romania after Ceauşescu: ThePolitics of Intolerance (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 1995).
43. An "ethnic" trend is obvious in the Romanian newest pop music wave (the name of one group, RoMania, is extremely suggestive from this point of view). The most famous guru of the post-communist epoch is Gregorian Bivolaru, a veteran of the Yogi underground, who, in the early 1990s, founded the immensely successful and apparently increasingly prosperous Movement for the Spiritual Integration in the Absolute. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is one of his explicit sources of inspiration, the movement practicing the same variety of sexual Yoga that made the American glory and the fall of this almost forgotten luminary. In Bivolaru's interpretation, Romania is best positioned for playing a major part in the coming cosmic cycle. As far as the Sci-Fi nationalists are concerned, the novel I mentioned is called Motocentauri pe Acoperişul Lumii (Moto-Centaurs on Top of the World) (Ploieşti, Romania: Karmat Press, 1995), and is the fruit of the collaboration of several authors, the most interesting and sophisticated of whom is Sebastian Corn, a neurosurgeon by profession.
44. Tudor Vianu, La société littéraire Junimea (Bucureşti, România: Minerva, 1968).
45. Mihai Sorin Radulescu, Elita liberalǎ româneascǎ 1866-1900 (Bucureşti, România: All, 1998).
46. The symbolic figure of radical liberalism, in the 1848 meaning of the term is Nicolae Bǎlcescu (1819-52). See Bǎlcescu, Opere, edited by G. Zane and Elena G. Zane (Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1974-). Another representative is C. A. Rosetti (1816-85). See Rosettl, Jurnalul meu (My Diary), edited by Marin Bucur (Cluj, România: Dacia, 1974).
47. The symbolic figure of radical liberalism, in the 1848 meaning of the term is Nicolae Bǎlcescu (1819-52). See Bǎlcescu, Opere, edited by G. Zane and Elena G. Zane (Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1974-). Another representative is C. A. Rosetti (1816-85). See Rosettl, Jurnalul meu (My Diary), edited by Marin Bucur (Cluj, România: Dacia, 1974).
48. Z. Ornea, Junimea şi junimismul (Bucureşti, România: Minerva, 1978),
49. Ion Bogdan Letter, Postmodernism, Din dosarul unei bǎtǎlii culturale (Piteşti, România: Paralela 45, 2000); Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu, Postmodernismul românesc (Bucuresti, România: Humanitas, 1999).
50. Ion Bogdan Letter, Postmodernism, Din dosarul unei bǎtǎlii culturale (Piteşti, România: Paralela 45, 2000); Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu, Postmodernismul românesc (Bucuresti, România: Humanitas, 1999).
51. The most recent Romanian intellectual polemic was aroused by a manifesto-book of a representative of the conservative camp, Horia Roman Patapievici, who places himself in the tradition of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom and engages in a radical, essentially theological criticism of modernity, thereby challenging the postmodern liberals. See Patapievici, Omul recent (Bucureşti, România: Humanitas, 2002).
52. Communalist nationalism is connected to the weekly Sǎmǎnǎtorul (1900-10) and to its editor, the historian Nicolae Iorga, a prolific author (only his academic bibliography contains thousands of titles) and a passionate polemist, who fascinated the younger generations with his apparently inexhaustible energy. See Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, Nicolas Iorga - o biografie (Iaşi, România: Institutul European, 1999). The mystical nationalism of the 1930s was a student movement, centered on a leader with no certified intellectual achievements, but with an intensely charismatic personality - Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu (1899-1938), who steered the frustrations of his generation into aggressive exhibition of Orthodox religious identity, violent anti-Semitism, and terrorism. Another key player of mystical nationalism was the philosopher Nae Ionescu (1890-1940), whose personal magnetism attracted into this ideological orbit young Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran, authors who did not, otherwise, display a special interest In the reawakening of Romanian Orthodoxy. See Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, translated from the Romanian by Charles Kormos (Published for the Vidai Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991); Z. Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The Nineteen Thirties, translated by Eugenia Maria Popescu (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1999). Zelea-Codreanu's Legion of the Archangel Michael (which eventually became the Iron Guard) played a major role in the Romanian Holocaust. It is also true that it was not the only local force to promote anti-Semitism and to repress the Jewish community. For the Holocaust in Romania, see I. C. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and Its Jews, foreword by Elie Wiesel (New York: Greenwood, 1992); Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry (Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center, City University of New York, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1994); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, foreword by Elle Wiesel, preface by Paul A. Shapiro (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000).
53. Communalist nationalism is connected to the weekly Sǎmǎnǎtorul (1900-10) and to its editor, the historian Nicolae Iorga, a prolific author (only his academic bibliography contains thousands of titles) and a passionate polemist, who fascinated the younger generations with his apparently inexhaustible energy. See Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, Nicolas Iorga - o biografie (Iaşi, România: Institutul European, 1999). The mystical nationalism of the 1930s was a student movement, centered on a leader with no certified intellectual achievements, but with an intensely charismatic personality - Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu (1899-1938), who steered the frustrations of his generation into aggressive exhibition of Orthodox religious identity, violent anti-Semitism, and terrorism. Another key player of mystical nationalism was the philosopher Nae Ionescu (1890-1940), whose personal magnetism attracted into this ideological orbit young Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran, authors who did not, otherwise, display a special interest In the reawakening of Romanian Orthodoxy. See Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, translated from the Romanian by Charles Kormos (Published for the Vidai Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991); Z. Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The Nineteen Thirties, translated by Eugenia Maria Popescu (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1999). Zelea-Codreanu's Legion of the Archangel Michael (which eventually became the Iron Guard) played a major role in the Romanian Holocaust. It is also true that it was not the only local force to promote anti-Semitism and to repress the Jewish community. For the Holocaust in Romania, see I. C. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and Its Jews, foreword by Elie Wiesel (New York: Greenwood, 1992); Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry (Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center, City University of New York, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1994); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, foreword by Elle Wiesel, preface by Paul A. Shapiro (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000).
54. Communalist nationalism is connected to the weekly Sǎmǎnǎtorul (1900-10) and to its editor, the historian Nicolae Iorga, a prolific author (only his academic bibliography contains thousands of titles) and a passionate polemist, who fascinated the younger generations with his apparently inexhaustible energy. See Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, Nicolas Iorga - o biografie (Iaşi, România: Institutul European, 1999). The mystical nationalism of the 1930s was a student movement, centered on a leader with no certified intellectual achievements, but with an intensely charismatic personality - Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu (1899-1938), who steered the frustrations of his generation into aggressive exhibition of Orthodox religious identity, violent anti-Semitism, and terrorism. Another key player of mystical nationalism was the philosopher Nae Ionescu (1890-1940), whose personal magnetism attracted into this ideological orbit young Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran, authors who did not, otherwise, display a special interest In the reawakening of Romanian Orthodoxy. See Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, translated from the Romanian by Charles Kormos (Published for the Vidai Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991); Z. Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The Nineteen Thirties, translated by Eugenia Maria Popescu (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1999). Zelea-Codreanu's Legion of the Archangel Michael (which eventually became the Iron Guard) played a major role in the Romanian Holocaust. It is also true that it was not the only local force to promote anti-Semitism and to repress the Jewish community. For the Holocaust in Romania, see I. C. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and Its Jews, foreword by Elie Wiesel (New York: Greenwood, 1992); Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry (Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center, City University of New York, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1994); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, foreword by Elle Wiesel, preface by Paul A. Shapiro (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000).
55. Communalist nationalism is connected to the weekly Sǎmǎnǎtorul (1900-10) and to its editor, the historian Nicolae Iorga, a prolific author (only his academic bibliography contains thousands of titles) and a passionate polemist, who fascinated the younger generations with his apparently inexhaustible energy. See Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, Nicolas Iorga - o biografie (Iaşi, România: Institutul European, 1999). The mystical nationalism of the 1930s was a student movement, centered on a leader with no certified intellectual achievements, but with an intensely charismatic personality - Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu (1899-1938), who steered the frustrations of his generation into aggressive exhibition of Orthodox religious identity, violent anti-Semitism, and terrorism. Another key player of mystical nationalism was the philosopher Nae Ionescu (1890-1940), whose personal magnetism attracted into this ideological orbit young Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran, authors who did not, otherwise, display a special interest In the reawakening of Romanian Orthodoxy. See Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, translated from the Romanian by Charles Kormos (Published for the Vidai Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991); Z. Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The Nineteen Thirties, translated by Eugenia Maria Popescu (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1999). Zelea-Codreanu's Legion of the Archangel Michael (which eventually became the Iron Guard) played a major role in the Romanian Holocaust. It is also true that it was not the only local force to promote anti-Semitism and to repress the Jewish community. For the Holocaust in Romania, see I. C. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and Its Jews, foreword by Elie Wiesel (New York: Greenwood, 1992); Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry (Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center, City University of New York, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1994); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, foreword by Elle Wiesel, preface by Paul A. Shapiro (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000).
56. Communalist nationalism is connected to the weekly Sǎmǎnǎtorul (1900-10) and to its editor, the historian Nicolae Iorga, a prolific author (only his academic bibliography contains thousands of titles) and a passionate polemist, who fascinated the younger generations with his apparently inexhaustible energy. See Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, Nicolas Iorga - o biografie (Iaşi, România: Institutul European, 1999). The mystical nationalism of the 1930s was a student movement, centered on a leader with no certified intellectual achievements, but with an intensely charismatic personality - Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu (1899-1938), who steered the frustrations of his generation into aggressive exhibition of Orthodox religious identity, violent anti-Semitism, and terrorism. Another key player of mystical nationalism was the philosopher Nae Ionescu (1890-1940), whose personal magnetism attracted into this ideological orbit young Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran, authors who did not, otherwise, display a special interest In the reawakening of Romanian Orthodoxy. See Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, translated from the Romanian by Charles Kormos (Published for the Vidai Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991); Z. Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The Nineteen Thirties, translated by Eugenia Maria Popescu (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1999). Zelea-Codreanu's Legion of the Archangel Michael (which eventually became the Iron Guard) played a major role in the Romanian Holocaust. It is also true that it was not the only local force to promote anti-Semitism and to repress the Jewish community. For the Holocaust in Romania, see I. C. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and Its Jews, foreword by Elie Wiesel (New York: Greenwood, 1992); Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry (Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center, City University of New York, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1994); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, foreword by Elle Wiesel, preface by Paul A. Shapiro (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000).
57. Communalist nationalism is connected to the weekly Sǎmǎnǎtorul (1900-10) and to its editor, the historian Nicolae Iorga, a prolific author (only his academic bibliography contains thousands of titles) and a passionate polemist, who fascinated the younger generations with his apparently inexhaustible energy. See Nicholas M. Nagy-Talavera, Nicolas Iorga - o biografie (Iaşi, România: Institutul European, 1999). The mystical nationalism of the 1930s was a student movement, centered on a leader with no certified intellectual achievements, but with an intensely charismatic personality - Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu (1899-1938), who steered the frustrations of his generation into aggressive exhibition of Orthodox religious identity, violent anti-Semitism, and terrorism. Another key player of mystical nationalism was the philosopher Nae Ionescu (1890-1940), whose personal magnetism attracted into this ideological orbit young Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran, authors who did not, otherwise, display a special interest In the reawakening of Romanian Orthodoxy. See Leon Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s, translated from the Romanian by Charles Kormos (Published for the Vidai Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, by Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1991); Z. Ornea, The Romanian Extreme Right: The Nineteen Thirties, translated by Eugenia Maria Popescu (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1999). Zelea-Codreanu's Legion of the Archangel Michael (which eventually became the Iron Guard) played a major role in the Romanian Holocaust. It is also true that it was not the only local force to promote anti-Semitism and to repress the Jewish community. For the Holocaust in Romania, see I. C. Butnaru, The Silent Holocaust: Romania and Its Jews, foreword by Elie Wiesel (New York: Greenwood, 1992); Randolph L. Braham, ed., The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry (Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Graduate Center, City University of New York, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1994); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944, foreword by Elle Wiesel, preface by Paul A. Shapiro (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2000).
58. In 1938, in response to the terror campaign launched by the Legionnaires that culminated with the killing of two prime ministers, Carol II decided to execute, without any trial, all the significant members of the extreme-right Legion of the Archangel Michael, beginning with their messianic captain, Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu. A perceptive analysis of these evolutions in Eugen Weber, "Romania," in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, eds., The European Right. A Historical Perspective (Berkley: University of California Press, 1965), 501-74. Romania at the end of the 1930s is an example for the cycle of violence generated by terrorism that, in the end, completely destroys democracy. In more recent history, Uruguay (the violence of the Tupamaros urban guerillas causing the rise of a brutal military junta) and Argentina (the complete disarray of democracy as a result of the fight between the military who had expelled Peron and pro-Peronist terrorists, especially the Montoneros) are occurrences of the same type of process.
59. On Iorga's atheism, sec Nagy-Talavera, Nicolas Iorga - o biografie, 85.
60. Iorga's aesthetic-politic philosophy is documented in his 1905 collection of studies and articles, O lupta literǎrǎ (A Literary Straggle), edited by Valeriu Râpeanu and Sanda Râpeanu (Bucureşti, România: Minerva, [1914, 1916] 1979).
61. Vladimir Pasti, Româna în tranziţie: cǎderea în vittor(Bucuteşu,România: Nemira, 1995).
62. See Michael Shafir, "The Mind of Romania's Radical Right," in Sabrina Ramet, ed., The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 213-32. Shafir also makes a distinction between parties of "radical continuity" and of "radical return," Both "indulge in xenophobic appeals and extreme nationalism," but while the "radical return" derives its ideological tenets from "neotraditional values associated with fascist parties In Interwar period," "radical continuity" is inspired by "the communist legacy Itself, looking thus to Nicolae Ceausescu . . . with admiration" (p. 213). After analyzing the public statements of Marian Munteanu, one of the most typical young leaders of the radical return constellation, Shafir underlines that "Munteanu is unwilling to pay any tribute to Ceausescu's nationalist policies" for two main reasons: first, because he considers "genuine nationalism" as incompatible with communism, seen as "an internationalist doctrine which disregards national specificity," so that "one cannot be a Romanian and a communist at the same time"; second, because of the conviction that a real nationalist creed should "incorporate the Romanian Orthodox religious element, for the two are [seen as] indivisible" (p. 222). Rich references to the Romanian post-communist extreme right are also to be found in Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Function, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), especially the chapter, "Scapegoating Fantasies: Fascism, Anti-Semitism, and Myth Making in East Central Europe," 88-110.
63. See Michael Shafir, "The Mind of Romania's Radical Right," in Sabrina Ramet, ed., The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 213-32. Shafir also makes a distinction between parties of "radical continuity" and of "radical return," Both "indulge in xenophobic appeals and extreme nationalism," but while the "radical return" derives its ideological tenets from "neotraditional values associated with fascist parties In Interwar period," "radical continuity" is inspired by "the communist legacy Itself, looking thus to Nicolae Ceausescu . . . with admiration" (p. 213). After analyzing the public statements of Marian Munteanu, one of the most typical young leaders of the radical return constellation, Shafir underlines that "Munteanu is unwilling to pay any tribute to Ceausescu's nationalist policies" for two main reasons: first, because he considers "genuine nationalism" as incompatible with communism, seen as "an internationalist doctrine which disregards national specificity," so that "one cannot be a Romanian and a communist at the same time"; second, because of the conviction that a real nationalist creed should "incorporate the Romanian Orthodox religious element, for the two are [seen as] indivisible" (p. 222). Rich references to the Romanian post-communist extreme right are also to be found in Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Function, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), especially the chapter, "Scapegoating Fantasies: Fascism, Anti-Semitism, and Myth Making in East Central Europe," 88-110.
64. The leading representative of the school of thinking that connects nationalism to the rise of the industrial society Is Ernst Gellner. See Gellner, Nationalism (Washington Square: New York University Press, 1997), The interplay between modern bureaucracy, as prior to and even independent of a significant process of industrialization, and nation building is explored by a school of thought initiated by S. N. Eisenstadt. See S. N. Eisenstadt and Stein Rokkan, eds., Building States and Nations (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1973). The explanation of national homogenization through an investigation of the mechanism of institutionalizing collective imagination is founded in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
65. The leading representative of the school of thinking that connects nationalism to the rise of the industrial society Is Ernst Gellner. See Gellner, Nationalism (Washington Square: New York University Press, 1997), The interplay between modern bureaucracy, as prior to and even independent of a significant process of industrialization, and nation building is explored by a school of thought initiated by S. N. Eisenstadt. See S. N. Eisenstadt and Stein Rokkan, eds., Building States and Nations (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1973). The explanation of national homogenization through an investigation of the mechanism of institutionalizing collective imagination is founded in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
66. The leading representative of the school of thinking that connects nationalism to the rise of the industrial society Is Ernst Gellner. See Gellner, Nationalism (Washington Square: New York University Press, 1997), The interplay between modern bureaucracy, as prior to and even independent of a significant process of industrialization, and nation building is explored by a school of thought initiated by S. N. Eisenstadt. See S. N. Eisenstadt and Stein Rokkan, eds., Building States and Nations (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1973). The explanation of national homogenization through an investigation of the mechanism of institutionalizing collective imagination is founded in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
67. Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation. A remarkable contribution to the understanding of inner differentiation of nationalism is Eastern Europe, at the conceptual level, in G. M. Tamas, "Ethnarchy and Ethno-Anarchy," Social Research 63 (Spring 1996): 147-91. An attentive and theoretically innovative description of the varieties of nationalism in Romania in the 1970s and the 1980s can be found in Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism.
68. Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation. A remarkable contribution to the understanding of inner differentiation of nationalism is Eastern Europe, at the conceptual level, in G. M. Tamas, "Ethnarchy and Ethno-Anarchy," Social Research 63 (Spring 1996): 147-91. An attentive and theoretically innovative description of the varieties of nationalism in Romania in the 1970s and the 1980s can be found in Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism.
69. Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation. A remarkable contribution to the understanding of inner differentiation of nationalism is Eastern Europe, at the conceptual level, in G. M. Tamas, "Ethnarchy and Ethno-Anarchy," Social Research 63 (Spring 1996): 147-91. An attentive and theoretically innovative description of the varieties of nationalism in Romania in the 1970s and the 1980s can be found in Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism.
70. See Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation, chap., "Vindictive and Messianic Mythologies: Post-Communist Nationalism and Populism," 65-87. This model incorporates the perspective of newer, more comprehensive approaches to this phenomenon, such as Yael Tamir's Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Tismaneanu's reading of the complexity of the identity policies in Central and Eastern Europe starts from the premises of a plurality of mythologies, of presignified manners of reading reality, active in the East European political and cultural world. The categories he proposes cover also the distinctions I made in the present article. The difference between Tismaneanu's approach and mine is not a matter of description, but of interpretation. Fantasies cf Salvation treats the complexity of nationalism as a variety of risks posed to democratization, while accepting that some of its forms, the civic one, especially, are not inherently incompatible with liberal values. Without contradicting this perspective, and without minimizing in any way the high risks embedded in the East European democratization processes, my understanding builds more on the potential for political dissent, polemics, and confrontation that emerges from the plurality itself of nationalist ideologies. My understanding is that even if some of the varieties of nationalism could strike us as particularly abhorrent because of their actual illiberalism and because of their more or less close, more or less conscientious, similarity with the historical extreme right or with nationalist communism, they are intertwined in a system of multiple nationalisms, a system that they cannot dominate and that institutes rules of competition and continuous debate that are inherently compatible with democratization. In other words, I assume that the different types of nationalisms keep each other in check, generating a kind of really functioning pluralism, and a kind of spontaneous order, which could count, pragmatically speaking, as a ground for the evolution of a real-functioning liberal democracy. The interwar precedent shows that, exposed to an illiberal external context, this kind of limited but real pluralism could easily degenerate into violence and dictatorship. But, once contained within a process of European and Atlantic integration, the same type of system could be credited with better chances of gradual but continuous opening.
71. See Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation, chap., "Vindictive and Messianic Mythologies: Post-Communist Nationalism and Populism," 65-87. This model incorporates the perspective of newer, more comprehensive approaches to this phenomenon, such as Yael Tamir's Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Tismaneanu's reading of the complexity of the identity policies in Central and Eastern Europe starts from the premises of a plurality of mythologies, of presignified manners of reading reality, active in the East European political and cultural world. The categories he proposes cover also the distinctions I made in the present article. The difference between Tismaneanu's approach and mine is not a matter of description, but of interpretation. Fantasies cf Salvation treats the complexity of nationalism as a variety of risks posed to democratization, while accepting that some of its forms, the civic one, especially, are not inherently incompatible with liberal values. Without contradicting this perspective, and without minimizing in any way the high risks embedded in the East European democratization processes, my understanding builds more on the potential for political dissent, polemics, and confrontation that emerges from the plurality itself of nationalist ideologies. My understanding is that even if some of the varieties of nationalism could strike us as particularly abhorrent because of their actual illiberalism and because of their more or less close, more or less conscientious, similarity with the historical extreme right or with nationalist communism, they are intertwined in a system of multiple nationalisms, a system that they cannot dominate and that institutes rules of competition and continuous debate that are inherently compatible with democratization. In other words, I assume that the different types of nationalisms keep each other in check, generating a kind of really functioning pluralism, and a kind of spontaneous order, which could count, pragmatically speaking, as a ground for the evolution of a real-functioning liberal democracy. The interwar precedent shows that, exposed to an illiberal external context, this kind of limited but real pluralism could easily degenerate into violence and dictatorship. But, once contained within a process of European and Atlantic integration, the same type of system could be credited with better chances of gradual but continuous opening.
72. The statements of celebrated ex-dissidents from the Czech Republic, Hungary, or Poland against nationalism have been well publicized in the Western media, But such attitudes are also expressed in the other countries of the region. In Romania, this position is identified with Gabriel Andreescu, Naţionalişti, antinaţionalişti (Iaşi, Romania: Polirom, 1996); Marta Petreu, Un trecut deocheat sau "Schimbarea la faţǎ României" (Cluj, România: Biblioteca Apostrof, 1999); Lucian Bola, Douǎ secole de mitologie naţonalǎ (Bucureşti, România: Humanitas, 1999); or George Voicu, Zeii cet rǎi: cultura conspiraţiei in România postcomunistǎ (Iaşi, România: Polirom, 2000). I would also quote, as a remarkably powerful and articulate critique of nationalism, Micea Boari, "Adevǎruri simple despre nationalism," Provtncia, no. 1 (2000): 3-4.
73. The statements of celebrated ex-dissidents from the Czech Republic, Hungary, or Poland against nationalism have been well publicized in the Western media, But such attitudes are also expressed in the other countries of the region. In Romania, this position is identified with Gabriel Andreescu, Naţionalişti, antinaţionalişti (Iaşi, Romania: Polirom, 1996); Marta Petreu, Un trecut deocheat sau "Schimbarea la faţǎ României" (Cluj, România: Biblioteca Apostrof, 1999); Lucian Bola, Douǎ secole de mitologie naţonalǎ (Bucureşti, România: Humanitas, 1999); or George Voicu, Zeii cet rǎi: cultura conspiraţiei in România postcomunistǎ (Iaşi, România: Polirom, 2000). I would also quote, as a remarkably powerful and articulate critique of nationalism, Micea Boari, "Adevǎruri simple despre nationalism," Provtncia, no. 1 (2000): 3-4.
74. The statements of celebrated ex-dissidents from the Czech Republic, Hungary, or Poland against nationalism have been well publicized in the Western media, But such attitudes are also expressed in the other countries of the region. In Romania, this position is identified with Gabriel Andreescu, Naţionalişti, antinaţionalişti (Iaşi, Romania: Polirom, 1996); Marta Petreu, Un trecut deocheat sau "Schimbarea la faţǎ României" (Cluj, România: Biblioteca Apostrof, 1999); Lucian Bola, Douǎ secole de mitologie naţonalǎ (Bucureşti, România: Humanitas, 1999); or George Voicu, Zeii cet rǎi: cultura conspiraţiei in România postcomunistǎ (Iaşi, România: Polirom, 2000). I would also quote, as a remarkably powerful and articulate critique of nationalism, Micea Boari, "Adevǎruri simple despre nationalism," Provtncia, no. 1 (2000): 3-4.
75. The statements of celebrated ex-dissidents from the Czech Republic, Hungary, or Poland against nationalism have been well publicized in the Western media, But such attitudes are also expressed in the other countries of the region. In Romania, this position is identified with Gabriel Andreescu, Naţionalişti, antinaţionalişti (Iaşi, Romania: Polirom, 1996); Marta Petreu, Un trecut deocheat sau "Schimbarea la faţǎ României" (Cluj, România: Biblioteca Apostrof, 1999); Lucian Bola, Douǎ secole de mitologie naţonalǎ (Bucureşti, România: Humanitas, 1999); or George Voicu, Zeii cet rǎi: cultura conspiraţiei in România postcomunistǎ (Iaşi, România: Polirom, 2000). I would also quote, as a remarkably powerful and articulate critique of nationalism, Micea Boari, "Adevǎruri simple despre nationalism," Provtncia, no. 1 (2000): 3-4.
76. The statements of celebrated ex-dissidents from the Czech Republic, Hungary, or Poland against nationalism have been well publicized in the Western media, But such attitudes are also expressed in the other countries of the region. In Romania, this position is identified with Gabriel Andreescu, Naţionalişti, antinaţionalişti (Iaşi, Romania: Polirom, 1996); Marta Petreu, Un trecut deocheat sau "Schimbarea la faţǎ României" (Cluj, România: Biblioteca Apostrof, 1999); Lucian Bola, Douǎ secole de mitologie naţonalǎ (Bucureşti, România: Humanitas, 1999); or George Voicu, Zeii cet rǎi: cultura conspiraţiei in România postcomunistǎ (Iaşi, România: Polirom, 2000). I would also quote, as a remarkably powerful and articulate critique of nationalism, Micea Boari, "Adevǎruri simple despre nationalism," Provtncia, no. 1 (2000): 3-4.
77. I am conscious of the ambiguities that could result from this comparison, first of all because of the diverging opinions on the nature and meaning of the English Revolution and of Cromwell's government. Some authors consider the rise to power and the rule of the Puritans as the origins of modern totalitarianism. See, for example, Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). But the opinion that the Puritan revolution had laid the foundations of modern democracy is also largely shared. For relevant information on this debate, see John Morrill and J. S. A. Adamson, eds., Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (New York: Longman, 1990).
78. I am conscious of the ambiguities that could result from this comparison, first of all because of the diverging opinions on the nature and meaning of the English Revolution and of Cromwell's government. Some authors consider the rise to power and the rule of the Puritans as the origins of modern totalitarianism. See, for example, Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). But the opinion that the Puritan revolution had laid the foundations of modern democracy is also largely shared. For relevant information on this debate, see John Morrill and J. S. A. Adamson, eds., Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (New York: Longman, 1990).
79. At least, this is the argument of the historians who tend toward a positive appreciation of Cromwell's historical role. See, for instance, Antonia Fraser's classic Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974).