Romanian Cultural and Political Identity Author(s): Donald R. Kelley Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.

59, No. 4 (Oct., 1998), pp. 735-738 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3653941 Accessed: 12/12/2009 18:00
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Romanian

Cultural

and

Political

Identity

The Journal of the History of Ideas, in collaborationwith other institutions,including the Universities of Bucharest and Budapest and the Soros Foundation,reconferencesbeing plannedon cently sponsoredthe second in a series of international was held at Tradition," topics in currentintellectualhistory.(The first, "Interrogating Rutgers University, 13-16 November 1997.) The Romanianconference, which was held in the ElisabetaPalace in Bucharest(27-31 May 1998), was devoted to "Culture and the Politics of NationalIdentityin Moder Romania." Over forty scholars,mainly from Romaniabut some also from the U.S., France,Germany,and Hungary,gathered to discuss a varietyof questions about Romaniansociety, past, present, and speculative future; and they were joined by at least as many visitors, especially students, from the local area and beyond. Topics discussed included politics, language, economics, historiography,religion, education, philosophy, ideologies, intelligentsia, particularintellectuals, minorities, and women (though not Gypsies or gays). Under this riot of rubricsa wide fashion, with frequent,sometimes range of questions were posed in interdisciplinary impassionedinterventions.What is-was, might have been, can be-Romania? Who is a Romanian(and who not)? What is Romania'srelationto the West and the East? To modernity,to modernism,to modern(And what are the "West"and the "East"?) ization?What is-has been, should be-the function of intellectuals,of political and cultural elites, in understandingthe Romanian past and in setting a course for the future?What,more generally,is the role of history in answeringsuch questions?Or is of psychoanalysis)the disease for which it history perhaps(as Karl Krauseremarked claims to be the cure? Keith Hitchens's keynote address suggested that rehashingold essentialist debates might not be productiveat millennium'send, but the conference itself could not avoid some excursions down the paths of memory and myth. For historians,Western historiansanyway,Romaniaseems to have too many pasts. Locatedat the junctureof four previous empires, Romania is a mosaic, or perhapsa pandemonium,of ethnic, religious, economic, and ideological groups that can only imagine, or invent, a nationality. Geographically(and in many ways culturally) remote from the West, Romania for a long time (as Sorin Antohi remarked)lacked both a public sphere and a civil society;andsuffering"aCounter-Reformation withouta Reformation" (Alexandru Dutu's phrase), it has not enjoyed a traditionof religious or ethnic toleration. Nor have either the Germansor the Jews (as Glass said) found their own unity within the changing bordersof the moder Romanianstate. Not until the nineteenthcenturydid Romania develop, out of its Boyar background(as Siupiur argued), an intellectual elite that could create a moder nationalhistory and help turn"peasantsinto Romanians"(Antohi's phrase);and even then this elite seemed more attractedto conserva735
Copyright 1998 by Journalof the History of Ideas, Inc.

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tive (Herder,Savigny, Burke) than to liberal views of autochthonism.Many features of Westernmodernity,such as Newtonian science, reachedRomanialate, and indeed there was a retrograde movementagainst liberalismunderthe aegis by orthodoxreligion. In any case this intelligentsia has been as fragmented and multiform as the Romanianpast itself. True, some Romanianscholars like to posit a mainstreamtradition, "excesses aside,"as one speakerput it-but how, asked another,can historians put "excesses" aside from the devastatingperspectiveof this century? Political and cultural self-examinationwas the dominant theme of this conference. Nationality, said Pippidi, depends on three factors, viz., name, language, religion, and territory.The Romanianname dates from the tenth century, indicating a separationof the Roman from the Greek traditionin Wallachia;and from the seventeenth century the idea of a mainly Roman provenance was given privilege. As a was spoken in the late Middle Ages, but the first writtendoculanguage, "Romanian" ment is dated 1521. The principalreligion in Romania was and is Greek orthodox, comalthoughthereare also RomanCatholic,Jewish, Islamic, and GermanProtestant munities, as well as the Uniate church created in the eighteenth century.As for the territory,this has been a matter of change, conflict, and confusion throughoutthe tragiccourseof southeastern European historyandcontinuesto be so for the MoldavianWallachiantwins viv-a-vis their equally agitated and proteanneighbors. Finding, finally, a kind of modem nationalityin the wake of WorldWarI, Romania was plunged into the bloody excesses of Fascism and Communism.The intellectuals of the "unluckygeneration"of 1927 sought understanding and legitimacy in a of the called what Calinescu variety contradictoryways, including "apocalypticfever" of the 1930s, to which Eliade, among others, surrendered. At that time, as one participantreminded us, both fascism and communism "had a future"and cannot, retrospectively,be discountedas irrelevant"excesses."In general nationalistand exclusionist sentimentswere counteredby the centrifugalforces of regionalism,xenophobia, and extremistideologies of that age. No wonder Romania"didn'twork"(as one commentator remarked)either under socialism or under the megalomaniacal dirigisme of Ceaucescu. In fact Romaniahas lived throughnot just one but a number of "unlucky"generationssince the achievementof political independence;and this is an indelible partof its nationalhistorywhich is the subjectof these criticalexchanges. What of the future?Will this and the next generationsbe luckier?Can Romania be made to work? Is there a Romanianpath to modernity (or postmodernity)? The exRomanianpast has not been "liberal"in a Westernsense, and many participants odds at doubt in a about this model Daniel Chirot, pressed spirit largely (although with the spirit of dialogue in earlier sessions, held it out as the only way of coping with political and economic challenges in the millennium to come). In any case Romania has more immediate problems, social, ethnic, and educationalas well as political and economic, to resolve before it canjoin, or rejoin,mainstream, "hegemonic" and this hegemony are Westernhistory-and to do so at a time when this mainstream being challenged and when SoutheasternEuropeitself is in a condition of apparently endless chaos. How this works out only historywill tell, while the intellectualswatch, perhaps act, but at least (such is the minimal liberal hope) continue the sort of dialogue carriedon here. Donald R. Kelley

Romanian Culture and Identity Program Keynote Addresses: Keith Hitchins, "The Identity of Romania" AlexandruZub, "WesternIdeas on the RomanianSoul"

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Modernityand the Constructionof National Identity: AlexandruDutu, "The Communitarian Model and National Ties" Andrei Pippidi, "RomanianIdentities in the Sixteenth SeventeenthCenturies" Adrian-PaulIliescu, "Nineteenth-Century Romantic and ConservativeSources of RomanianAutochthonism" Hugh Kearney(comment)

Religion and Identity: H. R. Patapievici,"A Short Look into the Disseminationof Newtonian Ideas in the Romanian Provinces, 1687-1860" Moldavia" MariaCraciun,"ReligiousChangeandTolerancein Sixteenth-Century CatherineDurandin,"Fromthe Liberalismof 1848 to the 'Orthodoxismul'of the 1930s" AlexandruDutu (comment)

and National Myths: Historiography Mirela-LuminitaMurgescu, "School Textbooks and Heroes of Romanian History" and the National Project" Ovidiu Pecican, "Moder RomanianHistoriography AlexandruZub, "RomanianHistoriographyunderCommunism" Sorin Antohi (comment)

Cultureand Identity in InterwarRomania: HildrunGlass, "The Jews of GreaterRomania:The Search for a Single Identity (1919-1938)" Rainer Ohliger, "Minority Identity in Process: CulturalPolitics among Ethnic Germansin InterwarRomania" Edit Szegedi, "Regionalismand National Socialism" Andrei Corbea Hoisie (comment)

EngineeringSocial Identity: Elena Siupiur,"The Formationof RomanianIntellectualsin the NineteenthCentury" Mariana Hausleitner, "CernautiUniversity, 1918-1944: Concepts and Consequences of Romanization" Charles King, "MakingMoldavians:Languageand Ethnicityon the RomanianSoviet Border" Irina Livezeanu (comment)

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InterwarIntellectualsand Politics: Matei Calinescu, "The 1927 Generationin Romania:Mihail Sebastian, Mircea Eliade, Nae Ionescuu, Eugene Ionesco" MartaPetreu,"Cioran,The Transfiguration of Romania" Claude Karooth, "LucianBlaga and the Birth of the Modem" Sorin Alexandrescu,"The Iron GuardPhenomenon" Leon Volovici (comment)

Ideologies and Economic Theories: Joseph Love, "Interwarand Postwar StructuralistTheories of Development in Romanin and Latin America" Bogdan Murgescu, "The Heritage of the Past in ContemporaryEconomic Debates" F. Peter Wagner(comment) The WomanQuestion and Feminism: MariasBucur,"CalypsoBotez: GenderDifference and the Limits of Pluralismin InterwarRomania" Mihaela Miroiu, "Antifeminismas Conservatism:The RomanianCase" CulturalImportsin EasternEurope:DemocracyandFemiIrinaLiczek, "Western nism" Bonnie G. Smith (comment)

Intellectuals and Communism: AlexandraLaignel-Lavastine,"Fromthe 'First'ConstantinNoica to the Second: Break or Continuity?" Mircea Flonta, "AnalyticPhilosophy in CommunistRomania:Why and How?" Vladimir Tismaneanu(comment)

Final Address:Daniel Chirot

(Thereare plans to publish the papersof this conference in Romanian,and perhapsin English, at a later point.)