Nationalism versus Internationalism: The Roles of Political and Cultural Elites in Interwar and Communist Romania

This paper has two main goals. First, it illuminates continuities between the ideas of “true Romanian-ness” as held by both the Romanian cultural elite and the Romanian political regimes in the interwar and communist periods. A manufactured definition of a “true” Romanian—as a Romanian Orthodox Christian, natively Romanian-speaking, and ethnically Romanian—formed the core of Romanian nationalism, regardless of the ruling ideology. This definition did not include the Roman and Greek Catholics of Romanian ethnicity on the grounds that they were not Orthodox Christians. It goes without saying that these criteria also excluded Hungarians, Germans and other ethnic minorities on the basis of ethnicity, language and religion. Second, the paper demonstrates that the principal ideas of Romanian nationalism developed in overt contrast to the internationalist ideological movements of both periods. Both the liberals and the Marxists misunderstood nationalism, claimed Ernest Gellner in 1964: liberals assumed that nationalism was a doomed legacy of outmoded irrationalism, superstition and savagery, and Marxists considered it a necessary but temporary stage in the path to global socialism. Gellner’s comments are evidently appropriate to Romania, where nationalist responses developed first to the Westernization of the interwar period and second to communist internationalism after 1948. Remarkably, the definition of Romanian-ness changed little as it passed into the attention of successive political regimes—first the Romanian kingdom of the interwar period and later the communists, especially under Ceauşescu. This continuity has legitimized the religiously and ethnically based nationalist idea in Romania. Being Romanian became a rather exclusive claim during these periods of the country’s history. Political and cultural elites in both periods found that the nationalist idea was an effective response to the various forms of internationalism which they confronted: the definition of a “true Romanian” could be used to single out rivals both within and beyond Romanian borders. The elite strata have been instrumental in the political socialization of the Romanian people, taking their ideological campaigns to the same rural Romanian upon whom they had modelled their political theories. The political and cultural elite of Eastern Europe were well positioned to influence the development of nationalist ideology in their respective cultures. In this context, Eisenstadt contests the assumption Nationalities Papers, Vol. 34, No. 2, May 2006