McNair Scholars Journal

Volume 16 | Issue 1 Article 13

2012 From the Enlightenment to Genocide: The Evolution and Devolution of Romanian Shawn Wooster Grand Valley State University

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Recommended Citation Wooster, Shawn (2012) "From the Enlightenment to Genocide: The vE olution and Devolution of ," McNair Scholars Journal: Vol. 16: Iss. 1, Article 13. Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mcnair/vol16/iss1/13

Copyright © 2012 by the authors. McNair Scholars Journal is reproduced electronically by ScholarWorks@GVSU. http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ mcnair?utm_source=scholarworks.gvsu.edu%2Fmcnair%2Fvol16%2Fiss1%2F13&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages From the Enlightenment to Genocide: The Evolution and Devolution of Romanian Nationalism

Introduction Romanian conceptions of national identity and how this conception collided with the This article analyzes the history of process of modernization in and Romanian nationalism’s transformation resulted in . from ethnic consciousness to exclusive nationalism and places the four phases Both Anderson’s Imagined Communities of Romanian nationalism’s evolution and Gellner’s and Nationalism and devolution within the theories provide excellent, if refutable, starting of nationalism put forth by Benedict points for explaining how nationalism Anderson and . Romanian developed in Western European nations; nationalism developed over a period indeed, Anderson’s theory of imagined of two hundred years, beginning in the communities even includes nations in middle of the eighteenth century and Asia, South America, North America and culminating during World War II. It Western Europe. Their theories, however, developed within four distinct phases: the do not adequately explain the phenomena birth of Romanian ethnic consciousness, of Eastern European nationalism, and Shawn Wooster the appearance of proto-nationalism, the specifically, Romanian nationalism. McNair Scholar era of patriotic nationalism, and finally, And lastly, Gellner does offer a set of the period of exclusive nationalism. nationalism typologies, but Romania does Each particular phase manifested within not fit within them. broad historical movements such as the I argue that Romanian nationalism’s Enlightenment, the Romantic Period, the development falls largely outside of Springtime of Nations, and the Age of typologies and grand theories proposed Nationalism. This article highlights some by Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner. of the key influences of those historical Instead of attempting to categorize periods upon Romanian nationalism. By in broad typologies, or even aligning several of the key features of both grouping them into several categories, Anderson and Gellner’s theories within it is more useful to think of nationalisms the broad historical movements with developing in each differently, as Romanian nationalism’s development, it each nation has its own complex history becomes clear that Romanian nationalism and unique set of cultural and political developed along a distinct course. challenges to contend with. It is important This article will first define key to understand how nationalism develops concepts such as nationalism, nation, because it has so often resulted in racism, , exclusion and in the most Jason Crouthamel, Ph.D. ethnicity and modernization. Secondly, extreme cases, genocide. In Romania’s Faculty Mentor it briefly describes several of the major tenets of both Anderson and Gellner’s case, understanding how nationalism theories of nationalism. Thirdly, it briefly developed can facilitate preventing its outlines the historical situation of each recurrence. Contemporary developmental phase of Romanian can take steps to avoid exclusive nationalism, including the Romanian- nationalism as it becomes more prevalent speaking region’s political, economic and during a time of economic uncertainty sociological character. An explanation and as Romanian society struggles to come of how the Romanian nation perceived to terms with its past, particularly with the both itself and other ethnic groups defines role that it played in both the Holocaust and clarifies the monikers assigned the and the Porajmos during World War II. four phases. By illuminating Romanian perceptions and behaviors towards other Theories and Principles of ethnic groups, the article traces the Nationalism beginnings of Romanian xenophobia and intolerance that in the late nineteenth- Whether it shows up in football matches century were inextricably intertwined with between historic rivals such as Poland and

80 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal Russia,1 on the streets of Budapest during which alarmed the community.7 It makes the levels predicted by Gellner. The fact is a right-wing political demonstration,2 in sense, then, to examine the historical roots literacy in Romania remained quite low the United States as white supremacists of Romanian nationalism and remind until after World War II; nevertheless, register to officially lobby the American our contemporaries of how murderous, Romanian nationalism took root. Further, government,3 or in Japan where right- nationalist ideologies emerge and potentially the cultural homogeneity that the state is wing nationalists threatened to kill a point a way towards reconciliation. supposed to engender did not happen in 4 South Korean actress if she visited Japan, We can begin our investigation by Romania, especially during the interwar nationalism and its corollary xenophobia asking several questions. What were the years when debates about the nature of still thrive. Romania is no exception, origins of Romanian nationalism? How Romanian identity and the extent that as evidenced by the sometimes popular did Romanian nationalism transform from modernization should take were most Party (PRM).. Led by ethnic consciousness to exclusive, racist intense with nationalist, xenophobic (known also for his nationalism? How do the major theorists of parties eventually taking over the reins of effusive praise of the former Romanian nationalism explain the rise of nationalism government in the years before World War dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu), the Greater in Eastern European nations? How does II. And lastly, industrialization itself and its Romania Party participated in the Romanian nationalism fit within those corollary, urbanization, became the object Romanian government for a brief period theories? Why is it important to investigate of fierce debate amongst the Peasantists, from 1993-1995. In 2000, Tudor placed the origins of nationalism in Romania in the Europeanists, and the eugenicists. second behind , who became particular? What has been the impact of The failures of industrialization and 5 president that same year. Romanian nationalism upon minorities urbanization, or at least the perception Countless other examples abound within Romanian borders? What is the of their failures, further fueled the racism of nationalist parties on the rise across nature of Romanian nationalism? Is it inherent in Romanian nationalism the Western Hemisphere. In Romania xenophobic? Is it fueled by resentment, and engendered ethnic scapegoating, it seems that the xenophobia connected fear, or anxiety? especially vis-à-vis the Romanian Jewish population. These variables combined with the of interwar Romania Several of Gellner’s arguments for and its role in the Holocaust have either and transformed patriotic nationalism into the rise of nationalism are inappropriate genocidal nationalism. been forgotten or sanitized and revised in Romania’s case. The first problem 6 by Communist historians. Further is the vagueness with which he defines Complicating Anderson’s argument complicating the mix of xenophobia and ‘nationalism,’ itself a movement that that print was the catalyst that nationalism in Romania is the legacy of took place over the course of nearly spurred the emergence of nationalism the after World War two centuries. In Romania nationalism is the fact that virtually no printing in I and the Romanian memory of foreign can be broken down into four phases. the was done in the domination for much of its history. For Secondly, industrialism was not necessarily eighteenth-century in the Romanian- Romanian Hungarians it is not uncommon a principle cause of nationalism in speaking provinces, let alone print for them to still reference Hungarian Romania because it developed unevenly capitalism. Even during the nineteenth- territorial losses after the Great War and in the Romanian-speaking regions and it century the level of printing was miniscule long for the days when developed quite late. The third point that in comparison to other regions in Western was still part of Hungary. Romanian is closely tied to the last is the fact that Europe. Some of this was due to the Hungarians advocate strongly for their Romanian nationalism developed in the extremely low level of literacy and the own institutions, such as universities, in absence of industrialism. This raises the similar absence of elites to which Hungarian is the primary language fourth problem that, according to Gellner, promote the idea of literacy through of instruction. In Targu Mures, Romania, industrialization requires the creation journals, newspapers and books. Also a city whose population is roughly half of a homogeneous culture by the state complicating the emergence of print Hungarian and half Romanian, fears of which includes the promotion of mass capitalism and literacy in the Romanian ethnic tensions are arising again due to literacy. Much like industrialization, mass speaking regions was the fact that Romania the decision to allow the creation of one literacy occurred unevenly throughout the was not an independent nation until Hungarian section at the medical school regions and when it did, it was hardly at 1878. Permits to set up printing presses,

1. Colin Busby, “Euro 2012 Update: Nationalist Riots,” International Political Forum, June 13, 2012, http://internationalpoliticalforum.com/euro-2012-update- nationalist-riots/. 2. Frank Bruni, “Bruni in Hungary: The Usual Scapegoats,” New York Times, April 23, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/opinion/bruni-in-hungary-the- usual-scapegoats.html?_r=1&ref=hungary. 3. Nick Wing, “Paul Mullet, White Nationalist, Neo-Nazi Birther, Registers as Capitol Hill Lobbyist”, The Huffington Post, June 18, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2012/06/18/paul-mullet-white-nationalist-neo-nazi-lobbyist_n_1607179.html. 4. Yoo I Na, “Japanese Right-wing Nationalists Threaten if Kim Tae Hee Comes to Japan ‘We’ll Kill Her,’” Soompi, March 12, 2012, http://www.soompi. com/2012/03/12/japanese-rightwing-nationalists-threaten-if-kim-tae-hee-comes-to-japan-well-kill-her/. 5. Balkan Insight, “Key Political Parties in Romania,” June 24 , 2012, http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/who-is-who-political-parties-in-romania. 6. Irina Livezeanu, “The Romanian Holocaust: Family Quarrels,” East European Politics and Societies, 16 (2002): 936. 7. Michael Leidig, “Medical School in Hungarian Sparks Controversy, Fears Over Ethnic Divides” The Romanian Times, March 13, 2012, http://romaniantimes.at/ news/General_News/2012-03-13/20294/Medical_School_in_Hungarian_sparks_controversy,_fears_over_ethnic_divides_ .

81 VOLUME 16, 2012 therefore, were almost always denied by values are structurally implemented. due to a perceived threat to the existence the imperialist power (Transylvania was Modernization as characterized by Maria of a particular ethnic group’s cultural dominated by the and Bucur is recognizable by “the growth of traditions. As a result, protection of the ethnic Hungarians until after ) state institutions meant to subordinate nation is sought through the creation due to the fear that nationalist ideas would local practices to a unitary system; the of a state. According to John Breuilly, indeed awaken the Romanian population development of modern political parties; nationalist claims are “built upon three to revolution. Even if permission was the secularization of political and social basic assertions: 1) There exists a nation granted, readership and subscription authority; industrialization; the growth of with an explicit and peculiar character. 2) rates were so paltry that presses would cities; and the development of occupations The interests and values of this nation take quickly go out of business. Nevertheless, tied to the new state institutions.”10 In the priority over all other interests and values. Romanian nationalism did find a niche Romanian case, modernization would not 3) The nation must be as independent first in the Transylvanian intellectual begin until near the end of the nineteenth- as possible. This usually requires at least circles in the eighteenth-century and even century with the unification of Moldovia the attainment of political sovereignty.”18 more fervently by the secular elites of the and as an independent nation11 Nationalism may also be broken down into Principalities of and Wallachia and gained speed with the formation of typologies, which, for the purpose of this in the middle of the nineteenth-century. Greater Romania after World War I. paper, will be done as I attempt to define In the Romanian speaking territories According to Adrian Hastings, the four stages of Romanian nationalism neither capitalism nor print existed on a ethnicity is “a group of people with that I have identified. large enough scale to promote the idea a shared cultural identity and spoken Gellner does not attempt to date of an “imagined community” across language.”12 Hastings’ succinct definition the beginning of modernization or the a wide geographical area, but instead, of ethnicity can be elaborated upon by advent of industrialization, which is print capitalism and literacy remained using T.K. Oomen’s summary of an problematic for explaining the appearance confined to a small community of elites ethnicity’s attributes: “religion, sect, caste, of Romanian nationalism. For him, and . region, language, descent, race, colour modernization merely implies that the Before analyzing the evolution and and culture.”13 Nations are “cultural rupture between agricultural societies and devolution of Romanian nationalism, entities that tend to establish their own industrial societies has created a profound it is necessary to define the terms that states”14 and denote self-awareness or self- shift in human history. Depending upon we will be dealing with. Gellner and consciousness.15 Nations may or may not the nation, this rupture may occur at Anderson’s proposals on the development have political autonomy, and if they do not various points in history, sometimes earlier, of nationalism are considered ‘modernist.’ have it officially, they invariably claim their sometimes later. In the case of the United According to Anthony D. Smith, the right to it. They almost always have their States and Great Britain, it occurs roughly modernists assert that “nationalism, the own literature, which becomes a primary in the middle of the eighteenth-century. ideology and movement is both recent source of identification.16 Rationality becomes the rule, rather and novel; nations too, are recent and Lastly, nationalism attempts to unify than a belief in superstition or sacred 19 novel; (and) both are the products of the political and national units. Modern knowledge. Formerly, the world was ‘modernization’, the global movement nationalism “overrides all other public well-ordered and hierarchical. Religion 8 of societies to ‘modernity.’” Modernists obligations, and in extreme cases (such as provided a unified explanation of the attempt to track the creation of nation- war) all other obligations whatsoever.”17 cosmos and the social order. The switch states by following rates of “urbanization, It can also refer to a political movement to rationality, though, turns this divinely social mobility, rising literacy rates, media that seeks sovereignty within a certain ordered world upside down by offering 9 exposure and voting patterns.” Modernity geographical territory on behalf of a unlimited exploration and questioning. implies reason, progress and rationality. nation and uses nationalist arguments to Risk and uncertainty are introduced, but 20 Modernization is the process by which justify its claim. Nationalism often arises so is the notion of progress.

8. Anthony D. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism (New York: Rutledge, 2009), 6. 9. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism, 4. 10. Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania (Pittsburgh: Press, 2010) Kindle Edition. 11. Paul Blokker, “Modernity in Romania: Nineteenth Century and its Discontents,” European University Institute, . EUI Working Paper SPS No. 2003/2. http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/335/sps2003-02.pdf ?sequence=1. (Accessed June 2012). 12. Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationhood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2. 13. Oomen, T. K., “State, Nation and Ethnie: The Processual Linkages,” in Race, Ethnicity and Nation: International Perspectives on Social Conflict, ed. Peter Ratcliffe (London: University of London Press, 1994), 34. 14. Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationhood, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 33. 15. Hastings, Nationhood,3. 16. Ibid., 4. 17. Ibid., 5. 18. John Breuilly, Nationalism and State, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 3. 19. Ernest Gellner, Plough Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History. (London: Collins, 1988), 66. 20. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, (New York: Press, 2006), 22.

82 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal Institutions that once controlled the Much like Gellner, Anderson describes defined borders receded and solidified. economy, politics, religion and social roles a similar cultural rupture, occurring Regional and provincial governments are fractured. In an industrial society, primarily in the eighteenth-century. In began using local languages to administer the economy becomes an entity separate Anderson’s view, the eighteenth-century the royal court. By the mid-seventeenth- from politics, and religion is separated experienced the “dusk of religious modes century, “the automatic legitimacy of from politics; however, in Romania, the of thought.”27 With the diminishing of sacral monarchy began its slow decline in Orthodox Church played an essential religiosity, or the sacred, the “classical Western Europe” and the rise of modern role in propagating and supporting the communities conceived of themselves as nations began.31 extreme nationalist agenda during the cosmically central, through the medium The final component of Anderson’s . In Gellner’s ‘agro-literate of a sacred language linked to a super- conception of modernity that significantly 28 societies,’ the peasants were cut off from terrestrial order of power.” Communities influenced the way man regarded the their aristocratic masters. This was not the were legitimated through religion. A world was his new conception of time. case in Romania where the interests of sacred language, such as , was also Medieval communities conceived time the aristocracy held sway over those a privileged language. Only members in terms of ‘simultaneity.’ According to of the peasantry until after World War I, of the divinely sanctioned order (such as Anderson, “The medieval Christian mind when the first meaningful attempt at land royalty, aristocracy, and the clerisy) had had no conception of history as an endless reform was initiated. access to it. With the advent of print chain of cause and effect or of radical Rather than kinship, language capitalism and the publishing of books separations between past and present.” and culture becomes the key feature of in local languages, or vernaculars, the In other words, the past and future were identity.21 Formerly, there was no chance sacred languages lost both their legitimacy fused in “an instantaneous present.”32 for nationalism to develop between the and power. In Anderson’s estimation, History and cosmology were intertwined. spheres because the social strata were so “The fall of Latin exemplified a larger Man’s interconnectedness with the world starkly delineated, meaning that there was process in which the sacred communities and his origins in relation to the world virtually no meaningful communication integrated by the old sacred languages were validated by the sacred texts. As between the strata.22 Industrialism brings were gradually fragmented, pluralized reason supplanted the power of religion 29 urbanization, which implies mobility, both and territorialized.” The church no to give the universe meaning, conceptions literally and figuratively.23 Mass, secular longer could monopolize truth, especially of time also changed. Rather than relying education, taught in the local vernacular, as Europeans were mounting explorations on faith to understand the seeming fuels identity formation. As industrialism in the New World, which had the effect incomprehensibility and arbitrariness forced rural inhabitants to the cities, the of broadening their cultural horizons and of the universe, men now attempted to newcomers found themselves in conflict introducing them to new conceptions of understand time as a series of cause and 30 with local minorities who speak different human existence. effect. History became a sphere apart languages and have different cultural With the disintegration of the sacred from the religious understanding of the practices. They competed for scarce political order came the solidification of cosmos, inspiring man to view history resources and in time, the minorities borders. Formerly, borders were porous, both progressively and fatalistically. are excluded from the majority ethnic as the divinely sanctioned kingdom was Religion no longer provided an adequate, group.24 Eventually the ethnic majority centripetally ordered. Power emanated comfortable explanation of man’s place “yearn(s) for incorporation into one of from the monarch, who acted as the center in the world, but at the same time, there those cultural pools which already has, or of this hierarchically ordered universe. was optimism that man could progressively looks as if it might acquire, a state of its Entities such as the Holy Roman Empire, alter his destiny.34 own, with the subsequent promise of full which had relied upon Latin as the thread Proto-states and the nationalism 25 cultural citizenship.” Resentment fueled and glue that held the Catholic territories they eventually engendered provided one the desire for nationhood and the birth of together through language and religion, means of understanding man’s place on 26 nationalism was born. Nationalism, then, gradually disintegrated as vernacular- earth, though. With the shattering of created nations.

21. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism, 5 22. John A. Hall and I.C. Jarvie, Transition to Modernity: Essays on Power, Wealth and Belief, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 122-124. 23. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 62. 24. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism, 5. 25. Gellner, Plough Sword and Book, 210. 26. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 129. 27. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (London: Verso, 1983), 11. 28. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 13. 29. Ibid.,19. 30. Ibid.,16. 31. Ibid., 21. 32. Ibid., 23. 33. Ibid., 24. 34. Ibid., 12.

83 VOLUME 16, 2012 simultaneous conceptions of time, man’s century in Transylvania. The next phase eastward looking Province were unlike need to understand the continuity of can be defined as ‘proto-nationalism’ those found anywhere in Europe.”42 his existence (birth, adulthood, death, in which elites created a community Transylvania’s distance from the afterlife) was undercut. The state, based on a common vernacular, in this and the devastation of the countryside with its manufactured roots of historical case Romanian, located in a particular due to continual foreign invasion and legitimacy, came to be seen as an organism geographical area and “can be a sort of Ottoman oppression and Greek Phanariot that had existed for millennia and would pilot project for the as yet non-existent exploitation led the Hapsburgs to conclude continue to exist far into the future. By larger intercommunicating community.”38 that the capacity for unrest, which could identifying with the nation, man imagined The Romanian proto-nationalists were potentially spread to its other eastern himself as connected to an entity that first represented by the Uniate Orthodox holdings, particularly Serbia and Hungary, moved along calendrical time. His members of the in needed to be immediately addressed.43 existence was “measured by clock and the late eighteenth century.39 The first potentially destabilizing force 35 calendar.” According to Anderson, the The slow dissolution of the Ottoman that needed to be rectified was the virtual 44 print capitalism of the sixteenth-century Empire near the end of the seventeenth- autonomy that the Three Nations allowed man to imagine himself as century and its defeat at the hands of (the German Saxons, Hungarians and connected with others who spoke and read the in 1684 provided space for Szeklers) had enjoyed for centuries under the same language and practiced the same Romanians to advocate for both political the Hungarians and later, Ottoman rule. cultural traditions. This connectedness legitimacy and to define Romanian identity. The Romanians, on the other hand, were was represented by the date printed on After the Ottoman’s failed siege of Vienna, not a recognized nation, but rather, were newspapers and broadsheets. When Transylvania fell under the domination merely ‘tolerated.’ Romanian nobles had reading a dated publication, readers could of the Hapsburgs. Almost immediately been largely absorbed into the Magyar imagine themselves connected to similar the ideals of the Enlightenment began aristocracy. Even though it did not enjoy readers from far-away places. The reader filtering into Transylvania via Romanian official recognition and was itself in danger may never meet his compatriots, but he Uniate priests who, due to their new status of obsolescence, the Orthodox Church had was aware that they were reading the same as Hapsburg subjects, were granted the become the de facto representative of the publication, possibly at the same time, privilege to pursue university educations Transylvanian Romanians simply because 36 within a general geographical location. in both Transylvania and abroad.40 Under it was the only legitimate Romanian Along with the advent of capitalism, the Ottomans, Romanians had virtually institution in Transylvania with some form increasing literacy propelled the creation no access to even the most rudimentary of administrative structure, no matter how of a middle class, an essential component education, let alone one from a university. feeble it might have been. Further, Austrian of modern nations and the audience that This changed under the Austrians as Roman Catholics viewed the truce between 45 would be most influential in subscribing a result of the union of the Romanian the four ‘received’ religions (Calvinists, to nationalist ideologies during the Age of Orthodox church with the Roman Unitarians, Catholics, and Lutherans) and 37 Nationalism in the twentieth-century. Catholic Church, which was the religion the Orthodox Church in Transylvania as of the Austrian court.41 heretical, thus adding a cultural element to political consolidation.46 By using religion Romanian Ethnic Consciousness Transylvania was ceded to Austria as a wedge, the Austrians hoped to resolve and Its Historical Foundations by the Ottomans in 1699 with the signing the inherent instability of Transylvania The initial step in the development of the Treaty of Carlovitz. King Leopold and quicken centralization.47 immediately set to work consolidating of Romanian nationalism can be viewed Of most consequence to the Romanian as one in which Romanian ethnic and incorporating Transylvania into the Austrian realm. In some ways, Transylvania Transylvanian’s conception of ethnic consciousness was first articulated in the consciousness was Leopold’s forced union work and advocacy of Ion Inochentie seemed a natural fit for Western integration, but “the physical and geographical of the Roman Catholic Church with that Klein during the middle of the eighteenth- 48 features of the isolated, independent, and of the Romanian Orthodox. Leopold

35. Ibid., 24. 36. Ibid., 36,37. 37. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism, 6 38. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1990), 59, 60. 39. Keith Hitchins, Studies on Romanian National Consciousness, (Pelham: Nagard, 2006), 29. 40. Keith Hitchins, The Idea of Nation: The Romanians of Transylvanian, 1691-1849, (: Editura Ştiinţifică, 1988), 11. 41. Hitchins, National Consciousness, 7. 42. Paul Shore, Jesuits and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania, 1693-1773, (Ashgate: Hampshire, 2007), 42. 43. Shore, Jesuits, 39. 44. The Three Nations were the “received” or officially recognized nations of Transylvania. This recognized status dated back to the fifteenth century and had remained in place despite the fact that the Romanians occupied the majority of the Transylvanian population. 45. As official religions, the “received” religions were supported by the Transylvania government and were eligible for both financial and political support. 46. Shore, Jesuits, 4. 47. Ibid., 2, 3.

84 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal viewed the Uniate Church as a vehicle probably the most important Romanian argued that the Romanian nation had to achieve both political pacification figure in the first half of the eighteenth- occupied Transylvania the longest, and and recatholicization of Transylvanian century who contributed to the awakening therefore, deserved equality with the three society. He had no intention of allowing of Romanian ethnic consciousness. Klein received nations. He was the first to attempt the formation of an autonomous viewed the Uniate Church first as a to establish the nobility of the Romanians Uniate Church. The merging of the vehicle to achieve political rights for the and their historical legitimacy as a people with Roman Romanian clergy, and second, as a means who belonged to Western Civilization; Catholicism was enshrined in the Act of of attaining the same political equality therefore, they deserved the same political Union, which also served as the official of the Romanian nation with that of rights of the Three Nations.­55 He was end of the Romanian Orthodox Church the Three Nations. His emphasis on the also the first to argue that Romanians in Transylvania. The Union had the effect natural law and the “equality of rights deserved equal representation due to the of dividing Romanians into two religious between nations” sets him apart as the fact that they represented a majority of groups. On the one hand, this had a “path-finder of the Romanians’ national the population in Transylvania, paid a divisive effect, but on the other, it caused struggle.”52 Thirty years after the Union majority of the taxes and contributed the Romanians to begin looking at themselves of 1700, Uniate priests still had not been most men to the military. Lastly, he argued and asking questions about what it meant to awarded the equality promised by the that the Leopoldine Diplomas guaranteed be Romanian. Even though it was deprived Second Leopoldine Diploma. Klein fought public office for Romanians who had of an administrative structure, it would, vigorously, both at the Court in Vienna and converted to the Uniate Church. None nevertheless, continue to subsist through at the Transylvanian Diet in Cluj, for the of his protestations, either to Vienna or sheer stubbornness and with support from realization of those rights. Klein interpreted Cluj, bore fruit.56 49 neighboring Orthodox communities. the Second Diploma as conferring equality Klein was a product of the Orthodox As a final act of the Union, the rights not only upon Uniate priests, but also countryside and shared a traditional previously granted to the Uniate clergy in upon all Romanians in Transylvania. He worldview with Romanian-speakers that 1692 (the same rights as Catholic priests, conceived of all Romanians as a distinct had changed little over the centuries. For immunity from taxation, payment of nation, a grouping superior to both the Klein, to be Romanian was to be Romanian the tithe and other burdens imposed by Roman Catholic Church and the Uniate Orthodox. Romanian Orthodox was landlords) were reaffirmed by Austrian Church that deserved to have an equal not strictly based on doctrine but was officials at Alba Iulia on September 5, political status as the Three Nations. Klein also intertwined with culture, a culture 1700 and adopted by the Orthodox was less concerned with the conversion with which Klein was unreservedly and Metropolitans Teofil and Athanasie.50 of Romanians to the Uniate Church, passionately aligned and dedicated to Romanian Uniate priests and those who than to an overall improvement in the preserving.57 Further, because Romanian converted to the Uniate Church believed social, economic and educational status Transylvanians were under the yoke of that they had finally achieved the same of the peasantry and all Transylvanian the Austrians, Hungarians and Saxons, 53 equality and status shared by the four Romanians in general. there was little hatred directed towards recognized confessions. It is doubtful as It was within this context of solidarity “the Other,” which would characterize to whether the Monarchy ever intended that Klein began to formulate the basis Romanian nationalism in the late to actually fully enforce the Uniate of Romanian historical legitimacy via nineteenth-century.58 Klein’s association clergy’s newly enshrined political rights, relentless petitioning to the Transylvanian with the traditional, folk customs of but Uniate membership, nevertheless, Diet and the Austrian Court.54 As Klein Orthodox Romanians in Transylvania opened other doors of opportunity, resisted the Jesuit’s attempts to subordinate went far to create a sense of solidarity and especially in education and representation the Uniate Church to their authority, ethnic consciousness.59 51 at the Austrian court. he weaved the idea of Daco-Romanian Through Klein’s leadership and Ion Inochentie Klein, the Jesuit- continuity into his arguments for the educational opportunities made educated and Uniate Bishop of Romanian political equality. By claiming available through Jesuit institutions and Transylvania from 1729-1751, was Daco-Roman descent, he essentially other opportunities to study in foreign

48. Ibid., 48. 49. Hitchins, National Consciousness, 14. 50. Hitchins, Romanian National Consciousness, 10. 51. Ibid., 11. 52. Daniel Prodan, Supplex Libellus Vallachorum, or The Political Struggle of the Romanians in Transylvania During the 18th Century, (Bucharest: Publishing House of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Romania, 1971), 419, 420. 53. Shore, Jesuits, 50. 54. Hitchins, National Consciousness, 11,12. 55. Ibid., 24. 56. Keith Hitchins, The Idea of Nation: The Romanians of Transylvania, 1691-1849, (Bucharest: Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, 1988), 45-48. 57. Hitchins, National Consciousness, 12. 58. Radu Cinpoeş, Nationalism and Identity in Romania: A History of Extreme Politics from the Birth of the State to EU Accession, (London: I.B. Publishers, 2010),42. 59. Hitchins, National Consciousness, 24.

85 VOLUME 16, 2012 universities, a tiny Romanian intellectual contends,62 we can begin with eighteenth- social problems and were unreservedly class developed. While it did not have century Romanian conception of the optimistic that the misery and poverty the needed political weight to successfully Jews. For the most part, Jews were not the of all Romanian-speaking peoples defend its perceived rights that had been objects of exclusion during Ion Klein’s could be alleviated through pragmatic granted by the Act of Union, this small tenure as Bishop of Transylvania, as measures. Focused less on philosophical group, comprised primarily of Uniate much as they were the objects of aversion. problems, they meditated on the practical Priests, did represent both the germ of Owing to still extant Medieval perceptions problems of Transylvania: the condition discontent and the presence of ethnic of Jews, Romanians thought of them in of the peasantry, education, and consciousness, the precursor to full- stereotypical, hateful terms. For example, political autonomy. 65 60 blown nationalism. racist terms such as the “Jew as Usurer” The Transylvanian School existed Discontent in the Transylvanian and ‘Christ-killer’ became common from roughly 1785-1815. Its most notable countryside added impetus to Klein’s descriptions for Jewish people. The stereo- members, Samuil Micu-Klein, Gheorghe efforts to build the foundations of type of the ‘Wandering Jew’ who was Şincai, Petru Maior and Ion Budai-Deleanu, Romanian ethnic consciousness. In the said to be doomed to wander the earth were all preoccupied with expanding and middle of the eighteenth-century, foreign because he had ceased to do the will of refining the ideas of Romanian historical ‘prophets’ such as Sarai Visarion, a God and had thus fallen out of His favor continuity begun by Ion Innochentie Serbian Orthodox Monk, preached across was also prevalent but would take on a Klein. They believed that by illustrating the Transylvania countryside against the more significant meaning in the middle of the Romanians’ fundamental Latinity, they Union and warned of souls being damned the nineteenth-century when Romanian would gain historical legitimacy, entrance because Romanians had been unwittingly anti-Semitism, and xenophobia in general, into Western civilization, and would win tricked by Uniate priests into believing became more complex, pervasive, deep- access to civil and human rights.66 Samuil 63 that Uniate theology was no different than seeded and Romanian-specific. Micu-Klein was the first to politicize the Orthodox doctrine. This provoked what theory of Roman continuity. Written in Hitchins calls the ‘village intellectuals’ The Transylvanian School and 1791 “The History of the Romanians in to petition the court in Vienna for equal Proto-Nationalism Questions and Answers” during a period representation and religious freedom of political unrest across Europe, some for Romanians in Transylvania. Village The Orthodox Church continued to historians surmise that this book aimed intellectuals were largely reacting to what exist in a position of resistance for several to upset and attack the legitimacy of the they viewed as a potentially apocalyptic more decades until Leopold’s daughter, Three Nations.67 Empress Maria Theresa, was forced to event: the destruction of the Romanian In contrast to Ion Innochentie Klein, Orthodox Church. Despite the flurry admit the failure of the Austrian Uniate policy in 1759 and allowed the Orthodox who believed that the Romanian language of political organization that was first was inadequate for legal and political manifested in mid-eighteenth-century to have their own metropolitan, albeit a Serbian one.64 By this time, a small group expression and who preferred to use Latin, Transylvania, it must be kept in mind that members of the Transylvanian School this was done outside of any irredentist of Transylvanian intellectuals, largely educated at the Jesuit-run at began exploring the etymological roots of desire for Romanian statehood, but rather, the Romanian. To them, the Romanian within the confines of Habsburg law. Cluj, expanded upon the ideas of Ion Inochentie Klein and elevated the position language had become corrupted by Slavic, There was no social revolution, but theirs Hungarian and German words and had was the desire for religious freedom.61 of ethnic consciousness to one of proto- nationalism. This group of distinguished been further obscured by the Cyrillic Because Romanian ethnic intellectuals, made up primarily of priests alphabet. The Romanian language, he consciousness eventually transformed with a smattering of laymen and , believed, had not developed as fully as into an exclusivist nationalism strongly came to be known as “The Transylvanian other Western languages because of associated with xenophobia in the late School,” and was led by Ion Inochentie the continuous barbarian invasions and nineteenth-century, it is useful to consider Klein’s nephew, Samuil Micu-Klein, who extensive periods of foreign domination. at this point the way in which Romanians was also a Uniate Priest. Because many He and his colleagues believed that it conceived of their Jewish neighbors. If of them had been educated in Austrian was their duty to restore the language 68 anti-Semitism is a useful indicator of or Western universities, they were highly to its original Latin roots. Underlying xenophobia in general as Sorin Mitu receptive to the use of reason to solve the restoration of the language was the

60. Vladimir Hanga, “The Legal Arguments of the Romanian Claims in the Supplex Libellus Valachorum, L’Europe du Sud-Ost 3, (1976):142 61. Hitchins, National Consciousness, 17-22. 62. Sorin Mitu, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania, (Budapest: Central European Press, 2001), 63. Mitu, National Identity, 79-81. 64. Hitchins, National Consciousness, 17. 65. Hitchins, Idea of Nation, 94. 66. Larisa Firtat, “European Influence in the Discourse of Ion Budai-Deleanu,”Revista Transilvania 12,(2010): 140-144. 67. Hitchins, The Idea of Nation, 114, 115.

86 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal recognition that the Romanian people The Orthodox Church was given the revolutionary spirit that was spreading had fallen far behind the rest of Western authority to open schools, procure dual- like wildfire in would overtake the Europe. The Transylvania School thus language books (German-Romania) and Austrian realms. He moved quickly to represented the first attempts to rectify ensure that enrollment opportunities were rescind his predecessor’s reforms. In this the backwardness of their countrymen being maximized.71 State support for the regard he was successful, but the Supplex and region.69 Orthodox schools became mandatory. revealed that Romanian thinking about The role of Joseph II, the Austrian Joseph II implemented o other their nation had become more complex. Monarch, was also a significant factor in reforms that seriously undermined the Even though the influence of Romanian creating space for Romanian intellectuals political structure of Transylvania that had Transylvanian elites would recede and give to conceive of themselves as a nation been dominated for centuries by the Saxon way to elites in Moldavia and Wallachia, within Transylvania worthy of political and Hungarian nobilities. First, Joseph the influence of the Supplex would be felt 74 legitimacy. Joseph II was interested in guaranteed the free practice of Orthodoxy throughout the nineteenth-century. continuing the process of centralization and made illegal discrimination against The Supplex essentially unifies the in the Austrian provinces, using reason to its adherents. Romanian Orthodoxy thus political program put forth by Ion Klein create more efficient governing structures was no longer a ‘tolerated’ religion but a during his time as Bishop of the Uniate throughout the realm and in making the ‘received’ one placed on equal footing with Church in Transylvania. The only provinces more useful, efficient and just. the four received religions of the three difference is its superior organization and He believed passionately in promoting nations. Secondly, he abolished the old vastness.75 The Enlightenment concepts education at all levels of society. After Hungarian and Saxon system of counties and principles contained within it (natural visiting Transylvania and engaging the and replaced it with one that paid little heed law, social contract, the rights of man) Romanian population in 1773, 1783, and to the ethnic makeup of the former regions. illustrate well the extent of the penetration 1786, he became personally interested in The result was that the new counties of Western ideas into thinking and the plight of the peasants who had been for had a more natural ethnic and religious writings of the isolated and marginalized centuries mired in poverty and ignorance. makeup. In effect, all four nationalities Romanian elite class.76 Implicit within it After Horea’s peasant uprising in 1784, were placed on an equal political footing also is the Enlightenment’s attitude towards Joseph II’s resolve to address the plight of and were guaranteed equal representation history: “History is merely a depository the Romanian nation in Transylvania was before the Austrian court.72 Unfortunately, of all the injustices that must never occur hardened. Although he ruthlessly stamped resistance to the new cultural and political again…He (the Aufklärer) sees in the past out the rebellion, he did recognize that reforms from the Saxons and Hungarians only inferiority, backwardness. For him, reforms needed to be implemented in the was especially fierce and eventually led the Middle Ages represent only darkness, countryside if further uprisings were to be to Joseph repealing most of the reforms ignorance, superstition, slavery and lack of avoided. This resulted in the emancipation before his death in 1790. Nevertheless, his useful culture.”77 A recurring theme among of the Transylvanian serfs in 1785. recognition of the Orthodox Church and many Romanian scholars and aristocrats As a direct result of Horea’s uprising, his implementation of education reform near the end of the nineteenth century was Joseph II’s commitment to education strengthened the resolve and drive of the the awareness of the Romanian-speaking specifically addressed the goal of “raising Romanian nation so seek political equality. land’s pervasive backwardness. The Supplex the Romanian nation out of poverty and The most significant political acknowledges this state as it describes the ignorance to a place of equality with the document written by Romanians in the historical injustices perpetrated against the other nations of Transylvania.”70 While it eighteenth-century came about as a Romanian nation in Transylvania vis-à- was true that Joseph II’s goal of providing direct result of Joseph II’s reforms and vis its disenfranchisement and demotion an education for the impoverished his death. The Supplex Libellus Vallachorum73 from historical ally and partner of the minorities of Transylvania was a noble was written one year after his death as Hungarian nation to subordinate, tolerated 78 one, his policy was also pragmatic in the Romanians realized that the window of status without political or cultural rights. sense the he sought to use education to opportunity for gaining political equality The Supplex puts forth the argument that both pacify the region and to maximize in Transylvania was closing fast. His Romania is not demanding new rights, 79 the economic potential of the region. successor, Leopold II, feared that the but rather, the “restitution of old ones.”

68. Hitchins, National Consciousness, 38. 69. Cinpoeş, Nationalism and Identity, 12. 70. Keith Hitchins, A Nation Discovered: Romanian Intellectuals in Transylvania and the Idea of Nation, 1700/1848, (Bucharest: The Romanian Foundation Cultural Publishing House, 1999), 109. 71. Hitchins, A Nation Discovered, 113. 72. Ibid., 116-118. 73. In Latin, ‘Supplex Libellus Vallachorum’ means “The Petition of the Romanians in Transylvania.” 74. Prodan, Supplex, 8. 75. Ibid., 420. 76. Ibid., 455 77. Ibid., 435. 78. Ibid., 433.

87 VOLUME 16, 2012 Only redress in the present can rectify the and were even essential as intermediaries.80 Nearly twenty-five years before the backwardness of Romanians and bring As a politically disenfranchised people, Russian takeover of the Principalities, the them into the enlightened epoch. Romanian-speakers in Transylvania idea of a politically unified Romanian Unfortunately for the Romanian focused their energies first on political territory had been discussed in the Russian political cause, the Austrian Monarchy emancipation from the Austrian and diplomatic and intellectual circles. Various had grown increasingly alarmed at both Hungarian aristocracy. Romanian anti- proposals were put forth and tabled, none the upheaval that was taking place in Semitism did not become more exclusive of them conceived by ethnic Romanians, revolutionary France and at the awareness until the legislation of the Organic Law but all of them with the goal of eliminating 81 that similar conflict could easily extend from 1835-1859 was implemented. the principalities and the potential for to its realms. Joseph II’s reforms were After the failed Greek uprising in 1821 the political and cultural unification of 85 rescinded and the Romanian’s political the Phanariot princes were expelled from a Romanian state. In 1803 the Russian demands were ignored. The demands Moldavia and Wallachia and replaced with diplomat, Vasili Feodorovich Malinowski, of the Romanian elites for political Romanian born princes by the Ottoman was the first to put forth the idea of a united representation proportionate to their Porte. Russia restrained herself from Romanian-speaking territory which would population and tax burden would interfering too obviously in Romanian be dominated by varying degrees under fundamentally alter the power structure internal affairs, but nevertheless awaited either Austria or Russia. Malinowski was of Transylvania if recognized. Revolution the chance to supplant Ottoman rule. This a well-known liberal in Russian elite circles would ensue. Romanian requests to install chance came in the mid-1820’s as Great and was also a passionate advocate of the printing presses were rejected, the use of Britain’s foreign policy focused less on natural rights of man and hence, nations. German as the administrative language supporting the Romanian-speaking lands Since the inhabitants of Transylvania was reinforced and the historic status of as a buffer region between the Austrian were primarily Romanian, Malinowski the Romanian political status as ‘tolerated’ and Ottoman Empires.82 By 1828 Turkish proposed that Austria cede Transylvania was reconfirmed. At the turn of the power was clearly on the decline and Turkey and unite with Moldavia and Wallachia to nineteenth-century, the political activity could no longer hold on to Moldavia and form the new ‘Kingdom of the Dacians.’ of the Romanian clergy was suppressed Wallachia.83 Russia, the self-declared Despite the seemingly benign intentions of until after World War I when Transylvania protector of its Orthodox brethren in Russia vis-à-vis their Romanian Orthodox was incorporated into the new Romanian Romania, attacked Turkey and forced it brothers, the goal of a unified state. The onus of political activity pivoted to concede its influence in its Romanian- seems to have been one of political and to Moldavia and Wallachia, where the speaking holdings. Count Kiselev was economic dominance, rather than support 86 tone became more secular as the political installed as overseer of the Principalities for national self-determination. struggle was picked up by intellectuals by Tsar Alexander and a was By 1828 Russian policy in the operating outside of the Romanian quickly composed and imposed on the Principalities seemed to be gaining Orthodox Church. chaotic, downtrodden Principalities. While purchase, even if it was somewhat Noticeably absent from the first phase the initial years of Russian domination saw ambivalent. On one hand, there had of Romanian nationalism’s development an increase in pillaging and murder in the been previous talk of breaking apart the in Transylvania was the exclusion of Jews Principalities, this exploitation was soon Principalities, but on the other hand, or other non-ethnic elements. Members of quelled by Kiselev, himself an Aufklärer who Kiselev, and to some degree his Ottoman the Romanian Orthodox Church and the had high-minded principles about how co-administrators, imposed the Réglement 84 Romanian nation had always viewed those the Principalities should be governed. Organique upon the Principalities. The who did not subscribe to their religious In the span of less than ten years, the Réglement Organique was a quasi-democratic creeds or cultural traditions as outsiders; Principalities had been freed of the regime in the sense that its members were nevertheless, Jews, especially in Moldavia, extortionist Phanariot regime, witnessed elected, but those representatives were were engaged in professions such as money- the diminished control of the Ottomans chosen solely from the boyars, or Romanian lending and tavern-keeping, professions (although the Ottomans nominally still aristocratic class. The peasantry was that were traditionally not taken up by held some influence in the Principalities, excluded. The significance of the Romanians. The stance Romanians took the Principalities were essentially under Réglements to this article is threefold. First, towards Jews was what one historian the subjugation of the Russians) and they eventually functioned as the basis labeled “hostilely tolerant,” but Jews were succumbed to the “protection” of its for the unification of a semi-autonomous not explicitly excluded from commerce Orthodox Russian brothers. Moldavian and Wallachian government

79. Ibid., 420. 80. Ladislau Gyemant, “The Romanian Jewry: Historical Destiny, Tolerance, Integration, Marginalisation,” Journal for the Study of Religious Ideologies, 3(2002), 85. 81. Fischer-Galati, Stephen, “The Legacy of Anti-Semitism,” In The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry, ed. Randolph L. Braham, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 5. 82. R.W. Seton-Watson, A History of the Roumanians: From Roman Times to the Completion of Unity, (London: Archon Books, 1963), 202-205. 83. Moldavia and Wallachia will henceforth be referred to as “the Principalities.” 84. Seton-Watson, A History of the Roumanians, 203-206. 85. Alex Drace Francis, The Making of Modern Romanian Culture: Literature and the Development of National Identity, (New York: Taurus Academic Studies, 2006), 23. 86. Francis, Romanian Culture, 24.

88 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal in 1859 and became the vehicle by which period, as it insisted on every nation’s right adequate infrastructure, there was little political autonomy was reached. Second, to national self-determination. The means reason to invest in the kind of heavy for the first time in Romanian history, they for nations to rid themselves of foreign industry that had been introduced in created space for a Romanian opposition oppression was through revolutionary Great Britain and the United States nearly party to form, which was primarily upheaval. And lastly, with its insistence one hundred years earlier. Romanian dissatisfied with the Romanian status of that every nation is unique (having its nationalism, though, was clearly Russian protectorate and administrator. own language, history and culture), evident, despite Gellner’s insistence that This opposition was mostly composed played a key role in providing industrialism come first. of boyars who had been educated in the vocabulary and direction for Romanian Also salient to this period was the rise 90 the West and returned to Romania patriots in their quest for autonomy. of literacy and publishing, both of which with revolutionary and Enlightenment According to Gellner, nationalism Anderson claimed would need to be in ideals that guided them in their quest does not arise until the appearance place in order for a nation to be “imagined.” for Romanian independence. Lastly, for of industrialization; however, when Due to the scarcity of statistics concerning the first time legislation was enacted that considering the rise of Romanian the Romanian-speaking regions during expressly forbid Jews from owning land nationalism during the middle of the this period in virtually every demographic 87 and gaining Romanian citizenship. nineteenth-century in the Principalities, it is category, it is nearly impossible to form a It would seem then, that if Russia had important to note that industrialization was completely accurate assessment of literacy planned on using the Réglements as a tool still a long way off. The Romanian economy and readership in the region; however, to exert influence upon the Principalities, at this time was essentially mercantilist. drawing on circumstantial documentation, this plan had unwittingly unleashed a The Romanian region of the Danubian the historian can safely surmise that patriotic, nationalist fervor that would only basin became the breadbasket and cattle Romanians were one of the least literate accelerate over the course of the next producer for the imperialist regimes in peoples in Europe in the nineteenth- one hundred years. Vienna, Constantinople and St. Petersburg. century. One observer during this period With Romanian patriots in A significant portion of the merchant claimed that Romanian literacy was at Transylvania effectively silenced by the class was of foreign origin and had little 8%, while another believed that even this rise of the Magyars in that region, the reason to invest in the infrastructure that number was too high. One work of official nationalist intelligentsia in the Principalities would facilitate the efficient transportation propaganda dating from the beginning of capably took up the cause for Romanian of Romania agricultural products and the twentieth-century placed Romanian sovereignty. This was partly accomplished provide incentives to Romanian peasants illiteracy at 87%, or roughly the same by a marked rise in literacy in the boyar88 to produce more. Further, because of the levels found in some regions of sixteenth- class and also by the introduction of new Principalities long tradition of political century Western Europe; therefore, it is printing presses, which was a direct result instability and arbitrary system of safe to assume that literacy levels were of Romanian elites going abroad to receive taxation, there was little appetite to invest much lower seventy-five years earlier.94 educations firmly rooted in Enlightenment in long-term transportation projects such Despite these extremely low levels 91 rationalism. This meant that the next as bridges and highways. Nevertheless, of literacy, prominent members of the phase of Romanian nationalism, what there was still often a grain or cereal intelligentsia and Romanian political elite I call patriotic nationalism, had turned surplus that could not be sold abroad for still believed in the essential importance of secular as it had freed intellectuals from lack of efficient transportation. Whiskey fostering Romanian national consciousness what Adrian Marino calls “medieval was often produced as a means of realizing through newspapers and magazines. Most mystical contemplation, of devout, some profit on the grain surplus, which notably was of Moldavia, spiritual exercises,” and the new mindset in turn lead to overproduction of liquor editor of Albina româneascaâ (The Romanian instead becomes “profane and moral” in general, leading one diarist to lament Bee, 1829-1847), who described literature 89 with a more secular “social destination.” that the lack of efficient roads actually as “the practical method of cultivating 92 Liberal ideology adopted from the French lead Romanians to a state of dissipation. the nation.”95 Asachi’s counterpart in and German interpretations dominated Serious investment in infrastructure would Wallachia, Ion Heliade Rădalescu, 93 Romanian political thought during this not occur until the 1860’s and without published Curiel rumânesc (The Romanian

87. Seton-Watson, History of the Roumanians, 209-214. 88. The term “” refers to the Romanian nobility. 89. Adrian Marino, “The Romanian Enlightenment: Ideas about Theatre, Poetry, Literature, Books, Publishing Houses, Reading,” in Enlightenment and Romanian Society, ed. Teodor Pompiliu, (Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Editura Dacia Cluj-Napoca, 1980), 28. 90. Paul Blokker. “Modernity in Romania: Nineteenth Century Liberalism and its Discontents.” European University Institute, Florence. EUI Working Paper SPS No. 2003/2. 91. Drace-Francis, Romanian Culture, 20, 21. 92. Charles Boner, Transylvania: Its Products and Its People, (London: Longman, Greens, Reader and Dyer, 1865), 183. 93. Radu R. Florescu, “Social Classes and Revolutionary Ferment in Nineteenth Century Bucharest,” in Romania Between East and West: Historical Essays in Memory of Constantin G. Giruescu, eds. Stephen Fischer-Galati, Radu R. Florescu, and George R. Ursul, (Denver: Eastern European Monographs, 1982), 164. 94. Drace-Francis, Romanian Culture, 41. 95. Gheorge Asachi, “Opere: 1820-1863,” in The Making of Modern Romanian Culture: Literacy and Development of National Identity, ed. Alex Drace-Francis (New York: Taurus, 2006), 40. 89 VOLUME 16, 2012 Courier, 1929-1848) and likewise proposed Enlightenment aims of “progress, truth, the Earth,” forever cursed to a nationless that “without national books, without a justice, morality.” The basis of their disgust state of existence if they did not awaken to national literature, neither the patrie, nor lay at the feet of their fellow boyars who the God-given opportunity that lay before patriotism, nor even nationality can exist.”96 had aligned themselves with the Imperial them, namely the opportunity to shrug off Râdalescu’s notation of the importance Russian regime and used the Réglements as a the imperial slavery imposed upon them by of literature in informing nationality means for personal enrichment rather than the Austrians, Greeks, Magyars, Ottomans comports well with Adrian Hasting’s same in service of the national goal of political and Russians. This fear is grounded in the supposition written nearly 160 years later sovereignty. They eventually formed, for medieval myth of the “Wandering Jew,” that a nation is primarily identified by the the first time in Romanian history, an punished by God for the role they played in literature that it produces.97 opposition party. crucifying Christ, and forever doomed to 103 Both Asachi and Râdalescu’s Before moving on to one of the most “roam around the world like strangers.” publishing ventures came as a result of critical phases of Romanian history (the The Enlightenment had provided their awareness of the backwardness of revolution of 1848), it is important to Romanians with the intellectual tools to the Romanian-speaking lands and from describe the Romanian perception of the fight their imperial oppressors and if they a desire to promote Romanian national Jews in the Romanian-speaking regions. did not, they risked being driven off their consciousness. Virtually every foreigner Anti-Semitism throughout ancestral land, just as the Jews had been travelling through the Romanian-speaking was commonplace, but each region or driven from Palestine. By the middle of lands lamented the backwardness of the nation subscribed to its own version and the nineteenth-century, Jews had become region and Romanian intellectuals were was characterized differently. Romanian the objects of shame and revulsion, as well painfully aware of the derision expressed anti-Semitism can be traced to two sources. as object lessons for what the Romanians in magazines as far away as London.98 First, according to Andrei Oisteanu, could expect if they did not seize the 104 The publishers Asachi and Râdalescu who “Orthodoxy does not contain ‘der Geist opportunity to realize nationhood. eventually became political leaders, were der Kapitalismus’’ and he goes on to quote Nevertheless, Jews had been “hostilely part of the Romanian Enlightenment Daniel Birbu who notes, “In the eyes of tolerated” for centuries, and during the tradition. One principal of the Romanian Orthodoxy, the sole legitimate occupation first few decades of the nineteenth-century, Enlightenment was that “literature must be is one that takes caution before trespassing they seemed to be making some progress directly and immediately useful to society” the boundaries of natural economics. in obtaining civil rights and were even and whose “mission was to instruct and Roughly, it is only the peasant’s work that is assimilating to some extent in some areas to criticize, to ‘enlighten’ in all aspects acceptable to Orthodoxy.”101 Because local of the Romanian-speaking lands.105 Even the consciousness of the Roumanians.”99 ordinances and customs often forbade him as the Réglements had banned Jews from Pragmatism, then, was also one of the from owning land or property, Jews, then, owning property in the countryside and most prominent features of Romanian often performed the role of intermediary, reinforced their exclusion from the political Enlightenment thought: if an idea did not merchant, banker, tavern-keeper, and all process, they did, however, express a small have a useful application, then it was of no roles traditionally seen as verboten by the measure of tolerance, as they allowed import. In a sense, literary Enlightenment practitioners of Orthodoxy; however, these Jewish children to attend Romanian public fostered “national and social ideals (that) services provided by these occupations are schools. After the union of the Principalities exceed in intensity and extent any other often seen as essential, even if immoral. in 1859, though, as Jews from and aim.”100 By the time of the great European Lastly, the traditional Jewish occupations the southern Russian provinces began revolutions of 1848, countless privileged came to be seen as shameful, even as trade settling in Moldavia, anti-Semitic rhetoric Romanian sons had travelled abroad and was considered to be a form of robbery.102 took on a new, more hateful, more paranoid 106 received excellent educations in Berlin, Sorin Mitu complicates and adds and xenophobic character. Paris, and Vienna. They returned to further depth to origins of Romanian anti- Modernization and Anti-Semitism their backward land full of patriotic fervor Semitism in the nineteenth-century with and the vocabulary to express it. They his assertion that Romanians feared that Even though the political goals of were eager to contribute to the awakening they, too, would be relegated to “wandering the 1848 Romanian revolutionaries had of their nation. They adopted the not been realized, the momentum for

96. Ion Heliade Râdalescu, “Opere,” in The Making of Modern Romanian Culture: Literacy and Development of National Identity, ed. Alex Drace-Francis (New York: Taurus, 2006), 41. 97. Adrian Hastings, Construction of Nationhood, 5. 98. Drace-Francis, Romanian Culture, 42, 43. 99. Marino, “Romanian Enlightenment,”21. 100. Ibid., 24. 101. Andrei Oisteanu, Inventing the Jew: Anti-Semitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central-East European Cultures, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 142 102. Oisteanu., Inventing the Jew, 139. 103. Mitu, National Identity, 80. 104. Ibid., 81. 105. Fischer-Galati, “Romanian Anti-Semitism,”4. 106. Ibid., 4,5.

90 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal emancipation from Russian domination effect of alienating most of Romanian in terms of the state, meaning that the increased. As a result, anti-Russian feeling society from the national project.110 collective became more important than also increased. Russia’s defeat in the Further alienating society was the new the individual. Constitutional reform at the hands of the British, government’s uneven handling of the newly in this sense, then, differed from that of French and Ottomans in 1856, paved rationalized economy, which supported its Western counterparts (who were also the way for the union of Moldavia and industrialist ventures through subsidies pursuing legal and historical redefinitions Wallachia and the United Principalities and tariffs, while at the same time ignoring of the state after 1848). Combined with were born in 1859. Many viewed this as the overwhelmingly agricultural sector of the latent, and ever more vehement, a first stepping stone to the creation of a the economy. The commodification of anti-Semitism in the Romanian-speaking 107 Greater Romania. Still widely influential, land, an essential component of breaking regions, and the declaration of the primacy liberals of “The Generation of 1848,” apart the feudal system and power of of the collective rather than individual advocated Jewish emancipation, while the boyars in the countryside, was hardly rights, Romanian nationalism took a more 114 their conservative compatriots, fearful of discussed. The refusal to address the exclusivist turn. the contaminating effect of “foreigners” medieval nature of Romanian society lead The Transylvanian School attempted on the Romanian modernization project, one intellectual to declare that the new to define the geographical legitimacy of rejected this demand outright. It has been government was essentially one of “forms the Romanian national by elucidating the estimated that nearly half of the urban without substance.”111 The new Romania descent of the Romanians from the Daco- population in the United Principalities by had adopted many of the liberal governing Romans. By doing so, they were locating this time was Jewish. Moldavia was also and market structures of the West, but it Romanians on an “island of Latinity in experiencing a massive influx of Jews had failed to reorder Romanian society in a Slav sea,” which called attention to the emigrating from the East due to increasing a way that reflected the new institutions. fact that Romanians had been subjected to harsh treatment by the , Russians, and The failure of the new government to foreign rule and oppression for centuries, Ukrainians. The massive immigration of address the plight of the peasants and hence the need to create a Romanian state Jews into the United Principalities caused agriculturally based economy would set that would protect them from future foreign a marked rise in anti-Semitism in a region up a narrative of marginalization and invasion. The Romanian’s historical 108 already steeped in xenophobia. discontent in the first quarter of the experience with foreign domination played The process of modernization in twentieth century. The refusal to rectify a key role in forming a nation based on the the United Principalities rapidly gained the disparate aristocratic living standards primacy of collectivism and exclusivity.115 momentum after 1866 with the adoption with the economic despair of the peasants As subsequently noted, mass Jewish of the new constitution, which can would be one of the primary causes of the immigration from the east caused an uptick essentially be viewed as the blueprint for rise of in the 1920’s.112 And lastly, in Romanian anti-Semitism. Further creating the future Romanian nation- while Jews would essentially be excluded adding fuel to the fire and occupying a state. The constitutional debate was from the political process, their presence place out of proportion to the challenges concentrated into two competing views, was tolerated in the commercial market, facing the infant Romanian parliament was the liberal and the conservative. Inherent as the skills and services that they offered the naturalization debate, which focused on in the liberal and conservative debate were seen as essential to the prospects of defining who belonged to the Romanian was the question of how to mobilize a the nascent Romanian economy.113 state and who was excluded from it. backward region steeped in corruption, Questions of how to pursue social After the Ausgleich (Compromise) of authoritarianism, and patriarchalism justice were pursued, with liberals 1867, the Hungarian aristocracy took and that lacked capitalist and democratic advocating the enfranchisement of the control of Transylvanian governmental traditions. Drawn up using the Belgian peasants and non-Christian ethnicities, affairs. Transylvania was subjected to constitution of 1831 as a liberal reference such as the Jews, and with the conservatives relentless Magyarization and while point, the Romanian constitution set in representing the boyar interests, who Transylvanian Romanians resisted total place a highly centralized parliamentary fought tenaciously against the inclusion assimilation into the Hungarian kingdom, 109 with the foreign monarch as of “foreign” ethnicities and land reform. advocacy for political autonomy was its head. The beginnings of mass politics Elites on both sides of the debate about essentially repressed until after World were evident, even though only two parties the future of the Romanian state, War I, when Transylvania was awarded were represented. Representation was however, defined the rights of individuals to Romania with the Treaty of Triannon. based on landownership, which had the

107. Ibid., 6,7. 108. Ibid., 7. 109. Carol I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was the ruler of Romania from 1881-1914. 110. Blokker, “Modernity in Romania,” 7. 111. Ibid., 10. 112. Ibid., 10. 113. Ibid., 8, 9. 114. Ibid., 6,7. 115. Ibid., 11.

91 VOLUME 16, 2012 Romanian anti-Semitism, though, did not have a native population of Jews. Jewish tolerance within Romanian borders. flourished in Transylvania especially in To Romanian leaders the Jews within On one hand, their business prowess was the urban centers where Romanians found its borders had only recently emigrated admired and deemed necessary for the themselves in competition with the Jewish from Poland, Russia and , and, creation of a strong Romania, but on the population. Anti-Semitism combined with therefore, did not qualify for Romanian other, the competition they represented economic tension created the conditions citizenship.118 Romania leaders instead caused resentment on the part of those for Romanian nationalism to become tried to characterize the exclusion of Jews who wanted to see the Romanian economy more intensely inflamed, just as Gellner from as a national imperative, grow and become strong due to Romanian predicted it would. Adding fuel to the for, if Jews were to be granted full business and economic savvy. fire was the fact that Transylvanian Jews citizenship, the ethnic stock of Romania tended to have completely assimilated into would be jeopardized. This argument was the Hungarian section of society and spoke really an extreme version of Romantic Exclusive Nationalism Hungarian. Because Romanian nationalist nationalism’s insistence on the uniqueness In the later decades of the nineteenth- leaders had long been associated with of every state and its inherent right to self- century Romanian intellectuals intellectuals of the Uniate and Orthodox determination.119 irrevocably split into two primary churches, the religious traditions of the Jews While the Great Powers’ (France, ideological camps, both of which had offered one more means of differentiating Great Britain, the , divergent views concerning how the future the Romanian, rural, Orthodox identity Prussia, Russia) decisions at the Congress Romania should be constructed. The 116 with that of the Jewish urban identity. of Berlin resulted in the formation of a liberal vision of Romania was based upon In 1864 a revised Civil Code was issued new Romanian state, in the opinion of Western concepts of modernization: the which contained within it legislation that Romanian leaders and those who were implementation of a market economy, would permit, in theory, the naturalization educated and interested enough to follow the centralization of power in a unified of ethnic minorities. In practice, though, the debate, sovereignty had come with nation-state, the adoption of a modern, most, and especially Jews, found it nearly unacceptable costs. First, the intense liberal constitution, and the founding impossible to acquire citizenship unless they lobbying of Western Jews120 on behalf of a parliamentary democracy (even could summon the necessary funds to pay of the Jewish brethren in Romania for though most Romanians were excluded for it. Most Jews, however, viewed this as a the cause of equal rights and citizenship from participating as they did not own step in the right direction. The constitution reinforced the belief that Jews were hostile land). The liberal vision was essentially of 1866 made Romanian intentions to the national goals of Romania. Due to “enlightened” in its outlook as it is firmly regarding naturalization even more clear, the positions they often held as bankers based on the faith they placed in progress although not in the manner the Jews and and tavern keepers, many Romanian and the importance of the rationalization other minorities had hoped for, as Article elites who had come to associate the of society. Acutely conscious of Romania’s 7 stated “Only foreigners of Christian Romanian peasantry with the essence backwardness in comparison to the West, rites may obtain naturalization.”117 At of “Romanianness” were alarmed that liberals thought of the Romanian nation the Congress of Berlin of 1878 at which the Jews were attempting to destroy the as a “liberating force, aimed against feudal Romania’s fate regarding its declaration purity of the rural population. Secondly, society and foreign domination . . . and 121 of independence would be decided by Jews were seen as agents of the West as composed of native Romanians.” the more powerful Western powers, the who were actively trying to undermine As such, they sought to adopt economic, failure of the Civil Code of 1864 and the the goals of creating an ethnically and political and cultural structures based inclusion of Article 7 in the Constitution culturally homogenous Romanian state. upon those found in the West, especially of 1866 would reinforce the suspicion that Romanian leaders and elites resented what in France. Romania was not serious, indeed, could they perceived to be Jewish and foreign The Europeanist view, as the liberal not be serious due to the pervasive and intervention in Romanian internal affairs. view was often called, came under entrenched nature of anti-Semitism in the Third, and also somewhat ambivalently, heavy criticism by those representing Principalities, about granting equal rights the Jewish occupation, and in some cases its traditional, conservative counterpart to all nationalities, regardless of religious monopolization of urban business activity, because they were seen as too “emulative” denomination, to those living within the was both envied and resented. This led to and did not consider the unique character Principalities. Indeed, by 1878, Romanian the inconsistent position that many anti- of Romanian society. One prominent leaders had been declaring that Romania Semitic Romanian leaders took vis-à-vis Romanian critique labeled the wholesale

116. Fischer-Galati, Anti-Semitism, 8. 117. William O. Oldson, A Providential Anti-Semitism: Nationalism and Polity in Nineteenth-Century Romania, (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1991) 38, 39. 118. Fischer-Galati, “Anti-Semitism,” 8,9. 119. Blokker, “Modernity in Romania,” 6,7. 120. Bismarck’s personal banker, Bleichröder, was Jewish and played a huge role in exerting pressure on Romania to enact legislation that would protect Romanian Jew’s political rights. 121. Ibid., 8,9. 92 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal adoption of Western liberal cultural, associated with the negative consequences to integrate the new minority populations economic and political structures “forms of industrialization, urbanization, that came along with newly acquired without substance.” Traditionalists viewed exploitation and the deterioration of territories.125 Integration of powerful, well- the rapid modernization of Romania as traditional values in the peasantry who educated urban minorities was one of the harmful. Modernization needed to be moved to the cities. primary challenges after the Great War and slowed down so as to avoid destroying Unfortunately, by the time of the fervency with which cultural policies “the pure values of the peasantry” and the Great Peasant Uprising of 1907, were implemented to replace them, or at “in order to preserve essential Romanian anti-Semitism, xenophobia and the least diminish their influence, was fueled 122 traditions.” Also running counter to promotion of Christian Orthodox by intense nationalism, which in turn was liberal conceptions of how the Romanian values were inextricably linked with fueled by the process of modernization economy should be industrialized, and Romanian and “Romanianness.” itself: the centralization of government, thus modernized, was the conservative Expounded by urban intellectuals and bureaucratization (and especially that of contention that the agrarian economy circulated by the “village intellectuals,” the Ministry of Education), the spread of should receive primacy over the urban, anti-Semitic rhetoric masked the real mass politics (divergent ideologies, a plethora industrial economy. Many conservative economic problems of the Romanian of political parties, the enfranchisement leaders worried about the negative aspects countryside, namely, that the issue of of male peasants), and the availability of 126 of modernization (especially its corollaries, land reform had been ignored. Ironically, government jobs. industrialization and capitalism) upon or perhaps cynically, the conservatives Both before and after the Great War, 123 the peasantry. placed the peasant on a pedestal as a Romania remained essentially rural; One aspect of the debate over representation of true “Romanianness” however, after the war, the newly acquired Romanian national identity that both even as they pointedly ignored the fact that cities were overwhelmingly populated parties did agree upon was that the it was the conservative economic policy of with Saxon-Germans, Hungarians, Slavs Romanian state should be independent, promoting an agricultural policy without and Jews.127 Romanian leaders quickly collectivist (the idea that state interests addressing the issue of land reform that realized the irredentist threat inherent in trump individual interests) and left the rural citizenry without the means the new regions, populated as they were exclusionary. Related to the exclusionary to provide for itself. Conservatives often with powerful ethnic elites who were character of the state was the anti-Semitic either represented the interests of large intent on maintaining their centuries rhetoric associated with all parts of the landowners or were landowners themselves old ruling privileges. According to Irina ideological spectrum. From the long-held, and had no interest in destroying their Livezeanu, these new, “large minorities Medieval anti-Semitism typical of many own economic livelihoods. Instead, were more urban, more schooled, and European nations, from the arrival of conservatives deflected attention to their more modern than the Romanians.”128 Eastern Jews to Moldavia and Wallachia economic interests by inflaming anti- The old debate concerning the integration and their accompanying foreign culture, Semitism and xenophobia to an already of minorities into Romanian society and to the perceived influence of foreign Jews fevered pitch.124 the guarantee of civic rights and equality in Romanian internal affairs, and now to With the Treaty of Trianon the took on even greater importance as similar the perceived outsized influence of Jewish Romanian dream of a Greater Romania conditions were imposed on the interwar lease-holders and entrepreneurs in the was realized. The addition of Romanian leadership by Western leaders Romanian countryside, Romanian anti- and Transylvania, though, inspired by Wilsonianism and Semitism became more virulent in direct engendered a set of challenges that embedded in the Treaty of Trianon. correlation with each stage of Romanian heightened the already exclusivist nature Romanian resentment seethed at yet one nationalism’s development. Jews had long of Romanian nationalism. Even as more perceived imposition on Romanian been excluded from Romanian political conservative critiques of liberal efforts to sovereignty. This time around Romanians affairs but had, nevertheless, successfully modernize Romania based on Western were forced not only to recognize the navigated the Romanian economy and cultural, economic and political structures equality of the smaller groups of ethnic provided essential services to Romanian firmly took root amongst Romanian society minorities such as the Jews and Armenians, society. The Jewish industrialists and at large, both sides of the political spectrum but now they were forced to recognize the capitalists, however, also became found themselves faced with the task of how equality and political legitimacy of the

122. Ibid., 10. 123. Ibid., 11. 124. Fischer-Galati, “Romanian Anti-Semitism,”10, 11. 125. Fischer-Galati, “ Anti-Semitism,” 12. 126. This is important because many Romanian youth fervently wished to complete a university education that would provide security and reasonable wages. Most of the university youth came from the impoverished countryside, so when a university education, and by extension, the dream of a government job, proved to be illusive, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and resentment were inflamed. 127. According to statistics provided by Irina Livezeanu from the Romanian Central Institute of Statistics, in 1930 Romania was 79.8% rural. After World War I, nearly 30% of Romania’s population was non-Romanian (Magyar, German-Saxon, Slavic, Jewish, Gypsy, etc.). Perhaps most tellingly, Romanians constituted a mere 58.6% of the urban population. Even more starkly, the Romanian urban population in the newly acquired territories (Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania) did not exceed 35%. 128. Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-1930, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 7. 93 VOLUME 16, 2012 same powerful minorities (German-Saxons liberal and conservative interpretations villages. These same students who had left and Hungarians, primarily) who in the of “Romanianness,” but also challenged their villages for the city and the promise past refused to recognize similar Romanian their teachers and nationalist mentors, of education turned to Codreanu’s Iron demands and who now represented thus introducing not only an ideological, Guard where they found an outlet for their a potential threat to the unity of but also a generational divide within the frustration that manifested in hatred and Greater Romania.129 ever-expanding intelligentsia.134 It is in violence towards ‘foreign’ ethnic minorities Romanian leaders attempted to the interwar period that we finally see, who they believed had robbed them of 136 displace the new minority elites by rapidly many decades after the first appearance their careers and dreams. expanding educational opportunities of Romanian nationalism, a concerted, The student movement of 1922 both at the secondary and the university Gellnerian state attempt to create a marked the beginning of Romania’s level to Romanians.130 Educational policy homogenous culture through elementary modernization crisis, particularly the crisis was facilitated by the centralization of and secondary schools and the universities that occurred in the bureaucratization of authority in Bucharest, the capital of that can be used as a framework for rural education which was itself a manifestation Romania, and dictated to each region the Romanians to supplant and combat the of the centralization of power in Bucharest means by which consolidation should be cultural dominance of minority elites and its attendant focus on creating a 135 achieved. Virtually all cultural policy was in the newly acquired cities. The Romanian elite to supplant powerful micro-managed from the capital, including interethnic conflict and competition in the ethnic minorities in the newly acquired even which textbooks should be used in cities often intensified and exacerbated regions. Romanian intellectuals’ concerns the classroom. Massive nationalist tendencies, just as Gellner about the number of students receiving were constructed to manage the cultural predicted, although, once again, this diplomas and the intense competition production of “Romanianness” through happened long after the first appearance for jobs that the number of newly government publications, secondary of Romanian nationalism. graduated students that this competition schools, the universities and the national By the early 1920’s, many Romanian engendered proved to be prophetic. By theatres. Most Romanian university educational leaders believed that the 1922 student frustration reached a fever students came from the countryside and cultural revolution in education had pitch. Students accused the government dreamt of obtaining a degree that would reached crisis proportions. The number of selling out to the Western powers. As a provide access to what they believed were of students with university diplomas far result of the Treaty of Trianon after the secured, cushy careers with the rapidly outnumbered the number of positions Great War, the Western victors (primarily expanding Romanian .131 available in the workforce. Not only was France and Great Britain), had forced the They were sorely disappointed, however, the quality of the diploma questioned, but Romanian leadership to adopt legislation upon arriving in the city and realizing that so also was the emphasis that universities that guaranteed equality and citizenship there was neither housing, nor room in had placed on educating students for to its Jewish population. Long-held the classroom. Further, when housing was careers in law and government service. Romanian resentment towards foreign available, it was not affordable. Classrooms Many educational leaders felt that students interference in Romania’s internal affairs often lacked scientific equipment, heat, and would better be able to pragmatically serve was reawakened and erupted into levels of sometimes even professors.132 Romanian Romania by studying agriculture, biology, outrage and fury not before experienced. students believed that Jewish students and chemistry, subjects that would have a Students stormed through city streets, occupied positions at the university that more profound impact upon Romanian harassing Jews and other minorities. They should have been reserved for Romanians. modernization. Instead, the universities physically attacked Jews and destroyed Anti-Semitism in the disillusioned student produced students who upon graduation Jewish shops and homes. The founder of body, already indirectly encouraged by had little chance of employment, Romania’s most powerful fascist party, official national curricula that fostered which lead to even more widespread the Legion of the Archangel Michael a state-sponsored interpretation of dissatisfaction and disillusionment. (later to become the Iron Guard that for a Romanian identity, quickly ignited.133 Some feared that the Romanian villages short time before World War II governed Ironically, the massive influx of highly had suffered most by the Ministry of Romania), , educated university graduates served Education’s determination to educate its went so far as to murder a Jewish man. He as a further catalyst for the appearance best and brightest. The brain drain from was tried, but not convicted, even though of fascism, as the student movement of the countryside to the city was viewed as all evidence pointed to his clear guilt. 1922 came to challenge not only the detrimental to the modernization of the Indeed, he did not even attempt to hide his

129. Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politic, 212. 130. Ibid.,235. 131. Ibid., 242. 132. Ibid., 237, 238. 133. Ibid., 239. 134. Ibid., 8. 135. Ibid., 262. 136. Ibid., 242, 243.

94 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal guilt as he was well aware that a majority Transylvanian Diet. This document migration from the East in the 1860’s of Romania supported his evil deed. represented the culmination of Romanian engendered fear that ‘foreigners’ were The trial of Codreanu added both to his educational and political ambitions and dramatically changing the ethnic make- personal prestige and heightened student the influence of Enlightenment and up of the region and placing at risk the participation in his Legionnaire movement. Romantic thought on the political struggle goal of a future homogenous Romanian Not only did Romanian exclusive for Romanian equality vis-à-vis the Three state. This fear combined with Romanian nationalism and fascism come about as Nations in Transylvania. By the middle resentment towards foreign intervention a result of the intense nation-building of the nineteenth-century, Romanian in Romania’s internal affairs in the late project directed from Bucharest, but the national ambitions dominated elite and 1870’s. Anti-Semitic attitudes intensified. violence perpetrated against minorities intellectual thought, which resulted In both 1878 and 1919, Western powers during the interwar period, and especially in the first truly modern conceptions advocated strongly on behalf of Jews in against Jews, largely reflected Romanian of nationalism. Previously, Romanian Romania and pressured Romania to adopt society’s fears of and Bolshevism nationalists had as their goal equality liberal naturalization policies and laws penetrating Romania. Jewish migration within the imperial governing structures that guaranteed their equal treatment vis- from Russia, Galicia, and the Ukraine within which they found themselves, but by à-vis Romanians. Again, anti-Semitism fueled this fear, as they were thought 1848, the quest for nationhood took on a ratcheted up yet another notch. In the to be Bolshevism’s ideological carriers. full-blown urgency to achieve nationhood, interwar years, Romanian university The Romanian fear of Bolshevism eventually culminating in the founding students reacted against the perception that also reflected the Romanian desire to of the first sovereign, autonomous Jews were unfairly eating up educational create a nation with strictly Romanian Romanian state in 1878. This era is one resources that by right belonged to ethnic characteristics, a concept somewhere defined by patriotic nationalism. The Romanians. This resentment combined between Western liberalism and Eastern culmination of Romanian nationalism with the fear of socialism and Bolshevism, paternalism. ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ was was defined by an intensification of both of which were supposedly being perceived as a threat to this goal and the nationalist rhetoric defined primarily by imported from Russian and propagated by disillusioned student population displayed its exclusive nature and the debate about Jews who wished to undermine the fledgling the most exaggerated form of this fear. the course of modernization that Romania Romanian state. By the end of the 1920’s, It is in the student movements of 1922 should embark upon. As the pace of Romanian nationalism had devolved into that Romanian nationalism transformed modernization sped up, manifested exclusivity and defined Romania as a into fascism and that lead directly to primarily by quickening urbanization, nation for certain Romanians only. Romania’s participation in the Holocaust industrialization, centralization and During the interwar years exclusive of World War II.137 bureaucratization, many Romanians nationalism dominated the Romanian were disillusioned by the character of national discourse and defined the modernization and eventually blamed meaning of Romanianness. Even though Conclusion its failures on urban ethnic minorities, a wide range of ideological positions The origin of Romanian nationalism especially the Jews. were expounded in the media, the one can be placed firmly in the first half of the As Romanian ethnic consciousness commonality that they all shared was eighteenth-century and more specifically transformed to exclusive nationalism, their anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Even within the writings and activism of the Romanian conceptions of minorities the majority of moderates and liberals Uniate Priest Ion Innochentie Klein. also changed. In the eighteenth century, subscribed to some form of racism, however Combined with peasant revolts in the there was an extreme version of the cloaked their utterances in reasonableness countryside, Klein’s activism served to Jewish minority, but their presence was may have been. Xenophobia, racism, foster Romanian ethnic consciousness, tolerated due to the recognition that they anti-Semitism and exclusive nationalism the precursor to full-blown nationalism. provided essential economic services in were strongly influenced by two primary By the late eighteenth and early the Romanian-speaking regions. As the factors. First, the Treaty of Trianon nineteenth-centuries, the Transylvanian revolutionaries of 1848 adopted more created a significantly enlarged Romania school made strides towards creating a liberal social policies, so too did they with urban areas dominated primarily coherent Romanian history, Latinizing adopt a more liberal stance towards Jewish by powerful ethnic minorities. Irredentist and ‘Romanianizing’ the language, naturalization laws. With the establishment fears inspired Romanian elites to displace writing the first Romanian grammars, of the United Principalities of Moldovia these minorities by rapidly educating and expounding the first Romanian and Wallachia in 1859, the Jewish Romanians and sending them off to the national myths. The School’s supreme population was hopeful that they would no newly acquired territories to take over achievement, however, was the writing longer be merely tolerated, but accepted the cultural institutions run by the Saxons and presentation of the Supplex Libellus fully into political and social life. This and Hungarians. This new group of Vallachorum to the Austrian Court and was not to be, however, as massive Jewish Romanian elites had been inculcated in

137. Ibid., 246-248.

95 VOLUME 16, 2012 both secondary schools and the universities fact that it was too successful. By educating than academically focused universities. with a strong sense of Romanian national so many so quickly, it created a large In Imagined Communities Anderson identity that was underwritten by a population of well-educated students who posits the theory that nationalism’s origins subscription to the Romanian nationalist had virtually no prospect of ever utilizing can be found in the sixteenth-century with ideology and its corollaries, xenophobia its education due to a lack of opportunity the advent of print-capitalism. As the and anti-Semitism. in the job market. Competition for scarce sacred languages used by the royal courts The second factor that heightened jobs and resentment towards ethnic and church lose their primacy, people who racism and nationalism in Romania during minorities for competing for those jobs can afford to buy books begin reading in the interwar period was the perception created the conditions for scapegoating, their local vernaculars and publishers are that Romanian modernization had gone which inevitably fell upon the usual target, more than happy to satisfy their demands. awry. As peasants flocked to the city to find the Jews. The student uprisings of 1922 An expanding literate, urban middle-class employment, they found that it was not resulted in violent protest directed towards largely fuels the publishing boom. As dated the paradise or land of opportunity that the Jewish population and culminated in newspapers are published, people become they believed it was. As industrialization the formation of Codreanu’s Legion of the more aware of their ethnic brethren who had hardly taken off, there were very few Archangel Michael, a fascist organization might be located in the neighboring town jobs. The cities were filthy and often lacked the quickly gained in popularity and or who might be located several hundred basic sanitation structures. The deeply eventually came to power in the late 1930’s. kilometers away. Either way they become religious country folk collided with what In Nations and Nationalism Gellner aware of one another and realize that they believed was the decadent lifestyles wrote that in order for nationalism to they share the same culture and language. of the city dwellers. Even though much of occur, a nation must experience the split A sense of ‘imagined community’ is thus the destitution found in the city was due from agricultural, medieval society to created through a common language to effects of the Great War on Romanian one defined by industrialization. In the propagated through books and newspapers. society in general and the severe economic Romanian case, however, nationalism Eventually, ethnic awareness fosters a more malaise of the first years after the war, made its appearance more than a concrete idea of nation, which in turn many who moved to the cities associated century before industrialization made its spurs the movement for nationhood. the filth, loose morals, and competition appearance in Romania. While Gellner Anderson’s theory does not fit with foreigners, most notably the Jews, does not make distinctions between the Romanian case, however, for several who were supposedly transplanting the patriotic and exclusive nationalism as I reasons. The first reason is that Romania’s decadent lifestyle of the West into ‘pure’ have done, even if the brand of nationalism rural inhabitants remained cut off from Romania in an attempt to destroy it. that Gellner was writing about was defined the rest of the Romanian-speaking The failures of industrialization and as exclusive (which made its appearance regions. Even by the interwar period many urbanization, then, were associated with in the later half of the nineteenth-century Romanians in the countryside lived an anti-Semitism and xenophobia. in Romania), Romania would not embark essentially medieval existence. Romania Modernization also failed by on massive industrialization until after remained primarily rural until well in succeeding. The tight coordination of World War II. Similarly, urbanization, to the 1960’s. Even at the turn of the cultural policy by the central authorities the corollary of industrialization, did not twentieth-century it is estimated that only in Bucharest fervently promoted education occur on a massive scale until after World ten percent of the Romanian population during the first two decades of the War II, and even by the 1960’s, more than was literate. Capitalism did not reach twentieth-century. Even though many 40% of the Romanian population still Romania until after the founding of the schools often lacked basic supplies such as lived in the countryside. Gellner insists that first Romanian state in the late 1870’s books and benches, Romanian literacy in the homogenization of culture required by and a middle class did not begin to form these first two decades sharply increased. an industrial society relies upon wide scale to any significant degree until the first But the Education of Ministry’s major literacy, which also functions to support decade of the twentieth century (and success was to be found in the number of industry. In Romania, however, the push when it did begin to grow during the late university students it successfully enrolled for literacy was due first to the recognition interwar years, its development was nipped and sponsored. The push to provide of the backwardness of the Romanian in the bud after the communist takeover in Romanians with a university education people in relation to its Western neighbors. 1947). All of Anderson’s ingredients for was inspired both by the realization of The Romanians also had as their goal the nationalist recipe, then, are missing in the backwardness of the Romanian the desire to displace the powerful ethnic Romania. Romanian nationalism seems rural population in comparison to the minority elites in the newly-acquired cities. to have been promoted by and subscribed Western nations, but also, as noted above, The goal of creating a homogenous culture to by a relatively small number of elites by the goal of creating a class of ethnic that aligned with the goals of industry in academia, business, government and Romanian elites to displace the powerful seemed to have been rarely discussed; perhaps by the petite bourgeoisie and other and more educated ethnic minorities in the indeed, if they had been, the crisis of groups who were literate such as priests newly acquired territories. The irony of modernity in education might not have and teachers. The exact mechanisms by the Ministry’s success, though, lies in the occurred, as more students would have which nationalist ideology filtered down to been directed to vocational schools rather

96 GVSU McNair Scholars Journal the masses is not clear to me and, indeed, an investigation into how ideas in general flow from cultural elites to the uneducated, working poor would be a fascinating topic to take on. Indeed, the lack of clarity of just how this process works in Anderson’s theory of imagined communities appears to be one of this book’s shortcomings.

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