ABSTRACT Title of Document: MYTH, IDENTITY AND CONFLICT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ROMANIAN AND SERBIAN TEXTBOOKS Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Ph.D, 2009 Directed By: Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, Department of Government and Politics The study compares two cases of ethnically diverse societies sharing a substantial set of characteristics but where inter-group relations developed in two opposite directions. In Serbia the entire decade of the 1990s was witness to widespread violence, first in the wars of Yugoslav secession (1991-1996) and later in the conflict over the status of the Kosovo region (1998-1999). In Romania, despite one eruption of interethnic violence in March 1990, there have been no further clashes between Romanians and Hungarians, even if a latent suspicion continued to be verbally manifested between these two communities. By comparing these cases, the possibility opens to verify the impact of taught history on the representations of self and others and, from this premise, to examine its influence on the potential for peaceful or conflictual ethnic relations. The questions asked are: Is myth, as identified in secondary literature in other areas (literature, media, and political discourse) present in the history textbooks of Romania and Serbia? If myths are to be found in history schoolbooks, are there differences in the ways these myths define the in-group and the relationship with the Other between a country that experienced interethnic conflict and a country that did not? The working hypothesis based upon the existing literature is simple: in multiethnic societies, history textbooks reflect the elite’s, especially state elite’s, interpretation of the past and outline the acceptable/ desirable representations of the dominant ethnic group and of the diverse Others with whom this group interacts. If the history and the self image of the dominant group are presented in a manner that highlights the differences and the uneven distribution of power between the dominant and the minority ethnic group(s), the possibility of domestic tensions increases and, if other conditions are present, there is even a rise in violent civil war along ethnic lines. The study finds that myths are present in the post-communist history textbooks of Romania and Serbia, both in their visual content and in their text. Despite expectations to the contrary, however, the differences in the types of myth used in a conflict case (Serbia) and in a non-conflict case (Romania) are small, thus disputing the importance awarded to history education in preventing or alleviating conflicts. MYTH, IDENTITY AND CONFLICT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ROMANIAN AND SERBIAN TEXTBOOKS By Anamaria Dutceac Segesten Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 Advisory Committee: Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, Chair Katherine David-Fox John R. Lampe Charles King Mark Lichbach Miranda Schreurs © Copyright by Anamaria Dutceac Segesten 2009 To my parents and grandparents for their inspiration and support ii Acknowledgements Writing is only in appearance a solitary pursuit. I argue in this dissertation about the embeddedness of political and intellectual actors into a larger cultural framework that partly conditions their choices. The more valid is the above statement for me: not only am I caught in the networks shaping my cultural milieu, but I am also embedded in the far more important networks of gratitude. I would not have finished this large and challenging project without the amazing support of numerous persons and institutions, so many that I feel terrified I might omit somebody. Apologies in advance, if such would be the case! There is no other way I could begin but by thanking my advisor, Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu. Vladimir has always been a model and an inspiration. To have the chance to work under his guidance has been a privilege and an invitation to tread on the path of academic inquiry equipped both with scholarly rigor and intellectual creativity. Moving to Europe after having spent my graduate education in the US meant having the better of two worlds. At Lund University I had the honor and pleasure of working together with Professor Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, who served as impeccable reference, knowledgeable consultant, and patient listener to my numerous questions. I am forever indebted to her goodwill and interest in my work. Warm thanks are due to all the members of my doctoral committee, Professors Katherine David-Fox, Charles King, John R. Lampe, Mark Lichbach, and Miranda Schreurs, as well as to all those who, through their comments, contributed to the improvement of the present work: Tea Sindbaek, Mattias Nowak, Kristian Nilsson, iii Felicia Rosu, and, from an early stage, Sanimir Resic. A special thank you goes also to Sune Bechmann, who read through numerous drafts of this rather substantial text and not once lost his patience, but continued to give me valuable feedback. I must also acknowledge the generous support of the Georg Eckiert Institute in Braunschweig, Germany, and the Crafoord Foundation, Sweden. My stay at the Eckiert Insitute was most rewarding and provided excellent data for further analysis, which was complemented by the information gathered during my field research in the region, conducted with the help of a Crafoord Foundation scholarship. My translator, Sanjica Faletar Tanackovic, deserves all the credit for a professional and very swift job. For help with the finding my way through the maze of the English language I am indebted to Fiona Robertson and Janelle Mills. Without the institutional support of the Department of Global Political Studies at Malmö Högskola and the Center for Languages and Literature at Lund University, I would not have had the time to dedicate to a project this size. For saving me when technical catastrophe was around the corner, I am grateful to Joel Nordin, a master of all things computer-related. My special thanks must go to Martin Dutceac Segesten, for being alternatively widely supportive of and wildly enraged at the process of putting together a research project of these dimensions. His energy was contagious, and drove me forward when times were tough. Finally, I am immensely thankful to my parents, Nicolae and Adriana, who have always given me their best and without whom nothing of this would have been iv possible. It is to them, as well as to the memory of my grandparents Ana and Gheorghe Dutceac, that this dissertation is dedicated. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... vi Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Research Question ........................................................................................................ 4 Methods of textbook analysis ....................................................................................... 8 The History textbook in context ................................................................................. 27 History textbooks in Romania ................................................................................ 30 History textbooks in Serbia ..................................................................................... 44 Education, conflict, and ethnic identity – overview of existing scholarship .............. 58 Education ................................................................................................................ 59 Textbooks ................................................................................................................ 69 Conflict ................................................................................................................... 78 Ethnic conflict – causes and explanations .......................................................... 89 Political uses of history and nationalism ................................................................ 96 Collective memory ................................................................................................ 107 Collective identity and ethnicity ........................................................................... 111 Myth .......................................................................................................................... 118 Functions of myth ................................................................................................. 130 Types of myth ....................................................................................................... 132 Romanian national myths ......................................................................................... 138 Latinity .................................................................................................................. 138 National Unity ....................................................................................................... 146 Serbian national myths .......................................................................................... 153 Masculinity and the myth of military valor ...................................................... 154 Kosovo as myth of election..............................................................................