If we abide by the axiom that politicians in general have a proclivity towards power and will attempt by any and all means, mostly within the existing legal framework, to acquire it, we have the first building block for our explanation. The equation of a functioning political structure will then include the congruence between the activity of politicians and their groupings, and the existing political and legal framework. A closer look at the legal framework of Romania, will reveal a number of interesting peculiarities. Not insisting on boring legal jargon, one of the main problems of Romania’s fundamental law, the Constitution, is its ambiguous wording on a number of issues. The matters, which gave birth to the present divorce between the parliament and the office of the President, lie in the faulty definition of their prerogatives. There is a huge grey area, in the issues of appointment and control over the government, and the Constitution leaves plenty of room for legal speculation and diverging lines of interpretation. This is all fine when, as between 2003-2004, the president and the parliament are of the same political lineage. But when the composition of the legislative differs from the presidential preference, and we add one Traian Basescu, an ambitious politician, permanent, protracted political trench- warfare is almost inevitable. Therefore, I submit to you that Romania’s political collapse is due to a structural cause, not to lack of political culture.

Romania’s Constitution is a document fraught with errors of formulation, and due for immediate revision. It renders the country neither in the area of parliamentary republics (such as Germany, Italy, Hungary etc.), nor semi-presidential (France) or presidential ones (USA). Romania is placed somewhere in the obscure zone between the latter two. It seems that even after 300 years we haven’t learned much from the English system of checks and balances.The world financial crisis has acted as a catalyst for this fundamental weakness of the institutional system, and has led to a state of administrative collapse. Yet the political class, and indeed, the press, the would-be representative of an inexistent civil society, concentrate on the coming presidential elections as a solution. I am no political analyst, but I would wager to say that this will not dispel the political storm clouds. The parliament still has budgetary control over this branch of the executive, and the present state of fragmentation of political options will not lead to a far dissimilar configuration of the seats in the legislative chambers. The true solution to this problem would be the abrogation of the present form of the Constitution and the adoption of one that would consecrate a parliamentary republic. I must admit that this is my personal option, but any other clearly demarcated democratic institutional format would be preferable to the present one.

Turn-of-the-century and post-1918 Romania faced a number of challenges on the political, social and mental tiers. The nation-building project had before it an increasing number of hurdles, such as foreign intervention and an ethnically incoherent hinterland. Thusly, Romanian self-images pictured themselves as being engaged in an unending struggle with a heterogeneous, outside force, which boiled down to modernity itself. While seeking to acquire adequate definitions for their national community, intellectuals started to experiment with innovative concepts, which seeped in from the outside. It is in this context that nationalism fused with scientific discourse to format notions. Such was the case of the idea of degeneration, which took on both a political, and a biological sense. This essay seeks to provide a short conceptual history of the themes of degeneration and palingenesis. They were all-too present in the Romanian intellectual production, which in turn served as basis for political engineering. For the purposes of this essay, I have isolated two social scientists, who will serve as case-studies to illustrate the diachronic phenotypical shifts within the Romanian

social-engineering discourse. Their philosophies of history reflected the same apprehension of modernity and utilized similar topoi. The ideas of decay and re-birth are also the pregnant themes around which the political-scientific gravitates.

In the turn-of-the century Austro-Hungarian intellectual debate, supra-national and national schemes confronted each other, in an attempt to impose their respective projects as the sole cure for the ailments of society. Into this classic right-left controversy, a third, alternative political option injected itself, attracting many supporters. It was this plan for the overhauling of the Monarchy which was most typical for the Austro-Hungarian political tradition. Its special character was made up of a combination of elements taken from regional patriotism, Kaisertreue, leftist-populism ( the possibility of the introduction of universal suffrage), catholic conservatism and flavored with novel elements, such as ethnic nationalism. It successfully espoused the nationality and social problems and demands, steering their energies toward a centralist solution. The most discussed and analyzed embodiment of this new centralist political avenue is the Great Austria movement. Concrete plans for the looming institutional and perhaps, administrative reorganization of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy are few and far between. The only clear-cut, instrumentalized project of imperial reform in existence was that of Aurel C. Popovici. He is considered by many historians therefore to having been the closest as there ever was ( although from their correspondence, it is clear that Franz Ferdinand disagreed with several of his points) to an ideologue of the Great Austria camp1.

1 Kann, The Multinational Empire, vol.2., p. 197-198

Popovici’s importance is twofold. Primarily, as stated above, he offered a potential plan for the future revamping of the imperial superstructure. Secondly, he offered his Romanian constituency ( and to other nations as well) a fresh apprehension of the nation, one that imbued the idea of dynasticism with modern ideas of ethnicity. He was the lynchpin

which held together the disenfranchised nationalities and the Crown. It is through this conceptual binom his intellectual contribution is best understood and integrated in the larger scape of the turn-of-century debate.

In order to understand better the motivation lying behind his proposed plan, one must begin with a short overview of the latter. Popovici’s idea of the nation was based upon the respective nation’s ethnic character. In this respect, he can be included ( with some reserves) in the same school of thought as the above-described Hungarian intellectuals of neo-conservative lineage. His intellectual influences are a mosaic comprised of different notions of such scholars and political thinkers. Among these were Ludwig Gumplowicz, Houston Stewart Chamberlain ( of both he makes lengthy and lofty quotations in his works), and Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau; he made use of their ideas on ethnicity and race. Popovici also borrowed concepts to back up his argumentation from Edmund Burke, and Herbert Spencer, and from german and English utilitarianism. He was also under the sway of the Vienna circle of neo-conservative politicians and their greatest representative, Karl Lueger, especially after his forced exile. From 1893 to 1908 he lived in Vienna and took a stake in the ongoing debates concerning the future of the empire, siding with the conservatives. But he was far from being a conservative himself. Coming from a liberal background, he developed a sophisticated modernist critique of modernity of sorts. He combined the emerging, yet murky idea of race with a contestation against the liberal order, developing a future project of traditionalist social organization and ethnic differentiation. In his later life, he was an avid contributor to the populist-nationalist Romanian journal “Samanatorul” ( “The Sower”), lead by the nationalist historian Nicolae Iorga. In his second most important theoretical work, Nationalism sau Democratie ( Nationalism or Democracy), published in 1910, he advocates an elitist notion of the societal edifice2.

2 Turda, Aurel C. Popovici’s nationalism and its political representation, p. 54-55

Popovici made frequent use of “race” as the provider of the basis for the nation. He himself defines race as “nationality”, a loose grouping of such attributes as a common background of language, culture and heritage, but also, most significantly, a strong sense of belonging to a community. “Romanianness” was the self-conscious result of the cultivation of this national feeling, which resulted in the appearance ( and maintenance) of the Romanian nation. This integral definition of the nation brought together in one community all those who shared the same ethnic conscience. It was obligatory to translate this sentiment into political reality, in order to assure the continuity of those who spawned it3.

3 Ibidem., p. 58-59 4 Turda, The idea…, pp.144-148

All races, for this Romanian political thinker, had a particular set of distinguishable features which set them apart from others. The stereotypical ethnic repertoire which he operated with produced radical affirmations. For example, on numerous occasions in his oeuvre, he declares that Hungarians are “all the same” or are “animated by the same spirit”, while alluding to their ambiguous relationship with Jewry. The differences of race were a product of nature itself in Popovici’s opinion, and resulted in each ethnic group having rights and indeed, a necessity for a well-defined habitat. The struggle for these was also an organic competition, and the very force that pushed forward the evolution of society. Races were locked in a continuous fight for survival. Here, he mirrors the ideas of Gumplowicz ( the synegetic nature of race) , Spencer (organic evolution ) and Knox ( the superiority of race)4, but also of other contemporary thinkers, such as Gusztav Beksics, with who’s work he repeatedly engaged into polemics. But where he swerves off the thought of Beksics is the question of race dynamics. Where Beksics extols the value of combination and the ability to assimilate of a race as its greatest asset, Popovici considers the mixture of ethnicities to be the key to their downfall. The preservation of race and its qualities through autarchy is the cornerstone of Popovici’s thought. This is an element appropriated from Gobineau, and

tailored to fit the logic of his argument ( his concept of racial degeneration is dynamic, as opposed to Gobineau’s irreversible atrophy). The hybridized nature of the Hungarian race therefore would lead to its inevitable downfall, especially after its latest incorporation of a large number of Jews.

This ethnic underpinning of society, in Popovici’s Weltanschauung, would be transposed into concrete form in his magnum opus, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Gross-Osterreich ( The United States of Great Austria), appeared in 1906. He put forth a plan which linked together federalist and centralist tendencies, all the while jealously safeguarding his beloved concept of ethnic separatism. Although at first appearance, the project seemed to belong to a by-gone era, it was not rooted in traditional politics. Popovici, as did his whole generation, broke with the idea of the historically-based federalist makeup of the Habsburg Monarchy. The reinstatement of the pre-1867 Transylvania would not have resulted in an ameliorated state for Romanians. Hungarians dominated even before that, and the lesson was not lost on them. What was needed instead, Popovici claimed, in the spirit of equity, was an ethnically-based reconfiguration of the imperial crown lands. Accordingly, he developed a federal structure, composed of 15 provinces, each circumscribed to a more or less well defined ethnic dominance. This construct would be governed by a federal government, which would exercise total power in matters relating to civil and criminal legislation, foreign policy, customs and currency, health, and justice. The legislature’s lower house was to be elected on the basis of universal male suffrage ( ideas of mass politics began to seep somewhat into Popovici’s scheme as well). The upper house would bring together the elites of the nations of the Empire, appointed upon a quota basis, and corporatism5. Besides Popovici’s scheme being socially orthodox, he allowed very little space to maneuver to all nationalities, including his own. Solving the nationality conflict seemed to hold the candle to all other issues, as far as the

5 R. A. Kann, The Multinational Empire, vol .2., p. 202

Romanian politician was concerned. But even in this matter, his plan was not ideologically uniform. His Romanian nationalism lead him to conceive a maximalist plan for autonomous Transylvania, including many ethnically mixed regions. He also seems to have favored German domination in some regions, and in some respect, over the whole empire. German would have become the Reichssprache and Vienna the capital. He also exhibited a fairly unambiguous contempt for Slavs, and considered them a danger because of their vulnerability to Russian Pan-Slav propaganda. Thusly, he carved up many new provinces to favor Germans, Italians or his fellow Romanians rather than Slavs. These double standards did not bring him much popularity among nationality politicians. The other problem in which Popovici did not fully live up to his own standards was assimilation. His views are somewhat duplicitous when small enclaves of nationalities in his newly-crafted counties are concerned. Theoretically, he sketches for them a certain amount of rights and protection, mainly in the cultural and educational field. Each of the Crown Lands would, in this respect, draft a Law similar to that of Eotvos’ 1868 one6. But, in many places in his United States of Great Austria and other works, he openly admitted that the fate of these small units is to be swallowed up by the larger ones, as a natural process. By this statement, he temporarily circumvents his own advocacy of the Gobineau-inspired degeneration theory. The assimilatory tactics so abhorred in Magyar hands, seemed acceptable, once the tables had been turned.

6 Popovici, Stat si Natiune, p. 258 and infra.

Despite its shortcomings, the plan gained a significant amount of notoriety, and remained until the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, one of the most important schemes for its renovation. At a more abstract, and perhaps compelling, level, Popovici’s thought is interesting because of the interplay of two grand themes: decay and rebirth ( in his case, of races). Though not wholly original, as I have already explicated, his political schemes claimed a “scientific” validity, and furthermore, he provided plans for their application. His

1910 volume, Nationalism or Democracy, further builds upon his themes exhorted in his previous book. He insists on the idea of humanity being constituted of races, and these components being, according to his motley social Darwinist scheme, in mortal competition with one another. He writes sardonically: “Races? But who speaks of races? Weren’t all men to be created equal?7”, and continues “in order to understand the importance of race…one should simply take a trip to the horse races…are the breeds there the result of some blind folly? Of miscalculated promiscuity?…the stable hands would laugh at us if we spoke to them about the unimportance of race”. Popovici goes on to quote lofty passages from Houston Stewart Chamberlain, arguing that the mixing of strong races with weaker ones leads to the downfall of the former. Only through rigorous selection, separation and the weeding out of “improper seeds” can a race rid itself of “bastardization” and ensure its blossoming. The isolation from outside interference can, through a purification of-sorts, lead to a rebirth of a community. Popovici brings up as examples the ancient Greeks, Romans, Moors, Spaniards8. The Roman example is particularly useful for understanding the mindset of the Romanian political scientist. He argues that Rome owed its success to its pure qualities, and faltered “because its seed had been spent…there had been no real Romans left by the third century…Rome had descended into a Cloaca Gentium Maxima9”. The maximum potential of an ethnicity, of a nation, and of humankind on the ultimate level, could only be reached via careful selection. He proposed a “school of characters” in which future generations would be instructed in order to preserve the successful qualities and discard those ascribable to amalgamation. The safeguarding of ancient rites would be pivotal for the insurance of survival; but the weeding out of bad elements ( and to illustrate this, Popovici again and again returns to biological examples) is also as important, if not more. This conceptual binom formers the kernel of his teleological construct. Man should hone his qualities continuously,

7 Popovici, Nationalism sau Democratie, p. 429 8 Popovici, Stat…, p. 82 9 Popovici, Nationalism…, p. 432-433

through biological means, as breeders strive to obtain a horse that runs faster. Mutant elements only slow down or defeat the process of evolution, and should therefore be discarded along the path to greatness. This was, in addition, no mere conjecture: it was law. Biology, and its appendix, history, proved thoroughly10. It seems that man is not powerful enough to escape his own destiny. The legacy of Popovici did not die or fade away with the Old Kingdom. It was carried into the interwar years of Greater Romania, and applied to the new sets of problems set before the society of the time. The social scientis who isolated and underlined the thopoi of degeneration and palingenesis best was Dimitrie Gusti, in his later works. Gusti was a noted scientist of the interwar period, a public figure, and considered today to be the founder of sociology and anthropology in Romania. He established the Faculty of Sociology at the University level in Iasi, founded and headed a number of Romanian scientific institutes, and served in various positions in the Ministry of Education, even as its minister in 1938. It was at this late stage of his career, already an established scholar of an impressive reputation, that he gave himself to short political pamphleteering. These short essays show in true synthetic fashion his political and social conceptions. In two of them, 1937’s The Science of the Nation, and its 1941 follow-up, The Science and Pedagogy of the Nation, degradation and palingenesis of the national community are the governing concepts of his political language.

10 Popovici, Stat…, p.85

Gusti lists his intellectual influences in the beginning of the essay. Besides the “usual” godfathers of sociology, such as Spencer, there are a few other curios additions. The prehistory of his ideas is somewhat similar to Popovici’s, whom he undoubtedly read as well. He speaks highly of Wilhelm Wundt and Karl Lamprecht, but also of Henry Thomas Buckle and Ratzel, from whom be borrows ideas of symbolic and antropo-geography. Gustave Le

Bon is another of his inspirers, showing a strong kinship with his predecessor’s intellectual filament.

From the outset of his two programmatic essays, Gusti exhorts the pedagogical nature of science in general, and sociology in particular, stating that it helps in “shaping the physiological and psychological nature of the community”11. He derives from sociology and ethnology a number of odd sub-disciplines, off-shoots such as ethno-psychology, ethno-sociology, ethno-pedagogy and most curiously, ethno-biology. Society and its governing laws can be objectively observed, according to him, with the use of empirical methods. Therefore, science can also be utilized as a toolkit for the ordering of society according to “scientific” laws and arrangements. Gusti concluded that society was made up of nations, the “single unit which suffices for itself12”. This ethnic autarchy of nations is a notion present already in the works of Popovici, but is taken further here. The science of the nation can be decanted from the wholesale empirical data gathered from investigations into the subject-matters every characteristic and peculiarity. In this understanding, Gusti does not differ much from many of his more moderate contemporaries. The importance given to science, and the amalgamation of scientific and political jargon, however provides the key factor. The Romanian sociologist argues that after sifting through the gathered data and establishing laws for its functioning, science takes the center stage. The national science will keep the nation in existence, governing it with rational rigor13. Science will gain primacy, and actively format, transform and order the members of society according to its own inner logic. The means with which this revolutionary shift will be realized is “the seizure of the cultural sphere14”. This will translate toward the masses into a “national-scientific” pedagogy. Any attempt to divert this course of events will inevitably lead to decay and downfall.

11 Dimitrie Gusti, Stiinta si Pedagogia Natiunii, p.1 12 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.2 13 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.7 14 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.8

The agents of this novel transfiguration were given the murky designation by Gusti of “elites”. It is unclear what exactly he was referring to, but undoubtedly he imagined these elites as intellectual and scientific first and foremost, and secondly, as comprising all the virtuous qualities of his times. The existence of elites implies that the society of the future, as envisioned by Gusti, will necessarily be a hierarchical one. He comments:”…the creation of the elites was the main preoccupation of the German regime after 1933 and Italy after 1922, alongside France after the collapse ( i.e. Pétain’s regime)15”. He argues that in any society, and even in nature, due to functional necessities, the leaders-followers dichotomy must exist16. This does not negate the strongly unified nature of society. Moreover, he champions the idea of voluntarism. His concept of voluntarism must be understood in a corporativist fashion, though. Each member of the societal edifice must voluntarily and whole-heartedly accept his socially designated place, and work for the betterment of the “Nation”17. This quality should be one of the main components of the character of what Gusti dubbed “the New Man (Omul Nou)18”. This concept would go on to have a long history in the post-1945 period of communist experimentation with human nature, but not surprisingly, it had a prehistory, being a notion launched by Dimitrie Gusti.

15 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.8 16 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.9 17 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.9-10 18 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.10

The “new leadership elites ( noile elite de conducere)” will be created after a strenuous process of selection. Criteria of discrimination would be sex, social background, and age, alongside the fuzzy concept of “national necessity”. The “new Romanian” would be the end-result of a long procedure of pedagogical programming directed from above, for the author wished to make use of the educational system to push his plans. Science was again underlined as the factor which could provide salvation for a nation engaged in competition with outsiders. If denied, only decay would follow, for this was the order of things. School was

meant to draft the best, to separate the wheat from the chaff. It would be adapted to ethnic needs and take on an organic form19, to emulate the immediate necessities of the community which it was meant to service.

19 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.13 20 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.13 21 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.15 22 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.21 23 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.21 24 Gusti, Stiinta…, p.24

The educational system would order men and women into future, strict (for, as we have seen social mobility would be near-impossible, and indeed, illogical, in a scientifically ordered society) social categories20. Children would undergo continuous “personality evaluations”21, in order to accurately gauge their “value”. The author goes on to describe a systematic method of weeding out those with lesser value. The youth, especially young prospective intellectuals should undergo a stage of working in villages, as both an anthropologic and transcendental exercise. It would bind them inextricably to the ethnic realities existent there. Gusti praises Italy, Germany and Vichy France for their “youth policies22” in conducting similar experiences. He states that the principle that should bind youth together is “to serve23”. “Serve the villages, science and the nation”; he makes lofty quotations from Maurras to bolster his position, and makes references to Volk-study institutes established in Germany between 1933 and 1938.

His educational scheme would not stop at youth or at the urban environment. Gusti’s plan was an universal one. He made provisions for a “cultural home (camin cultural)” to be established in every village, in order to cement the bonds of the community and to diffuse the message of the core (this idea is another one which would have a long history, after being appropriated post-1945)24.

The complex and all-encompassing nature of Dimitrie Gusti’s blueprint for a future society, nevertheless, rested firmly on a few key concepts. The most important of these were

apprehensions of decay and that of palingenesis. His “New Man” would be created out of the ashes of the old, and harnessed all the positive qualities vested into him by science and reason.

The political language of the two political thinkers detailed above gravitated around the manipulation of these two key concepts, onto which a scientific-political hybridized discourse was bolted. It combined elements of philosophy of history, sociology and biology in order to firmly ground itself in a pseudo-scientific basis. The infusion of science and politics at the level of topicality produced a highly compelling teleological superstructure that viewed human nature itself as subject to change, even if it did not have clear idea of direction. This ability to evolve and regenerate was viewed as the main quality that made human character human, but also the quality which had the potential to devour itself, to further change human nature into something unrecognizable.

Bibliography:

1. Turda, Marius, Aurel C. Popovici’s Nationalism and its Political Representation in the Habsburg Empire. In Turda, Marius (ed.). The Garden and the Workshop. Disseminating Cultural History in East Central Europe. Budapest: Central European University- Europa Institut, 1998

2. Turda, Marius, The idea of National Superiority in Central Europe 1880-1918. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004

3. Turda, Marius, Weindling, Paul J., Blood and Homeland. Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940, Budapest, Ceu Press, 2007

4. Popovici, A. C., Statele unite ale Austriei Mari, Bucuresti, Albatros, 1997

5. Popovici, A. C., Nationalism sau Democratie. O critica a civilizatiunii moderne, Bucuresti, Albatros, 1997

6. Gusti, Dimitrie, Stiinta si Pedagogia Natiunii, Bucuresti, Imprimeria Nationala, 1941

7. Livezeanu, Irina, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, nation building and ethnic struggle, 1918-1930, Ithaca/New York, Cornell University Press, 1995

8. Kellogg, Friedrich, A History of Romanian Historical Writing, Bakersfield CA, Charles Schalke Jr., Pub., 1990

9. Gusti, Dimitrie, Stiinta natiunii,” Sociologie româneasca, no. 2-3 (February-March 1937), pp. 1-7.

10. Regional Identity Discourses in Central and Southeast Europe (1775-1945), Budapest, Ceu Press, 2006

Let me start off by stating that I am in no way unbiased in my wiev towards the Social Democratic party; people who know me also know I sought to combat its actions on many occasions. I hold no particular sympathy for mrs. Andronescu, either ( I was one of her lab rat Bacalaureat 12th graders back in 2003). But in this case I cannot condone the hipocritycal criticism of this measure. Firstly, let’s examine Spiru Haret university, and private universities in general in Romania. Their status in many cases shady and uncertain, they reared their heads in the Early 90′s, with the vanguard being lead by Spiru Haret University and the Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University. Lead by men such as rector Aurelian Bondrea, and others, they sported a faculty of specialists belonging more to the era of Ceausescu than to post 90′s Romania. A novel fact for the market of higher education in Romania, they offered admission conditioned only by one being able to afford the tuition, as opposed to state-funded institutions, which required a more-or-less strict admissions exams (at least they did back in my day). This alone questions the dubios nature of persons graduating from such an institution, for their skills are never truly tested from the outset. But let us not judge right from the word go.

Another fact is the low level of education that these universities and their various departments offer. It is a well-known fact that diplomas gained from them are not on par with the ones handed out by the state universities, many of which, especially nowadays, are notoriously out of thouch with the latest developments in their respective fields ( especially those in humanities, while mathemathics and informatics seem to be the last fortress of quality Romanian scholars). One can then ask oneself: how can these institutions formally issue diplomas which should be equivalent to those obtained in the state-funded system? To put it simply, they cannot.

The private universities, with Spiru Haret being the most conspicuous, sport staggering enrollment rates and students, numbering in the millions in the present. Spiru Haret alone, reportedly has around three hundred thousand. This, combined with the upwardly mentioned low quality of studies offered, leads to a dangerous dillution of the level of higher education in the country. The competitivity of people wanting to acceed to the status of student is low, since options are plentiful ( at first glance). This gives very little motivation for the state universities to perform as well, since they are seeing admission rates decline each year. Let us take, for example, the field which the staff of our blog is engaged in: History and International Studies. The top three state universities all have such a department, with student numbers swollen ( due to the desire to compete with the numerous other universities) to around 300 in a year. The top ten largest private universities each have such a department, with more or less the same numbers. That gives us a number of roughly three to four thousand graduates each year, that have a training in history. Does Romania need three thousand historians yearly, especially when the number of full teaching positions in a metropolis such as Bucharest in the field is 2 (two), yearly? The level of overproduction of intellectuals in inadequate fields has reached staggering rates.

Getting back to the qualitative side of the matter, the lack of an adequate regulatory system from the side of the authorities is also conspicuous. The scandal has shed full light on precisely this element. Andronescu’s bold move is therefore salutary, if backed up by a move in the legal sphere as well, with the case of Spiru Haret serving as an all-important precedent. Don’t get me wrong: I am not opposed to the idea of alternative insitutions of higher education to the state ones. I am currently enrolled in one myself. But their functioning should be governed by strict norms, to serve as bulwarks of quality. The autonomy of universities has become a cloak behind which many irregularities are masked, and its instrumentalization by corrupt rectors must come to and end. A system of scholarships must be set up. And so forth. The conclusion is that I do not feel that the measure of the minister, however bungled and badly planned, is wrong in its inner core. Though to swallow for some is the very fact that they do not qualify for the status of students. This status should again become on of intellectual prestige and priviledge, not the mediocre social cathegory which it has become nowadays. The Ministry of Education must act thoughly at first, to enforce legal measures; though it might hurt some, the country’s level of education will be better off in the long run.

As the reader could already learn from the introduction above, the two main case-studies chosen are to be found in Hungary and Romania. The two manifest archetypical mental and social trends, for what has become consecrated in the historical jargon as “nation-building”, in the Central and South Eastern European areas. In spite of this, they manifest certain peculiarities, borne out of their respective mental and political self-formatting. Therefore, a third point of reference is needed, in order to successfully conduct a comparative study with consequences to the entire region. I have chosen to make references to Bulgaria, and occasionally, to Yugoslavia, so as to successfully argue my case. For my theoretical background, I shall lie heavily upon the conclusions drawn by the American sociologist and political scientist, Andrew C. Janos , although in a modified fashion, for I will also take into consideration aspects of political language and ideology. Main trends in ideology of nation-building, reaching back to the mid-19th century, and resulting in a certain social stratification and mental mapping, will be analyzed and rendered, in order to decipher the deep roots of the phenomena.

There are many common trends that can be ascertained from all the upward-mentioned case-studies, upon making even the most sweeping analysis. As nascent nation-states, they found themselves facing more or less the same internal challenges, from their birth in the latter part of the 19th century, through the years of the First World War and the interwar period. For an adequate understanding of the phenomena occurring in the countries, I shall introduce the concept of the “developmental state” . This term was put forward by the American-Hungarian political scientist Andrew C. Janos, in order to explain just such situations. The developmental state is identified by a superstructure of stately apparatus and codification, borne out of very little preceding internal causes, mostly out of the interplay of diplomatic bargaining of the Great Powers and an ambitious “national” elite .

The developmental state in the Central and South Eastern regions of Europe in the late 19th century was an all-but encompassing occurrence. Very few states had an uninterrupted governance and at least, internal autonomy, so as to fall back upon when faced with the issues of modernity. Hungary and Romania were no exceptions, although Hungary had, to a certain extent, access to a far-removed past of medieval codexes of rights and privileges, which it would later instrumentalize in order to fashion a legal apparatus. In addition, the core-areas of both of them had a certain amount of autonomy within their respective imperial frameworks. In the age of nation-states, the elites of the developing states of the area attempted, via aggressive campaigning in the Occident and political coups at home ( see the revolutions of 1848-49), to emulate the patterns put forward by the West . The conclusion is that most of the stately constructs in the area came not as the result of complex internal processes and factors of internal development and organic political upgrowth. Instead, they were the fruits of the political engineering of a politically-minded think-tank, composed of intellectuals, mostly educated abroad, who wished to reproduce the model seen there. Romania’s generation of 1848 or the exponents of the later Liberal Party, or Hungary’s Kossuths, Deaks and Tiszas are clear-cut examples of state- and nation-building elites at work.

The chimera of 1848’s France dangling in front of their eyes, the elites of the newly-established nation-states proceeded to construct the infrastructure needed for a successful emulation. The means at their disposal, in order to achieve these grandiose ends, were few and far between. The aggressive mobilization of resources and people was chosen in order to quickly “catch-up” to the community of European powers to which these states felt they naturally belonged to. The mental mechanism of nationalist dialectic can be clearly seen to be at work. The Romanians used the term “burning of stages” (“arderea de etape”) for this process, rightly so, since the area attempted to leap forward several hundreds of years in terms of technology, legal and institutional framework, et cetera. The instruments with which to achieve these results were political; the political field worked actively in order to format, in a top-down manner, the society and the economy . The vice-versa of the phenomenon that occurred in the West was put in place. The elites created from scratch a complex legal framework, often borrowing wholesale from occidental counterparts ( see the Romanian Constitution of 1866, which was copied from its Belgian counterpart). Other measures, that would prove to be key in the long run, were the creation of core institutions such as the army and administration. The bourgeoning elite, often numbering a mere fraction of the entire population, needed a solid social basis, upon which to ground its power-structure, besides requiring a system of political control .

The elements of the newly-built infrastructure came about, as we have already seen, as a byproduct of nationalist posturing, legitimate needs for a system of control and standardization, and the need for the production of elites. This last necessity was particularly close to the natural interest of the ruling few, since it wanted to reproduce and propagate its reign and its value-system. The institutional framework was to fuel the growth of an autochthonous elite, which, at the time, was more or less equal with the body of the “nation”. The result of this process was the creation of a very strong bureaucracy and political-military class, motivated by an equally potent esprit de corps. This social category sought and succeeded in monopolizing the reins of power for the entire period under question. Only slight episodes of dissent appeared, mostly in the interwar period ( the reasons of which will be treated in the latter part of this essay). The ideology of this class was that of liberal nationalism, with a very mild emphasis on the liberal element, and its main purpose, that of nation-building. The political climate was that of temperate pluralism, with a fair amount of freedom of speech and of the press ( within certain boundaries). However, the political-electoral process within these constitutional arrangements, precisely because of their lack of adaptation to autochthonous conditions, was fraught with half-measures. The real centers of decision vis-à-vis forming a government or a parliamentary majority laid not with the electorate ( even after the introduction of measures such as universal male suffrage in Romania in 1923), but with obscure power-nodes such as the king, the powerful heads of the major political parties, or financial tycoons . Factors such as provisions for the interests of the bureaucracy and the army were also to be taken into account. The fledgling bureaucracy or political class ( I shall refer to it by using these two terms) concentrated all its efforts toward a syne-genetic process, which was to spiral out of control in the interwar period.

The social and economic policy of this nation-building political class was also particular to the area. Its two main characteristics are protectionism and dirigisme. Since the most influential ideologues in the field of economic thought of the time were the likes of Friedrich List and Karl Marx, industry was identified as the key to the well-being of any nation. Therefore, protectionist measures were introduced in order to develop indigenous manufactures and industries, as well as infrastructure ( out of which railroads seem to be the most important, at least from a financial and mental impact-standpoint). The results varied, but in all-but a few cases the initial products were not able to gain a competitive edge over foreign imports, and mainly produced for the internal market. This financial effort, grafted upon the support for an already increasingly overbearing bureaucracy, led to numerous bankruptcies and dependence on foreign loans. Budgetary deficits and mounting foreign debt were a steadfast characteristic for the governments in the area. The resulting situation left the primary sector of economy, and those engaged in it, hard-pressed, and without a coherent political voice. External factors, such as the dropping prices for wheat (due to competition with and overproduction of American wheat) , did not help alleviate the strained relationship between the administration and the agricultural sector.

Another consequential factor in the internal dynamics which contributed to the rise of contestation in the area was an especially relevant facet of social policy: educational and cultural politics. We have already established that a major part of the nation-building process consisted in conscious elite-building; another aspect was the desired nationalization of the masses. In order to accomplish just such results, a complex and uniform system of schooling was developed over the years, which sought to encompass all of the citizenry. The reforms of Spiru Haret in Romania or Trefort Ágoston in Hungary followed the same pattern. Consequently, in all states of the area, especially Hungary and Romania, there is a noticeable spike in the levels of literacy and school attendance . The number of persons receiving higher education, domestically, also increased exponentially. Press and other means of information and communication followed suit.

The concrete results of this vector of development were twofold. Firstly, by the turn of the century, and towards the eve of the World War, this schooling-system had produced a large amount of people cognizant of the inner workings of the political system. This increasingly large category of citizenry found itself inadequately represented politically, and, surged toward the extremes of the political specter. I am talking here about the appearance of a politically-activated intelligentsia, which could not integrate via the existing channels. Due to the over bloated nature of the bureaucratic system, many could not find jobs adequate to their level of training, or at all. These people quickly became critical of the system in its entirety. Their criticism struck a chord with the already strained relationship between the bureaucracy and the primary sector. The conjugation of the two social categories found political expression in an unified, radical form.  This process was already well in place by 1914. It was halted somewhat by the turmoil of the war, but reaffirmed its strength in the late 1920’s, stimulated by the worsening of the internal situation .
The second consequence is less politico-economic in nature, and pertains to the inner ideological nature of the educational-cultural framework which set apart Romania and Hungary from the rest of the area, allowing for the development of peculiarly strong subspecies of fascism. The motivation and subject-matter taught in the educational system, at all levels, from the elementary up to the auditoriums of the universities, were imbibed with a strong nationalistic overtone . Thusly, whole generations of youths were brought up in accordance with the nationalist canon. The generational conflict which arose  from the problems already shown above (the lack of social mobility), was fought under the guise of competing nationalisms.

This fact in itself did not lead to a generalized ultra-nationalistic public discourse in most countries of the area. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia serve as counterparts to Romania in Hungary in this sense, and provide us with adequate examples to conduct a simplified asymmetric comparison. The main emphasis falls upon the political-ideological traits of public life, which set apart Romania and Hungary from the others. In Romania, the weakness or, as some historians argue, the complete lack of any historical tradition of the political Left (understood here as socialism and its many sub-variants), can be identified as a cause of the veer to the right. Romanian socialists had been particularly weak during the second half of the 19th century, culminating with the episode dubbed as “the Betrayal of the Generous”, during which prominent members of the Romanian Socialist Party joined Bratianu’s Liberals . Anti-semitism was also notoriously strong in the Romanian lands (Romania being the last country to emancipate its sizeable Jewish population in 1918) , and socialism took plenty of flak because of its internationalist stance. Later, socialism and its purveyors came to be seen as (due to the proximity of Russia) traitors and aliens, seeking to pollute the body of the nation. Any person with a leftist tinge was portrayed as working in collusion with the Soviet Union. The stance adopted by the Romanian Communist Party, upon the directive of the Third International, to declare Romania as an imperialist power, did much to discredit the Left ( it was subsequently banned). Other directions of a critical political attitude, such as the National Peasant Party, were lost along the way. On the one hand, they looked back on a rich heritage of radical nationalist political activity themselves (being formed from the remains of the Romanian National Party of Transylvania). On the other, the party found itself entangled in the intestine struggles around the economic crisis and the return of King Carol the Second. These two events cost the party dearly in public support and credibility. The nationalist rhetoric conquered and firmly held in its grasp the field of political language.

The Hungarian Left, theoretically, looked back upon a fairly solid historical tradition, as did the Peasantist undercurrent. The Hungarian Socialists were highly popular among the urban proletariat and could commandeer large masses of demonstrators, insomuch as mayday celebrations became a cause for alarm around the turn of the century Budapest. The moderate Left, or Civic Radicals, provided the best intellectual support for the movement, with men as those gathered around Oszkár Jászi’s Sociological Society or Ady Endre’s Nyugat ( West) literary circle. The ideological streams favoring peasant and smallholder interests coagulated around András Áchim’s party. This promising outlook toward political normalcy was ruined by the events in the aftermath of the First World War. The surge and failure of both democratic and then Bolshevik-lead revolutions, in which both elites were highly involved, the staggering territorial losses and the ensuing chaos directed the field of public discourse toward radical nationalism. Much of the value-system of the Ancien Regime, tolerance and liberalism, were repudiated, in favor of revanchard slogans . The power-structure which embedded itself in the vacuum left by the events of 1918-19, however, was little changed. It encapsulated the negative tendencies of the previous regime, including dirigisme, an overbearing bureaucracy, and intellectual overproduction, and combined it with other nocent traits such as the lack of upward social mobility and adequate political representation. An aura of internal pluralism was maintained. However, there existed very little political alternatives to the Egységes Párt (The Unified Party, or as it was later known the Party of National Union). The communists were banned, and the socialists kept under strict supervision, their activity curtailed to the point of discontinuation. The Smallholder Party, which emerged under the previous regime, fell victim to its own nationalist tendencies and political inexperience. It merged with the Christian National Union (KNEP) and various other political splinter-groups to form the already mentioned Unified Government Party, which ruled Hungary for the next decade. In the course of this participation to power, it lost most of its real support among its target-electorate.

The dynamics of the elements described above came together in a very-specific, but yet comparable fashion in the two countries chosen as case-studies in this essay, Romania and Hungary. The developmental strategies of the elites of these states lead to the development of a strata of population which had become available for political mobilization, but was unable to do so, because of the very nature of the power-relationships themselves. The obvious conclusion is that the issues that lie at the core of the problem identify it not as the byproduct of some sort of historical aberration, but as being systemic. From the outset, the premises of the new system were political and not organic; the elite-generating mechanism, once put in motion, spiraled out of control. It churned out generation after generation of individuals suited toward engaging in the affairs of the state, and very little of those able to engage in economically productive sectors. The mentality which it produced also expected the solution to the systemic problem to be gained from the system itself. The state was identified as the repository of all solutions, and therefore, statist solutions to issues generated by the state were favored. The mobilization of scarce resources, initially to keep up with the standard of living in the core states, was again proposed in a radical fashion in the interwar period, in order to ensure social peace. Here, the schema proposed by the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen can be used to study the phenomenon. He uses the concept of a “leisure class” in order to render the occurrence when a ruling elite borrows customs and needs ( often expressed in commodities known as “Veblen goods”) from other social settings, in order to affirm its authority ( the concept of “international demonstration” is also used by some sociologists to describe this process) .  The mission civilizatrice  of the political classes of these states can be understood in this fashion, modernization as an attempt at self-legitimation in a changing world. However, when the superstructure had already been built and adequately staffed, the new elites were caught in the dichotomy of the promises and the lack of delivery. The concept invented by critical Romanian literary scholars Junimea (Titu Maiorescu), ”forme fără fond” (forms without substance), seem fitting to describe the end-result. This upwardly mobile strata was affected by the phenomenon identified as relative deprivation by the American sociologist Ted Gurr. He theorizes that a potentially revolutionary or otherwise politically charged atmosphere can appear in situations when the system finds itself in structural change. When the pace of this metamorphosis slows down or even grinds to a halt, there is a noticeable difference at psychological level between what men expect ( what they have been promised) and what they can actually achieve . I hypothesize that the situation in late interwar Romania and Hungary can be understood using this theoretical apparatus.

The solutions provided by fascism to the problems of society were highly tempting. The first reason was: fascism was a highly composite and often heterogenous ideology, encapsulating ideas both from the extreme right and left. This extreme right-wing element of it proved to be the key to its success in societies which turned their back to the political left as provider of valid solutions to the country’s ailments. We can see in our asymmetric case-studies that very weak, if any, fascism existed in states in which the peasantist and communist forces were strong. Second, it appealed to society wholesale, pandering to the traditions, as well as allowing for social mobility. What scanty evidence of the social bases of fascism in Romania and Hungary we have , identify it as having a strong basis between youth and workers, but otherwise being a Volkspartei ( a catch-all party). Fascism also fit in the desired formulae of statist solutions, aggressively seeking to mobilize resources toward a greater end. The conclusion which can be drawn from the theorizing above is that fascism was an ideology perfectly tailored for the particular needs of society in late interwar Romania and Hungary, and occurred as a byproduct of a larger, systemic crisis.

Notes:

1.Ioan Scurtu, Gheorghe Buzatu, Istoria Romanilor in secolul XX (1918-1948), Bucuresti, Paideia, 1999, pp. 35-51
2.Milton Lehrer, Transylvania: History and Reality, Maryland, Bartleby Press, 1986, p. 234-236
3.Haraszti Endre, The Ethnic History of Transylvania, Florida, Danubian Press, c. 1971, pp. 134-151
4.Levente Salat, Lucian Nastasa (eds.), Maghiarii din Romania si etica minoritara, Cluj-Napoca, Fundatia CRDE, 2003
5.Zsombor De Szasz, The Minorities in Roumanian Transylvania, London, Richards Press, 1927
6.Ioan Scurtu, Majoritari si Minoritari, in Academia Romana, Istoria Romanilor, vol. 8, p. 57-58
7.Biro Sandor, The Nationalities problem in Transylvania 1867-1940, p. 619
8.Biro, p. 622
9.Erdely Tortenete, vol 3., internet edition, www.mek.oszk.hu , 2008.04.16
10.Ibidem.
11.Biro, p. 625-626
12.Scurtu, Boar, Minoritatile Nationale intre 1918-1925, p. 11
13.Ibidem, p. 11; Scurtu, Majoritari si Minoritari, in Academia Romana, Istoria Romanilor, vol. 8, p. 59
14.Biro, p. 628
15.Scurtu , Majoritari si Minoritari, in Academia Romana, Istoria Romanilor, vol. 8, p. 62
16.Erdely Tortenete, vol 3., internet edition, www.mek.oszk.hu , 2008.04.16
17.Biro, p. 629
18.Ibidem, p. 629-630; I might add that press trials and various legal tricks to prevent publication of periodicals existed in the Dualist period; I could not check the validity of Biro’s quoting of Pop
19.Erdely Tortenete, vol 3., internet edition, www.mek.oszk.hu , 2008.04.16
20.Ibidem, p. 635
21.Erdely Tortenete, vol 3., internet edition, www.mek.oszk.hu , 2008.04.16
22.Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania, p. 177
23.Ibidem, p. 158-159
24.Biro, p. 656
25.Scurtu , Majoritari si Minoritari, in Academia Romana, Istoria Romanilor, vol. 8, p. 60
26.C. A. Macartney, Hungary and her Succesors 1919-1937, London/New York, Oxford University Press, 1937, p. 289

Bibliography:

1. Biro Sandor, The Nationalities problem in Transylvania 1867-1940, Boulder/ Colorado, Social Sciences Monographs, 1992
2. Galantai Jozsef, Trianon and the Protection of Minorities, Boulder/ Colorado, Social Science Monographs, 1992
3. Haraszti Endre, The Ethnic History of Transylvania, Florida, Danubian Press, c. 1971
4. Illyes Elemer, Nationale Minderheiten in Rumanien: Siebenburgen in Wandel, Wien, Wilhelm Braumuller, 1981
5. Kopeczi Bela , Barta Gabor (eds.), Erdely Tortenete, vol 3., internet edition, www.mek.oszk.hu , 2008.04.16
6. Lehrer, Milton, Transylvania: History and Reality, Maryland, Bartleby Press, 1986, p. 234-236
7. Livezeanu, Irina, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, nation building and ethnic struggle, 1918-1930, Ithaca/New York, Cornell University Press, 1995
8. Macartney, C. A., Hungary and her Succesors 1919-1937, London/New York, Oxford University Press, 1937
9. Pascu, Stefan et alii, Din Istoria Transilvaniei, Bucuresti, Editura Academiei R.P.R., 1960-61, vol. 2.
10. Salat, Levente ,Lucian Nastasa (eds.), Maghiarii din Romania si etica minoritara, Cluj-Napoca, Fundatia CRDE, 2003
11. Scurtu, Ioan, Buzatu, Gheorghe, Istoria Romanilor in secolul XX (1918-1948), Bucuresti, Paideia, 1999, pp. 35-51
12. Scurtu, Ioan, Liviu Boar, Minoritatile Nationale intre 1918-1925, Bucuresti, Arhivele Nationale ale Romaniei, 1995
13. Scurtu, Ioan, Liviu Boar, Minoritatile Nationale intre 1925-1931, Bucuresti, Arhivele Nationale ale Romaniei, 1996
14. Scurtu, Ioan, Majoritari si Minoritari, in Academia Romana, Istoria Romanilor, vol. 8
15. Zsombor, De Szasz, The Minorities in Roumanian Transylvania, London, Richards Press, 1927

The birth of modern Romanian national consciousness can be traced back to the late 18th century Transylvania, with the appearance of the Scoala Ardeleana generation (Petru Maior, Gheorghe Sincai and others). Nascent proto-nationalism originated in this, at the time most developed Romanian-inhabited area(1) . From the outset, it was bound up with the elements of another system of ideas, which it needed as a mediator in order to get its concepts through. This ideology was the dynastic loyalism cultivated by the Habsburg dynasty. The two cooperated smoothly in the first half of the 19th century, through though trials such as the 1848 revolutions(2) , and seemed to be in a sort of symbiotic relationship with one another. But the end result was a conflicting situation, which led to a completely disconsonant situation towards the turn of the century. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the way in which the imperial legitimating apparatus gradually failed to incorporate newer elements of nationalism, eventually loosing out to this sentiment.

The theoretical framework which I will utilize involves a diachronic analysis of the two streams of thought. I hypothesize that, contrary to what Romanian historiography on the subject claims, the two ideological systems were in an inherent conjectural juxtaposition towards each other. It was from the beginning a marriage of interest between them: they aimed to combat, at first, the force of the local aristocracy, and later, that of Hungarian nationalism. The Ausgleich of 1867 brought this congruent situation to a close, and threw Romanian nationalism and dynastic loyalties in opposing camps. Still, for another few decades, the allure of Vienna was great, and Romanian political elite of Transylvania attempted to reinterpret the nationalist scheme within its boundaries.

The status of the Romanian political Weltanschauung after the enactment of the Compromise presented itself thusly: there were two major groups that perceived the 1867 act in differing manners. The first faction, belonged to the Romanians of Banat and Partium ( concentrated in the city of Arad mostly). Owing to their more ample participatory political experience, they opted for a continued fight against Hungarian ambitions, within the confines of the establishment(3) . This camp, however, did not have the support of the majority of the Romanian ethnics. The other group was under the leadership of Dr. Ioan Ratiu, and benefited from the backing of the majority of Romanian voters from Transylvania proper. Due to their ideological-intellectual heritage, that can be traced back to 1848, they refused to acknowledge the conjunction between the Imperial House of Habsburg and the Ausgleich. The 1867 political mutation left the leadership of the Romanian national movement in a state of shock and disarray. Their psychological formatting allowed for the adoption of one defensive strategy: political boycott of the established system, also known as “passivism”(4) . Over the years, the staunch adherence of the heads of the movement to this tactic frustrated all attempts for modern political organization. Instead, they reverted back to the tried and tested method of sending various memoranda to the Court, deploring their oppressed situation. The first of these documents, the Memorial, was launched in 1868. One after the other, these acts went on to be ignored by the imperial authority, or had little more effect than a declaration of principle. The refusal of acknowledgment and the slow realization that Franz Joseph’s hands were tied in regards to the matter gradually chipped away the elements of loyalism from the Romanian nationalist discourse.

The first occurrence that heralded renewed activism and self-empowerment within the Romanian national movement was represented by the 1881 founding of the Romanian National Party of Transylvania(5) . The aging Dr. Ioan Ratiu was soon elected as the president of it ( after a temporary tenure of Partenie Cosma). The event signifies a renewed desire towards emancipation through their own means, but also the refusal to break with the traditional tactic. Another important landmark in the progression of the Transylvanian’s national ideology was the establishment of the journal Tribuna of Sibiu in 1884(6) . The newspaper quickly became one of the quasi-official press organs of the party. The significance of the publication was to be the political language it dispensed. Its discursive thematic was centered around self-promotion of the Romanian national idea, self-assertion, political activism and castigated dependence on others and inertia. Cultural and economic activity, in an effort to raise awareness and civic-political culture among Romanians in the region, was also aggressively propagated as a solution to the political marasmus.

The watershed in the relationship between the Imperial House of Habsburg and the Transylvanian Romanian political elite was to be the episode known as the “Memorandist Movement”. In 1890-91, a vigorous campaign of national mobilization was launched by the leaders of the Romanian National Party ( P.N.R.). Its goal was the reawakening of national pride, and channeling of it towards supporting a new tactic, that of aggressive petitioning of the imperial core. This was seen as the only way to compel the throne to retake its “traditional”, Josephinist position towards the nationalities(7) . A document entitled “The Memorandum” was edited by the PNR great congress in Sibiu. The party faithful spread the abridged versions of the memoranda not only amongst the Romanians of Transylvania, but throughout the Monarchy, in Romania and abroad. This propagandistic effort, which ate up a lot of resources of the community, was all done with the hope of getting attention and support for the plight of the Romanian minority of dualist Hungary. All of this activity was followed up by an ideologically symbolic trip to Vienna, of a delegation numbering 237 members, in which representatives of every social strata of the Romanians were duly included ( even a number of peasants). In an atmosphere of great effervescence, their goal was to personally hand over the document to “their emperor”(8) . Although they were viewed with great sympathy by a number of political figures of the period ( among them Karl Lueger), the outcome of the campaign was not the one expected. Franz Joseph, through the representatives of his cabinet, refused to grant them an audience, and the unopened envelope containing the Memorandum was sent to Budapest, as a matter of internal concern. The response of the Hungarian authorities was to launch a series of show trials against the Memorandists. Subsequently, most were jailed ( for short periods though), while the rest were forced into self-imposed exile. The act of the emperor was perceived by most of the Romanian intelligentsia and their followers as treason, an infringement of the traditional relationship between ruler and subject. The PNR was also banned for a while. Consequently, the majority felt they could not trust Franz Joseph anymore, who they equated with Dualism, and reoriented their political tactic(9) .

The conditions for the ebbing away of dynastic sentiment among Romanians were therefore set in place. The social evolution of the Romanian community was also a great contributor, besides the already outlined political-intellectual atmosphere. In spite of the fact that the avenues towards upward social mobility were somewhat limited for non-Magyar speaking groups in Dualist Hungary, a certain evolution did take place. The Romanian political elite became much stronger, and acquired a strong urban and bourgeois character. More Romanians were involved in financial activities and liberal professions than ever before, providing the national movement with a renewed vigor and material resources(10) . Owing to their social background, their ideology was to be that of liberal nationalism, which, in most cases, viewed the traditional loyalist sentiment with skepticism. A new generation grew up in the midst of the Romanian National Party that felt it could not depend on the ruling dynasty for providing a solution for their grievances. Men such as Iuliu Maniu, Vasile Goldis or Teodor Mihali saw active participation in the day-to-day business of politics and society as the only plausible and possible course of action the PNR could take.

In the area of political discourse and ideology, all this was translated through the radicalization of the language used. The new topoi employed gravitated around the idea of “activism”. This was launched by the journal Tribuna. In the wake of the failed Memorandist Movement, and as a direct consequence of it, the articles lobbied for a more active involvement in the life and defense of the community, instead of the “empty tactic of petitioning and a priori declarations of yesteryear”(11) . Also, declarations of secession from under the Dualist Hungarian system began to pop up from time to time. This escalated towards the emergence of a new political platform dubbed by Romanian historiography as “Tribunism”. The Tribunist movement was to spearhead the reformation of the internal structures and political strategies of the Romanian National Party in the late 1890’s , by its incessant criticism and propaganda towards change.

By the turn of the century, the new generation, confident in its own capabilities and internal sturdiness, was ready to prove the value of their tactics. Two episodes contributed decisively towards the seizure of internal power. The first was the setting of a surprising and decisive precedent in 1903. In this year, employing the activist tools and mobilization, the Romanian deputy Aurel Vlad successfully ran for office in the circumscription of the contested Dobra (Hunyaddobra) county(12) . The example of this successful candidacy was not lost on the Romanian voters. The other was the death of the aged Dr. Ratiu, the president of the party in 1905. The party congress in Sibiu elected as new president Gheorghe Pop de Basesti, and under his mandate, the party officially adopted “New Activism” as a political tactic. Instead of the traditional refusal to participate and recognize the validity of the existing political arrangement, “new activism” would concentrate its efforts towards raising the level of political awareness in the rural areas, employment of modern press propaganda and reorganization of the party apparatus. The new slogan adopted “Through ourselves” ( “Prin noi insine”), the age-old motto of the Romanian liberals across the Carpathians, signified the paradigm shift that the new generation brought forth(13) . The victorious “activists” went on to secure a record number of 16 mandates (out of the 26 attributed to the “nationalities”) in the 1906 elections. Their drive towards an activist political ideology, in constant motion, oriented towards the masses, and the campaigning for issues such as universal suffrage, was in concert with other such turn-of-the century movements that brought about the crisis of liberalism in both halves of the Monarchy.

Still, the loyalist sentiments were not given up, just reoriented and transfigured somewhat. The maintenance of a legalist character was the pragmatic reason against the complete divorce on the discursive level. It was not the only factor, though. The imperial ideology, in the midst of the crisis of liberalism, started to reinterpret its own ideology to suit the change in the public discourse. Within this translation, the loyalist nationalists among Romanians discovered an alternative center onto which they focused their ardent devotion. The new centre was the camarilla gathered around the successor throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The would-be dynast actively cultivated ties with various politicians of differing background and convictions, especially nationalities. The common ground was their contempt towards the established political configuration and their propensity towards a federalist-imperialist solution. Many of them hoped for a reinterpretation of “enlightened Josephinism” in modern terms. The group dubbed “the Belvedere Circle” had in its composition several Romanians. The most well known enthusiasts of the imperial solution were Alexandru Vaida-Voievod and the political theorist Aurel C. Popovici.

The internal situation of the Romanian ideology around 1908-1910 can be mapped as a fragmented one. One of the factors of discord was the maintenance of loyalty towards the imperial power, or the scrubbing of it as an anachronism, a vestige of the past to be dealt away with. There existed at around 1907-1908 at least three groups in the Romanian elite, that each promoted a different political platform, and viewed the question in accordance with it.

The first was that of the newly appeared faction of the so-called “Steely Youngsters”, gathered around the journal “Gazeta Transilvaniei”. Through the voice of their leaders, Octavian Taslauanu, and the poet Octavian Goga, they interpellated the leadership of the party for a more radical program and accused them of betraying Romanian interests through collaboration with Hungarian authorities. Loyalty towards the House of Habsburg was also seen by them as a proof of “selling out”, in favor of an element that had very little to do with the primary nature of the Romanian people(14) . They frequently castigated men such as Vaida-Voievod for treachery against the interests of the nation as they perceived them. The power base of this fraction was, in this period, particularly small, constituted mainly out of nationalist students’ circles in the two imperial capitals. In spite of this fact, and because of it, since much of the party members and apparatus of the PNR were selected from this social strata, they had significant influence on the leadership of the party. Their criticism in the articles of the Gazeta Transilvaniei, the traditionally best read publication amongst Romanians in Transylvania (which after 1907 they controlled), proved to be a constant vexation for Maniu and the others, who many a time had to radicalize their public discourse to take support away from the Youngsters(15) .

The second group is that of the PNR leaders, the most important being Iuliu Maniu, Teodor Mihali, Vasile Goldis and Gheorghe Pop de Basesti. They benefited from a strong support from the Romanian constituency, although it dwindled somewhat after the dismal performance in the elections on 1910. They continued to pursue an activist policy, building strong power bases and educating the rural voters through their campaigns. Maniu and his party also followed up on an array of political strategies, from supporting the campaign for the introduction of universal manhood suffrage in Hungary, to collaborating with Hungarian opposition politicians such as Justh Gyula and Oszkar Jaszi. They even attempted to enter into negotiations with the Hungarian prime minister, Istvan Tisza, on two occasions, in 1904-05, and 1911-12(16) . The strategy was therefore to keep all doors open for the national movement, and to pursue a balancing act between Goga’s radicals and Vaida-Voievod’s conservative option. The latter received mandate on several occasions to negotiate with the heir of the throne in the name of the party leadership. Some of the PNR higher echelon still maintained the belief that at the succession of Franz Ferdinand, the political system would undergo major changes, and did not want to exclude the Romanians from participating.

The third political option was represented by the loyalists. While among the party elite, few were adepts of their solution, they wielded a significant amount of influence among the rural voters, who remained staunch loyalists until 1918. They opted for a federalist scheme of reformatting the empire, in which the imperial power would be the prime agent. This plan is detailed by Aurel C. Popovici’s famous work “The United States of Great Austria”. In his book, he sketches up a future federalist administrative solution that would cure the ailments of the Monarchy. In this volume, he blends traditional loyalist and federalist plans with a new type of nationalism, infused with elements of biology and ethnical racialism(17) . He opts for a segregation of ethnicities ( he calls them “races”) under the guise of the central power. In this manner, imperial power was reinterpreted in a modernist fashion. It comes as little wonder that the book became quite popular in Vienna and was promoted by the Belvedere circle through baron Brosch. On the pragmatic side, Alexandru Vaida-Voievod maintained a close relationship with the Archduke’s camarilla and even prepared on several occasions committees of Romanians to present before Franz Ferdinand their demands. He himself is often quoted as portraying the Archduke as a “modern Joseph the II”(18) .

The relationship between Romanian nationalism in Transylvania and dynastic loyalties is therefore quite complex. The two were intertwined to such a degree that it is sometimes hard to tell them apart at a first glance. The two meant to exploit each other’s programs and goals to suit their own purposes from the outset. The general tendency of nationalism was to gradually sever its ties to the ruling dynasty, but it never did so completely. Much congruency between the two existed up to the formal end of the Monarchy and even beyond. Interestingly, after the turn of the century, the situation seemed to go full circle and the reformatted imperial justification of power incorporating new motifs appeared to regain the lost support. To that end, the conjuncture of interest and ideology supply complimented each other. The outcome is unknown to us because of the historical circumstances, but provides an important case study towards the further understanding on fin-de-siecle nationalisms of the Austro-Hungarian realm.

Notes:
1.Ian Hampshier-Monk, History of concepts: comparative perspectives, Amterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 1998, p. 40-41
2.Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Hanover, NH : Wesleyan University Press, 1997, p. 118 and Alan Munslow, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies, London ; New York : Routledge, 2000, p.8-9
3.Ferdinand Fellmann, History of Philosophy in the 19th century, p. 21-22
4.Lawrence Stone, The Revival of Narrative, in The Past and the Present Revisited, London : Routledge, 1987, pp. 76-78
5.Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 1992, pp. 151-153
6.Stone, The Revival…, p. 85
7.Hampshier-Monk, History of concepts…, p. 39
8.Iggers, Historiography…, p. 119 and Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History, Houndmills, Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2001, p. 12
9.White, Metahistory, p. X. ( Preface)
10.White, Metahistory, p. 29
11.White, Metahistory, pp. 31-38
12.Hayden White, Metahistory, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, p. 12-13
13.Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Hanover, NH : Wesleyan University Press, 1997, p. 118
14.Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Cambridge, England : Polity Press, 1992, p. 240-241
15.Stone, The Revival of Narrative, and Peter Burke, New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Cambridge, England : Polity Press, 1992, p. 234-235
16.Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Malabar, Fla. : R.E. Krieger, 1982, pp. 3-13
17.Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Malabar, Fla. : R.E. Krieger, 1982, pp. 9
18.Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Malabar, Fla. : R.E. Krieger, 1982, p. 10-11

Bibliography:

1. Burke, Peter, History and Social Theory, Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 1992
2. Burke, Peter, New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Cambridge, England : Polity Press, 1992
3. Fellmann, Ferdinand, History of Philosophy in the 19th century,
4. Hampshier-Monk, Ian, History of concepts: comparative perspectives, Amterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 1998
5. Iggers, Georg, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Hanover, NH : Wesleyan University Press, 1997
6. Marwick,Arthur, The New Nature of History, Houndmills, Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2001
7. Munslow, Alan, The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies, London ; New York : Routledge, 2000
8. Przeworski, Adam and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Malabar, Fla. : R.E. Krieger, 1982
9. Stone, Lawrence, The Revival of Narrative, in The Past and the Present Revisited, London : Routledge, 1987
10. White, Hayden, Metahistory, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993

Notes:
1.Henk te Velde, Political Transfer: an introduction, p. 205
2.Henk te Velde, Political Transfer: an introduction, p. 205
3.te Velde, Political Transfer…, p. 205
4.te Velde, Political Transfer…, p. 206
5.te Velde, p. 206
6.Bloch, Marc, A Contribution towards a Comparative History of European Societies, in Land and Work in Medieval Europe, pp. 44-81.
7.Berger, Stefan, Herbert Morrison’s London Labour Party in the Interwar Years and the SPD: Problems of Transferring German Socialist Practices to Britain, pp. 291-306
8.de Dijn, Annelien, Balancing the Constitution: Bicameralism in Post-revolutionary France, 1814-31, pp. 249-268 and Roussellier, Nicolas, The Political Transfer of English Parliamentary Rules in the French Assemblies (1789-1848), pp. 239-248
9.Cohen, Deborah, O’Connor, Maura, Comparison and history : Europe in cross-national perspective, New York : Routledge, 2004, p. xii
10.te Velde, pp. 215-216
11.Gero Andras, Az elsopro kisebbseg. Nepkepviselet a Monarchia Magyarorszagan. Budapest: Gondolat, 1988, p.89
12.te Velde, p. 208
13.Tilly, Charles, Invention, Diffusion, and Transformation of the Social Movement Repertoire, p. 308, p. 310
14.Wolfram Kaiser, Transnational Mobilization and Cultural Representation: Political Transfer in an Age of Proto-Globalization, Democratization and Nationalism 1848-1914, p. 406
15.Kaiser, p. 410

Bibliography:

1. Cohen, Deborah, O’Connor, Maura, Comparison and history : Europe in cross-national perspective, New York : Routledge, 2004
2. de Dijn, Annelien, Balancing the Constitution: Bicameralism in Post-revolutionary France, 1814-31, in European Review of History, 12 (July 2005) 2
3. de Jong, Janny, The Principles of Steam: Political Transfer and transformation in Japan, 1868-1889, in European Review of History, 12 (July 2005) 2
4. Kaiser, Wolfram, Transnational Mobilization and Cultural Representation: Political Transfer in an Age of Proto-Globalization, Democratization and Nationalism 1848-1914, in European Review of History, 12 (July 2005) 2
5. Roussellier, Nicolas, The Political Transfer of English Parliamentary Rules in the French Assemblies (1789-1848), in European Review of History, 12 (July 2005) 2
6. te Velde, Henk, Political Transfers: An Introduction, in European Review of History, 12 (July 2005) 2
7. Tilly, Charles, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, New York: Russel Sage, 1984
8. Tilly, Charles, Invention, Diffusion, and Transformation of the Social Movement Repertoire, in European Review of History, 12 (July 2005) 2