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BRUCE HADDOCK
University of Wales, Swansea
AND OVIDIU CARAIANI
University Politehnica, Bucharest
We explore the theoretical underpinnings of a political debate initiated in 1989 by the
Grupul pentru Dialog Social about identity, legitimacy and civil society in Romania.
Commentators have often focused on the resurgence of nationalism as a response to
the politics of transition. We concentrate, instead, on the normative engagement
which distinguishes practical argument in general. We oer a theoretical bridge which
sets the sharply dierentiated positions of protagonists contributing to the Romanian
debate in a broader theoretical perspective. Our central claim is that attempts
to defend a revised version of `civic nationalism' fail to resolve tensions between
individualist and collectivist notions. By focusing on what is `civic' about civic
nationalism, the terms of reference of the debate are signicantly shifted.
Our concern in this paper is to analyse the theoretical assumptions which have
informed attempts to modernize the Romanian state in the period since the fall
of Ceaus escu. The broad terms of reference will be familiar. Modernizers have
sought to adopt (something like) the western conception of civil society, with a
stress on human rights, the rule of law, economic liberalism and association
with pan-European institutions. They have found themselves confronted not
only by hard-line nationalists, for whom cosmopolitan language is a betrayal of
Romanian national identity, but by traditionalists intent upon reconciling a
distinctive Romanian inheritance with a wider Europe des patries. The political
attractions of the latter position are evident. The nationalism which was such a
marked feature of Romanian public culture under Ceaus escu has not simply
disappeared, nor in fact was it created by Ceaus escu and his ideologues.
1
Reconstructions of the intellectual pedigree and institutional entrenchment of
nationalist discourse in successive Romanian regimes tell us a great deal about
the building blocks of the contemporary debate. What they leave out of
account, however, is the normative engagement which distinguishes practical
argument in general. We focus on arguments (well or ill conceived) which have
sought to exploit and extend the terms of public discourse in contemporary
Romania. We treat them as more or less defensible theoretical statements, not as
#Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Political Studies (1999), XLVII, 258274
1
See Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in
Ceausescu's Romania (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991); and Dennis Deletant, `The
Debate between Tradition and Modernity in the Shaping of a Romanian Identity', in Robert
P. Pynsent (ed.), The Literature of Nationalism: Essays on East European Identity (London,
Macmillan, 1996), pp. 1426.
types of argument. Our reconstruction of the debate is thus a contribution to the
debate itself.
Conventional discussions of nationalism have been largely concerned with
the elaboration of typologies. Distinctions within the European context vary
from broad (and imprecise) contrasts between the nationalisms of east and west,
to more technical characterizations of civic/ethnic or reform/integral national-
ism.
2
These typologies are helpful up to a point. Yet they do little to clarify the
conceptual distinctions at the margin of contrasting types. Examples of
discourse can be placed on a spectrum; but the considerations which might
persuade protagonists to change their views are left unexplored. It is one thing
to show how dierent conceptions of the nation have been appropriated in
Romanian public debate, and quite another to consider the cogency of the
arguments advanced. Clearly little can be achieved if plausible terms of
reference are not rst established. In the Romanian tradition, a contrast might
be drawn between western/Roman/modernizing/individualist conceptions
and eastern/Dacian/traditionalist/anti-European/collectivist conceptions, each
exploiting familiar notions in an on-going debate. Our interest here, however, is
with what it means to hold a particular view in the face of possible objections.
There is nothing methodologically odd about this approach; it is simply to treat
a sophisticated Romanian debate as a species of political theory.
A marked feature of the contemporary debate is the reluctance to break with
established terms of discourse. Marxism, of course, has been a spectacular
casualty. In one sense, however, Marxism had already been relegated to a sub-
ordinate role through Ceaus escu's exploitation of entrenched nationalist
assumptions. The preoccupation with national identity, readily intelligible in
an earlier context of state formation and expansion, has survived, fostering
discussions which marginalize signicant groups within Romanian society. It is
bitterly ironic that the politics of identity, which did so much to undermine even
the beginnings of an autonomous civil society under Ceaus escu, should
continue to be the obsession of politicians anxious to set Romania on a new
path.
3
This is a problem which, in one form or another, has beset all the
emerging post-communist states. There is no typical case. Each state nds itself
breaking new ground in its adaptation of received understandings to unprece-
dented political and economic conditions.
4
The point to stress is that these
traditions are never nally closed. Within Romania the politics of identity
has been challenged at the intellectual level, albeit ineectively. Our aim is to set
this vital argument in a wider context of theoretical debate which may go some
2
See, for example, John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds), Nationalism (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1994); John Hutchinson, Modern Nationalism (London, Fontana Press, 1994);
Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: the Quest for Understanding (Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1994); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1983); Peter Alter,
Nationalism (London, Edward Arnold, 1985); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reec-
tions on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso, 1983); Sukumar Periwal (ed.), Notions
of Nationalism (Budapest, Central European University Press, 1995); Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism:
Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992); James G. Kellas, The
Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity (London, Macmillan, 1991); and Montserrat Guibernau,
Nationalisms: the Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Polity, 1996).
3
See Tom Gallagher, Romania after Ceausescu (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1995).
4
See the collection of essays in Richard Caplan and John Feer (eds), Europe's New Nationalism:
States and Minorities in Conict (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996).
BRUCE HADDOCK AND OVIDIU CARAIANI 259
#Political Studies Association, 1999
way towards breaking down the exclusive terms of reference of contending
groups.
It is not surprising that national identity should be a pervasive concern.
5
Emerging as it did from the collapse of three empires, the Romanian state has
never enjoyed a clear identity or settled boundaries. The nation clearly
antedated the state, though both were constructed identities. Contrasting
constitutionalist and authoritarian strands were already evident in 1848. Con-
stitutionalists such as Koga lniceanu, Russo and Ba lcescu, inuenced by French
revolutionary ideas, were always on the defensive in the face of more assertive
characterizations of the essence of the nation. Francophiles were portrayed as
bonjuristi, advocates of foreign (specically French) customs without roots in
Romanian tradition. Maiorescu and his followers rejected cosmopolitanism as
`shape without substance' and argued instead for an `organic' literature that
would express the unique qualities of Romanian culture.
6
The argument came
to a head in the 1920s with the publication of Lovinescu's History of Modern
Romanian Civilization (19246) which self-consciously defended a modernist
position that saw the adoption of advanced European institutional and cultural
models as a functional necessity for Romania.
7
By challenging the basic
assumptions of indigenous traditionalism in all its guises, Lovinescu served as a
catalyst for the polarization of the national debate.
The emergence of a Romanian version of the Eastern Orthodox religion as a
politically signicant movement was decisive for the consolidation of a
Romanian identity with strong anti-western and anti-individualist accents.
Ethnic and religious identity were now equated. Rationalism, positivism and
toleration were seen as decadent manifestations of a declining civilization. In the
inter-war period, the quest for a cultural rebirth of the Romanian nation gave a
pronounced authoritarian tone to political rhetoric, especially in the legionary
movement. This rst taste of a mass-based populism was decisive in the
marginalization of liberal individualism.
Stress on the unique qualities of the Romanian tradition became the domin-
ant motif of a philosophical movement (Trairism) that served as a signicant
bolster to the legionary movement and, through Noica, has continued to exert
philosophical inuence.
8
One of the more remarkable features of the history of
ideas in Romania in the twentieth century is the resilience of an essentially
irrationalist philosophy in the face of a state which, after 1948, embraced a
formal rationalist ideology, with matching bureaucratic apparatus.
5
For an historical overview see Iordan Chimet (ed.), Dreptul la memorie (Cluj, Dacia, 1992,
4 vols.).
6
See Titu Maiorescu, `I
n contra direct iei de asta zi n cultura roma na ' (1868), in his Critice
(Bucharest, Minerva, 1984), pp. 12735.
7
See Eugen Lovinescu, Istoria civilizatiei romane moderne (Bucharest, S tiint ica , 1972); and for
discussion see Z. Ornea, Traditionalism si modernitate in deceniul al treilea (Bucharest, Eminescu,
1980).
8
For discussion see Z. Ornea, Anii treizeci: Extrema dreapta romaneasca (Bucharest, Fundat iei
Culturale Roma ne, 1996); Constantin Noica, Pagini despre suetul romanesc (Bucharest, Human-
itas, 1991); Constantin Noica, Sentimentul romanesc al intei (Bucharest, Eminescu, 1978);
Constantin Noica, Cuvant mpreuna despre rostirea romaneasca (Bucharest, Eminescu, 1987); and
Constantin Noica, Istoricitate si eternitate (Bucharest, Capricorn, 1989).
260 Nationalism and Civil Society in Romania
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In one sense the Communist regime must be seen as an extreme version of a
collectivist politics which had been implicit in Romanian nationalist discourse
since 1848. What was new was the fusion of a thoroughly rationalist conception
of the `new man' (homo collectivus) with a traditional conception of the moral
signicance of the peasant in idealizations of indigenous rural culture. In
philosophical terms, Trairism and Marxism make uneasy bedfellows. What they
share, however, at least in these versions, is contempt for the values of liberal
individualism. The two positions were paradoxically brought together in the
doctrine of Protochronism (defended particularly by Papu and Ba descu) which
sought the pristine originals of scientic and philosophical innovations within
the structure of Romanian language and culture.
9
1989 represented a challenge and an opportunity. The facile assumption that
`civil society' could simply be incorporated, that the only obstacle to civic
modernization had been an oppressive government, was now exposed.
Communism had collapsed but not collectivism.
10
Elites which had previously
sheltered under the communist umbrella now sought protection under the
mantle of nationalism. In the process they may well have strengthened their
positions. Nationalism as an ideology had proved to be almost endlessly
exible. Indeed the Communist regime itself had endured largely by adopting
nationalist terms of discourse. What had initially seemed to be a wholly new
situation turned out, on closer inspection, to be a revised version of a very old
argument. Attitudes to Europe or minority rights were still formed within the
terms of reference of the proclaimed uniqueness of the national culture.
Collectivism, like a chameleon, had adapted to a new set of circumstances. Civic
nationalism, however, had been a casualty. In the nal analysis, the language of
civic engagement had been swamped by the pervasive obsession with national
identity which had informed nationalist discourse from the outset.
11
These obsessions were confronted by the eclectic group of intellectuals who
came together in the immediate aftermath of the `revolution' in order to
challenge the tacit acceptance of nationalist terms of discourse. The Grupul
pentru Dialog Social (Group for Social Dialogue) initially embraced dissidents
who had served (at least in a tenuous sense) as leaders of an underground
opposition to the Ceaus escu regime. It would be misleading to equate the work
of these intellectuals with the more developed opposition networks in Poland,
Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But at least as far as the Romanian intelligentsia
were concerned, these were public gures with declared positions. Among the
leaders, Gabriel Liiceanu and Andrei Ples u had been deprived of important
academic positions, Dan Petrescu had written an important letter to Ceaus escu
condemning the human rights abuses of the regime and had given interviews
with Radio Free Europe, and Alexandru Paleologu, Octavian Paler, Stelian
9
See Edgar Papu, `Protocronismul roma nesc', Secolul XX, 5/6 (1974), pp. 811; Edgar Papu,
`Protocronism, s i sintez a', Secolul XX, 6 (1976), pp. 79; Edgar Papu, Din clasicii nostri: Contributii
la ideea unui protocronism romanesc (Bucharest, Eminescu, 1977); Ilie Ba descu, Sincronism european
si cultura critica romaneasca (Bucharest, S tiint ica s i Enciclopedica , 1984); and the discussion in
Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism, pp. 169214.
10
Adam Michnik has described nationalism as `the last word of communism'. See Adam
Michnik, `Nationalism', Social Research, 58 (1991), p. 759.
11
See Katherine Verdery, `Nationalism and National Sentiment in Postsocialist Romania', in
her What was Socialism, and What comes Next? (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996),
pp. 83103.
BRUCE HADDOCK AND OVIDIU CARAIANI 261
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Ta nase and others had been among the signatories of the last public letters
protesting against the treatment of Romanian writers in spring and autumn of
1989.
12
Their political activity before 1989 had been fragmentary, but they
shared a commitment to create something like a western-style civil society in
dicult circumstances. In so far as the group became a formative inuence after
1989, it was through the journal 22.
13
The journal represented a style rather than
party-political position, championing an inclusive conception of citizenship
which rendered established distinctions irrelevant. From this point of view,
there is no necessary incompatibility between Hungarian (Romany, Serb,
German) cultural identity and Romanian citizenship. The casual linkage
between identity and legitimacy was thus undermined.
To articulate a cosmopolitan conception of citizenship was itself an innova-
tion in the Romanian context. What makes 22 instructive, however, is not the
commitment to rights that informs it, but the attempt to expose the false
foundational myths which had been used to legitimize dierent forms of the
Romanian state.
14
A principal innovation here was to insist that the nation is a
discursive construct and not a `natural' fact. Essentialist views of the nation
were treated (by Patapievici for example) as a species of `ethnic Platonism',
rendering individuals accidental in relation to the nation as substance.
15
This
essentialism endorses no specic conception of the nation, but individuals
would not be nally intelligible outside a national context. Within these terms of
reference one cannot ask `What makes a good man?', only `What makes a good
Romanian?'
16
Individuals exist as instances of a collective essence, the people as
a whole enjoying the status of a `super-personality'.
17
Attempts to characterize this `super-personality' are necessarily contentious.
Once the `people' are accorded pride of place as the embodiment of the nation,
we are still left with the problem of specifying the distinct identity of a particular
people. This, for Patapievici, is analogous to the diculties generations of
readers have encountered in elaborating the detailed implications of Rousseau's
notion of the General Will. Within the Romanian context, Patapievici cites
Blaga's inuential portrayal of an original pastoral idyll (spatiul mioritic) as the
12
Opponents of the Ceaus escu regime formed two clear groups. Followers of Noica (such as
Liiceanu and Ples u) stressed the signicance of salvation through culture, while a more politically
orientated group who saw themselves as dissidents (including Doina Cornea, Mircea Dinescu, Dan
Petrescu and Gabriel Andreescu) stressed principled opposition to communism in both theory and
practice.
13
The Grupul pentru Dialog Social published a declaration of principles in the rst issue of 22,
20 January 1990, p. 3. A selection of articles from 22 is available in Gabriel Andreescu (ed.),
Romania versus Romania (Bucharest, Clavis, 1996).
14
For discussion in relation to Romanian historiography see also Lucian Boia, Istorie si mit n
constiinta romaneasca (Bucharest, Humanitas, 1997).
15
H.-R. Patapievici, `Criticilor mei', 22, 32, 713 August, 1996, p. 11. Patapievici is something of
an enfant terrible in Romanian cultural life. Trained as a physicist, he became a public celebrity after
the publication of his Politice (Bucharest, Humanitas, 1996). He contributes to a range of journals
and newspapers and is a leading editor with the publishing house Humanitas.
16
In the 1930s Nae Ionescu, the intellectual mentor of the legionary movement, proposed a
distinction between `Romanian' and `good Romanian'. AGreek Catholic could be a loyal Romanian,
but strict Romanian identity applied only to followers of the Orthodox religion. See Z. Ornea, Anii
Treizeci: Extrema Dreapta Romanesca (Bucharest, Editura Fundat iei Culturale Roma ne, 1995),
pp. 915.
17
See Patapievici, `Criticilor mei', p. 11; the phrase is taken from Karl Popper, The Open Society
and its Enemies (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1945, 2 vols).
262 Nationalism and Civil Society in Romania
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archetype of a style of thought that necessarily attributes a subordinate and
derivative signicance to personal identity.
18
Individuals are real, in this scheme
of things, only in relation to a pristine ethnic form.
Patapievici's point is not simply that Blaga is mistaken, but that collective
conceptions of identity are illusory. He describes the search for a `putative
identity' as a `national obsession'.
19
The syndrome is evident in the rst stirrings
of a movement for political independence. In 1848, for example, both liberal
modernizers and traditional revivalists were operating with an entirely abstract
conception of Romanian identity, involving schematic and blinkered con-
ceptions of past and future. At moments of crisis, such as the War of Independ-
ence of 1877 or the peace settlement of 1918, the contrast between (what we
might call) the French and Eastern Orthodox models came to the fore, under-
mining any prospect for a settled consensus. Here was an argument that
would be endlessly repeated if political legitimacy were persistently treated as a
function of cultural identity. Communism oered only an illusory solution,
replacing both models with an equally myopic conception of identity (homo
collectivus). What Patapievici presents us with, then, is a choice between `the
theology of homo collectivus', `nostalgia for mystic solidarity', and the rational-
ism of `methodological individualism'.
20
Whether methodological individual-
ism can be sustained without ctions of its own, however, is quite another
matter.
Patapievici's favoured position is a conception of a free-standing civil
society, where `eective identity is constructed through our daily politics', with
each individual contributing to the `collective identity of all'.
21
The con-
structivist view of national identity has, of course, a very long history, going
back to Renan's celebration of the nation as a `daily plebiscite' and beyond.
22
And in more recent social and political theory it has come to constitute one of
the most inuential currents among theories of nationalism.
23
There is less
agreement, however, regarding the building blocks of this daily construction.
Individuals may contribute in a very small way to the construction of a
`collective' identity, but not (as Marx was to note in a slightly dierent context)
`under circumstances they themselves have chosen'.
24
The idea of rational
actors bargaining among themselves in the pursuit of mutual advantage, with
no regard for context or attachments, is one of the least plausible hypotheses of
modern political theory.
25
One simply does not need an atomistic theory
of society in order to argue that individuals are uniquely valuable and have
rights.
18
See Lucian Blaga, Spatiul mioritic (Bucharest, Editura Humanitas, 1994), pp. 1656; rst
published 1936.
19
H.-R. Patapievici, `Metazica nat iunii n act este o politica ', in Gabriel Andreescu (ed.),
Romania versus Romania, pp. 1801.
20
Patapievici, `Metazica nat iunii n act este o politica ', p. 184.
21
Patapievici, `Metazica nat iunii n act este o politica ', p. 185.
22
See Ernest Renan, `What is a Nation?', in Stuart Woolf (ed.), Nationalism in Europe: 1815 to
the Present (London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 4860.
23
See, classically, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso, 1983).
24
Karl Marx, `The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte', in his Surveys from Exile, David
Fernbach (ed.) (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1973), p. 146.
25
See Maurice Keens-Soper, `The liberal state and nationalism in post-war Europe', History of
European Ideas, 10 (1989), 689703.
BRUCE HADDOCK AND OVIDIU CARAIANI 263
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What outraged Patapievici's critics was precisely the claim that individual
identity is conceivable outside a collective context. Pruteanu, for example, could
ask rhetorically whether a defence of individualism necessarily made one both
`an enemy of the people' and `an enemy of the regime'.
26
Orthodox communists
and nationalists (the distinction is not always clear) saw Patapievici as a
`pathological case', an `exhibitionist', a `suitable case for treatment'.
27
Nearly all
critics sought to reinstate a distinction between a people in its diverse circum-
stances and an historical archetype of a people (neam) which legitimizes a polity
despite its lapses from perfection.
28
This is clearly counter-assertion rather than
argument, but it illustrates the centrality of collectivist assumptions within
Romanian culture.
29
More signicant, perhaps, is Patapievici's tacit assumption
that the people as a whole cannot properly constitute a political order of any
kind. Manolescu warned Patapievici of the danger of irting with an anti-
democratic position.
30
If (as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
had argued) the nation and the political order were to be identied, then denial of
the nation might undermine the political space for democratic politics.
Patapievici's position might more properly be described as anti-majoritarian
or anti-populist rather than anti-democratic, endorsing as it does the priority of
rights over a passing consensus within public opinion.
31
It may be that the form
of Patapievici's polemic is slightly misleading. To denigrate certain conceptions
of the Romanian nation (and Patapievici's tone is certainly sharp) is to
presuppose that there is a nation to talk about.
32
Liviu Antonesei identied
residual `ethno-psychological' assumptions in Patapievici's language.
33
One is
reminded of the dilemma posed by Wittgenstein in his characterization of action
(`what is left over if I subtract the fact that myarmgoes upfromthe fact that I raise
my arm?').
34
When we rid ourselves of all myths, what exactly are we left with?
Few Romanians could accept the stark rationalism of Patapievici's position.
Even sympathizers such as Gabriel Andreescu (who had served as chairman of
the administrative council of the Grupul) felt the need to move beyond icono-
clasm to a modulated analysis of the pursuit of Romanian interests.
35
Andreescu sees the language of collective identity as a fatal temptation which
has obscured the furtherance of concrete political objectives. To insist, for
example, that Moldavia should properly be a part of Romania is an obstacle to
the achievement of a stable working relationship with Russia and the Ukraine.
The real issue for Romania is not how to redeem lost lands but how to ensure
26
George Pruteanu, `Es ecurile mpotrivirii', Dilema, 1734 (1996), p. 13.
27
C. T. Popescu, `Cum sa ne descotorisim de poporul roma n, Adevarul, 1869, 17 June 1996, p. 1.
28
For discussion of the translation of the term neam into English see Verdery, National Ideology
under Socialism, p. 323, fn. 3.
29
See Verdery, `Nationalism and Nationalist Sentiment in Postsocialist Romania', pp. 83103.
30
Nicolae Manolescu, `Votul universal', Romania literara, 23, 1218 June, 1996.
31
For a full elaboration of an anti-majoritarian democratic position see Ronald Dworkin, Taking
Rights Seriously (London, Duckworth, 1977).
32
Note the tone and temper of the four letters of Patapievici to Paleologu in H.-R. Patapievici,
Politice (Bucharest, Humanitas, 1996), pp. 1769. The remaining essays in the volume are more
analytical.
33
Liviu Antonesei, `I