Itt-Ott, 1994 (27. évfolyam, 1. (123.) szám)

1994 / 1. (123.) szám

stead of isolation, cosmopolitanism instead of nationalism. If we accept this phenomenon as a “mazeway reformulation,” notice must be made of the determined move towards a radical cultural transformation, with transnational values at its core. The days and nights between the withdrawal of the army in Timisoara (December 20), and the fall of Ceaus.escu (December 22), can be seen as the moment of “communication,” with the population pouring into the streets with the specific goal of talking, of sharing this general system of values which, if publicly accepted, appeared like the only way to break with the past. The “organization” and “routinization” movements did not even have time to begin. As soon as the uprising spread in the country, the movements in Timis, oara — which until then had followed their own course — became part of a larger process, a move that attenuated the radicalism of the first days of the revolt. With the uprising in Bucharest, another revitalization movement was attempted — not the continuation of the one in Timis, oara, even if triggered by the latter.

However, the peculiarities of the Romanian reality aborted the revitalization movement from its start. The skillful coup d’état whereby the nomenklatura group acceded to power, derailed the first important movement of “mazeway reformulation.” Instead of a new code, a whole range of recycled formulas were communicated.

The phenomenon calls for some explanation: the inspirational charisma of a personality like Tőkés was absent in Bucharest, thus facilitating the attempt of a frustrated political elite to avail themselves of the general frustration of the entire society tunneled in the unanimous hatred of Ceau^escu. This political class was about to recast itself into a new identity, that of “democratic rulers.” To this effect, formulating a new code pertaining to radical, personal, and societal transformation was out of the question. The point made by Vladimir Tismaneanu is of particular relevance here: “The nomenklatura under Ceau^escu was not a ruling elite, but merely a higher class of the despot’s slaves. Thus, the 1989 revolution, although begun by people of Romania, was quickly captured by the nomenklatura and turned into a liberation of their own class.”1 Having achieved instant control of the means of communication, this particular group was in the ideal position of leading (or trying to lead) the aspirations for change towards the direction convenient for them, namely one which did not imply radical turns and

modifications, but only a reinterpretation of the code that had supposedly been rejected. Thus, continuity, rather than radical change, became part of the discourse. While politically convenient, the freshly discovered virtue of continuity was based on cultural assumptions: social and political structures had been tainted by communism, but the Romanian culture and soul had remained virtually intact. Therefore, there was no need for a cultural transformation, i.e., for a new cultural code that would reject and transcend, among other things, nationalism.

In today’s Romania nationalism does not appear as a new cultural product, but as a system of recycled ideas that proved more relevant for the redefinition of personal and collective identities than the general, transnational and pluralistic values intially advocated in Timisoara.

Although Ceau§escu’s decades of dictatorship had appropriated a selected nationalist discourse and adapted it to the communist ideology, resuscitated pre-communist nationalistic attitudes and behaviors have appealed to great numbers of people. Having been banned for forty years, they have become even more attractive and have acquired instant righteousness, an important quality for individuals and societies plunged in moral confusion. Looking back to some more or less familiar and idealized images is more comfortable than stretching one’s imagination to construct a new and different identity.

Some of the elements included in the process of recycling originate from the nostalgia for the Greater Romania of the interwar years. In the attempt to reconstitue this state from territories that now are part of other countries, the “rediscovery” that Romania is surrounded by enemies leads not only to irredentist claims, but also to the construction of a victim syndrome and develops a fatalistic defensive attitude. Onto this conglomerate are also grafted xenophobic and anti-Semitic attitudes popular since the second half of the nineteenth century. In the articulation of the nationalist discourse to define Romanian ethnicity along mystical lines has proved to be particularly seducVladimir Tismaneanu, “Between Libaration and Freedom,” in Vladimir Tismaneanu and Patrick Clawson, (eds), Uprooting Leninism, Cultivating Liberty (Lanham, New York, London: University Press of America, 1992), 17.

44 ITT-OTT 27. évf. (1994), 1. (123.) szám