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Post-Communist Nationalism: The Case of Romania
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20120 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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2 / 1992 |
5,728 Words |
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Juliana Geran Pilon
Juliana Geran Pilon is executive director of the National
Forum Foundation. |
The collapse of the Soviet empire, exhilarating as it may be for the people who may now realistically hope for a freer life, brings with it serious aftershocks. The legacy of nearly five decades of communist rule is no small problem: A populace economically impoverished, subjected to lies and complete political control, has emerged traumatized and tired.
Perhaps the most urgent need before the people who have recently undergone a change of regime, no matter how incomplete (as in Romania), is to carve out an identity; hence post-communist nationalism. The attainment of self-definition may provide a healthy sense of self-worth and renewed confidence. Through continuity to their past and their rich--if sometimes checkered--traditions, the nations of East-Central Europe may yet be able to breathe, create, and survive once more.
The danger, however, is that instead of a healthy reappraisal of those traditions, there will be cheap jingoism and an inability to either forgive or move on to another historical level. Specifically, there is a chance that the pathology of the past half-century will be deliberately exploited by the defatted elite--the nomenklatura--in cooperation with delinquent, chauvinistic fringe elements, to create a lethal implosion. Hate-filled, racist, and xenophobic nationalisms destroys any hope for democracy.
Yet it is possible for a nation to be both liberal--in the classical sense, respecting the individual and his voluntary associations--and national, or even multinational. The case of the United States stands as a promising example that such an ideal is not unrealistic.
It would be easy to dismiss nationalism as nineteenth-century romanticism, or as chauvinism with a thin veneer of ideological respectability. There are even those who deplore the demise of communism, which they argue "kept the lid on" nationalist feelings. While there is certainly some truth to this-communism kept the lid on most of the captive people's feeling-there is no point in denying the real issues, which involve man's place in history and society.
I do not consider "nationalism" to be just a vague mixture of ethnicity, self-interest, and xenophobia. The concept deserves closer analysis-particularly in the context of the traumatized East-Central European nations. While a detailed philosophical inquiry must be left for another time, a case study will help illustrate some of the components of the concept in a current setting; the case of
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