Project Description

My Regimes of Historicity project will explore a number of themes that led to the refashioning of the ethnic and national identities of Moldavian Roman Catholics, the so-called Csangos, during the late 1930s and early 40s. This refashioning was advanced primarily through the historiography of the period, first by Hungarian historians and ethnographers who ventured into the Csango lands and later by Romanian historians and Catholic priests. I will, furthermore, re-examine the Moldavian Csangos in the context of Romanian and Hungarian population policies, which emerged during the interwar period and were implemented during the Second World War. Finally, I will look at the rise of clericalism in Moldavia and the role of the Csango clergy in nationalizing the debate on the ethnic origins of the Csangos.

The Csangos provide an important case study for several reasons: they were considered not only an ethno-linguistic minority (Hungarian) but also a religious minority (Roman Catholic); they had played no active role in either the Hungarian or Romanian national movements; they were eventually targeted for expatriation to Hungary; moreover, they had an active clerical intelligentsia with support from the Vatican; and yet their homeland had always been in Moldavia proper, which until the early twentieth century had been a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional territory of the Romanian Kingdom. By the 1940s, however, many Romanian policymakers viewed the Csangos as a religious, ethnic, and linguistic anomaly in the very heart of the nation. By contrast, many in the Hungarian government viewed the Csangos as an ethnically pure community of Magyars who could be used to re-colonize the Hungarian state.

I intend, moreover, to look at the historical narratives of the Csangos that were constructed by the Csango clergy, and will examine the relationship of this community's past to its present experience in the early 1940s, and the ‘horizons of expectations' they held for their future as refashioned ethnic Romanians. This represents an enormous shift in the community's understanding and representation of itself through time: hitherto, the historical representation of the community was situated squarely within ecclesiastical history. However, the interwar period radically changed the context in which even small, isolated communities such as the Csangos were forced to re-evaluate and ‘re-represent' their historical connection to Romania's past, its present, and its future. Specifically, they were forced to demonstrate their compatibility with the new, national narratives of the dominant ethnic majority and the state. For Greater Romania was a new and highly ethnicised state and nation, with little room for incompatible ethnic or confessional others. However, this was not just a discursive battle. Policies such as population transfers, nationality registers, and racial laws sought literally to reconfigure the state along ethnic lines.

It is in this context that the Csangos underwent a process of national induction, the aim of which was to demonstrate that their historical experience and ethno-national identity were congruent with that of the dominant ethnic nation, Romania. In order to secure a place within the new nation and to preserve themselves in their homeland, the Roman Catholic clergy amongst the Csangos constructed a new, nationalized past of the community, one that could be merged into the meta-narrative of the Romanian nation. This was a relevant history - a Romanian history - that could anchor them in the present, thereby preventing their deportation to Hungary and restoring their full civic rights as ethnic Romanian nationals.