Tematizarea orașului, imaginarea națiunii: București și Liov la 1906. Abordarea centralistă vs. abordarea federalistă (un studiu în elite locale și în conceperea spațiului public)
The Theming of the City, the Imagining of the Nation: Bucharest and Liov in 1906. Centralist Approach vs. Federalist Approach

Summary/Abstract: The present paper presents the cases of two cities from the Central and Eastern Europe. It is about Bucharest, the capital of the Romanian Kingdom, and Liov, the capital of the province of Galitia. They are approached in key moment for the assertion of identity, that is the official manifestations occasioned by the first Romanian national exhibition in 1906 and respectively the anniversary of 250 years from the siege of Liov from the side of the Cossacks in 1905. By depicting these events, I have in intention the set up a radiography of these two cities, situations of the modernization in the area, but especially to identify the key topics advanced in the public speecj by the local elites. These topics would represent essential itemsin articulating the 20th century Romanian, Ukrainian, but also Polish national imaginary. At a first sight, Bucarest could be regarded as the symbol of the administrative centralization and political uniformity, as they were put into practice by the Liberal elite in the capital. On its turn, Liov, as framework of the coexistence of three nationalities having antagonistic political projects, could be considered as example for the centre-periphery dynamics, where the authorities in Vienna made attempts the implement a multi-country political culture to the inhabitants of the AustrianHungarian Monarchy. One of the ambitions of this study is to indicate that, despite these appearances, the centralist pattern wish and imagined by the Brătianu family was negotiated and adapted by the conservative governments that reached the political power in the reference period. Meanwhile, the regional politics in Galitia that intended to harmonize the national interests find the reluctance of the coherent opposition of the local ethnies, which were ideologically organized on the pattern of the nations that had already achieved a state framework where to express their national ambitions (e. g., Italy, Germany). Finally, by raising a question mark on the preponderance of the centralism, as Bucharest has been associated with155 , or of the multinationalsim, as it has been defined related to Liov, by the Romanian, Ukrainian, and Polish historiographies, I would suggest the continuity of the public speeches between these failed projects and various political arrangements that Romania, Ukraine and Poland were forced to initiate in the 20th century (perhaps the policy towards the ethnic minorities is the most relevant example). Moreover, these failed projects were converted during the same century in a nostalgic speech for the pre-First World War Romania and respectively for Galitia as a representative of the multiculturalism in Central and Eastern Europe.

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