Naţiune, naţionalism şi construcţie naţională în România
Nation, Nationalism and Nation-Building in Romania

The Union of 1918, National Identity and Legitimizing Discourses under Communism, 1945–1989

Summary/Abstract: This study argues that the Union of Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania in 1918 did not represent the final stage in the process of creating the Romanian nation. These authors contend that the Union of 1918 only accelerated a process of nation-building that entered its final stage under communist rule in the early 1980s. At the same time, the present study demonstrates that despite the fact that nation-building in Romania took longer than many scholars and laypeople are willing to accept, the process of creating the Romanian nation entered its final and irreversible stage in late communism. The national consciousness of Romanians and their emotional attachment to the present-day national territory were put to an extreme test immediately after 1989 when the “unrealized” Czechoslovak and Yugoslav nations split among ethnic lines, which was not the case of the Romanian nation.

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