Mérlegen a „Nagy Egyesülés”. Vita 1918-ról és Románia utóbbi száz évéről
The “Great Union” on Balance. Dispute about 1918 and the Last Hundred Years of Romania’s History

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents the dispute that has gone on over the past years about the balance sheet of the last century of Romanian history after 1918. The authors examine the oeuvre of two outstanding representatives of contemporary Romanian historiography, Ioan-Aurel Pop and Lucian Boia, whose views on the centenary and the great issues of Romanian history, as well as on the basic features of the national “grand narrative” considerably diverge from each other. Exploring some of the key texts of these authors, who have formulated characteristic views on the occasion of the centenary, and whose arguments carry weight in Romanian public opinion, the authors tried to identify those fault-lines within Romanian historical scholarship which shed light also on the relationship of the science of history in a wider sense to nation-building. For what is at stake in the filling up of the centenary with content is no less than Romanian collective memory and the definition of actual national identity – while, on the basis of the two historians’ view of the past it is also possible to conceive the Romania-project in the service of which each of them imagines his own narrative

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