”Scenariile alternative” ale identității basarabene la începutul secolului al XX-lea: mobilizare etnică, românitate incertă și construcție națională într-o provincie de frontieră
”Alternative Scenarios” of Bessarabian Identity in the Early Twentieth Century: Ethnic Mobilization, Uncertain Romanian-ness and Nation-Building in a Borderland Province

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the various forms of resistance to and / or non-involvement in strategies of national mobilization in early-20th century Bessarabia, as well as the alternative identity projects articulated by local elites. The region was the object of rival claims to inclusion in the Russian imperial and Romanian national space, with each of the two alternative centers competing for the loyalty of the local population. However, the extent to which the Bessarabian population responded to these signals and messages was rather limited. Early 20th-century Bessarabian society, and especially its nobility, clergy, and intellectual strata were slow in responding to nationalist signals coming both from the Russian center and from its Romanian rival. This was obvious, on the one hand, in the continuing presence of traditional discourses of dynastic loyalty and religious conformity and, on the other, in a number of “alternative” identity projects that produced variations on and creatively manipulated the mainstream versions of national(izing) narratives. Rather than simply illustrating the “fluidity of identities” usually associated with many East European borderlands, these phenomena also point to the difficult negotiation that the local elites entered in order to meet the challenge of modern politics. Far from rejecting mass politics in general, their representatives were actively seeking alternative models that did not necessarily involve the nation as a main point of reference. In general, the national message, in all its guises, had little impact before 1917, despite the fears expressed by imperial authorities. Local voices in the field of identity politics really emerged only during the revolution of 1917, amid a fluid and violent landscape defined by the experience of war. The nationalizing impact of the war and the oscillation of Bessarabian political elites between various projects of autonomy, federalism and nation-building also changed the visions of collective identities in the region.

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