Russians, Romanians, or Neither? Mobilization of Ethnicity and “National Indifference” in Early 20th-Century Bessarabia

This article discusses the various forms of resistance to and/or noninvolvement in strategies of national mobilization in early 20th-century Bessarabia. 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 limited at best. I specifically focus on three groups that, although the most politically active at the local level, were also reluctant to react to nationalist discourses and visions generated at the center: the majority of the Bessarabian intelligentsia, which was thoroughly integrated into the imperial system; politically conscious members of the local clergy, some of whom created a peculiar version of local “patriotism” explicitly opposed to modern nationalist propaganda; and the local nobility, which viewed its political role in terms of dynastic loyalty and conservative social values. I also discuss attempts to attract the local Romanian-speaking peasantry to Russian monarchist and right-wing organizations, which succeeded to a much greater extent than similar efforts by nationalist activists. This illustrates, on the one hand, the ambiguity and uncertainty of the local population’s self-identification and, on the other, the multiple forms that “national indifference” could take in the Russian borderlands before World War I.

Imperial Policies and Ethnic Mobilization in Early 20th-Century Bessarabia

The use of “national indifference” as an analytical category raises some important methodological questions. As Tara Zahra makes clear in her seminal article introducing the concept, “tensions between nationalist aspirations and popular responses to their demands often propelled political change and radicalization in modern east central Europe.”¹ In other words, national indifference becomes meaningful only when a significant tension or open conflict exists between nationalist discourses claiming the allegiance of a group and the reluctance of the latter to respond to national stimuli. This emphasis on tension, conflict, and (lack of) response is particularly illuminating, as it allows us to distinguish between national indifference as such and a prenational or protonationalist stage of a group’s collective identification.² To further refine her argument, Zahra insists that “far from being a premodern was often relic, national indifference a response to modern mass politics.”³ This notion thus seems, in a sense, secondary in comparison to the emergence of national discourses, always following in the footsteps of already articulated visions of the nation. This impression is also reinforced by Zahra’s own contention that “national indifference is … a negative and nationalist category,” ultimately valid only “in the eyes of the nationalist beholder.”⁴ The “imagined noncommunities” created as a result of this negative and exclusive definition usually refer to people “in-between,” who cannot be easily categorized in terms of national belonging or who refuse to accept the national categories imposed from above. The implicit assumption here is not simply that the group in question is isolated, premodern, or “backward,” but that, although fully aware of and affected by national propaganda, it displays a conscious rejection of the national model. Surely, this rejection can assume many forms, including localism, regionalism, the primacy of religious allegiances, and ostensible traditionalism. The main justification for using this category stems from the fact that these groups were already functioning within a conceptual universe permeated by national vocabulary, references, and discourses but refused to engage with them. I follow this approach in discussing the Bessarabian case. I argue that in certain imperial borderlands (including Bessarabia) mass nationalist politics and national indifference coexisted and had a simultaneous impact on the communities involved. While admittedly stretching Zahra’s definition to its limits, I posit that national indifference was especially relevant for those borderlands where nationalism came “from above” (i.e., from the imperial/national center) and confronted societies where the cultural gap between the elite and the masses was particularly salient. Thus the elite was forced to adapt rather quickly to the new ideological context, while the rest of the population was drawn into political modernity slowly...