The mioritic nation – an alternative approach to Moldovan national identity

Abstract

Moldova has been widely argued to be a failed nation-building project, with two national identity discourses coexisting within Moldovan society and amongst Moldovan elites: Romanianism and Moldovanism. Challenging the dominance of these discourses in the literature, this article argues that in spite of its absence from the nationalism debate in Moldova, the ballad Mioriţa is a key element for the Moldovan articulation of national identity. The analysis employs a discursive approach focused on language as a constituting phenomenon and draws from Mioriţa's appeal to the grass roots level, its banality in day-to-day life, and, more importantly, its promotion by Moldovan cultural elites. This latter part focuses specifically on the writings of novelist Ion Druţă. Druţă places Mioriţa at the very center of his construction of Moldovan national identity. He highlights its links with Moldovan history, culture, religious thinking, and geographical space, both reproducing a structure similar to the two national identity discourses, Romanianism and Moldovanism, and building on their similarities. But more importantly, Druţă's representation of national identity sheds light on the possibility of an all-encompassing Moldovan identity, overcoming the existing cleavage, and a series of mechanisms that can be employed to achieve this.

Keywords:

• Moldova
• Mioriţa
• national identity
• banality
• religion
• Ion Druţă

Acknowledgements

An early version of this paper has been presented at the Aberystwyth-Lancaster Postgraduate Conference 2013, Manchester University, 5–7 June 2013. I would like to thank the panelists there and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments. Based on their suggestions, two different papers have been developed from that initial draft, this one and another analyzing the links between Miorita and representations of Moldovan passivity. I am grateful for the generous support offered by the ESRC for this research through a +3 PhD grant.

Notes

1. Alecu Russo and Vasile Alecsandri are two of the cultural and political leaders of the 1848 revolution in the Principality of Moldova.

2. The data have been collected in the state language of Moldova and may not be representative of the 30% national minorities in Moldova, such as Russian, Ukrainian, Găgăuz, etc. Further research is required in order to asses Mioriţa's importance for these groups. Nevertheless, the reiteration of mioritic discourses by political actors, especially the Communists, as representatives of the minorities’ vote, suggests the wide appeal of the symbol, across all ethnic groups in Moldova.

3. Transhumance is the seasonal movement of shepherds and livestock between mountains and lowlands.

4. The Alliance for European Integration was the governing alliance (2009–2013). It consisted of three parties: the liberal-democrats, the democrats, and the liberals. For the first year (i.e. up until the November 2010 election) it also included AMN, the Our Moldova Alliance.

5. See Ciscel (2006) for an ample discussion of the socio-linguistics of the use of Romanian/Moldovan in the Republic of Moldova.

6. A series of words in Romanian are synonymous with the English “nation,” the most used in Druţă’s writings being neam and popor (people).

7. Suman and chimir in the original, two important parts of traditional wear.

8. The Moldovan Christian-Democrat Party (PPCD) is a centrist party in Moldova, focused around the figure of Iurie Roșca. During the 1990s it had a strong Romanianist and pro-unification discourse. Nevertheless, in 2005 the party informally supported the Communist government and its national identity articulation shifted to a more Moldovanist stance.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic Research Council through a +3 PhD scholarship.