Nation-building and mass schooling of ethnic minorities on the Romanian and Soviet peripheries (1918–1940): a comparative study of Bessarabia and Transnistria

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the local responses to mass schooling in the rural areas of Romanian Bessarabia and Soviet Transnistria (1918–1940). Both Romania and the USSR aimed at deeply transforming the local populations. Romania implemented schooling to assimilate ethnic minorities within the model of a nationalizing state, while the USSR adopted an inconsistent nationalizing policy, determinedly imposing compulsory education for all children. The resistance to schooling among ethnic minorities was less intense in Transnistria than in Bessarabia. In both cases, the state authorities abandoned, in the late 1930s, the schooling in minority languages for the benefit of the titular nationalities.

Trial registration: Netherlands National Trial Register identifier: ntr-.

KEYWORDS:

• Primary education
• Romania
• USSR
• ethnic minorities
• nation-building

Acknowledgements

I thank the editors of this special issue Samuel Foster and Olena Palko, and my friend and colleague Andrei Cusco, who provided feedback and insight on previous drafts of this paper, although they may not agree with all of its interpretations. I also thank the very helpful comments of the two anonymous reviewers. And I thank the Humboldt Foundation for making this research possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible by Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung [grant number MDA 1209327 GF-E].

Notes on contributors

Petru Negura

Petru NEGURA is currently a Humboldt fellow at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg, Germany. Negura held his PhD in Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He authored the book Ni héros, ni traîtres. Les écrivains moldaves face au pouvoir soviétique sous Staline (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2009) and co-authored with Irina Livezeanu a chapter about “Borderlands, Provinces, Regionalism and Culture in East-Central Europe” for the volume Regionalism and Modern Europe, eds. Xosé M. Núñez Seixas and Eric Storm, at Bloombsbury Press, 2019. Petru Negura is also a lecturer at the Free International University of Moldova and researcher at the Institute of Legal, Political and Sociological Research in Chisinau. His academic interests deal with the sociology / social history of intellectuals, of public education and social welfare in Eastern Europe and the former USSR.