Historical research should be guided by the desire to uncover the truth, or else it is just propaganda. However, the mere elimination of dishonest presentations of the past does not always produce a single truthful “story”. More often than not the work of historians leads to debates about the nature of their case studies, which are only rarely solved by the mere elucidation of facts. In the age of pluralism, methodology becomes of primary concern. Therefore, the current transition in the study of Eastern European History must be equally guided by the search for hidden truths of the past, and by the search for new methods of constructing research and corresponding presentations of findings. Moreover, it appears that the new generation of scholars has the burden of finding its own way towards accommodating the need for new methods, insofar as there are few local traditions to follow in this regard. Yet, works like the quoted study of Igor Casu on the politics of nationality in the Soviet Moldova inspire optimism through the indirect evidence of enthusiasm and honest search for new ways of historical analysis. Step by step, the new historiography is conquering its own domain.
Nationality Policy in Soviet Moldova is a book of limited availability to the larger audience of the Central and Eastern Europe, primarily because it is printed in Romanian. Moreover, its unstated but transparent goal to reveal the inevitability of the latest geopolitical choices of Moldovans imposes certain limitations on the possibility of generalizing its conclusions to other countries. But its methodology makes it particularly important for the scholars from the entire region – as an effort to go beyond mainstream tendencies, as well as an indication of the need to go even further on this path.
Dr. Casu was perhaps uniquely qualified to write a synthetic work on the history of the nationality policy in Moldova, having an enviable access to relevant literature written by Moldovan, Russian, Romanian and Western scholars on the subject (which he clearly studied minutiously). His preliminary research revealed that, to date, there is no coherent and comprehensive work on the subject. The absolute majority of the available material is either biased in its selection of primary sources, or focused on narrow aspects and short periods of time. A complete understanding of the Soviet politics on nation building in Moldova requires a balanced longitudinal study, which would discuss this process “from cradle to grave”. Moreover, it would have to include cultural, ethnodemographic, linguistic, psychological, as well as economic dimensions. The undertaking may seem to be too ambitious, unless the author manages to find a suitable way to structure the material. In this case, the formula was generated by the epistemological views of the author. Casu expressed from the very beginning his conviction (backed by a quote from the discourses of Paul Valery) that in every case there must be facts on which everyone must (and do) agree. Regardless of the debates that surround them, certain events occurred in history beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore, the key to presenting a comprehensive and objective history of the processes under discussion was found by the author in the method derived from the previous assertion. In other words, he engaged in a extensive comparative study of sources, and filtered out all the dubious, or tendentious elements from the final presentation. The result was an advanced textbook which narrated the events grouped in chapters by aspects (cultural, linguistic, ethnodemographic, economic, psychological), supporting every sentence with rich footnotes and disclosing every gap in the data that was available.
This work was a huge advancement towards objectivity, but fell short of reaching its goal, because of the obvious tribute it had to pay to the Soviet tradition of historic lore. According to the latter, objectivity is taken for granted not only in the real life events, but also in the mind of the historian. A researcher is supposed to be a professional who has superior knowledge on the events that he or she is selflessly investigating. That superior knowledge makes one an “authority” on the subject, which means that his or her choice of material and even opinions is not subject to questioning, given sufficient evidence (footnotes) of honesty. Therefore, the majority of works are expected to represent some sort of storytelling with footnotes (a modern version of medieval chronicles). All the analytical effort of the author is left out of the final narrative, in order to preserve its stylistic beauty. As a corollary, the objectivity – which this encyclopedic work so much aspired to – proved to be elusive for two reasons. First, the choice of material and the comments allowed in the text betray the unavoidable subjectivity of the author. Hence, the text is sprinkled with qualifiers like “unfortunately”, “luckily”, “disastrous”, “only a few realized the necessity to”, which even reveal the occasional emotional involvement of the author in the narrative. Moreover, some examples are directly quoted as personal experiences, which may or may not be representative. Second, in some cases the national element of the Soviet politics was insufficiently developed because of lack of “objective” facts, thus arresting analytical efforts on specific issues. For example, the concentration of the heavy industry in Transnistria (the region named “Pridnestrovie” in Russian) is widely perceived as an element of the Soviet nationality policy in Moldova. Yet, in the absence of archival documents to back that, the author could neither make a strong statement on this issue, nor make a call for further research, because these are methodological comments which do not fit into the overall narrative. The result was an insufficient explanation of the economic component of the nationality policy.
Perhaps, this burden of the past traditions compelled Dr. Casu to interpret literally the statement that “history is constantly in the need for being rewritten”, i.e. as the need to produce new textbooks (“chronicles”) on a regular basis. According to this implicit view, research is being done in order to generate revisions of the earlier narratives, with every subsequent narrative being closer and closer to the final truth. Therefore, his work read as whole is supposed to be one such intermediary link in the evolutionary chain of historiography on its particular subject of study. Or, should it be the only work that survives one thousand years from now, it would be an invaluable document on the topic, due to its inclusiveness. Otherwise, it is only the best account possible in our days of the history of national building of Moldova.
One may ask: why is it so bad to have good narratives? The answer would have to point out the acute counterefficiency of this method. First of all, the historian does an undisclosed amount of analytical work that is left out of the text, producing – however you put it – just another version of history (defined as a succession of events). Then, the reader has to read carefully the entire book, chapter by chapter, without missing anything, in order to grasp all the facts, memorize it all, and only then attempt to analyze independently the relationship between various parts of the book in order to get an understanding of the process under discussion. And the next coming historian, in order to promote the most recent discoveries, has to do the whole thing all over again. This is not just a matter of focussing the narrative merely on the events, or on the mentalities of a given epoch. It is rather about a methodological deficiency that can not keep up with the development of the historical discipline.
At this stage, one can only speculate about the future methodological profile of East European historiography. However, the analysis of Dr. Casu’s remarkable work points out to two possible developments, at least with regard to major synthetic undertakings. The first is related to the problem of subjectivity. As revealed by the collapse of the Soviet analytical barriers, freedom of expression is a necessary, but not sufficient ingredient of fruitful historical work. The new problem that needs to be overcome is that of competing interpretations with equal claims to objectivity. Therefore, an historian with claims to advancing our understanding of a complex subject may have to shift methodological explanations from the status of “hints” in the introduction and footnotes to the essence of the text. Rather than merely depicting the facts, or even subjecting them to original analysis, the author would have to discuss explicitly the various sources employed. The reader cannot be expected to believe the text because of the “authority” of its writer. The burden of proof must be on the shoulders of the historian. In order to give credibility to the argument, and to facilitate further progress in research on the same issues, the beauty of the narration will probably have to be sacrificed for the dry rigor of methodology. To be exact, the Soviet historians did engage in comparative analysis of sources, particularly when trying to discredit their colleagues from the “bourgeois” camp. But, instead of representing professional debates, those writings were most often ideologically charged pamphlets. In contrast, this review means to encourage the attempts to focus historiography specifically on methodological aspects in justifying the validity of proposed arguments.
The second likely development, closely related to the first, will be to change the “architecture” of the texts. Event-driven expositions require a grouping of material by aspects. For example, in the case of nationality studies, one chapter might tell the story of events related to culture, another could deal with economic factors, yet another would discuss demographic developments, etc. But once the narration is traded for the explicit interpretation of sources, there appear to exist major incentives towards “going analytic” all the way. Thus, instead of hoping that the readers would “see” the conclusions based on the skillful exposition of events, the authors may opt for an explicit discussion of their own interpretation, by structuring the material accordingly. Given that there are strong interconnections among various aspects of a problem, the analysis may be better if structured according to the conclusions of the research, rather than its premises. For example, the study of nationality politics could be grouped into chapters discussing: a) the problem of distinguishing the outcomes of the nationality agenda from the effects that were endemic to the Soviet system, even in the absence of such a policy; b) the conflicting tendencies and interests within the named agenda, which influenced the outcomes; c) population migration as a result of cultural, political, economic and psychological variables; d) the striking difference between outcomes in rural and urban areas; e) the role of local resistance to central policies etc. In this way, the researcher would succeed both in justifying his or her position by disclosing the analytical work done with the data sources, and in conveying an original interpretation (or a better understanding) of the processes under discussion. History would only have to gain if the links among various variables that had major consequences were discusses explicitly. After all, if our present is so complex, why should we expect our past to fit into a unidirectional (though multistranded) narrative?
To be consistent, we must stress that methodology is not immune from the presumption of pluralism. In other words, many other methodological approaches are possible, and may even become predominant in the region. But one thing is certain: as long as the quest for new methods is being pursued, the science of history will flourish. In other words, now is a great time to be historian.