New Horizons from Prague to Bucharest: Ethnonational Stereotypes and Regionalist Self-Perceptions in Interwar Slovakia and Transylvania

Abstract

The paper outlines how the portrayal of “us” and “them” changed during the interwar period in the relational web from Prague to Bucharest. The collapse of the Monarchy had shaken some of the foundations of national self-perceptions and brought to the fore hitherto insignificant groups either as active protagonists of politics of identity or as significant others. Nevertheless, the old representations of each other had changed less markedly. The real novelty of the period was that the appearance of Hungarian minorities and their politics of identity enabled the creation of some temporary group constructs that transcended traditional ethnic boundaries and redefined ethnicity on a more region-centred basis