The Moldavian Csangos as sub-culture

At an academic conference in Bucharest a few years ago, I attempted to disentangle the identities of the Moldavian Csangos, a ‘hyphenated community’ of Romanian and Hungarian-speaking Roman Catholics living in eastern Romania, from the worn-out debates over their putative ethnicity and nationality. After my presentation, during which I explained the identity and history of the Csangos, as a community or group defying a singular ethnic let alone national categorisation, a distinguished Romanian historian and public intellectual asked, in no uncertain terms: ‘Yes, yes. But, please tell us – Are the Csangos Romanian or Hungarian?’ This chapter applies the concept of ‘sub-culture’ to the case study of the Csangos. For over a century, debates about the Csangos’ collective identity have centred on traits, such as ethnicity and nationality, traits that Joseph Rothschild has characterised as simultaneously plastic, variegated, and originally ascriptive, and all too easily politicised in the fertile historical and demographic circumstances of East-Central Europe. ¹ Historically, both in common parlance and within the professional fields of history, sociology, ethnography, and anthropology, this community has been identified, understood, and framed an ‘ethnic minority’ or ‘religious minority’ or both. The limitations of the terms ‘minority’ and ‘ethnic’, especially in the cultural and linguistic tapestry that is East-Central Europe, are by now well known to both specialist and non-specialists on the region. With some exceptions, ² claims about the ethnic origin or the national belonging and allegiance of the Moldavian Csangos continue to dominate the historiography and scholarly discussions about the community. ³