Somewhere in the faded memory of history textbooks and libraries, a distant image of the Assembly gathered in the two Principalities in 1857 is preserved. Nearby are elegant gentlemen in frock coats and peasants who wear their own clothes, without ethnographic ostentatiousness. each other. The photo that has reached us preserves the image of two countries that will soon become one. Custom sofas are part of this delicate and labor-intensive process of invention in Romania.

Special assemblies were also the space from which one of those enduring myths arose, entering the legend of the school and the circulation of the general place of propaganda. Mosh Ioan Roate, the MP for Pontaş in the Moldavian Assembly, is praised above all as a symbol of the village wisdom nurtured by Cusa, Mr. Uniri. For more than a century, in the regime of people’s democracy, he is remembered as a sign of the national genius, betrayed and deceived by the predatory elites of the bourgeois-landlords. His modest house in Vrancha becomes a place of pilgrimage for schoolchildren.

The ad hoc sofas are one of those moments when the idea of ​​patriotism is tangible and concrete: Tito Mayorescu gave them the position of the center of the canon, the point around which, prophetically, the effort of national revival is organized. Collected in a collection of documents coordinated by DA Sturds, the documents of the special meetings are proof of the intelligence with which the local elite imagined, on a bipartisan basis, the plan for the evolution of the common homeland. Ten years before 1866, the Special Assemblies embodied this hope we call Romania.

Future

The special assemblies, convened on the basis of the decisions of the Paris Conference, end a decade of political ice age in the two principalities. After almost ten years since 1848, mountain shepherds can return home. The Russian protectorate was abolished as a result of the Crimean victory.

The decade after 1848, 1857 marks the triumph of Europeanization of the principalities. The principalities are no longer a distant exotic space left in the north, they are drawn into the web of interests and rivalries of the West. What emigrants hoped for since 1848 is a confirmed reality. The discussion about Romanians is a European discussion.

Special sofas are a sign of paradox. Conceived as assemblies of democratized states, with a division into strata and social segments visible from the electoral regime, they approach the ideal proposed by the documents of 1848. They are assemblies of democratized states, as noted by G.I. Bretianu, organizations which, prevailing among the educated and secured elements, included in their composition voices that were not paid attention to until now, village voices. Hence their uniqueness to the extent that their pre-modern architecture allows access to a gathering of those who will be eliminated through the census mode game.

They reunite in their structure the political families born as a result of the action of 1848. The pacification imposed in Paris in 1856 obliges the dialogue between the factions that arose at the time of Paschopism. Radical liberals, moderate liberals, conservatives – all later ideological segments are in this laboratory of ad hoc Assemblies of ideas.

In their intellectual diversity, the Assemblies evoke the prolific eclecticism of the French assembly that would debate the 1791 constitution. The sofas offer, in contrast to the radicalization that leads to terror, the image of a politics of compromise and negotiation. : the mountain utopian radicalism of 1848 is removed in favor of a search for agreement and solidarity.

Union and homeland

Resume John’s tests. K. Filitti, The meeting is a sign of the reunification of branches of the national party, branches divided by different readings, given the pace of evolution and progress of the principalities. Ioan C. Filitti’s remarks are worth repeating to remove vulgar sociological determinism. What the Romanians are achieving is the abolition of privilege through the votes of those who belong to this privileged segment. In 1857, on the right, as well as on the left, a sense of the urgency of modernization appeared. Both assemblies put an end to the old regime by their votes. Before the elimination of privileges is guaranteed by the Paris Convention, this desire is sanctified by the Romanians. Patriotism means the assumption of legal equality as the basis of citizenship.

Special assemblies were, especially in Moldova, much larger than a simple consultative body. Their mission was to develop and discuss the question of an authentic constitutional order. Legal equality is only one of these elements defining Europeanization. The ultimate goal of the Desires of the Two Assemblies was to establish a regime that would reject corruption, arbitrariness and inequality. The memory of regulatory rule with a whole range of excesses served as a negative benchmark. Constitutionalization was an option motivated by a unanimous rejection of the absolutist and mercenary model of public administration. Consensus provides a common understanding of patriotism: the Motherland exists only as long as laws, not people, rule. A common denominator among political factions is the assumption of modernization as a set of ideas and practices.

The coalition of 1866, which intended to remove Cusa, achieved the application of this plan of regeneration, dominated by the article of a foreign prince on the throne of a finally united Romania. The years of Kuza’s rule proved the need to return to the wishes formulated in 1857. Representative constitutional government, separation of powers, limitation of arbitrariness, all this was inseparable from the final gesture of bringing a monarch from the ruling dynasty of Europe. A foreign prince was the very guarantee of the existence of a European homeland. Ad hoc sofas clearly articulate this desire. – Read the rest of the article on Contributors.ro