In D. Draghicescu's terms, this transactional spirit ("Cough up more, sir!" – "Knock some off, mister!", as a folk saying goes) is the legacy of the Orient, a stamp of the Levant on our past, present and, presumably, future. In this key, the transaction points to a polymorphous fairground, that may be the weekend village fair (where the price set by the seller does not necessarily reflect the merchandise on sale, but the status of the buyer!) or a political stage, whatever the regime. This type of transactional spirit seems fully integrated in Romanians' traditional political culture. To tell the truth, it is not easy at all to track back this multifaceted trait: is this a salutary strategy developed by the people to survive throughout history? Or is it the more recent fruit of the gap between form and content, specific to us after the 1848 revolution, a gap incriminated by Titu Maiorescu, yet seen in many more nuances by Eugen Lovinescu in the mid-1920s?Romanian political life was thoroughly impregnated with this transactional spirit from its very dawn. Whether it was – in the late 19th century – the Conservatives and the Liberals, or – between the World Wars – the Liberals and the Peasant Party, the political actors of Romania constantly depended not only on the relations they had with the legitimizing body of voters, but also on the (negotiated) relations with the arbitrator of the political game – the king. Of course, we know mostly from the caricatures offered by literature where this transactional spirit may lead in politics – some refer to Eminescu's journalism alone, others prefer the Caragiale-Musatescu line. Let alone the appeal of these testimonies, one must admit that, in history, they were often blatantly contradicted: it was the self-same Liberals, whose versatility (with Eminescu) or snobbish self-sufficiency (with Caragiale) kindled the irony of the more rigorous Conservatives, that played the main role in modernizing the Romanian state. Their out-and-out transactional spirit, disavowed by their adversaries in the short term, yielded the most beneficial results in the long term. Is this a sign that they were speculating a perennial national feature rather than a momentary course of events in society?The monument of integrity that, according to dogma, the party of Romanian communists was supposed to embody also proved, once risen to power, a perfect speculator of Romanian political culture. However foreign to the nature of Romanians, but taking advantage of a certain tendency to accept the authority, characteristic of the same national political culture, communism was quickly contaminated by this transactional spirit as well. The struggle for power from the early 1950s, won by Gheorghiu-Dej, combined force and transaction. Later, in 1965, Dej's succession reminds of the same: Nicolae Ceausescu was not elected by his older comrades because they hoped he would be more easy to manipulate, as Ion Gh. Maurer hinted in the 1990s, but because he promised he would keep the privileges of the old Dejist guard intact.And the story of our indigenous transactional spirit is not over. Something else seems to me more important. Without being, in itself, an inevitably malign feature, this transactional spirit keeps the spirit of the contract away from us. As it is rather a "transactional" society, Romania has always had problems in becoming a "contractual" society. Because of that, across epochs and regimes, matters are constantly negotiated and renegotiated, deadlines are not complied with, and so on – and this does not bother a soul, because we all believe in a periodical transaction rather than in a contract that we may perceive as a constraint. Ziarul de duminica, 2002
by Adrian Cioroianu
