Identity and Otherness in Interwar Chișinau

Abstract

Proposing the image of the other in the interwar Chisinau, we set out to decode the ways in which the people of Chisinau reflected in the mirror of the other, so that we came to address the aspects of citizens and foreigners in relation to the city, the old and new elites as well as the periphery of the city, national-ethnic minorities and internal and external immigrants, including refugees, as well as the marginals of society. From what has been presented, we can see that Chisinau from the beginning of the interwar period had an identity mark, with claims of greatness, derived from the physiognomy of the former tsarist empire. Spectacular in its special way of being, Chisinau had those facets that still reminded (from the wide streets, the multi-ethnic spectrum of the population) of the existence of a cosmopolitan community detached from a multicultural urban space so contrasting with the periphery of the city, completely monolithic from an ethnic and cultural point of view. Gradually, during the more than 20 years of Romanian administration, Chisinau has woven into its history, through the rise of the new and the decline of the old elites, characteristics of Romanianness and new trends. The space of rediscovery, perhaps even the beloved city of so many nationalities, from Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, to Armenians and other communities, Chisinau revealed the experience of the daily difficulties of being different in relation to the rest of the cities within Romania as a whole.