--- In [email protected], "Amana Ferro"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Eronat. Grupul etnic constituit de evrei se defineste prin limba,
cultura,
> traditie, religie, si nu doar prin cea din urma. Cei convertiti la
iudaism nu se numesc evrei
Si cei convertiti la alte religii, de exemplu la ortodoxie(vezi Par.
Nicolae Steinhardt) nu mai intra acolo?Dar evreii atei initiatori ai
comunismului ca Trostki ori activistii comunisti de frunte trimisi
in Romania ca Burah Teskovici(nume schimbat in Teohari Georgescu),
Brucan, Sasa Bardenko(schimat in Alexandru Barladeanu), Ana Pauker,
Nikolski, Neulander(devenit Roman) si alte zeci/sute(cu nume
schimbate/romanizate)...
Daca permiteti, pentru ca imi amintesc cum cu alta ocazie ati scris
(scuze daca gresesc...) ca sunteti aromanca dupa mama(btw, parca
apartenenta la grupul etnic evreu se considera dupa mama), pentru
dvs sau alte persoane interesate, un articol:
The Albanian Aromanians´ Awakening
Identity Politics and Conflicts in
Post-Communist Albania
by Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
Editor's Note: This article is adapted from a paper published in
March 1999 by the European Centre for Minority Issues as ECMI
Working Paper # 3, and is reprinted with the kind permission of the
author. All copyrights remain with the author.
Over a decade ago Ernest Gellner claimed that
[T]here is a very large number of potential nations on earth. Our
planet also contains room for a certain number of independent or
autonomous political units. On any reasonable calculation, the
former number (of potential nations) is probably much, much larger
than that of possible viable states. (Gellner 1983:2)
Aromanians or Vlachs define themselves as a people, basing ideas of
ethnic or cultural cohesion on criteria of language, religion,
descent, common history and former socio-professional
specialisation. Thus, Aromanians certainly qualify as one of
the "sleeping beauty nations" as coined by Gellner. A description
provided in 1900 by Sir Charles Eliot under the pseudonym "Odysseus"
in his travel account "Turkey in Europe" (and brought to my
attention by Nandris 1987:27), still seems amazingly valid in giving
an impression of Aromanian omnipresence in the Balkans:
[The Aromanians] remind us of one of those ingenious pictures in
which an animal or human face is concealed so as not to be obvious
on first inspection, though when once seen it appears to be the
principal feature of the drawing. In the same way one may live and
travel in the Balkan lands without seeing or hearing anything of the
Vlahs, until one's eyes are opened. Then one runs the risk of going
to the opposite extreme and thinking, like Roumanian patriots, that
most of the inhabitants of Macedonia [as well as of Greece and
Albania] are Vlahs in disguise. (Odysseus 1900: 409 ff)
Today, many thousands of Balkan Aromanians still live quite
compactly in at least three south-east European state formations: in
northern Greece, Macedonia (FYROM) and southern Albania; and there
are still traces of Vlach-Aromanians and pockets of Aromanian
populations in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Romania. Early and more
recent documentation of Balkan life suggests total populations
between a couple of thousand, ten thousand or up to a few hundred
thousand Aromanians in these states. In Albania [see Map], they were
recently estimated at about 200,000 by the English scholar Tom
Winnifrith who is widely regarded as a most impartial observer. This
figure seems to fill the huge gap between the figures concerning the
Greek minority in Albania given by Albanian sources at about 60,000
and the Greek official statistics of "Greeks" in Albania of 300 -
400,000. In the national Greek view, Hellenic cultural heritage is
seen as passed on through Byzantine culture to the Greek Orthodox
religion today. Religion, as a criterion of classification,
automatically places all the Albanian Aromanians, and also those
people who call themselves Albanian Orthodox, into the "Greek
minority."
Internationally, they are known as "Vlachs" or as "Aromanians." The
latter term is derived from their self-designation as Aromân or
Rromâne (or Armân or Rrâmân) which indicates their Romance mother
tongue which gives the Romanians reasons to regard them as part of
their own culture. Albanians call them either Vlleh or Çoban
(meaning: "pastoralist") which indicates their original socio-
professional specialization, or Llaci-face (similar to the Serbian
designation Zinzar which has an offensive touch and is derived from
the sound of their language).
In Albanian communist times they were not recognised as a separate
minority group, officially considered to be almost completely
assimilated and hence absorbed into the population statistics. One
might hypothesise that the Aromanian identity continued to exist,
latently, during the communist period. However, among my
interviewees, there were people who only learned that they
were "Aromanian" four or five years ago, as well as others who felt
that their Aromanian identity was suppressed, endangered or lost
during the communist period.
In the early post-communist transition period a vivid Aromanian
ethnic movement emerged in Albania. The slumber of a "sleeping
beauty nation" ended and it became part of a recent global Balkan
Aromanian initiative. In 1997, the Freiburg "Union für aromunische
Sprache und Kultur" under the leadership of Vasile Barba, a well-
known diaspora activist, succeeded in leading the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe, without any Greek participation
however, to formulate a recommendation for the protection of
Aromanian culture and language in its host-countries (Council of
Europe 1997). To follow Gellner's mythic imagery, it will be the
objective of this paper to define who, or what, was the "prince" who
gave the kiss of life to Aromanians in Albania.
The Aromanian Question and Assimilation
In fact, the new ethnic movement in many respects resembles a turn-
of-the-century phenomenon. Without having received much attention in
South East European history, there had been a short-lived but quite
successful Aromanian national movement which culminated in their
recognition as an Aromanian millet ("nation") in May 1905 in
Constantinople with the support of the Great Powers (prominently by
Austria-Hungary). The "Aromanian Question" in the period from the
middle of the last century until 1905 was described brilliantly and
in great detail in a doctoral thesis in 1974 by Max Demeter Peyfuss,
an Austrian historian of partly Aromanian descent (Peyfuss 1974).
>From this thesis one can draw an understanding of the typical
structure of Balkan national movements; the leading actors of
identity politics who imported national ideas from urban centers
abroad (in this case mainly from Bucharest); how ethnically based
associations were founded; schools and education promoted, attempts
to develop a standardized written language and literacy programs
pursued; and popular traditions transformed into "folklore."
Among the reasons Peyfuss gives in order to explain why, despite all
this, the Aromanians still failed to form a separate nation-state,
are:
They were seeking independence within a frameworkthat of the
Ottoman Empirewhich itself was in the process of disintegration.
As a tool of Romanian nationalist Balkan politics competing mainly
with Greek agendas, they themselves were split in a destructive
conflict between either a pro-Romanian or a pro-Greek orientation.
Escalating violence imposed on Aromanians by Greek nationalists in
the Civil War and Balkan Wars emerged as a reaction to Romanian
propaganda activities and Romanian support for ethnic schools and
churches on Greek territory, and eventually suppressed any further
Aromanian separatist attempts.
Pro-Romanian Aromanian nationalists eventually sought emancipation
in the newly-formed Albanian nation-state while the others were
assimilated into the Greek nation and participated in the Greek
nationalist movement.
There were, however, very different attitudes among different groups
of Aromanians in relation to the national movements they had to cope
with. Those Aromanians who, well into this century, preserved their
socio-professional identity and continued to practice transhumant
pastoralism until the newly-founded nation-states "colonialized"
their territory and set up impermeable political borders, conceived
nationalism as counter-productive. As one old Albanian Aromanian
shepherd once explained to me, reflecting on his life: "We did not
need or want any nation because borders hindered our mobility
between winter and summer pastures" (1995, interview Vithkuqe).
On the other hand, many authors have pointed out how, "by melting
into their host nation," the Vlachs or Aromanians became "the best
Greeks," "the best Macedonians," and also the "best Albanians"
(though, due to Albanian isolationism during the communist period,
there was not much known until recently about the latter). Nicholas
Balamaci, a second generation member of the American diaspora, has
convincingly explained how integrating or identifying with the host
nation and taking part in its development proved to be an early road
to modernizationbesides turning out to be the road to assimilation
for former mountain Vlachs (Balamaci 1991).
In sedentarization, literacy programmes, and migration and
urbanisation processes, many former semi-transhumant mountain
pastoralists managed, polyglots as they were, to transform spatial
mobility into social mobility. They thus became part of the Balkan
bourgeoisie while participating in and promoting their respective
host-states' national movements. Thus, many national heroes referred
to in today's national historiography are known among Aromanians as
actually having been Aromanians, such as, for example, the former
Greek conservative party leader Averoff, orin the Albanian casethe
famous Frasheri Brothers, considered to be the most important
figures of the Albanian national movement. They originate from the
same Albanian village that the Albanian Aromanians also known
as "Frasherliote" (= people from Frasheri) are said to come from.
(Editor's note: the consonant "R" is sometimes transposed in
different forms of words in Aromanian, e.g., Samarina/Sarmaniatsi,
Frasheri/Farsherotsi.)
If a failed Aromanian national movement and a more or less forced
homogenization process in Albania have led to their assimilation,
certain questions arise. Why and how did Aromanian ethnicity emerge
with political transition in Albania? Can the re-emergence of
Aromanian ethnicity be seen as the result of transition, i.e. of re-
privatization, the new freedom of religion, the emergence of party
politics, globalization, or some other innovations in society? Does
a newly emphasized ethnicity prove beneficial in coping with the
difficult, novel realities, and under what conditions does it really
matter? When does it not? Finally, under what circumstances does an
emotional attachment develop and the newly discovered ethnicity
become "emotionally internalized" (cf. Verdery 1990)?
I would like to argue that the Albanian Aromanians' new emphasis of
their ethnicity can be seen as a pragmatic strategy of adjustment to
successes and failures in the Albanian political transition and also
to globalisation. In juxtaposition to Peyfuss's historical analysis
I would like to stress that, today, it is exactly the revitalisation
of the conflict between followers of a pro-Greek and a pro-Romanian
identification that serves to broaden the scope of options for
potential exploitation. In constructing antagonistic discourses
mirroring Romanian or, respectively, Greek world-views, Albanian
Aromanians manage to secure the future of their offspring and to
create new social positions for themselves.
Aromanian Identity Renaissance in Albania ("the Awakening")
In 1991, with the liberalization of the political situation in
Albania, the Aromanians started to organize themselves. Two
Aromanian men in Selenica (near the harbor city of Vlora, mid-
central Albania) and two in Korça (south-east Albania), all involved
in cultural work mainly through Albanian and Aromanian folk music,
working independently, began constructing a statute for an Aromanian
cultural association. They were then introduced through the then
Romanian ambassador in Tirana and worked together to found a common
association. The first Association of Aromanian Albanians was
recognized by the Albanian Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports in
October 1991 as a "cultural group," and as the second largest group
after the Albanians, but not as a "minority."
After this initial success, a first Congress of Albanian Aromanian
People was held. In addition to many Albanian Aromanians, a large
number of diaspora Aromanians from Macedonia, Romania, Greece,
Germany, France, and the USA participated in this conference.
Folklore groups performed and declarations emphasized the important
contributions of Aromanian people to culture and development in
Albania and elsewhere. Apparently, these events were meant to
stimulate pride and to stress the importance of a collective
identity. Hence, the Albanian Aromanians learned the so-
called "Aromanian National Anthem" at the first conference they were
able to organize and attend. Long known in the diaspora, this
anthem, a fiercely ethnicist nineteenth-century poem by Constantin
Belimace called "the will of the forefathers," calls for the
maintenance of the Romance language. Since this first conference,
many other conferences and folklore events have taken place on a
large scale.
Associations and Factions
In 1996 and 1997, there were branches of the Aromanian associations
founded in late 1991 in probably every city and many villages of
central and southern Albania. In many cities one could find at least
one local Aromanian association board, including a president, a vice-
president and a secretary. These cause some confusion to the outside
observer because there were often two parallel local associations
governed by different boards. This is due to a split in the first
association of 1991, resulting in legal registrations of new
Aromanian (or Vlach) associations in 1993 (Korça) and 1995 (Vlora)
and indicative of the fact that the followers of the initial
Selenica (Vlora) group stood in opposition to the initial Korça
group.
In fact, the registration documents of the different groups, as
collected in Vlora and Tirana in 1996 and 1997 show some interesting
irregularities. Comparing the lists of names of founding members,
the transfer of loyalty by some individuals becomes evident. By
moving from one association to another, these Aromanians chose to
switch from a pro-Romanian to a pro-Greek faction, and vice versa.
When some of them were interviewed, former power struggles over
positions in the associations were exposed. Aside from leadership
conflicts, the disagreements were indicated through giving slightly
different names and statutes to the evolving association. In 1995
and 1996, the Aromanian interviewees differentiated between a so-
called "pro-Greek" wing (or "Albanian Vlachs") with political as
well as cultural aims, and a "pro-Romanian" (or "Albanian
Aromanian") wing with explicitly non-political, cultural objectives.
There is a tendency among many members of the pro-Greek faction to
be active in, or supportive of, the Human Rights Party. This party
is the successor to the former politically dubious "Omonia," which
was said to have been in close contact with fundamentalist,
nationalistic Greek circles before the Greek president Kostas
Simitis came to power. Under Berisha's government, "Omonia" became
illegal and was banned (cf. Kadritzke 1998).
In contrast, many of the pro-Romanian followers based in Korça and
Tirana still remember the Romanian-supported Aromanian schools and
the Aromanian churches from personal experience in post-communist
times. They eagerly engage in the revival of these institutions,
giving Aromanian language courses to the youngsters and assisting
and supporting Aromanian church rituals. In teaching Aromanian,
missing words are consciously replaced by Romanian words, and
Romanian religious texts serve as a basis for the liturgy which is
also partly performed in either the Aromanian or the Albanian
language. Thus, as brought to my attention by Thede Kahl, the
factual existence of an original Aromanian liturgy (Liturghier
armînesc) from the beginning of the 18th century, discovered by Ilo
Mitkë-Qafëzezi in Korça and published in 1962 by Caragiu
Mariotseanu, is ignored. In recent years, this text has been
reprinted and circulated among Albanian Aromanians with the support
of the Aromanian diaspora, and can therefore be considered to be
known by the Aromanian church activists of Korça. However, the text
is printed in Greek letters, and therefore conceived of as alien by
this faction which exclusively refers to Latin writings. In this,
they reproduce another feature of the pre-communist pro-Romanian
movement among Balkan Aromanians. Like the Aromanian priest of
Korça, these pro-Romanian activists tended to identify with the
ruling Democratic Party since they felt grateful for their new
opportunities and were also supported by bilateral friendship ties
between Romania and Albania and presidents Berisha and Iliescu. With
the practical disintegration of Albania in 1997 and accompanying
immense disappointment with Berisha's Democratic party, many of
these former supporters leaned towards even more conservative,
monarchist parties which were left as the only alternative to
the "Democrats" or the "Socialists."
Both groups construct discourses defining their ethnic identity in
terms of their either Greek or Romanian preference.
"Discursive interfaces"
Romanian scholars (cf. as a classic: Capidan 1937; Papahagi 1932)
and also members of the Aromanian diaspora in the Boston area in the
USA, Germany and France classify the Albanian Aromanians among the
so-called Macedo-Romanian or Southern-Danube Romance culture. Simply
summarised, they base this cultural concept on linguistic evidence
that the Aromanian language is a Romanian dialect. Second, it is
based on the conception of historical continuity from the Thracians
or Dacians. Many of my Albanian Aromanian interviewees agree with
this, although with the slight variation of extending the idea to
include the ancient Illyrian tribes. The idea of claiming direct
descent from the Illyrians is taken from Albanian national
historiography and makes the Albanian Aromanians "perfect"
Albanians. In short, the Aromanian people are believed to be the
descendants of various ancient romanized autochthonous tribes which
were dispersed throughout South East Europe over time.
Actors of the pro-Romanian wing, however, consciously avoid taking
into account the idea of any possible relation to the ancient
Hellenes. They say the ancient Greeks were "of no importance, they
lived only around Athens, on the Peleponnesos and on the islands."
In some villages, I also heard a variant that Aromanians once came
from Romania through emigration. People of this faction feelas some
of my interviewees saida kind of "nostalgia for Romania," where
the "old culture" is preserved, and where they easily understand the
language. Historically, there were also commercial links between
bourgeois Albanian Aromanian traders and sedentary Aromanian
craftsmen of prosperous southern Albanian cities with their
counterparts in Romania until the Second World War. The pro-Romanian
faction still remembers this connection from their family histories.
At the same time, they always emphasise their patriotic feelings
towards Albania. They proudly point out that the leading figures of
the Albanian national movement were Aromanians. One of the
interviewees in 1996 showed me a copy of a map of an old
nationalistic Albanian book from 1913. The copy I received was
called "The True Albania". Later I learned that it derived from the
work of the first academic Albanian geographer Ahmet Gashi. A
similar original ethnic map was titled "Ethnic Albania" where
Albania extends far into Greek territory, as far south as Preveza.
These maps would add today's Greek Epiros to Albania as well as
Kosovo.
In contrast, leaders of the "pro-Greek" faction explained to me that
Aromanians are romanized Hellenes. This view is also shared for
example by the Greek scholar Achilleas Lazarou (1976, 1994) whose
papers are translated and published by this Albanian Aromanian
faction; by the Institute for "North Epiros Studies" in Joannina;
and by many Orthodox priests on the Greek side of the border. In
1994 I was given a map by a Greek priest from the border area which
showed Greece extending far into Albanian territory up to the
Shkumbin river near Tirana. This is also the space where the Greek
minority of Albania is said to be situated. A leader of the Albanian
Aromanian pro-Greek faction, confronted with the arguments of his
counterparts, once simply asked me: "Did Romania exist already 2000
years ago?"
Many of the pro-Greek Aromanian families practiced a nomadic
pastoralism (transhumance) well into the communist period, when
mobility was hindered by the impermeable political borders between
Albania and Greece. Oral life histories, as tape-recorded, showed
that many of them used to be convinced communist partisans, employed
as experienced pathfinders and caravan leaders, and that these
nomadic Aromanians conceived the new possibilities of
sedentarization resulting from the first land reform and the
creation of agricultural cooperatives as a great and fair gift.
However, the ones successfully exploiting the new possibilities as
land owning entrepreneurs soon abandoned this positive perception.
Under an Albanian policy paralleling Russian Stalinism, they became
stigmatized as kulak and, like the bourgeois urban Aromanian traders
and craftsmen, they were expropriated and persecuted. On the other
hand, Aromanian pastoralist and livestock competencies were welcome
in cooperative work. Aromanians became veterinarians, shepherds in
brigade work, and dairy experts in land cooperatives. Evidently,
during the post-communist transition period, many descendants from
recently transhumant families started to revitalize a private, and
this time sedentary, economy using livestock and dairy competencies
again. They utilize old and temporarily-interrupted family relations
on the Greek side of the border for commerce again. For example, in
1996 in the border area smuggling networks of goat's and ewe's milk
cheese existed between Albanian and Greek Aromanian relatives.
Social Structures and Positions
Politics of social structures and positions negotiate prestige.
There is a latent struggle for prestige going on among different
groups in current Albania. To set off one's exclusive group as more
prestigious than the others seems to be a leitmotiv for everybody.
The southern Albanians consider the northern mountaineers to be
primitive, whereas the people in the North see the Southerners as
corrupt and not trustworthy. Since Ottoman times the people of the
village next door have always been looked upon with suspicion. The
Muslims are considered to be weak traitors by their Christian
neighbors because they are believed to have converted under the
Ottomans, or for other reasons which are always related to a
structural need for constructing criteria of inclusion and exclusion
according to which access to various resources is defined.
In this general atmosphere, Aromanians in Tirana explained
assimilation during the communist period, when the Aromanian
language was not passed on to the next generation, by the feeling of
being despised when classified by urban Albanians as Çoban
("pastoralist"). These interviewees actively and consciously intend
to invert this low-prestige experience. First, they demonstrate this
through retrospective discourse: "Aromanians were always very
educated, standing above other people," and by saying
that "traditional mobility was a factor to get into contact with new
ideas." Second, prestige and power is conjured up
prospectively: "soon, my children will be proud to be coban,"
and "the Aromanian youth will be Albania's intellectual elite in the
future." Third, future prestige is created in action: more than 900
Aromanian students study by now in Romania. Other students and
pupils attend universities and schools in Greece. The usual subjects
are medicine, law, economics and international relations.
All Aromanian activists of the "pro-Romanian" faction themselves
have their children study in Romania. At the same time, access to
foreign scholarships is an extremely desirable resource in Albania
today. A large number of scholarships offered by the Romanian
government to Albanians depend on a verified Aromanian identity.
Particularly if the Aromanian language is lost, as is usually the
case among the younger generation, the verification certificate is
issued by the local or the central board of the "pro-Romanian"
Association of Albanian Aromanians. The leading memberssince they
are the ones with the contactsmediate and either recommend the
applicant as a boy or girl "from a good family" or not. This key
position, of course, entails enormous social power.
The same is true for the "pro-Greek" counterparts: There is evidence
that in 1992, without any bureaucratic troubles, visas, including
official work permits (which for an average Albanian are very
difficult to acquire) were handed out freely to those Aromanian
people from villages around Vlora who identified themselves
as "Helleno-Vlach." Even today, visas are allocated by priority to
Albanians who can prove a Vlach heritage. Again, leading members of
the "pro-Greek" Albanian Aromanian Association send their children
to schools in Greece or have permanent economic relations with
Greeks. I was told that they also use their ties to the Greek
embassy and to Aromanian personal networks to mediate between the
donor institution and the villages, and to recommend people.
Leading figures of both Aromanian Association factions accuse each
other of abusing their position by taking money from the candidates.
People in the villages told me that "with poor people you can do
what you want." They argued that the poor would sign anything and
with any faction if it would help them progress. There is also
evidence (although no one would confess to this) that leaders from
both factions switched their orientation in the last few years and
had their children study first in Greece, but then in Romania, and
vice versa. There is also, of course, a very emotional bond and
strong identification respectively with either the Romanian or the
Greek State in cases where help had already been received, as
witnessed by temporary returnees to the villages. When a new
ethnicity had proven helpful in every-day life and contributed to
boosting pride, emotional attachments developed.
Identity Relevance Variations
Finally, Aromanian identity is not always and everywhere of
relevance. It is not normally referred to when it is a disadvantage.
Apparently, Albanian Aromanian people of high social status in
modern Albanian society, and this includes many well-known scholars,
politicians and artists, tend not to engage in Aromanian ethnic
politics. Under no circumstances at all would some admit to their
Aromanian family background. As some interviewees explained, to
emphasise a distinct identity might harm their image and status,
even though they do not necessarily believe in the available
dominant discourses. A well-known Aromanian scientist in Tirana,
happily married to a Muslim woman in the communist period (when
mixed marriages were politically correct), confessed he would never
engage in Albanian Aromanian identity politics: "There is no doubt,
anyway, we stem from the Illyrians like any Albanian. We are
romanized Illyrians."
According to Tom Winnifrith, "it is in the towns where Vlachs tend
to lose their identity, forgetting their Vlach speech and peculiarly
Vlach way of life" (Winnifrith 1992: 285). This seems to be
generally true for Tirana, where Aromanians live dispersed, but not
for Korça, where Aromanians still prefer a specific quarter, and
where the middle and older generations proudly explain that during
the communist period they spoke their Romance language, as they
still do today as long as no other Albanian is present.
Sometimes, one family is split into two identity orientations: a son
and his family might be migrant workers in Greece and the daughter
might have a scholarship at a Romanian university, for example. "We
know who we are, we are Albanians," one Korça family explained, "and
we adjust to the circumstances. The historians should find out about
our origin." For the Aromanian students in Bucharest, who are known
among their fellow students as "the Albanians," Aromanian identity
also plays a minor role. An Aromanian female student on vacation in
Albania clarified: "Most of us don't know how to speak Aromanian. We
know Romanian, now, and Albanian, of course. Nobody talks about
Aromanian identity. We are Albanians." In their favorite pub where
they meet, they speak only Albanian. They know that they owe being
chosen to study abroad to their Aromanian descent. There are,
however, also cases of one or the other Albanian friend who was able
to slip through, protected by a family relationship to the
responsible Aromanian officials. A number of students are
descendants of mixed Albanian/Aromanian marriages. Some parents
chose to inform them about their Aromanian identity only after the
collapse of the communist regime. This newly achieved consciousness
became relevant for them only when it offered the possibility to
study in Greece or Romania.
A final example shows a sphere in which Aromanian identity is played
down by the Aromanians but might be emphasised by non-Aromanian
Albanians. In the land privatisation process there is a conflict
with regard to the new legislation that would balance the claims of
the former cooperative workers with those of the former feudal
landowners. Many former transhumant Aromanian families who settled
in the villages only in the early communist period feel threatened
by the former landowners. In disputes about this conflict, I never
heard an Aromanian point to his specific identity because this could
be a liability. This was confirmed by research conducted in 1998 in
a south-east Albanian village for it was shown that even non-
Aromanian former semi-transhumant pastoralists are called "Vlachs"
by other villagers in order to indicate that they do not have any
claim to land in terms of inheritance rights.
Despite the turmoil in Albania in early 1997, the Aromanians did not
give up their newly-gained possibilities. Aromanian students were
advised to stay abroad in Greece or Romania while everyone was
arming themselves in Albania. Some unidentified persons attempted to
burn down the "pro-Romanian" association's office in Tirana in 1996.
This office is situated in the same building as the socialist party
organ, zëri i popullit. The Korça church is still under construction
after the money flow from Romanian and Aromanian businessmen was
interrupted following the collapse of the Pyramid schemes.
Still, some Aromanians became hesitant about declaring their
cultural heritage when the opposition press accused leading
government officials of being of Aromanian descent, thereby
attempting to disqualify them as trustworthy Albanians. This evokes
memories of the late Albanian communist period when even the best-
known Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare, explained the cruelties
committed against Albanian people by the fact that the Politburo was
composed of a quarter, if not a third, of Macedonians and Aromanians
(Kadare 1991: 65; Schmidt-Neke 1993:187).
Summary and Concluding Remarks
Summarising the key points, I would like to stress that there is
utilisation of identities as well as emotions with regard to these
identities. In this there is a generation gap. The older generation
was able to refer to an old model of Aromanian identity when there
was no social order and structure immediately after the breakdown of
the communist regime. They also felt a certain nostalgia remembering
old Aromanian identity features from their pre- or early communist
past, and now they also utilise identity politics for social
positions, reputation, psychological compensation of an inferiority
complex, economic advantages, and, most importantly, to secure
future opportunities for their children. The younger people seem not
to care very much about Aromanian identity in terms of its symbolic
meaning, but also utilise it to gain better opportunities for jobs
and education. Emotional attachment may appear after having received
benefits.
In conclusion, the evidence strongly suggests that Albanian
Aromanians' globalizing identity confers an advantage to them over
non-Aromanian Albanians. By renouncing a local identification in
favour of one associated with more powerful States (Romania and
Greece), that is, associated with ideas distant in space and time
and therefore mystical and unchallengeable, they create access to
scarce social, economic, political and cultural resources while
profiting from new opportunities in the Albanian transition process.
Besides creating a sense of exclusivity, they are able to shift
identities: they can choose between different modes of
identification, or they can attribute distinct significance to
different identities in various situations, referring to their pre-
communist situation if opportune. This flexibility is an efficient
and profitable strategy of adjustment to different circumstances. It
is undoubtedly not unique to the Albanian case. In contrast to
essentialist assumptions, I want to stress that it is the
flexibility of identities that makes people strong everywhere. ·
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