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EUGEN STANCU Istorie si mit ín constiinta románeascá almost page by page. He generally considers that the essence of Boias book is in fact an attack on the Romania national identity, a fact that in many countries would be punishable by law.?? This controversy related to the problem of nation and the harm provoked by deconstruction of several historical national mythical figures is secondary, since there was another more important issue at stake in the book. Between Boia and his critics in fact stands an epistemological problem, namely that of historical objectivity. A historian like loan-Aurel Pop strongly believes in the capacity of the historian to reach the truth after a scientific investigation. He criticized Boia because instead of using the proper methodology a historian should employ, he rather, as Pop put it, used means from the “domain of literary art”.*? It should be said that Boia’s revisionist historical agenda was directed also against the problem of historical objectivity as it was understood by most Romanian historians in the 1990s. He was convinced there is not a clear line between fact and fiction and, therefore, history cannot be objectively written. His view resembles more that of Hayden White, who maintains that writing history does not mean objectively discovering the truth from the past,*° than the methodological assumptions of the historical discipline put forward in the 19'* century by historians such as Leopold von Ranke, who thought that based on documents from the archives they could reconstruct history ‘as it really was.’ REFERENCES ANTOHI, Sorin — Zus, Alexandru: Oglinzi retrovizoare. Istorie, memorie si morala in Romania, Iasi, Polirom, 2002. Bota, Lucian (ed.): Mituri istorice romanesti, Bucuresti, Editura Universitatii Bucuresti, 1995. Bora, Lucian (ed.): Miturile comunismului romanesc, Bucuresti, Editura Universitatii Bucuresti, 1995. Bora, Lucian — ABRET, Helga: Das Jahrhundert der Marsianer, München, Heyne Verlag, 1984. Boia, Lucian — OROVEANU, Anca — CoRLAN-IOAN, Simona: Insula Despre izolare si limite in spatiul imaginar, Bucuresti, Colegiul Noua Europa, 1999, Bota, Lucian: Eugen Brote (1850-1912), Bucuresti, Litera, 1974. 8 Toan-Aurel Pop: Istoria, adevarul si miturile, Bucuresti, Editura Enciclopedica, 2002, 299. 2% Tbid., 300. 30 Hayden White: Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. * 118
