Construcții și deconstrucții de-a lungul unui secol. Istoriile Partidului Comunist

Coordonatori: Dalia Báthory, Ştefan Bosomitu, Luciana Jinga

Volumul XVI/2021

Anuarul este disponibil pe site-ul Polirom.

Cuvânt înainte (pp. 11-14)

Cristian Vasile, Rescrierea sub comunism a istoriei PCR din timpul dictaturii regale (1938-1940) (pp. 15-47)

The extent of the falsification of the Romanian Communist Party’s history during the royal dictatorship (1938‑1940) goes far beyond the simple modification in the 1980s of a famous photograph illustrating the moment of May 1, 1939. The latter was a demonstration organized on May 1, 1939 by the royal dictatorship authorities in order to honor the Labor Day. In the last decade of the communist dictatorship a photo showing a crowd of the May Day demonstrators was modified by including the head of the then young communist Nicolae Ceauşescu.
In this article we focused on the successive rewriting (often equivalent to mass falsification) of the history of the Communist Party of Romania during the royal dictatorship from the first postwar years until 1989 (but with incursions into post‑communism). We analized the writings of authors with alledged analytical perspective, party historians or censored and self‑censored specialized historical literature (such as Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, Mihail Roller, Gheorghe I. Ioniţă, Ion M. Oprea, Al.Gh. Savu, Mircea Muşat, Ion Ardeleanu). Archival documents were also used.
Beyond the historiographical analysis, the article also focused on topics of special interest: for example, the way in which the alleged communist infiltration of the Guilds (Bresle) was presented in Romanian historical writings over the years. The Guilds were institutions specific to the royal dictatorship regime which replaced the Trade Unions precisely to serve a more effective control by the political official in the context of an authoritarian system (of right‑wing orientation, copying fascist corporatism).

Keywords: royal dictatorship, Carol II of Romania, communist historiography, propaganda, rewriting history, history and power

Emanuel Copilaş, Strategie, adaptare, improvizare. PCR în contextul politic postbelic, 1944-1947 (pp. 49-74)

Postwar Romania, like al the other Eastern European countries, was characterised
by a perpetual political crisis. Questioning the traditional historiographic division between
democratic and undemocratic political forces, the present contribution tries to enlarge and to
also problematise the postwar local, regional and international contexts from the perspective
of the Romanian Communist Party, with reference to other relevant political forces, especially
the officially dissolved Legionary Movement. It does so without stumbling into too many value
judgements.
Keywords: postwar Eastern Europe, United States, Soviet Union, democracy, conservatism

Antal Róbert-István, Între social‑democraţie şi comunism: o scurtă biografie a lui Lajos Jordáky (pp. 75-100)

In the present article I have shown through the life of Lajos Jordáky the choices and values of the Hungarian elites in Transylvania. After 1945 these intellectuals have become loyal builders of the Stalinist dictatorship in Romania, but given the fact that they were representatives of a minority community they have found themselves in a trap‑situation. They had to choose between the party (communist) identity or the full‑fledged representative of the Hungarian community. Lajos Jordáky from his youth was a devoted socialist: first he considered himself a social democrat, then he became communist, and in the end, after having witnessed the imprisonment and trial during the 50s, he became antistalinist. But his communist identity was never in accordance with the expectations of the party: he was an autonomous person, he did not accept the Leninist thesis of the party as the vanguard of the working class. He became a member of the Romanian Communist Party in 1944, but was excluded two years later – being guilty of deviation from the party line. In 1972 he was again taken back into the ranks of the RCP. His last move was in the context of the 70s. He thought that he could serve the Hungarian community in Romania only from the Romanian Communist Party and most of all he saw a dangerous tendency in the Hungarian cultural life: the restoration of interwar culture. But according to Jordáky’s views, only by socialist culture the Hungarian community in Romania could be fully emancipated.

Keywords: Lajos Jordáky, Magyar intellectuals, Transilvania, socialism

Ştefan Bosomitu, „Un partid în permanentă luptă cu el însuşi”. Consideraţii privind controlul şi epurarea cadrelor în PCR/PMR (1945‑1965) (pp. 101-143)

The article addresses, in a preliminary and succinct manner, the control and purging policies of the Romanian Communist/Workers’ Party, seeking to find some explanations for the fluctuations in the number of RCP/RWP cadres and drawing attention to the evolution of the party’s personnel policies during the People’s Republic. We will consider both the manner and methods by which the party tried to regulate not only the numbers, but also the social composition of the corpus, but also the way in which, under pressure from top to bottom, the party ends up „self‑purging” by almost natural reflexes. Likewise, we will try to subject the analysis and the hypothesis that the control and exclusive policies were directly influenced and conditioned by the nature and dynamics of the party’s recruitment policies.

Keywords: Romanian Communist/Workers’ Party, recruitment, control, purge, enemy

Andrei Dălălău, Partidul Comunist şi intelectualitatea. Lupta pentru legitimare şi inventarea duşmanului. Studiu de caz: Procesul Noica‑Pillat (pp. 145-171)

The purpose of the article is to analyse the process of constructing the ideological portrait of the class enemy towards the politically non‑involved intellectuals in communist Romania in the 1950s. The ideological construction of the enemy has been carried out by the communist party through the Securitate secret police. The research hypothesis is that the communist regime has instrumentalized the class enemy in order to justify repression and to
gain political legitimacy, alongside with obtaining increased political control over target groups in society. The method used is ideological analysis, followed by a case study concerning the Noica‑Pillat trial from 1960. In the first part, the article deals with the evolution of the concept of „enemy” starting from Karl Marx and continuing with communist leaders from the Soviet Union and Romania. The second part aims to exemplify the ideological repression through the case study. The results suggest that the ideological figure of the enemy was a discursive construct used by the communist authorities to annihilate its real or fictitious opponents.

Keywords: class enemy, intellectuals, Noica‑Pillat, political legitimacy, show trials

Cezar Stanciu, Despre raţiunile constituirii Frontului Unităţii Socialiste, 1968 (pp. 173-189)

The Front of Socialist Unity was a mass organization established by the Communist Party leadership in Romania in the autumn of 1968 with the purpose of strengthening the political and ideological unity of the entire society around the Communist Party. This new organization reunited the Communist Party itself, trade‑unions, youth and women’s organizations, artistic unions and many other such structures in an attempt to improve party control over all aspects of life. This article argues that the establishment of the Front of Socialist Unity derived from two categories of rationalities. On one hand, confronting the spectrum of a potential Soviet intervention in Romania following the events in Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Nicolae Ceauşescu aimed to intensify his own personal control over the party and society, forging unity and solidarity on a common political and ideological platform as deterrence to
a possible foreign aggression. At the same time though, the regime was already confronted with the challenges raised by the advances of industrialization and urbanization which forced the limits of the party apparatus’ capacity of control. Ceauşescu’s response to this challenge derived from his beliefs that mass mobilization and ideology can help overcome obstacles. Therefore, the creation of the Front of Socialist Unity derives from multiple converging causes, reflecting the party’s leadership aspiration for total control, even though it was never actually attained in the end.

Keywords: Communist Party, organization, social control, mass mobilization, propaganda

Cosmin Năsui, Construcţia şi deconstrucţia imaginii Partidului Comunist prin diplomaţie culturală. Dan Hăulică în documentele Securităţii (pp. 191-232)

In the communist cultural world, the intellectual Dan Hăulică had an extensive activity, covering various domains: literary, scientific, historical, artistic, diplomatic and political. His activity is institutionally relevant, as Hăulică had organized institutions, creative unions, associations and publications, which he also managed: the Council of the Writers’ Union, the Council of the Visual Artists, the Bureau of the Bucharest Writers’ Association’s critique section, the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, the 20th Century Review 1, and so on. Hăulică’s cultural and political activity continued after 1989, first as a member in the Provisory Council of National Union in 1990, and afterwards as an ambassador, permanent delegate to UNESCO (1990‑2001).

Keywords: Dan Hăulică, Securitate, cultural diplomacy

Alexandra Oprea, Statul, victimă a corupţiei? Discursul anticorupţie în ultima fază a regimului comunist din România (pp. 233-252)

Over the last 20 years, debates on state reform in Romania have revolved around the subject of corruption, resulting in two dominant approaches. Thus, corruption is often perceived either in an essentialist or a voluntarist manner. Using a sociological approach, this paper aims to show the existence of a „social need” for informal practices, without naturalising them. This requires an empirical survey of society to understand the internal criticism of these practices (anti‑corruption) and its dynamics – the origin of the norms that seem to be imposed today. In order to reconstruct the social logics that contributed to the change in perspective on corruption, the analysis of the phenomenon during the communist period is inextricable. So, when does the fight against corruption begin? Did it exist during the communist regime? And if so, is it minor or dominant? Thus, we advance the hypothesis that the identification of forms of public denunciation of corruption in the communist era, even marginal ones, allows us to grasp the transformations of discourse of this political phenomenon; more precisely, the adjustments that occur at the border between what represents a „normal” practice and what represents an „abnormal” practice, before and after the 1989 Revolution. Thus, the first part of the research focuses on identifying the descriptive language used to encode illicit practices and exchanges of services, but also the set of rhetorics around which the anti‑corruption discourse revolves. In the context of the generalised scarcity that marks the 1970s, petty corruption as an everyday ‘practical norm’ is then analysed. The last part aims to analyse the relationship established between these social relations, conditioned by the „gift” and official discourse, by analysing the indictment of the guilty parties and the political
management of the problem.

Keywords: class enemy, corruption, illicit practices, anti‑corruption discourse

Recenzii

Iulian Toader, România în diplomaţia destinderii. Originile Conferinţei pentru Securitate şi Cooperare în Europa, Cetatea de Scaun, Târgovişte, 2020, Bogdan-Valeriu Preda (253-255)

Simon Miles, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War, Cornell University Press, New York, 2020, Daniel Filip-Afloarei(pp. 256-260)

Stefano Bottoni, Lungul drum spre Occident. O istorie postbelică a Europei de Est, traducere de Ana Maria Gruia, Mega, Cluj‑Napoca, 2021, Liliana Corobca (pp. 260-263)

Jean‑Philippe Légaut, Copiii pierduţi ai României. Realitatea crudă a orfelinatelor comuniste, traducere din limba engleză de Mihaela Adina Eros, Meteor Press, Bucureşti, 2020, Victor Sămărtinean (pp. 263-269)