Marginalități, periferii și frontiere simbolice. Societatea comunistă și dilemele sale identitare
Coordonatori: Ștefan Bosomitu, Luciana M. Jinga
Ştefan Bosomitu, Luciana M. Jinga, Cuvânt-înainte (pp. 13-15)
Ipostaze ale marginalității politice și sociale
The purpose of my research was to analyze and construe one of the practices applied by the Romanian communists in order to ease the imposition of their regime between 1945 and 1947: the distortion of the political opponent’s public image. Our analysis was limited to the case of the prominent Jewish leader Wilhelm Filderman, who advocated for the rights of his community during the Holocaust and whose refusal to support the communist regime brought him under the close scrutiny of the communist affiliated press. Alternatively, the objectives of this approach were to elucidate the methods by which the communist power gained legitimacy in the Jewish community and to identify the different forms of the discourse of exclusion employed by the press.
In the first section of the study, I analyzed the defining moments of the last three years of Wilhelm Filderman’s political career, showing his gradul marginalization. In the second section, I performed a discourse analysis based on a selection of articles published by two communist newspapers (România liberă and Unirea), seeking to identify how the image of the opponent was structured, the characteristics of the discourse of exclusion and the effects it generated.
The conclusions that I reached were that the communists had articulated their political discourse not only to obtain large numbers of supporters, but also in order to annihilate a political opposition that was indispensable in the process of creating legitimacy. In order to create it, they needed enemies and when they did not have one, they invented one, as was the case of Wilhelm Filderman, who became the subject of a media campaign that modified the representations about him in such a manner that he was abandoned by most of his associates and became a marginal figure in the community that he defended for most of his career.
Keywords: Wilhelm Filderman, Romanian Jewish community marginalization, media campaign, communism, discourse analysis
Cette approche porte sur la présentation et l’analyse de la manière dont le régime communiste concrétise (après 1956) les prémisses d’une apparente tendance d’intégrer socialement les anciens détenus politiques qui ont été assignés, après leur mise en liberté, au domicile obligatoire. Les limites de cette politique (de marginalisation, en fait), ainsi que la «réponse» de l’intellectuel qui se voit obligé de vivre «le supplément de punition», seront construites selon l’expérience de l’ethnomusicologue Harry Brauner, jeté au D.O. pour deux ans dans le village Viişoara, près de Slobozia. Arrêté et impliqué dans le procès de Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, il a été auparavant condamné à douze ans de travail forcé. À l’expérience traumatisante et de désintégration causée par l’emprisonnement, suit la fausse liberté du Bărăgan, où la seule personne connue qu’il peut contacter est Lena Constante, artiste plastique et sa future épouse, incarcérée elle aussi pour les mêmes accusations.
La correspondance de Harry Brauner constitue le support de notre étude, qui prend en considération le livre édité et publié par Irina Nicolau sous le titre Surâsul lui Harry (Bucarest, Ed. Ars Docendi, 2010). L’approche comporte une double focalisation: sur les multiples hypostases qui peuvent expliquer les politiques d’exclusion imposées par l’État dans ce contexte et sur la manière dont le récent libéré réussit (ou non) de les dépasser. Les efforts de s’adapter à une société déchue, les tentatives de récupérer le passé détruit, la précarité de sa santé mais aussi la vie en Bărăgan sont passés par le filtre de l’intellectuel sensible qui, grâce à ses ressorts subjectifs, essaie pendant deux années de trouver le sens de son existence, son identité. Alors, ses lettres ont un rôle légitimateur, concrétisant les dilemmes, les angoisses, les impuissances du protagoniste.
Mots‑clés: désintégration sociale, assignation à domicile, correspondance, identité, exercice thérapeutique
Sorin Radu, Cosmin Budeancă, Romulus Zăroni: un personaj politic atipic de la jumătatea secolului XX (pp. 59-86)
An ordinary peasant preoccupied of politics, Romulus Zăroni became an important leader of The Ploughmen Front, a political organization with left orientation, important in the Romanian political life after The Second World War. Under the influence of communism and the collaboration between the political organizations of which The Communist Party was part of, his political career evolved spectacularly, Romulus Zăroni occupying many important political positions, including Ministry of Agriculture. This accession was also influenced by Petru Groza, his political chef, who became prime‑minister on 6th March 1945.
His quick ascension and his atypical behaviour attracted the attention of both politicians and public opinion. He represented, starting from that point on, the prototype of the politician who occupied public jobs without the necessary education. The study presents Romulus Zăroni’s biography and also the way in which the people of his birth place remembered him and where he developed political activities throughout his career.
Keywords: communism, Ploughmen’s Front, political leader, oral history, collective memory
This article proposes an analysis of how the communist regime defined categories of needs during the 1950s. Paying a particular attention to everyday experiences of industrial labor force, this research looks at both legislative and institutional actions to unveil how various programs of social rationalization were articulated. Beyond ideological ambitions to create a new man, the purpose of the authorities was to build a system of social control that would integrate a heterogeneous population into a homogenous community. However, this article shows that the project was fragmented by various individual practices like blat, theft, bribery or a flourishing black market. Using a large variety of research sources, like archival material, press articles and legislative collections, this research argues that individual practices during the 1950s represented that main element in reconfiguring the social and professional hierarchies on very different bases from the official ones.
Keywords: urbanization, well‑being, rationalization, informalities, black market, social control
De la dilemele dezintegrării la eforturile de înregimentare
Diego Ciobotaru, Sportul românesc între tentaţiile deviante şi tendinţele de înregimentare (1944‑1948) (pp. 113-142)
After August 23, 1944, the Romanian Communist Party has used sport to penetrate its political ideas as deeply into the youth. Almost all communist leaders supported this action, both at the center and especially in the province. To do this they also set up their own organization to be the interface of this policy, called the Popular Sports Organization. As noted by the historian Bogdan Popa, Romania’s interwar history (and in extenso the post‑war period) can be understood through physical culture as sport as social product features bearing age, „responding to its positive and negative trends”. Among other things, the democratization of sport and the exclusion of characteristics implemented by fascist movements were the main goals that the Communist Party has staked OSP activity in the 1944‑1947 period. In the present study, we plan to present the manipulative approach of sports by PCR via Popular Sports Organizations and to present another facet of conflict in the postwar political scene, one in which the stadium is the battleground between the government and the opposition, of serious incidents being recorded in official matches or simple friendly events.
Keywords: sport, postwar, Romanian Communist Party, Popular Sport Organization
Petre Opriş, Aspecte privind câteva evadări aeriene din România (1946‑1971) (pp. 143-157)
During the Cold War, the cases of using civilian or military airplanes in order to escape from Romania were not publicized by the Romanian authorities – except for the famous „case of Tămădău” (July 14, 1947), staged by the communist authorities from Bucharest to completely dissolve the National Peasant Party and sentence its leaders to life in prison, Iuliu Maniu and Ion Mihalache (November 11, 1947). This study deals with cases of political opponents of the communist regime from Bucharest, who tried on their own to escape from Romania using some stolen airplanes. Also, we are presenting how the Romanian authorities reacted in the spring of 1971, when an airliner of TAROM national company arrived forcibly to Vienna. Among others, the incident resulted in the punishment of the Securitate and Militia personnel, deemed guilty of misconduct before and during that escape, and the establishment of the „Hawk” anti‑terrorist group of Securitate, intended to prevent hijacking and to offer more security to the airports and airplanes in Romania.
Keywords: airplane, escape, Militia, pilot, Securitate
This study analyzes the Romanian Communist Party’s position in reference to the potential cooperation between communist and social‑democratic parties in Europe in the context of Neue Ostpolitik. Although sharing a common ideological origin, communists and social‑democrats have been divided by irreconcilable adversity since the establishment of the Communist International in 1919. Later, in 1951, due to growing Cold War tensions, the Frankfurt Declaration of the European Socialists excluded any potential cooperation with the communist parties. During the 1960s, the efforts employed by West European communists to transform their identity and increase their legitimacy in domestic politics were the source of the first attempts to reach a common platform with other leftist forces. The Soviet reaction to such initiatives was initially hostile, rejecting any form of cooperation with the social‑democrats, still viewed in Leninist terms as „traitors” of the working class. In this context, the Romanian communists placed themselves on the reformist side and advocated in favor of cooperation between communism and social‑democracy. PCR developed close relations with the European socialists and encouraged both sides to find a common political platform. This way, PCR aimed to undermine Moscow’s influence over world communism and open new bridges towards Western governments.
Keywords: communism, social‑democracy, cooperation, sectarism, Ostpolitik, Soviet Union, Romania, allargamento
Vlad Paşca, Educaţia în România comunistă: un joc cu sumă nulă? O analiză a stocurilor de educaţie (pp. 181-195)
This article looks at the evolution of educational stocks during communism from a systemic and diachronic perspective. Using census data collected in 1956, 1966, 1977 and 1992, the assessment of quantitative gains focuses both on the national level, and on various social groups, such as women and rural inhabitants. Educational expansion is then discussed by taking into account contingencies and qualitative flaws within the socialist system. While data show an increase in the number of secondary and tertiary education graduates, socio‑economic backwardness of Romania played an important role to the relativity of these dynamics, along with the late communist policies. For most of the educational achievements there had been ideological and political economy offsets determined by the dictatorial regime, and also counterbalances inherent to a traditionalist path dependency.
Keywords: educational policies, communist, socialist system, census data, educational patrimony, human capital
Cristian Roiban, „Regiune” vs „stat naţional unitar” în istoriografia naţional‑comunistă (pp. 197-214)
In this study I show the way the Romanian historiography during nationalcommunism approached the regional history. According to the directives of the state ideology, a large part of the Romanian history academics minimized local and regional cultural peculiarities endorsing a unitary interpretation of the past based on a unique national master narrative. Furthermore, they instrumentalized diversity, be it geographical, cultural, linguistic, confessional or of another type as arguments for a constructed teleological discourse about the national unitary state and the various forces acting concertedly for the unity ideal. The goal of such a discourse was to justify the necessity and unavoidability of a national unitary Romanian state. According to the official historiography the conceptualization of the relation region‑national state follows a pattern of accretion in which small parts congregate towards a bigger totum without any rational explanation.
In this paper I present the structure of this type of historiography discourse and its diffusion via canonical history treatises and textbooks. I approach three dimensions of the official historiography discourse, which are unity, separation, and the socialist nation. Starting with the 1970 these historical myths and the concepts they employed became increasingly central for the official and historiographical discourse affecting significant parts of the social and political vocabulary.
Keywords: region, unitary‑national state, national‑communism, historiography, ideology, socialist nation
Periferii și marginalități culturale
The following article aims to emphasize the role that Romanian literary critic G. Călinescu had in the discourse for legitimizing the humanist intellectuals,
mainly the writers, as a working class in 1947 and 1948, when the country was on the verge of becoming a popular democracy, on a Soviet model. Being a politician serving the National Popular Party (a crypto‑communist structure) and directing its official newspaper The Nation, the highly rated scholar became a central figure in the clash that this category had to face the propaganda, which was focused on the slogan of „proletarian dictatorship”. In the interval we are interested in, G. Călinescu used a rhetoric in which the main goal was to demonstrate that the „middle categories” (especially writers, artists, historians and philosophers) and the working class shared a series of common economic and political purposes. Moreover, he was confronted with a major difficulty in his task. Each argument could not point out the independent mission of humanist intellectuals, but their allegiance to the communist power. Thus, he was forced to admit that any creative activity served the Communist/Working Party. All in all, his attempt was a failure, because the articles he published in The Nation were destined to illustrate the power and wellness of the popular democracy.
Keywords: cultural periphery, humanist intellectuals, middle‑class, Marxism‑Leninism, popular democracy, Romanian communism, literary propaganda, National Popular Party, G. Călinescu
Simona Preda, Alternative. Repere din arta disidentă a ultimelor două decenii comuniste (pp. 235-254)
Like everywhere in the communist block, there were Romanian artists who refused to comply with the communist dictatorship and the regime has not only created a proletarian art (Proletkult). There were painted during this period special blades, many of them unknown to the public, true core spiritual strength propaganda attacks and official art. Artists like Horia Bernea, Paul Gherasim (and its 1986 exhibition at Dalles Hall, bearing the sacred symbols, in an era rampant atheist), Constantin Flondor, group Prolog, Sigma, Tescani Camp, Poiana Mărului Camp, etc. have demonstrated a spirit of resistance to totalitarian pressures, while giving an aesthetic life underground, connected to the natural course of European artistic trends. Diffusion mechanisms of these events (performances) rather keep knowledge; circle of friends and less specialized publications. We also mention the idea that a single artist is liable to the plurality of languages and artistic visions in the context that we find both art and propaganda alternative. Hiring artists (to varying degrees in specific contexts) to this alternative language arts sometimes went up to the social and political protest.
Keywords: communism, alternative art, artists, exhibitions, propaganda, censorship, protest banned topics
Mihaela-Lucia Ion, Grupările artistice din perioada comunistă: integrare, dezintegrare şi re‑integrare socială (pp. 255-276)
According to Boris Groys, the innovation is seen as putting the new in a different context. In defining the concept of museums and art galleries, the art theoretician applies the theory of „outside in the inside”. He believes that an artwork placed in an art gallery or in a museum has a bigger rate of becoming a masterpiece. An object seems more alive, more real in a museum, than placed in an artist’s work environment. I am changing Boris Groys theory from outside in the inside into inside in the inside. The experimental artworks were created for a small, but educated (communist) public. The emancipated public of the experimental artwoks could have touch and perceive the works of art, but he still lived in a communist environment. The experimental artworks, most of the time, cannot find their place in the communist or not museums, so they lose their artistic prestige.
Keywords: museum, art gallery, art critic, Atelier 35, 1.1.1. Group, Prolog Group
Manuela Marin, Securitatea şi panica morală: contraculturile muzicale ale tineretului în România comunistă a anilor 1980 (pp. 277-301)
Using Stanley Cohen’s concept of moral panic, my paper analyzes the way in which the Securitate understood and reacted towards the emergence of punk rock, new wave, rock and csöves (tubers) musical countercultures among the Romanian youth during the 1980s. The main argument of my paper is that the specific reaction of the Securitate about this subject was not simply the consequence of resuming old ideological stereotypes about West and its use of culture and ideology in the struggle against Soviet Union and its allies. As such, the Securitate’s moral panic was also informed by the symbolic significance that youth held in fostering the building socialism and related to this, by how youth’s consumption of Western musical culture could change the terms of such positioning. Moreover, the Securitate officials’ lack of thorough knowledge of Western musical scene and culture led them to indiscriminately ascribe the rebelling and anti‑system meaning that these countercultures had in the Western societies to their Romanian versions. At the same time, based on the supposedly nonconformist nature of the youth countercultures, my paper shows how the Securitate placed the Romanian young fans in a fabricated rather real social marginality. In the last part of my paper, I show how the Securitate assumed the role of a moral entrepreneur in dealing with the emergence of Romanian youth countercultures.
Keywords: youth, counterculture, moral panic, Securitate, music, West