Alex Goldiș, Literature and Memory Wars. Representations of Communism in Contemporary Romanian Fiction

ABSTRACT

The democratic environment in Romania after 1989 witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented number of public discourses engaged with the re-evaluation of communism. In line with recent contributions to cultural memory studies (Aleida Assmann, Astrid Erll), this essay tries to assess the role that fiction played in reshaping the communist past and engaging with the post-communist present. Narratives written by Dan Lungu, Radu Pavel Gheo and Vasile Ernu, some of the most representative writers of the Romanian post-1989 era, are examined against the backdrop of public debates regarding the opposition between democracy and totalitarianism, progression and nostalgia, the ʻcivilized Westʼ and the ʻprovincialʼ East. In reaction to the pressure of ideological discourses, this article argues that literature remains a privileged site where alternative versions of memory can intertwine and negotiate their claims. Literary texts that reshape cultural perceptions fulfil the ʻmnemonic multiperspectivityʼ function of the public discourse with particular focus on recovering the marginal voices that are often disregarded by classic historiography.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural memory studies
• Romanian literature
• fiction
• communism
• heteroglossia
• democracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Uilleam Blecker, Alexander Etkind, ʻIntroductionʼ, in Uilleam Blecker, Alexander Etkind, and Julie Fedor (eds.), Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 5.

² Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 40.

³ Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

⁴ Aleida Assmann, ʻRe-framing Memory. Between Individual and Collective Forms of Constructing the Pastʼ, in Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree and Jay M. Winter (eds.), Performing the Past (Amsterdam: De Gruyter, 2012), 38.

⁵ Ibid., 39.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ James V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 6.

⁸ Stefan Troebst, ʻRemembering Dictatorship: Eastern and Southern Europe Comparedʼ, in Maria Todorova and Stefan Troebst (eds.), Remembering Communism. Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe (Budapest – New York: Central European University Press, 2014), 120.

⁹ Ibid., 140.

¹⁰ The only notable Samizdat publication in Romania was the journal Ellenpontok/Contrapuncte in Oradea in 1982 authored by a group of Transylvanian intellectuals. See Géza Szöcs, ʻTwelve Frames from the Beginning of the 1980sʼ, Philobiblon. Transylvanian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Humanities, IV – V–VI – VII (1999): 224–36.

¹¹ Aleida Assmann, ʻEuropeʼs Divided Memoryʼ, in Blecker, Etkind, Fedor, Memory and Theory, 32.

¹² Vladimir Tismăneanu, Raport final (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2006), 33.

¹³ Adrian-Paul Iliescu, ʻDe ce misionarii anticomunismului sunt incapabili să judece comunismulʼ, in Vasile Ernu, Costi Rogozanu, Ciprian Șiulea, and Ovidiu Țichindeleanu (eds.), Iluzia anticomunismului românesc (Chișinău: Cartier, 2008), 156.

¹⁴ In the preface, the editors note that their volume was rejected by all the Romanian publishing houses. Cartier, the publishing house that accepted the volume, is located in Moldavia – see Vasile Ernu, Costi Rogozanu, Ciprian Șiulea, and Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, ʻPrefațăʼ, in Ibid., 3.

¹⁵ Cristina Petrescu, Dragoș Petrescu, ʻThe Canon of Remembering Romanian Communism: From Autobiographical Recollections to Collective Representationsʼ, in Todorova, Troebst, Remembering Communism, 69.

¹⁶ Jan Assmann, ʻCommunicative and Cultural Memoryʼ, in Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (eds.), Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2008), 109–18.

¹⁷ Jacques Derrida, ʻArchive Fever: A Freudian Impressionʼ, Diacritics 25 (1995): 11.

¹⁸ Vladimir Tismăneanu, Marius Stan, Romania Confronts Its Communist Past. Democracy, Memory, and Moral Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1.

¹⁹ Vladimir Tismăneanu, The Devil in History. Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), XII.

²⁰ Iskra Baeva, Petya Kabakchieva, ʻHow is Communism Remembered in Bulgaria? Research, Literature, Projectsʼ, in Todorova, Troebst, Remembering Communism, 84.

²¹ Ibid., 85.

²² Izabella Main, ʻThe Memory of Communism in Polandʼ, in Todorova, Troebst, Remembering Communism, 110.

²³ Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 85.

²⁴ Petrescu and Petrescu, ʻThe Canon of Rememberingʼ, 67–8.

²⁵ Erll, Memory, 151.

²⁶ Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevskyʼs Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 6.

²⁷ Nelly Wolf, Le roman de la démocratie (Saint-Denis: PU Vincennes, 2003).

²⁸ Literatureʼs position towards the anti-communist ideology is sometimes more varied than that of other arts in post-communist Romania. In film, recent studies have demonstrated, the anti-communist hegemonial mode of representation was rather pervasive. See Claudiu Turcuș, Împotriva memoriei. De la estetismul socialist la noul cinema românesc (Cluj-Napoca: Eikon, 2017).

²⁹ Gabriel H. Decuble, ʻPrefațăʼ (Preface), in Gabriel H. Decuble (ed.), Cartea roz a comunismului (Iași: Versus, 2004), 14.

³⁰ Radu Pavel Gheo, ʻMesaj din miezul unui ev aprinsʼ, in Decuble, Cartea roz, 92.

³¹ The recovery of communism through a childhood lens is specific to other Eastern European cultures as well. In Bulgaria, an online Dictionary of childhood has been initiated – see Milla Mineva, ʻCommunism Reloadedʼ, in Todorova, Troebst, Remembering Communism, 169.

³² Gheo, ʻMesajʼ, 90.

³³ Filip Florian, Matei Florian, Băiuțeii (Iași: Polirom, 2006), 48.

³⁴ Ibid., 165.

³⁵ See Pierre Nora, ʻDe l’archive à l’emblèmeʼ, in Les Lieux de mémoire, Les France, tome III, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 1012.

³⁶ Vasile Ernu, Născut în URSS (Iași: Polirom, 2006), 8.

³⁷ Ibid., 116.

³⁸ Boris Buden, ʻChildren of Communismʼ, Radical Philosophy 159 (2010): 18.

³⁹ See Ștefan Baghiu, ʻProcesul identitar în postcomunismul românesc: situaţia intelectualilor (1989–1990)ʼ, Transilvania 7 (2015): 45–52.

⁴⁰ See Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Irena Reifová, ʻThe Pleasure of Continuity: Re-reading Post-socialist Nostalgiaʼ, International Journal of Cultural Studies 6 (2018): 587–602; Veronika Pehe, Velvet Retro: Postsocialist Nostalgia and the Politics of Heroism in Czech Popular Culture (Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2020); Otto Boele, Boris Noordenbos, Ksenia Robbe (eds.), Post-Soviet Nostalgia. Confronting the Empire’s Legacies (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2020).

⁴¹ Juan J. Linz, Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 143–4.

⁴² See Andreea Mironescu, Textul literar şi construcţia memoriei culturale. Forme ale rememorării în literatura română din postcomunism (Bucharest: Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2014).

⁴³ Erll, Memory, 165.

⁴⁴ See, among other comments or reviews, Bogdan Crețu, Baba comunistă a îmbătrânit cu 15 ani, Observator cultural 22 (2022): 16; Mihai Iovănel, Istoria literaturii române contemporane. 1990–2020 (Iași: Polirom, 2021), 408–11; Anikó Szilagyi, ʻDan Lungu: Iʼm an Old Commie!; Ignacy Karpowicz: Gestures, Translation and Literature 3 (2018): 379–83; Mironescu, Textul, 76–8; Mihaela Ursa, Baba comunistă cʼest moi!, Apostrof 6 (2007): 29.

⁴⁵ Cosmin Borza, ʻDan Lungu, il cantastorie della transizione rumenaʼ, in Nicoleta Neșu and Luisa Valmarin (eds.), Il romanzo rumeno contemporaneo (Roma: Bogato Libri, 2010), 122.

⁴⁶ See Vincent Jouve, Poétique des valeurs (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001).

⁴⁷ Dan Lungu, Sunt o babă comunistă! (Iași: Polirom, 2006).

⁴⁸ Nonetheless, Dan Lungu’s novel has also supported alternative critical readings, which emphasized precisely its anti-communist schematism envisaged by the narrator’s condescending atittude towards the ʻold communistʼ. For this view, see the arguments and references in Ștefan Baghiu and Ovio Olaru’s article from this issue.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS - UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2021-1207, within PNCDI III.