Recuperative memory in Romanian post-Communist society

Abstract

This paper explores the idea of “recuperative memory” with respect to the process of coming to terms with the past after the fall of the Romanian Communist regime in 1989. Its method is to examine the mechanisms used by recuperative memory in order to re-appropriate the past and emphasize the inherently mediated and multifaceted nature of this process. Using various examples from oral testimonies, autobiographical writings, literary works, and cinema, the paper argues that the role of recuperative memory is not only to facilitate the process of coming to terms with the past, but also to offer the material necessary to sustain a viable politics of memory. This entails providing a platform for the intergenerational transmission of memory and knowledge for those who did not live under the Communist regime, filling in this way the intergenerational gap, despite the lack of political class engagement.

Keywords:

• Communism
• mediation
• recuperative memory
• Romania
• testimony
• publications

Notes

1. Gabriel Andreescu’s (2013) Carturari, opozanti si documente. Manipularea Arhivei Securitati reveals the difficulties of interpreting historical documents, especially with the Securitate archive documents that concern public figures or well-known intellectuals.

2. See Tismaneanu, Dobrincu, Vasile, eds. (2007).

3. See, for example, the chapter “Romania” in Stan (2009a), especially 137–140.

4. The Securitate was the Romanian political secret police during the Communist regime; it controlled the private and public lives of Romanian citizens through mass indoctrination and manipulation, censorship, and hard repression.

5. For example, in February and March 2014, the CNSAS in collaboration with other institutions organized an exposition using archive documents and photographs dedicated to the Securitate as an instrument of dictatorship.

6. In elections (e.g. in 2000 and in 2004), the CNSAS failed to unveil the identity of informers and Securitate agents, and forgetting the imperative of neutrality, CNSAS leaders often sided with political parties (Stan 2013). Its internal disputes, methodological errors in analyzing information, and errors in past verdicts resulted in public disregard of CNSAS activities and, after so many political attempts to manipulate the truth, a general neglect of the past. Meanwhile, informers were the only figures exposed for their crimes, and the main perpetrators, those who had high-ranking positions and who were directly involved in crimes were forgotten, until eventually many of them died (Alexandru Nicholski, Alexandru Drăghici, or Gheorge Crăciun) or were too old to be incarcerated.

7. See, for example, the activity of The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (ICCMRE).

8. The first organization created in post-Communist Romania, The National Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (http://www.totalitarism.ro/) was founded in 1993 under the umbrella of the Romanian Academy. Its publications include the journal Archives of Totalitarianism. Another example is The Romanian Institute for Recent History (http://irir.ro), a privately funded non-governmental institution, founded in 2000 as the result of the initiative of Coen Stork, former ambassador to Romania from Holland. The Centre of Investigation of the Communist Crimes (CICCR) (http://www.condamnareacomunismului.ro/), was founded in 2010 to identify cases of human rights violation under Communism. Possibly the best known is the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (ICCMRE) (http://www.iiccr.ro/en/), founded by a governmental decree that united two previously separate organizations.

9. For example, some journals publish weekly articles regarding former victims/perpetrators, major Communist figures, the history of the Romanian Communist Party, and so on.

10. I am referring here not only to the documents and Securitate files that were missing or destroyed after the fall of the Communist regime, but also the personal testimonies of those discouraged by the political class from stepping forward and revealing the details of their traumatic past. Many survivors kept silent after the regime change, either afraid that the Communists were still in power or feeling neglected by the public and suppressed by political agendas.

11. See, for example, the destruction of Securitate files after the Revolution; the case known as the Berevoieşti affair is still not elucidated. Under Ion Iliescu’s political regime, in 1990, some 90 sacks of Securitate documents were allegedly thrown into a ravine to be destroyed. According to the media, this was not an isolated incident.

12. Memories can be subjected to manipulation and various attempts to rewrite the facts. It is very strange that the former President Ion Iliescu, who was also a well-known Communist and who became the first president after the 1989 events, was also the president and founder of the Institute of the Romanian Revolution in December 1989. His role in the 1989 events is not very well established, but there are many suspicions about his activities.

13. http://www.memorialsighet.ro; the website can be accessed in four different languages.

14. Please see www.inscop.ro, accessed July 17, 2015.

15. Beşliu (2014); see also Dragomir (2011) and Todorova and Gille (2010).

16. More information about the history of the Law of Lustration in Romania can be found in Dix and Rebegea (2010), and also in the chapter “Lustration” in Stan (2013).

17. In 2013, two former Communist prison commanders (Alexandru Vişinescu and Ioan Ficior) were placed under investigation on charges of crimes against humanity. Alexandru Vişinescu was charged in July 2015 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

18. For the concept of mediation, see also Erll and Rigney (2009).

19. In 2008, a dictionary of the Romanian Communist prisons was published by Andrei Muraru.

20. See also the activity of the “Fundaţia Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu” (Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu Foundation). Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu was the leader of the Făgăraş anti-Communist fighters group, active between 1947 and 1956.

21. The legal consequences varied from up to 20 years in prison (including torture, starvation, and the loss of the personal properties) to death.

22. The conditions were very difficult, many died from cold, hunger, exhaustion, or various diseases. They were heavily guarded and questioned or tortured in a perpetual attempt to coerce them into collaboration.

23. Another direct testimonial is that of Spijavca (2004). She lived the nightmare of deportation together with her husband and children and kept a journal about her family’s suffering.

24. For more details, see http://institute.ubbcluj.ro/.

25. See, for example, Echinox issues 13 (2007): “Gulag and Holocaust,” 15 (2008): “Mémoires de prison,” 19 (2010): “Communism: Negotiation of Boundaries.” See also History of Communism in Europe, vol. 1 (2010) “Politics of Memory in Post-Communist Europe.”

26. Lavinia Stan (2009a, 142) concludes that after the Greek Catholic Church was dismantled in 1948, its six bishops and some 600 of its priests who refused to convert to Orthodoxy were imprisoned.

27. Among other volumes that present the Communist regime, Anita Nandris-Cudla 20 de ani în Siberia. Amintiri din viață (2006) depicts the years she spent in deportation in Siberia and offers deep insight into the suffering experienced by those deported to Communist camps who lost all their properties, and more often their lives as well.

28. This concept was amply argued in the post-Communism Romanian cultural sphere, and used by Romanian television in a documentary series under this title, focusing on cultural life during the Communist period; the documentary is now transmitted weekly at midnight, thus it targets, voluntary or not, a limited audience. http://www.tvrplus.ro//editie-rezistenta-prin-cultura-287394, accessed August 2, 2015.

29. See also Alan Hartwick’s documentary Beyond Torture: The Gulag of Pitesti, Romania, and the website http://www.fenomenulpitesti.ro.

30. Their anti-Communist activity was made possible after the first decades of the Communist regime, when the fact the West was “watching” Romanian Communism began to matter to the regime in power. Though this movement was not one of the most remarkable of its kind, many risked their lives and the lives of their families in order to oppose the regime. Among those killed for their dissidence were Mihai Botez, Paul Goma, Doina Cornea, and Gheorghe Ursu.

31. Otilia Răduleţ remembers how her daughter asked her why her father listened to the radio with his winter coat on his head (Ştef and Ştef 2014).

32. That is why many novels set in the Communist period can be read as containing biographical references. For example, a character’s childhood might represent the memories and experiences of real-life figures who had been children during that time period.

33. For this topic, see Georgescu (2010).

34. More on this subject in Nasta (2013).

35. The report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania discusses the root of public condemnation of Communism in Romania. See in Tileagă, “Communism in retrospect.” For example, page 471: “The narrative of Communism is not self-condemnatory or self-blaming, but rather Communism is distanced from (the national) self.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UEFISCDI [grant number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0010].