Transitional Politics of Memory: Political Strategies of Managing the Past in Post-communist Romania

Abstract

The article develops a typology of political strategies of coming to terms with the past as a theoretical frame of reference against which it assesses the transitional politics of memory pursued in Romanian post-communist society. It argues that after an initial ‘elusive’ strategy based on a politics of amnesia gave way to a confrontationist stance promoting a politics of anamnesis, the communist past was both politically criminalised and symbolically demonised. The article concludes by arguing that the failure of the ‘mastering the past’ paradigm epitomised by the 2006 Tismăneanu Report needs to give way to a ‘normalising’ paradigm of remembering Romanian communism.

Project financed from Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu research grants LBUS-IRG-2016-02.

Notes

¹ For a very different use of the term, see Kristen Ghodsee (2011). While Ghodsee refers to the ‘politics of anamnesis’ as a way of recuperating ordinary people’s positive experiences of communist regimes, this article employs the same term to denote a particular politics of memory pursuing the recovery of the traumatic memory of communism suppressed during the ‘politics of amnesia’ promoted by the heirs of the Communist Party.

² ‘Lege privind accesul la propriul dosar și deconspirarea securității ca poliție politică’, available at: http://www.cdep.ro/legislatie/eng/vol44eng.pdf, accessed 10 September 2017.

³ Procesul comunismului, Curtea Penală de Condamnare Juridico-Morală a Crimelor Regimurilor Comuniste, 7 September 2006, available at: www.portalulrevolutiei.ro/documente/Procesulcomunismului.doc, accessed 12 September 2017.

⁴ The ICAR Foundation was founded in 1992 with the mission of providing free medical, psychological, social, and legal assistance to the victims of human rights abuses experienced during the communist regime.

⁵ The term ‘obsessive decade’ (obsedantul deceniu), first coined by the novelist Marin Preda (1970, pp. 1, 3) in the literary sphere, gained wide usage in the Romanian public discourse in designating the traumas of the 1950s inflicted by communist authorities in their bid to transform Romanian society into a socialist regime.

⁶ Public Opinion Barometer (POB) October 2006, based on a representative sample of 1,975 respondents, with a margin of error of ±2.3% at a 95% level of confidence.

⁷ The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, May 2011, based on a representative sample of 1,125 respondents, with a margin of error of ±2.9% at a 95% level of confidence.

⁸ The Justice and Truth Alliance (2003–2007) was the second successful attempt, after the National Democratic Convention, at articulating a centre-right political platform against the successor of the former communist party (Partidul Social Democrat—PSD). The alliance between the National Liberal Party and Băsescu’s Democratic Party updated the CDR’s already strong anti-communist agenda with a vocal rhetoric of anti-corruption.

⁹ The official condemnation was prefaced by a juridical mockery organised by the survivors of the fascist Iron Guard, parodying the legal proceeding of a tribunal. Several months before Băsescu delivered his sentence in Parliament, on 7 September 2006, communism was condemned in the Central University Library of Cluj, which housed what its protagonists have called ‘The Penal Court of Juridical and Moral Condemnation of Communist Regimes’ Crimes’ (2006).

¹⁰ The thesis of ‘Romanian exceptionalism’ runs through most of the historiographical accounts of Romanian communism, with the most articulate expression to be found in the Final Report. This academic discourse is complemented by other discursive strands such as those elaborated by the influential anti-communist weekly Revista 22 (Magazine 22) issued by the Group for Social Dialogue (Grupul pentru Dialog Social—GDS). A different type of exceptionalism is implied by the Sonderweg thesis developed in German historiography, which describes Germany’s modern evolution as following a ‘special path’ in comparison to other Western nations, leading directly to the catastrophe of the Third Reich.

¹¹ ‘The Pitești phenomenon’ was a re-education experiment conducted on political prisoners by the Romanian communist authorities between 1949 and 1951. A wide repertoire of brutal measures ranging from symbolic humiliation and psychological abuses to physical torture was used on the detainees in a systematic effort to destroy their identities and ‘re-educate’ them into compliant communists. These efforts aimed to bring about the complete transformation of human personality, accomplished when the political prisoner became himself an executioner. The project was closed by the communist government in 1952 and 22 of the prisoners-turned-executioners were sentenced to death.