Academic literature on the topic 'Romania – History – 1944-1989'

On 22 October 2003, with the initiative of Romania's president Ion Iliescu, the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania (ICSHR) was set up. Nobel laureate for peace and American writer of Romanian origin Elie Wiesel was appointed as its president. In spring 2006, with the initiative of Romania's president Traian Băsescu, the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (CPADCR) was formed. Vladimir Tismăneanu, the American political scientist of Romanian origin, became its president. Both commissions were established with the purpose of producing a final report on the two forms of totalitarianism in Romania: the extreme right totalitarianism between 1940 and 1944, and the extreme left totalitarianism between 1944 and 1989. Both commissions rested on legal and ethical grounds and they addressed Romanians' expectations and dilemmas linked to their recent traumatic history.

The anti-communist armed resistance that occurred as a disparate and heterogeneous movement in Romania from 1944 until 1962 became a highly politicized topic after 1989. Some interpreted this history as an element of the national resistance against Soviet occupation and the ensuing forced communization. Others demonized the partisans (or at least minimized their role) and presented them as outlaws, fascists, and criminals. This essay analyzes the armed resistance and its place within the politics of memory from three interrelated perspectives: 1) as lived experience in the context of post-World War II emergence of communism; 2) it takes a concretely localized perspective; and 3) analyzes these lived experiences as they have been presented in autobiographical accounts heavily influenced by post-1989 anti-communist rhetoric. The article concludes that multiple histories of repression and resistance have so far tended to be incorporated in a master narrative and argues that an approach emphasizing localized lived experience may offer an alternative interpretative framework.

In July 2007, a few months after Romania joined the European Union, on January 1, 2007, the archives of communism housed by the National Archives of Romania opened to the public. The following year, as a result of an agreement between the National Archives of Romania and the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania, the online communism photo collection, containing photographs from 1945 to 1989 and from 1921 to 1944, became available on the Internet. Also in 2008, artists Ciprian Mureșan and Adrian Ghenie, in a conceptual response to this sudden presence of photographs documenting the communist history of Romania, started to paint Nicolae Ceaușescu as a mixture of personal and public snapshots of the communist leader’s life (fig. 1). “It was Ciprian’s idea,” Adrian stated in an interview with curator Magda Radu. “We wanted to find out if, given the imposed iconography [on communist artists back then and on ourselves now], it was still possible to make an aesthetically passable work.”[1] Their project brings up a daring question, which I argue still standardizes today’s studies of art produced under dictatorships in Romania and elsewhere. Could these portraits function as inspirational art/propaganda and as visual signs open to varied interpretations? Or, in art critic Boris Groys’s words, “Can you have a good portrait of a bad dictator?”[2] Ghenie explains, “My generation, we were all losers historically, economically. There was no culture of winning. Winning under a dictatorship is to make a deal with the power, which is a moral dead end. A black hole.”[3] Therefore, painting a successful portrait of a dictator must be a postmortem portrait realized outside the dictatorship, after 1989. The dictator’s portrait, once an imposed subject under the nationally-implemented aesthetic of socialist realism in Romania, suddenly became a choice within the realm of artistic interest. This way, for Ghenie and Mureșan, such an intentional return to the dictator’s portrait becomes an aesthetic quest to discover how to paint a dictator’s portrait in the wake of censorship.[4] The portrait, as a propagandistic format once imposed and ubiquitous, is now open to the possibility to fail aesthetically or to be rejected or abandoned by the artist. To learn about the past, therefore, often means repainting Ceaușescu as a father figure and a national hero, shrinking the dictator’s former palace to a small cardboard cake (Irina Botea Bucan, 2003), using documents and photographs and reconstructing images of monuments and cities (Calin Dan and Iosif Kiraly, 1995–1996), or replacing the old labels from socialist realist sculptures with new ones (Ileana Faur, 2012). Artists deconstruct historical artifacts and their symbolic meaning by dislocating historical facts from their inert official narrative and relocating them in the artist’s current personal instance. By actualizing these symbols, artists also point to the former dictatorship’s lingering ideological specter in today’s society.

Allgemeines Das ist Militärgeschichte! Probleme - Projekte - Perspektiven. Hrsg. mit Unterstützung des MGFA von Christian Th. Müller und Matthias Rogg Dieter Langewiesche Lohn der Gewalt. Beutepraktiken von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Hrsg. von Horst Carl und Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg Birte Kundrus Piraterie von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Hrsg. von Volker Grieb und Sabine Todt. Unter Mitarb. von Sünje Prühlen Martin Rink Robert C. Doyle, The Enemy in Our Hands. America's Treatment of Enemy Prisoners of War from the Revolution to the War on Terror Rüdiger Overmans Maritime Wirtschaft in Deutschland. Schifffahrt - Werften - Handel - Seemacht im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg. von Jürgen Elvert, Sigurd Hess und Heinrich Walle Dieter Hartwig Guntram Schulze-Wegener, Das Eiserne Kreuz in der deutschen Geschichte Harald Potempa Michael Peters, Geschichte Frankens. Von der Zeit Napoleons bis zur Gegenwart Helmut R. Hammerich Johannes Leicht, Heinrich Claß 1868-1953. Die politische Biographie eines Alldeutschen Michael Epkenhans Altertum und Mittelalter Anne Curry, Der Hundertjährige Krieg (1337-1453) Martin Clauss Das Elbinger Kriegsbuch (1383-1409). Rechnungen für städtische Aufgebote. Bearb. von Dieter Heckmann unter Mitarb. von Krzysztof Kwiatkowski Hiram Kümper Sascha Möbius, Das Gedächtnis der Reichsstadt. Unruhen und Kriege in der lübeckischen Chronistik und Erinnerungskultur des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit Hiram Kümper Frühe Neuzeit Mark Hengerer, Kaiser Ferdinand III. (1608-1657). Eine Biographie Steffen Leins Christian Kunath, Kursachsen im Dreißigjährigen Krieg Marcus von Salisch Robert Winter, Friedrich August Graf von Rutowski. Ein Sohn Augusts des Starken geht seinen Weg Alexander Querengässer Die Schlacht bei Minden. Weltpolitik und Lokalgeschichte. Hrsg. von Martin Steffen Daniel Hohrath 1789-1870 Riccardo Papi, Eugène und Adam - Der Prinz und sein Maler. Der Leuchtenberg-Zyklus und die Napoleonischen Feldzüge 1809 und 1812 Alexander Querengässer Eckart Kleßmann, Die Verlorenen. Die Soldaten in Napoleons Rußlandfeldzug Daniel Furrer, Soldatenleben. Napoleons Russlandfeldzug 1812 Heinz Stübig Hans-Dieter Otto, Für Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit. Die deutschen Befreiungskriege gegen Napoleon 1806-1815 Heinz Stübig 1871-1918 Des Kaisers Knechte. Erinnerungen an die Rekrutenzeit im k.(u.)k. Heer 1868 bis 1914. Hrsg., bearb. und erl. von Christa Hämmerle Tamara Scheer Kaiser Friedrich III. Tagebücher 1866-1888. Hrsg. und bearb. von Winfried Baumgart Michael Epkenhans Tanja Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika. Koloniale Sicherheitspolitik und transkulturelle Kriegführung 1885 bis 1918 Thomas Morlang Krisenwahrnehmungen in Deutschland um 1900. Zeitschriften als Foren der Umbruchszeit im wilhelminischen Reich = Perceptions de la crise en Allemagne au début du XXe siècle. Les périodiques et la mutation de la société allemande à l'époque wilhelmienne. Hrsg. von/ed. par Michel Grunewald und/et Uwe Puschner Bruno Thoß Peter Winzen, Im Schatten Wilhelms II. Bülows und Eulenburgs Poker um die Macht im Kaiserreich Michael Epkenhans Alexander Will, Kein Griff nach der Weltmacht. Geheime Dienste und Propaganda im deutsch-österreichisch-türkischen Bündnis 1914-1918 Rolf Steininger Maria Hermes, Krankheit: Krieg. Psychiatrische Deutungen des Ersten Weltkrieges Thomas Beddies Ross J. Wilson, Landscapes of the Western Front. Materiality during the Great War Bernd Jürgen Wendt Jonathan Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front. The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918 Christian Stachelbeck Glenn E. Torrey, The Romanian Battlefront in World War I Gundula Gahlen Uwe Schulte-Varendorff, Krieg in Kamerun. Die deutsche Kolonie im Ersten Weltkrieg Thomas Morlang 1919-1945 »Und sie werden nicht mehr frei sein ihr ganzes Leben«. Funktion und Stellenwert der NSDAP, ihrer Gliederungen und angeschlossenen Verbände im »Dritten Reich«. Hrsg. von Stephanie Becker und Christoph Studt Armin Nolzen Robert Gerwarth, Reinhard Heydrich. Biographie Martin Moll Christian Adam, Lesen unter Hitler. Autoren, Bestseller, Leser im Dritten Reich Gabriele Bosch Alexander Vatlin, »Was für ein Teufelspack«. Die Deutsche Operation des NKWD in Moskau und im Moskauer Gebiet 1936 bis 1941 Helmut Müller-Enbergs Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitlers Wehrmacht 1935 bis 1945 Armin Nolzen Felix Römer, Kameraden. Die Wehrmacht von innen Martin Moll Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck, »Herr Oberleitnant, det lohnt doch nicht!« Kriegserinnerungen an die Jahre 1938 bis 1945 Othmar Hackl Stuart D. Goldman, Nomonhan, 1939. The Red Army's Victory that shaped World War II Gerhard Krebs Francis M. Carroll, Athenia torpedoed. The U-boat attack that ignited the Battle of the Atlantic Axel Niestlé Robin Higham, Unflinching zeal. The air battles over France and Britain, May-October 1940 Michael Peters Anna Reid, Blokada. Die Belagerung von Leningrad 1941-1944 Birgit Beck-Heppner Jack Radey and Charles Sharp, The Defense of Moscow. The Northern Flank Detlef Vogel Jochen Hellbeck, Die Stalingrad-Protokolle. Sowjetische Augenzeugen berichten aus der Schlacht Christian Streit Robert M. Citino, The Wehrmacht retreats. Fighting a lost war, 1943 Martin Moll Carlo Gentile, Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Partisanenkrieg: Italien 1943-1945 Kerstin von Lingen Tim Saunders, Commandos & Rangers. D-Day Operations Detlef Vogel Frederik Müllers, Elite des »Führers«? Mentalitäten im subalternen Führungspersonal von Waffen-SS und Fallschirmjägertruppe 1944/45 Sebastian Groß, Gefangen im Krieg. Frontsoldaten der Wehrmacht und ihre Weltsicht John Zimmermann Tobias Seidl, Führerpersönlichkeiten. Deutungen und Interpretationen deutscher Wehrmachtgeneräle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft Alaric Searle Nach 1945 Wolfgang Benz, Deutschland unter alliierter Besatzung 1945-1949. Michael F. Scholz, Die DDR 1949-1990 Denis Strohmeier Bastiaan Robert von Benda-Beckmann, A German Catastrophe? German historians and the Allied bombings, 1945-2010 Horst Boog Hans Günter Hockerts, Der deutsche Sozialstaat. Entfaltung und Gefährdung seit 1945 Ursula Hüllbüsch Korea - ein vergessener Krieg? Der militärische Konflikt auf der koreanischen Halbinsel 1950-1953 im internationalen Kontext. Hrsg. von Bernd Bonwetsch und Matthias Uhl Gerhard Krebs Andreas Eichmüller, Keine Generalamnestie. Die strafrechtliche Verfolgung von NS-Verbrechen in der frühen Bundesrepublik Clemens Vollnhals Horst-Eberhard Friedrichs, Bremerhaven und die Amerikaner. Stationierung der U.S. Army 1945-1993 - eine Bilddokumentation Heiner Bröckermann Russlandheimkehrer. Die sowjetische Kriegsgefangenschaft im Gedächtnis der Deutschen. Hrsg. von Elke Scherstjanoi Georg Wurzer Klaus Naumann, Generale in der Demokratie. Generationsgeschichtliche Studien zur Bundeswehrelite Rudolf J. Schlaffer John Zimmermann, Ulrich de Maizière. General der Bonner Republik 1912 bis 2006 Klaus Naumann Nils Aschenbeck, Agent wider Willen. Frank Lynder, Axel Springer und die Eichmann-Akten Rolf Steininger »Entrüstet Euch!«. Nuklearkrise, NATO-Doppelbeschluss und Friedensbewegung. Hrsg. von Christoph Becker-Schaum [u.a.] Winfried Heinemann Volker Koop, Besetzt. Sowjetische Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland Silke Satjukow, Besatzer. »Die Russen« in Deutschland 1945-1994 Heiner Bröckermann Marco Metzler, Nationale Volksarmee. Militärpolitik und politisches Militär in sozialistischer Verteidigungskoalition 1955/56 bis 1989/90 Klaus Storkmann Rüdiger Wenzke, Ab nach Schwedt! Die Geschichte des DDR-Militärstrafvollzugs Silke Satjukow Militärs der DDR im Auslandsstudium. Erlebnisberichte, Fakten und Dokumente. Hrsg. von Bernd Biedermann und Hans-Georg Löffler Rüdiger Wenzke Marianna Dudley, An Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate, 1945 to the Present Michael Peters

Defence date: 25 February 2022
Examining Board: Prof. Alexander Etkind (European University Institute); Prof.Federico Romero (European University Institute); Prof. Constantin Iordachi (Central European University); Prof. Juliane Fürst (Leibniz Centre of Contemporary History ZZF)
The sixties witnessed many youth unrests across the globe. Compared to previous decades, a distinctive decisional category emerged: youth. They gained a central role by defining themselves in opposition to other generations and perceiving themselves as a unique one with a purpose to change history through ‘revolution’. At the same time, the youngsters considered themselves to belong to a movement that transcended their local city, the national borders, and ideological barriers. Yet, there were different ways to express the discontent against the values of the ‘gerontocracy’. This dissertation creates a local, regional, and comparative analysis of the history of sixty-eighters from Hungary and Romania. It will focus on their childhood experiences and on the impact of political decisions. A significant determinant was the cultural and psychological background of each of the protagonists. The group cohesion and the cultural and psychological background of each protagonist determined their protest tactics. Some youngsters were not interested in politics, but the state considered their activities, such as listening to Radio Free Europe or playing in a rock band to be a threat. A variety of cultural genres were involved in this process: music was an essential component of the late 1960s, which had a notable role in challenging the Establishment. Thus, another line of inquiry will explain how musicians and artists used different protest expressions, such as Maoism, rock music, or ‘passive resistance' as protest tactics. The relationship between artists and the state was not always an oppositional one. Instead, this project will use James Scott’s concepts of infrapolitics and hidden transcripts to show there was always a negotiation and a compromise between various networks.
Chapter 5 ‘Ultra-Leftist Revolution in Hungary' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as chapter '‘The long 1968’ in Hungary and its legacy' (2019) in the book ‘Unsettled 1968 in the troubled present revisiting the 50 years of discussions from east and central Europe’
The introduction of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Eastern-European 1968s?' (2019) in the journal ‘Review of international American studies’
Chapter 1 ‘The Childhood of a Generation' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'The pre-history of Hungarian and Romanian 1968ers' (2020) in the journal ‘Wroclaw yearbook of oral history’

This study examines the Socialist Republic of Romania as a Stalinist state which employs a personality cult. The leader of a state is the focus of a personality cult, but he does not enjoy the status it gives without consent from elsewhere within the government. In order to determine where this power comes from, three possible sources are discussed. These are: Nicolae Ceausescu, president of Romania; the state bureaucracy; and the people. The Soviet Union, during the time of Stalin, is used as a comparative element. When Nicolae Ceausescu came to power he did so with the consent of the elite. As the Romanian elite are less inclined to support his policies, Ceausescu has had to continually take steps to stay ahead of the opposition. The Romanian people also lent their support to Ceausescu earlier, and have since become discontented with the regime. This study concludes that a leader with a personality cult must have some form of consent to come into power, but his personal characteristics will determine how he leads and whether or not he will be able to remain in power if that consent is withdrawn.
M.A.

Les travaux de recherche pour la présente thèse s’appuient en grande partie sur les dossiers de la Securitate, conservés au Conseil national pour l’étude des archives de la Securitate, à Bucarest et à Popesti-Leordeni, en Roumanie. Ces travaux visent à expliquer les divers mécanismes de terreur mis en œuvre par la Securitate, la police secrète roumaine sous l’ère communiste, dans le but de recruter parmi la population des personnes pour alimenter son réseau de surveillance. Bien qu’examinant l’ensemble de la période communiste en Roumanie, la thèse se penche en particulier sur les deux dernières décennies du régime, durant le règne de Nicolae Ceauşescu, de 1965 à 1989, et introduit comme outils d’étude les notions de psuchegraphy et de dossierveillance, deux néologismes pour désigner les méthodes coercitives appliquées par la Securitate dans le but d’enrôler des informateurs et de s’assurer de leur collaboration. Le concept de psuchegraphy recouvre la collecte de données biographiques, permettant de consigner dans les dossiers de la Securitate suffisamment d’indices sur la personnalité, le caractère et les convictions profondes de personnes ciblées afin de cerner leurs points vulnérables et les forcer ensuite à une collaboration. Les présentes recherches démontrent que ce type d’analyse servait en quelque sorte de prélude au recrutement des membres du réseau de surveillance de la Securitate. Le concept dit de dossierveillance met en lumière le rôle de la technologie et de la documentation lié aux pratiques de surveillance pour le recrutement des informateurs et l’instauration d’un climat de terreur pour assurer le contrôle des populations. La composante dossier dans dossierveillance, amplement expliquée dans ces pages comme la technologie employée par la Securitate dans l’exercice de la surveillance de personnes ciblées, fut l’un des outils « disciplinaires » (Foucault 1975) les plus efficaces pour entretenir la crainte et de suspicion. Ces travaux présentent également les conséquences de l’application de tels mécanismes sur une nation, un phénomène appelé ici la banalisation du mal, d’après le concept de la banalité du mal avancé par Hannah Arendt dans son œuvre. Enfin, ce travail permet de revisiter le sujet de la lustration et de la justice transitionnelle, et d’examiner comment les nouvelles avancées universitaires énoncées dans ses pages peuvent contribuer à mieux comprendre et traiter le sujet de la collaboration en Roumanie dans un contexte postcommuniste
Working primarily with Securitate files, currently stored at the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS), located in Bucharest and Popesti-Leordeni, Romania, this thesis explains the various terror mechanisms the Securitate, Romania’s secret police during the country’s communist period, employed in order to gain recruits and employ them as part of its surveillance network. Although the thesis discusses the entire communist period in Romania, it places significant emphasis on the last two decades of communism (1965-89), when Nicolae Ceauşescu was in power. This thesis introduces and discusses the following two concepts— psuchegraphy and dossierveillance—described herein as two terror methods applied by the Securitate to obtain informers and compel them to collaborate. The former mentioned concept entailed collecting biographical data Securitate’s targets that would give one sufficient clues about a person’s core beliefs, personality, character, and identity, all with the scope of getting to know that which Securitate referred to in its files as a person’s vulnerable points. This thesis shows that this kind of analysis was a precursor to recruitment of the members of the Securitate’s surveillance network. The latter aforemetioed method of terror stresses the role of technology and documentation in surveillance practices and their use for recruitment of informers and management of the population by maintaining it in a sense of dread and fear. The ‘dossier in dossierveillance, loosely defined in this thesis as the technology that the Securitate employed to place its targets under surveillance, represented one of the Securitate’s most effective “disciplinary” tools (Foucault 1975) through which it managed to instill fear in people. This thesis also describes the outcome of enforcing such mechanisms on a nation, amassing to a phenomenon described here as the banalization of evil, a term that builds on the work of Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil. Lastly, this thesis revists the subject of lustration and transitional justice and explores how the new scholarship discussed in the thesis may further contribute to understanding and treating the subject of collaboration in a post-communist context in Romania

Defence date: 11 September 2015
Examining Board : Professor Philipp Ther (University of Vienna/EUI) – Supervisor; Professor Maria Todorova (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) – Co- Supervisor; Professor Pavel Kolár (EUI); Professor Bogdan Murgescu (University of Bucharest).
The thesis examines the structure and functions of political festivals in socialist Romania, between 1948 and 1989, focusing especially on their roles in mirroring the official communist ideology and its shifts between the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and nationalism, as well as in shaping a new type of culture for members of the working-class and peasantry. This analysis illustrates political festivals as instruments of institutional and mass control, and as means of self-representation for the communist regime, with the purpose of providing political legitimization. The research has focused on a comparative perspective, developed at two levels: a chronological one – between youth and workers festivals in Romania, during the 1950s and 1960s, and the so-called National Festival of Socialist Education "Song of Romania", during the 1970s and 1980s – and a structural comparison – between the official image of festivals in propaganda, at a general level, and that of festivals as perceived by ordinary people, at a case-study level. Political festivals constituted an important means of institutional and mass control, as well as of creating a new type of culture, in socialist Romania. Youth and workers festivals characterized the official cultural atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s. Later on, in the aftermath of Nicolae Ceausescu's policy of integrating nationalism in the Marxist-Leninist ideology, in order to legitimize his personality cult, political festivals became the main instrument of forging the new man of the communist regime. Benefiting from a wide and diverse array of primary sources and material, the thesis addressed the following questions, among others: What was the development and evolution of political festivals in socialist Romania? What material and discursive contexts determined the selection or replacement of political symbols in the framework of political festivals? What were the effects of political festivals on everyday life for ordinary people? How did political festivals deal with the issue of leisure, free time and continuous education?

This chapter analyzes historiography in several Balkan countries, paying particular attention to the communist era on the one hand, and the post-1989–91 period on the other. When communists took power in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia in 1944–5, the discipline of history in these countries—with the exception of Albania—had already been institutionalized. The communists initially set about radically changing the way history was written in order to construct a more ideologically suitable past. In 1989–91, communist dictatorships came to an end in Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Years of war and ethnic cleansing would ensue in the former Yugoslavia. These upheavals impacted on historiography in different ways: on the one hand, the end of communist dictatorship brought freedom of expression; on the other hand, the region faced economic displacement.

The chapter is devoted to discussing constitutional and criminal law as it existed in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe between 1944 and 1989 (Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Romania, Hungary, and Poland). As a result of the great powers’ decisions, these countries came under the direct supervision of the Soviet Union and adopted totalitarian political solutions from it. This meant rejecting the idea of the tripartite division of power and affirming the primacy of the community (propaganda-wise: the state pursuing the interests of the working class) over the individual. As a result, regardless of whether the state was formally unitary or federal, power was shaped hierarchically, with full power belonging to the legislative body and the body appointing other organs of the state. However, the text constantly draws attention to the radical discrepancy between the content of the normative acts and the systemic practice in the states mentioned. In reality, real power was in the hands of the communist party leaders controlling society through an extensive administrative apparatus linked to the communist party structure, an apparatus of violence (police, army, prosecution, courts, prisons, and concentration and labor camps), a media monopoly, and direct management of the centrally controlled economy. From a doctrinal point of view, the abovementioned states were totalitarian regardless of the degree of use of violence during the period in question. Criminal law was an important tool for communist regimes’ implementation of the power monopoly. In the Stalinist period, there was a tendency in criminal law to move away from the classical school’s achievements. This was expressed, among other means, by emphasizing the importance of the concept of social danger and the marginalization of the idea of guilt for the construction of the concept of crime. After 1956, the classical achievements of the criminal law doctrine were gradually restored in individual countries, however – especially in special sections of the criminal codes – much emphasis was placed on penalizing acts that the communist regime a priori considered to be a threat to its existence. Thus, also in the field of criminal law, a difference was evident between the guarantees formally existing in the legislation and the criminal reality of the functioning of the state.