CULTURE AS a HAVEN DURING the COMMUNIST REGIME Ramona MUREŞAN, Phd Candidate, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca Abstract:The

SECTION: HISTORY LDMD I CULTURE AS A HAVEN DURING THE COMMUNIST REGIME Ramona MUREŞAN, PhD Candidate, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca Abstract:The cultural products of the communist regime must be observed in a close relation to the political circumstances of the period, since everything was governed by politics during those times. The special and unique link between culture and politics might be hard to understand from the contemporary perspectives even by an inhabitant of the former communist bloc, not to mention people who have never known a totalitarian regime. In these circumstances, culture became a haven, a getaway place from the hardship of life. And nowhere was this more obvious than in the communist prisons, where innocent people found refuge in praying, in poems and in sui generis conferences and lectures given by outstanding teachers, priests and scientists who were imprisoned for merely believing in their dreams and values. Learning poems by heart, teaching others and sharing cultural knowledge to their fellow sufferers, gave these people the strength to survive, mentally and physically, in a communist political prison. Politically detained persons in the Romanian communist regime found their balance in religious faith (Nicolae Steinhardt), in poems (Radu Gyr, Lena Constante) or in handcraft. Regardless of the cultural form they have resorted to, their testimonies are a valuable life lesson for those who now enjoy the freedom that they have so hardly fought for. Keywords: communism, cultural haven, political imprisonment, freedom When dealing with the cultural products of a totalitarian society, one must thoroughly observe the correlation between the cultural product in itself and the socio-political context within which it was created and, possibly published or released to the public. From this perspective, two possibilities emerge in so far as the artist’s attitude towards the regime was: on one hand, there is the submission and the moral compromise some were willing to make and, on the other hand, there is the bitterness and the revolt in preserving the moral verticality in some other creators. Undoubtedly, there were some who stood between the lines, but even this type of positioning is, in our opinion, a form of giving up. The insidious way in which the oppressive regime has been trying to control the cultural life influenced to a high degree the artistic movement during Communism. Making art, and especially literature, synonym to the communist propaganda, The Communist Party lead an assiduous campaign to ideologically alter the culture, thus maintaining a climate of axiological confusion through diversions, false news, mass ideological intoxication and constant panic. Given these conditions, the cultural creation functioned on a surviving mode and the cultural elite was defeated, either by gaining artists on the communists’ side, or by isolating them from the rest of society. The communist prisons have been filled with intellectuals, who were humiliated and tortured beyond imagination. The stories of those who have survived the communist hell are simply terrifying, and the Romanian post-revolutionary literature produced an avalanche of such confessions which round up the image of a cultural life during the communism. Studying these writings is a must, a sine-qua-non condition in contextual analysis of the cultural products from that period. A dictatorship generates profound changes at all levels of human existence. We do not only refer to the material deprivation, but also – and even more – to the mutations that such a 523 SECTION: HISTORY LDMD I regime causes on the human spiritual life. The less spirituality it allows, the stronger the dictatorship is, as Eugen Barbu’s main character states in his novel Prinepele: “[…] I have corrupted them, I have taught them to steal[…]. What more could I do than forcing them to forget their mother tongue? […] All that was honest in this country now lies in prisons, rotting, or long perished.”1 Although it refers to another period in our country’s history, the above quote holds a universal truth: when language, culture and moral values are defeated, the dictator has reached his purpose. However, another issue occurs, which does not allow the communists to completely suppress the cultural life of the country. They are well aware of the fact that a nation’s culture is what defines the nation itself, with its traditions, its language and its beliefs. Beyond social and political data of an era, the nation is almost exclusively defined through its culture and, disregarding this reality would equal with political suicide. Therefore, following their instincts or the advice of personal counselors, dictators were able to assess the major impact that cultural leaders had on people. The intellectuality of a country is an opinion leader and this is why they have always been carefully supervised and, if possible, lured into the political structures. Despite the intensive campaign to politically dominate all spheres of life, there were still many outstanding figures who managed to remain unchanged and unchained in spirit, no matter how hard their body was hit. How they managed to do so, is yet another story, on which our paper focuses. The vast bibliography available on the topic of communist political imprisonment makes it easier but at some points, even more difficult to distinguish patterns or types of people imprisoned during the communist regime. Amongst the most valuable diarist writings, we recall those of Nicolae Steinhardt, Sergiu Al. George, Virgil Ierunca, Paul Goma, Ion Ioanid, Ioan Ploscaru, Nicolae Mărgineanu, Lena Constante and the list goes on, with names that are all and each of them synonym with courage, spiritual strength, powerful minds and moral landmarks. Their confessions state for posterity the regime they were submitted to, the torments of communist prisons, the censorship, the physical deprivations and the spiritual sufferings they were forced to endure. In the proper sense of the word, these people’s salvation was their ability to disregard the material aspects of reality and, at the same time, to perceive everything on a spiritual level, discovering the superior values of life: solidarity, empathy, compassion. In this regard, we consider Ioanid’s words as iconic: “And today, while free, whenever I meet a former prisoner who speaks about prison with warmth, I know immediately that he is one of us, who understood things the same way I did. One who knew that the prison is not the building, nor the guards or the treatment, but the prisoners. Those who disregarded the material things within which the regime tried to enclose us (bars, prison walls, hunger, cold, sufferings of all kind and even death). Those who were freer in prison than others outside.”2 Life within communist political prisons proved to be unbearable and, unfortunately, many died or chose the compromise to survive. Physical tortures reveal insane minds and extreme sadism. The torturers proved really creative in discovering means of torture, but even they knew that the most difficult to bare is the psychological torture. Therefore, they constantly pushed the limits of the prisoners, in an attempt to destroy their intellectual abilities and their 1 Eugen Barbu, Princepele, 43. (Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own) 2 Ion Ioanid, Închisoarea noastră cea de toate zilele, vol. 1, 87. 524 SECTION: HISTORY LDMD I spiritual strength. Vulnerable spots were addressed, such as family, religion and moral dignity. Nothing was sacred for these tortures. They mocked, as Virgil Ierunca reveals, the most important religious celebrations, forcing the prisoners to eat faeces instead of the Holy Sacrament, making them adore a phallic appearance instead of their God, or eat like pigs, in response to the Last Supper. It is difficult to imagine how could one stand such humiliations and preserve their sanity at the same time. After all, how much can one endure and where does the force to surpass these horrors come from? Nowadays, such images seem to be taken from a fictional book because they are so unreal. This perception is met even with young people from former communist countries. It is then, pointless to mention that for people who have never lived under a totalitarian regime, such scenes are quite unbelievable. Indeed, such horrors should have never happened, but they did happen and it is our duty to tell the next generation with what costs they got their freedom. And understanding how these people saved their souls and their sanity is a lesson to be learned, and hopefully never to be lived again. All the memoires depicting life in communist regime mention, alongside the terrors, also the ways in which people kept going on. Three were the solutions taken into consideration: the first one, stated in Soljenitan’s Gulag Archipelago, was embracing death, since nothing can be taken to a man that has given up everything. A second possibility was to become completely unadjusted to the system, so that one could not be blackmailed and the third option was an active opposition, based on the principle that the harder the system hits you, the more cheerful you become. As far as the attitude is concerned, the Romanian political prisoner vacillates, according to Adrian Marino, between heroism, partial obedience and complete servitude. However, we must draw attention to the fact that all these behaviour patterns converge, at times, within the same person. The law of survival in the communist prisons is adjusting to the new situation. The process begins with the distinction between the vital and the moral values of the prisoner. Given these coordinates, Tzvetan Todorov distinguishes a moral profile of the prisoner: prior to imprisonment, the moral values are well defined, but the first days’ shock causes their immersion. Later on, once the adjustment begins, the preservation instinct makes the prisoners reconsider their spiritual structure.

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