The Pennsylvania State University Schreyer Honors College Department of English Incarceration As a Tool for Shaping National I
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THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH INCARCERATION AS A TOOL FOR SHAPING NATIONAL IDENTITY: ROMANIA, 1947–1989 JAKE PELINI SPRING 2016 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a baccalaureate degree in English with honors in English Reviewed and approved* by the following: Robert D. Hume Evan Pugh University Professor of English Thesis Supervisor Xiaoye You Associate Professor of English and Asian Studies Honors Adviser * Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. i ABSTRACT This essay examines how a regime can employ its carceral system to help reshape the national identity of its subjects, taking for a case study communist Romania between 1947 and 1989). Historians have studied in detail the Romanian communist regime’s secret police, the securitate, as well the 1989 revolution that violently overthrew the regime. However, a paucity of scholarship exists on the prison spaces themselves. This study places the Romanian carceral system—both as a whole and through the examination of select individual prisons—at its center. Using the spatial theories of Henry Lefebvre and Robert Whiting, as well as the nationalist theories of Georgio Agamben and Kenneth Jowitt, this essay shows that prisons functioned within Romania’s national and local frameworks to terrorize Romanians into complicity with the communist regime. Romanians who continued in their dissent were incarcerated by the regime, and this essay details the carceral program that the regime employed to brainwash prisoners according to communist doctrine. As a result of the communists’ imposition of the carceral program upon the Romanian people, the prison retains a presence in the Romanian cultural landscape, even thirty years after the regime’s fall. I hope that upon its conclusion this essay will have clear implications for rethinking how not only a Stalinist regime but any state employs its carceral system to consolidate its power. ii Pentru unii libertatea nu există, însă, pentru alţii, chiar şi faptul că pot scrie această propoziţie înseamnă libertate. For some, freedom doesn’t exist; for others, even the fact that I am able to write this sentence is freedom. For some, freedom is nothing more than a feeling—same as love or faith. — Attila Bartis Lăzarea, 2012 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... iv Chapter 1 Communist Romania’s Ubiquitous System of Incarceration ...................... 1 Chapter 2 National Space: Constructing the Romanian State ..................................... 7 Romania’s National Awakening, 1821–1914 .................................................................. 8 Peleş Castle: A Case Study in Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century Romania ........... 11 Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania: Emergent Ethnic Hot Spots, 1914–1940........ 12 Bessarabia ................................................................................................................ 14 Bukovina ................................................................................................................... 15 Transylvania ............................................................................................................. 17 Finalizing Borders: World War II and the Transition to Communism ............................ 18 Chapter 3 Local Spaces: The Consolidation of the Communist Romanian State........ 21 Systematization: Cultural Stalinism in Ceauşescu’s Romania ......................................... 22 Ceauşescu’s Casa Poporului [“People’s House”]: Nation Building in Local Space ....... 24 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 26 Chapter 4 Incarceration as a Tool for Shaping National Identity ................................ 27 Overview of the Romanian Gulag .................................................................................... 27 Romania’s Gulag Network: Nation Building on National and Local Levels ................... 31 The Role of Prisons in “Breaking Through” ........................................................... 33 The Role of Prisons in “Political Integration” ........................................................ 36 Prisons as Micro Spaces ................................................................................................... 43 The Prison as Carceral Micro Space ....................................................................... 45 The Prison as Religious Micro Space ...................................................................... 51 The Prison as Educational Micro Space .................................................................. 55 Re-education at Piteşti: A Case Study in Nation Building Inside Prisons ....................... 58 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 62 Chapter 5 “Incarceration Identities” in Twenty-First Century Romania ..................... 65 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................ 71 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Map of Political Boundaries in the Kingdom of Romania, 1877–1878 ................... 9 Figure 2: Map of Romanian Political Boundaries, 1940.......................................................... 13 Figure 3, Left: Front view of the Palace of Parliament, August 1989; Right: Aerial view of the Palace of Parliament, 2014 ............................................................................................... 25 Figure 4: General Distribution of Location of Imprisonment in Romania, 1945–1989 .......... 28 Figure 5, Left: Spatial Distribution of Traditional Prisons in Romania, 1945–1989; Right: Spatial Distribution of All Locations of Incarceration in Romania, 1945–1989.......................... 39 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, to the brave Romanian women and men who lived under the communist regime, especially those incarcerated by communist officials. For the courage and inspiration you have inspired in me throughout this process—I dedicate this to you. Thank you also to my supervisor, Prof. Robert Hume, who dedicated countless hours, which were already sparse, to meet with me, provide feedback on drafts, offer book recommendations, and allow me to grapple with ideas. He saw this project from the beginning to its significantly different end. I feel honored to have called him my supervisor, mentor, and hopefully, now, a friend. To Prof. Lisa Sternlieb, whose seminars and mentorship have molded me into a better thinker, writer, and reader, and have taught speak up for what I believe in, even when—no, especially when it goes against the grain. To Prof. Catherine Wanner, who welcomed me into her undergraduate history seminar in the spring of 2015 and introduced me to Eastern European Borderland History. Without her, this essay would not exist. To the Rock Ethics Institute, which provided generous funding for this research. To my dear friends, without whose support and inspiration over the last few years I would certainly not have finished this thesis, and likely would not have continued to complete my degree. For their support and love, I would especially like to thank Anna, Coral, and Michelle. To these and the countless others who deserve my gratitude: Throughout my university studies, you have given me so much. And though I have appreciated the material gifts—the books and the articles and the funding—what has meant the most to me over the last four years has been the intangible gifts—of your time, your talents, and, ultimately, your love. All you have done has been greatly appreciated. 1 Chapter 1 Communist Romania’s Ubiquitous System of Incarceration Between 1947 and 1989, Romanian communist leaders constructed a state that was as carceral as it was communist. From penitentiaries in the Carpathian peaks of the north; to psychiatric torture facilities near the western cityscapes of Timişoara; to deportation centers concentrated around the eastern Danube delta: Romania’s extensive, multifarious penal landscape was crucial to the communist regime. Prisons were instrumental in both the rise and consolidation of Romanian communism. Nearly a decade before the Romanian People’s Republic was officially proclaimed in 1947, future communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej formed Doftana prison’s “prison nucleus,” a think-tank of subversive intellectuals who developed many of what would become the communist party’s central tenets. This group included, among others, Ana Pauker and Nicolae Ceauşescu, the country’s future dictator.1 If carceral institutions were present at the conception of Romanian communism, they were also omnipresent throughout it. Penitentiaries were found in cities such as Braşov and Timişoara, where major revolutionary protest movements erupted and which eventually toppled 1 Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons, 36, 78. Though Ana Pauker played a crucial role in Romania’s communist era, this paper will not discuss her role outside of the context of prisons. For a biography of Pauker, see Levy, Ana Pauker. 2 communism.2 Romanians who were charged with economic sabotage and absenteeism were relocated to forced “labor units” or “work colonies” to serve their sentences.3 Finally, Romanian prison