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Identity Politics in Communist Romania

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Identity Politics in Communist Romania Historical Memory versus Communist Identity Historical Memory versus Communist Identity Proceedings of the Conference “Th e Shaping of Identity and Personality under Communist Rule: History in the Service of Totalitarian Regimes in Eastern Europe,” Tallinn, 9–10 June 2011 Edited by Meelis Saueauk Th e conference “Shaping of Identity and Personality during Communist Rule: History in the Service of the Totalitarian Regimes in Eastern Europe” was hosted on June 9–10, 2011 by the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory and the Unitas Foundation. We would like to thank our partners, supporters, and authors for their contributions towards the conference and this publication. Organising Committee: Uve Poom (CEO, Unitas Foundation), Toomas Hiio (Member of Board, Estonian Institute of Historical Memory), Meelis Saueauk (Research Fellow, Estonian Institute of Historical Memory). Estonian Institute of Historical Memory Th e Estonian Institute of Historical Memory was established by President Toomas Hendrik Ilves in 2008 in order to provide the citizens of Estonia with a thorough and objective account of the status of human rights during the Soviet occupation of Estonia. Th e Institute of Historical Memory is a member of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. www.mnemosyne.ee Unitas Foundation Th e Unitas Foundation was established in 2008 with the mission to unite societies divided by totalitarian regimes. Th e organisation is based in Tallinn, but operates internationally. Th e Unitas Foundation is a member of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. www.unitasfoundation.org Th e conference and its publication were made possible with the generous support of the Ministry of Education and Research, Open Estonia Foundation, and the Republic of Estonia Government Offi ce. Edited by Meelis Saueauk Translation: Peeter Alan Tammisto, Aet Ringborg Language editing: Refi ner Translations OÜ Layout: Aive Maasalu Cover design: Kalle Paalits ISBN 978-9949-32-617-4 (print) ISBN 978-9949-32-649-5 (pdf) Copyright: Authors, 2014 University of Tartu Press 4 www.tyk.ee Contents Foreword ............................................................................................ 7 Maria Mälksoo Introduction ..................................................................... 9 Silviu Taraş Public Rituals in Transformation – Identity Politics in Communist Romania ................................................. 19 Eli Pilve Ideological Pressure in School Lessons in the Estonian SSR ............................................................. 45 Simo Mikkonen Giving a lesson in history – Soviet attempts to manipulate Estonian émigré communities .................. 71 Ivo Juurvee Soviet propaganda targeting the Estonian Diaspora ... 89 Maarja Talgre Annex: My memories of Soviet propaganda in Sweden ....................................................................... 105 Jernej Letnar Černič Th e Remains of Communist Identity in Slovenia. Transitional Justice in Slovenia: Potential, Pitfalls, and Future ......................................................................... 111 Klinta Ločmele (Un)told Memories: Communicating the (Soviet) Past in Latvian Families .................................................. 129 Agata Fijalkowski A Judge’s Identity ............................................................. 147 Authors ............................................................................................ 164 5 Foreword This collection consists of academic articles on the subjects addressed by the research conference “The Shaping of Identity and Personality under Com munist Rule: History in the Service of Totalitarian Regimes in Eastern Europe,” held at the Nordic Hotel Forum Conference Center in Tallinn, Esto- nia, on 9–10 June 2011 and arranged by the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory Foundation and the Unitas Foundation. Identity as knowledge of oneself or self-identifi cation in social circumstan- ces and relations was something the Soviet-type communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe considered important to attempt to influence. Th is infl uence reached everyone and naturally gave rise to various sentiments and counter-reactions. Th e shaping of the identity “the new (Soviet) people” proved especially difficult in the countries and territories annexed by the Soviet Union during World War II (such as Estonia) or the Central and Eastern European countries subsumed into the Soviet bloc and Sovietized, where attempts were made to apply the same dogmas that had worked in Stalin’s totalitarian USSR. To the former citizens of those previously more or less democratic countries, these attempts looked strange and absurd. Ideologically mutated history was an important component of the offi cial communist identity. The artificial official history and the new historical identity it forced upon the population aspired to establish the sole possible truth by means of half-truths, ignoring and suppressing events that had actually happened and people who had actually lived. The organizers of the conference intended to describe, analyze, and ex- plain the state policies and activities used in Eastern Europe for shaping the communist identity and personality by manipulating the historical conscious- ness, and the effi ciency of those policies and activities, proceeding from the offi cial historical approaches of the former Eastern bloc. As the identifi cation of violations of human rights during the Soviet period is the principal mission of the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory, there was also research into connections between the restriction of human rights and the shaping of 7 FOREWORD identity by force. A majority of the members of the Learned Committee of the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory were present at the conference, starting with Enrique Barón Crespo from Spain, lawyer and economist and former president of the European Parliament. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of the Republic of Estonia and patron of the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory, who gave a welcoming address at the conference, emphasized that we should not neglect the collection of local people’s memories, oral history. Probably the most important thread running through every article in this collection is the conflict between the official, communist identity and the nation’s historical memory, and its consequences. For this collection, articles based on seven conference papers were selected. All in all, the conference left us with hope that, even if it is diffi cult to assess the infl uence of propaganda and shaping the communist identity, the task is not impossible. And that identities are created more easily than they can be changed. The organizers thank the Open Estonia Foundation and the Estonian Mi nistry of Education and Research, whose support has helped both the conference and this publication to become a reality. Hopefully, the collection will provide fascinating and thought-provoking reading. Meelis Saueauk editor Estonian Institute of Historical Memory 8 Introduction Introduction Maria Mälksoo Th e vulnerability of humans’ sense of self against the totalitarian system has evoked the creative and inquisitive energies of writers, filmmakers, artists, and scholars alike. Arthur Koestler published his disillusioned critique of Soviet communism in 1940. Th e hero of his striking novel Darkness at Noon (1941) is unable to resist the Party’s narrative, giving up on his sense of self and facing his execution convinced that he is serving the Revolution.1 George Orwell’s famous anti-totalitarian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) similarly sees the protagonist Winston Smith turned by the system so that he ends up loving “Big Brother.” Still others, such as Czesław Miłosz, have pointed to the resilience of individuals in highly controlled societies in constructing their identities. In his The Captive Mind (1953), he describes the sizeable space for private discourse that existed in the Soviet bloc in parallel to the official narrative through the deceptive practice of Ketman. Nonetheless, his account is a poignant reminder of the moral diffi culties one encounters while resisting the attempts of totalitarian and highly authoritarian systems to seek “enslavement through consciousness.” In order to retain a sense of self, one generally reaches for memory, hoping to keep some sense of continuity of one’s identity – and thus the struggle of man against power becomes, in Milan Kundera’s (1980) shrewd observation, the “struggle of memory against forgetting.” This call has recently been taken up by a range of scholars from diffe- rent disciplinary corners in order to examine the intertwined pasts and memory cultures of the states and societies of the former Soviet bloc. While the unwritten canon of the interdisciplinary fi eld of memory studies has traditionally focused on the largely Western ways of remembrance and working through of the Western encounters with Nazism, the ongoing “Eastern European turn” in the explorations of the politics, idiosyncrasies, and functions of memory has considerably broadened the discipline’s analytical 1 Koestler, A. Darkness at Noon. New York: Macmillan, 1941. 9 MARIA MÄLKSOO gaze. Th is is evidenced by works as varied as Catherine Merridale’sNight of Stone (2000), Anne Applebaum’s Gulag (2003), Orlando Figes’s Th e Whisperers (2007), Harald Wydra’s Communism and the Emergence of Democracy (2007), Irina Paperno’s Stories of the Soviet Experience (2009), David Satter’s It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never
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