Negotiating Communist Boundaries

The demise of Communism remains an important research topic for Human and Social Sciences. Twenty years on, with the benefit of hindsight, research on the phenomenon has been enriched, its instruments refined to respond to the complexity of the concepts involved as well as to the critical and theoretical approaches in circulation. These are now applied to a field of investigation enriched by the publication of new documents and testimonies, as well as by the opening of document archives inaccessible until recently. Building on the topic of boundary negotiation within communism, this issue of Echinox Journal reunites several generations of researchers from various European countries, applying different perspectives on a phenomenon characterised by the complexity of a whole ”continent”. It is a continent possessing a typical geography and therefore making necessary a good mapping at all levels: historical, political, social, psychological, cultural and literary. We do not claim having achieved such a map, but do believe that this issue of Echinox Journal can provide a series of suggestions and keys perhaps landmarks, useful for a reader interested in (re)visiting the complex topic of Communism.

In designing this volume, we started from the idea of “boundary”, imposition or limit, as one of the main realities of a totalitarian regime, at work at all social and cultural levels of the Eastern European societies. The symbolical boundary (a sort of imaginary “wire fencing”) was present in all walks of life, from the closed geographical borders to the ideological restrictions enforced upon culture and literature (as a new, ideologically imposed “canon”). Professional and even private life was subject to various boundaries (from the freedom of speech to the controlled distribution of workplaces, houses, food, everyday items and so on). The system was the only one to decide which the accepted limits were, be they in everyday life, legislation, culture, press, education or art. This issue of Echinox Journal investigates therefore the manner in which the idea of boundary, totalitarian imposition or limitation is perceived by post-communist research today, especially by a new generation, as the volume features contributions signed mainly by researchers specialised after 1989 and who thus recover and try to make sense of – in many papers through direct access to recently open official archives –an important part of their countries’ history (but also history of literature or social history), benefiting from the current framework of research, the new means and perspectives. Our aim has been that of offering the reader a truly interdisciplinary collection of papers, signed by specialists in different areas of social and human sciences (history, literature, cultural studies, psychology and others), as well as representing different cultures and nationalities – mainly belonging to Eastern European countries, as the topic refers to realities that affected this part of the world. We welcome contributions from specialists in some Western countries (France, Switzerland) the volume opening up – we hope – a prolific dialogue between the two geographical areas and their different historical experiences and ways of envisioning communism.

The studies are grouped around four main sections, according to the principle of shared conceptions and similarity of perspectives as well as that of shared scientific background and tools. Thus, the first section, Life and Culture under Siege, figures mainly studies focusing on the historical and social aspects of the restrictive policies of the communist regime. The papers in this section (most of them based on direct study of official communist documents and archives in Bucharest) profiles the totalitarian state and the manner in which it tried to shape indeed to level down (by means of its specific control apparatus) education, culture, law, architecture, among other. The analyses illustrate how, for instance, the state tried to impose a typical Soviet style model to public space, in both urban and rural environments (see historians Mara Mărginean’s and Alexandru Câmpeanu’s papers on the socialist modernization of Hunedoara in 1950-1951, and respectively, on the Soviet style modernization of the Romanian villages 1948 – 1962). In an archival research, Manuela Marin approaches one of the most important totalitarian phenomena (propaganda) and its limits during Ceauseşcu’s first years in power (1965-1967). Along with propaganda, another significant aspect of a totalitarian regime is by definition, repression. Corneliu Pintilescu approaches the latter in a legitimising context, the Socialist legislation and the communist mechanism of legalising political abuse. Another historian’s paper, that of Cătălina Mihalache, focuses on Communist education and its system of control and limitation through punishment and reward. Moving towards the field of clinical psychology, Alina Bîrsan’s paper is interesting in its illustration of the traumatic aspects of the forced adaptation and/or resistance to the totalitarian restrictive frame. Discussing culture and society within the ideological boundaries imposed by Communism, Cristina Spinei approaches the concept of “political culture”, while Alexandru Matei explores the relation between communist ideology and aestheticism. Francois Ruegg initiates a complex discussion on the prolongation and current effects of the political intrusions in cultural matters in post-communist Europe (with reference to the situation of a contemporary cultural “siege”).

When discussing a framework of limits and limitation, one of the most immediate implications (illustrated by the second section, Escaping Communist Boundaries) that comes to the fore is the subject of freedom (see Rodica Ilie’s study), the need of escaping / trying to transgress the boundaries (whether physical or psychological). Focussing on recollections from the communist period, Andi Mihalache’s paper approaches the need to escape the pressure of the public life of the time, while Alain Vuillemin ventures further, looking at the attempts of some authors in the communist block to denounce the political restrictions to the West. Corina Boldeanu focuses on irony as a subtle form of evasion, and as a form of poetic language used to circumvent and fight censorship.

A third section approaches closer culture and literature by addressing issues regarding the negotiating boundaries in cultural policies and literature. This extensive section gathers case studies on literature written during communism, especially by literary studies specialists working in different Eastern European literatures (Croatian, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Romanian and German literature as practiced in/on Communist Romania). Caius Dobrescu focuses on the delicate problem of writers’ subjective consciousness of the limit in the post-Stalinist period, an “intra-subjective dimension of the mental and rhetorical construction of the limit”. Sanda Cordoş also writes on the post-war Romanian literature, examining the complex manner in which literature was submitted to the political authorities and the measures and directives, external to its field and specificity. This political intrusion is also illustrated in the mourning poetry examples offered by Anna Spólna from Polish literature (on Stalin’s death) as well as by the interesting 1980s Romanian poetry selections in Andrei Bodiu’s study on the mechanisms and limits of censorship. A specific form of (this time direct) negotiation is analysed by Andrada Fătu-Tutoveanu, who discusses a phenomenon manifest especially in the late 1940s-1950s Romanian literary environment (a compromise, a “deal with the Devil” authors accepted/were forced to do between ideology and aesthetic value). Restriction patterns and stereotypes within communist countries become apparent in discussions of the studies on Slovenian and Croatian literatures (the latter in an interesting Gender Studies approach on the negotiation of boundaries, margins, liminalities). Representations of the theme in Russian and German literature are approached by a group of papers, each group establishing a complex dialogue on two cultural contexts important within the totalitarian regime. Ileana Alexandra Orlich speaks of Solzhenitsyn’s works and their importance for revealing the restrictions and atrocities of the Stalinist gulag, while Olga Grădinaru and Mihaela Lovin deal with the distortion of literature by communist ideology (either on writing Soviet literature or reading of the classics). An interesting take on German culture in communist Romania is offered by Carmen Elisabeth Puchianu, Mihaela Bereschi Rogozan and Delia Cotârlea who write about the German language cultural communities in Romania and how totalitarian control is reflected in their literature (see Rogozan’s study on Nobel prize winner Herta Müller) as well as cultural journalism. Moreover, a poet herself, Puchianu shares her writing experience (as a German language author) in the 1980s Romania.

Discussing Communist boundaries after twenty years since its collapse makes the year 1989 a pivotal topic for the kind of analyses conducted here, especially as the moment represents itself a limit. Ruxandra Cesereanu deals precisely with the 1989 moment and the unsolved issues around the violent historic event, i.e. the “terrorists” (the unseen protagonists of the Romanian Revolution). Following the end of Communism, the four papers closing the volume discuss several of the very interesting directions and questions of interest for international research of Communism. Ion Manolescu thus tackles the urban “systematization” inheritance, while Vlad Navitski, questioning the tradition of the left through the communist “lesson,” and Alin Rus, who refers to the situation of a former Soviet country, Moldova and its identity problems, focus on other aspects of post-communist societies and their traumas. Finally, Patricia Goletz deals with a very significant aspect of today’s research on the communist past (not only in Slovakia, the case studied by Goletz, but in all former communist countries) – the institutional recovery of the memory. All these papers, forming a sort of epilogue to a discussion on the communist restrictive influence on the society, a larger debate on the consequences or effects of the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe.

At the end of this foreword, we would like to take the opportunity to thank all the authors for their interesting and stimulating contributions and to the editorial board of Echinox Journal, especially to Professor Corin Braga, for all their support and for providing the topic of boundaries within Communism with this excellent framework of analysis, thus continuing new directions and questions to add to the collection of academic issues already published by the Echinox Journal on different aspects of totalitarianism.

Sanda Cordoş

Andrada Fătu-Tutoveanu