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"Collective memory -- Romania"
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Remembering communism : private and public recollections of lived experience in Southeast Europe
\"The volume examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume, examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. Common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past. As a result, the analyses point at the sociopolitical factors and societal processes that help construct, transform, stabilize and finally canonize past memory. Due to its interdisciplinary character and the wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches presented, the volume offers a broad and varied kaleidoscope of memorial practices in a variety of milieus of post-communist societies, from school to the internet. The volume deals with eight major thematic blocks revisiting specific practices in communism such as popular culture and everyday life, childhood, labor, the secret police, the perception of 'the system' and others. The analyses highlight occasionally similarities and differences between the two principal case studies, resulting in the end effect in the observation of a significant divergence in the memory of communism between the two neighboring countries\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Remembering Communism
Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past.
The volume deals with eight major thematic blocks revisiting specific practices in communism such as popular culture and everyday life, childhood, labor, the secret police, and the perception of \"the system\".
eBook
Heroes and Victims
Heroes and Victims explores the cultural power of war memorials in 20th-century Romania through two world wars and a succession of radical political changes-from attempts to create pluralist democratic political institutions after World War I to shifts toward authoritarian rule in the 1930s, to military dictatorships and Nazi occupation, to communist dictatorships, and finally to pluralist democracies with populist tendencies. Examining the interplay of centrally articulated and locally developed commemorations, Maria Bucur's study engages monumental sites of memory, local funerary markers, rituals, and street names as well as autobiographical writings, novels, oral narratives, and film. This book reveals the ways in which a community's religious, ethnic, economic, regional, and gender traditions shaped local efforts at memorializing its war dead.
eBook
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE COMMUNIST RESISTANCE IN ROMANIAN CINEMA. THE THAWING PERIOD
This paper intends to illustrate an often neglected, yet relevant aspect of the collective memory construction in communist Romania. In addition to other forms of collective remembrance, cinematic representations of the recent past have played a significant role for both the political regime and the Romanian society by providing political legitimacy as well as entertainment. The communist resistance was one of the most recurrent topos of collective memory, whereas underground party supporters – the so called “illegalists”- often had to be presented as figures of identification. The cinema permitted, however, a negotiation of the recent past on different levels. Starting from these considerations and focusing on the film production „Duminică la ora 6“(Sunday at Six, Lucian Pintilie, 1966), the paper brings into discussion the communist resistance discourse during the liberalization period.
Journal Article
DIE WICHTIGSTE ALLER KÜNSTE: DER FILM ALS MEDIUM DES GEDÄCHTNISSES IN DER NACHKRIEGSPERIODE. DER WIDERSTAND IN NEPOŢII GORNISTULUI UND DAS BEIL VON WANDSBECK
The post-war period represented a time of political and social upheaval that largely affected collective memory. The present paper explores the question of how this collective memory was constructed by the medium of cinematography in Romania and GDR. On the basis of two film analysis, the topos of the resistance fighter is firstly examined as a main negotiation subject between filmmakers and party officials, in order to finally draw comparative conclusions on memory politics in both states.
Journal Article
Public Perceptions of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Romania
During the Second World War, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews, 12,500 Roma, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian civilians died at the hands of the Romanian authorities.¹ Most of them perished due to starvation, disease, death marches, death trains, and mass killing operations.² The toll of victims was the direct result of an intentional, state-sponsored and organized policy of ethnic cleansing implemented from 1940 through 1944 by an authoritarian regime with certain fascist features, which was backed for a short period of time by a fascist party.
A century-long anti-Semitic rage and hate, anger as a strong political motivation, and
Book Chapter
Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care
With this nuanced and interdisciplinary work, political theorist Mihaela Mihai tackles several interrelated questions: How do societies remember histories of systemic violence? Who is excluded from such histories' cast of characters? And what are the political costs of selective remembering in the present? Building on insights from political theory, social epistemology, and feminist and critical race theory, Mihai argues that a double erasure often structures hegemonic narratives of complex violence: of widespread, heterogeneous complicity and of \"impure\" resistances, not easily subsumed to exceptionalist heroic models. In dialogue with care ethicists and philosophers of art, she then suggests that such narrative reductionism can be disrupted aesthetically through practices of \"mnemonic care,\" that is, through the hermeneutical labor that critical artists deliver-thematically and formally-within communities' space of meaning. Empirically, the book examines both consecrated and marginalized artists who tackled the memory of Vichy France, communist Romania, and apartheid South Africa. Despite their specificities, these contexts present us with an opportunity to analyze similar mnemonic dynamics and to recognize the political impact of dissenting artistic production. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, the book intervenes in debates over collective responsibility, historical injustice, and the aesthetics of violence within political theory, memory studies, social epistemology, and transitional justice.
eBook
Place and the spatial politics of intergenerational remembrance of the Iron Gates displacements in Romania, 1966–1972
Post‐socialist memories recalling the communist past in Central and Eastern Europe have risen to importance in recent decades, but there is still a scarcity of literature dealing with the post‐socialist “post‐memory.” By adapting a social‐spatial narrative methodology to memory studies and by promoting the current theories on the spatial politics of (intergenerational) memory in general and more specifically on the post‐socialist memory formation, this paper aims to highlight the nature of memory, how intergenerational shaping of memory happens and the implications of these memories for understanding post‐socialist memory creation through an understanding of how people's personal connections (attachment) to place serve as the basis of intergenerational memory transmission. To set the scene, between 1966 and 1972, in alignment with the Stalinist principles of Soviet electrification, Romania and Yugoslavia completed the construction of one of the largest hydroelectric plants in Europe – the Iron Gates – on the Danube. Although the flooding of the settlements that were in the way of this project involved the destruction of property representing local cultural heritage, the dominant place‐based memories are those related to trauma and personal attachment to (materially gone) places. The shaping of memories for the post‐socialist generation is the foundation of people's difficulty in adapting to a market economy and the capitalist state. However, while the home becomes a locus for memory transmission between generations, post‐memories are “summarised” through certain key traumatic events. The implications of the creation of these memories are significant for understanding post‐socialist memory formation because post‐socialist remembrance of communism is bottom‐up, rooted in local events and grounded in place. Finally, in the context of claiming retroactive justice in contemporary Romanian politics, tensions between those manifesting counter‐memories (i.e., memories that challenge state‐led actions) and those with memories that reveal people's pride for the engineering achievements bring out the complex nature of these memories.
Journal Article
Museums and Transitional Justice: Assessing the Impact of a Memorial Museum on Young People in Post-Communist Romania
Memorial museums are frequently established within transitional justice projects intended to reckon with recent political violence. They play an important role in enabling young people to understand and remember a period of human rights abuses of which they have no direct experience. This paper examines the impact of a memorial museum in Romania which interprets the human rights abuses of the communist period (1947–1989). It uses focus groups with 61 young adults and compares the responses of visitors and non-visitors to assess the impact of the museum on views about the communist past, as well as the role of the museum within post-communist transitional justice. The museum had a limited impact on changing overall perceptions of the communist era but visiting did stimulate reflection on the differences between past and present, and the importance of long-term remembrance; however, these young people were largely skeptical about the museum’s role within broader processes of transitional justice. The paper concludes that it is important to recognize the limits of what memorial museums can achieve, since young people form a range of intergenerational memories about the recent past which a museum is not always able to change.
Journal Article