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"Communism -- Social aspects -- Romania -- History"
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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
Disrupted landscapes
The fall of the Soviet Union was a transformative event for the national political economies of Eastern Europe, leading not only to new regimes of ownership and development but to dramatic changes in the natural world itself. This painstakingly researched volume focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation's forests, farmlands, and rivers. From bureaucrats abetting illegal deforestation to peasants opposing government agricultural policies, it reveals the social and political mechanisms by which neoliberalism was introduced into the Romanian landscape.
eBook
Censorship of the Sacred and the Rationalisation of Society in the Early Years of the Communist Regime in Romania: Combating Pilgrimages, Processions and Miraculous Phenomena
During the parliamentary elections in Italy after World War II, rumours spread in the public sphere about the occurrence of “miracles.” These “miracles” were interpreted as warning messages from the divine about the danger posed by the Communist Party. This was considered part of a strategy to promote Christian Democrats by representatives of the Catholic Church and was viewed with concern by communist countries in Eastern Europe as the phenomenon began to spread. In the second half of 1948, the Romanian authorities initiated measures to abolish the Greek Catholic Church and persecute the Roman Catholic Church. In this context, rumours spread in Catholic circles about “miracles” intended to stimulate the resistance of believers in the face of persecution. The phenomenon of “miracles” also spread among Orthodox believers, who were dissatisfied with the elimination of religious education in schools and the beginning of the collectivization of agriculture. For this reason, this phenomenon was considered a danger by the communist authorities in Romania. In this study, we aim to examine how the authorities dealt with the issue of “miracles,” what measures were taken, which institutions were involved, and what the consequences were for long-term religious policy in communist Romania.
Journal Article
Planning Labour
Impoverished, indebted, and underdeveloped at the close of World
War II, Romania underwent dramatic changes as part of its
transition to a centrally planned economy. As with the Soviet
experience, it pursued a policy of \"primitive socialist
accumulation\" whereby the state appropriated agricultural surplus
and restricted workers' consumption in support of industrial
growth. Focusing on the daily operations of planning in the
ethnically mixed city of Cluj from 1945 to 1955, this book argues
that socialist accumulation was deeply contradictory: it not only
inherited some of the classical tensions of capital accumulation,
but also generated its own, which derived from the multivocal
nature of the state socialist worker as a creator of value, as
living labour, and as a subject of emancipatory politics.
eBook
The Dialectical Meaning of Offshored Work
\"The Dialectical Meaning of Offshored Work analyzes how offshoring investments function as a platform for intercultural encounters among corporate actors and local populations of hosting communities. The book synthesizes ethnographic research, media reviews, and policy analysis to examine how localized forms of offshoring production occur in social, political and economic processes to highlight dilemmas connected to mobility of capital, modernization, social equality and capitalist expansion. The book delineates the complex interplay between Western neoliberalism and a transforming post-socialist Europe, to show the complex ways in which offshoring production infiltrates local communities. Analyzing issues of labor, work and employment, this book engages with current scholarship on critical management, sociology, anthropology, and East European studies\"--
eBook
Ambiguous Transitions
Focusing on youth, family, work, and consumption, Ambiguous
Transitions analyzes the interplay between gender and
citizenship postwar Romania. By juxtaposing official sources with
oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, Jill
Massino illuminates the gendered dimensions of socialist
modernization and its complex effects on women's roles,
relationships, and identities. Analyzing women as subjects and
agents, the book examines how they negotiated the challenges that
arose as Romanian society modernized, even as it clung to
traditional ideas about gender. Massino concludes by exploring the
ambiguities of postsocialism, highlighting how the legacies of the
past have shaped politics and women's lived experiences since
1989.
eBook
Between Holy Church and Holy Human Rights
This article considers the experiences of Romanian men and women who expressed same-sex desire immediately following the collapse of Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime in 1989 until Romania's accession to the European Union in 2007. Drawing from the Adrian Newell Păun Queer Archives, this research puts at its forefront the voices of queer individuals to shine a light on the hardships of living as a sexual minority in the repressive environment of Romania in the 1990s. This research follows the broader framework of decolonizing Eastern European queer history by giving members of the LGBTQ+ community their rightful voices to tell the story of their plight and their perspectives in a country where they experienced widespread homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination. Through firsthand accounts, this article additionally exemplifies how queer individuals were able to survive hardship, to find their voices within their own community, and to begin experiencing and expressing themselves as a sexual minority.
Journal Article
Historical origins of corruption in the Romanian public health system - path dependency and contagion effect
Background
In this paper, we estimate the long-lasting influence of the former Habsburg Empire's border on the territory of Romania, specifically on the prevalence of corrupt behaviour and practices in health services.
Methods
Employing microdata from the 2016 Life in Transition Survey and applying ordered probit regression, we explore the hypothesis that the geographical proximity of respondents' residences to the former imperial border—restricting the analysis within a bandwidth of 50 km, 75 km or even 100 km on either side – significantly influences current individual tendencies towards corrupt behaviour.
Results
The results indicate that individuals in Transylvania living in the immediate vicinity of the former border of the Habsburg Empire (no more than 75 km away) show a higher propensity towards corrupt behaviours, similar to those from Moldova and Wallachia who reside in the same bandwidth but to the east of the former historical border. Interestingly, on one hand, after a series of tests with various relevant factors, the contagion effect is observed from right to left, meaning from those in Moldova and Wallachia towards those in Transylvania, and not the other way around as might be expected based on other previous studies. On the other hand, individuals living more than 75 kms west of the former historical border show clear reluctance to engage in informal payments and gift-giving when interacting with the public health system as patients.
Conclusion
By rigorously controlling for various variables that comprehensively show different legacies of the communist regime, our results confirm the persistence of these influences across different bandwidths, thereby corroborating the hypothesis of path dependence influenced by the former Habsburg Empire.
Journal Article
Agricultural Intensification Reduces the Portfolio of Wetland Ecosystem Services: European Danube River Lowlands as a Global Biodiversity Hotspot
Anthropogenic landscape transformations have promoted the provision of ecosystem services (ES) at the expense of other ES, biodiversity, and human well-being. We analysed the transformation portfolios of ES provisions, the costs of transformation, and the rivalry between ES categories and biodiversity conservation during the pre-communist and communist eras. We also examined EU influences in Romania’s Danube River lowlands. The environmental history of social-ecological systems was used to: (1) map transformations of natural environments; (2) analyse the outputs of human modes of production, including crops, fish, timber, and livestock, using economic valuation methods and by appropriating the primary means of production; and (3) describe ideologies and values as drivers of ES transformations. During the communist era, the surface area of the agricultural land increased at the expense of natural ecosystems. This resulted in increased provisions being made for crops and timber at the expense of the fish supply; it also caused a reduction in livestock. The costs of land reclamation, hydrotechnical works, and the use of fertilizers and pesticides, resulted in a net annual loss of EUR 36 million for the entire case study area, disregarding the losses of other ES. Achieving a balanced portfolio of ES requires a discussion about the need for nature restoration, transdisciplinary social-ecological research, and the identification of key leverage points.
Journal Article