Title: Captive Romania: Police Terror and Ideological Masquerade under Communist Rule
Abstract: It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.... A melancholy conclusion.... It turns lying into a universal principle. Franz Kafka The present paper proposes to explore the workings of power, the strategies of social control in Romania under Communist rule whose consequence was the 'freezing' in time of a country deviated from its normal course by a totalitarian regime, a country in which people had come to beg for what they were in fact entitled to, for what was already, and rightly, theirs. I will focus on the use of terror as the chief means of maintaining control in a totalitarian state and on ideology as the main underpinning of political power in Soviet-type regimes, managing--initially--to devour reality in the name of an all-embracing project of universal happiness (Tismaneanu, 68). My main concern will be the impact of such tactics of domination and control on the everyday life of Romanian people. The devastating, dehumanizing effects of a universe plagued by fear and duplicity will be illustrated in the works of Romanian writers Marin Sorescu and Augustin Buzura. A brief comparative study of the 'soft' controlling designs in the American consumer culture will further reveal possible causes that led to the failure of the Communist experiment in Romania. While Communism is impotent as an economic system, it proved extremely efficient as a system of worldwide expansion and social control. In order to accomplish that, Communism had to conceal its reality and remain an 'idea.' This 'idea' would promise a total revolution, collective salvation and universal happiness, a bliss of final redemption in a world devoid of conflict as Polish anti-utopian thinker Leszek Kolakowski ironically put it (quoted in Tismaneanu, 97). This facade of something high was actually meant to conceal the low foundations of totalitarian power. The popular appeal of totalitarian ideologies and their capacity to mobilize populations rested upon the devastation of ordered and stable contexts in which people once lived. The impact of the First World War and the Great Depression, the pervasive anti-fascist mood in Europe and the USSR's shrewd equation of Communism with Anti-Fascism, the spread of revolutionary unrest, all this left people--in their desperate need for ultimate salvation and a new epoch--open to such ideologies that would claim to secure the future against insecurity and danger. Unfortunately, these hopeful Eastern European peoples would soon experience the clash between 'lofty' ideals and abject practices. In Romania, as in other Eastern European countries, ideological masquerade and police terror were the main instruments used to control the population, to crush opposition, to destroy civil society, to completely reconstruct the displaced society in the Party mold. In the late '40s and the '50s, Romanian statements--infused by the Soviet cliches--repeated the aggressive Leninist discourse regarding the capitalist world, in particular the American foreign policies. As Ileana Marin points out, even national history was programmatically altered in order to meet the expectations of the Romanian People's Friend, the Soviet Union (90). Romania was no longer a sovereign state because the government was dominated by communists--eager to carry out Moscow's orders--and their Soviet mentors. The Soviet model became mandatory resulting in the overall regimentation of ideological life in all satellite countries. The Communist Party (called the Romanian Workers' Party at the time), imposed by Moscow and supported by Soviet tanks, banned political parties, enthroning the terror of one party rule and exterminating the best Romanian intelligentsia and youth. Communist ideology was enforced, mock trials enacted and freedoms suppressed while political, cultural and religious leaders were imprisoned (Nicolae, 108). …
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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