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Remembering Romanian Communism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Charles King
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Abstract

The report of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, issued in December 2006, is the most serious attempt to understand Romania's communist experience ever produced. Coordinated by the American political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu, the report covers virtually every aspect of communism as a lived system, from the installation of Communist Party officials during the postwar occupation, through the instruments of coercion, to the fate of religious institutions, the economy, national minorities, and education. The release of the report also contributed to a major political crisis, during which the parliament attempted to unseat the president, Traian Basescu, who had lauded the report and officially condemned communism as an illegitimate system. The question now is whether the commission's report will be used as yet another opportunity to reject history or as a way of helping Romanians learn, at last, how to own it.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , Winter 2007 , pp. 718 - 723
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2007

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References

1. For Tismaneanu's view on these connections, see Tismaneanu, Vladimir and Dragos, Paul, Aligică, “Romania's Parliamentary Putsch,” Wall Street Journal, 20 April 2007 Google Scholar. For overviews of the report and reactions to it, see Gheorghiu, Lucian et al., “Fantoma comunismului luptă pînă în ultimul ceas,” Cotidianul, 19 December 2006Google Scholar; Tismaneanu, Vladimir, “Raportul nu e un rechizitoriu,” Revista 22, 19-25 December 2006 Google Scholar; Andrei Cornea, “Cele două coaliţii,” Revista 22, 11-17 May 2007; and Adrian Cioflâncă, “Regret formal,” Ziarul delaşi, 10 April 2007.

2. See, for example, Crampton, R. J., Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century—and After (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Deletant, Dennis, Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and thePolice State, 1948-1965 (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; Levy, Robert, Ana Pauker: The Rise andFall of a Jewish Communist (Berkeley, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. For an early statement of this point, see Shafir, Michael, Romania: Politics, Economics, and Society (Boulder, Colo., 1985)Google Scholar.

4. Băsescu, Traian, “Un regim ilegitim şi criminal,“Revista 22, 19-25 December 2006, 1 Google Scholar.

5. See, for example, Corneliu Porumboiu's film Afost sau n-afost? (Was there or wasn't there? 2006).

6. Ash, Timothy Garton, “The Uses of Adversity,” The Uses of Adversity: Essays on theFate ojCentral Europe (New York, 1989), 105-19Google Scholar.