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Márton Áron, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Alba Iulia (1938-1980), came to the attention of the Securitate from the founding of this repressive institution until the autumn of 1980, when he passed away. The reasons for his surveillance were his popularity among the faithful, his outspoken anti-communism, his loyalty to the Vatican and the fact that he came from the country's largest national minority. The results of this extended surveillance are reflected today in the bishop's files in the Archive of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives in Bucharest. One of the main methods used by the Securitate in the surveillance process was the use of microphones. They were installed in the bishop's office in 1956 and operated with short interruptions until the end of his life. The transcripts of the recorded conversations are today in the bishop's files and represent a „gold mine" for historians interested in the Catholic Church in Romania during the Communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Union of Democratic Priests in Romania was a subordinate pro-Communist organisation created by the Romanian Communist Party in 1944 as part of the national front strategy imposed by the Soviets in occupied Eastern Europe. Its aim was to rally Romanian Orthodox clergy who, because of their strong traditional anti-communism, would not otherwise be willing to join the RCP or other pre-existing subordinate organisations. The RPC needed to „re-educate" and „politically mobilise" the priests rather than antagonise them until it was fully in power. Although the UDPR is mentioned in many studies of the establishment of the Communist regime in Romania (especially its first leader, Fr. Constantin Burducea, and its most famous manifestation, the General Congress of Priests, 16 and 17 October 1945), little is known about it. This dearth of information is partly because of the lack of historical evidence for other aspects of the UDPR's existence and partly because historians probably regard the UDPR as inconclusive and uninteresting at a time of transition when a whole world was collapsing, and other events/political formations seemed more appealing. Be that as it may, there are still interesting aspects to be discovered about the UDPR, which we try to address in this study and which ultimately help us to better understand the changes in the relationship between church and state that began at that time and, more broadly, the turbulent period between 1944 and 1948. Based on Romanian and Soviet archival documents, newspapers of the time and published diaries, this study aims to shed light on some lesser-known aspects, such as the UDPR's relationship with other pro-Communist organisations and with the ministry for religious denominations, the reason why the Soviets refused to send a delegation to the General Congress of Priests, the UDPR's official newspaper and the involvement of two of its members (Constantin Burducea and Constantin Dolea) in the repression, namely in the first arrest of Father Arsenie Boca in 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the tensions created and sustained around the definitions of the respectable employee in Romania two decades after the fall of the socialist regime. I argue that the hegemonic anti-communist discourse has crucial effects beyond shaping the dominant intellectual field, through creating the representational tools by which any claim employees could make in relation to their involvement in the circuits of capitalist production is qualified as illegitimate. The pressure towards understanding oneself as an autonomous, flexible, creative and self-sufficient working subject that the increasingly pervasive neoliberal logic exerts is being multiplied by presenting the adherence to this subjectivity as the only way to prove that one is no longer under the legacy of the (indisputably bad) socialist past. I try to render visible the affinities between the voicing-outs and silences which constitute the anti-communist discourse and the building blocks of the neoliberal scripts for subjectivities on the one hand, and the impossibilities to formulate individual level indignations on the other. Following Boltanski (2011), I differentiate between reformist critique (which denounces situations as unjust, but within the overarching framework that holds capitalism itself as a just system) and radical critique (which would put in doubt the very fairness of capitalism and would make claims of alternative modes of co-production). I base my empirical claims about the parameters of ordinary critique on the case of middle managers in Cluj, whose working life histories I analyzed. I argue that while reformist critique is abundant in their narratives, the possibility of it coagulating into radical critique is seriously hampered. I focus here on the role played by the hegemonic anti-communist discourse and some of the instances in which it is substantiated in fueling this impossibility. I further argue that sociologies of domination such as orthodox Marxism contribute to making the coagulation of radical critique more difficult because this theoretical position does not allow us to recognize analytically any exterior to capitalism as we speak and live. I use the case at hand to make a more general plea for critical sociology to place the political implications of the narratives it produces at the heart of its theorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts a conceptual understanding of "post-communist nostalgia" by looking at various interdisciplinary approaches to the phenomenon. It then brings empirical evidence into discussing how the "nostalgia" label has been applied in public discourse among various Romanian opinion leaders in the recent years by focusing on two main controversial issues: the official document condemning communism with its associated discussions and the debate around building a Museum of Communism in Romania. Discourse analyses of 50 articles including editorials, opinion articles, interviews and reports outline the main clash between an official anti-communist discourse and alternative positions or anti-anti-communist discourses, be they radical-moralising, leftist or simply critical towards the politicisation of the anti-communist discourse. The official anti-communist discourse seems one-sided and while doing justice to victims of the past regime, it also confiscates a collective memory at the expense of a decisive Western-type of discourse. Finally, the paper provides examples of an alternative discourse to the dominant verdict of "exorcising the past". When bringing into discussion examples from cinematic representations, I argue that they have little to do with amnesia or anti-modern tendencies commonly understood as explanations for the results of recent polls on people's attitudes regarding communism. Since yet another verdict on the matter is far from being useful, I strive to shift the perspective on the debate from a moral, anti-communist view to a more balanced one that takes into account cultural, psychological, social and political explanations, while keeping in mind the dangers of both starting from zero in a purified present and glorifying a utopian "Golden Age". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the historical and symbolic aspects of the image of an anticommunist fighter, Teodor Şuşman junior, preserved in collective memory. Teodor Şuşman junior, son of Teodor Şuşman senior, leader of the anticommunist resistance movement in the Apuseni Mountains disguised himself as an icon painter after his father committed suicide in order to protect the community he belonged to against the persecution of the Securitate. The analyses of the oral history interviews discuss Teodor Şuşman junior's travesty in the context of the history of clandestinity, of the marginal. They reveal that the community interpreted the two Şuşmans' life according to symbolic patterns deeply embedded in collective thinking, their death being considered a sacrificial death taken on for the sake of the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Făgăraș Land (Romania) is a very old administrative formation with its own identity, preserved from the beginning of the Middle Ages. The mapping of the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) highlighted the groups of caroling lads as the main strategic heritage resource, but also the existence of many other ICH resources that can be exploited towards the sustainable development of the area. These include local soups, an ICH gastronomic resource that can help build the area's tourism brand. All resources, together with the peculiarities of the local medieval history, the memory of the anti-communist resistance in the Făgăraș Mountains and the religious pilgrimage to the local Orthodox monasteries, support the configuration of Făgăraș Land as a multidimensional associative cultural landscape. The content analysis of the information on ICH available on the official websites of the administrative territorial units (ATUs), correlated with the data from the interviews with local leaders, highlighted the types of local narratives regarding the capitalization of cultural resources and the openness to culture-centered community-based development, namely glocal, dynamic local and static local visions. The unitary and integrated approach of tourist resources, tourism social entrepreneurship, support from the local commons and a better management of the local cultural potential are ways to capitalize on belonging to the Făgăraș Land cultural landscape, towards sustainable community development of the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1 The study examines aspects of the mechanisSm of official propaganda during the period of the Legionary National State, noting (among other things) that the topic of nationalism was intertwined with that of anticommunism, with elements of antisemitic discourse (in turn) not absent from this background either. The Legionary Movement, in a period of reconstruction and undifferentiated growth in its numbers, had lost much of the relative attractiveness it had known during Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s lifetime, with the new leadership (of which Horia Sima in particular had emerged) representing only a pale copy of its predecessors. The Legionnaries were also disadvantaged by the tense, complicated, unpredictable relationship they had during this time with Ion Antonescu, as well as by the lack of experienced elements in the act of government. Propaganda and dynamism tried to compensate for these major shortcomings, but without success. In the end, events turned out to be totally unfavourable to the Legionnaires, seriously compromising their image. The series of abuses, violence and murders provided extremely strong arguments for the Legion’s opponents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines the role played by the armed resistance in Romania during the period of Sovietisation and Stalinisation (1944–1962) and its significance within the politics of memory and justice after 1989. One conclusion of the analysis is that opposing interpretations by political actors each in search of legitimacy correspond to attempts to manufacture plausible narratives of the specific historical discontinuity posed by the revolutionary break of 1989. A second conclusion reveals how memory and identity conflicts at group and individual levels can easily result in the translation of historical myths into enduring historical facts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of the study is to uncover the relation between political anticommunism, as a dominant meta-ideology in the Romanian intellectual environment, and the studying directions, language and typology of conclusions presented by historiography. The object of this study is made up of research works that can be assimilated to the 1990-2004 historiography focusing on Romanian communism. The analysis grid proposed for understanding how communism influenced Romanian historiography has four pillars: methodological options derived from major historiography currents; frequent study theme; stylistics of the historical discourse; the issue of responsibility/guilt. The predominant ideology which can be identified in the texture of Romanian historiography concerning the 1945-1989 period is anticommunism. The main problem generated by a historiography contaminated by anticommunist ideology is that history contributes to legitimizing a sui generis populism, nourishing the anti-modern discourse of a part of Romanian intelligentsia and political actors that use the anticommunist legitimacy in the public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Romania, in the last two decades of Communism, there had been few cases of dissidence. One of the dissidents was the writer Paul Goma. He was arrested in 1956, in the context of the Hungarian revolution and sent to prison for two years. In January 1977, he addressed a letter of solidarity to the signatories of Czechoslovakian Charter 77. The movement for defending human rights in Romania, which Paul Goma initiated at the end of the '70's, had gathered approximately 200 people. In April 1977, Paul Goma was arrested and after he was released, he was forced into exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text looks into the forms of Romanian anti-totalitarian culture, especially in the first two decades of the Second World War, the way in which men of letters expressed their rejection of controlled culture. The interpretation of anti-totalitarian culture is in a hermeneutic manner and is supported by the interpretation of terminology, dictionary entries connected to "ANTI" (resistance, dissidence, opponence). The conclusion is that apart from the isolated anti-communist resistance in the mountains there was no other form of coherent-collective resistance organised on the level of the majority of the population in Romania, not to mention dissidence. Only individual gestures and small groups kept alive faith in alternative solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]