COURAGE

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The letter, which reached Voice of America radio station in the autumn of 1989, represents an ample critical analysis of the practice of the personality cult adopted by the Ceauşescu family, a phenomenon which reached the limits of the absurd in Romania in the 1980s. The author, an unidentified Romanian citizen who had emigrated to France in the autumn of 1989, succeeded, before his departure from Romania, in capturing the reactions of people in Iaşi to the official visit of the presidential family on 13–15 September 1989. According to his letter, the “masquerade” began several days before the arrival of the Ceauşescu family. The letter ironically recounts the fact that the preparations for the official visit did not take into consideration the shortage of food and the weather. Thus, during the rehearsals, “small children were dressed in national costumes and kept in the cold or in the rain,” while party agitators went through the city with loudspeakers instructing the population to chant “hurrah!” at the passage of the car with the presidential couple. The agitators also encouraged people through the loudspeakers not to give the president any letters, but to give them to their factory managers. The local elite wanted to avoid a situation in which the “most beloved son of the people,” as the president was called at that time, might be disturbed by the population’s complaints. The author of the letter also analysed the role of the nomenklatura in preserving this personality cult, as well as their abusive behaviour. For example, he noticed that the heads of factories represented “a new class of nomenklatura, with discretionary powers.”

In the end, the letter received by the radio station highlights the population’s general discontentment, which was manifest, on the one hand, through various outlets such as humour, and, on the other hand, through spontaneous acts of revolt. As for the jokes about the Ceauşescu couple, the letter described a discussion in a tramway. One of the people observed with irony that the pigs on exhibition in the town centre were very big, but none were as big as Ceauşescu. The absurd of the situation consists in the fact that the exhibition in question was meant to prove the richness of the country’s agriculture while the population suffered from a severe food shortage. As an act of revolt, the author mentioned that the glass windows of the Moldova general store in Iaşi had been covered with graffiti: “Bring down the dictatorship! Bring down Ceauşescu! Bring down communism!” Offering a wealth of details about the population’s state of mind, the letter is a document reflecting the frustration which dominated Romanian society before the collapse of the regime in December 1989.

Kapsuko valstybinio teatro direktoriaus laiškas Vincui Mykolaičiui-Putinui su rašytojo atsakymu, 1960 m. Teatro vadovas paprašė V. Mykolaičio-Putino leidimo statyti spektaklį pagal romaną „Altorių šešėlyje“. Mykolaitis – Putinas tokio leidimo nedavė. Atsakyme valstybinio teatro direktoriui rašytojas  rašė, kad statant spektaklį romanas gali būti iškraipytas pagal oficialias ideologines normas ir reikalavimus.

In the letter sent to the Commission on Religious Matters of the Vinkovci Municipality, the correspondent Republic Commission interpreted the new circumstances that had arisen in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. The regime adopted new political strategies for lower levels of government and instructed them on how to fight against the oppositional influence of the Catholic Church in a socialist society. “It forces us to create our political strategy and tactics, in other words, clear conceptions with which to successfully and cogently politically counteract the offensive tendencies and actions of the Church in its attempt to infiltrate our socialist society.“

The journal Praxis, whose editorial board consisted of Rudi Supek together with Milan Kangrga, Gajo Petrović, Danko Grlić, Ivan Kuvačić, was published from 1964 to 1974, four times a year in the Croatian language. It also had international editions in English, French and German. Intellectuals gathered around the journal advocated for a neo-Marxist approach to philosophy and sociology. Soon this group was called the Praxis intellectuals (Lešaja 2014: 246), and they promoted a social system which would expand the individual's ability to act freely and creatively. From this standpoint, they criticised capitalism and its understanding of human freedoms and rights which, according to them, leads to alienation. But they also criticised the free market elements which were introduced into the economic system of self-management socialism in Yugoslavia in the mid-1960s and certain other aspects of the Yugoslav socialist system which they considered over-bureaucratized. That is why they often came into conflict with the LCY. The journal was repeatedly attacked and censored by the authorities, its financing was blocked, and even though it was not officially banned, its publishing was disabled by “self-management censorship” (Stipčević 2005: 11-12). Namely, the working people of the Joža Rožanković printing company informed the editorial board of their decision not to provide printing services for the journal anymore. The Rudi Supek Personal Papers in the Croatian State Archives (CSA) contain the letter from Franjo Kalapoš, the manager of the printing company, sent in March 1975, notifying the editorial board of Praxis that the self-management bodies and political organisation of the company made the decision that the journal would no longer be printed. The Praxis editorial board then tried to find another printer, but every single one of them refused to print the journal. That is why the already prepared issue of Praxis (6/1974) was never published. According to Gajo Petrović's testimony, “certain forums even told us not to try too hard, as all the presses received the notification and the workers in all of them were quite in agreement regarding the matter” (Lešaja 2014: 286).

This document is a copy of a memorandum written by Gheorghe Ghimpu at the end of 1971 and addressed to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. This thirteen-page typed text is part of volume 10 of the Usatiuc–Ghimpu–Graur file stored at the SIS Archive . The version preserved in this archive represents a literal Russian translation of a handwritten Romanian-language document. The Romanian version was copied by Valeriu Graur from the initial typed draft of the memorandum authored by Gheorghe Ghimpu. The handwritten Romanian text, confiscated from Graur’s apartment, constituted one of the main pieces of evidence during the trial. This text was to be smuggled by Graur to Romania and subsequently sent to the RFE/RL headquarters in Munich (by clandestine means), but Graur’s arrest hampered this. The document synthesises the main arguments and views of the members of the National Patriotic Front. The text begins by deploring the fate of the “ancient Romanian lands” of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and Transnistria under the “most cruel and despotic tyranny” of the Soviet regime. This regime is accused of “chauvinism” and of large-scale repressive policies in the post-war period. The author acknowledges that during the 1960s the situation had improved and that the Moldavian population had more opportunities to receive a better education. However, the MSSR’s position within the USSR is described as that of a “colony of the Russian Empire” (the anti-imperialist rhetoric is pervasive). The document then presents and purports to analyse various strategies used by the Soviet regime to Russify and “de-nationalise” the local Romanian-speaking population. Aside from mentioning the isolation of the USSR Romanians from Romania proper and the attempt to create a separate linguistically based Moldavian national identity, the author points to several other concrete manifestations of the Russification policy, e.g.: 1) the attempt to further assimilate the local population by appointing to leading and managerial positions Russian speakers or Russified Moldavians, who were in reaction labelled ”outsiders” (venetici) or Russian collaborators, and who consolidated the colonial relationship between Soviet Moldavia and the Russian centre; 2) the ”expulsion” of the Romanians to Siberia’s ”virgin lands” and their replacement by a wave of Slavic migrants, 3) compulsory service in the Soviet army; 4) the encouragement of mixed marriages; 5) the ubiquitous use of Russian as a state language (despite the provisions of the Soviet Constitution) and the marginalisation of Romanian; 6) the Russification of education at all levels; 7) the purposeful Russification of proper names (both family names and geographic locations). The author further argues that the Romanian population has not accepted the policies of the “Russian colonisers,” and invokes a number of individual examples of resistance, mainly from intellectual circles. Although stating that the “struggle will continue,” the text concludes on a rather pessimistic note, emphasising that the Romanians of the MSSR are isolated and ignored by the wider world due to the Russification policies pursued by the regime. The dominant nationalistic language and overtones, which are probably inspired from the interwar rhetoric specific to Greater Romania, make this document one of the most eloquent examples of Moldovan national opposition in the Soviet period. The attention given to the cultural sphere is especially revealing. It is worth mentioning that Graur reconstructed a version of this document from memory, so it was thus able finally to reach its destination ten years later, in 1982, when it was broadcast by Radio Free Europe.