The analysis of the relation of internal development, nationalism and Communist regime in Romania offers a possible key for understanding the Romanian-Hungarian relation in the 1980's.
In 1945, at its emergence from illegality, all sources estimate the size of RCP between 600 and maximum 2000, nevertheless the smallest communist party in Eastern Europe. Among Western scholars as well as in after-1989 Romanian historiography there is a consensus that without the support of the Red Army, the communist regime wouldn't have had the chance to be established in Romania.
The explanations for this rather slight influence of the RCP in Romanian society are found by many scholars in the lack of Marxist intellectual roots in Romanian culture, its "foreign image", the illegal activity and police efficient surveillance. In the interwars' period, RCP isolated itself from the Romanian society by its Marxist discourse and anti-national policy (Ionescu 1964; King 1980). The Soviets always exercised a tight control of RCP through the Comintern, a fact more evident in the Romania's national questions, determining from the very beginning a schism within the party. In December 1923 the Balkan Communist Federation adopted a resolution which established the task of the Romanian section as supporting the rights of national minorities to self-determination, "up to and including complete secession from the existing state" #1;. The Fifth Comintern World Congress in June/July 1924 reiterated the 1923 instructions, following the failure of negotiations between Romania and the Soviet Union. The Third RCP Congress which took place in Vienna in August 1924, included self-determination and the right to secession in its resolution, as did the fourth (1928) and the fifth (1931) held in Kharkov and respectively Moscow #2.
Many of the leaders of RCP belonged to the Hungarian minority such as Elek Koblos (Badulescu), Sandor Korosi-Krizsan (Georgescu), and Stefan Foris, all Hungarians from Transylvania. #3 Classified statistics of the RCP for the year 1933 indicate that about 26.58% of party members were of Hungarian origin, this being the first ethnic group as representation; the Romanians - with about 22.65%, were only the second one; the Jewish minority was the third largest ethnic group in the party - with 18,12% #4. Why was the RCP relatively popular among national minorities in Romania? A possible answer could be that Transylvanian towns were more industrialised than other parts of the country, as indeed the proportion of the party members living in Transylvania was the highest in all Romanian provinces - some 36% #5. Nevertheless, as Robert King and Michael Shafir pointed out, such support was mainly the result of the minority antipathy to Greater Romania #6. Kóvari Attila, a Romanian Hungarian Jew emigrated in Israel in 1976, an author by no means favourable to the Romanians, analysing the RCP nationality policy in the 1920's, argued that Romanian party members "manifested a nationalism that was characteristic of the former social-democrat spirit of the Second International, while the party members belonging to the national minorities - Hungarians and Jews from Transylvania, Russians and Ukrainians from Bessarabia - manifested a clear tendency toward isolationism and hoped to the re-establishment of the pre-war frontiers" #7;. Consequently, in Romanian public opinion the party was perceived as non-Romanian and anti-national organisation and the "Marzescu law" (December 1924) led the party in illegality, affecting its popularity and influence and making efforts of recruiting very difficult.
The first period of the communist regime in Romania, 1944-1958 is defined by Stefan Fisher Galati as the loss of national identity by the destruction of the "bourgeois nationalist" legacy and the diminution of Romania's national sovereignty under a virtual Soviet occupation #8. The same process is described by Kennet Jowitt as "breaking through": "the decisive alternation or destruction of values, structures, and behaviours which are perceived by a new elite as compromising or contributing to the actual or potential existence of alternative centres of power" #9; and by Michael Shafir as the "primitive accumulation of legitimacy" #10;. The regime still based its rule on Soviet support. And the role of the Red Army in bringing communism in Romania was emphasised by the RCP leader Gheorgiu Dej as late as May 1961, when he was still referring to the "glorious freedom bringing Soviet Army" and was originally acknowledged in the 1952 Constitution #11, according to which the Romanian People's Republic had come into being "as a result of the historic victory of the Soviet Union over German fascism and of Romania's liberation by the glorious Soviet Army" #12;. The turning point of this policy is generally considered the Romanian reaction at Valev plan for division of labour within the CMEA, which designed Romania development as to focus mainly on agricultural supply for the most communist industrial countries. The famous declaration of the RCP from April the 23rd 1964, published in Scanteia, the official newspaper of the party, stated that: "There does not and cannot exist a 'parent' party and a 'son' party or 'superior' party and 'subordinate' parties...No party has, or can have, a privileged place, or can impose its line and opinions on other parties." #13; K. Verdery #14 demonstrated that the need for autonomy and autarchy was an expression of the communist tendency to maximise the resources at the disposal of the political apparatus, an endeavour which was by no means served by the development of agriculture. As a consequence Communist policy was directed to the creation of industry, especially heavy industry which permitted maximal control over resources. The outbreak and the development of the conflict with the Soviet Union underwent many changes in domestic and foreign policy of the regime, very important for our analysis. In that conflict, Romania turned to society in search for domestic support. The necessity to create a basis for the new policy of independence from Moscow led first to the recuperation of several national themes and than to the recreation of national ideology in a socialist system (Fischer Galati). The nation rather than the proletariat, became the ideological base of the regime. N. Ceausescu stated that "In recent times a number of theoreticians have been trying to lend credence to the idea that nations are an outdated social category...The attempt to present the socialist nation, the socialist fatherland, as being opposed to socialist internationalism is profoundly unjust and profoundly unscientific" #15;. The system got rid of its earlier external sources of legitimisation, (that we have seen in Dej discourse), and base its legitimation to internal values. Official propaganda abused and aggravated some traditionalist nationalist themes, such as: the continuity of the Romanian people of the same territory, the predestined role of the Romanian nation, the emphasis on the "nebulous" Dacian roots, the ethno-centrist myths #16. One of the main theme, shrewdly exploited by the party propaganda, was the anti-Russian feelings of the Romanians #17 (almost unanimously acknowledged by scholars but a case which however, is not singular among small countries that were forced to face the Russian invasions). The official discourse openly condemned the anti-national politics imposed to RCP by the Comintern. Romanian historiography made many allusions to the historical injustice of the "Bessarabian question". The Bessarabian policy of Marshal Antonescu was rehabilitated #18. A visit of Ceausescu to Suceava gave the opportunity for a veiled reference to the historical Bukovina #19. "The Soviet liberating role" thesis was not mention anymore, being replaced by the claims of the status of equal among equals for the Romanian army in the defeating of Germany in the Second World War, and blames on Soviet diplomacy which deprived Romania of this right #20. The role of Soviet Union in the construction of socialism in Romania was reconsidered, blaming the economic exploitation organised by Sovroms, mixed Romanian-Soviet enterprises that were disbanded only in the 1954-1955. National communists like Lucretiu Patrascanu were rehabilitated, and several amnesties were accorded to former 'class enemies' and 'chauvinist elements'.
In analysing the national ideology under the communist regime, I agree with Verdery that the communists had not recreated or reinvented national ideology (Ficher Galati 1982), neither did they make a conscious syncretism with Marxist ideology (Jowitt 1971, Tismaneanu 1992). The cultural production on national ideology continued uninterrupted in Romanian cultural and political thinking, and, once in power, the communists were "forced" to integrate these cultural productions "within Romania's socialist political economy" (Verdery 1991). From the three models of control used by the regime: remunerative, coercive and symbolic-ideological (K. Verdery, 1991), the last two became by farther the most important ones. If the earlier tries for remunerative control have been reversed and kept minimal, with the "July Thesis" (6 and 9 July 1971) the regime shifted to a symbolic-ideological control, which "institutionalised" the discourse of the national identity and designed a privileged role for a cultural elite: historians, writers and philosophers #21.
Thus, the dialectic of the Romanian communist regime underwent
considerable changes over time under the N. Ceausescu's rule.
The first years witnessed a relative liberalisation of the regime,
coupled with a very rapid economic development. These phenomena
brought new cultural development in the society, such as the growing
autonomy of certain intellectual centres (see the Writers Union,
detailed analysed by K. Verdery); and the rapid industrialisation
brought Romania's economy into a new phase, which required structural
adjustments, as price reforms and management autonomy. The solutions
chose by Romanian leader were: a cultural revolution following
the Chinese model (from 1971) which ended in a total control of
the RCP over cultural production in Romania; the New Economic
Mechanism announced in 1978 was not implemented, but an even more
economic control and centralisation occurred. The regime moved
to an increasingly personalised power, including nepotism and
a leadership cult which reached unbelievable heights. All these
phenomena made their effects in the 1980's, influencing the attitude
towards Hungarian minority and implicitly, the relations with
Hungary. The generalised economic crisis was amplified by the
painful process of debt repayment and by the implementation of
new gigantic projects of Stalinist inspiration: the Danube-Black
Sea channel, the construction of the new Bucharest, the systematisation
plan. All were done at the expense of living standard: rationalisation,
electricity and food shortages, lack of medical assistance and
appropriate drugs were the new socialist realities. Naturally,
the RCP was confronted with an acute lack of legitimisation and
popular support. N. Ceausescu tried to control the situation by:
increasing repressive measures, which transformed Romania into
a veritable Politeistaat; and by an exacerbation of nationalist
propaganda The main characteristics of nationalist-communist propaganda
were, according to V. Tismaneanu: xenophobia, autarchy, isolationism,
anti-Occidentalism, anti-intellectualism and protochronism: "the
Narcissistic assertion of a Romanian priority and originality
in the principal cultural fields (from political economy, aesthetics,
and sociology to logic, cybernetics, and mathematics)", transforming
the Romanian land into "the cradle of world civilisation #22".
|
|
| Back | Index | Next |