Suchergebnisse

El proyecto COURAGE ha creado una base de datos electrónica de acceso abierto que recopiló nuevas fuentes, resumió nuevos conocimientos y creó nuevas narrativas sobre un patrimonio cultural europeo hasta ahora dividido: el legado de la disidencia bajo las dictaduras comunistas en Europa Central y Oriental. El equipo rumano de COURAGE ha resaltado un nuevo sentido de ser europeo, que fue experimentado por muchas personas comunes que crearon significados cotidianos y prácticas culturales como si vivieran en un país libre. Esta identificación con Europa se refleja en colecciones privadas previamente desconocidas creadas por aquellos que preveían estrategias de oposición a las dictaduras comunistas que habían rechazado los valores fundamentales que sustentan la Unión Europea: estado de derecho, derechos humanos, libertades civiles, etc. Los valores opuestos se reflejan en las colecciones creadas por la policía secreta comunista rumana, la Securitate, que recuerdan un pasado europeo no democrático y advierten sobre el peligro de olvidarlo bajo la presión de los desafíos actuales que enfrenta el proyecto europeo. ; The COURAGE project has created an open-access e-database that collected new sources, summarized new knowledge and created new narratives about a hitherto divided European cultural heritage: the legacy of dissent under the communist dictatorships in East-Central Europe. The Romanian COURAGE team has highlighted a new sense of being European, which was experienced by many ordinary individuals who created everyday meanings and cultural practices as if they lived in a free country. This identification with Europe is reflected in previously unknown private collections created by those who envisaged strategies of opposing the communist dictatorships that had rejected the fundamental values underpinning the European Union: rule-of-law, human rights, civil liberties, etc. The opposite values are reflected in the collections created by the Romanian communist secret police, the Securitate, which remind of a non-democratic European past and warn against the danger of forgetting it under the pressure of the current challenges the European project is facing.

Far from accomplishing its utopian plans of transforming society, communism did not turn gender equality into a reality either. This paper moves beyond the common-place approaches that simply underline the failures of this political system and presumes that women experienced communism in very diverse and often ambiguous ways, for public and private roles conflicted more often than not. From among the few individuals who dared to articulate critical thoughts on Romanian communism prior to its collapse of 1989, the present paper recuperates the experience of three women. Members of the urban educated elite, they believed nonetheless in different values and pursued different strategies of expressing discontent with the regime. These female critics of the communist system went beyond personal or group interests, but among the issues of public concern they raised none belonged to a feminist agenda. Yet, these women acted as if gender equality was a reality in Ceauşescu's Romania: they considered themselves the equal partners of like-minded men, while their male peers accepted them as such, for equalitarian perceptions of genders shaped the public roles assumed by non-conformist Romanian intellectuals. The example of these three women does not prove that communism succeeded in redefining the status of women, but it illustrates how the urban educated social group experienced gender relations then. No feminists in thinking, these three women were so in their behavior. Their criticism of Ceauşescu's communism was genderless, but it nonetheless strengthened the idea that women are no less than men.

Using the concept of political culture, this article highlights that enduring patterns of thought and action governed the attitudes and the behavior of the Romanian communist elite since its coming to power and until the very end. Identity forming experiences from early periods, prior to the takeover and up to the Hungarian Revolution, decisively shaped the minds of the RCP leadership in such a way as to transform this party into the most monolithic in the entire Soviet bloc. Consequently, a reformist wing did not emerge from within the party ranks, as it happened in the other communist countries. This would directly influence not only the way in which communism collapsed in Romania, but also the transition from communism in this country. It was the revolution of 1989 that opposed for the first time a group of old-timers with reformist views to a dictator who hated reforms. In order to illustrate this thesis, the present study discusses the so-called "letter of the six" addressed to Nicolae Ceauşescu by six former members of the nomenklatura in March 1989. The article analyzes the conditions in which the protest emerged, the reaction of the regime when confronted with an unprecedented gesture, its impact on the Romanian population as well as abroad and, finally, its legacies in the post-communist period. The criticism of the supreme leader expressed in this letter did not provoke the revolution. It represented, however, the first reform communist manifesto in this country, and it expressed views that, through the post-1989 Romanian political elite, would become influential in the early days of post-communism, delaying the genuine democratic transition.

"Obwohl es auch in Rumänien Dissidenten gab, beförderten deren Aktivitäten weder die Revolution von 1989, noch stellten sie während des frühen Postkommunismus eine Alternative zum Neo-Kommunismus bereit. Der vorliegende Aufsatz betrachtet die bemerkenswertesten Resistenz-Handlungen von Persönlichkeiten aus dem intellektuellen Milieu wie solche der Arbeiterschaft, um die Besonderheiten der politischen Subkulturen des mit Polen oder der Tschechoslowakei nicht vergleichbaren Widerstandes in Rumänien herauszuarbeiten. Wichtig ist, dass es solche Resistenzbewegungen auch hier überhaupt gab, obwohl eine Tradition der Teilhabe an der politischen Kultur völlig fehlte. Aus dieser Perspektive dienten im Dezember 1989 kritische Intellektuelle der großen Mehrheit dann doch als Beispiel." (Autorenreferat)

'Obwohl es auch in Rumänien Dissidenten gab, beförderten deren Aktivitäten weder die Revolution von 1989, noch stellten sie während des frühen Postkommunismus eine Alternative zum Neo-Kommunismus bereit. Der vorliegende Aufsatz betrachtet die bemerkenswertesten Resistenz-Handlungen von Persönlichkeiten aus dem intellektuellen Milieu wie solche der Arbeiterschaft, um die Besonderheiten der politischen Subkulturen des mit Polen oder der Tschechoslowakei nicht vergleichbaren Widerstandes in Rumänien herauszuarbeiten. Wichtig ist, dass es solche Resistenzbewegungen auch hier überhaupt gab, obwohl eine Tradition der Teilhabe an der politischen Kultur völlig fehlte. Aus dieser Perspektive dienten im Dezember 1989 kritische Intellektuelle der großen Mehrheit dann doch als Beispiel.' (Autorenreferat)

Fifteen years after its collapse, communism has undoubtedly become part of Romania's recent past. Although this period is now the historians' field of research, its study remains indebted to the pre-1989 evaluations made by western political scientists. Among those who contributed to the understanding of Romanian communism, Vladimir Tismăneanu features prominently. This essay reviews the concepts coined by this author -such as national Stalinism or dynastic communism- and underlines the interpretations he proposed for some particular episodes – such as the power struggle based on three centers or the emergence of Marxism revisionism as the prerequisite for internal liberalization.