When Stalinism recreated Romania

Films are great ways in which we all can learn some stuff about history, in a way that may be more pleasing then reading history books and scientific papers. Especially for those of you who live in the West, Eastern European communism was present through images that showed a world that praised on the “genius” of the working class, a world that seemed to be self-sufficient and did not need any exterior intervention in order to survive. It was a mediocre world, a world that saw its working class as a label of progress to the perfect equallitarian socialist society that represented the communist ideal, which in fact was never actually fulfilled.  

It is important to take in to consideration the fact that we cannot learn history only through films, or books, or through the stories that are passed on from one generation to the other; learning history is a combination of all the elements that were mentioned above with adding some extra ingredients too.

 Going back to the main subject of this article, there are certain things that many westerns don’t understand about the communist era in Eastern Europe, things that are somewhat harder to notice and understand if you didn’t do a little research in to the history of the nations that were under totalitarian rule until the beginning of the ‘90s.

I want to talk more about the communist agenda had in mind the cultural remodeling of the newly created socialist republics. In order to make things even more precise, I’ll use Romania as an example to what Stalinization had as an agenda.

1.      One thing that we need to understand, in the case of Romania, is the fact the cultural landscape become the subject of distortion, amputation, and remodeling. Until the political power was fully taken away by the communists in 1947, Romania was, and still remained for a few years after, a mainly rural and agricultural nation. In addition, the level of social polarization was very high, with a very thin, not so noticeable middle class. The creation of the middle class was politically planned; it didn’t came as a result of the self determination of a group that aimed at reaching a better standard of life and a higher position in the social hierarchy.

Basically, people were put in roles that they never had a script for. On the same line, Marxism was distorted by the fact that the soviets rejected the idea that the proletariat could lead by itself a revolutionary movement, thus putting under a question mark the fact that the proletariat was crystalized well enough to produce a social revolution of such scale.

2.      Another very important aspect is the fact that cultural expression, in all of its forms, was “kidnapped” and forced to serve the construction of the socialist world. This way, a lot of artist, writers, singers and actors were banned and went in to exile. Only the artworks that weren’t in contradiction with the cultural alienation agenda of the Communist Party retained their place, the other ones were destroyed. And what was the effect of this?

a.       Art and cultural expression were dried out of their true meaning and became tools of propaganda and mass manipulation.

b.      The political bias that everything related to the arts had.

c.       The rise in to prominence of mediocre artists that were willing to take part in the political propaganda agenda of the Communist Party.

d.      A lack of trust and interest that people from Eastern Europe give nowadays to cultural manifestations and events, or better said, a lack of trust that such manifestations can contribute with anything positive to their lives.

e.       The over glorification of folklore and its usage as a weapon for nationalism – this way traditional music and costumes were no longer a reminder of our ancestor’s way of life, of the spiritual and material heritage, they were weapons of nationalism, elements that were meant to make people believe that our heritage is the best, the most original and superior.

f.       Even thou it wanted to be seen as progressive, Romanian national culture started to become, especially from the beginning of the ‘60s, more traditionalistic and nationalistic, thus destroying the essence of communism which gravitated towards an international socialist brotherhood.

Proletarian culture became more and more anti-intellectual, education, which was only under a public form, also became a mass weapon of political indoctrination. The evolution of those students with remarkable academic results was put to a hold if they were disagreeing with the political doctrines of the Communist Party, this can be extended to almost any field of activity.

The lack of education which did not come from the lack of access to it, but from it poor quality, greatly contributed to the success of proletariat’s anti-intellectualism.

As much as we dislike it, we must admit the following thing: Between War Romania and Communist Romania are two different worlds – the soviet infiltration managed to create a totally new nation, one that was culturally alienation, had an artificially create culture which was designed by an illegitimate political class, a country that was turned over night from rural to urban and from agrarian to industrial.

And we should also admit that nowadays we look and act more as our invaders then ourselves!