CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FROM ELITE CULTURE TO CULTURE FOR THE

“NEW” PEOPLE: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

ROMANIAN IDENTITY THROUGH THE

CULTURAL PRESS (1948-1964)1

ANDRADA FĂTU-TUTOVEANU

1. Introduction

Under the slogan “for the people, about the people, by the people”, the

Romanian context is an interesting case in point when it comes to

approaching popular cultures from the perspective of local identities—

especially those considered minor or marginal, such as Eastern European

countries, both in relation to communism and post-communism. The late

1940s and 1950s were quite possibly the most significant period in

Romania in terms of both the identity crisis and cultural shift the country

underwent due to the process of Sovietisation, alternatively read as

cultural colonisation (see Fătu-Tutoveanu 2012, 77–93).

Indeed, Romanian culture suffered a process of distortion or identity

deconstruction followed by reconstruction in terms of Soviet mimicry

based on “a canon that depend[ed] on discursive criteria established in the

metropolitan centre” (Mignolo 1993, 125). Subjected to stereotypically

optimistic propaganda encouraging the population to contribute to the

process of building a Communist Paradise, Romanian culture was actually

disfigured during the late 1940s and early 1950s, becoming unrecognisable

if compared to its interwar characteristics and the tendencies shown prior

to the instalment of communism. Romanian culture—always a crossroads

or border culture between Western and Eastern influences—was then

forced, under extreme political pressure, to accept a radical shift towards

the Soviet cultural canon. Consequently, during the late 1940s, Romanian

“High” culture, predominant until then, can be referred to as a “captive”

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and a beheaded one, since the elites were either eliminated (see Toma

2004, 325-335) or forced to adjust to the official discourse:

The Stalinist blueprint for Eastern Europe was based on a unique strategy

of transforming national political cultures into carbon copies of the USSR.

The leaders of the local communist parties and the growing administrative

and secret police apparatuses enthusiastically implemented this blueprint,

transplanting and even enhancing the characteristics of the Soviet type of

totalitarian system. (Connelly 1999, 107)

In intimate connection with the above-mentioned strategy, and in tune

with the political and social changes, the media turned into an essential

instrument to implement the cultural policies imposed by the regime;

simultaneously, the media became the mirror of such transformations,

which were to convince the readers, already significant in number, of the

legitimacy of such measures and the regime itself (Fătu-Tutoveanu 2011,

78-87). While the (cultural) press may usually be quite safely regarded as

the most faithful reflection of the evolution of trends and ideas—

animating, for instance, the literary or artistic environments—, within the

totalitarian context it actually shows the directions and effects of

propaganda. Thus, the complex mechanisms through which the official

discourse was implemented are most visible in the cultural periodicals of

the time, such as articles, prose and poetry sections, criticism, inquiries

among artists or transcriptions of their meetings, to mention but a few.

The Soviet cultural “canon” provided that culture should no longer be

elitist or bourgeois, but become popular or, explicitly, mass culture.

Although in post-war Western contexts popular culture has been accepted

as essential due to the (re)production, massification and commodification

of cultural products, in the case of satellite countries in the Soviet bloc, as

is the case of Romania, the situation was radically different. It was an

aggressive, artificial, politically-controlled process that involved the

levelling of all tendencies and originality towards the model of “Soviet

cultural homogeneity and monotony” (Rolf 2009, 601). The process meant

eliminating, transforming, re-educating or replacing the prominent voices

through a complex punishment-and-reward mechanism. Elimination meant

purging people but also periodicals and books that were already

published—through the purge of libraries, both personal and public—or

were entering the publishing process. It rapidly led to a closed, tightly

controlled system, based on fixed and rigid ideological (and even physical

and psychological) boundaries:

Sovietising culture was a work in progress, and various experts of cultural

production had an influential voice when it came to defining an adequate

FROM ELITE CULTURE TO CULTURE FOR THE “NEW” PEOPLE

343

“Soviet style”. Participants sometimes “worked towards the leader” by

acting in ways they imagined to be expected by the political centre. (Rolf

2009, 603)

The creation or, in some cases, radical transformation of key

institutions was an essential process towards achieving total control of all

cultural production. Thus, in June 1948, the Romanian Academy became

the Academy of the Popular Republic of Romania. In the following year,

the Writers’ Union was created and would amass substantial power and

centralise important resources, such as library funds, publishing houses

and magazines. In January 1949 other radical interventions took place

based on the decision of the Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP) to focus on

the “stimulation of scientific, literary and artistic activities” (Selejan 2007,

171; Ionescu-Gură 2005).2

A more urgent matter having been solved—“the conquering and the

stabilising of the power of the State” (Selejan 2007, 16)—some actions

were initiated in 1948 and 1949 as part of the process of literature

appropriation by politics. Decrees aiming at “stimulating scientific, literary

and artistic activities” were issued, such as the decree issued on 14 January

1949, for book editing and distribution, considered an instrument for

“stimulating literary creation”. As stated elsewhere (Fătu-Tutoveanu 2012,

87), this decree mirrored the cultural policies that typically resulted from

cultural sovietisation, including the nationalisation and centralisation of

publishing houses and all printing, control over copyright issues and all

cultural publications and reproductions, etc. In 1948-1949 the official

press organs revealed the complex measures adopted by the regime in

order to subordinate literature and the arts.

2. Explaining the concepts

The concept of “minor culture”, as employed in the current study,

applies to two functional levels. First, in a more general perspective—

influenced by post-colonial studies—the concept may be used to refer to

the relationships between a particular national culture and those aligned

with the dominant or hegemonic discourses. Historical and linguistic

factors are also involved and the case of Romania—a small nation, always

at the border of great empires—is no exception. In this respect, Lucian

Boia spoke of symbolic borders as both real and equally “fictional” limits

(2008, 61), using the concept of “geographical predestination” (2008, 50)

to explain the case of Romania in relation to the status of a constant

marginal or peripheral nation. While acknowledging that the discourse of

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identity and otherness is always relative to the speaker— “problema-cheie

este pînă la urmă cine vorbeşte despre cine: unde se situează pe axa

centru-periferie cel care ţine discursul şi unde se află cel care formează

obiectul acestui discurs” (2008, 54) [the key-issue is, after all, who speaks

of whom: where is the speaker placed on the axis centre-periphery and

where on this axis is the object of the discourse]—, Boia retrieves the

discursive, historical and “geographical predestination” of Romania for a

peripheral condition, in relation to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Byzantine

Empire, the Otoman Empire, the Habsburg and Russian Empires, and

more recently, to the European Union (2008, 54-61).

Notwithstanding the above, “minor” can also be interpreted in the light

of the specific historical context in the late 1940s-1950s and particularly

the context of the 1950s totalitarian regime: Romanian culture was

minorised not only as a national culture, but also in its relation to power,

having been turned into an instrument. In this sense, culture is in the

service of proletarians and, more specifically, in the service of propaganda.

“High” culture was minorised in a process that sacrificed originality and

aesthetic values to the function it performed within the system. As Adrian

Marino (1996, 126) argues, the relation between politics and literature is

neither uniform nor universal, as it is context-dependent. Moreover, in a

totalitarian state such as communist Romania this dependence is extreme,

as censorship and propaganda appropriate literature, both in terms of form

and message, turning it into an educational and manipulating instrument

towards the “captive” mass audiences.

The appropriation of culture by politics was aggressively performed,

leaving no room for questioning its relation to power, as the following

quotation reflects:

[S]uprimarea libertăţii comunicaţiilor şi a deplasărilor, cenzură sălbatică,

dogme, normative, dirijism birocratic, limbă de lemn, lozinci goale, eroi

pretins ‘pozitivi’, propagandă, aşa-zisul ‘spirit partinic în literatură’. […]

mai înseamnă suprema oroare pentru orice scriitor care concepe şi scrie

liber şi independent, în demnitate: transformarea sa în funcţionar literar şi

în instrument docil de propagandă. […] A fost constrâns—mai ales la cei

ce păstrau încă un reflex de independenţă—la duplicitate şi ipocrizie, la

oportunism şi cinism. (Marino 1996, 18-19)

[[S]uppression of the freedom of communication and travelling, wild

censorship, dogmas, normative documents, bureaucratic domination,

wooden language, empty slogans […], propaganda, […] the supreme

horror for any writer who conceives and writes freely and independently:

his transformation in a literary clerk and an obedient instrument of

propaganda. He was thrown a few financial privileges. […] He was

FROM ELITE CULTURE TO CULTURE FOR THE “NEW” PEOPLE

345

forced—especially those maintaining a reflex of independence—to

duplicity and hypocrisy, opportunism and cynicism.]

The transformation of the writer into an obedient clerk is part of a

larger process focused on the deconstruction and then reconstruction of

identity using Soviet blueprints. Therefore, the Eastern European countries

adopted the Soviet model on identity construction policies defining the

manner in which identity patterns were promoted through the available

media: the regime was creating individual and group patterns. This

involved a set of complex, politically-controlled social matrices,

materialised in different codes and representations and intended to

deconstruct, reconfigure or reshape individual and group identities. This

artificial de- and reconstruction of identities took place at several levels,

involving social, gender, professional and individual identity. These new

identity patterns promoted a specific “orthodoxy” manifested in a set of

stereotypical features defining the “new” man, the “new” woman, but also

the “new” writer or worker. Speaking of the process as it took place during

the Sovietisation of Romania, Morar-Vulcu (2007) argues that identity is

constructed, referring to an artificial, imposed construction. He means that

the monolithic official discourse imposes (through media) a series of

Soviet-modelled identity matrices and typologies. Paraphrasing Benedict

Anderson, Morar-Vulcu argues that in this system not only the nation but

all types of identity (collective, individual, cultural or political) are

“imagined” through the discourse (2007, 99-100) and therefore artificial.

Within culture, this reshaping or construction of an artificial group or

individual identity meant institutionalising artists, who were, as mentioned

earlier, transformed into paid “clerks”, grouped into institutions on which

they were fully dependent, both financially and socially. The cultural

periodicals reveal the recurrent plans that were required from them, as

they had to engage themselves in producing a certain number of works

every year and then, if possible, produce more. Institutional power

manifested itself in official normative papers and the duty to attend

meetings, while discussions on culture often placed emphasis on

“production” and paid work (loans, salaries, awards and high royalties and

any kind of privilege for the “faithful”). When problems existed, the

institutional hierarchy placed the writers in the position of asking for

support from the communist leaders. The following transcript of a

dialogue between a president of the Writers’ Union and the chief of the

state shows the required artificial, repetitive and stereotyped “wooden

language” (Thom, 2005):

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Tov. George Macovescu: ‘Activitatea noastră se desfăşoară conform

indicaţiilor pe care dumneavoastră ni le-aţi dat. În repetate rânduri

dumneavoastră ne-aţi spus că sarcina noastră principală este de a produce

cartea. Producţia noastră, a scriitorilor, tovarăşe secretar general, este

cartea, cartea pe care o producem, cartea care ajunge în mâinile cititorilor

noştri. Vă putem raporta că planul acestui an se ridică la 2.600 de titluri de

literatură care vor fi tipărite […] Trebuie să precizăm că numărul este bun

şi putem afirma că ţinem pasul cu producţia material, conform planului de

stat care există în ţară’. (Macrea-Toma 2009, 147)

[Comrade George Macovescu: ‘Our activity is being performed according

to the indications you gave us. You told us repeatedly that our main task is

to produce the book. Our production, the writers’ production, comrade

general secretary, is the book, the book we produce, the book that reaches

the hands of our readers. We can report that this year’s plan rises to 2,600

literary titles to be published. […] We have to add that the number is good

and we can state that we keep up with the material production, according to

the state plan in our country’.]

If the regime was using the media to promote its identity construction

policies in order to create the “new” man, within culture it was definitely

“fabricating writers” (Macrea-Toma 2004, 136).

3. The “Paper Curtain”

Le fameux rideau de fer […] n’était donc qu’un simple rideau de papier

(Spiridon 2004, 20)

[The famous iron curtain […] was therefore no more than a simple paper curtain]

Sorin Toma, senior editor between 1947 and 1960 of the official

newspaper of the Party, Scânteia, admitted that the newspaper had been

designed to justify the policies promoted by the unique Party and shape

public convictions and behaviours in accordance with the official ideology

(2004, 310), following thus the same pattern as the Soviet propaganda and

official newspapers (and mainly Pravda). The decade between 1948 and

1958 meant even more: this was the time when Soviet troops were present

in Romanian territory; thus, the Sovietisation of culture was performed

under military pressure. Despite the heavily promoted “voluntary” (or self)

Sovietisation (Connelly, 1999), many authors, among them Malte Rolf

(2009), do not agree that this process was accepted voluntarily or

enthusiastically.

The leaders in Bucharest formed a puppet regime ruled by Moscow

and all “directions” relating to culture, the economy, etc. were decided

FROM ELITE CULTURE TO CULTURE FOR THE “NEW” PEOPLE

347

there, leaving little in terms of decision making to the local leaders.

However, the latter had similar ideas to the Soviets when culture was

concerned. Dej (the General Secretary of the Party) himself and the rest of

the local leaders had been communist workers, politically trained by

Moscow and with little education, so they were interested in culture and

cultural periodicals only as instruments of political propaganda. The

ideological “orthodoxy” (Fitzpatrick 1992, 238-250) of the message had to

be the same, irrespective of the instrument (be it an official newspaper or a

literary work) and the political leaders never missed the chance to correct

all possible “heresies” in cultural products, even if this meant showing

writers how to write or correcting the thought of influential scholars.

This decade, especially its early years, is therefore very interesting as

Soviet control was then at its peak. The appropriation of cultural products,

institutions and cultural actors was extremely significant for the

communist regime in Romania since, although power had been conquered,

it now had to be legitimised. If persuasion and propaganda are generally

used to reach power, the usual stages were reversed in Romania:

politically-controlled cultural periodicals, and all cultural products, were

used after the establishment of the communist regime and “served not the

ascension to power, but its consolidation and legitimacy” (Osman 2004,

48). As it had very little public support at its instalment, the communist

regime needed media (cultural periodicals such as Flacăra or

Contemporanul among them, considered to be more attractive to their

readers due to the emphasis laid on the visual component) in order to

persuade people about the benefits of a new political order which was

already a fait accompli.

Another function of media was to impose new values and standards in

order to reshape the opinions and convictions of the audiences by

“controlling the truth”. Official information was carefully controlled and

filtered before reaching the masses (millions of copies of periodicals were

distributed and almost imposed on the people—as is the case of the official

newspaper Scânteia): “Puterea creeazã şi distribuie o entitate bastardã,

amestec […] de real şi iluzoriu, de spus şi presupus–acest produs hibrid

este informaţia oficialã” (Coman 2007, 134) [By monopolising

information, Power creates and distributes a bastard entity, a mixture of

partial truths and credible lies, of reality and illusion, said and presumed—

this hybrid product is official information]. Through the press, the

communist regime applied a complex persuasion and control system in

order for the propaganda message to have the necessary impact on the

readers’ minds and emotions, wishes and acts. As put by Lasswell,

“Propaganda […] is the technique of influencing human action by the

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manipulation of representations” (1995, 13). The purpose was to make

them react as expected, ensuring they remained passive in some aspects

while “mobilising” them in others: “the propagandist’s task is to intensify

attitudes favourable to his purposes, to reverse obstructive attitudes, to win

the indifferent or at least to prevent them from becoming antagonistic”

(Lasswell 1995, 18).

4. S(t)imulated debates

The overwhelming control of all intellectual activities and cultural

products was, however, paradoxically treated by propaganda, as far as the

cultural press reveals it. Intellectuals, Katherine Verdery argues, were

considered both necessary and dangerous, because of their abilities to

influence social values, but also because the political perspective on their

cultural role was different from the official one (1994, 64). Verdery adds

that the talents of the intellectuals were also essential for the legitimisation

of the regime, which required the monopoly of the cultural means of

production and, most especially, the very language, which had to be duly

transformed into an “authorised” version, with ideological effects (1994,

65-67).

Although any real debates and controversies were hushed down, and so

diversity of ideas simply was not allowed to exist but systematically and

effectively replaced with monotonous thought (generally expressed with

wooden language, simulating cultural “effervescence”), debates and

intellectual verve was a favourite activity of the cultural periodicals of the

time: many (artificial, content-less) gatherings, conferences and debates

were organised within the abovementioned institutional environment.

Farce was therefore not an exception but the rule in cultural meetings:

everything from roles to attitudes (enthusiasm, zeal, hatred, etc.) was to be

simulated. These role-plays were very much based on a collective or

organised lie (or “living within a lie”, as Vaclav Havel et al. (1985) put it),

(both politically- and socially-based) convention and compromise. Ana

Selejan (2007, 465) quotes for instance an article published in

Contemporanul in 1951 by V. Nicorovici, mentioning the debates that had

taken place that same year and, most significantly, the phrases used (i.e.

“opinion opposition”, “combative spirit”, “animating the working

sessions” and so on), which attempted to suggest effervescence and

participation, quite ironically when confronted to the transcripts of the

wooden language monotonous discussions.

FROM ELITE CULTURE TO CULTURE FOR THE “NEW” PEOPLE

349

As suggested above, the press revealed an obsession for its “lively

participation in discussions” (Selejan 1998, 8), which was the opposite of

the actual immobility, monotony, fear and artificiality of the cultural

manifestations and practices of the time. Paradoxically, even those

measures taken to encourage and make such meetings and cultural

activities more “dynamic” (or at least appear to be so) were artificial and

bureaucratic; for instance, institutions were placed in charge of

“stimulating the activity of creation”, as well as the debates and

controversies. The topics were conventional and the debates had to follow

the predictable lines and apply the same monolithic language. The

meetings usually had an administrative purpose: to “plan” work or to give

instructions. Occasionally, however, the farce had hidden purposes: the

meeting, disguised as a working session, was actually meant to punish,

find a scapegoat for a certain problem, or offer “examples”—see Jar’s case

below (Toma 2004, 203-206). In addition to “exemplary” meetings,

authors were also sanctioned in articles which, although written by critics

or journalists, were commanded by political leaders. Thus, for example

Sorin Toma confessed in his postcommunist memoirs that he received the

task to write an important (yet literary) article directly from Iosif

Chişinevschi and not through Leonte Răutu, who usually mediated the

communication between the Party and the newspaper Scânteia. Moreover,

he was told that this direct communication was due to the fact that the

initiative of this article belonged to the Party leadership and more

precisely to the General Secretary himself (Toma 2004, 331).

The instrumentalisation of the cultural press is thus most visible in

such exemplary meetings or critical articles published by the controlled

periodicals. Not only the meetings, but the whole series of inquiries and

interviews published by the cultural periodicals of the time transmit the

same artificial “enthusiasm” s(t)imulated by propaganda: writers always

fully “engage” to write more and “better”, in terms of ideological

faithfulness or “orthodoxy”. They make conventional statements of

“adhesion to the cause”, always expressed in the ideological wooden

language which had invaded public communication and particularly press.

Consequently, “reality” and “fiction” were no longer easily

distinguishable: reality, explicitly the most important thing culture had to

focus on, was actually fictionalised in this convention.

Moreover, in this role-play, parts were reversed and the discourse of

propaganda was very much a substitute for reality, while both writers and

readers had to at least pretend they accepted the simulacrum (Osman 2004,

49). Beneath the conventional optimism and “engagement” in the cause,

cultural periodicals and the cultural products they promoted were

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350

disfigured, forced to squeeze and develop within an artificial matrix,

subjected to military discipline: no wonder, then, that the formula of the

Soviet “regimenting of intellectual life and culture” (Tismǎneanu 2003,

109) should be widely used when approaching Romanian culture, during

its grey, uniform and obedient years, later referred to by writers as the

“obsessive decade”.

5. Correctional measures and resistance

If the history of Romanian communism reveals the existence of certain

periods characterised by relative—yet controlled—freedom, in the late

1940s and early 1950s, any sign of disobedience was punished in an

exemplary form, as shown above. Alexandru Jar’s case of public

discrediting is one of the most symptomatic ones: a writer with a

communist background who had dared to ask for some independence for

writers. Sorin Toma’s testimony on this public symbolic execution is that

it had been carefully planned and organised so as to set an example and

warning to the other writers (2004, 206). Thus, rather than establishing

directions and censoring “unfaithful” works, the regime was actually

“punishing” (or threatening to do so with) those who dared to oppose

them:

Mai întâi sunt acuzaţi de colaboraţionism o serie de scriitori, apoi de

rătăciri ideologice şi de pactizare cu fascismul german, ceea ce creează

panică şi derută în rândul scriitorilor, care de teama represaliilor se

înregimentează masiv în rândurile PCR sau răspund unor comenzi politice

imediate, scriind cu frenezie despre traduceri din literatura sovietică. […]

În librării, edituri şi biblioteci epurarea cărţii vechi este radicală. […]

Numeroase biblioteci particulare sau publice sunt arse, zeci şi mii de cărţi

sunt aruncate la gunoi, transportate în pivniţe şi beciuri întunecoase, unora

dintre cele mai importante arhive li se dau foc. (Popa 2001)

[First, some writers were accused of collaboration [with the enemy], then

of ideological errors and pacts with the German fascist, which created

panic and confusion among writers, who feared massive retaliation and as

a consequence entered the Communist Party or responded to immediate

political orders, writing frantically about translations of Soviet literature.

[...] In bookshops, publishing houses and libraries the purge of older books

was radical. [...] Many private or public libraries were burned, tens of

thousands of books were thrown away, transported to dark basements and

cellars, some of the most important archives were set on fire.]

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As already mentioned, the former cultural elites, who had had pro-

Western ideas and education, were eliminated and dismissed from

universities and institutes, sometimes even sent to labour camps.

Consequently, they had to remain silent, had no “signature right” or else

had to learn to speak the “new” language. It is therefore interesting to see

if “resistance” as such existed and, if so, how it functioned and which were

the correctional measures associated to it. In Adrian Marino’s words

(1996) “resistance” characterised

care au refuzat, direct sau indirect, tacit sau declarat, să scrie în favoarea

regimului totalitar comunist. Care s-au opus, într-o formă sau alta,

transformării literaturii în instrument de propagandă. Care au protestat şi

rezistat, într-o măsură sau alta, indicaţiilor, normativelor,cenzurii,

dispoziţiilor administrative şi legale. (Marino 1996, 21)

[those who refused, directly or indirectly, silently or openly, to write in

favour of the communist totalitarian regime; those who opposed in one

way or another the transformation of literature into a propaganda

instrument; those who protested against, and more or less resisted, the

directives, normative documents, censorship, legal and administrative

decisions.]

These legal measures meant that the ideological pressure (the socialist

realism monopoly) had administrative, legal and even repressive equal

correspondents, all organised in a complex bureaucratic system (Toma

2004, 335). Marino studies resistance under two main categories: passive

and active resistance. In the first category, the author placed, first, the

silent, passive, spontaneous resistance expressed by the refusal to write;

secondly, he speaks of an assumed, conscious refusal to contribute to

commissioned festive articles and similar pieces of writing. In the second

category of active resistance, he places, first, political-literary and political

resistance through literature—the explicit refusal to sign, collaborate or to

become a cheater—and, secondly, the most serious one: publishing

clandestine works, sending books and papers abroad, collaborating with

Radio Free Europe and adding political subtexts among others (Marino

1996, 21-27).

A few very important writers of the time, however, were allowed to

write outside the ideological “pattern”, due to a combination of prestige

and political faithfulness. This phenomenon could be referred to as

negotiation of boundaries or canons: in exchange for this partial freedom

of writing these important authors used to “offer” numerous articles or

literary works, very faithful to the official ideology. Sometimes these

contributions were very significant, both in dimensions and political

involvement, such as Petru Dumitriu’s extensive novel on the Danube-

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Black Sea canal, Drum fără pulbere [Road without Dust], which was

presented as a great socialist work, while the building site that serves as

setting for the work was in fact a labour camp, mostly for political

prisoners. Their conscious negotiation made it possible for some valuable

works to appear in the 1950s, but the authors were later marked by this

compromise. As Nistor argues, few books survived in terms of aesthetic

value and even fewer as morally uncorrupted (2009, 156).

Transcripts of meetings or other documents made accessible after 1989

placed great interwar personalities in a very dramatic light in relation to

compromise. The manner in which the writers had to obey, and bow to

political directions, listening to and obeying instructions issued by

political leaders despite the latter’s lack of education, is visible in

transcripts such as that of a dialogue recorded in an official meeting at the

beginning of 1960 between a Romanian Academy member and important

interwar prose writer (G. Călinescu) and the general secretary of the Party,

Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej. The writer visited the political leader in relation to his

book, blocked by censorship, but had to behave as a “yes-man” to Dej’s

speech on the Party’s involvement in establishing a “right direction” for

the writers to follow. Sorin Toma mentions Dej saying that he had read

and annotated a part of the aforementioned book in order to emphasise

what was ideologically incorrect or unacceptable (in his words, “wrong”).

Most significantly, the General Secretary of the Party proved inflexible

towards any unorthodox directions in literature (stating that the Party

makes no compromises when the Party spirit is concerned) and with

writers attempting to avoid the main ideological direction, shown by the

political leaders (Toma 2004, 209). The Academy member and influential

writer was advised on the “right” way to approach literature and this

behaviour, simulating protection, is highly representative of the relation

between politicians and cultural producers of the time.

6. The “right” way

This “right” cultural way involved some pre-established rules deeply

connected to the political context of the time (and extremely powerful

during the Sovietisation process). Therefore, what was only left to discuss

when criticising a work of art was the “degree” in which the rule was

obeyed; in fact, specialised critics were replaced by groups of proletarian

readers, considered more legitimate as they “spoke for the masses”. If not

perfectly conforming to the official ideology (as was usually the case), the

purpose of all debates and meetings was to “correct” the work (see Toma

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353

2004, 208-210), which in the case of literature led to revisions and new

editions. During the first decade of the communist regime, artists, however

privileged, were treated with simulated superiority and tolerance by the

proletarians, as culture was “in the service of workers”. The simulated

educational influence of proletarians over writers was extensively present

in cultural periodicals, mirroring “reality”. The conclusions of such

meetings were that the works could be improved and made to sound

“right”. This meant full acceptance from the writer of the workers’

criticism. Thus, an example quoted by Selejan is that of Davidoglu

confessing that, following such an educative meeting within a factory in

which he was criticised for the death of a character, he conformed and

changed the plot of his book (Selejan 2007, 100).

The rules of what, to use Fitzpatrick’s terminology (1992, 238-250),

could be referred to as “orthodox” literature required that this should be

simple and accessible, as clearly stated by Selejan (2007, 100): “write so

we can understand”. However stereotypical and monotonous, literature

was presented as showing—and not just imitating—reality. Fiction was

explicitly considered heresy, as fantasy was considered part of the residues

of the “old” literature and a form of covering and concealing the “truth”,

while both culture and society were in fact kept captive within a universe

of conventions and simulacra. As a consequence, topics had to be taken

from proletarian realities: attention was paid to covering the topic in

quantity and faithfulness to the ideology whilst aesthetic value played no

relevant role. The cultural press was very much interested in the extent to

which such “real life” subjects were covered: “Progrese inseminate se pot

observa—scrie Eugen Luca—mai ales în nuvelistica oglindind viaţa

uzinelor şi fabricilor” (Selejan 2007, 201) [An important progress can be

noticed—Eugen Luca wrote—especially in the short stories reflecting life

within plants and factories], while the novelist Petru Dumitriu wrote a

series of articles on the topic of building sites. Self-criticism was always

appreciated even when ideological “victories” were acknowledged. The

stereotypical discourse had to leave room for improvement (usually

involving new editions of the same volumes) and progress, particularly in

terms of revealing an improved political education and therefore a

religious-like “knowledge of truth” (Selejan 2007, 466).

Besides imposing proletarian subjects on artists, other absurd situations

required intellectuals to support political measures and become interested

in them, such as the example of poets writing on the benefits of kolkhoz

(Soviet-modelled collective farming) policies, as part of a campaign to

promote the elimination of the “differences between intellectual and

physical work”.

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354

Paradoxically, as conventional and devoid of content as they were,

cultural products—and literary works in particular—were prolific enough

during communism in terms of quantity. In fact, after inquiring about the

number of published books in a certain year, Ceauşescu commented that

literature was very productive (Macrea-Toma 2009, 147). Although

Ceauşescu’s allusion refers to a period outside the scope of the current

study, it is equally applicable to the 1950s—a period which, although

heralded as most aggressive and restrictive in terms of ideological control,

reveals a rich cultural production in terms of quantity.

Being offered privileges—referred to as “priviligentsia” by Sorin

Antohi (2005) and Macrea-Toma (2009)—or simply having no other

choice—punishment has already been mentioned here—, especially

writers, but also other cultural producers, followed “directions” as closely

as possible and produced a significant number of works, even if very few

of these were valuable and ultimately survived. For the category interested

in gaining privileges and occupying a position within the state institutions

or organisations, especially in the Writers’ Union, compromise actually

meant a transfer of power: they could thus exert influence over some

aspects of publication and make decisions in this respect, influence the

content of school textbooks and decide upon literary awards (Verdery,

1995, 194).

7. Conclusions

This mapping of the cultural press between the late 1940s and early

1950s leads us to conclude that the few existing periodicals—the most

significant of which were Flacăra and Contemporanul—reveal

monotonous content and repetitiveness, expressed in stereotypical

language and visual representation clichés. As a result of Sovietisation,

cultural periodicals did no longer “record live” cultural phenomena but

adopted an artificial, conventional code that was applied with no

exception. Consequently, originality and aesthetic values were sacrificed

to political, ideological principles, all of these being extra-cultural factors

and influences.

Thus seen, culture was held captive between very well organised

borders, merely an instrument for “the education of the new man”,

deconstructing in fact and then reshaping his identity. Restrictions were

extended on every level of culture, from organising and censoring writing

and publishing to restricting access to reading. The latter was performed

through the limitation of people and book circulation and the “purging” of

FROM ELITE CULTURE TO CULTURE FOR THE “NEW” PEOPLE

355

libraries, with special funds created for those considered to be “dangerous”

books. These were controlled through a centralised censorship and

publishing system, together with a whole lot of institutions which, in order

to group and control all intellectual professions, unions and institutions

with specific legislation (but also privileges), controlled prizes and fees,

regulated punishment and even conducted public “executions” in regular

meetings.

As a consequence, Romanian culture in the 1950s was subject not only

to an unexpected and radical change that took it away from its natural

leanings towards the West and Western modernism,3 but also to

aggression and captivity on political and even military grounds.

Propaganda and ideological discourse, after the Soviet model, replaced all

cultural initiatives and movements, while culture became a conventional

mechanism with predicable methodologies and results. The artificial

transgression from a former elite culture to a culture for the people, about

the people, by the people resulted in an organised convention in which

most of the producers and receivers—the “new people” subjected to an

artificial de- or reconstruction of their own identity—learned only to

simulate interest and enthusiastic involvement. The “disciplined” and

uniform evolution of culture was only seldom interrupted by exceptions,

such as rare manifestations of resistance (exemplarily punished) or, in case

of the most privileged, political negotiation in what Pruteanu has called

“the deal with the devil” (1995).4

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Notes

1 This paper is supported by the Sectoral Operational Programme “Human

Resources Development” (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund

and by the Romanian Government under the project number ID59323. 2 Short quotes in Romanian have all been translated into English by the author of

this paper. Longer quotes are preserved in the source language and provided with

an English translation. 3 Interwar Romanian literature was deeply connected to and influenced by Western

Modernism. 4 This is the title he chose for his work Pactul cu diavolul: şase zile cu Petru

Dumitriu (1995).