Site designed and created by Razvan Paraianu. © Created in February 2002, Last revised: May 14, 2002.

—  Studies of Communist Nationalism —

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index of Projects:

The Communist-Nationalism Study Project is a series of primary sources and information intended to help the studies of recent history  and to trigger a decent academic discussion on the issue of Communist-Nationalism. It is intended to serve as a resource database and a discussion place for all those involved in researching this topic. Professors, graduate students and researchers interested in are more then welcomed to join this project.

My goals are:

To make available on-line various sources regarding Communist Nationalism during the Socialist epoch. A special attention will be paid  to the production of the social historical consciousness and its continuity and/or discontinuity with the post-Socialist era.

To overcome the exclusively political history of the recent period which is more or less tributary to the scarcity of primary sources and the closeness of state archive. The socialist culture definitely is a part of recent history and should be treaded as such.

To encourage comparative studies on Communism. I will do my best to offer as many possible sources in other languages than English for a broader scholar audience.

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My paper will focus on the national cinepopee (“cinepopea naţională,” term coined in the early ‘70s) and its prominent representatives. One of them, Sergiu Nicolaescu, a former movie director, presently a senator of the governing party PDSR, happened to be the one who opened the controversy over the new textbooks saying that they are deserving an auto-da-fé. Reviewing his career, it became obvious why he was the most sensitive to the issue of history textbooks. For he, alongside with other movie directors less successful than him (i.e. Titus Popovici, Francis Munteanu, and others), was the author of a significant number of historical movies illustrating, as a “bible of the poor,” the vulgata of national epic. My argument is that this pseudo-historiography, with vehement claims of being a scientific account, managed to replace the proper historiography concerning the hegemonic discourse about the past and to monopolize the historical interpretation to the detriment of professional historians. These movies offered a panoramic fresco of two millennia of Romanian history in a thoroughly planned strategy that prove an internal coherence incomparable to the contemporary Romanian history studies. They succeeded to corrupt the intellectual coordinates of the historical consciousness and even the academic standards regarding the historical writing, and to provide a complete set of values and a consistent Weltanschauung still convincing for the present Romanian mentality. Moreover, the recent political evolution allowed the allegation that this frame of mind, of which the manifestations of the extreme nationalists are just the tip of the iceberg, has not any competitor within the entire political spectrum, although ten years passed after the violent collapse of Ceauşescu.

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P.S. Your comments, questions and discussions are more than welcome. The floor is open.

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