COURAGE

gyűjtemények hálózata

This brochure is one of the few publications printed in exile which dealt with cases of national opposition in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR). It illustrates Mihnea Berindei’s interest in the oppositional movement developing in Soviet Moldavia and seems to indicate that Berindei had some connections with the editor of this booklet, Nicolae Lupan. Lupan was one of the most well-known oppositional figures in the MSSR. After his deportation from the USSR for “Romanian nationalist activity” in 1974, Lupan settled in the West (first in Belgium, then in France) and was active in placing the case of his native MSSR on the map of anti-Soviet dissent and anti-regime opposition. The booklet purportedly reproduced a letter that Lupan had received in August 1982 from a mysterious group called “The Young Bessarabians,” but it might have been written by Lupan himself. In any case, no such organisation is known to have existed in the MSSR at that time. The brochure focused on the arrest and trial of the Usatiuc–Ghimpu–Graur group (National Patriotic Front), the most important oppositional movement which emerged in the MSSR after World War II. In the preface to the letter, Lupan emphasised his personal connection to the Usatiuc and Ghimpu families and to the entire organisation, also referring to another emblematic case of national opposition “from below” which had occurred in September 1970, when two young women, Asea Andruh and Lilia Neagu, wrote over forty “anti-Soviet” slogans on a number of public buildings in central Chișinău. Lupan further stated: “One pays dearly for national resistance in Chișinău. Just as for the word “freedom.” The freedom to express oneself, the freedom to write, the freedom to be silent… Yes, even the freedom to be silent! For, if someone never wishes to speak at the propaganda meetings, this person is viewed as suspect and treated as an untrustworthy element.” Lupan claimed that the original of the letter was written in Romanian, while he only published a French translation of the original, “strictly abiding by” the text’s content. The letter provided a detailed description of Usatiuc, Ghimpu, and Graur’s trial and the reaction of the public to their condemnation. The description of the events was fairly accurate, with the unknown author emphasising the “rabid anti-Romanian propaganda” which had been pervasive in Soviet Moldavia “for a number of years already.” Interestingly, this letter also mentions Petru Lucinschi, the future Moldavian party leader and post-Soviet president of the Republic of Moldova, as a “typical example of the traitor that the colonisers call ‘a national cadre.’ He Russified his name, he married a Russian woman and he has devoted himself, body and soul, to serving the interests of Soviet imperialism.” The author then inveighed against Russian domination in Moldavia, focusing on the lack of national rights and the various forms of persecution and injustice suffered by the local population under Soviet rule. After narrating in some detail the individual fate of the National Patriotic Front’s leaders as of 1982, the brochure also referred in passing to other cases of repression against “Bessarabian patriots” that had occurred since the 1960s (including Gheorghe Muruziuc, Mihai Moroșanu, the Andruh–Neagu affair etc.). The strong-worded conclusion stated: “the Russian authorities pursue their plan to annihilate the Romanians of Bessarabia, a fact that can be qualified as genocide without bloodshed.” The natural solution to the Moldavians’ plight was, not surprisingly, “reunion with the Mother-Country – Romania.” This text, coupled with several other works by Nicolae Lupan to be found in Mihnea Berindei’s library (e.g., Bessarabie, terre roumaine, published in Brussels in 1982) proved that Berindei displayed a constant interest in the Moldavian case, possibly also helping the few exiles from the MSSR who had settled in the West to present their views to a wider audience.

This documentary was filmed in 1990, in the context of the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. While former members of the underground opposition were celebrated as heroes of the fight for freedom in countries like Poland, Hungary, and former Czechoslovakia, in Romania – a country where only a few intellectuals had dared to stand up against the Ceaușescu regime – the most troublesome question was: “Why did we not have a Havel?” In other words, why was dissent in Romania weak in comparison to any other country of the Soviet bloc. Romanian intellectuals found themselves socially compelled to formulate a convincing answer to this question, and argued that the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, was so efficient that it destroyed any attempt at organising an opposition movement. This documentary was among the first to challenge this interpretation and thus trigger an ongoing public debate, for it argued that the feeble criticism of the former communist regime was rather the effect of co-optation than of oppression.

The director Benny Brunner focused on an interview that he conducted in Munich with the founder of the collection Michael Shafir and the late dissident Mihai Botez. Images depicting Romania during the 1980s support the arguments of the two interviewees. The main assumption of the documentary, which both Shafir and Botez had previously developed in their works, is that Romanian intellectuals were co-opted by the communist regime and became an instrument for the preservation of political power. In this respect, the regime used, on the one hand, financial incentives and career opportunities and, on the other, the manipulation of the nationalist discourse. The case of the poet Adrian Păunescu was given particular attention, for he represented the most striking example of a talented young intellectual who nonetheless submitted himself willingly to the communist regime. He started his career as a nonconformist intellectual in the late 1960s, only to end up as a pillar of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s cult of personality in the 1980s and a manipulator of the underground culture of the young generation.

In the 1980s an entire area of Braşov was demolished in order for a new district to be built in its place, namely the Civic Centre, supposedly the city’s new socialist centre. The building of “civic centres” (centre civice) was an intrinsic part of the urban systematisation policy that was promoted during the 1970s and 1980s. This policy was meant to implant a new urban identity in the cities, one that would reflect the “greatness” of the “Golden Age,” as the official propaganda presented Ceauşescu’s regime. The buildings depicted in the pictures are part of a district called Strungul (The Lathe), which was the name of the factory in the vicinity. The buildings were private houses of one or two storeys, mostly built at the beginning of the twentieth century or in the interwar period by middle-class or working-class families. The demolished buildings were replaced in the second half of the 1980s by a cluster of ten- to fifteen-storey buildings. In the background of the picture can be seen a building that took shape in the 1960s, belonging to the Hidromecanica Factory, on which a propagandistic slogan can be seen: “Long live the Romanian Communist Party.” The juxtaposition of this slogan suggesting the greatness of the communist era with the apocalyptic setting of the demolition gives this image an ironic meaning. Taking these pictures was an act of cultural opposition because photographing the demolition processes implied political risks for the photographer. The simple act of immortalising the demolition processes could have been considered as a critical stance towards the official policies of urban systematisation.

The picture shows Hristo Ognyanov during a Radio Free Europe broadcast. Ognyanov was a long-time contributor to the Bulgarian language program of Radio Free Europe.

One of the programs of Radio Free Europe was called Bulgarian Literature under Communism, which Ognyanov created in 1964 (CSA F. 1264, op. 1, a.e. 289). The featured item contains the program transcripts, totaling about 375 pages. The Ognyanov’s broadcasts provided a broader picture of the development of literature in Bulgaria, while at the same time condemning the restrictions imposed by the government. He specifically presented works from Bulgarian literature and culture that the communist regime had banned in Bulgaria. In the series, Bulgarian Literature under Communism Ognyanov reported on official decisions of the Bulgarian Communist Party and revealed lies in the party’s propaganda.