DISCOURSES OF RESISTANCE: ANTI-SYSTEMIC PERFORMANCE ON A ROMANIAN COLLECTIVE FARM
DISCOURSES OF RESISTANCE: ANTI-SYSTEMIC PERFORMANCE ON A ROMANIAN COLLECTIVE FARM

Summary/Abstract: As history suggests, the forty odd years of socialist hegemony in Eastern Europe was characterized by long periods of relative political quiescence interspersed with extreme outpourings of anti-systemic practice. The latter included revolts in 1956 in Hungary, East Germany, and Poland, 1968 riots again in Poland and the flowering of the Prague Spring in then- Czechoslovakia, the rise, banning, and ultimate triumph of Solidarity through the 1980s, and the final coupes de grâce of revolution throughout the region at the end of that decade. Supposedly in between these small- and larger-scale rebellions, daily life in socialism went on with relative calm and a seemingly general lack of overt popular resistance. Such quiescence seems to have been particularly the case in Romania. Here there was some early and intense guerilla resistance before the socialist state fully consolidated its power. This was notably so for the Făgăraş region as discussed in the two volume work by Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu.1 Subsequently, after the consolidation of the Party’s hold on power there were few other events of note. There was some resistance to the implementation of collectivization in the late 1950s and early 1960s (of which we will discuss more below) and a few other worker rebellions, such as those of the Jiu Valley miners in 19772, the miners at Motru3, and the Red Star factory workers in Braşov in 1987. But for these albeit out-sized actions Romanian dissent to socialism went on largely outside the country, purveyed by exiled literary figures like Paul Goma and Dorin Tudoran, and behind closed doors of homes and apartments.

• Details
• Contents