State against the Citizens and Citizens against the State:Repression and Insurgent Violence in Communist Romania, 1945–1989
State against the Citizens and Citizens against the State:Repression and Insurgent Violence in Communist Romania, 1945–1989

Summary/Abstract: The present study addresses two interrelated issues concerning political violence, namely, state repression or state against the citizens, and insurgent violence or citizens against the state, for the case of communist Romania. In general, insurgent violence represented an answer to state repression. Over the entire communist period, that is, March 1945–December 1989, the patterns of state repression and insurgent violence resulted from attitudinal and behavioral patterns that characterized the functioning of a triangular relational nexus, namely, regime–society–Soviet Union. These attitudinal and behavioral patterns emerged as a result of the successive transformations of the Stalinist model imposed on the Romanian society from “abroad and above” in the aftermath of World War II.

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