‘Socialist in form, national in content’? The ‘national-international relation’ in the ideological economy of romantic Leninism
‘Socialist in form, national in content’? The ‘national-international relation’ in the ideological economy of romantic Leninism

Summary/Abstract: The present paper tries to bring forward an ideological reinterpretation of the Romanian communist ideology from the „golden age”. „Romantic Leninism” implies an apparently incompatible ideological hybridity between Leninism, Romanticism and even Fascism, endemic with reference to the other communist regimes from Eastern Europe and even the whole world. Without neglecting its international manifestations, the accent lies here on several concepts considered to be the theoretical backbone of what I have named romantic Leninism. Following the analysis of the ideological structure of romantic Leninism, this part of the paper deals with Nicolae Ceaușescu’s personality cult and the particular type of socialist economy implemented during his leadership, both underlined by the heroic-romantic ideal of „building socialism”. On the whole, I intend to prove that romantic Leninism represented, under different appearances, a unified assault over the „bourgeois” conscience of Romanian society, in the attempt of replacing it with another type of conscience, that of the well-known „new man”, robotized and following exclusively the party’s goals, which he accepts as his own.

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