Simvolizam na suvaraniteta i politicheskite granici i rumanskata politika 1944-1989
Symbolism of Souvereignity and political Frontiers in Romainan Politics 1944 - 1989

Summary/Abstract: The present article is an examination of the drawing and redrawing of ideological political frontiers in socialist Romania, to show how a frontier based on workers against fascism and nationalism was initially constructed. Then the entry of the лnational liberationн idea in the 1950s is documented as it was constructed from a Marxist-Leninist starting point. Finally the article charts the shift marked by the Ceausescu era when the political frontier became fully centred around the nation, with the mythical symbol of socialism functioning as one element in a discursive structure of legitimation of Communist Party rule. What is shown in this study is how social conflict was represented and domesticated by a hegemonic articulation, in this case the attempt of the post-war Romanian regimes to paint pictures of reality which offered individuals the choice of two ready made subject positions, or identities. One was a progressive identity, the other was a reactionary identity. The hegemony of the Romanian Communist Party, or more precisely the ability of both Dej and Ceausescu to maintain dominance within the party partly relied on this ideologically produced over-simplification of the field of social conflict, which was organised by the production of the political frontiers analysed in this article. The crisis of the regime came when social conflict could no longer be convincingly represented or effectively domesticated by party discourse. In 1989, the party fell victim to a social movement motivated and interpellated by an identity based on a new positive chain of equivalence, that of the Romanian people - Freedom - Revolution, with the negative chain of equivalence on the other side of the political frontier being Ceausescu, Socialism and the Party, - oppression of the Romanian nation.

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