Images of communist and post-communist Romania in British travel literature
Images of communist and post-communist Romania in British travel literature

Summary/Abstract: This study is an imagological analysis of British representations about communist Romania and their continuity in building post-communist image in the British travel literature. The paper goes further research aimed at my previous British representations about Romania in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Again, almost nothing seems encouraging, even after the fall of communism. Romania is sometimes described in darker colors than before, as if it would be forever doomed to be poorly managed and without hope for the future. No communist doctrine is not judged to dire situation before 1989, but rather, to put unsatisfactory application of its principles by dictators such as Ceauşescu in the 80s. 70s inspired instead and Utopian idyllic image of an island in the ocean liberal Soviet imperialism and a promoter of the purest ideal Marxist doctrine. However, such images are offset by the intellectual and cultural resistance to Romania before Ceausescu's dictatorship. Thus, depending on the ideological orientation of the observer, Romania under the communist regime is a liminal space between dictatorship and liberalism, between the Soviet model and the national, between West praising Ceausescu and the Soviet Union, Romania tolerant neighbor, who seemed to pass with a view to changing the provisions Ceausescu, images of countries represented either by the president of "dissident" dissident culture or by people if we try to find a common denominator of these images. 80s seem to resolve ambivalence about Romania British images. There is no dictator prevailed dissident intellectuals or dissidents, but misery and sorrow of a people oppressed. Aura of liberalism Ceausescu, seen especially in his international policy, was gone.

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