Furtive selves: Proletarian contradictions, self-presentation, and the party in 1950s Romania

International Labor and Working-Class History

Volumn 68, Issue , 2005, Pages 9-23

  Friedman, Jack R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33749332081     PISSN: 01475479     EISSN: 14716445     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0147547905000177     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. The research for this paper was conducted with the support of Duke University, the American Fulbright Program. IREX. and ACLS. I am particularly indebted to Richard Collier and Mircea Baron for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
2. Ghiţa Ionescu, Communism in Romania: 1944-1962 (London, 1964), 204.
3. Ioan Lǎcustǎ, "1948-1950, Partidul Muncitoresc Român, se... Verifieǎ," Magazin Istoric 34.4 (2000), 18-21.
4. Ionescu, Communism in Romania, 204-15.
5. Kenneth Jowitt, Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Romania, 1944-1965 (Berkeley, 1971), 135-42.
6. Stephen Fischer-Galati, "Rumania" in Eastern European Government and Politics, eds. Vaclav Benes, Andrew Gyorgy, and George Stambuk (New York, 1966), 218-40. While many scholars of Romanian history have suggested that verificare concluded with the June 1950 pronouncement of the findings and results of this purge, verificare actually continued as a core part of the work of local and regional Party officials. In my own research in the county level, state archives in the city of Deva, I found that verificare files for the Petrpşani Region (Jiu Valley) existed through the late-1950s, showing a marked peak in the size of these files and number of individual reports between 1952-1955. The process of verification, in short, remained a looming threat in the lives of many Party members long after 1950.
7. Arhivele Naţionala Deva, Fondul Partidul Comunist Român, Raionul Petroşani [PCRRP], 1954, File 365, 7-11.
8. Margareta Toth-Gaspar, "Condiţiile de Munca şi Viaţa ale Minerilor din Valea Jiului şi Luptele lor Greviste pînǎ la Sfârsitul Secolului al XIX-lea," Acta Musei Napocensis (1964), 255-85.
9. For an overview of this period see Mircea Baron, Carbune şi Societate în Valea Jiului (Petroşani, 1998)
10. and Ion Popescu-Puturi, Presa Muncitoreasca şi Socialista din România, Volume 3, Part 2 (Bucharest, 1973).
11. N. Maghiar and S. Olteanu, Din Istoria Mineritului în Romania (Bucharest, 1970), 304.
12. Mircea Muşat and Ion Ardeleanu, România Dupǎ Marea Unire (Bucharest, 1986), 379-93.
13. For discussions of "Lupeni '29" see Ioan Andriţoiu, "Aspecte Privind Situaţia şi Lupta Muncitorilor Mineri din Valea Jiuluil în Perioada Crizei Economice din 1929-1933," Societatea de Stiinţe Istorice din Republica Socialistea România 15 (1970), 125-36;
14. Maghiar and Olteanu, Din Istoria Mineritului, 305;
15. Ion Poporogu, "Contribuţii în Cunoasterea Grevei Minerilor de la Lupeni din August 1929," Sargeţia 5 (1968), 393-99;
16. I. Saizu, D. Sandru, I Agrigoroaie, and N. Toderici, "Contribuţai la Cunoasterea Situaţiei Materiale a Minerilor din Valea Jiului în Perioada 1929-1933,"Analele Stiinţifice ale Universitǎţ "Al. I. Cuza" Iasi 12.5 (1966), 85-104;
17. and loan Velica, Lupeni '29: Blestemul Carbunelui (Cluj-Napoca, 1999).
18. PCR-RP, 1952, File 130,110. Later, this same wall, after the graffiti was removed, was again defaced-this time by a swastika.
19. PCR-RP, 1952, File 180, 46.
20. PCR-RP, 1952, File 166, 124.
21. PCR-RP, 1954, File 365, 7.
22. Igal Halfin, "From Darkness to Light: Student Communist Autobiography During NEP," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 45 (1997), 210-36;
23. Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, 2003).
24. Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial ibid, 220.
25. This encouragement to "free associate" in the act of critiquing/autocritiquing, of course, could have drawbacks for the state also. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation of the 1930s." The Journal of Modern History 68.4 (1996), 831-66
26. and Vladimir Kozlov, "Denunciation and its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944-1953," The Journal of Modern History 68.4 (1996), 867-98 for a discussion of what they call "graphomania" and how this could tax state bureaucracies.
27. The rights and responsibilities of Party members were codified in many state publications. See Primirea de noi membi în partid: îndatoririle şi drepturile comuniştilor (Bucharest, 1952) as an example from the period.
28. The fact that one presented an autobiographical narrative that reflects one's desired self-presentation did not, of course, suggest that this was the self-presentation desired by the Party itself. Frequently, well-crafted narratives would fail to impress Party officials working in their "verification" capacity. In fact, narratives that appeared "too perfect" were frequently marked as fabrications or lacking a significant "autocritique."
29. PCR-RP, 1953, File 238, 21-34.
30. Dennis Deletant, Communist Terror in Romania, Gheoghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965 (New York, 1999)
31. and Vladimir Tismaneanu, Stalinism for all Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (Berkeley, 2003).
32. Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul, 93.
33. Halfin, in looking at the discussion of physical and psychological "breakdown" as an explanation for acts of deviance in Party autobiographies, poses the question of the ambiguity connected to the reading of bodily weakness this way: "Was it physical breakdown, or was it a token of a wicked intention? In the former case one acted like an automaton and had to be restrained, corrected, enlightened; in the latter case one acted in full self-awareness and had to be mercilessly punished" (ibid, 94).
34. Terror in My Soul Ibid. 80.
35. Terror in My Soul Ibid, 81.