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F F A A C C U U L L T T Y Y O O F F S S O O C C I I A A L L S S C C I I E E N N C C E E S S

P P O O L L I I T T I I C C A A L L S S C C I I E E N N C C E E S S S S P P E E C C I I A A L L I I Z Z A A T T I I O O N N

No. 33-34 • 2012

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- R E F E R E N C E S -GHEORGHE VLĂDUŢŢESCU (Romanian Academy), ALEXANDRU BOBOC (Romanian Academy), FLORIN CONSTANTINIU (Romanian Academy), CRISTIAN PREDA (University of Bucharest), LAURENTIU VLAD (University of Bucharest), VLADIMIR OSIAC (University of Craiova), CĂTĂLIN BORDEIANU („Petre Andrei” University of Iaşi)

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- E D I T O R I A L B O A R D - Editor in chief: AAUURREELL PPIŢUURRC

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A D D R E S S :

University of Craiova, 13 A. I. Cuza Street, Craiova, 200585, Dolj, Romania, Tel/Fax: +40251418515.

© 2012 - Editura Universitaria All rights reserved. All partial or total reproduction without the author’s written agreement is strictly forbidden.

ISSN: 1584-224X http://cis01.central.ucv.ro/revistadestiintepolitice/

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C C O O N N T T E E N N T T S S

POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY: THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 7

Aurel PIŢURCĂ, Communism and political elites 8

Patricia GONZALEZ ALDEA, The Identity of Ceaușescu’s Communist Regime and its

Image in the West 14

Jonuz ABDULLAI, Luan SINANI, Political culture and policy-making after the fall of

Communism in Macedonia 29

Cătălin STĂNCIULESCU, „Wooden language”, persuasive definitions, and inferentialist semantics

40 Ali PAJAZITI, University youth and politics in post-communist transitional Macedonia

(FYROM) 49

Andreea Mihaela NIŢĂ, Cultural consumption of urban population in today`s Romanian society Comparative study communism - post – communism 63 Magdalena RADOMSKA, Criticism of Capitalism in Post-Communist Europe 73 Radu RIZA, Political power from potentia to potestas 85

POLITICS TODAY: HOW TO DEAL WITH THE RECENT ISSUES? 93

Mladen KARADJOSKI, Democracy in the countries of the Western Balkans: nominal or crucial transformation of the political systems after the end of communism 94 Cătălina Maria GEORGESCU, Performance versus Corruption within Public

Administrations: Does the Issue of Political Discretion Become Inevitable? 103 Sonja BUNČIČ, Twenty years after the Yugoslav break-up: privatization models and

results 117

Sandro STEINBACH, Mariusz RYBAK, Soviet Heritage and Export Trade - Cross-

Country Evidence from Georgia, Russia and Ukraine 130

Ancuţa POPA, Andreea STOICIU, The structural and cohesion funds – an opportunity

for Romania 143

Harun ARIKAN, A Failure of Europeanization? The Case of Hungary 154 Hasan JASHARI, Macedonia’s public policies and social transformation 165 Andreea BIGYA, The electoral system and election campaign in Romania. From

communism to democracy 175

Elena Steluța Dinu, Health services in Romania during transition period 184 Loredana STAN, The Paradoxes of the Economic Crisis: an analysis of its social

consequences in the EU 196

Mihaela-Alexandra VEZUINĂ, Romania in the global crisis (2008-2011) 210

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JUSTICE AND INSTITUTIONAL REFORM: PATHS TO EU INTEGRATION 225 Anca Parmena OLIMID, Struggle for Sacred After EU Integration. Constitutional Developments Concerning Religion and Freedom of Religion in Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria (I)

226

Lavinia Elena SMARANDACHE, The evolution of the legal regime of institutions issuing electronic money in the Romanian legal system 239

MEDIA STUDIES: PERCEPTIONS AND REALITIES IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE 251 Krzysztof OLSZEWSKI, Image of Romania as member of the European Union in the

Polish press 252

Xenia NEGREA, Communism in the Romanian Press during the Economic Crisis 269 Ionuţ RĂDUICĂ, Cultural anthropology of media after the communism fall 279

STATISTICAL METHODS: APPLICATION PROGRAM 286

Mihai-Radu COSTESCU, Identifying indIcators of dynamics. Application Program 287

BOOK REVIEW 295

Alexandra Petrescu, Tăcerea în politică. Eseuri (Silence in politics. Essays)

(Anca Parmena OLIMID) 296

E d it o r s’ N o t e

298

Report on the Second International Conference After Communism. East and West under Scrutiny,

Craiova, 2-3 March 2012 (Anca Parmena OLIMID, Cătălina Maria GEORGESCU) 299

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POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY:

THOUGHT AND PRACTICE

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ORIGINAL PAPER Aurel PIȚURCĂ

Communism and political elites

Aurel PIŢURCĂ University of Craiova,

Faculty of Social Sciences, Political Sciences Specialization E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The study Communism and political elites is an attempt to approach political power within the communistregime from the perspective of elite theory.

For a better understanding of the issue, the study makes a short review of elite theory, especially of Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca, thus creating the foundament for the presence of elites inevery social-political formation, including socialism. An important segment within the study is allocated to the working class elite theory, having Robert Michels at the center. Although Robert Michels’

theory aimed at the working class in capitalism, his theory is also valid for the analysis of political elitism in socialism. At the same time, the study analyses the manner in which elite theory is found in socialism, starting with the moment of the installment of communist power, continuing with the communist period and ending with the post-communist moment.

Key words: elite, communist political elite, communist nomenclature, communism, elite circulation.

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The elite theme was and continues to be a much debated theme in political sciences, in the system of philosophical, sociological, juridical, estetical and moral thought. Elites were constituted and established in all social formations, fields and segments of social life. There are as many types of elites as the fields of activity. According to Vilfredo Pareto “elites have nothing in absolute; there can be an aristocracy of saints, an aristocracy of brigands”1. Along time different types of elites were established within the social structure: the aristocracy, nobility as social elites. We can speak today of a technocratic, artistic, cultural, administrative, political, sports elite. Among all these types of elites, the political elite has imposed itself as a constant of social life. It was present since the antiquity, monarchical government and aristocracy being its most representative components. Established in the space of power, of government, one finds political elites in the entire route of history.

Talking about the power-political elite relationship, G. Porry asserted “it is no less true that the tendency of concentrating power and responsibility in the hands of a minority is one with absolute general applicability”2.

Politics, power are the fields of which the presence and action of political elite is linked. According to Max Weber, “making politics thus means, for us, striving to participate to power or striving to influence the distribution of power”3.

Not all the population within one society has the same call, attraction towards politics as it requires knowledge, abilities and vocation. Those who make politics must make proof of some qualities, they must have the power to impose themselves in the management of public affairs. To put it differently, they must form an elite. Referring to the population-political elite relation, Vilfredo Pareto said: “the population is divided in two strata, the inferior one, a stranger to the elite, and the superior one, the elite”. The elite itself is not unitary in relation to power, the government. The same V. Pareto appreciated

“those who directly or indirectly play a notable role in government constitute the governmental elite. The rest forms the non-governmental elite”4.

On the unequal role of population in relation to power also writes Gaetano Mosca: “in all regulatory constituted societies within which there are what we call government, we do not see only the manner in which its authority is exercised in the name of the people, of a dominant aristocracy or of a sovereign…but we constantly find another thing; those in government, those who dispose of and exercise public powers, remain only a minority, under which lies a great number of persons who do not ever really participate in any way in government and do nothing but stand it”5.

In any society, political elite represents a minority, is distinct, and through the relation with power play a major role in its organization and leadership. It represents a group of people able and capable to make politics, having as supreme objective political power under all its aspects, to influence it, maintain it, but especially to conquer it.

Until the 18th century when one laid the foundations of modern democratism, the unequal division of power between the elite and masses was

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considered something normal, just and regularly legitimated through the divinity. Masses had no role in the equation of power, were not even taken into account, being considered incapable of political creation and leadership, incapable to participate in taking or implementing decisions. Only during the 19th century with the affirmation of modern democracy appears the distinction between rulers and ruled, dominators and dominated, government-governed, or to put it differently, between political elites and the masses.

Imposing democracy especially in the contemporary period has raised the problem of (in)compatibility of the political elite. The specialists’ opinions are divided. Many authors making appeal to the classical formula of defining democracy by the ancient Greeks, but also by the North-American president Abraham Lincoln as “government of the people, through the people, for the people”, consider that within a democratic society there is no place for political elites, even proposing their elimination. On the contrary, others consider that democracy, in its classical form would be something ideatic, that in reality it is an institutional technique of elaborating and applying decisions and has to be understood and conceived in a strong relationship with the new requests and realities. Some of its fundamental principles themselves, as is that of equality, have to be reformulated.

Equality is a juridical principle, people are equal before the law, as regards their rights and social-political liberties, in education and training, in forming their career, in promotion. This does not mean that all people are the same. Nowhere and never did exist or will exist an egalitarian society, even if communists had it as final objective, seeing in it the ideal society they wished to accomplish. People have different roles, functions, positions, statuses within the society, class, social group or parties. These situations are determined by different degrees of training and education, by different intellectual, professional, organizational, managerial, rhetoric or career qualities, capacities. All leads us to the presence and acceptance of the elite. Elite and elitism did not avoid the working class. Although Marx in his writings has approached the problem of defining the class, especially from the perspective of the proletariat, and founded his entire theory on class struggle, he was not expressly preoccupied by the issue of the elites, as it would have raised the issue of its unity and homogeneity. Accepting the idea of the class struggle promoted by Marx, Vilfredo Pareto argues that it is not only a a simple struggle between the proletariat and capitalists, but “we find it in an infinity of groups with different interests and, especially, among elites disputing power”.

Referring to the socialist movement, the same Pareto argued: “socialism facilitates the organization of elites who appear from the inferior class…it is one of the best instruments to educate these classes”6.

The problem of elites at the level of the working class was especially approached by Robert Michels. Fine connoisseur of the German and Italian social-democratic movement, Robert Michels has tried to apply Vilfedo Pareto and especially Gaetano Mosca’s elite theory to the capitalist working class.

Within the constitution of elites at the level of the working class, Robert

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Michels starts from the need to organize it “only through organization the proletariat becomes a class capable of political resistance and social dignity…

But who says organization says tendency towards oligarchy. Within the nature of this organization lies a profoundly aristocratic element”7.

Referring to a party or a union, the same Robert Michels was saying

“the mechanism of organization gives it a solid structure and, at the same time, determines important changes at the level of the organized mass. The final effect of organization is the division of any party and of any professional union in a ruling minority and a ruled majority”8. The conclusion is only one: the organization of the working class leads to its division into a great non-political mass and a minority, that is the political elite.

Although Robert Michels in his study had in view the working class from the capitalist society, his theory is still valid in the case of the working class from the socialist society. For a long period of time the communist literature and its political leaders have denied the presence of political elites in socialism. The presence of the elite, especially of the political one, was contrary to the principle of socialist equality, generating social inequality and inequity, not conformal to socialist democracy. The elite, elitism were considered notions with negative, depreciative connotations even, conceived as a minority which would be contrary to the majority, fact which could not be accepted in communism.

Such an attitude was contrary to the social reality and eluded several essential principles of the social-political activity of the working class.

 The organization of the working class generates the presence of the political elite. Without organization the working class cannot accede to power, cannot influence or conquer it. “Organization – said Robert Michels – is the source that gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electorate, of the mandates over those who gave them the mandate, of the delegates over those who delegate them. He who says organization says oligarchy. Any party organization represents an oligarchic power supported by a democratic basis. All over we have electorate and elected.

But all over we meet an almost endless power of the elected over the masses of those who elect them”9.

 No political action, and especially one that aims at the problem of power, of conquering it, as is the case of revolution, cannot be accomplished without a leadership, a political elite. In all situations the elite is synonymous to leadership. The communist revolution, like all revolutions, had as leading element a minority, that is a political elite. This elite is in great extent the product of the working movement, of its organization, but also a translation of some elements from within the old elite which led to communist ideals, it is the so-called converted elite.

 Any radical revolutionary change, as was the one accomplished by the communist revolution, ends the domination of the old elite and brings to power a new elite, a fact valid to communism as well. Even from the moment of the installment of the communist power we deal with the

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political elite. All societies along history was led by minorities, by elites, socialism was no exception. Gaining and exercising power would give birth to the government elite. At its beginnings, the communist political elite being in power had its legitimacy into politics, materialized through its attachment towards the communist values, principles and ideology.

What did matter were not professional, intellectual or managerial qualities, but the attachment, loyalty towards communist power. The new communist elite formed was in great extent constituted by mediocre people, many of them having no knowledge about politics or social organization and leadership, at most they disposed of some native, general aptitudes which allowed them to be included in the decision-making process or in forming some forecasts.

The communist elite itself is not homogeneous either, inside it we would distinguish a governing elite, very restricted, given by the supreme party and state organs which would constitute power. The forms communist elitist power takes differ from one party to another, in Romania that was given by the Secretariat and Political Bureau of the Communist Party. To this central communist nomenclature, which is regularly the name for the political elite, one must add the party and state political organisms in the territory. These, in relation to the great mass of party members, with the working class, to which base communists made appeal to, represented a minority, a political elite. To it one would add, in a small extent, some elements from the old political elite, as was the case in Romania: Ion Gh. Maurer, prof. C.I. Parhon, prof. Miron Constantinescu, the writer Mihail Sadoveanu etc.

To this elite in power one would add the non-governing elite formed from party members, the second rows in power, those who would support communist politically and ideologically. They are not directly involved in governance, some of them do not hold positions anywhere but in the party, are the so-called party activists met in great numbers, especially at the beginning of communism. In such a situation was the Central Committee of the Party. It was never a decision-making organism, but at most consultative, and following the growth in the number of members it even fell as importance. For instance in Romania in 1945 the number of members of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party was of 35, in 1948 it was of 57, and in 1989 it reached 46710.

The establishment of the communist political elite on the political- ideological criterion, on the loyalty towards the unique party and the communist regime has led, especially in the first period of the regime, to the regeneration of the political elite in a very slow pace, which determined the forming of a “gerontocratic elite”.

The reforming current which spread over the communist system after 1990, perestroika and glasnost would affect the political elite, bringing forth a new, young elite, more financially well-established, professionalized, qualified in relation to the needs and requests of the

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period which would lead to a conflict, smoldering at the beginning and then open. From it the new post-communist elite would be formed, which would make the translation towards the democratic society.

 The newly constituted political elite in many situations, as was the case of USSR, would reach the leadership of the communist regime, or, as was the case in Poland, Romania, would lay at the rule of the new society, or in the second rows of power, being linked mostly by economic aspects and less by political and ideological ones, it would launch a strong pressure for the reformation of communism, process ending with the fall of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe.

Through the functions they held within the communist regime, the members of the nomenclature were the only ones capable to know the reality of the communist economy, they disposed of the experience of governing it, they had a strong relations system both home and abroad, and many of them reached the possession of important actives and capital, allowing them to develop the new economic and political activity. From within the younger nomenclature one would recruit an important part from the future post- communist elite. It benefited mostly and was mostly aware of the internal changes appeared after 1990.

As a consequence, the reform, reproduction, circulation and translation of elites from within the communist regime can be fully incorporated, as the social and political historical realities have shown, in the general theory of political elites.

1 Vilfredo Pareto, Les systems socialistes, 1902, 1903, course held at the University of Lausanne, 2 vol. apud Jacques Coenen-Huther, Sociologia elitelor, Editura Polirom, 2007, p. 17.

2 Geraint Porry, Political Elites, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1969, p. 45.

3 Max Weber, Politica o vocație și o profesie, Editura Arina, 1992, București, p. 8.

4 Apud J. Coenen-Huther, op. cit., p. 19.

5 Gaetano Mosca, Sulla teorica dei governi e sul governo parlamentare, Studii istorice e sociali, Lascher, Torino, 1884, apud J. Coenen-Huther, op.cit., p. 24.

6 Apud op.cit., pp. 42-44.

7 Robert Michels, Sociologia partidului politic, Bologna, 1966, p. 55.

8 Ibidem, p. 33.

9 Ibidem, pp. 300-301.

10 Silviu Șomîcu, Radiografia puterii. Elitele politice din România in anii 1945-1989, Asociația de Studii Sociale, Craiova, 2003, p. 17.

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ORIGINAL PAPER

Patricia GONZALEZ ALDEA

The Identity of Ceaușescu’s Communist Regime and its Image in the West

Patricia GONZÁLEZ ALDEA, Ph. D.

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, UC3M Email: [email protected]

Abstract: This study presents the identity of Ceaușescu’s Communist Regime and its Image in the West. Furthermore, the author argues that after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the most repeated words by the former communist countries were not ‘European Union integration’, but ‘European Union reunification’. In this context, it is important to note that after the revolution, Romania faced numerous difficulties on its way to democracy.

Key words: communist regime, Cold War, Ceauşescu, Romania, Europe.

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1. The bloc’s identity during the Cold War

In the mid-1990’s, the Spanish diplomat Jorge Fuentes, said ‘in Europe, the West prevails over the East and the North over the South without any reason. Europe was built by all of us, and indeed I would venture to say that certain Southern and Eastern countries have been more European than some of us’ (Fuentes 1997, 41). But decades of Cold War and European division between the two blocs fostered the West’s ignorance and lack of interest regarding the East. That’s why the Western perception about the reality of Eastern countries has so often been wrong.

During the 1950s, a European identity was created within a supranational organization. It was the beginning of the European Community, the result of the sum of the identities of the six Western countries that freely joined. Opposing this Western European identity, the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe inevitably led to the parallel creation of its own bloc identity.

The Soviet Union tried not only to blot out the national identities of its satellite states through the ‘Russification’ of the population and the destruction of their cultural identities, but it also aimed to destroy Europe’s deepest roots, the Christian ones, by persecuting Catholicism and systematically destroying its artistic and cultural heritage.

In the international context of the two blocs, from the mid-1970s Romania forged its own specific identity, separate from the Soviet bloc. Early on, this had a positive impact on the perception of the Romanian regime in the West.

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), launched in Helsinki in 1975, was the main diplomatic instrument during Cold War era. At its follow up meetings, the Western bloc gradually discovered the true nature of Ceaușescu’s regime.

At the start of the 1970s the peaceful coexistence between the two blocs made it possible to lay the groundwork for the CSCE. The key word was

‘détente’, the easing of tensions, bringing together the two blocs for the first time in one forum. The most important political representatives of 35 countries met in Helsinki. Among them were well-known heads of state like Brezhnev, Ford, Honecker, Schmidt, Moro, and Ceaușescu himself.

The problem was that in the very conception of the CSCE the bipolar system persisted. As Vincent points out, there were two ways of understanding the meaning of ‘détente’: ‘to the West it was supposed to be a new style of International relations, as a result of the easing of ideological tensions between the two blocs, and a new focus on human rights, in addition to trade and security issues. To the East ‘détente’ meant an easing of tensions, but between rulers, not between societies. In fact, the priority of security over human rights could be an excuse for not recognizing human rights as an aim of foreign policy’

(Vincent 1986, 68).

In this connection Romania, in stark contrast to the progress in political and human rights fostered by the CSCE summits, systematically clamped down on liberties. Hiding behind the principle of non-interference in its internal

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affairs, Romania came down especially hard on freedom of information, freedom of expression and religious liberty.

The regression of the Romanian regime was parallel to the CSCE meetings' achievements in other Eastern countries. Nevertheless, the condemnation and political criticism from the West, particularly during the 1980s, together with the role of the dissidents' moral revolution, ultimately led to the end of the communist regime in 1989 (González Aldea 2008, 295-300).

After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the most repeated words by these countries were not ‘European Union integration’, but ‘European Union reunification’. They had always considered themselves to be in Europe, albeit under another identity. It was not therefore a new European enlargement, but a return to the union after decades of bipolar division, during which European Union values such as respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom and democracy, were systematically disregarded by Eastern countries.

The ignorance of the reality inside the Central and Eastern European countries, ‘homogenized’ by the Soviet bloc, led the Western bloc to underestimate their cultural values and to look down on them when Eastern countries asked for ‘European reunification’. As Bronislaw Geremek, historian and former Polish foreign affairs minister, pointed out on the occasion of the 2004 European enlargement: ‘the simple citation of the names of these countries means an exotic accent as if it was a list of colonized countries.

Western Europe has forgotten that Prague and Krakow, Budapest and Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest, are old European capitals’ (Geremek 2004,13).

In March 1990, the diplomatic relations with the Vatican, in tatters since 1948, were resumed by Romania. During 1991, the new Romanian Constitution, despite its limitations, meant a new starting point with regard to the promotion and respect of human rights. In 2012, twenty-two years after the end of the Ceaușescu’s regime, a new generation of young people has grown up in Romania. For them, communism is a thing of the past, and despite the difficulties of the transition period to democracy, they consider the European identity, without any division into blocs, as their natural environment.

2. The CSCE’s launch and the beginning of Romania’s regression The various proposals concerning security in Europe crystallized in a round of consultations at the end of 1972. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was launched in 1975 after three stages of meetings, and the final document signed was called ‘the Helsinki Act’.

Cooperation in human rights and the information exchange between societies of the two blocs were important commitments achieved, along with economic and military détente. The bloc’s political priorities were clearly different, and the Eastern bloc was reluctant to put ‘human détente’ into practice.

Due to its estrangement from the USSR and its degree of political openness during the first few years of Ceaușescu’s regime, Romania gained a positive image in the West. In 1967, Romania was the country that inaugurated

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the Spanish policy of liberalization towards the Eastern bloc. After some contacts in Paris, commercial and consular delegations were opened.

The positive image of Romania in the West was reinforced during the preparations for the CSCE summit because it participated outside of the three blocs that existed within the CSCE: Eastern countries, Western countries, and Non-Aligned and Neutral countries. However, as it turned out, Romania's independent stance in the CSCE was not an indictment of communist policy and did not reflect openness in Romanian policy, it was merely an attempt to use the Conference for its own benefit.

In fact, between 1971-1975, Romanian domestic policy underwent a dangerous regression, bringing to light one of the most repressive communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The economic reforms stopped, reverting to the old soviet system of compulsory production figures (‘indicaţii’ in Romanian) that had plunged Romania into economic chaos in the 1950s. After an official visit to North Korea in 1971, Ceaușescu carried out a cultural revolution emulating the Chinese-Korean model. Atheist propaganda was strengthened. The ‘Conducător’

started a process of accumulation of power. The Rural Systematization Programme, which eventually led to the destruction of entire villages, was approved in 1974. The State Security Services, the feared ‘Securitate’, were reorganized under the control of Ceaușescu himself. The 1974 Press Act signalled the beginning of regression in the sphere of information.

In short, the dictator’s cult of personality based on the communist doctrine, in the style of Stalinism and Maoism, coupled with extreme nationalism, was born. Later, this system would be called ‘Ceaușismo’. The myth of the ‘multi-competent Conducător’ (Petrescu 1998, 235) was created: he was the first miner of the country, the first farmer, the first builder of Romania, etc. This ‘illness’ was shared with his wife Elena, an almost illiterate woman who the regime made into an academic, engineer, and chemist.

According to Fisher-Galati (1991,189) ‘if the accumulation of power was ignored or not taken seriously by most Romanians and the International community it was due to Ceaușescu’s success in foreign policy and his early achievements in economic development’.

This first evidence, and the later crowning proof of Ceaușescu’s repressive policy, was clearly reflected in Romania's participation in the CSCE and its follow-up meetings.

After the Helsinki Summit (1975), in spite of the Romanian foreign affairs minister’s statement in 1973 during the preparatory stages of the CSCE summit in support of the continuity of the Conference, Romania opposed this measure fearing every new meeting might become a chance to examine its compliance with the CSCE human rights commitments.

Nicolae Ceaușescu in his long and propagandistic statement in the CSCE closing ceremony insisted on the principles of sovereignty, national independence, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and the need for disarmament to achieve peace and security, but any mention of principles related to the respect and promotion of human rights was strictly

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avoided. Particularly, he obviates principle 7 of the famous Helsinki Decalogue concerning respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief. The novelty of this principle 7, compared to a similar principle in the United Nations Charter, is that countries agree to promote and foster not only ‘respect’ for human rights, but also ‘the real practice’ of these rights. In this sense, people’s rights do not emanate from the State’s recognition.

The heart of the disagreement on humanitarian questions that divided the two blocs was the different concept of human rights. From the socialist perspective, they are not inherent to human beings by virtue of their being human, as the capitalist view states. Rather, human rights are provided by the State according to the socio-economic structure developed. While the East referred to collective rights, granted and recognized to the individual by his own State, the West referred to individual rights.

The humanitarian issue was included in the Helsinki Final Act, despite the reticence among the Eastern countries. In Heraclide’s opinion (1993, 9) ‘it was considered by the West, above all by the nine members of the European Community, as the field which could seriously change the Eastern political systems and gradually lead to their transformation’.

The West, which was not initially in favour of the Conference’s continuity, after the Act was signed decided to subordinate the question of continuity to progress in the human contacts area and in the humanitarian matters in general, as a way to pressure the East to make improvements.

Consensus as a decision-making formula often slowed talks down and led to stagnation on certain issues. The possibility of adding ‘reservations’ to the documents approved within the CSCE worked more as a threat, and only on very few occasions was it equivalent to a veto. But Romania, particularly during the 1980s, used the possibility of making reservations on several occasions in order to avoid any progress on humanitarian issues.

The most important period began precisely with post-conference discussions, when, as the diplomat Javier Rupérez underlines (1975, 210), ‘the forum ceases to be a gauge of room temperature and can become an influence and shaper of reality’.

The fact that the Act had no legal validity since it was not an international treaty and that its authority was only moral as a political agreement did not undermine it. It was the most that could be achieved in that era of division between blocs.

The emergence in the East of active groups in defence of human rights that began monitoring compliance with the CSCE humanitarian principles came on the heels of economic and military progress.

3. The real identity of the Romanian communist regime

The first follow-up CSCE summit was held in Belgrade in 1977 in a less favourable international context. The relations between the blocs again went through tense times, paradoxically turning the CSCE, which was launched precisely as a forum for détente, into the focus of their disputes.

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At the Belgrade meeting, the Helsinki monitoring groups reported various episodes of disregard for the CSCE human rights commitments. The Moscow group was lead by Yuri Orlov, the Czech group was led by Vaclav Havel, who launched the Charter 77 movement, and the Romanian group was led by Paul Goma, whose ‘Letter to Romanians’ supported Charter 77. Paul Goma was arrested and released after one month thanks to the international interest in his case. The Spanish newspaper ‘El País’ (Rouco 1978) reported about the Goma case. Nevertheless, he was forced to leave Romania before the end of 1977 due to the internal pressure from the Romanian government.

From exile, Paul Goma wrote articles condemning the humanitarian situation in Romania: ‘Although the Letter to the Belgrade Conference only collected 200 signatures, Romanians have shaken off the fear, the animal fear implanted in their souls during 30 years of terror, they have finally defeated the silence, the complicity (between victim and hangman). Since the spring of 1977, Romanians have begun to speak, to complain with a loud voice, to protest and to claim their human Rights. And they have begun to speak because they have finally confirmed that the West believes them, amplifies the shouts of pain and indignation (anger), and sometimes calls the Bucharest regime to account’

(Goma 1999, 32).

In Romania's case, despite the presence of well-known figures such as Doina Cornea or Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa, there was no real dissident movement to speak of, partly because the intelligentsia, the grass-roots of most dissident movements in Eastern countries, was repressed and persecuted during the first few decades of communism. Intellectuals like Ionescu, Cioran, Vintila Horia, and others were driven into exile. Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa was imprisoned from 1948 to 1964, spending three years in the terrible Pitesti prison. He began writing a diary of this awful experience in 1977, and decided to become priest. His defence of human liberty took him back to prison in 1979, and the diary was seized by the Securitate. Father Calciu-Dumitreasa was set free in 1984, but he was 'invited' to leave Romania.

In 1977, exiled Romanians founded the League for the Defence of Human Rights in Romania, based in Paris. It belonged to the International Helsinki Federation, which comprised the various national Helsinki Watch Groups, since 1982.

Nevertheless, the monitoring work of the Helsinki groups and civil movements to promote compliance with the CSCE commitments served to unmask the Romanian regime, and to reveal its true face.

Related to the Romanian internal situation, a miner’s strike in the Jiu Valley broke out shortly before the start of the Belgrade summit. It was considered the first serious warning to the dictator about the growing dissatisfaction of the population. After the miners' repression, a free trade union was created in Romania in 1979 in order to fight for workers' rights.

Romanian cultural life emulated the Chinese-Korean model with festivals like ‘Cîntarea României’, first held in October 1976. As Francisco Veiga points out, ‘it was a kind of nationwide folk Olympics with a clear socio-political

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purpose, namely social homogenization and intellectual contempt by praising the popular genius’ (Veiga 1994, 109).

The youngest Romanians were forced to participate in the event. Dragos Petrescu (1998, 239) explained how the festival closing ceremony took place:

‘under the light of artificial spotlights, poems dedicated to the General Secretary of the Party were recited. The grotesque show closing the first edition unfortunately symbolized a real image of the Romania of that time’.

The atheist doctrine was strengthened, the main religious feasts were not recognized, and the systematic destruction of religious heritage began. In response, the Romanian-Christian Committee for protecting freedom of thought and freedom of religion, launched by Pavel Nicolescu and Dimitrie Ianculovici 1978, monitored the CSCE commitments in this connection.

The Romanian Orthodox Church was characterized by its collaboration with the established power. According to Lecomte (1992, 291) ‘the harm of communism in Romania would have been smaller if the Romanian Orthodox Church had not been the most committed to the communist power of the entire socialist bloc’. The bonds between the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Securitate reached even beyond the country's borders. The Church sent its

‘priests’ to the countries where exiled Romanians lived, allegedly to carry out pastoral care, but the truth was the priests were usually Securitate members responsible for keeping tabs on everything the exiles did.

The Romanian Orthodox Church minister Nicolae Stoicescu, when interviewed by Laignel-Lavastine (1990, 38), tried to justify the role of the Orthodox Church, stating that ‘it has adapted to the country's new situation; it has renounced certain activities, but in doing so it has saved itself. In fact, thanks to this policy the Orthodox Church kept its 122 monasteries, 2 theological schools, and an acceptable number of seminarians.

Amnesty International (1978) denounced the persecution of neo- Protestants and Baptists during the 1970s. Among the prisoners of conscience the organization highlighted the case of Ghejan Titu, persecuted for teaching religion at school; or the Adventist Ion Mocuta, imprisoned several times accused of propaganda against the State, in fact for publicly denouncing the treatment of neo-Protestants in Romania, and the lack of religious freedom, on foreign radio stations. Dumitru Blidaru was another example, charged with

‘parasitic living' under the infamous Decree 153/1970, as well as with illegal religious activities. He was locked away in a psychiatric hospital.

Amnesty International published a report titled ‘Allegations of psychiatric abuses and maltreatment in the Socialist Republic of Romania’ at the end of the 1970s, expressing concern about the growing practice of subjecting people exercising their freedom of speech and freedom of conscience to psychiatric treatment.

Freedom of press deteriorated sharply, after the abolition in 1977 the censorship body, (‘Direcţia presei’), making way for something even worse:

self-censorship. Communist states continued to jam the reception of messages broadcast by foreign radio stations like RFE (Radio Free Europe). RFE was

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funded by the US Department of State, and broadcast from Munich in 21 languages, Romanian included. At times it was able to broadcast up to 12 hours per day.

Vasile Paraschiv, one of the first active defenders of human rights and trade union liberties in Romania, was confined to a psychiatric facility in 1976 for having contacted Radio Free Europe.

In Charles Gati's view, the role played by foreign radio stations in Eastern Europe was crucial:

'More important than what West did, was what it was, prosperous and free. The sharp contrast between East and West was a powerful message to all the eastern Europeans. This message reached them due to the increasing contacts with Western Europeans through Western radio stations’ (Gati 1990, 188).

The ‘Conducător’, contrary to the internal repression, kept on building his external image as a champion of peace and disarmament (Ceaușescu 1981, 92), although he was actually one of the leading arms exporters to Third World countries.

An official visit by Ceaușescu to Spain to meet King Juan Carlos was planned in 1977, but was later cancelled due to the earthquake in Bucharest.

Ceaușescu took advantage of this moment to announce that the city would be rebuilt based on the communist architectural concept. According to Mariana Celac, the case of the ‘Casa Poporului’ signalled 'a degradation of the totalitarian discourse in architecture. The House is unlike other European experiences of its kind, and models must be sought elsewhere: Marcos Stroessner, Somoza, Kin Il Sung, Gadafi, Bokasa’ (Celac 1998: 302).

Ceaușescu’s visit to Spain finally came about in May 1979, when he became the first Eastern European Head of State to visit Spain officially. Three bilateral agreements were signed relating to commercial issues, international freight transport and scientific cooperation. There was no mention of the human rights situation in Romania. In Madrid, Ceaușescu was given the ‘Key to the City’. The West bestowed the dictator with various other honours, like the

‘Legion of Honour’ in France, and similar honours in Great Britain, Italy, and Greece.

New proposals were launched in the Belgrade Summit, but they were not fruitful because the stances of the two blocs were very distant. The Eastern Bloc considered the denunciation of human rights violations as interference in their internal affairs. The outcome of the first CSCE follow-up meeting was a brief document, with little new content, merely reasserting the Helsinki Final Act.

4. The 1980s: the Western Bloc’s condemnations of Romania

The second CSCE follow-up meeting took place in Madrid in 1980. This phase of the process was set to last three years, in order to avoid repeating the poor outcomes achieved at the previous meeting in Belgrade.

The Romanian regime's regression gathered pace during the 1980s. The beginning of the destruction of the historic centre of Bucharest, to be replaced

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by a new civil centre, involved the demolition of churches and the removal of thousands of families. The restrictions implemented to tackle payment of its foreign debt transformed Romania into one of the poorest countries of the continent by the end of the 1980s.

Radio Free Europe intensified its efforts and broadcasts to the East, and Romanian dissident voices like Doina Cornea often used this radio station to channel their condemnations of the human rights situation in Romania. This made the radio station an objective for Securitate surveillance.

Nevertheless, Doina Cornea admits it was a misunderstanding that made her a household name through RFE, turning her into persecuted figure under permanent surveillance. In 1982, Cornea used RFE to invite other professors to share certain reading materials with their students. At the time, nobody signed letters to the radio station, but she did, wanting them to know the letter was authentic. RFE’s editors thought it was a pen name and they read it on air. Accordingly, she claimed her participation in the active dissident movement ‘all began with an unconscious act. It was by chance that I was forced to accept this role. I was actually happy about the misunderstanding, otherwise I would not have had the courage to do it' (Combes 1990, 71-72).

Soon afterwards, she was dismissed from the University, and she stepped up her efforts to denounce the humanitarian situation in Romania.

George R. Urban (1998, 302), the former RFE executive director between the end of 1970s and the 1980s, highlights the work of three editors of the Romanian service: Noel Bernard, Vladimir Georgescu and Mihai Cismarescu.

The latter died suddenly in 1983 after only a year in the post. His colleague Bernard also deceased in December 1983, from cancer. Georgescu himself died in 1988.

The Madrid final document urged states to examine religious communities' applications to practice their religion in Romania. Nevertheless, The Union of Young Baptists, which had been outlawed, in 1983 asked the Romanian Government to be reinstated and the response was a six-month prison sentence for the applicants. The Romanian Greek-Catholic Church called on the Madrid CSCE meeting to demand its rehabilitation, to no avail.

The Madrid document recognized new commitments such as respect for freedom of association, to prevent events like the repression of the trade union Solidarity in Poland. In the humanitarian sphere, it stipulated a period of six month for family reunification. As for freedom of press, the document did not outline terms, but said journalists' visa applications must be speeded up.

Three meetings of experts on humanitarian issues were convened in Madrid. Romania was the target of criticism during the human rights meeting in Ottawa (1985) due to the misuse of psychiatric hospital treatments for political purposes. Since 1948, the Romanian Law of Cults committed to psychiatric institutions members of religions who illegally organized prayer meetings. At the end of the 1970s, Amnesty International had already expressed its concern about this misuse of psychiatric treatment to people exercising their freedoms of expression and conscience.

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