Between Deprivation and Privilege: (Former) “Enemies of the People” in Communist and Postcommunist Romania

Abstract

Communism everywhere it settled aimed to create a new society and the ‘new man’ in the shortest possible time. In order to put into practice such social engineering, it was necessary that those social categories refractory to change to be annihilated. There-fore, the former politicians, the landlords, the wealthy peasants (the kulak), the bour-geois, the intellectuals, the artists were methodically and constantly repressed. Laws, institutions and people were summoned to effect change through repressive methods. The beginning of the process of building the communist society created many ‘enemies of the people’, as the communists described them, victims of the class struggle, but also of their own ideals. Belief in the ‘Arrival of the Americans’, and in the short duration of Communism led them directly to prisons, hard labor and deportation camps. Many perished, but most escaped and returned to the society that was reconfiguring itself on new bases and with new values. The fall of communism brought their recognition as ‘victims’ of the totalitarian regim’s politics. In order to acknowledge their suffering the postcommunist Romanian state offers them compensations, granted them the label of ‘anti-communist fighter’, and eventually condemned Communism as ‘illegitimate and criminal’. My paper discusses all these issues while pointing out what was at stake in organized repression during communism as well as in recognizing the suffering of the repressed in the first postcommunist decades.