CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Iacob , Bogdan Cristian |
|---|---|
| Title | Stalinism, Historians, and the Nation. History-Production under Communism in Romania (1955-1966) |
| Summary | The present dissertation deals with the writing of history and its role within the system of planned science under communism in Romania. It analyzes the functions and dynamics of the historical front in the regime’s politics of knowledge and identity. By means of inquiry on the relationship between personnel, institutions, and policies I study the evolution of the various themes and topics that appeared within the historians’ epistemic community and their relationship with the political discourse of the Romanian communist party. I map out the development and features of the gradual hybridization between the historiographical constructions of the Nation and the party’s self-definitions and narratives about Romania and its society past, present, and future. I argue that, between 1955 and 1966, one can identify a wide process of adaptation, organization, control, and synthesis in the politics of science and of history with tremendous, cumulative effects on the political discourse of the communist party. The culmination of these phenomena were the years 1964 and 1965, when the party‘s political discourse will converge with the historians’ own narratives on the subject of collective identity. The present work is an attempt to overcome the binary model of historians versus the party. It does this by taking into account the ecosystem of history-production in Romania, with its specific traditions, ideological conditionings, and strategic positions within a communist polity that constantly avoided reform and persevered in constructing Stalinist civilization. I also pursue a comparative approach trying to see how the Soviet model of planned science and cultural transformation transferred in the Romanian context and the extent to which some of the dynamics of the local historical front were part of synchronic developments across Eastern Europe. I conclude that, starting with 1955, the master narrative of Romanian historiography would mature based on the growing symbolic progression of ancestors - kin (neam) - people – nation – socialist nation. This process reached its climax into the principle of a unitary, homogeneous, demotic nation that continuously evolved on the road to progress in time. Ultimately, history-production became fundamentally, if not exclusively, preoccupied with reflecting the rebirth of the national being across history with the construction of socialism as final stage. This role was far from unfamiliar for Romanian historians. In pre-communist times, their craft had more often than not taken the form of a national and political discipline (if not science). By 1966, historians had officially regained their pre-1945 function of apostles of the Nation. The evolution and resulting features of history-production from 1955 to 1966 were the outcome of the gradual alignment of scientific personnel and institutions, of scholarship and political discourse, and, ultimately, of ideology along the lines of a re-imagination of the Romanians as a national community under Stalinism. The present dissertation is a tale of how historians fully integrated themselves, acquiring a central role, in the power grid of national Stalinism – the alternative, illiberal modernity advanced by the communist party in Romania. |
| Supervisor | Trencsenyi Balazs |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/hphgab02.pdf |
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