Narrating Communist Repression in and Outside the Courtroom: The Case of Former Prison Commander Alexandru Vișinescu and its Resonance with (Societally) Available ‘Narrative Worlds’

Abstract

In 2016, Alexandru Vișinescu was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his actions as a prison commander five decades earlier. This article explores the epistemic function of this “landmark case” by contrasting the judicial narrative with the narratives of the participants in the trial, i.e., the civil parties, and spectators, i.e., the university students representing the younger generation. The accounts of the survivors’ families, while showing great similarities with the judicial account, considerably broaden the setting and locus of responsibility and place Vișinescu's story in the larger context of communist repression. University students, by contrast, have very limited knowledge of the adjudicated events, reflecting their de-contextualised understanding of the past. This understanding is an expression of what I call the available narrative world, including publicly accessible narratives and discourses, but also subjective stories from the private sphere. In the Romanian context, characterised by perpetuated silences about the communist past, the narrative world available to university students is restricted and offers little resonance for the judicial narrative, making its integration into existing knowledge structures difficult. Consequently, I argue that the reception and acceptance of judicial narratives varies according to their resonance with societally available narrative worlds.