Resettlement, intergenerational memory, place attachment, and place identity in Roșia Jiu coal mine - Gorj County, Romania

Abstract

The present study was conducted in a traditional mining area in Romania-the Rovinari Carboniferous Basin-from which in 1976 the communist authorities relocated about 800 people, two churches, and a cemetery to a new location in the village of Iași, Gorj County, in order to expand coal mining operations. Using the triangulation method, we gathered data from 139 questionnaires, 30 interviews, and ethnographic observations to highlight the ways in which the traumatic memories of the communist period are evoked today by the displaced population and perceived by the younger generation. Apart from some post-communist memories that cast the communist regime in a positive light, respondents largely condemned the regime, which, by threatening to take away their work, forced them to move to a new location. This relocation had profound implications in respondents' personal and family mentality represented first by the destruction of local cultural property or heritage and later by the appearance of trauma and respondents’ implicit attachment to the places they had lost. The history of those times is taught through the intergenerational transmission of memories at home as a place of family identity or at church as the centre of spirituality for the Romanian village.Bringing household items from the old destroyed location to the new location strengthened respondents’ postcommunist memory and helped to heal or alleviate their past trauma. However, beyond the differing political considerations expressed by those we interviewed and questioned, the complexity of post-communist memory, whichis tense and nuanced, remains relevant under deeper scrutiny.