SOVIET CULTURAL COLONIALISM: CULTURE AND POLITICAL DOMINATION IN THE LATE 1940s-EARLY 1950s ROMANIA

Abstract

The paper analyses the potential of a theoretical comparison between communism and colonialism, focusing on the cultural dimension of the Stalinization process in Eastern Europe. The paper applies this theoretical perspective to late 1940s- early 1950s Romanian culture in relation with the appropriation of culture by the communist regime within the late 1940s political and ideological shift in Eastern Europe. The approach uses as a background for its argumentation a theoretical debate which started 2001 and has continued until today (Moore 2001, Kovacevic 2008), also reinterpreting on a series of theories developed during as well as at the end of the Cold War (Kulski 1959, Kolarz 1964, Horvath 1972, Katsenelinboigen 1990). The paper uses a series of conceptual tools such cultural transfer, cultural dependences, cultural identity, cultural export, which are applied for the first time to the Romanian culture.