Writing History in a Propaganda Institute: Political Power and Network Dynamics in Communist Romania by Francesco Zavatti (review)

Abstract

SEER, 95, 4, OCTOBER 2017 788 Zavatti, Francesco. Writing History in a Propaganda Institute: Political Power and Network Dynamics in Communist Romania. Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations 119, Södertörn University, Stockholm, 2016. 487 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. SEK 243.00. Thehistoryoftherelationshipbetweenpoliticalpowerandthewritingofhistory under the East European Communist regimes is a subject that has received little attention from scholars. Under the influence of the organizational model of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the satellite regimes created institutions that resembled the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the CPSU (IML), created in the early 1920s. Between 1946 and 1951, each Communist Party established such a body whose tasks involved the ordering and securing of the Party archive, translating and publishing Soviet ideological manuals and publishing the official history of the Communist Party. Francesco Zavatti has chosen to examine the Romanian example, the Party History Institute of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers’ Party (ISISP). The result is an admirable work of scholarship, based on an investigation of an impressive range of archival sources, memoir literature and interviews with Romanian historians. The reasons for his choice are twofold: first, the separate political path pursued by Romania under Gheorghiu-Dej in the late 1950s and continued by Nicolae Ceaușescu and second, the quest for legitimacy pursued by the regime. Under both Romanian leaders it can be argued that national ideology trumped Communist ideology. The degree to which Ceaușescu succeeded in mobilizing support for his regime from intellectuals, and the reasons for that success, have been stimulatingly analysed by Katherine Verdery in her profoundly original study of identity and cultural politics under the Romanian dictator (National Ideology under Socialism, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1991). Broadly speaking, Ceaușescu achieved that success by using the ‘nation’ as his constant point of reference in defining his policies. The appeal of such a definition drew its vigour from the fact that national identity had been central to Romanian culture and politics, long before the imposition of Communist rule in Romania, as Zavatti points out (pp. 46– 52). Ceaușescu’s promotion of it enabled him to project himself as the latest in a line of Romanian heroes who were seen as defenders of the Romanian nation. At the same time Ceaușescu’s insistence on the ‘nation’ struck a powerful chord of sympathy among groups of intellectuals who eagerly exploited the discourse on the ‘nation’ for their own advantage. One group of intellectuals who were central to the promotion of the idea of the ‘nation’ were the historians. The role which Romanian historians were called upon to play was that of legitimizing the nation’s claim to its homeland. Thus the opening questions of Zavatti’s dissertation are, ‘How did the Institute handle the dilemma of writing the history of the RCP and of Romania between REVIEWS 789 a Stalinist canon and a national ideology canon?’, ‘How did the Institute manoeuvre to achieve legitimacy by history-writing?’ and ‘What tensions were generated between the Party-imposed canon and the established professional standards when the Institute historians tried to assume cultural authority?’. In providing answers Zavatti discusses the complex dynamics of ISISP using, on the one hand, the Institute’s archive, and on the other, interviews with the Institute’s historians and those attached to other Bucharest-based institutions. Zavatti’s complementary approach is a salutary reminder of the wisdom of a friendly warning offered to this reviewer by Sir William Deakin, Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford, that ‘If you rely solely on the documents you are bound to get it wrong’. To the tensions generated by the ISISP’s claim to primacy among Romanian historical institutions, exemplified by Zavatti, may be added the manipulation to absurd proportions of the indigenous Dacians’ role in the ethnogenesis of the Romanians by Nicolae Copoiu, a researcher at the ISISP. In an article published in the magazine, Cântarea României (Song to Romania), in 1986. Copoiu claimed that the Dacian language was a Latin tongue and that it was ‘a mistake to accept the concept of the Romanization of Dacia’ which ‘would mean that the Dacians disappeared from history...