The autobiographical archive in post-communist Romania: “True” heroes and collective victimization

Abstract

Considering the emerging field of anti-totalitarian collective memory of communism, this article explores the interplay between the autobiographical archives and the public discourse on memory. It questions the appeal for establishing the “true” history of communism as it is reflected at the autobiographical archive level. Based on Elisabeta Rizea’s relevant case study and using a comprehensive approach addressing the discourse on memory in Romania, the grounding elements of the autobiographical archive are analyzed. Its afterlife is discussed in terms of its reception and through user-generated content specific to online communication platforms. The article argues that while the entanglements between the autobiographical archive and the discourse on memory of the Romanian communist past demonstrate a prevalence of the victimization and heroism narratives, the online engagement indicates both a continuity with these narratives and a (re)working of autobiographical archive in the register of truthfulness and authenticity.

Memorability of Romanian dissidence: Ordinary people, secret files and artistic remediations

“…The attention given to the early communist decades corresponds to the narrative of victimisation that is part of anti-communist currents in East Central Europe (Behr et al, 2020) and that has dominated the discourse on the Romanian communist past for a long period of time. (Mitroiu and Gradinaru, 2024). In this part, we review the main forms of dissenting act, indicating different agents of memory which mediate the understanding of the past and create memorability.…”

“…This includes the romanticising of some social movements of dissent and of particular public figures and the silence surrounding others (Ciobanu, 2020; Petrescu and Petrescu, 2007). The post-communist memory landscape in Romania experienced subtle changes from one decade to another, and its dynamics slowly moved from the dominant anti-communism expressed in various institutional, material, mediatic and symbolic forms to more polyphonic and critical forms of remembrance and memorialisation – including everyday life experiences and the memory of the material culture, a generational approach, as well as reflecting over the political (mis)uses of the memory of communism and articulating transnational movements, such as memory decolonisation (Mironescu, 2022; Mitroiu and Gradinaru, 2024; Pohrib, 2019). In our article, we demonstrate that recent memorialisations in film and theatre are exemplary of this turn.…”