National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania (Society and Culture in East-Central Europe)

Society and Culture in East-Central Europe

by Katherine Verdery

The current transformation of many Eastern European societies is impossible to understand without comprehending the intellectual struggles surrounding nationalism in the region. Anthropologist Katherine Verdery shows how the example of Romania suggests that current ethnic tensions come not from a resurrection of pre-Communist Nationalism but from the strengthening of national ideologies under Communist Party rule.

Genres: Anthropology, Romania, Politics, Academic, History

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Katherine Verdery is Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Since 1973 she has conducted field research in Romania, initially emphasizing the political economy of social inequality, ethnic relations, and nationalism. With the changes of 1989, her work shifted to problems of the transformation of socialist systems, specifically changing property relations in agriculture. From 1993 to 2000 she did fieldwork on this theme in a Transylvanian community; the resulting book, The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania, was published by Cornell University Press (2003). She then completed a large collaborative project with Gail Kligman (UCLA) and a number of Romanian scholars on the opposite process, the formation of collective and state farms in Romania during the 1950s. The resulting book, Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962, was published by Princeton University Press (2011).

Reviews

[Pavel Nedelcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

National Marxism? Possible only in Communist Romania



The cultural life in socialist Romania is full of nuances and deserves analysis from different perspectives.

The author of this book focusses, in particular, on the idea of nationalism, the national idea/essence and its development in cultural and political discourses throughout Romanian history, and especially under Ceaușescu's rule.

Why did a Party such as the Communist one in Romania need to rely on national ideology if Marxism-Leninism (already legitimating its power) was everything but national? How is this paradox to be explained among some others originated from it?

Verdery is the first scholar to study these dynamics in the West immediatly after the 1989 revolution(s) and the fall of Ceaușescu. Even if this monograph was published in 1990, I think it can still be considered one of the finest and detailed accademic essays on this topic.

[风花 · Rating 5 out of 5]

《Verdery：齐奥塞斯库新时代罗马尼亚特色社会主义思想概论》
依然是verdery的书，是作者80年代-90年代的作品，笔触明显不同于2010年之后重新发掘“社会主义遗产”的“新新左派”，甚至作者也在preface里承认，她很想这样写（保持中立），但是她在罗马尼亚齐奥塞斯库治下做田野的不愉快经历（甚至有点精神折磨）让她没办法这样写（xii-xiii）。作者在这本书的主要观点就是罗马尼亚共产党如何将意识形态的方向从马克思列宁主义导向了国家意识形态（national ideology类似于民族主义），以及知识分子如何参与了这种动态的构建，甚至即使有些知识分子自觉地反对政治对文化生产的压制，但他们依然无意识地参与了这种国家意识形态的生产。verdery笔下的知识分子大概可以分成两种，一种是“亲欧/西派”，说罗马尼亚要发展，要在国际舞台上竞争，离不开对欧洲-西方文化的学习与吸收；一种是“本土派”，说罗马尼亚要拒绝西方的评价尺度，要把“文化自信”与“文化评价的标准”牢牢把握在自己手里，不能让西方人来评价罗马尼亚人好不好。这种本土派最喜欢干的事情就是说“罗马尼亚超前论”，作者在第六章就讲了这派学者如何将罗马尼亚历史上的一场农民战争说成是“比法国大革命更早的现代历史转折点”，“我们罗马尼亚比法国还要早地进入现代文明社会”。不过这种发明也要坚持党的领导，这派学者不用叛乱来形容这场农民战争，而说成是“农民革命”，并且此农民革命如何与共产党在罗马尼亚的发展紧密联系。而这种从马克思“教条主义”向关注“民族”的意识形态转向，与齐奥塞斯库试图集权的意图是同步的，并且齐奥塞斯库有意识的主导了这场意识形态转向，而且很有意思，齐奥塞斯库文革中来中国朝鲜转了一圈，回去就开始被罗马尼亚人称为“小文革”的政治集权。
而这场“转向”不仅仅是齐奥塞斯库个人的集权意图，也离不开知识分子的参与甚至是对核心符号“nation”（nation不同于state，颇有一种民族-国家双重复合体的味道）的定义权的“斗争（争夺）”。但在本土派与亲欧派对nation这个符号的争夺之中，“没有任何地方、也没有任何人提出这样一个问题：“是否真的存在所谓的‘罗马尼亚人民’？” “尽管在具体问题上有时存在激烈分歧，但这些观念已经成为整个政治与文化生活各个层面进行互动的基础。”（P70）

而这种知识分子的相互竞争反而是让我比较意外，因为在毛时代是没有“知识分子”的，毛时代可以用红卫兵，可以有造反派，可以有单位的宣传组长，或是专职写材料的干部，但是知识分子及其争论其实是一个80年代之后才有的东西，而在罗马尼亚居然在齐奥塞斯库治下，虽然专制极为窒息，但知识分子还有一点喘息之地。

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The current transformation of many Eastern European societies is impossible to understand without comprehending the intellectual struggles surrounding nationalism in the region. This book shows how the example of Romania suggests that current ethnic tensions come not from a resurrection of pre-Communist Nationalism but from the strengthening of national ideologies under Communist Party rule. I found particularly enlightening Verdery's discussion of Romanian protochronism, or the tendency to define virtually everything as a 'Romanian first.' Having traveled extensively throughout the new Eastern Europe and having conversed with many academics, students, and laymen from these countries, I always found it fascinating how obsessed these people are with claiming primacy for their intellectuals, their artists, their history (especially their origins, often fabricated at worse and exaggerated at best0, indeed, all of their 'accomplishments. Verdery asserts, at least in Romania, this tendency flows not only from a historically and geographically frail position between competing imperialist empires (Austrian, Russian, Ottoman, mostly), but also from the tendency of cultural elites to use national pride and national 'essence' as nation-state unifiers. Even though the collapse of communism, or in Romania's case, sociology, occurred more than twenty years ago, it seems to me that the protochronist tendencies still abound in states such as Romania.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting look at how political and intellectual activity in Romania under Ceausescu came to revolve around the nation, overshadowing and eventually displacing Marxism. The book explores how this nationalism was reinforced by both the Party leadership and by conflicts among intellectuals, and the ways in which Romania’s highly centralized state socialist system shaped the strengthening of national ideology, which continued to have an impact after 1989. I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in nationalism and socialism in Eastern Europe.

[Mike Mena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keywords: hegemony, ideology, academia, socialism, ideology, nationalism, Bourdieu, Gramsci, practice