Decembre 1989: premisses du debat sur le passe recent en Roumanie

Abstract

In Romania, the relationship with the communist past is strongly linked with two disappearances: that of the former dictator and that of the former unique party. Interestingly, the set-up of these disappearances is quite different. One is public and radical, while the other is silent and problematic, as if the striking clarity of the first puts into the shade the resorts and history of the second. After any radical political change, there is inevitably a form of "recollection of memories" (Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, 1989), a process through which the past is reevaluated in the light of values privileged by the new political regime. One of the questions to be answered is how do the first post-communist leaders confront Romania's tragic past? This paper analyzes the premisses of the political debate on communism in the discourse of CFSN (Council of the National Salvation Front) and FSN (National Salvation Front). The paper also tries to expose the intimate mechanisms through which FSN took over the heritage of PCR (Romanian Communist Party), making use of a discourse that promises change, only to limit it afterwards.