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BIBLIOGRAPHY
| Title | Revolutionary breakthroughs and national development: the case of Romania,1944-1965 |
| Author | Kenneth Jowitt |
| Publisher | Berkeley: University of California Press |
| Annotation | The book analyzes the first two decades of communism in Romania with its two phases: one of breakthrough and the beginning of the inclusionary policies of the regime. The first is the process by which the Romanian Workers’ Party (the earlier name of the RCP) pursued the political penetration of the state structures and of society alongside with the redefinition of the national community. This initial stage is dominated by “coercive-utilitarian” attitudes of the comunist leadership that didn’t rely on developing legitimacy-based relationships with the society. It rather pursued the aim of “breaking the Chinese wall” (Gheorghiu Dej) formed by the pre-communist societal structures – the irreversible departure from the pre-communist political community. The completion of the first phase produced an increased capacity to adapt of the RWP to domestic conditions. Starting with 1955 VIIth RWP Congress, the regime sought an interpretation of Marxism-Leninism to Romanian conditions – a “domesticist position” of the regime centered on the goal of emulating the Soviet Union. This competitive stand of the communist leadership meant increased bargaining and persuasion techniques (rather than coercion or outright terror) both at a domestic and international level. The direction culminated into Ceauşecu’s “synthetic” rule in which “the nation became the major referent”. The breakthrough process was followed and led (because of its specificities) to a discursive and political “responsabilization of the party toward the nation”. Jowitt identifies in his book the formation of systemic prerequisites for the initiation of long-term process of hybridization of nationalism and communism in Romania. |
| Author of Annotation | Bogdan Cristian Iacob |