Power and Ridicule – Elena CeauȘescu in Communist Humour (original) (raw)
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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CEAUȘESCU JOKES
Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory 5.1 (2019), 2019
Political humour, as an indispensable part of popular culture, played a complex role under communism in Romania. It was a catalyst of the general discontent towards the catastrophic effects of Ceaușescu's megalomaniac dictatorship, a forbidden, dangerous means of expressing opposition. This dynamic part of folklore captured and exposed essential aspects of life in communism, from the permanent fear of the Securitate to the ever-growing ridicule of the presidential couple and their acolytes. Unforgiving jokes targeting the Ceaușescus, now almost forgotten, rendered the grotesque portraits of the abusive, illiterate leaders of a totalitarian regime, radically contrasting with the official discourse that glorified them as heroes of socialism and parents of the nation. Drawing from a rich body of theoretical approaches to political humour and, particularly, political folklore, I intend to critically reread Romanian political humour of the communist era regarding Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu in order to question its role in transforming the public perception of autocratic power. Authors such as Egon Larsen, Dana Maria Nicolescu Grasso, Christie Davies and Eliott Oring, among others, have closely explored the complex territory of this limited yet significant cultural realm. I also intend to explore its specific traits as a potentially particular genre and re-evaluate some divergent theoretical stances that view gallows humour in a dictatorial regime either as a concrete protest or as a means of rerouting and defusing resentment. The creative richness of this rather dominant part of Romanian political humour of the 70s and 80s could reveal a unique territory in which caricature is nurtured by everyday despair.
he Proceedings of the International Conference Globalization, Intercultural Dialogue and National Identity.he Shades of globalisation. Identity and dialogue in an intercultural world / ed.: Iulian Boldea - Tîrgu-Mureș : Arhipelag XXI Press, 2021 ISBN: 978-606-93691-3-5, 2021
The downfall of the communist regime in Romania highlighted many dysfunctional situations perpetuated for decades in propaganda speeches. An example in this sense is the image of the dictator's wife, Elena Ceauşescu. The cult of the leader's personality was completed, as historians have acknowledged, by his wife, a fact not very common in the case of dictators. The situation along these lines allowed Elena to become an important link in the communist regime led by her husband. The adulation of the creative genius and the homage of all the acts of self-sacrifice for people's wellbeing ends with the arrest of the two spouses, and the following stories show us the portrait of a woman totally opposite to the official adulated image. The current study focuses on this duality: the official image versus the former entourage's image or memories, limiting ourselves to the written press and to the interviews or testimonies conducted and published after 1989 with Ceauşescu family close friends, relatives or administration members.
Elena Ceauşescu's Personality Cult and Romanian Television
Elena Ceauşescu, spouse of the Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu, generated in the 1980s a gigantic homage industry, as she was the object of a personality cult as strong as that of her husband' s. This paper briefly outlines the origin and elements of Nicolae Ceauşescu' s personality cult, to focus then on Elena Ceauşescu' s cult: how at first it was merged with the cult of her husband, her being a mere companion of the head of state, and then grew to the point of paralleling that of Nicolae Ceauşescu during the last years of communist rule in Romania. The second part focuses on the evolution of Roma-nian state television and its crucial role in the diffusion of her personality cult, showing how this state institution became completely subordinated to the presidential couple in the 1980s, and pointing to a paradox of the period: the shorter Romanian television' s daily broadcasting time, the larger the amount of programming on Ceauşescu. Finally, the paper shows how January was infused with anniversary dates meant to consolidate the personality cult of the presidential couple and to reinvent communist traditions.
Ceaușescu’s National-Communist Populist Turn of the 1970s: A Failed Charisma?
Connexe : les espaces postcommunistes en question(s)
Ceaușescu’s name is linked to his Promethean attempt to secure Romania’s independence from the Soviet tutelary power and to build a modern industrial state out of the agricultural and industrial Romania modernised during the 1950s following the Stalinist model. This international and social challenge was implemented through the mobilisation of nationalist ideology and the strengthening of the relation between the leader and his people. To attract the masses, Ceaușescu’s charisma did not refer to any objective and inner quality of the leader but to his capacity to embody and manipulate the aspirations of large part of society thanks to a vast housing and industrialization program and a call to nationalism. Even if this populist policy eventually failed in 1989, it consolidated the regime for almost 30 years.
Women had an important role in any society. During Ceausescu's leadership the social status and identity of women were rebuilt by the political discourse of the nationalist leaders of Romania when traditionalist to serve political interests of the moment, such as strengthening political legitimization of power and create a new workforce. This paper aims to outline the image of women in the communist period when her role as mother and housewife carrying traditions that underwent a change, she became a builder of communist society.
Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia, 2016
The article endeavors to show that "resistance through culture" in totalitarian regimes is part of a social and political dynamic that is complicated and paradoxical. I claim that a discursive analysis of power relationships and of the rapport between the private and official idioms in the political context of communist totalitarian societies can evince the daunting complexity of some forms of resistance-through-culture discourse. My main argument is that, with the appropriate critical instruments, cultural discourse analysis can broach the intricacies and paradoxes of power relationships in oppressive environments and can ground a more accurate and unprejudiced moral evaluation of resistance through culture as a phenomenon typical of totalitarian cultural politics.
Ceausescu on the magnifying glass
When we have to decide in our studies, which arguments underline and which not, there are lots of things to consider. In this academic paper i decided to label the personality and the facts regarding a man who's behavior has really influenced the life of thousands and thousands of Romanians , and of a person who's thoughts have been really misunderstood by the political international audience at the beginning, such as the all American political think tankers and all the west European organizations. A mistake like the one made by the Us government , when they trusted the first Fidel Castro to be a real partisan fighting for the freedom of his country and not a former law student coming from far and highly motivated to take the power after Fulgencio Batista. More or less the same is happened with Nicolae Ceausescu trusted as an enlightened post Georgju-Dej secretary, able to give to Romania an international dimension. The fact that allow us, to bring Ceausescu's Biography facts and pills from Romanian history into an economic paper, is that his dictatorship has really influenced the economy of Romania with strong differences with other former Urss block countries whom economical agenda was decided by the central planning decisions. Ceausescu, as commonly known, decided to isolate his country from the rest of Eastern Europe, to be an exception, a personal exception we may infer, because differently from the case of Jugoslavia's constitution of 19741 or the NEM in Hungary, here we face not structural changes decided by the country after years of planning or with an ideological base, but changes decided by sudden head shots made year by year by Ceausescu that has often changed his ideas and his relationships with other countries. A data could let us understand the descending parable of this man, Romania in the early 70's was the country with the biggest industrial growth of Europe 2, in the late 80's one of the poorest in the world with the highest rate of infantile death, something hard and difficult to realize..
The Proceedings of the International Conference Literature, Discourse and Multicultural Dialogue.Literature as Mediator. Intersecting Discourses and Dialogues in a Multicultural World, Tîrgu-Mureș, Mureș, 2018, eISBN: 978-606-8624-14-3, 2018
The present study aims to bring into attention the ways in which an important historical event, such as "the making of Great Romania" was celebrated during the "80 in Ceausescu"s Romania. It is known the fact that communist propaganda used each and every festive moment to support the communist ideology, and least but not last, to strengthen the leader"s personality cult. In this regard, we are going to take a look over some of the most important publications from those times: Scînteia, România Liberă, România Literară, Flacăra, Era Socialistă, Cutezătorii, Luminița, and Șoimii patriei.