Communism in Post-communist Romania: An Ambivalent Legacy

After Nicolae Ceaușescu’s execution on December 25, 1989, Romania faced an important issue to deal with: What was to be done with the 44 years of a quasi-totalitarian system, based on continuous political violence?! How should Romanians relate to it? What was to be remembered and what was to be forgotten? How it should be passed on to the next generations, those who were born before, around or after the fall of the regime? The answer to these questions has varied over the 35 years since the fall of the communist regime in Romania. Numerous factors contributed to the way in which Romanians related to their communist past, how it was represented in the public space, how it was and is passed on. The actors involved have also changed and the official public memory has known many avatars. In the subsequent pages, I propose an analysis of all these aspects, resulting from my research of the last 21 years on the memory of Communism.