Social Interests and Revolutionary Identity in the Romanian Revolution of December 1989

In this paper I shall discuss a meaningful aspect of the December 1989 revolution, the founding event of the post-communist Romanian democracy, as reflected in the collective memory. Particular emphasis will be placed on the social construction of ?revolutionary identity? as a newly emerging social identityin the Romanian transition. At times the debates and controversies surroundingthe title of ?revolutionary? animate the public space, generating contradictory attitudes. The segment of the population that was directly involved in the events of December 1989 can be considered a complex and heterogeneous social category. It was politically recognised as a social category when it became the object of a state policy that has been materialised into a law since December 1990; namely law no. 42/1990, initially entitled ?the Law for Honouring the Martyr-Heroes? Memory and for Awarding certain Rights to their Families, as well as to those Injured during the Revolution of December 1989?. The several amendments made to this law reflect a rather ambiguous relationship between the post-December Governments and this social category. I therefore assume that the social construction of revolutionary identity is not politically neutral; in this respect I shall stress the symbolic and material interests involved in claiming this identity, as well as the political stakes and power relations that the public acknowledgements of revolutionary identity implies. Secondly, moving beyond the generic acceptance of the term ?revolutionary?, I shall attempt to depict its internal diversity, referring to a multitude of lived experiences and shared memories that provide the content of this identity.  

Theoretical and methodological framework

The theoretical perspective of this analysis of revolutionary identity is shaped primarily by Richard Jenkins? contribution to outliningsocial identity as a strategic concept in the social sciences (Jenkins, Richard 1996): the model of dialectical internal and external definition of identity;the conceptual distinction between nominal and virtual identities; the institutionalised identities, etc.I use also Barth?s insightful concept of boundaries (Barth, Fredrik 1969), which has now become a common reference in studies of ethnicity, as well as of other social identities, demarcating the social spaces across which identities are negotiated.

The assumption that ?power and politics are central to questions of identity? and that ?social identities exist and are acquired, claimed and allocated within power relations? (Jenkins 1996:24-5), which is influenced by a Foucauldian view of power, seems to be used rather rhetorically in Jenkins? book. Nevertheless, I shall illustrate its relevance in the context of the Romanian revolutionary identity.

On the other hand, I would emphasise the central role of collective memory in shaping a social identity. A shared meaningful past is needed in order to legitimate a collective identity. In the case of a revolutionary identity, the official ascription of the category of ?revolutionary? depends ultimately on testimonies of lived experiences. The social construction of these narratives implies shared, negotiated meanings of life histories. For the social researcher it is worth scrutinizing these life stories with particular sensitivity to the implicit personal and collective mythology, as the special light in which oral histories can be seen;[2].

The present analysis is based on data collected in the course of an extensive fieldwork that is still in progress. I attempt to establish the social identity of the revolutionaries by relying on the following sources and methods: interviews with participants in the revolution from Cluj (mainly members of the ?Association for the Truth about the Revolution, Cluj?, composed of the injured and the families of the martyr-heroes); interviews with participants in the Timisoara revolution; and participant observation and interviews with those who attended the ?National Conference of the Unifying Revolutionaries from Romania?, which took place in Timisoara, on 16 December, 2002.In order to analyse the official discourse on the category of revolutionary I have made use of the text of law no. 42/1990, with its subsequent amendments and additions, published in Monitorul Oficial (The Gazette); other statements I make in this paper have their empirical basis in my monitoring of media covering the period of December 2002, which focused on the public debates on the quality of revolutionary, as well as participant observation in a couple of sessions of the trial of the revolution in Cluj. This study of the configuration of the Romanian revolutionary identity is part of a broader PhD project with the title ?The 1989 Romanian Revolution in the Collective Memory and in the Social Imaginary`, in which the theoretical and methodological approach is an interdisciplinary one, bringing together oral history, social anthropology and social psychology.

If we look at the process of revolutionary identification as a synthesis of external and internal definition (Jenkins 1996, 26-7), then we become aware of whose definition of a ?revolutionary? counts more, in which contexts, and with what consequences and how such definitions are interrelated. Thus, we can analyse the social construction of the revolutionary identity at the following levels: the official level of political discourse and Government policies (which define the quality of revolutionary and allocate material and symbolic resources); the level of the institutionalised identity (comprising all revolutionary organisations, which define membership and draw distinctions between members and non-members); the level of public opinion (which conveys stereotypes and fluctuating social representations of revolutionaries). The external definitions influence self-ascription and self-definition, and in the tension between them a social space of negotiating identities is configured.

Towards semantics of the revolutionary: the official definition

The generic term `revolutionary` is a nominal, all-embracing identity under which one can find, in the political discourse, those who took part directly (and they also claim this) in the events of December 1989 in Romania ? events that are officially as well as historically termed ?The Romanian Revolution?. As is known, in the Central and East-European landscape of the year 1989, where changes in the political system were programmatically non-violent, the Romanian revolution was remarkable for its extreme violence, both physical and psychological (through a huge media disinformation campaign). The tragic consequences of the violence in the Romanian revolution were 1107 dead and 3352 injured people, including 162 dead and 1107 injured before December 22 (the day of Ceausescu?s fall and capture) and 942 dead and 2245 injured after December 22. As long as there is confusion surrounding the events of December 1989, a lack of political will to establish the truth and a systematic avoidance of responsibility for what happened to the victims, the revolutionary identity and its public acknowledgement can be nothing but problematical. Therefore the semantics of the ?revolutionary? notion implies an ideological dimension, fairly compatible with the official – hegemonic – definition of the Romanian revolution.[3]

On the other hand, in the public eye a series of connotations that have tended to fluctuate over time have been attached to this denomination of `revolutionary`: from the ?heroic? halo attributed to the participants in the events of December 1989 (lasting up to the first democratic elections of May 1990, when the echoes of the revolution as a miracle, as the birth of a new world were still resounding), to their transformation into ?victims?; and after 1996, when the number of revolutionary certificates issued exploded, to their acquiring meaning of  ?impostors? and ?profiteers?. 

At the official level of political discourse and government policy, the category of revolutionary was established by law 42/1992, which regulates access to a series of symbolic and material resources. This law has produced more or less perverse effects. Criteria aimed at categorising those who can benefit from this law were provided in order to allocate these resources. Subsequently, these categories were slightly redefined. But it should be noted that these modifications are far from being indifferent towards political interests. Consequently an increasingly conflicting tension has been maintained, reaching critical points in 1996, 2000 and 2002.

Thus, the heading of the initial text of the law was ?The Law for Honouring the Martyr-Heroes? Memory and for Awarding certain Rights to their Families, as well as to those Injured during the Revolution of December 1989?. Obviously, the law had a symbolic character, given the title of ?martyr-heroes of the Romanian revolution?, awarded posthumously, and the triumphant title ?Fighter for the Victory of the December 1989 Romanian Revolution? (a title sounding like those in the communist historiography of revolutions) awarded to the injured persons. The initial law also had a compensatory character for the damages suffered, by providing some rights exclusively to those who had suffered a loss in the events of December 1989. A short time thereafter, in June 1991, law no. 42/1990 was slightly modified, introducing the following new categories: the title ?Fighter for the Victory of the December 1989 Romanian Revolution? was now also to be awarded to those who were imprisoned between December 16-22 for having participated in demonstrations leading to the victory of the revolution. There also appeared a category of the ?direct participant in the manifestations for the victory of the revolution, remarkable through special merits?, an honorary category that does not have any material rights as yet. A new governmental group called ?The State Deputy Secretary for the 1989 Revolution victims` problems? was then instituted. (To be noted that the term ?victims? stresses the compensatory character of the law.) This institution will represent the official entity that can ascribe the institutionalised revolutionary identity according to the definitions of the law. A finer typology reflecting a more complex representation of the December events as well as of those involved in it can also be noticed here. Thus, besides the quality of martyr-hero and that of fighter for the victory of the revolution (which implies, as I mentioned, a coherent triumphant vision of the revolution and the assumption of the revolutionaries? agency, active role), the category of ?deceased or injured in connection with the events in December 1989?, reveals, on the contrary, the involuntary, hazardous aspect, the regrettable mistakes, the confusion and incoherencies of the Romanian Revolution. Re-published with certain other modifications in 1992, law no. 42 brings forth the following new aspects: The title of ?Fighter for the Victory of the Romanian Revolution? included now the terms injured, imprisoned in the period 16-25 December and direct participants in the fights for the Revolution victory between 16-25 December 1989. Those in this latter category were granted institutionalised social identity if they could obtain recognition by the revolutionaries? organisations founded up to that date. All these categories have access to a series of important material facilities and rights.

Inevitably, once these items come to be put into practice, any declaiming of identity as a ?direct participant in the revolution? will be susceptible to abuse. The law no longer has a compensatory character, but is framed in terms of rewards, and is positively discriminating. The new political authority that arose as a consequence of the 1989 regime change actually rewarded the category of ?Fighters for the Victory of the Revolution? for their loyalty to the ?revolution cause?.

In the context of the political changes which occurred in Central and Eastern Europe in the revolutionary year of 1989, these material rewards for civic involvement (performed, of course, in an extremely risky context up to a certain moment) seem by now to have acquired an air of caducity. If the historical-juridical bases of such rewards are rather precarious, the political stakes are pretty obvious. They belong to the official vision of the nature of the Romanian revolution even if they appeal to worn-out patterns of revolutions, the Marxist-Leninist pattern in particular.[5]

Once more, this dichotomy can be read between the lines of law 42 since every version of it specifies that the rewards instituted by this law cannot be applied to those who ?fought against the revolution?. At the discursive, ideological level, the Us/Them opposition is evident. During the events of December 1989 this did have a symbolic effectiveness as it mobilized the population to defend the vital points of the capital against the ?terrorist? threat.

In reality, however, the us and them categories were very ambiguous and extremely confusing; the consensual notion of Us, intensively constructed by the media, which mobilized a great part of the population around the new ?emanated power?, in fact have concealed the existence and the confrontation of different competing groups and factions. On the other hand, the them category of enemies, who represented a danger from which the people had to defend themselves by uniting was hardly identified during and after the revolution either. The idea of fighting implies the existence of an enemy, the existence of winners and losers. But this screenplay proves its weakness in this respect as well. In the apparent logic of rewarding after the fighting ?which might find its equivalents in the war history- one side of the coin is still missing: the identification of those forces that were responsible for producing so many victims and their punishment. First of all this is about the ?terrorists? claimed by the tele-revolution after the dictators fled on 22 December. Even though the collective psychosis of the terrorists produced many more victims than Ceausescu?s repressive forces up to 22 of December, it is generally known that the subsequent investigations did not succeed in finding any genuine terrorist. All those suspected and captured in the psychotic period of the revolution were subsequently released. These unidentified entities rather represented rhetorical means, elements of scenery in a screenplay of a tragically revolutionary performance; meanwhile the actual persons who participated in the repression ordered by Ceausescu in the period of 16-22 of December 1989 and who can be clearly identified by their victims were not actually made responsible.

In the trials of the revolutions (which were initiated in Timisoara, where they came to an end in 2000, and in Cluj, where the Supreme Court sentenced a minimum punishment for the Army representatives) the general trend has been to delay matters for as long as possible to escape the law; in such a manner that those whose lives had been dramatically damaged were denied the moral right to find out the truth and justice.

To return to the effects of law 42, the climax of the conflicting tension between the categories of participants that this law referred to was reached in 1996 when an abrupt split in the social identity of the revolutionaries, discriminating between us (meaning the genuine revolutionaries) and them (meaning the impostors), was favoured. This happened in the framework of an inflationary issuing of ??revolutionary? certificates?, as a consequence of a massive awarding of such documents to those who in one way or another had managed to claim their identity as ?direct participants with special merits in the revolution?.

The means by which the revolutionary files were produced are not hard to imagine in a culture favouring nepotism like the Romanian one, which is biased toward abuses and corruption.[6] All these strategies were possible because of the weakness and the versatility of the law, the lack of objective criteria by which such a vague identity could be claimed. Consequently, the number of persons acknowledged as ?fighters in the revolution; direct participants with special merits? grew dramatically: in 2000 in Monitorul Oficial (the Gazette) 17,126 persons were enlisted with the status of ?participant with special merits?, while the number of the titles of ?martyr-heroes? was 27; the numbers of the titles of injured revolutionaries was 73 and that of the imprisoned – 108 persons [cf. Monitorul Oficial: 100 bis, 7 March, 2000]. The effect of this inflation was a suffocating sense of marginalisation by those who had had revolutionary files drawn up by the prosecutor since 1990 ? that is before the delivery of material rewards- but been overwhelmed by the newcomers added to the list in 1996. This inevitably led to discrediting the identity of the revolutionary in the public eye. What consequences has this phenomenon had upon the social identity of the revolutionary?

Claiming authenticity: the organizations of revolutionaries

The year 2002 can be considered to have been a critical moment; 13 years after the revolution there is a need to re-assert the revolutionary identity. The appropriate strategy is claimed to be the exposure of the ?impostors? through a campaign of file checking and effective civic involvement. This aim was asserted at the National Conference of ?Unifying the Revolutionaries in Romania?, held in Timisoara, on 16 December 2002. Here the leaders of this movement of the ?genuine revolutionaries?, as they called themselves, said:

?We have to get rid of the others, to retrieve the same dignity which we had then, to get it back now and to get united and to became a force having a say in public life.(?) We want to be a balancing factor, to continue our fight for the democratisation of the country and the social problems for which we stood up then.? (in December n.a)[7].

They asserted their own autonomy from the political power and the multiple identities of this union?s members:

?We are not interested in the colour of the political parties. (?) But we want to be useful to any government; (?) what we fight for is raising the quality of life of people, even by telling the truth.[8]

The re-assertion of the identity of genuine revolutionaries, which the conference intends to institutionalise, is made through self-definitions and a clear delimitation from ?the others?.

At the organisational level, markers of authenticity and distinction are provided:

?(?) There are 33 genuine associations, with signatures, with stamps, 34 having been founded according to law 42 up to 1990, when the problem of the material rights had not yet been taken into consideration. We are people who really fought in the revolutions and wanted to be together ? the others made an association for the sake of the big bone? This makes us different from the others who outnumber us, who are in far greater numbers than the genuine us. (?) This is not a question of Iliescu?s  or Nastase?s revolutionaries[10]

The dichotomy Us versus the Others is played across the boundaries of different revolutionary organizations; but it is recurrent at other levels as well. Several interviews with representatives of certain revolutionaries? organizations from Timisoara revealed that the relationship between political power and this category has constantly been perceived as asymmetrical. In terms of self-stereotypes, the revolutionaries define themselves as brave, strong-willed people, capable of becoming leaders:

?(?) one couldn?t have got out in the streets if one hadn?t been able to be a leader, to say either/or!?[11]

They believe that they are endowed with such a strong-willed character, which the new political power was aware of, continually trying to drive a wedge between them:

?(?) They are afraid of the revolutionaries; the power has kept trying to split us up for 13 years.(?) They are afraid of us, they definitely know that this is a sensitive area?? (namely Timisoara n. a.).[12]

In the case of this assertion the dichotomy them/us easily slips towards acquiring a local cultural distinction; Timisoara versus Bucharest as different cultural areas, competing with each other. As is known, the Romanian revolution was initiated in Timisoara and continued in other major cities of the country and in the capital, while revolutionary programs were also formulated here. In spite of the active role and the huge risks taken by the protesters then, in December 1989, their 13-year absence from the country?s political stage was justified by interviewees as follows:

?We were weak, politically unprepared and unwilling to make any compromise. We have waited for 13 years, not getting involved in public life; we didn?t want to be compromised? ?the children of the revolution are the first to be devoured?[14]

They judged that they were aware of the political stakes and of the strategies through which the political power had kept them under control:

?These people couldn?t be kept together and disciplined except by means of material motivation, that is under law 42. This law was an illusion for us and a reality for them, the former nomenklatura, the second generation of communists.?

?(?) They are afraid of us, there are people among us whose aim is to divide us.

If we had been united and disciplined and had had some sort of economic motivation we would certainly have been a force, a real force by now.?[15]

These discourses advocate, sometimes passionately, the (re)-legitimating of the revolutionary identity. Bridging the gap between ?then? (the mythical time of their revolutionary protests) and ?now? is meant to construct a sense of continuity of their pro-active role in the Romanian transition. Implicitly, these kinds of discourse reveal other social representations of revolution, an alternative mythical view: the unfinished revolution.

Once more, ?it is clear that identity (however inexplicit), boundary (however elusive and nebulous), and authenticity (however contested and contestable) are matters in which people invest huge value.?(Cohen 2000, 5)

Searching for Truth and Justice: aspects of the trials of the revolution

I consider that the phenomenon of the Romanian revolution can be conceived as an iceberg event, having a deep history and causing long-term effects. Referring to its violent side, it might be regarded as a traumatic event of the present past, whose deep ambiguity has generated difficult memories. I suggest, therefore, that scrutinizing it towards a comprehensive understanding involves a form of catharsis. This kind of approach belongs to the more general and sensitive issue of ?treating a difficult past?. (Ash 2002)[16] Therefore, the complex issue of the trials of the revolution, as well as the controversial issue of rewards and compensation, which we have already discussed, should be addressed in this broader context. However, the aim of this paper is more modest. I shall refer here to the trials of the revolution merely as another level at which the dichotomy us/them has been performed.

This dichotomy implies other protagonists and other types of experiences. The trials of the revolution have institutionalised the opposition between the injured and the families of the victims of the revolution, most of them by now members of certain revolutionary associations, on the one hand, and a few representatives of the repressive forces on the other (namely the representatives of the army who have been accused for their violent intervention against protestors before fraternising on 22 December). Only a few individuals have been made responsible for the casualties that occurred before 22 December 1989 (the day of Ceausescu?s fall). These ones perceive themselves as scapegoats. In the public eye, their having to stand trial has brought a serious offence and caused severe damage to the image of the army as an institution, given the perspective of NATO integration. On the other hand, the victims of the revolution in Cluj have had quite different experiences. Some of them had bullet-inflicted wounds that have still not healed. Others, members of the heroes? families, bear inner wounds and material difficulties that are sometimes overwhelming. I shall illustrate a few aspects regarding the social recognition of the revolutionaries in the community that they belong to; their attitudes towards the guilty and towards the need to finding out the truth, through the voices of some members of a Revolutionary Association from Cluj, whom I have interviewed. These can be found in the Archive of the Oral History Institute.

Thoughts on the social acknowledgment of the revolutionaries:

?All these rights and medals are not unsatisfactory for me, materially speaking; I am disappointed from a moral point of view. I don?t really need all these, what I need is rather the truth, I need to know what happened; a moral reward would have been more special if the society had taken definite steps in other directions than the present ones.?[17]

?Public opinion is the one that causes a bitter feeling in me: people I haven?t met for 12 years asking me what?s wrong with your leg?.. I tell them: drop it, don?t ask me that, such a long time has passed. And still, if I tell them anything they ask me: ?Why did you go there??? This is the bitter feeling I get because the public opinion cannot appreciate properly how serious the events that happened then were. They?d rather believe those who said that a few drunkards had got out into the streets. So they minimise things and, what is more, they even disapprove of us. It is easier to stay indoors and to get things for nothing.?[18]

 

On the public opinion of revolutionaries and their families:

(speaking of her husband?s death, her acquaintances say):? ?Why did he go there?(?) What do these people (the revolutionaries, those injured, n.a) want more? We are also poor; everybody is poor??[19]

On attitudes towards those who were responsible for her husband? death:

?I would have been content if they had only come to ask us for pardon? the gentlemen who shot, tovarasii, securistii, whatever they were? the terrorists?(?) For me and my family it is no longer important if they are punished or not; if then in 1990 any justice had been done, now it would all be different. It is too late now?.[20]

On public oblivion:

(interviewer?s question: ?Do you think the event of 1989 is meant to be forgotten?? ?Yes, it is. What was published was not enough? Neither in the media, nor?It was all like a taboo? Why did those people die in Cluj? I wonder?As if it was nothing??[21]

An elusive identity: revolutionaries without a certificate

I have so far emphasized certain types of institutionalised revolutionary identity whose discursive universes I have attempted to reveal. From the point of view of the social researcher there still is a non-institutionalised category: namely the participants in the demonstrations up to 22 December and the subsequent performance, those who have not had a revolutionary certificate awarded to them by the Government and who are not the members of any revolutionary organisations. This type of identity implies their having chosen not to become affiliated with any association, not to claim anything in exchange, and not to demand any awards for their ?revolutionary? attitude, which was considered normal during those days.

?I consider the decision to take part in the street protests of 22 December as being perfectly normal. Those weren?t acts of heroism? theoretically, this could have happened in Brasov back in 1987, as well as on other occasions? and if the people had mobilized themselves and they hadn?t supported Ceausescu through their passivity, we wouldn?t have been in that situation in 1989 and probably our post-December situation would have been different.?[22]

The only authority before which they legitimate themselves is their own civic consciousness, and perhaps the life stories to be told to their children. In the absence of organizational membership they can hardly make any claims on their identity. And this is all the more difficult as long as there is a tendency to monopolise the debates on and the (re)definitions of the Romanian revolution by both the representatives of revolutionary associations and by mainstream political power.

*

The multitude of personal experiences and meanings of the events lived then configure discursive universes that are continuously redefining themselves around present social interests. The oral history approach uses participants? testimonies to capture the veins of a recent history. And what is more, searching the comprehensibility of the events we experienced and which influenced our lives in a more or less obvious way means, for each one of us, whether a scholar or not, a chance to understand ourselves. Eventually this fact constructs our individual identity. And I would even venture to say that the relevance of this complex interrelation implied in the process of the revolutionaries? social identification could be extended to encompass a more general theme: attitudes towards the recent past, and particularly towards the founding event of 1989. I consider that the ambiguity of the official definition of revolutionary identity and the problematic experiences of being a Romanian revolutionary have subtly influenced and mirrored the profile of our rather dramatic post-communist transition.

References:

Ash, Timothy, Garton 2002, Trials, purges and history lessons: treating a difficult past in post-communist Europe, in Muller, Jean, Werner (ed.) 2002, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe. Studies in the Presence of the Past, Cambridge.: Cambridge University Press.

Barth, Fredrik 1969(ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Cultural Difference, Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Cohen, Anthony P. 2000, Signifying Identities. Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Values, London &New York: Routledge.

Jenkins, Richard 1996, Social Identity, London: Routledge.

Samuel, Raphael, and Thompson, Paul 1990 The Myths We Live By, London: Routledge.

[1]This new perspective on life histories was offered at the 1987 Oxford Conference on ?Myth and History?, and was reflected in the volume The myths we live by, edited by Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson. It was a ?fundamental proposition of this conference to assume the displacements, omissions and reinterpretations through which myths in personal and collective memory take shape? (Samuel and Thompson 1990, 5)

[2]In this respect, an oral archive of recorded testimonies of the participants in the revolution from Cluj is in preparation at the Institute of Oral History, Babes-Bolyai University, which I belong to.

[3]I have already attempted a historical semantics approach to the notion of the Romanian revolution in the article ?Significances of Political Non-Violence in the Central and Eastern European Revolutions of 1989: The Violence of the Romanian Revolution? in the journal Caiete de antropologie istorica (Papers of Historical Anthropology), published by the Seminar of Historical Anthropology, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj 2(2002)

[4]This idea is developed in my study mentioned above, Significances of Political Non-Violence in the Central and Eastern European Revolutions of 1989. The Violence of the Romanian Revolution.

[5]I have analysed this type of polarizing at the discursive level in my BA dissertation, stressing the fact that this black and white polarity between ?terrorists? and the ?Saviour? has been the key to the ideological representation of the ?Live Broadcasting Romanian Revolution?. There is a short version ?The Revival of Symbols in the Romanian Revolution of 1989?, published in Caietele Tranzitiei (The Paper of Transition) edited by the Institute of Cultural Anthropology, Babes-Bolyai University Cluj, 1997, p.issue 1, p. 102-106.

[6]There are a few notorious cases of certain people who had behaved in a totally hostile manner towards the anti-Ceausescu? protestors in the first period of the revolution (before the dictator?s fall), or even those involved in the repressive forces, who are currently members of certain organisations of revolutionaries and who have obtained an official certificate as a revolutionary. This is rather a peculiar illustration of the theoretical assumption that ?the criteria of membership are a matter of negotiation at the organisational boundary? (Jenkins 139-63).

[7]Interviewees Tudorin Burlacu, Petre Borosoiu, 18 decembrie 2002, Timisoara, interviewer S. Grama. 

[8]Ibidem.

[9]Ion Iliescu and Adrian Nastase are important political leaders, the president, respectively the prime minister of Romania at that time.

[10]Interviewees Tudorin Burlacu, Petre Borosoiu , 18 decembrie 2002, Timisoara, interviewer S.Grama.

[11]Ibidem.

[12]Ibidem.

[13]One can notice in this assertion the political myth of the French Revolution.

[14]Interviewees T. Burlacu, P. Borosoiu , 18 decembrie 2002, Timisoara, interviewer Sidonia Grama. 

[15]Ibidem.

[16]In ?Trials, purges and history lessons: treating a difficult past in post-communist Europe?, Timothy Garton Ash has done a comparative analysis of the policy of facing the legacy of communism, particularly in Germany and its neighbours. In these respects, four key interrogations have to be answered carefully: ?whether to remember and treat the past, (?) when to address it;(?) who should do it, and last, but not least, how?? (Ash 2000, 265-282)

[17]Interviewee Lung Dan Ioan, injured in the revolution, interviewers C. Budeanca and L. Rusu, Cluj,2002.

[18]Interviewee Juscau Vasile, injured in the revolution, interviewer Sidonia Grama, Cluj, 2002.

[19]Interviewee Ciortea Elisabeta, a widow of the revolution, interviewers C Budeanca and D Bodeanu, Cluj, nov. 2002.

[20]Ibidem.

[21]Ibidem.

[22]Interviewee Leontin Iuhasz, Mrs Doina Cornea?son, a well known Romanian dissident, interviewer Sidonia Grama, Cluj, nov.2002.