The Romanian National Television as part of the communist propaganda apparatus during the 1970s

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Cristina Baumgarten ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Nicolae Ceausescu

To legitimize its actions and to control the population, the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) worked constantly to impose its vision, with the propaganda apparatus acting intensely during both the period of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, as well as during the reign of his successor, Nicolae Ceaușescu. From its establishment in 1956, the Romanian National Television (TVR) had been one of the instruments through which the voice of the communist authorities had been heard, both literally and figuratively. In this study I investigate the evolution of TVR as a propaganda tool of the communist regime during the 1970s, with a focus on the evolution of the propaganda programmes and on the main requirements of the Party. For this purpose, I used sources from the Romanian National Archives and the Archives of the Romanian Broadcasting Society, and I analysed the measures that PCR took in relation to TVR so that the latter meets the ideological expectations of the communist regime.

„Arvīd, uz kurieni Tu aizgāji?”: Arvīda Griguļa personības loma Rakstnieku savienības vēsturē

2020 ◽  
pp. 74-84
Author(s):  
Madara Eversone
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
State Archive ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Impact

The article aims to highlight the role of Arvīds Grigulis’ (1906–1989) personality in the Latvian Soviet literary process in the context of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union, attempting to discover the contradictions and significance of Arvīds Grigulis’ personality. Arvīds Grigulis was a long-time member of the Writers’ Union, a member of the Soviet nomenklatura, and an authority of the soviet literary process. His evaluations of pre-soviet literary heritage and writings of his contemporaries were often harsh and ruthless, and also influenced the development of the further literary process. The article is based on the documents of the Central Committee of the Latvian Communist Party, the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the Communist Party local organization of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union that are available at the Latvian State Archive of the National Archives of Latvia, as well as memories of Grigulis’ contemporaries. It is concluded that the personality of the writer Arvīds Grigulis, although unfolding less in the context of the Writers’ Union, is essential for the exploration of the soviet literary process and events behind the scenes. The article mainly describes events and episodes taking place until 1965, when Arvīds Grigulis’ influence in the Writers’ Union was more remarkable. Individual and further studies should analyse changes and the impact of his decisions in the cultural process of the 70s and 80s of the 20th century.

The Unique “Blooming and Contending” 1961–62

1969 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 54-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merle Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Main Trend ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

From its inception until at least the Cultural Revolution, the Communist regime in China has had a twofold aim for its intellectuals: it has sought to indoctrinate them with the exclusive ideologies of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and it has tried to utilize their skills to develop an industrialized and modernized society. The Chinese Communist Party has attempted to implement these two policies by an insistence on the strict orthodoxy of thinking individuals, on the one hand, and by the encouragement of intellectuals to work creatively at their jobs on the other. This contradictory approach has resulted in a policy toward the intellectuals that has been alternatively severe and relaxed. Though the main trend is usually in one direction or the other, there have always been counter-currents present which can be revived when necessary.

scholarly journals “Niepodległość” Liberal Democratic Party

Sowiniec ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (46) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Marcin Kluzik
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Round Table ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Independent Country

The Liberal Democratic party “Niepodległość”/“Independence” was a radically anti-communist party and its aim was to overthrow the communist regime and make Poland an independent country, for the party had no doubt that other elements of its agenda could be realised only after Poland achieved independence. Its uncompromising anti-communist stance made the party reject the agreements made at the Round Table. The LDPN advocated political and economic liberalism, combining it with an attachment to a conservative and Christian canon of values.

A Historian, the Securitate and the “Holy Party”. Reading the Secret Police Files of Ioan Dimitrie Suciu (1949-1982)

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-68
Author(s):  
Felician Velimirovici
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
The Social

"A Historian, the Securitate and the “Holy Party”. Reading the Secret Police Files of Ioan Dimitrie Suciu (1949-1982). The following article describes the life times and events that historian Ioan Dimitrie Suciu has experienced in Romania after 1948, under communist rule. By studying his personal Secret Police Files drawn up by the Securitate officers over a period of more than 30 years, I propose an account of his life story focused primarily upon his relationship with the communist regime. As an anti-Fascist former student of Nicolae Iorga, until 1947 I.D. Suciu has managed to become a self-made man in the capital city of interwar Romania. In 1949, he has got into a first conflict with communist authorities when he tried to flee the country. After spending over 3 years in jail, he was released in 1952, only to be soon again arrested and incarcerated for 6 years, for committing the crime of “conspiracy against the social order”. Between 1964 and 1975 I.D. Suciu has worked as a researcher at “Nicolae Iorga” History Institute in Bucharest, before being sent to jail for a third and last time (1975-1977). Never becoming a political dissident, during his last years of life, he experienced a growing discontent towards the regime and expressed abundant critiques against the Communist Party and its leaders. Keywords: Romanian Communist Party, Securitate, Ioan D. Suciu, condemnation. "

Komunistiskās partijas kontroles mehānisms Latvijas Padomju rakstnieku savienībā: Žaņa Grīvas piemērs

2021 ◽  
pp. 110-118
Author(s):  
Madara Eversone
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Reading Room ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
National Library ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
Representative Image

It was in the interests of the Communist Party to create a representative image of Latvian Soviet writers, which would represent the interests of the party and at the same time oversee the course of literary life in the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union. Such was the writer Žanis Grīva in the Latvian Soviet literary process. The influential positions in the Soviet nomenclature gave him power in the creative environment and created opportunities to monitor the implementation of the Communist Party’s course. The article aims to put forward the personality of Žanis Grīva in the context of the research of the Latvian soviet literary process and the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union, proposing several issues to be further researched and developed in the future. The article is based on the documents of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the Communist Party local organization of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union, and the personal file of Žanis Grīva in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, and documents of the Žanis Grīva collection that are available at the Latvian State Archive of the National Archives of Latvia, as well as Žanis Grīva’s personal documents regarding his life and professional activities that are available at the Aleksejs Apinis Rare Books and Manuscripts Reading Room at the National Library of Latvia. Memories of contemporaries were also investigated. It is concluded that the role of Žanis Grīva in the Latvian soviet literary process and the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union is political and purposefully constructed by the Communist Party, and has little to do with literature and literary talents. It can be assumed that Žanis Grīva has negatively affected the creative activity of some members of the Writers’ Union, such as Gunārs Priede.

Limits on the Press and Civil Society during the Maximato

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-67
Author(s):  
Ben Fallaw
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
The Press ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Voice

In October 1931, Governor Bartolomé García Correa and Socialist Party activists violently closed Carlos R. Menéndez’s Diario de Yucatán for being reactionary. Defenders of the Diario denounced the governor for illegally silencing the voice of what today we would understand to be civil society. After a seventeen-month struggle in the courts, the national press, and in Mexico City’s bureaucracy, Menéndez prevailed. This article closely examines the conflict, using regional and national archives and abundant contemporary press coverage, paying careful attention to discursive expression of socioethnic inequalities. It reveals significant limits on the regional independent press and the concept of civil society during the formative period in postrevolutionary Mexico known as the Maximato (the 1928–35 era dominated by Plutarco Elías Calles as hyperexecutive or Jefe Máximo). During the Maximato, the postrevolutionary state employed authoritarian measures to centralize power. The Maximato state, however, could not govern without acknowledging both the Constitution of 1917’s classical liberal civil rights, such as freedom of the press and guarantees of associational life, and the revolutionary political legacy of popular action against “reaction.” In the Yucatecan case, the muzzling of the regional independent press was not simply top-down illiberalism. Yucatecan socialists believed it would help create a more egalitarian and inclusive socio-political order to supplant civil society. The Diario’s exclusivist definition of civil society and the national press’s personal attacks on García Correa reflected widespread beliefs that people of indigenous and African descent were incapable of taking part in civic life. While Menéndez eventually prevailed in the courts, it was due more to his economic and cultural capital and prominent Mexico City allies than to legal protections for press freedom or civil-society resistance. The case helps us to understand how the latter two varied so significantly over place and time in postrevolutionary Mexico, and why Tocquevillian notions of civil society require careful qualification when applied to poor, overwhelmingly indigenous regions of Mexico.

Textual Anxiety: Reading (and Misreading) the Draft Constitution in China, 1954

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-179
Author(s):  
Neil J. Diamant ◽  
Feng Xiaocai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Political Terror ◽  
Ordinary Citizens ◽  
Draft Constitution

This article uses comments, questions, and conversations about the PRC's draft constitution of 1954 to assess state legitimacy and how people felt more generally about the Communist regime. Taking advantage of untapped archival sources in Hong Kong and the mainland—including classified intraparty reports and transcripts from meetings in factories, police stations, universities, and villages—this article challenges the conventional view that the constitution bolstered support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Instead, the document generated a great deal of anxiety among ordinary citizens, as well as among CCP officials and the regime's favored classes. This “text-based” cause of emotional turmoil was a supplement to the classic forms of political terror that dominate the literature on Communist dictatorships. Despite widespread confusion, people's identification of problematic sections of the constitution turned out to be remarkably prescient in light of political disasters in the 1950s and 1960s and ongoing constitutional controversies in the era after Mao Zedong.

scholarly journals Struggles for the Character of the Roman Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1989

Eurostudia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-73
Author(s):  
Miroslav Tížik
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
The Church

After the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia came to power in 1948, power struggles followed between political parties and long-running internal struggles within the country’s Roman Catholic Church over the church’s character and organizational structure. These struggles related not only to purely theological issues, but also to the ideals of communism (and, later, socialism), the Communist Party and its program. The internal plurality within the church throughout the whole period of the people’s democracy and state socialism in Czechoslovakia calls into question the dualistic image of struggles between the church and the Communist Party, and it complicates the image of the church as a victim of the Communist regime. In particular, the crucial periods from 1948 to 1952 and from 1968 to 1969 suggest that, throughout much of the communist period there persisted tensions between the higher and lower clergy and there were diverging views on how the church should function; these tensions took on a diversity of shapes and varied in intensity.

scholarly journals Slovenian Communist Legacy: After 25 Years of Independence of Slovenian Nation

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-165
Author(s):  
Lea Prijon
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Communist Regime

Abstract It has been 25 years since Slovenia’s independence from Yugoslavia, but nevertheless it seems that Slovenia can not break its ties with the communist tradition, which for decades dictated and limited the life of Slovenians and hindered Slovenia’s development in general. Even transition (on economic and political filed) has failed, although in its beginnings it seemed that Slovenia would be a story of success. The paper deals with the rise of the Communist Party and the Communist regime and its impact on Slovenian developments till nowadays.

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