ReSET Teaching Anthropology: Means and Meanings
Book review
Authors: Adrian Neculau
Title: Viata cotidiana in comunism / Everyday life in communism
Year: 2004
Publication: Polirom
Place of publication: Iasi
Number of Pages: 367
Language: Romanian
ISBN: 973-681-766-0
Student: Dana Cornea
“Babeş-Bolyai” University, Faculty of European Studies
Advisor: Petruţa Mîndruţ
“Viata cotidiana in communism / Everyday life in communism” is a collection of texts which is coordinated by Adrian Neculau. The texts are written by different authors who are all professors in the field of history, psychology, philosophy, sociology, political sciences in the most famous universities in Romania or researchers in different institutions from Romania or from abroad.
This book is the result of the debates that the author-coordinator has had with his students during the courses and with his colleagues from different universities. During the debates that took place in the Laboratory of social psychology in the University “Al. I. Cuza” from Iasi Adrian Neculau and his students were trying to apply different theories or concepts to our reality, to the recent past and to the new context. Their purpose was to discover which are the mechanisms through which the past orders to the present, to identify the way that brings into light a new social identity, the way that comes into being a new social thinking. In this way there had existed lot of projects, thing that had as a result a few books.
In 1999 the author coordinator has started the research project “Viata cotidiana in comunism / Everyday life in communism”. This title has been chosen only as a temporary one, the final book being wanted to have a more suggestive name. The purpose of this project was to analyze the life that Romanian people has had during the communist era. In order to help this project to become real there has been also initiated in the university’s magazine, “Psihologia sociala / Social psychology”, a special column where people (especially professors in the field) were invited to contribute.
When the project of this book has been officially launched lot of teachers showed their interest in it and they have started preparing their work. Unfortunately not all of them finished in the appropriate time and not all the texts have been included in this book. That is why there is going to be a second edition more complex and more complete.
The very purpose of this book is to present and to analyze the life that Romanian people had under the communist era. The authors of this collective book achieve their purpose by using interviews that they made with people living then, analyzing documents dated from that period, files, articles, and the most important thing, using their own experience they had living in the communist era.
They are trying to present the facts in the most objective manner possible in order to make the material authentic but, in the same time, being the subject of lot of the experiences presented, the subjectivism appears throughout the book. They adopted this position to inform the readers about the everyday life during the communist era in a good and plausible way. The authors had an insight view of the facts being a part of the system and experiencing the consequences and the repercussions of the living under such regime.
Their sources are still various and critically examined. The sources are official documents, testimonies of people involved and who have suffered because of the regime, interviews with common people or famous people who have decided to confess the bad experiences they lived during that time (from women who were forced to give birth to children they didn’t want to professors who have been imprisoned for having the courage to speak against the regime) and the authors private life experience in different contexts (from their everyday life to their public life).
The ideas are presented consistently and they are developed logically.
The main themes of the book are:
1. A new society, a new context
2. Everyday practices
3. Important events
4. Life after being reeducated in communist prisons
In the first part of the book it is presented the new social context after the rising of the communism.
In the second part of the book are presented different situations of the everyday life that common people had: living with strangers in their own houses (the institution of inmates/colocatarii), the permanent fright of being took of an opponent of the regime (the institution of informers/informatorii), the censure, food shortages, the law on banning of abortions.
In the third part of this material are presented important events that have influenced in a way or another the communist era in Romania: the miners strike from 1977, the rebellion of workers from Brasov (1987), the reeducation, the torture from the communist prisons and the deportation of the opponents of the regime.
The last part of the book present the life that people have to had after being “reeducated” by the communists in their prisons after being punished for their hostile attitude to the regime, about the shame they had to bear for having the courage to protest.