ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

Protochronism and nationalism under Ceauşescu’s brand in totalitarian Romania 119express freely and in an open way, their opinions or feelings in artistic works.Due to the fact that there were stipulated hard sanctions for those to infringe thedirectives of the party, most of the writers chose to obey the rules.The main characteristics of the cultural policy advanced by Ceauşescuare, according to Anneli Ute Gabanyi, the following:a) National pride is represented by the newly produced mass culturalmovement (in 1976) called «Romanian singing», while the statute ofprofessional writers is continually eroded, and even the future existence of theircreation union is threatened; professional artists are thus forced to create mainlywithin the «Romanian singing», festival, counselling and supporting (evenfinancially) amateur groups of art.b) Material support, which professional artists enjoyed in the past, artistswho the regime attempted to bring to conformism, was not to be granted anymore.c)Amateur art is highlighted, there appeared articles in the party press,articles which explained the fact that pure artistic, aesthetic, aspects of a workare not important, as long as the political, ideological, moral message,transmitted by these works is correct from the party’s point of view.d) Another aspect of the PCR political deviation from the professionalart to «mass», amateur art is also reflected in initiating «popular theatres»,within large industrial companies. The idea behind this movement is to shoveculture from centre to periphery, where the masses are, as well as the factoriesand agricultural units they work in 4 .All through his long career, Ceauşescu, thanks to the group of apologistswho competed for building a trollopish cult, will get more mystic facets. Due tothose, he becomes:a) The country’s revolutionist by excellenceb) The theoretician of a new world orderc) Peace championd) Architect of a new Romaniae) Independence herof) Guarantor of national unityg) The most beloved son- or parent- of the nation 5 .Poets, painters and sculptors or «political clients» as Adrian Cioroianucalls them- competed in immortalizing all these hypostases of the secretarygeneral of the communists “exceeding at the same time the boundaries of anysense of measure with a tremendous easiness” 6 .Starting from the idea of protochronism, Ceauşescu will inoculate theRomanians stale nationalism, understood only by him. He gets even to the“discovery on Romanian land of the oldest hominid (a primate which exceeded4 Apud Anneli Ute Gabanyi, Ceausescu’s cult, Iasi, Polirom, 2003, p. 124-125.5 Apud Adrian Cioroianu, On the shoulders of Marx. An introduction to the history ofthe Romanian communism, Bucureşti, Curtea Veche Publishing House, 2005, p. 490.6 Ibidem.