ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

120Mădălina Abagiuthe monkey stage, being able to transform into human being) on the Europeancontinent” 7 . For such a discovery a special name was also to be chosen:Australanthropus Olteniensis. The nationalist propaganda carried by Ceauşescucan even lead to suspicions, such as the one regarding the fact that theanthropologists who named the hominid were thinking of Ceausescu’s Oltenescorigin when naming it.A simple look at the poems dedicated to the PCR secretary general, ondifferent occasions, emphasizes the fact that the artists who created these worksuse the same style: exclamations, epithets, metaphors, hyperbolic comparisons,all of them as homage to Ceauşescu. For the Romanian writers Ceauşescu is:«the legendary man», «Romania’s reformer», «the oak from Scornicesti», «thegreatest politician in Romania’s history», «brave leader», «symbol of fight andsympathy». More than this, Ceauşescu is compared to the greatest rulers of thecountry. In an article from the Flame magazine, appeared in 1980, people canread that January is a month with great days. It is the month which imposedAlexandru Ioan Cuza to the nation, but also Ceauşescu “son of peasants, whobecame worker and revolutionist and enlightened intellectual of his country, andwho imposed, more than any other great man of our nation, the name ofRomania” 8 . On the same occasion of the 1980 anniversary, in Spark and FreeRomania two interesting pictures, from this point of view, are reproduced. InSpark, Ceauşescu appears next to two Dacian kings, Burebista and Decebal, tothe wayvodes Stephan the Great, and Michael the Brave, to Nicolae Balcescu,as well as the ruler A.I. Cuza. The same characters (except Nicolae Balcescu)appear also in the photograph from Free Romania 9 . If Stalin “acts like an allpowerful God surrounded by his angels and archangels” 10 , meaning the rest ofthe part he manipulates, Ceauşescu becomes a «secular god».Under the pretext of promoting young Romanian artists, the RomanianSinging Festival, where the Flame Cenacle imposed itself, represented anotherway of manipulating masses and indoctrinating with pro-communist topics. Thetwo emblematic examples of the cultural-artistic environment of the Ceauşescuera will not get rid of the political immixture and will be turned into anidolization ritual of Romania’s ex-ruler. Besides a series of poems and songssang by all the people, whose artistic value can not be debated, artists came infront of thousands of people with songs in which they could not forgetvenerating the PCR leader, both at the shows organized by the Flame Cenacle,and other festivals generically called Romanian singing. Together with otherpropagandistic means, used in a more or less visible way, these culturalmanifestations represented a sort of «mask» which covered the negative aspectsof the communist regime. The shows practically turned into the only way7 Anneli Ute Gabanyi, op.cit., p. 116.8 Flacăra, 24 th -30 th January 1980.9 Scânteia, 26 th January 1980 and Free Romania, 26 th January 1980.10 Adrian Cioroianu, op.cit., p. 424.