REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

86
Remembrance in Time
position expressed through hidden transcripts is called public transcripts. Because these
two types of transcripts are the result of a process of domination, their content reflects the
dynamic and constant struggle between those who are dominated and the dominating
ones especially since the latter affect the transcriptions and condition the similar
manifestations of those who are subordinated. However, the hidden transcripts, through
their complexity (including those mentioned above as gestures, mimicry, hidden
behavior, speech acts etc.) allow the subordinate groups to create a subculture that gives
meaning to their passive forms of resistance regarding the official political line and at the
same time to customize the ideate content of the social space as an expression of the
indirect unofficial opposition towards the official transcript specific to the formal
exercise of power relations. 3
Trying to define resistance as part of the complex response that the society gave to the
Stalinist regime, Lynne Viola stressed that there one cannot talk of only one resistance,
but rather of resistances or acts of resistance, different in size and content having multiple
meanings. This is due to the fact that the acts of resistance are influenced and at the same
time illustrate the complexity of the society in which they emerged, with all the internal
political and social divisions, along with all the conflictive forces acting within it. 4
Sheila Fitzpatrick uses the term sedition (in Russian kramola) to describe various forms
of everyday resistance in the Soviet Union from 1960 to 1970 years. However, the author
notes that these forms of daily opposition of the Soviet citizens were their only real
political acts, while the model of popular democracy of the Soviet Union assured them
only a simulated participation in the political decision making process. 5
In his monograph dedicated to the Soviet Magnitogorsk city, examining how socialism
was not just built but also lived, Stephen Kotkin introduced the expression of creative
resistance to characterize how people in that city in the middle of construction responded
to official policies and to the manner in which they were implemented. This type of
resistance is defined by those "little tactics of habit”, such as behavior, language, attitude
employed by individuals to avoid or undermine the meaning of written and unwritten
rules of appropriate behavior officially established. In other words, the creative resistance
was an imaginative original reinterpretation of the official rules so that they served the
interests of individuals, but at the same time they had to maintain the appearance of
scrupulous compliance of official regulations. 6
Applying the above mentioned to the subject of our study, we will analyze the
resistance in communist Romania as part of everyday existence of subordinate groups
which developed a series of specific acts of resistance. These acts through their diversity
2 Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
3
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Yale University Press, New Haven,
1990, p. XI-XII, 2-26.
4
Lynne Viola, “Introduction” in Lynne Viola (eds.), Contending with Stalinism. Soviet Power and
Popular Resistance in the 1930s, Cornel University Press, Ithaca, 2002, pp. 1-14.
5
Sheila Fitzpatrick, „Popular Sedition in the Post-Stalin Soviet Union”in Vladimir A. Kozlov,
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Sergei V. Mironenko, Sedition. Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union
under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011, pp. 1-24.
6
Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as a Civilization, University, Berkeley, 1995, pp.
35, 154-155, 220-221.