One of the
main tasks attributed to Soviet Moldovan writers and “creative intellectuals”,
from the creation of the first literary organization of the Moldovan Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, was to create a system of cultural values (around an allegedly distinct
literary language and the invention of a local cultural heritage) which would
legitimate the existence of a Moldovan “socialist nation”. In contrast with the
19th-century European nation-building process
[1],
the Soviet Moldovan national project is designed and implemented in a very
short time so as to “catch up” with more advanced nations (Soviet ones
included). Moldovan writers, scholars, and artists are thus appointed leaders
of a large-scale will-driven enterprise made possible with the direct
intervention and under the strict gaze of republican authorities, starting with
1924 (the creation of MASSR)
[2].
Identity and Cultural Conflicts
Both in MASSR
(1924-1940) and, later on, in MSSR (Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic,
1940-1991), just like with other Soviet republics
[3], the
local administration and intellectuals were divided in two antagonistic groups
according to the geographic origin and “political capital” of their members.
Throughout the 30s, the MASSR administrative and intellectual elite becomes the
battleground of an increasingly fierce fight, both symbolically and
administratively, between two camps – the so-called
Moldovenists and the
Romanianists –,
who got their names from their respective positions on the issue of the
national language of the Republic.
Moldovenists were
advocates of a stand-alone “Moldovan” language, in clear-cut rupture with
literary Romanian language norms. On the other hand,
Romanianists were in favor of a literary “Moldovan” language
every bit identical with the language written and spoken in Romania. As with
other Soviet republics, the central power instrumentalized the social and
political divide at the level of the local administration and intellectual
elite and regularly interfered to determine the power relations and the spheres
of influence between the two groups. Sometimes, however, the two factions took
advantage of the changes at the top, in Kiev or Moscow, taking over local power
and imposing a certain conception of linguistic and/or cultural policies.
Neither of the groups was able to stay in power more than a few years in a row.
Thus, the authority transfer from one group to the other automatically brought
about a reversal in terms of linguistic policies, on the ruins of the previous
version of “Moldovan” grammar and spelling.
The
Moldovenist /
Romanianist divide survives the creation of the Moldovan
Soviet Socialist Republic and the restructuring of the Moldovan Soviet Writers’
Union by including a new group of Bessarabian writers. After a first time of
conflict escalation between the two groups – the Bessarabians and
the Transnistrians –, between 1946 – 1949 (a period later known
as Zhdanovism
[4]), the Bessarabian group wins
the dispute with the Transnistrians. As a result they impose, riding the wave
of the post-Stalinist thaw, a Romanian-like version of the “Moldovan” literary
language and cultural heritage. The only concession made to the
Moldovenist camp was the
maintaining of the Cyrillic alphabet which remained a symbolic marker of the
specificity of the “Moldovan” language.
Between 1924
and 1956, Soviet Moldova (MASSR and MSSR) was subject to seven linguistic
“reforms” (accompanied by revisions of cultural policies), going back and forth
between Moldovenism and Romanianism. For over thirty years, both
the Moldovan administration and intellectuals oscillated between two opposed
cultural and linguistic conceptions which lead to a split in the ethnic and
national identity of the Moldovan population. The inconsistency of the
national, linguistic and cultural policies promoted in Soviet Moldova, which
lasted for three decades, can be accounted also on the lack of decision making
on the part of Soviet central and local authorities. The lack of decision
making is partly explained by the fact that Moldova was integrated in the “big
family of Soviet republics” according to a peculiar sovietization formula. Most
of the times, the Moldovan “case” was perceived as falling under the Western
Soviet republics category, those annexed after 1940 (the Ukraine, Western
Belarus, the Baltics, Karelia)
[5]. Some other times,
however, Moldova was grouped together with the Middle Eastern Soviet republics
[6], given the disputed nature
of its territory and its predominantly rural population.
Starting with
the mid 50s, behind the official façade of a Moldovan language and literature,
a tacit “Romanianization” of high culture occurs in the Republic of Moldova
under the pressure of Bessarabian intellectuals and with the support of
cultural figures in Moscow and, last but not least, with the complicity of a
part of the Transnistrian elites (who privately acknowledged the superiority of
the expressive resources of the Romanian literary language compared to the
“Moldovan” language). At the same time, the policies implemented by the
Moldovenist camp for several
decades leave their profound mark on the language and identity of both Moldovan
writers and their target audience, after 1956. At present, the majority of the
Romanian-speaking population in the Republic of Moldova calls their language by
the glottonim “Moldovan language.”
[7] To the great
disappointment of pro-Romanian politicians and intellectuals in Moldova, the
“Moldovan language” appellation was ratified by the Constitution, shortly after
the declaration of independence of the Republic of Moldova.
The wave of
the Khrushchev thaw, which gave Moldovan intellectuals a first taste of the
freedom of expression, withdraws soon. Hopes kindled by the official
recognition of the language and cultural heritage (the strongly “Romanianized”
version) are shattered in 1959 by the increasingly frequent calls of the party
leadership on the “nationalist” writers to behave. While the power fiercely
attacks the “Romanianization” of Moldovan culture, a generalized process of
Russification takes over all the spheres of the republic. From this moment on,
Romanian culture and particular manifestations deemed nationalistic are
banished from the public space and they withdraw in the private space of
informal meetings organized by some writers as a means of escaping the official
propaganda discourse that they are forced to use in their works.
Socialist Realism as Identity Discourse
The creation
of the Soviet Moldovan identity, a project started in the 20s-30s in the MASSR
and continued in Bessarabia after 1940, is taken up again with renewed strength
right after the liberation/ re-occupation of the former Romanian province in
August 1944. Along with the press and the education system, Moldovan writers,
through their works, participate in an ample persuasion and propaganda
operation to disseminate and implant an ideological and identity message
reflecting the interests of the Soviet power in Bessarabia and Transnistria.
Moldovan literature in the Stalinist era (but also, in a “softer” form, up
until the fall of the Soviet Union) passes on a strong
antagonistically-structured identity message to its target audience
[8].
To neutralize
the feeling of belonging to the Romanian nation of a significant part of
Bessarabians (dating from the inter-war period), Soviet ideology builders
cultivate the notion of a stand-alone Soviet Moldovan national identity. At the
same time, showing the essentially contradictory nature of this nation-building
enterprise, the Soviet leadership strongly opposed (particularly during bouts
of regime radicalization) the emergence of any form of local nationalism deemed
harmful for the proper integration of Moldovans in their Soviet “Mother Land.”
Throughout
the Stalinist era (with clear repercussions on later periods), Moldovan literature
builds an antagonistic identity discourse that praises Soviet Moldova and
disqualifies anything related to the Romanian administration. The positive pole
of this ideological construct emphasizes the agrarian nature of Moldova as it
associates the country with images familiar to the rural majority of its
population (Moldova is seen as a young peasant girl, as one’s countryside home,
as a village between valleys, etc.). “The glorious past” and “the luminous
present” of Moldova are tightly linked to another positive aspect of this
identity construct: Russia. The idyllic and prosperous image of Soviet Moldova
is even stronger against the background of dire poverty allegedly associated
with life in inter-war Bessarabia. Finally, Moldovans are depicted as fearless
combatants against the “yoke of the bourgeoisie and the landed gentry.”
The Audience: Subject and Object of Symbolic
Violence
Despite its
claiming to be “folk” literature, Socialist realist literature in Soviet
Moldova did not achieve mass literature status, at least not during Stalinism.
With the backing of the State, the writers kept trying to reach a wider
readership organizing to this end “meetings with the readers” and “literary
evenings” at the workplace, in kolkhozy and factories. With little or no
education at all, the so-called folk readership was not very responsive to the
writers’ popularization campaign. Only starting with the first generations of
elementary, secondary and vocational school graduates, – MASSR in the 1930s
and, especially, MSSR throughout the 1950s –, one can speak of an active
although small readership. This real readership also constitutes a
pool of potential candidates for the literary institution engaged in an
official campaign to “train cadres.” Hired most of the times as pedagogues,
these young intellectuals, fresh out of normal and middle schools, work both as
mediators between Moldovan writers and their “folk” readership. Thus, far from
constituting a mass readership, the first generation of readers sets the bases of
mass literature through their own work in schools.
Through
schools and other mass culture institutions, Moldovan literature in the Soviet
era participates in the spreading of an ethical and cultural value system. This
allegedly legitimate value system will be durably inculcated in the Moldovan
population through a process that Pierre Bourdieu called symbolic violence
[9]. Thus, we can ask: to what
extent the Moldovan writers believed in the truthfulness of the message they
were called upon to convey to the wider public thus contributing heavily to the
imposition of an exogenous axiological system? Some of the Bessarabian writers,
who endorsed the Soviet power in 1940, did it out of personal conviction.
Nonetheless, the subsequent fate and commitment of a significant number of
their fellow writers were decided accidentally following the accession to power
of the Soviet regime in June 1940 and its come back in 1944. Agreeing more or
less to collaborate with the Soviet regime, the Bessarabian writers who gained
membership in the Soviet Moldovan Writers’ Union were forced to adapt their
knowledge and abilities to the new political requirements. This adaptation
process did not go smoothly as some writers resisted more or less openly while
cultivating a certain degree of opportunism. Only later generations, writers
fully trained in Soviet schools, can be considered the product and vehicle of a
Soviet value system and
Weltanschauung.
Moldovan Writers, from “De-Stalinization” to
the Present
In the late
50s, a new generation of Moldovan writers (later known as the “thaw
generation”) gains membership in the Moldovan Writers’ Union (MWU) as part of
an indigenization policy
[10],
promoted by Khrushchev starting with 1956. Most of them are graduates of Romanian
high schools subsequently trained in Soviet higher education institutions.
The writers
who become MWU members in the 1960s (the “60s generation”) have, however,
serious shortcomings in terms of Romanian and universal literature and culture
as these subjects are removed from Moldovan secondary and higher education
curricula in the mid 1950s. As Aureliu Busuioc, member of the “thaw
generation”, confessed, the 1950s young writers “were at least thirsty to know,
to learn”
[11]. Aware of the gaps in their
cultural knowledge, these young writers accept to be initiated by their older
fellow writers. Trained in this era of relative liberalization, following the
20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (which condemns
some of the Stalinist “crimes”), the writers of the 1960s generation assimilate
the new Soviet slogans (which were still taken seriously at the time) and,
simultaneously, a certain kind of critical thinking. The communication between
older writers, trained under the Romanian administration, and the new
generations of writers, MWU members starting with the late 50s, provides the
latter with an alternative education to the “monopoly of legitimate symbolic
violence” (M. Weber/ P. Bourdieu) practiced by the Soviet system of education
and propaganda. Their spotless political trajectory makes some 1960s writers to
feel entitled to question the fairness of some Soviet-imposed new norms.
Without
questioning the legitimacy of the Soviet system or communist ideology as a
whole, the public positions of Moldovan writers, qualified as nationalistic by
the authorities, are the only type of disagreement with the Soviet regime. As a
result, in October 1965, during the 3rd Congress of the MWU,
the “thaw generation” and the “60s generation” unite to openly challenge the
Russification of the Moldovan population and to claim the adoption of the Latin
alphabet. The writers’ congress, attended by high members of the Republic’s
government, upsets the latter and becomes the pretext for renewed calls on the
Moldovan “creative intellectuals” to behave (a “cracking of the whip” as
witnesses put it).
The Brezhnev
era, also known as the “stagnation era”, is remembered by several Moldovan
writers as a time of decline of literary probity: “some writers sold themselves
in exchange for honors, positions, prizes” (Vladimir Beşleagă
[12]). The “stagnation era” was
also characterized by “crippled” sociability (Alexei Marinat
[13]) given the writers’
constant fear of the law enforcement agents. Several writers belonging to the
1950s-1960s generations, some of which had been remarkably bold at the 3rd Congress
of the MWU, accepted administrative positions in the Writers’ Union and other
cultural institutions at the expense of “taming” their literary talent, under
the pressure of censorship and self-censorship.
While most
writers simply follow the routine or fade into the anonymity of administrative
hierarchies, a new generation of writers emerges in the early 1980s announcing
the literary effervescence and “national rebirth” driven by the perestroika and glasnost policies.
During the years of this “second thaw era”, the national-flavored claims of the
1965 writers, stifled two decades before, reemerge slightly louder. The writers
become the avant-garde of the “singing revolution” while MWU becomes its
epicenter. Driven by both democratic and nationalist momentum, more and more
writers become fully engaged in politics. Some get elected deputies in the
Supreme Soviet of MSSR and, after the August 1991 declaration of independence,
in the first Parliament of the Republic of Moldova. Other writers become
members of a Romanian nationalistic party, in the early 1990s, and militate for
the reestablishing of the interwar borders of Greater Romania
[14].
Similar to
the “stagnation era”, in the 90s, writers lose their autonomy in relation to
the political power except that this time they give it up willingly. After the
“revolutionary” excitement wears off, the role of the “engaged” writer becomes
marginalized both in the political and the literary spheres. Towards the mid
90s, a new generation of young writers emerges, not so much through their
original literary work as through so-called postmodern “manifestos” and strong
criticism of the “old guard” writers, i.e. those who gained notoriety in the
1960-1970s. Graduates of Moldovan universities in the late 80s and of Romanian
universities starting with the 90s, these new writers declare their
determination to break with the Soviet past and the “outdated” patriotism of
their older fellow writers.
Two
emblematic literary figures from the Soviet era, Grigore Vieru and Ion Druţă,
the former living in Bucharest, strong advocate for the reunification of
Bessarabia and Romania, the latter living for decades in Moscow, active
adherent of Moldovan specificity, become the target of repeated attacks from
young writers organized around the Basarabia and Contrafort editorial
staffs, not so much for the “anachronism” of their political stances or the
traditionalism of their works as for the conflation of their literary vocations
and their political missions. Eager to make it up for what they perceive as the
isolation of Moldovan literature from Romanian and European cultures, the young
“postmodernists” indulge in a literature of the absurd, the insignificant and
the gratuitous play. As a result, they only unnerve the “older” writers who had
been advocating, ever since the mid 80s, a model of “edifying” literature.
These intergenerational debates only emphasize the lack of actual communication
between fellow writers on the very object that defines their status and role as
writers. Victims of the liberalization of the literary market after 1990, both
the “young” and the “old” write and publish very little. One more reason for
some of them, the “Unionists” or “Moldovenists”,
to be nostalgic about a time when one could make a living from writing.
Instead of Conclusion
The
elasticization of the State intervention in the cultural sphere throughout the
1950s constitutes the ground for the long- and medium-term reorganization of
the Moldovan writer institution according to rules specific to the literary
sphere. This is accompanied and supported by the social changes the MWU
underwent starting with the 1950s. In the 1940s, the criteria structuring the
Moldovan literary sphere have a strong political connotation: geographic
(Transnistrians vs. Bessarabians) and political belongingness
(communist vs. “party-less”). Starting with the 1950s, on the other
hand, the MWU is structured more along categories that have to do with an
internal logic of the institution: belongingness to a particular generation or
the practice of a certain literary genre (poetry, prose, criticism, etc.).
There is a background to this social dynamic within the MWU. The fleeing of a
significant part of the intellectuals active under the Romanian administration
and the mass education of the population as part of the “cultural revolution”
to the purpose of providing the Republic with the necessary “cadres” and
intellectual professions triggered transformations of the intellectual elite of
this era. The effects (and side effects) of this will-driven project of
democratization of the education system – fast-paced and often partial
schooling, generalized “rurbanization” of intellectuals – leave their mark on
the social structure of the writer’s institution and the production thereof:
literary works.
Following the
“re-Stalinization” tendencies of the Moldovan administration at the end of the
50s, the issue of the language and “cultural heritage” comes up time and again
as subject for debates and interdictions. Meanwhile, cultural figures,
particularly “official” ones, keep disseminating and reinforcing a Moldovan
identity with a “Soviet” content. As a result, the gap between the façade
discourse and the private discourse of Moldovan cultural figures on what
constitutes Moldovan identity overlaps with a rupture that widens in time
between the feeling of belonging cultivated in the private sphere by the
Moldovan cultural elite, which booms during the perestroika times,
and the self-perception of the masses of Soviet Moldovans, self-perception
taught to them by the same cultural elite.
Negură, Petru
(2009) Ni héros, ni traîtres. Les
écrivains moldaves face au pouvoir soviétique sous Staline (1924-1956).
Paris: L’Harmattan (420 pp).
Petru Negură
(2014) Nici eroi, nici trădători.
Scriitorii moldoveni şi puterea sovietică în epoca stalinistă. Chişinău:
Cartier (444 pp).
Book summary
The aim of
this book is to understand the social and political background of the genesis
and evolution of Moldovan Soviet literature throughout the Stalinist period.
The book analyzes the web of individual and collective stakes and interests
that contributed to the creation of this body of literature. Moldovan writers
were given the mission to adapt a foreign literary model (socialist realism) to
a local cultural context. This adaptation process generated certain tensions
and compromises between the writers themselves (and the various groups of
writers making up the Moldovan Writers’ Union throughout time), the Soviet
power (both central and local), and the target audience of this literary
production. The creation of the Moldovan literary language takes place in a
time of ample and difficult social change for the Soviet society – and the
Moldovan one in particular –, which is clearly reflected in the structure and
content of this literature. Targeting a large audience, the Moldovan brand of
socialist realism undertakes an active role in creating the ethnic and civic
identity of the Soviet Moldovan population. Was this identity-building process
successful? – asks the author at the end of his book.
Petru Negură,
PhD in Sociology (from EHESS, Paris), Assistant Professor at the State
Pedagogic University of Moldova, Chisinau.
Translated by
Miruna Voiculescu
This paper
was published in
CriticAtac,
August 20, 2012.
