Memorability of Romanian dissidence: Ordinary people,secret files and artistic remediations

Introduction

In 1981, Mugur Călinescu, a 17-year-old high school student from Botoșani, a city in Northern Romania, wrote a series of subversive slogans on the city walls. He was investigated by the local branch of the secret police (the Securitate) and put under surveillance. He died of leukaemia before his 20th birthday – a fact that led his relatives to suspect that he may have been poisoned with radiation during one of his regular meetings with Securitate agents. After a legal battle was won in his name by his mother in 2007, the Commission for Establishing the Status of Fighter in the Anti-communist Resistance was obliged to declare him a fighter against the communist regime. In 2017, based on rumours associated with Călinescu’s death, a group of Romanian scientists and historians, coordinated by the Institute for the Investigation of the Communist Crimes in Romania, exhumed his body for further investigation and analysis, giving rise to a sensationalist press campaign in several local and national journals (Institutul de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului și Memoria Exilului Românesc, 2017; Touma, 2017). The endeavour produced no revelatory evidence to support suspicions that Călinescu was poisoned, and so the case was closed. However, the campaign did bring significant public attention to his case and, indirectly, to other acts of dissent carried out by ordinary people during the communist period.

In this article, we explore the conditions necessary for a narrative recounting of past events to become memorable and incorporated into collective memory by focusing our analysis on the role played by artistic remediations in creating such memorability. Călinescu was a young boy with no connections to other dissidents and with no support whatsoever – prior to his acts of dissent, during the interrogatories and afterwards. Neither did his acts earn him any kind of affiliation within the larger context of Romanian dissidence. However, after 2000, his case received public attention and became the subject of certain documentary and artistic productions. These productions are based especially on the Securitate files, bringing forward in an explicit way the question of whether the Securitate themselves were one of the main agents of memory. Therefore, one of the main questions of this article is: When and under what conditions are events and stories that have been forgotten, re-discussed or brought to light? (Focusing on those events and stories which had minimal impact on society and history, and feature ordinary people as their protagonists.) We also interrogate the use of the Securitate files in artistic productions, examining this acknowledgement of the role played by the Securitate in creating the narratives of the communist past. In Călinescu’s case the Securitate files are the main source in which his acts of dissent are recorded. Therefore, we argue that Securitate files become the major materials used by artistic productions in re-enacting Călinescu’s acts of dissent. This follows the Securitate’s practices of isolating the individuals who manifested resistance or acted in a dissenting way. The Securitate even created biographies for those under surveillance, meticulously surveilling their lives and relationships – involving their friends, family members and acquaintances in this process.

Throughout this article, we are using the concept of memorability as explained by Anne Rigney (2018, 2021) in her studies of the role played by aesthetic remediation in creating and circulating memories and narratives of the past. She argues that past events are not equally memorable, as different events do not determine cultural forms and aesthetic mediated (re)workings in the same way (Rigney, 2018: 370, 2021). Rigney identifies two phases in creating memorability. The first is determined by ordinary individuals’ ability or failure to register and, thus, remember a specific event – this phase can be discussed in terms of the event’s impact on individuals’ memory. The second results from the fact that those worth remembering are constituted as memories when translated into transmissible experiences (using available media and cultural forms – stories, monuments, documentaries, exhibitions, and so on) (Rigney, 2021: 13). For the narratives to spread they must enter the dynamic of remediations with aesthetic experiences, thereby helping to create sites of memorability (Erll and Rigney, 2009). Astrid Erll also asks how some media ‘create and mold collective images of the past’, pointing out the requirement to study ‘the phenomena within, between, and around those media which have the power to produce and shape cultural memory’ (Erll, 2010: 390). Based on Rigney and Erll’s considerations, we analyse Călinescu’s case by paying attention to a. its impact on memory and b. its inclusion in artistic productions and the way in which these aesthetic experiences have the remediating effect of increasing its memorability. We supplement our analysis by discussing the correlation between these artistic productions and the discourse on public memory and with previous representations of dissidence – in Erll’s terms, intra-, inter- and pluri-medial analysis (Erll, 2010: 390).

In Romania, as well as in other East Central European countries, the production of memorability and the management of the resulting collective memories are interlinked with the narratives of communism that dominate the memorialisation of the recent past. This includes the romanticising of some social movements of dissent and of particular public figures and the silence surrounding others (Ciobanu, 2020; Petrescu and Petrescu, 2007). The post-communist memory landscape in Romania experienced subtle changes from one decade to another, and its dynamics slowly moved from the dominant anti-communism expressed in various institutional, material, mediatic and symbolic forms to more polyphonic and critical forms of remembrance and memorialisation – including everyday life experiences and the memory of the material culture, a generational approach, as well as reflecting over the political (mis)uses of the memory of communism and articulating transnational movements, such as memory decolonisation (Mironescu, 2022; Mitroiu and Gradinaru, 2024; Pohrib, 2019). In our article, we demonstrate that recent memorialisations in film and theatre are exemplary of this turn. They include multiple narratives of the past and reflect on the role of the Securitate files in generating and articulating the memory of the communist past. They reveal the involvement of the Securitate in creating and circulating information during the communist period and afterwards in biographies and life stories, often involving the creation of a ‘double’ designed to replace personal, self-managed life-narratives in the public memory (Müller, 2013). Through a lack of open statements ascribing the artistic productions to a specific memory discourse, the artistic productions analysed here avoid the anti-communist paradigm, which defines communism as an externally imposed ‘criminal’ regime, legitimises the narrative of anti-communism as largely adopted, and therefore, limits in-depth discussions of individual and collective responsibility. By using the files as viable sources, these artistic productions expose the Securitate as an active agent in creating ambiguous and distorted memories in post-communist societies and, furthermore, help audiences reflect on that process.

Facing the communist regimes’ forms of repression and mechanisms of control, people in European countries produced various forms of response. The understanding of both repression and resistance are still fuelling the discussions related to the communist past (Ciobanu, 2021; Koleva, 2019). Studies on Romanian resistance to the communist regime alternatively refer to general concepts such as opposition and dissidence, or they refer to the collective aspect of different resistance acts – armed resistance, protests, riots and so on. Throughout this article, we explore both of these, following both past studies and current debates, adding some additional layers of contemporary understanding based on political theory. The act of resistance is defined by its relationship with the rule it is resisting. Here, this rule can be understood as a ‘structure of institutionalized subordination and super-ordination’ based on which both distribution of goods is managed and expectations of compliance are expressed (Daase and Deitelhoff, 2019: 12). Whether rule is legitimate or illegitimate in nature, resistance to it comes in two forms: opposition and dissidence – each having various forms and degrees, including a transitional component, explaining movement as a response to the changing nature of that rule. In the case of totalitarian regimes, where resistance is especially difficult, opposition is defined as accepting the ruling order and using ‘the institutionalized forms of political involvement to express its dissent’ while dissidence ‘rejects the rules of the order and chooses unconventional forms of organization and articulation to exercise radical critique of rule’ (Daase and Deitelhoff, 2019: 12–13). The resemblances between these two forms of resistance are found in the voicing of dissenting opinion and in formulating political alternatives, while the differences are to be found in whether or not they accept the ‘the applicable rules of political participation and comply with them (opposition) or whether they reject or deliberately violate these rules (dissidence)’ (Daase and Deitelhoff, 2019: 19). The previous studies on resistance in Romania indicate that following the regime which brutally repressed its critics during its first decade, it simply wasn’t possible to establish viable political alternatives. However, we argue that in many cases specific dissent movements or, more often, individual acts articulated some solutions by not fully rejecting the rule of the regime, but by more narrowly improving different aspects of society and politics. Following Daniela Koleva’s (2019) assessment, we propose that not only is the expression of dissent (an action) definitory for it to be considered such, but that there must also be a desire for the act to have an impact – for there to be an acknowledgement of the consequences of the act. We argue that in the Romanian case the Western ‘gaze’ and the acknowledgement of dissent inside and outside the communist regime represented the defining element of the radical critique of the rule associated with dissidence.

In the first part of the article, we use various examples of acts of resistance to argue that, on one hand, during the late communist period, dissidence had a pronounced individual and exceptional character, and that, on the other hand, the memorability of Romanian dissidence is often constructed around symbolic individuals who associated with the anti-communist paradigm and who generated post-communist collective affiliations. Discussing the collective character of dissident acts or its absence during late communism we adopt Barbara J. Falk’s (2003) definition of a collective movement based on the ‘collective effort to build a set of ideas and tactics’ and develop a ‘political theory and strategies for change’ that could ‘lead the struggle against authoritarian communism’ (p. 2). Presenting several examples of acts of dissent, based on their representativeness and the existing literature that discusses these cases and without aiming to an exclusive review, we question the memorability of dissident acts by considering the memory discourse on communism and the involvement of different agents of memory. In a comparative manner we underline the unique features of Mugur Călinescu’s case. In the second part, we reflect on the role played by the Securitate in creating memorability and engage with the memory of Călinescu’s act of dissent, its remediation, and the usage of the Securitate files in the process. We explore how the memory of this local, individual act of dissent performed by an ordinary citizen was created and mediatised in the Romanian public space and further reworked through artistic expressions by analysing two post-millennial productions: a documentary theatre play staged by Gianina Cărbunariu, Uppercase Print (2013), and Radu Jude’s 2020 film of the same title. Both scripts incorporate excerpts from the secret police files, which the actors recite in a neutral tone. In addition, Jude’s film combines these archive-based monologues and dialogues with propagandistic images from the communist times, thus creating an intermedial space of memory where the audience may insert its own understanding and interpretation. We analyse Cărbunariu’s and Jude’s productions based on their inclusion in the larger frame of memory studies and cultural memory analyses, using a close reading approach and employing a comparative and thematic analysis (Pickering, 2008; Till, 2008). A number of interconnected artistic expressions and narratives are identified and discussed. We argue that these productions question mainstream frames of memory by revisiting the narratives and biographies created by the secret police files and give new, artistically mediated voices to victims, perpetrators, and collaborators. We conclude that the artistic remediations of Călinescu’s story increase its memorability on national and international levels and enlarge the narrative of Romanian communism by challenging previous understandings of dissidence, drawing attention to individual acts of resistance performed by ordinary people and engaging with memories as open-ended, dynamic processes that involve different agents and layers.

Romanian dissidence: Opposition, forms of non-compliance and their memorability

Facing the Soviet-influenced communist regimes, various forms of resistance emerged across the East Central European countries, spanning collective movements like those in Poland and Hungary (Falk, 2003, 2011; Shore, 2012), as well as low-profile movements such as Romania’s ‘resistance through culture’, which also has its critics (Andreescu, 2017). In Romania the resistance movement had a more collective and intentional character from the late 1940s to the early 1960s than afterwards, when forms of dissent were rather expressed individually, as the regime suppressed the main organised forms of resistance. Public attention given to the collective resistance movements in post-communist times impacted the main narrative of the past and increased its memorability, while other forms of resistance practised during late communism remained less explored (Petrescu, 2018a: 151). The attention given to the early communist decades corresponds to the narrative of victimisation that is part of anti-communist currents in East Central Europe (Behr et al., 2020) and that has dominated the discourse on the Romanian communist past for a long period of time. (Mitroiu and Gradinaru, 2024). In this part, we review the main forms of dissenting act, indicating different agents of memory which mediate the understanding of the past and create memorability. Hence, we reveal the agents of memory’s focus on symbolic figures who generated past affiliation and continue to do so in the present. In this framework, we interrogate the artistic interest aroused by Călinescu’s case.

The post-communist research reveals a broad understanding of the concept of resistance by revealing its different forms and degrees, ranging from armed resistance in the mountains, peasant riots following the collectivisation process, workers’ unrests and protests to political dissent, resistance through culture, and cultural opposition (Petrescu, 2004a, 2004b, 2018a). The public discourse on the memory of the communist past prioritised the resistance practised during the first decades of the communist regime in the form of anti-communist armed resistance which was a ‘disparate and heterogeneous movement in Romania from 1944 until 1962’ (Ciobanu, 2015: 105). The Securitate brutally suppressed these efforts, killing resistance leaders during mountain fights or in prisons. These resistance groups were formed by former army officers, doctors, lawyers, peasants and students equipped with arms from the Second World War. The ‘defiant struggle in the Carpathian Mountains of small bands of partisans’ supported by peasants from mountain foothills was largely unknown at national and international levels, due to the Securitate’s tactics of ‘preventing information about resistance to the regime’ leaking out to the public (Deletant, 2019: 205). The mountain armed resistance was glorified during the post-1989 transitional years through mass media as being the primary form of challenge to the former regime. Its members were commonly described as ‘heroes, individuals with exceptional or even superhuman qualities who enjoyed widespread support and loyalty within their communities’ (Ciobanu, 2015: 107). The TV documentary Memorialul Durerii (Memorial of Suffering), produced in the early 1990s by Lucia Hossu Longin focused on the patriotism, courage and sacrifice of the armed resistance, while the connections of some of its leaders to interwar, right-wing extremism were ignored. The documentary also had a significant role in creating the dominant ‘romanticised version’ (Ciobanu, 2015: 108) of the armed resistance’s actions. This, alongside the publication of memoir literature and access to the Securitate files, impacted the collective memory and increased the prevalence of the anti-communist resistance, subsequently practised and adopted by a large majority without chronological consideration.

Very few organised and collective resistance movements took shape during the late communist period, and those that did all had two common features. First, they had a regional character, resulting from miners’ and plant workers’ dissatisfaction with their labour and living conditions. Second, they were silenced by the Securitate without being able to grow further at the national level through what could have been other groups’ support. Third, they were triggered by financial constraints such as wage cuts in the context of economic decline and deterioration of working conditions. With few exceptions, these movements chose to express their resistance by proposing peaceful solutions to political problems, as opposed to more unrestful means. For example, the miners’ strike of 1977 in the Jiu Valley posed a significant challenge to the communist regime. However, the Romanian media failed to report on the strike, demonstrating the control exercised by the government over both the media, which became a tool of manipulation, and the information disseminated to the population – a ‘sanitizing of news’ – that proved ‘very effective in containing protest and in inculcating a sense of isolation and frustration among protesters’ (Deletant, 2015: 246). Another example is the January 1979 declaration of the naval yard workers in the Danube port of Turnu Severin militating for the right of free association, which brought severe repercussions to the participants. The same fate met the September 1983 Maramureș miners’ strike, the November 1986 Cluj and Turda workers’ strike, and the February 1987 Iași workers’ protests. Due to a stronger mobilisation of people, compared with previous years, the November 1987 protests in Brașov, the country’s second-largest industrial centre, aroused international media coverage and support, as well as individual acts of support from within the country. The repercussions targeted both the workers and the dissidents who criticised the regime. They were detained or placed under house arrest; such was the case of Doina Cornea, Radu Filipescu, Nelu Prodan and Gabriel Andreescu (Deletant, 2015: 255). The memorability of these acts of dissent that, even if brutally suppressed, generated collective movements, is based on their initial impact at the level of public memory; their stories circulated at the community level and beyond, and after 1989 they were remediated through public narratives and cultural productions, such as Liviu Tofan’s documentary film Brașov 1987. Two Years too Early (2017), based on testimonies from the participants in the events. The November 1987 protests from Brașov are singular in the way in which they were remediated through cultural productions (including a graphic narrative by Mihai Grăjdeanu published in 2017). Looking at the way in which the memorability of this event was constructed in terms of impact, three elements stand out: the larger support showed during the events, from other workers, common people and dissenting intellectuals, the violence with which the regime responded, and the fact that the workers turned the narrow focus of a protest about wage cuts into a wider political dissent, shouting anti-regime slogans for the first time (Deletant, 2006: 89). The clear anti-communist character increased the memorability of this event and its correspondence with the anti-communist paradigm that long dominated the discourse of memory played a significant role in its remediation and recirculation.

The ‘resistance through culture’ as a form of dissidence is mainly discussed by the Romanian intellectuals in response to critics who deride the lack of collective forms of intellectual opposition, which was associated with Romanian intellectuals’ responses to the communist regime’s attempts to control the cultural sphere. Only a few writers dared to protest against censorship and the regime, or to support those who defied the regime (Culic, 1999: 62), with a majority of intellectuals apparently compliant with the regime and distancing themselves from the few who expressed any opposition. This ‘resistance through culture’ was a form of non-conformism to the regime’s directives in the cultural landscape – confronting language, challenging topics in literature and so on. Despite the differences between non-conformist and dissent actions, a retroactive interpretation of their acts of dissent from the intellectuals’ part, brought into discussion the question of writers who used their works to indirectly oppose the party by refusing to adopt the official language of the regime (Liiceanu and Müller, 2011). Intellectuals’ acts of dissent – public acts, challenging the regime and operating outside the system – were rather exceptional and individually performed, while the resistance through culture was a ‘discreet stance’ (Deletant, 2006: 90). Most Romanian writers ‘failed to oppose censorship, and were deeply marked by it’ (Deletant, 2008: 161), and a ‘certain complicity, a tacit pact made so that one would be able to write’ (Culic, 1999: 64) was practised. However, the memorability of the ‘resistance through culture’ was largely publicised by its supporters during the post-communist period and in some cases, it was associated with the Păltiniș group, formed during the last communist decades by several young intellectuals around the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica (Dronsfield, 2023; Verdery, 1991: 256–301). Some public contestations of the ‘resistance through culture’, manifested as acts of creating memorability for alternative narratives of the past and had, as main agents, intellectuals and writers and members of different minorities who were largely and systematically targeted by Securitate. Such is the case of Herta Mülle, an associate of the members of the Aktionsgruppe Banat, a group of ethnic German writers that included Richard Wagner, Ernest Wichner, William Totok, Johann Lippet, Gerhard Ortinau and Rolf Bossert. These writers did not directly criticise the regime and its practices, although the group posed serious difficulties for the regime due to its refusal to embrace the official ideology, its increasing visibility, its ‘ethno-cultural origin, its literary program and its left-oriented vision’ (Glajar and Brandt, 2013; Petrescu, 2015). The constant terror inflicted upon the group traumatised its members and even caused the death of some of them (Rolf Bossert and Roland Kirsch).

If ‘resistance through culture’ is considered part of the memory discourse of communism or even a ‘cornerstone of the dominant narrative on Romanian communism’ (Petrescu, 2018a: 152), the definition of cultural opposition includes a wide range of cultural activities and independent thinking that conflicted with the ideas and values imposed by the regime – activities that were materially or digitally preserved (Petrescu, 2018a: 153). The cultural opposition gained more visibility in the discussion related to the resistance during the last decade of the communist regime. It is strongly associated with the young artists of the 1980s who attempted to create new representational strategies to depict a ‘heterogenous, fragmentary, and plural world’ (Cornis-Pope and Neubauer, 2004: 44), with various acts showing individuals’ critical, alternative, and independent ways of thinking in relation to the ideas and values imposed by the regime (Petrescu, 2018a). Such resistance was manifested through film, theatre, and, most importantly, literature (Modreanu, 2020; Virginás, 2021). Several subcultures that were created to circumvent the regime’s control proved to be fertile terrain for various forms of subversion. For example, music performances became (symbolic) sites of resistance (Mogoș and Berkers, 2018: 56–57). While resistance acts resulted mainly from informal manifestations expressed through individuals’ behaviour (rather than from direct and explicit forms of opposition to the regime’s control and cultural codes), youth subcultures ‘offered a more collective (intentional) type of dissent’ (Mogoș and Berkers, 2018: 70) and were connected to common musical interests and shared ideas. The resistance acts were also explored in the world of filmmakers, and the individual character of resistance was again identified as dominating the scene (Virginás, 2021). The same conclusions extend to the satirical student groups that emerged in what was to be the last decade of communism. They acted as ‘artistic brigades’, participated in various youth festivals and television shows, and manifested a collective feeling of solidarity and even resistance against the regime (Runcan, 2021). Student subcultures eventually produced a frame for acts of resistance, as was the case with the literary group formed around a student magazine, ‘Dialog’, at the University of Iași (Mironescu, 2021). Overall, despite their lack of success in inspiring wider resistance movements, anti-communist student and youth subcultures demonstrate how younger generations provided a voice to collective discontent and created alternative spaces for social dialogue. The memory of these acts circulated in the public space through the stories and narratives of those who were part of these groups and subcultures.

Even if they failed to gather extensive support from other writers or generate collective dissident movements, individual acts of dissent were manifested during late communism, despite the regime’s control and intimidation tactics. Literary writings and open letters were the main channels through which Romanian dissidents tried to challenge the regime. For instance, Paul Goma managed to draw Western attention to his act of dissent during the 1970s. His book Gherla, recounting the time spent in prison in 1956 on charges of preparing an anti-communist movement, was denied publication in Romania, but appeared in French translation in 1976. In 1977, he wrote a letter of support for Charter 77 and its signatories in Czechoslovakia. Failing to attract support among his friends, Goma decided to write an open letter to Nicolae Ceaușescu, the leader of the Communist Party and ruler of the country, inviting him to sign this letter of support (Petrescu, 2019a, 2019b). Goma’s protest that ‘subsequently attracted the signatures of over 200 Romanian citizens (. . .) was the first publicly disseminated criticism of the regime within Romania since the imposition of Communist rule’ (Deletant, 2015: 239). The Department of State Security carried out a large campaign of intimidation and harassment against Goma, the other signatories and against their families. He and his family were allowed to leave Romania on 20 November 1977, although the long arm of Securitate tried to reach him abroad, and, even if it failed, various measures were taken against him, such as the parcel bomb that was sent to him from Madrid in February 1981. His actions were widely publicised and, as a result, Goma occupies a significant place in the public representations of the dissidence associated with late communism. The memorability of his publicly assumed critical attitude towards the communist regime, and Ceaușescu personally, was rapidly consolidated after 1989. Goma’s dissidence was remembered publicly, and the author was directly involved in creating memorability for his own acts of dissent, through interviews, articles, and the publication of his autobiographical works. The literary community, alongside the mass media, acted in preserving and transmitting the memory of his resistance, while his anti-Semitic remarks (such as those included in his book Red Week June 26-July 1940 or Bessarabia and the Jews) and his ‘selective Holocaust denial’ (not denying the Holocaust as such, but the Romanian involvement in it) cast a shadow on his public persona (Shafir, 2008).

Another example is that of Doina Cornea, former university lecturer of French Literature at Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. She became a symbolic figure of Romanian dissidence and of the Romanian people’s hopes for democracy immediately after the 1989 events (Petrescu and Pintilescu, 2019a, 2019b). In 1982 she sent her first letter to Radio Free Europe (RFE) in which she deplored the Romanians’ perversion of conscience that led to the replacement of moral values with material ones. It is an interesting observation that in a period of severe shortage and economic crisis in Romania, she used the loss of moral values to demonstrate the Romanians’ struggles under communist regime. The fact also illustrates the existence of various forms of resistance. The content of the letters she wrote afterwards shows changes in terms of greater political engagement in contesting the regime. Her letters and writings were read out on RFE in 1984, 1985 and 1986 and she was the only one to show open support for all those who took a stance against the regime despite the personal significant repercussions that followed. In August 1987 she began to address open letters to Nicolae Ceaușescu that took great efforts to smuggle out of the country and have read on RFE. In her letters she demanded reforms and directly blamed Ceaușescu for the disastrous situation in Romania. In 1988 her third open letter was signed by twenty-seven teachers, writers and workers, marking a rare example of collective dissident protest (Deletant, 2015: 268). After 1989 she was seen as a guardian of the democratic values. The former communist nomenklatura, part of the post-1989 political class, perceived her as a threat; she was targeted by politically controlled disinformation media campaigns that tried to diminish her influence during the transition period. Different interviews with her were broadcast over the years, including an episode of the Memorial of Suffering, keeping her memory alive. She died in 2018, and in 2020 the Cluj City Hall announced its plan to transform her former home into a memorial house.

In March 1989, the BBC broadcast ‘letter of the six’ written by former senior party officials (Gheorghe Apostol, Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Corneliu Mănescu, Constantin Pârvulescu, Grigore Ion Răceanu and Silviu Brucan). In this collective act of resistance, the authors, all sharing a common view, publicly criticised the policy of Nicolae Ceauşescu, the supreme party leader, denounced him for disregarding the rule of law, offered examples of illegal actions, and referred to human right violations and economic problems, accusing him of being solely culpable for the situation as whole. Even if amply commented upon in the Western media, the letter did not impact Romanian society or inspire other party officials or other dissenting intellectuals to join the effort, mainly because the authors were considered to represent the communist party (Petrescu, 2004a).

The memorability of acts of dissent is mainly generated by the memory discourse on communism and largely corresponds to ‘the canon of remembering the recent national past’ (Petrescu, 2018a: 151), and it also involves a larger variety of agents of memory – mass media, families, and non-governmental organisations playing a significant role. The memorability of acts of dissent is further reproduced in various institutional, educational, and cultural frames targeting different audiences. The ‘memorial museums’ (Williams, 2007), such as the Sighet Communist Victims and Resistance Memorial founded in 1992 and the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes established in 2009, have played a significant part through their research and educational programmes in increasing the memorability of specific acts. The transitional justice process also impacted the memory of communism, and different acts of remembrance and public commemoration increased the memorability of several acts of dissent (Iacob, 2015; Petrescu, 2020; Șerban and Ciobanu, 2020; Stan, 2012; Tismăneanu, 2015). Mass media also acted as an agent of memory through its involvement in outlining and circulating portraits of exceptional individuals who opposed the regime.

However, besides mass media, the memorability of some specific acts of dissent was constructed by the dissidents’ relatives in their struggle for justice, who also enjoyed the support of members of the civic society. Such is the case of Gheorghe Ursu, a construction engineer who specialised in seismic risks, a poet and an intellectual who corresponded with critics of Romania’s communist regime abroad (Petrescu, 2018b). The Securitate began targeting him after he criticised Ceaușescu’s response to the 1977 earthquake that killed more than 1500 people in southern Romania. Ursu was part of the team of experts assigned to assess and repair buildings that had been damaged by the quake, and he witnessed the stopping of the reconstruction work, politically motivated by the necessity to focus on the People’s House – a megalomaniacal architectural project in Bucharest that now houses Romania’s parliament. Ursu wrote several letters that were read on the air by RFE. Following his actions, his diary-like registry including entries expressing his criticisms against the regime was confiscated. The Securitate also accused him of illegally possessing foreign currency after its agents found 15 US dollars and 10 Deutsche Marks at his home. He was arrested in September 1985. Repeatedly beaten, he died in prison less than 2 months after his arrest. His family fought to bring those guilty to justice, a process still unfolding more than 30 years after Ursu’s death (Synovitz, 2020). His story was included in the Memorial of Suffering and is the subject of the film Babu – The Gheorghe Ursu Case (1995) directed by Cornel Mihalache that features recordings of Ursu’s voice, his family’s and friends’ recollections, and documents, as well as an interview with one of his abusers, Marian Clita, who signed an agreement with the Securitate and was instructed how to beat and torture Ursu. Clita was condemned in 2000 for this crime, but Ursu’s family fought to bring to justice those who coordinated the entire action. The film was also aired in Sibiu during the events celebrating the city’s selection as the year’s European Capital of Culture in 2007 and by Romanian National Television (RNT) in 2020.

To summarise, the memorability of the acts of dissent associated with the late communist period is the result of the interplay between different agents of memory, including those who supported and promoted the anti-communist paradigm and the former nomenklatura who dominated the political arena in the first post-communist decade. The private mobilisation of personal and family memories as well as specific individual efforts for justice supplement and increase the memorability of dissidents and their past actions. In recent years, various agents of memory have continued to mobilise collective and individual memories and different transnational research projects, such as COURAGE – Cultural Opposition: Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries (http://cultural-opposition.eu) and NEP4DISSENT – New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent (https://nep4dissent.eu), have further helped generate a manifold representation of European and Romanian dissidence. The ongoing research in Romania and beyond can supplement and nuance the understanding of resistance and the character of its dissent, while different agents, such as memorial museums, civic society, alongside mass media and family and relatives, can round off, compete with, or even challenge dominant memory discourses.

Artistic and visual representations have played a significant part in increasing the memorability of acts of dissent, such as the Memorial of Suffering TV series and other films and documentaries using archival documents and interviews with the regime’s victims, their family members and even their perpetrators. However, in Mugur Călinescu’s case, which we will focus on in the following part, the remediation practices of artistic productions challenge the canonical representations of dissidence built around well-known figures who already impacted collective memory of resistance. They increase the understanding of acts of dissent through the use of debatable and challenging sources, such as the Securitate files, and play a critical role in creating memorability for individuals who, due to their lack of visibility, have not generated large support and affiliation.

Securitate files and artistic reworkings

The secret police files in all East Central European communist regimes offer an extensive archive of dissidents and their acts. However, its usage as the main source to document the past is unreliable. The lustration process in the former Eastern Bloc countries knew different variations (Stan, 2009), while the former communist secret services made attempts to cover their tracks by destroying some of their documents. For example, East German Stasi destroyed some files in 1989, which are now in the process of being recovered with the reconstruction software, ePuzzler, while the Romanian Service of Information, the successor to the Romanian Securitate, destroyed files in 1991, a process uncovered by journalists (Glajar et al., 2019). Pursuant to Romanian Law 187/1999, Romanians are granted access to Securitate files pertaining to them and to similarly pertinent official documents in the National Archive. Law 293/2008 then provides further clarification to allow for the activities of the National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives. The opening of the secret files created valuable resource for researchers to compile an accurate historical picture of the communist regime, its perpetrators and its victims. However, it also opened the door for various misuses of such information, for political purposes (Verdery, 2014: 72–74), or to publicly shame former collaborators. Such agenda-driven misuses also had the effect of reducing the apparent accountability of proven, individual collaborators, scapegoating particular public figures for disproportionate condemnation instead (Ursachi, 2015). Access to the Securitate files allowed an extensive search to identify former political police agents and informers in the context of transitional justice (Stan, 2004) and in the larger context of finding secret police agents and spies from the Cold War period (Apor et al., 2017; Glajar et al., 2019). In addition, it facilitated a better understanding of the mechanisms of coercion and manipulation that secured people’s collaboration. The Securitate files show citizens’ willingness ‘to collude in authoritarian systems of power’ (Lewis et al., 2016: 7). Access to the Securitate files challenged many of the general assumptions regarding the collaboration of different categories of people. For example, the Romanian Orthodox Church, enjoying a high level of societal confidence during the communist period and afterwards, made significant efforts to stop further investigations after the public exposure of names of priests and prelates who disclosed information obtained during confession (Stan and Turcescu, 2005). Other studies further analyse the Securitate’s collaborative efforts to control religious freedoms (Cindrea-Nagy, 2022; Pintilescu, 2022; Șincan, 2022; Turcescu and Stan, 2021). Examination of the Securitate files has resulted in a significant body of research into the mechanisms of control employed by the Russian communist regime and a deeper understanding of the role the Securitate played in that context (Deletant, 2015; Puttkamer et al., 2014) – research which details the Securitate’s surveillance of literature, performative arts and music (Mogoș and Berkers, 2018; Preda, 2021). Through a close reading of the Securitate files on writers and artists, these studies reveal much about the regime’s ideology and their surveillance of the cultural landscape, identifying targets thought to have the potential to communicate subversive content hostile to the regime – targets to be monitored and, if necessary, subjected to various intimidation tactics. They show that the relationships between the Securitate and those people it targeted were varied and complex, telling stories of collaboration, duplicity and resistance. Perhaps relatedly, they show the lack of public consensus on how precisely to define a Securitate collaborator, despite the normative legislation (Petrescu, 2017). The case studies of well-known intellectual figures show that the information gathered from the Securitate files corroborated a public appetite for scapegoats – an appetite which hindered reconciliation with the communist past. They also revealed significant conflicts between the post-communist images of anti-communist heroes and those images of them in their Securitate files, where some of them were labelled as collaborators (Petrescu, 2017). Several studies focused on the language used by the Securitate officers in writing the interrogatories and biographies of those surveilled (Plamadeala and Tileaga, 2022), further revealing the complexity involved in the processes of surveillance, biography writing and file assembly. The studies show that the ‘extensive biography of the suspect’, had the power to ‘radically alter the course of that life, and even to put a full stop to it’ (Vătulescu, 2010: 13) with such files including private items, correspondences, personal writings and diary pages (Lewis et al., 2016). An ample analysis was made concerning the construction of Securitate files targeting well-known and highly esteemed intellectuals, like Herta Müller (Glajar, 2023). The analysis also documented the responses of certain targeted individuals to reading their own files. Bujor Nedelcovici, Dorin Tudoran, Katherine Verdery and Müller wrote fascinating works detailing this process (Müller, 2013; Nedelcovici, 2003; Tudoran, 2010 (2005); Verdery, 2018) which further aroused the researchers’ interest in this topic (Glajar, 2018; Poenaru, 2023). Other studies explored different areas controlled during the communist regime, such as sports, where the regime acted to stop the defection of athletes from Romania, as they were considered a symbol of the state (Golban, 2022; Petracovschi and Chin, 2021). Studies looked also at the afterlives of the Securitate archives (Stan and Tismaneanu, 2021) and at the current representation of the Securitate in the Romanian society and its usage in populist rhetoric (Chiruta, 2020).

Public access to the Securitate files impacted and shaped the memory of communism in different ways, individually and collectively. For example, it demonstrated that the Romanian communist regime fostered collaboration on an extensive scale. The Securitate recruited informers as part of its surveillance strategy, with the number of those monitored surpassing a million people by 1989 (Stan, 2013: 69). The data shows that the number of collaborators doubled from 1968 to 1989 (Lewis et al., 2016: 3–4) and even included high school students, as was the case with Călinescu’s colleagues. The access to the Securitate files also generated artistic and critical forms of memorability and thus contributed to the memorialisation of the past in post-communist times. In our research, we adopt the idea that the performance ‘can draw on the attributes we assign to both history and memory to encourage a critical attitude toward the past’ (Cornish, 2015: 67). Other European artists used and questioned the secret police archives in their works. For example, the Stasi archive was a focus for projects coordinated by performance collectives such as Rimini Protokoll (Cornish, 2015; Garde, 2016), which proposed to educate audiences ‘through alienating visual, aural, and tactile experiences that recreate an uncomfortable and still unresolved past’ (Lewis et al., 2016: 15). In this part of the article we question how artistic productions re-enact the past using the Securitate files as their main source. Is the role of the Securitate as an agent of memory creating the narrative of the communist past played out in these productions? And how is the memorability of individual acts of dissent performed by ordinary people created and remediated through artistic expressions? In our analysis we closely follow the question of transmissibility and that of remediation, by discussing the transition from archive to theatre and film and how they impact the audiences targeted.

A few months after Ceaușescu’s working visit to Botoșani county in 1981, subversive slogans appeared on the city walls. For more than a month, these slogans remained, demanding food, freedom, respect for human rights and solidarity among citizens. Consequently, there was a general surveillance of individuals suspected of dissident acts, along with the verification of those who listened to RFE and the gathering of graphological evidence. These practices continued without substantial results until high school student Mugur Călinescu was arrested while writing his last documented slogan with chalk and in uppercase characters: ‘WE WANT JUSTICE AND FREEDOM’. He came from a working-class family with no history of dissidence, a fact that surprised the authorities and raised questions surrounding Mugur’s motivations and agency. In the play and in the film discussed here, the teenager’s mother suggested a possible justification for his actions, which was also to be found in the Securitate file. Namely, the influence of RFE broadcasts. During the investigation, however, Călinescu maintained his dissenting attitude, arguing that he had had the opportunity to check the information spread by RFE regarding the Romanian communist regime for himself, in his local community, and found the information to be true. Furthermore, in private conversations with family members, taped by the Securitate and incorporated in their files, Călinescu insistently reaffirmed his agency, explaining that he was motivated to give a voice to latent collective discontents and create solidarity at the community level.

The two files opened in the case, ‘The Fence’ (regarding the anonymous act of writing anti-regime slogans) and ‘The Pupil’ (regarding Călinescu himself), include various depositions and documents, as well as Călinescu’s testimony and descriptions of his family members and friends. In addition, the Securitate attempted to create ‘the extensive biography of the suspect’ (Vătulescu, 2010: 13), with the help of collaborators, some of which were his schoolmates. Since an autobiographical account was usually included in the file, by signing the documents created by the political police apparatus, the subject confirmed and accepted this narrative of his life (Lewis et al., 2016). In the absence of any personal notes, Călinescu’s statement to the investigator and his filed autobiography are the only documents ‘in the first person’ we have from the young protester. The Securitate’s process of writing and making official biographies was in part made possible in light of the fact that information regarding acts of dissent was not publicly circulated and mediated. The creation and spreading of false narratives were possible in this space because information was controlled by the Securitate and alternative channels of communication were underdeveloped. This fact was utilised to great effect in maintaining the isolation of those who dared contest the regime.

Due to his young age, in Călinescu’s case, the surveillance proved immensely damaging and had lasting effects on his relationships with his family and peers, excluding him from any form of external support. His residence was put under permanent surveillance, and the Securitate officers interrogated and intimidated his parents, neighbours and schoolmates, while the declarations given during official interrogatories and informal discussions were used to create an atmosphere of mutual suspicion between all the persons targeted by the enquiry. Also, a symbolic trial was organised at his school, with the participation of Securitate agents and local political representatives, where Călinescu was openly disavowed by his teachers and schoolmates for his acts of dissent. Because of Călinescu’s marginal position in the local community and the repressive measures taken against him, until 1989, knowledge of his actions remained at a local, informal, underground level, manifested only through hearsay and family narratives. ‘The Pupil’ file was closed after 10 months, even though the Securitate officers continued to summon Călinescu to different meetings, unsuccessfully attempting to transform him into one of their collaborators. His death 3 years later aroused people’s suspicions regarding the involvement of the Securitate, with speculations emerging that he was slowly poisoned by them.

Following an episode of the Memorial of Suffering dedicated to the surveillance of pupils and students, playwright and theatre director Gianina Cărbunariu created and staged a play entitled Uppercase Print in 2013, based on excerpts from Călinescu’s Securitate files and interviews with three of the agents involved in the investigation, conducted by historians, Mihail Bumbeș and Mihai Burcea. Cărbunariu (b. 1977) is part of the millennial generation of artists, whose members have tended to show a keen interest in the recent past, focusing on microhistories, socially relevant intersectional stories and archive-based documentary work. She practises an ‘artistic activism’ through journalistic and documentary work, innovative and collaborative stage work and the creation of independent theatre collectives (Modreanu, 2013: 386). Millennial artists and writers enacted a turn to the social and political in theatre, cinema and, to a lesser extent, in literature, bringing a special attentiveness to archives and Securitate files – an interest that may be seen as generational and transnational, given the fact that it spans the contemporary artistic fields throughout the East Central European space (Vătulescu, 2010).

In 2020, Cărbunariu and film director Radu Jude co-wrote a film adaptation of the play – the production being distributed through the HBO network. Although a relative latecomer to the New Romanian Wave of cinematography, Jude (b. 1977) quickly became one of its most prominent representatives. His interest in documents, history and collective memory marked an archival turn not only in his own filmography but also in contemporary Romanian cinema where the harsh realism of the 2000s gave way to a more historiographic and reflective artistic perspective. Starting with The Dead Nation (2017) and continuing with The Exit of the Trains (2020) and Memories from the Eastern Front (2022), Jude’s interest in the re-medialisations of historical documents has informed a series of critical takes on the failures of critical memory in present-day Romania.

The two artistic products were followed by discussions and debates with various audiences, both domestic and international, raising questions of how the secret police documents, the stories they tell and the biographies they create can be interpreted and integrated into contemporary narratives of memory. Without eluding the topic of memory, critics focus primarily on the devices and techniques employed and the effects they produced (Cîntec, 2017; Gorzo and Lazăr, 2022; Petho, 2022). The public interest demonstrates the societal impact of documentary theatre and film produced by millennial artists targeting sensitive issues from the national past and at the same time, it allows us to speak about the two productions in the frame of cultural memory, seeing them as instances of what is called memory theatre and memory film.

The play Uppercase Print was conceived within the transnational project Parallel Lives – 20th Century Through the Eyes of Secret Police, developed between 2013 and 2015 and which involved artists from six East Central European countries who created documentary theatre productions based on research concerning the secret police archives (Divadelná Nitra Association, 2013). Cărbunariu’s play was staged 48 times between 2013 and 2015, both in Romania and in the East European countries involved in the project, and is currently in the repertoire of the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest. The production is staged in a studio theatre, with the audience seated close to a generally unlit stage dominated by a vast screen that displays pages from Călinescu’s file. Five actors take turns playing multiple characters (Mugur Călinescu, the Securitate agents, the informants, Călinescu’s parents, schoolteachers, and colleagues) who read extracts from the file ‘The Pupil’ – this was a method Cărbunariu previously employed in her play X mm out of Y km (2011), based on the Securitate file of Romanian writer and dissident Dorin Tudoran, which was published in an early version of the play and annotated by the author (Tudoran, 2010 (2005)). The space is filled with intense multimedia stimuli, including intermittent spotlighting of the actors and the audience, loud, violent bangs punctuating abrupt changes of scenery, auditory illustrations including abstracts from Ceaușescu’s speeches, jingles from TV shows and RFE broadcasts, static noise from the listening devices of the Securitate and a haunting fragment from Queen’s 1981 hit song ‘Under Pressure’. These effects create an intense sensory and participatory experience for the audience, which is further reinforced by how the actors’ bodies are made to engage with the Securitate documents aggressively projected onto themselves. The struggle between the individual and the official document, as well as between the body and the written text, highlights the attempts of the Securitate to imprint its own narratives onto people’s lives while it simultaneously showcases individuals’ efforts to resist them. In the play’s most climactic scene, the actor playing Călinescu repeatedly falls centre-stage on a mattress to the hammer-like bang that is audible throughout the play, which increasingly resembles the metal door of a cell being slammed shut. This act of self-violence is meant to symbolise the invisible violence done to the young man in the course of the years-long encounters with Securitate agents, either in the form of a gnawing demoralisation, wearing him down, or in the form of the equally untraceable poison that Călinescu’s mother accused them of having killed him with. At the same time, the accompanying bang resounds loudly in the ears of the audience members, making them perceive in a more immediate way this act of violence.

We argue that in terms of artistic expressions the play provides a multi-sensorial experience that creates a participatory scene for the audience. The tension is also created at the narrative level by leveraging themes that are recurrent in the collective memory and dominant narratives of the communist past, such as the opposition between the individual and the Securitate, the continuous struggle to resist the pressure of the repressive apparatus, the violence inflicted upon by the regime and the extensive control over the public and private sphere of a person’s life. All these themes resonate with the audience’s previous knowledge regarding the communist past, based both on the main narratives dominating the public memory discourse and with the previous visual representations of the communist past, such as the television series The Memorial of Suffering, the documentary film Babu – The Gheorghe Ursu Case (Sorin Mihalache, 1995) or the documentary Cold Waves (Alexandru Solomon, 2007). The Securitate files are used as the main documentary resource and the role of the Securitate as an agent of memory is openly presented in Cărbunariu’s re-enactment of Călinescu’s act of dissent. However, the narrative created by the Securitate is aesthetically challenged in a multi-sensorial framework that empowers the audience to spot the many flaws of this narrative and its artificial nature – one based on manipulation and violence.

Although based on the same script with only some adjustments, Jude’s film, as the director insistently declared in interviews (Emerzael, 2020), makes every effort to maintain a neutral perspective concerning the Securitate documents. Uppercase Print is presented as a ‘theatrical’ and meta-referential film, the set of which is organised like a rotating theatre stage divided into several sections, each with its own minimalist décor. As in the play, the main ‘narrator’ is the Securitate officer responsible for the investigation, a reminder to the audience that what they are hearing is the officially sanctioned version of the facts. However, by using the rotating theatre scene as a film set, Jude gives voice to multiple narrators, each reciting the statement they have given during the investigation. The opening sequence is a segment from the RNT archive that never made it to broadcast, showing two men and a woman reciting a patriotic poem until they suddenly stop talking and wait awkwardly without changing pose, until one of them exclaims: ‘There’s no text. No text on the teleprompter’. In the film, actors read the script, trying to leave aside any change in affect or tone, irrespective of the inherent emotionality of the events described in the secret police’s documents. Like the original play, the film progresses chronologically, following the order of events presented in Călinescu’s Securitate files. However, Jude’s use of contrasting archival footage periodically interrupts the main narrative. Unlike the play, Jude’s film chooses to portray Călinescu in a more realistic manner by using a non-professional actor, who at the moment of shooting was a student at the same high school Mugur had attended, dressed in clothes resembling those of the communist era, but directs him to refrain from expressing any bodily emotion while reciting the script. The strangely detached performance is used to assess an unfathomable historical situation, signalling the possible refusal of the character to emotionally recognise and validate a text he did not author – a text authored by the Securitate on his behalf.

In addition to the Securitate files, Jude incorporates images and video recordings from the RNT archive. The RNT footage explores a diversity of social experiences and issues of the time, concerning everyday life, entertainment, consumption, and youth culture, as well as the enforced rationing of energy, policing of private life and Ceaușescu’s cult of personality. These images are generally propagandistic, though not always, which gives the film a complex critical dimension. Through the 1980s, RNT was used to propagate an ideologically constructed, descriptive type of narrative of the regime and of citizens’ lives that had little in common with the reality of substantial economic decline and the general oppression of dissent. Furthermore, different strategies and visual codes, such as the centrality of Ceaușescu in the frame, depersonalisation of the masses and the spotlight on the banners were used during live transmissions (Mustata, 2013: 110). Pre-screening control sessions were held for all the materials to be broadcast; however, brute materials were also archived and Jude does not abstain from using those in his film. The images and materials included in Jude’s production are not meant to re-enact the atmosphere of the last decade of the Ceașescu regime, but rather they indicate the permeability and interplay between memory strata.

The succession and combination of images from the RNT archive, Securitate files, and the actors’ interpretations of the depositions that were included in those files have an impact on the audience’s attention, revealing to them the aesthetic process of constructing Călinescu’s story. This intermedial interplay points to the co-existence of different strata of memory and memory agents and to the way in which they impact and affect the memorability of past events. It also reveals the gaps between different layers of memory, allowing the spectators the possibility to insert their own reflections into the narrative and aesthetic construction. The way in which Jude aesthetically represents this specific individual act of dissent results from the usage of multiple archives of memory – archives that challenge each other’s validity. Therefore, the aesthetic tension is not, in this case, created between the regime represented by the Securitate files and the individual act of dissent but between different memory archives through which contradictory versions of the past are re-enacted. The act of dissent is instrumentalised and the audience is facing the web of manipulations and control in which the ordinary people’s lives were caught.

The memorability is constructed in contrasting ways in these two artistic productions. As Rigney has underlined, the key word in this context is transmissibility, which involves creating transmissible experiences through creative means (Rigney, 2021). Equally important is the medium of circulation of such experiences (Erll and Rigney, 2009), as well as the profile of the targeted audiences. Therefore, in analysing the transmissibility of past experience, besides the remediation through artistic expressions – usage of multi-sensory environment and of multiple archives of memory – we need to look at the audience targeted by the two productions. In Cărbunariu’s play, transmissibility is based on a type of memorability that addresses, first and foremost, the younger generations born after 1989 – those with no personal memories of the socialist times. The fact that the play was often staged at festivals directed at younger audiences reinforces this connection. Empathy with the main character is constructed by purposefully selecting seemingly anodyne sentences from the Securitate file which evoke the young age of the dissident: ‘The Objective does his homework. The Objective listens to music. The Objective watches movies with his mother’. But empathy is also fuelled through decontextualising techniques that erase the time and space of the character’s actions: in the play, Călinescu is a hooded teenager creeping at night and writing forbidden slogans on walls, just like a contemporary graffiti artist sneaking through alleyways away from the police to make his art.

Cărbunariu’s play engages in a much more direct and sensory way with the audience and aims at generating an emotionally powerful and immediate impact, through many correlations with the memory of the communist past and the way in which it was already aesthetically mediated. Though the play is a work of documentary theatre, it employs theatrical effects not traditionally associated with the genre, which are not designed to enhance the dramatic effect, but to test the limits of a document and the limits of theatre itself (Cărbunariu and Jude, 2020). In addition, moments of high tension alternate with others in a more ironic way, either openly or subversively – a fact which provokes the audience’s laughter and releases its bottled-up emotions.

As for the addressability, Jude’s film targets a different type of public. Given that it had its premiere at the Berlinale and afterwards it was distributed by HBO, the film is made accessible, at least in theory, to a broader audience, both national and international. However, the film’s aesthetic structure contradicts the idea of easy access. The director opts for a collage or montage type of representation that deliberately lacks a climactic moment and instead relies on the tension between the scenes enacting Călinescu’s story and the archival propaganda images that are interspersed. To perceive this tension, however, the spectator must possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of Romanian communism, either from personal or family experience, or from (self-)education. Some critics also observed that using archival images of children and youth from the late communist period may have a boomerang effect on spectators who share the same childhood memories, where instead of having a critical reaction to the images they may develop feelings of nostalgia (Ferenc-Flatz, 2020). Still, by rendering visible the contradictions between the different archives it relies upon, the film overcomes a unidirectional reading of its aesthetics and message.

When enacted in artistic products, memorability relies on both poles of the aesthetic relation – those of authorial intention and audience response. Despite its increased potential for transmissibility, paradoxically, Jude’s film has a lower potential for creating memorability, since the neutrality-driven perspective of the film does not encourage the empathic engagement of the spectator with Călinescu and his acts of dissent, especially in a framework based on empathy with the victims and heroes of the past (from an inter- and pluri-medial perspective). Furthermore, the intra-medial space constructed by alternating Călinescu’s story and the RNT archive images may not trigger the expected reaction due to the spectator’s difficulty in properly decoding their message, especially if they lack knowledge of twentieth-century Romanian and East European history. Those are the reasons why the way in which the film affects a domestic and regional audience and a non-European, more remote one, may differ widely, both in terms of deciphering the (un)familiar codes of the communist repressive apparatus and propaganda and in terms of prompting affiliative aesthetic experiences.

Conclusion

Both artistic productions end with an epilogue giving voice to three of the Securitate agents involved in Călinescu’s case, based on excerpts from interviews that they gave to two Romanian historians in the 2000s. A self-critical positioning is not to be found in these interviews, as those subjects decisively fail to assume responsibility for their actions. However, through the act of giving voice to perpetrators along with their former victims and recognising the Securitate’s role as agents of memory, the artistic productions allow and invite the audience to assume a critical position. In Transitional Justice, Lavinia Stan (2013) writes: ‘[O]nce a state opens the files, the reconstruction of the past belongs not only to historians, but also to those who lived through times of repression’ (p. 60). The artistic productions move the discussion of the individual search and reconstruction of the past forward by performing ‘the biography’ of specific people as it was documented and written by the Securitate officers. The contrasting individual experiences of communist repression are given, in Cărbunariu’s play and Jude’s film, new forms of expression through artistic remediations. They are, thus, rendered accessible to those having limited knowledge of the Securitate archives or those who are unaware of the diversity and the manifold nature of dissidence, as well as of the interplay between different agents and layers of memory. The artistic expressions through which Călinescu’s story has been retold to a larger audience, nationally and internationally, challenges the dominant narrative of Romanian communism by including in its structure previously unknown or neglected acts of dissent performed by individuals whose voices were silenced until 1989 or even afterwards. These are voices of ordinary people with limited or non-existent impact at the societal level during the communist regime – they would be forgotten were it not for their families’ sustained efforts and/or for their Securitate files and their artistic afterlives. In these cases, the Securitate files become the main source to publicly attest and validate their acts of dissent. Responding to our first research question, we conclude that what is brought to life or re-discussed, and in this way (re)circulated, are those elements (stories and acts of dissent) that largely correspond to the main paradigm of memory dominating the process of coming to terms with the past. On one hand, Călinescu’s story corresponds to the anti-communist paradigm, demonstrating the large resistance of the Romanian population. On the other hand, through its marginal position, his story did not significantly impact the collective memory and remained largely silenced. The artistic productions analysed here challenge the canonical image of dissidence and forge space for this particular story in the post-communist memory landscape. Without adopting the anti-communist paradigm through a moral stance, validated aesthetically and narratively, the two artistic productions discuss ordinary people’s acts of dissent, as well as the silence and lack of social support that surrounded these acts. Furthermore, they aesthetically remediate the Securitate files and the biographical narratives they construct to articulate and reflect upon the ambiguous and distorted character of memory in post-communist societies. The ways in which the audience interacts with, and participates in, the story created through multi-sensorial and multi-archival, artistically mediated environments, remain to be further explored, as do the ways in which the role of the Securitate as an agent of memory will continue to be recognised and validated. While the two theatre and film productions discussed in this article offer a creative zone where the audience could insert their own memories and interpretations, it is the spectator’s role that is critical in transforming this space into an arena of empathy and critical memory.