July Theses - Impact

Impact

Especially after the Writers' Congress of 1968, Party leaders started to clash with writers; earlier that year Ceauşescu had announced: "the freedom of the individual is not in contradiction with the general demands and interests of society but, on the contrary, serves these interests". Ceauşescu managed to co-opt numerous intellectuals (many of them formerly apolitical or even oppositionist) and bring them into the Party after condemning the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, but still the Party began to intensify the struggle among writers as a group and between them and the Party. In 1970, awards of literary prizes brought the Party leadership into open conflict with the Writers' Union. This determined the Party to recover the privilege of granting such awards and of determining their standards of value.

Despite these forebodings of conflict, the Theses, with their promise of Neo-Stalinism, came as a shock. The Party was supposed to supervise the Theses' implementation closely and meticulously, but it was unable to do so with the same efficacy as in the 1950s. In part, this was due to the artistic community, which was numbed by the proposals and roused into a temporary united front against them. Zaharia Stancu and Eugen Jebeleanu, long associated with the régime, joined in protest with younger writers like Buzura, Păunescu, Popescu and Marin Sorescu. Leonid Dimov and Dumitru Ţepeneag denounced the proposals on Radio Free Europe in Paris, and Nicolae Breban, editor-in-chief of România Literară, resigned while in West Germany and attacked the Theses in an interview with Le Monde. Writers appeared combative at a meeting with Ceauşescu in Neptun.

The Party issued its own counter-measures. For instance, a law passed in December 1971 prohibited the broadcasting or publication abroad of any written material that might prejudice the interest of the state. Romanian citizens were also forbidden from having any contact with foreign radio stations or newspapers, as this was considered hostile to Romania. One man who had submitted a volume of poetry to a critic for evaluation was tried for having written "hostile" verse; despite the critic having come to defend him, a military court sentenced him to 12 years' imprisonment.

However, in advance of the National Writers' Conference (May 1972), the writers' initial solidarity was destroyed by infighting, not by the Party (which temporarily withdrew into the background). After Ştefan Bănulescu resigned as editor of Luceafărul, Păunescu fought with Fănuş Neagu for the position, which went to someone else, causing Neagu to leave the opposition. Initial supporters of the Theses included Eugen Barbu, Aurel Baranga and Mihnea Gheorghiu; Nichita Stănescu also claimed to have received them with "a particular joy" and to regard them as "a real aid to culture". Writers felt resentment at Goma's success in West Germany and at Ţepeneag's having been translated into French; the Party exploited this by persuading the Writers' Union to hold its 1972 congress with delegates elected by secret ballot, not by a general assembly — delegates would choose one of two names offered to them. By the time of the July 1972 National Party Conference, the cultural élite's strategies and the conflicts that would dominate the 1970s and 1980s had crystallized. Dissident Monica Lovinescu describes four features of the literary scene in Romania until 1989: intermittent courage; position in the social order transformed into an aesthetic criterion; the efficacy of some means of corruption; and a breakdown between generations, with many young oppositionists ready to compromise and some older writers ready to resist.

The Party offered increased royalties and pensions and played upon writers' envy, which led to the exclusion of Goma and Ţepeneag, who failed to be elected by secret ballot and were jeered when they spoke at the Union delegate election meeting before the conference; there, it was also established that Goma had no talent. While writers like Blandiana, Buzura, Ştefan Augustin Doinaş and Marin Sorescu refused to conform, maintaining moral and artistic integrity, Goma and Ţepeneag were targeted for their readiness to challenge the Party's cultural dictates. Other writers were anxious not to jeopardise their privileges and afraid that the Party might use the Theses to bring new "writers" into a rebellious Union. They instead preferred subtle evasion of their constraints and so were reluctant to back the pair of more outspoken dissidents.

Within three years, the balance of power in the writers' community had shifted from the 1960s generation to the protochronists; writers eager for greater influence could now obtain it by specialising in the production of ideology. These included both figures on the decline who hoped to revive their careers, such as Barbu (whose career had suffered at the expense of oppositionists), and younger writers like Păunescu, an initial opponent. The two factions remained in open conflict for a decade, but by 1981 the Party had rendered the Union impotent by freezing its funds and restricting its activities — no more Writers' Conferences were allowed after that year. Instead, with the greater emphasis on ideology, force, and centralisation, and with more funds, the protochronists remained more influential until the Romanian Revolution of 1989, having been reinforced by the "Mangalia Theses" in the summer of 1982. Particularly in the 1980s, Romanian culture and science became increasingly isolated internationally.

Also as a result of the Theses, sociology was removed as a university discipline and what was left was taught at the Party's Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy. The number of those allowed to study non-technical subjects at the university was sharply cut; fewer books were published; and the privileges formerly accorded to intellectuals were reduced. In 1974, the Academy of Sciences was forced to take on Elena Ceauşescu as a member and then its head; she politicized it to such an extent that its prestige and much of its serious research were destroyed.