Daniela Ionescu

California State University Long Beach

Censorship in a Totalitarian Regime: Three Women’s Stories of

Creative Resistance in the Socialist Republic of Romania

With every paper I write, I try to share the history of my native Romania with

other people. Censorship plays an all-too-important role in that history. This paper will

address censorship in a totalitarian state by focusing on three Romanian writers--Ana

Blandiana, Doina Cornea and Herta Muller—who all practiced a form of creative

resistance in communist Romania. I will examine the specific forms that their resistance

took, as well as the forms of censorship and repercussions they faced in taking a position

against the Romanian government. Little has been written about the feminist movement

during communism, even though these women were notable dissidents during the regime

of the Romanian dictator Ceausescu.1 I argue that even though the Communist Party of

the Socialist Republic of Romania used censorship to control all aspects of culture, there

was a resistance that took subtle, yet powerful form.

During five decades of communism in Romania there was a continuous effort by

Party leadership to control all types of communication, to alter the historical past and

language, and to manipulate the mystical in an attempt to create a sacred aura for the

dictator (Armanca). In the 1960’s, the General Directorate of the Press and Printing was
1
Nicolae Ceausescu (1965-1989) was the leader of the Communist Party and the president of Republic
Socialist of Romania. He charted an independent, nationalistic course but also maintained a repressive
control over free speech and internal dissent. His harsh economic policies and grand building projects
reduced Romania from relative prosperity to near starvation. Ceausescu was overthrown in a revolution in
1989, and he and his wife, Elena Ceausescu, were executed by firing squad.
the most important tool of government censorship. The Directorate was inspired by the

Soviet Stalinist model, which was considered to be the ideal form of communist

censorship (Armanca). As a consequence, all branches of media and culture--radio,

television, theater, movies, concerts, publications and books--were forced through this

ideological filter (Armanca).

Despite the pervasiveness of state censorship, the writer Ana Blandiana2 became

famous as a black-listed writer when she was still only fifteen years old. The reason was

simply because her father, a well-known priest in the community, was considered “an

enemy of the people” (Lupu). Blandiana, thus, began her literary career already under a

dark cloud of suspicion. In Romania, the mid-1960’s was a period of transition between

the old and younger generation of Communist Party leaders. As expected, writers took

full advantage of the loosening censorship that took place during this brief period of the

so-called “Romanian Spring” (Stefanescu, 5). Blandiana and other Romanian writers

chose poetry as their preferred form of cultural resistance. The author explained: “The

metaphor is a comparison in which there is a missing term that allows itself to be felt,

discovered, thought, found, reinvented under the nose or over the head of censorship”

(Ionescu).3 As a result of the missing term behind metaphor, poetry could not be

censored because half of the meaning is added or filled in by the reader (Frandzen). Such

poetry created a special bond between the poet and her readers based on the shared

exercise of freedom involved with decoding the author’s use of metaphor. Interpreting the

poem meant reading between the lines, against the official decrees of the state. In this
2
Author’s real name is Otilia-Valeria Coman. When Blandiana was fifteen years old she decided to have
the pseudo literary name Ana Blandiana. Blandiana is the name of a village in Transylvania where her
mother was born.
3
“Avea un mare avantaj. Metafora, comparatie din care lipseste un termen, permitea ca termenul nerostit sa
fie fie simtit, descoperit, gindit, reinventat pe sub nasul sau peste capul cenzurii.” Ana Blandiana
way, the reader of the poem could directly participate in a subversive act of resistance

against the regime. What is remarkable, however, is the fact that she managed to become

so well known in poetry, since the field was heavily dominated by men (Lupu).

At that time during the 1960s, censorship was still tolerable because writers knew

exactly what the censors would and would not accept. However, after visiting North

Korea and China during the early 70’s, Ceausescu decided to fashion his regime after the

Maoist model (Armanca). To that end, in 1974 he decreed a new law in which the role of

arts and mass media was clearly defined as the official instrument of communist

propaganda. Henceforth, the official role of the media was solely to support the political

power of the Communist Party and its leader. Journalists, artists and writers were forced

to promote the Marxist-Leninist philosophy and reject any other ideologies (Armanca).

From that moment on, the political atmosphere became a nightmare for Blandiana and

other progressive Romanian authors. Officially censorship was abolished, but in reality it

had became stricter, more powerful and more chameleon-like in its slipperiness. No one

knew in fact how many levels of the censorship existed.

Even under these conditions, Blandiana and others managed to find a way to trick

the censorship apparatus and publish some of their works. The relation between authors

and their chief editors became one of a risky complicity (Frandzen). At times, editors

sent short summaries of writings that deliberately ran counter to the author’s intended

meaning to the censorship department in hopes of duping them (Frandzen). As such,

books that might not normally have passed censorship were published and found their

way into bookstores. Writing and publishing became a continuous and covert negotiation

between writers, editors and censors.

 For Blandiana the decade of the 80’s was the hardest to endure. In 1985 the

author sent a few poems to “Amfiteatru, a student newspaper (Severin). She warned the

editor that these poems could cause problems with censorship, but they were approved

nonetheless (Frandzen). Miraculously the poems were published in the December edition

of the newspaper. The explanation for this “mistake” in censorship was simple. Because

editors, as well as students, were preparing to leave for the winter break, Blandiana’s

poems were sent directly to the print house without being verified and approved by the

censorship authority (Frandzen). Unfortunately, an over-zealous informant announced to

the authorities that the paper was publishing subversive poetry. As a result, a huge

scandal ignited at the national level, and all employees of the student newspaper were

fired.

One of these poems entitled, “The Children’s Crusade,” is about children born of

mothers who were forced to procreate. The poem is a direct allusion to the 1967 Decree4

that banished abortion and made it punishable by law. The dictator’s plan was to have a

large work force at his discretion. The incisive language of Blandiana’s poem provided a

clear image of fetuses “who do not hear, do not see or understand.” The poet suggested

the unborn children were already condemned to uniformity and the loss of any distinction

as they were becoming the property of the communist government even before being

born (Sorea). The verses, “Fetus besides fetus, / An entire nation,” reminds me of my

childhood when we, the children, were forced to march, in a perfect order, at the parades

organized in the honor of the dictator, who was touted as the “beloved father of the

4
Ceausescu’s Decree 770 from 1st of October 1966 forced women younger than 40 years - who had no
serious physical or mental conditions – to have at least four children. On 25 December 1988, the age limit
was raised to 45 years and the number of children to five. Contraceptive methods were also forbidden.
Abortion was punishable by imprisonment or fine. It also introduced mandatory periodic gynecological
controls performed in the headquarters of large companies and schools.
nation.” This coercion led to an army of zombies ready to fulfill dictator’s commands.

For example, it was mandatory for children beginning at the fifth grade, to work for

months in the fields, cleaning the city and their classrooms. This type of unpaid labor

was euphemistically called “volunteer work.”

Another consequence of the 1967 Decree was that countless women lost their

lives or did serious harm to their bodies in back alley abortion attempts. Doctors were

prosecuted and punished with imprisonment if they attempted to treat a woman arriving

at a hospital with complications caused by a botched back alley abortion. Medical staff

was not allowed to give first aid to such patients unless an agent of the secret police was

present. In order for a patient to receive medical care, she first had to be interrogated and

confess the identity of the person who performed the abortion. In same cases if the

patient refused to talk was beaten or left to die with no attempt to save her life allowed.

Growing up as a girl in this type of environment was traumatic. As children, we had to

watch our mothers, sisters and friends suffer. When I was 16 years old, my 23 year-old

cousin Maria died as result of a back alley abortion. Maria refused to name the person

who performed the abortion. As a consequence, she was left to die in the hospital. My

cousin Maria was just one of the many unfortunate examples of “unasked mothers” who

Blandiana pays homage to in her poem. Because the student newspaper published The

Children’s Crusade and a few other poems considered subversive, all the employees at

the newspaper lost their jobs.

However, these verses became manifestoes in the 1980’s against the regime and

were cherished by Romanians. Despite the tough censorship, the poems were copied by

hand, and passed from one person to another as a symbol of cultural and political
resistance. Blandiana was saved from being thrown in jail by international protests in her

favor. Thirty-seven Italian writers sent letters to the Romanian dictator supporting her

release, and Ceausescu gave in because at that time he was still gaining economic favors

from the West (Tiu). Despite continual harassment by the Securitate (the Romanian

secret police/KGB), the poet never stopped writing. Through clandestine ways, some of

her writings were published in Western Europe, infuriating the authorities even more.

After the 1985 “big scandal,” Blandiana knew that all eyes of the secret police

were watching her. She decided to keep a low profile and started to write children’s

books. Despite the draconic surveillance, in 1988 Blandiana wrote a parody called

Arpagic (the English translation is Chives—the name of her cat). She had some fun

making a parody of Ceausescu by describing her cat’s behavior as similar to the dictator’s

cult of personality. The writer thought nobody would notice the resemblance, but much to

her surprise, everybody did. Her book suddenly disappeared from the bookstores’

shelves--all remaining copies were confiscated and destroyed by the secret police

(Chitan). As a result, from then on everybody nicknamed the dictator “Chives,” which

enraged the dictator.

After the Arpagic incident, even Blandiana’s name was forbidden, and all her

books were banned from libraries. Still, distribution of this book continued on the black

market. In 1988, because of the Arpagic episode, Blandiana was put under house arrest.

The writer was denied even phone service, and the Party did everything possible to

isolate her from the rest of the world. She was not freed until the 1989 Revolution.

Indeed, the 1980’s was the period when Ceausescu ruled with an iron fist, but

even so he could not silence the entire nation. The dissident Doina Cornea was one of the
strong voices of those dark times. A professor and activist, Cornea wrote manifestos

against Ceausescu’s repressive regime and illegally sent them to Radio Free Europe.5 I

became aware of her activism in 1988 by listening to the Free Europe radio station, which

was forbidden by the regime. Cornea was an activist, which was a rare thing to find

during the Ceausescu’s regime. The dictator considered activists the most dangerous

subversives of society. These people were the most outspoken against the regime, and

their criticism was considered intolerable in a dictatorship. The goal of her written text

was important because it expressed the point-of-view of a teacher who refused to

compromise with the regime on a fundamental matter: the education and spiritual

development of the younger generation (Stanescu). Her conviction was that “each

individual spiritual attitude counts,” and she tried through personal example to make the

intellectual class assertive and outspoken (Marcu). In 1987, Cornea joined the Brasov

auto workers’ union revolt against the regime. During the uprising she decided to print

manifestoes as a form of protest and as a symbol of solidarity with the workers’ revolt.

Unfortunately, because of the media black-out created by the regime, the rest of the

nation knew little about the workers’ revolt until several months later. Another form of

Cornea’s resistance was in open letters sent to the dictator. The brave professor not only

denounced the terror of the communist regime, but she also presented her own political

program as an alternative to the existent one (Stanescu).

Because of her activism and resistance, Cornea (at the time in her sixties),

received “special” treatment by the dictator through the secret police. First she was fired

from her position as professor at Cluj University, and then she was subjected to many

5
Radio Free Europe, radio station located in Germany, was founded by the US government in 1950. Its
mission was and still is to promote democratic values and institutions by reporting the news in countries
where the free press or freedom of speech is prohibited.
interrogations and severe beatings by the secret service. Cornea was briefly jailed, then

freed because of international pressure (Stanescu). Due to guilt by association, her son

lost his job, and relatives and friends of Cornea were threatened. Beginning in 1988, she,

like Blandiana, was placed under house arrest. On the 18th of May, 1989, the deputy and

president of the European Social Christian party from Belgium, along with a journalist,

tried to visit Cornea (Stanescu). They were arrested and severely beaten by the secret

police. That same day, when Cornea tried to get out of her house, she too was brutally

beaten. Cornea remained under house arrest until the 1989 Revolution. The professor

later confessed that it took her twelve years to build up the strength and guts to challenge

the status quo directly (Man).

My final example of women writers practicing resistance by persevering against

state censorship is Herta Muller, a Romanian-born novelist who chose to write her prose

in German (her maternal language). Muller was so censored that I only became familiar

with her in 2009 when she won a Nobel Prize in literature. This was a consequence of

the draconic censorship that not only isolated Romanians from the outside world, but also

from within. The dictator specifically imposed laws to prevent people from moving from

one place to another, thereby blocking the flow of information at a national level. Muller

was also a member of the Aktionsgruppe Banat, a minority group of German writers who

supported freedom of speech against government censorship (Rusnac). When the writer

was a student, she was under the scrutiny of secret police because she refused to work for

them as an informant (Rusnac). The pain, fear, and terror hidden in each person

oppressed by the somber regime were things no one, dared to talk about; she brought

such feelings into plain view by describing them in detail in her books. It took much
courage and strength to contradict the “rosy” fantasy image of communist society that the

dictator wished to portray.

Muller’s 1982 debut book, Niederungen, which translates as Low Fields, was

considered dangerous by the communist censorship authority and was only partially

published (Rusnac). Because Muller’s editor was from West Germany, they used to meet

and work at Niederlung in the woods (Onisei). At that time Romanians were forbidden

from having direct contact with foreigners who did not belong to sanctioned communist

territories. Meeting in the woods was the only way to escape secret police scrutiny. Even

though the dictator and his secret police did everything they could to isolate and silence

an entire nation, some of us still found ways to keep in contact with the outside world, as

Muller did.

In her books Muller depicts a cruel and terrifying view of Romanian dictatorship.

The writer’s work “bears a fingerprint of secret terror, which cannot be erased from her

mind” (Iuga). From persecution “to fear, torture, and death, the secret police is much

more than a repressive institution in Muller’s writing” (Iuga). The text itself comes to

life under a multitude of symbols. The reader can “feel pain and human compassion” in

her prose (Barca). The trauma of a society is illustrated through the force of original

images, which she masters through writing. Despite being harassed by the secret service,

in 1984 Muller‘s book made its way illegally to Germany to be published in its entirety.

After this incident she was banned from ever again being published in Romania. As a

result of the continued harassment of Muller and her family by the regime, in 1987 she

was forced to leave the country (Rusnac). The writer immigrated to Berlin, after West

Germany paid the communist government 8,000 Marks in exchange for her freedom. In
2009, Muller won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her work in the service of the

dispossessed and her depiction of the somber life of Romania’s German minority under

Ceausescu’s communist regime.

Blandiana, a poet, Cornea, a professor and an activist, and Muller, a novelist and

the voice of Romania’s German minority, are clear examples of resistance against the

censorship imposed by a communist regime that used intimidation and terror to control

all aspects of its culture. Researching these dissidents was a struggle because the main

sources of their literature can only be found in Romania. In the case of Cornea and

Muller, there is not much information available from the 1980’s. Muller’s books recently

became known and translated in Romania. Not much has been written about Cornea

especially, because her body of work was about civic actions not documented since they

were considered subversive activity. In what I like to think of as a sign of feminist

solidarity, Blandiana recently published Cornea’s dissident journal from the 1980’s.

In addition to her writings, Blandiana was involved in the process of

democratization of Romanian society following the 1989 Revolution. Even today, the

author considers cultural resistance necessary. She warns that to be manipulated by TV,

or by violent movies of questionable quality, is as dangerous and degrading as censorship

by a dictatorship (Ionescu). Blandiana says that today we must fight against indifference

and kitsch (Ionescu). She is one of the founders of Alianta Civica (in English: The Civic

Alliance),6 a Romanian non-profit civic organization whose mission is to consolidate civil

society after five decades of communism. When the secret service broke into their homes
6
Alianta Civica is one of the largest NGO’s in Romania. Founded in 1990, after the Revolution, when a
group of 216 founding members (Romanian intellectuals from all the fields of public life) signed a project-
statement, it was officially registered on November 29 of the same year. Its motto is: “Numai impreuna
putem reusi” (English translation: Only together we can succeed).
at will, put them under continuous surveillance, sent armies of informers to surround

them, threatened them with being killed, fired them and even exiled them, Blandiana,

Cornea and Muller did not give up the fight. These writers, through poetry, manifestoes,

open letters and prose, found a way to exercise cultural and political resistance. With all

the complicity and negotiation between the authors, their editors and the censorship of the

time, they still managed to publish some of their writings. The repercussions were

dramatic, but each was well aware of the risk involved. As Blandiana said, “[E]verything

has its own value, in consequence each of us needs to pay for the value” (Chitan). These

female dissidents understood a simple but fundamental truth: that in a regime of terror,

silence will transform the people into accomplices of the regime. Today it is also

important to remember and to denounce the cruelty of Ceausescu’s communist regime.

The only victory possible against such a regime is through WORDS. Despite the

draconic censorship put into place by the regime, words made possible not only a cultural

resistance, but also a special connection between writers and readers, and the outside

world. I wrote this essay because “if we forget what happened during communism, we

are in a fundamental matter complicit in it” (Hodorog).

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Banned