The ‘Samizdat’, which was a key form of dissident
\nactivity across the Soviet bloc, in which individuals reproduced censored
\npublications passing the documents from reader to
\nreader,appeared in
\nRomania at a time when all publications were subjected to harsh communist
\ncensorship. This form of underground press was used to disseminate ideas and
\nattitudes that criticized the regime, at the same time introducing political
\nand economic reforms. The particularity of this type of press was that it
\nwasn’t published by a certain publishing house, but by the authors themselves.
\nOne of the classics of this form of avoiding censorship was the Soviet writer
\nand physician Vladimir Bukovski. Another major figure of this phenomenon was
\nthe Czech playwright Vaclav Havel. This type of press was either typewritten or
\nrudimentarily printed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In Romania the Samizdat didn’t reach the intensity it
\nhad in the other communist countries because, under dictator Ceausescu, the
\ncountry had the most repressive political police. In order to stifle the
\nphenomenon, all those in the possession of typewriters had to have them
\nregistered with the local police, which was called militia back in the day. In
\nspite of all those restrictive measures, some people resorted to this type of
\npress in order to rally support for human rights observance. One of the
\nsubversive associations of the time was the Union of Hungarians in
\nTransylvania, set up by a professor of philosophy called Borbely Erno. In an
\ninterview to the Oral History Center of the Romanian Broadcasting Corporation,
\nin 2002, Borbely told how he got the idea of setting up the organisation and
\nhow he got the first samizdat texts. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Borbely Erno: I decided to set up this organisation following a series of
\ndiscussions with colleagues and friends, with many intellectuals in Romania. I
\nhad already started reading and disseminating banned texts, which I got from
\nabroad. One day we decided to take some action because we had that feeling of
\nhopelessness, of being unable to do
\nanything. So I came up with the idea of setting up an organisation. We got a
\nlot of texts from Hungary, Austria and France. France had a strong community of
\nRomanian expats at that time and from there we got a lot of Samisdat texts,
\nvery critical of the communist regime and the dictatorship in Romania. A
\nsimilar organisation had been operational in Hungary since early 1970, but they
\nenjoyed some liberty there unlike us in Romania. Although dissidents were being
\nmonitored there too, they had more freedom and there were more banned texts in
\ncirculation, most of them written by professors of philosophy and sociology.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Back in the communist time, anyone joining an
\nassociation without the authorities’ approval became a suspect of subversive
\nintentions and was thrown into prison. Knowing he was actually taking on the
\ncommunist Goliath, Borbely Erno decided to keep the organization small at
\nfirst.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Borbely Erno: We did not want to have many
\nmembers in our organization, as political systems usually do, party or
\nassociation members. It was a smaller group and its nucleus was made up of 3
\npeople who had a lot of connections. We started having talks with people,
\nincluding with dissidents who were already famous at the time such as Kiraly
\nKaroly. We were holding those talks as we wanted to enlarge the group’s nucleus
\nat a certain point. But we wanted to count on 3 persons. There were the 3 of
\nus, myself, Biro Katalin and Buzasz Laszlo. We knew it
\nvery well that we could get caught, the Securitate officers were very clever,
\nthey were tapping us everywhere we went and they had many collaborators across
\nthe country among the general population. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Borbely Erno also talked about the purpose of the organization. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
We wanted to distribute more materials, including materials taken
\nover from samizdats written by experts in various fields, to draft our own
\nsamizdats and to make a certain type of propaganda. Of course we could not make
\na direct propaganda although we wanted to spread manifestos and the so-called
\nsmall journals in various cities and towns. We thought of a method to spread
\nthem but we wanted them to reach various publications in the West, and
\nespecially radio stations such as Deutche Welle, Free Europe and the Voice of
\nAmerica, by means of which our texts reached back home. Through this method we
\nwould have tried to make a certain type of propaganda, to draw attention on us.
\nIf everything had gone smoothly without us being discovered, we would have
\nmanaged to co-opt more adherents. With the help of friends from the West we
\ncould have gone public, in the sense of declaring ourselves as an official
\nassociation. They could have annihilated 2 or 3 people easily but it would have
\nbeen more difficult to kill 50 – 100.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The samizdat was more than a manifesto, it was a diagnosis put to an
\nailing regime in its final stage, as Communism was. We asked Borbely Erno about
\nthe content of the texts he used to write . <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Some of the topics I
\napproached were related to freedom: freedom of the press, freedom of speech,
\nfree movement of people. We wanted to distribute a study that appeared in
\nFrance, about the Helsinki documents signed by Ceausescu, that had not been
\neither published or applied. We wanted to disseminate the human rights separately,
\non leaflets. Then I approached topics related to social life and opportunities
\nfor youth. Although we were a Hungarian organization, we were very aware that
\neventually everyone suffered the same and the issues of the Hungarian minority
\ncould not be solved without first solving the fundamental issues of society.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The samizdat in Romania was an attempt to mobilize the
\npopulation in order to set up a civil resistance against the regime’s abuse.
\nAlthough it was not as widespread as in the Soviet Union, Hungary, the Czech
\nRepublic and Poland, the samizdat in Romania got across to those who were
\ndetermined to change something. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ‘Samizdat’, which was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc, appeared in Romania at a time when all publications were subjected to harsh communist censorship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[42621,42622],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-129389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-samizdat","tag-underground-press"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n