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Dennis Deletant, Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-- 1965. London: C. Hurst & Co, 1999, xii + 351 pp., L39.50h/b.
TREATMENT OF THE FIRST DECADE AND A HALF of communist rule in Romania during the post-communist era presents a paradox. On the one hand, there is an almost universal condemnation of this period across the post-communist political spectrum. Virtually no significant political formation or official will assume responsibility for the period or refer to it in less than ambivalent terms. Indeed, the language used by prominent former members of the communist regime is frequently every bit as vitriolic as that of victims of the communist regime. Romanians seem almost united in their characterisation and condemnation of this period of `foreign occupation' (i.e. Soviet hegemony) and repression. The paradox is that for all the heated rhetoric, discussion of this era in post-communist Romania has tended to be episodic and vague, and there have been remarkably few attempts to address the era in a systematic fashion.
In his volume, Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965, the long-time Romanianist Dennis Deletant, of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, sets out to remedy this situation. This volume develops and significantly extends upon some of the themes and events discussed in the first 67 pages of his previous volume devoted primarily to the Ceausescu era, Ceausescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989 (London: Hurst, 1995). Deletant traces the history of the Romanian communist movement from its inception through its assumption and consolidation of power...