ABSTRACT
Collecting testimonies of past oppression, social struggle, and political disempowerment is a relatively new line of research in Eastern Europe (Harvey, 2000; Analele Sighet [the Sighet Files], 1995) and a significant area of study across academic disciplines (see, e.g., Cronon, 1992; Garro & Mattingly, 2000; Gugelberger, 1996). In the former communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe, most narratives of oppression emerged publicly after 1989, following the transition of Eastern and Central European regions from totalitarian to pluralistic societies. This chapter examines 53 published testimonies of oppression and 9 in-depth interviews with former political prisoners and deportees. The testimonies were given after 1990 by Romanian citizens of different ethnicities, individuals directly oppressed by the communist regime during the late 1940s, the 1950s, and early 1960s, and coerced-until December 1989-to conceal their suffering under penalty of additional incarceration or persecution.2
