ABSTRACT
In September 2010, the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile1 published a survey on the opinions and attitudes of the Romanian population about the communist past. Among many of the rather contradictory results, the poll showed how 78 percent of the respondents answered “No” to the question “Did you personally or has a member of your family suffered because of the communist regime?” At the same time, 37 percent considered that the regime was criminal, 42 percent that it was illegitimate, and 50 percent admitted that there was repression under communist rule.2 The importance of this information lies in the possibility to analyze the conceptual chain that plays the role of signifier in reference to the communist historical experience: repression-criminality-illegitimacy-suffering. If we wish to establish this connection on the basis of the mentioned statistics, it does not appear to function. Indeed, the first three seem to have a more general quality, while the fourth a personal, subjective one. Despite the proportionally majoritarian acceptance of the first three as descriptive labels for the communist regime in Romania, there is highly decreased identification with individual, collective, or even family suffering for the historical period in question.
