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    Velvet Totalitarianism: Post-Stalinist Romania
    Velvet Totalitarianism: Post-Stalinist Romania
    Velvet Totalitarianism: Post-Stalinist Romania
    Ebook413 pages11 hours

    Velvet Totalitarianism: Post-Stalinist Romania

    By Claudia Moscovici

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    This book introduces students and the general public to the post-Stalinist phase of totalitarianism, focusing on Romania under the Ceausescu dictatorship, through the dual optic of scholarship and fiction, in a story about a family surviving difficult times under a totalitarian regime due to the strength of their love.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRowmanLittlefield
    Release dateJul 29, 2009
    ISBN9780761846949
    Velvet Totalitarianism: Post-Stalinist Romania

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    Reviews for Velvet Totalitarianism

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    • 3/5
      This book is written in three parts. Each part examines a different phase of the Romanian characters' involvement with the post-Stalinist movement. Part I examines the the emotions and physical events of living in Romania, behind the Iron Curtain. Part II examines how those characters adapt to their new foreign homes, once deciding and achieving immigration. Part III creates generational movement.This book created emotional awareness with the characters while they were still living in Romania. However, it became increasing difficult to connect with the characters as they dealt with their inner totalitarian demons once physically safe outside of Romania. Once the characters became flat, it became more history than story driven.Overall it was a good book.
    • 4/5
      The title put me off reading the book. I thought it would be a boring history lesson for a place I don't know very much about. But after reading the intro and the brief history lesson in the very beginning where the author broke down the facts behind some of the story it made me realize that this is the perfect way to do history. Take actual events and throw in a little fiction to really get people connected to the story and history being told. I won't give anything away for you but if you are reading the reviews for this then you must be interested already. This is a great book, that in a way brought home George Orwell's 1984 for me. To realize that these atrocities were happening to people and all the struggles they had to go through each and every day is heart breaking. It just goes to show that shouldn't always believe what you are told. The story starts with the family in Romania and the son/brother has defected to France. The story progresses through what happens to the families of people who defected and then into the family making it out. The story follows the daughter Irina while she's in America and some the obstacles she faces not only when she first gets there but also years later. The only issue I had with the book is that I hate Irina's boyfriend. The dude is a straight up creep. Me not liking a character should in no way dissuade you from reading this book. It is possibly one of the best I've read lately and I am sooooo happy I happened to receive it.
    • 5/5
      It took me a while to start reading the book, but once I did I couldn't put it down.The book, I believe, will resonate not only with the reader who may not be familiar with Eastern and Central European history, but with those readers who either lived in Romania or the other "Eastern Block" countries during this time frame (or their descendants who may or may not have heard about what went on back "home").Highly recommended reading.
    • 2/5
      Received a complimentary copy in a LibraryThing Member Giveaway. Moscovici's Velvet Totalitarianism is the title of the edition, including an introduction geared toward political science intro classes; the novel itself is entitled Reincarnations of Love, alluding to a subtheme of Romanticism (both the intimate ideal and the aesthetic tradition). In fact, this subtheme ties together three parts of the novel which otherwise feel like very separate works. Part I deals with life behind the Iron Curtain in post-Stalinist Romania, apparently one of the most abject societies in the so-called Second World. Part II takes up the immigrant story of some characters introduced in Part I, and Part III recounts events occuring during Romania's Velvet Revolution and the fall of State Communism around the Eastern Bloc in 1989-1990.Much of the tale is inspired by Moscovici's family experience, as acknowledged in the author's Introduction. Given that confession, it is hard not to read various parts of the story literally, and not merely as inspired by or loosely analogous to the author's family history. Somehow that detracted from the experience for me.I was disappointed that I did not get much of the tone or tension of living under Ceausescu's fear-based regime, though this was described literally enough. The prose was very factual, realist, and if anything overly detailed in a quotidian way. Perhaps my sympathies lay with more elliptical, stylised depictions of the psychology and patterns of life under totalitarianism.Part I, while clearly not relating the average Romanian's experience under Ceausescu, can be read as an ideal type: the plot is almost James Bond in its unlikelihood, but brings across the dynamics and pervasiveness of the Securitate. Part II left all of this behind, except to lay the groundwork for Part III by linking the intrigue through characters recently emigrated from Romania, but as yet still ensnared in the plot of Part I. Part III, however, was for me too far-fetched. The Hitchcockian role of the Everyday Man caught in international intrigue suddenly pivots and characters become central to the historical fall of Ceausescu's regime. The shift wasn't true to the feel of the rest of the story, and took away from my overall appreciation.Moscovici never explains why she refers to Ceausescu as Petrescu throughout. Her introduction, in fact, is a very helpful primer on key aspects of Romanian political history and pointedly refers to Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, who keep their given names in the novel but are stylised Petrescu. It's especially confusing since a Nicolae Petrescu figured in pre-Stalinist Romanian politics. I wonder if it's a Romanian in-joke.
    • 5/5
      A Remarkable Story of a Family’s Surviving the Totalitarian Regime in RomaniaClaudia Moscovici’s historical novel, Velvet Totalitarianism, has been acclaimed as “A deeply felt, deftly rendered novel of the utmost importance to any reader interested in understanding totalitarianism and its terrible human cost,” by author Travis Holland, author of The Archivist’s Story. This remarkable work makes the tortured history of Romania under the oppressive regime of Ceausescu come alive by tracing a family’s struggle to survive the corrosive psychological demoralization of living under the yolk of the Securitate, the country’s Secret Police.We are introduced to the Schwartz family who live in fear of the power of the Securitate’s loud interrogations, torture, rape, and severe beatings. Always on the alert, family members ask, “Were you followed home?” or pronounce, “Can’t we enjoy life without worrying every single moment?”We follow the oldest son of the Schwartz family, Radu, to Paris where he had been given permission to study chemistry at the Cite’ Universitaire. He also takes a part-time job with Radio Free Europe and meets Ioana, an athletic raven-haired beauty. Their love blossoms but at a high cost for Radu. She introduces him to a “friend” who secretly works for the Securitate, someone who pressures Radu for information from Radio Free Europe. Tortured for not agreeing to spy on RDF, he soon disappears and loses contact with his family.Meanwhile his father gets a teaching job in the United States and defects. His mother and younger sister apply for visas to join him; that action results in the mother’s losing her job. Not until three years later are they successful in getting their visas during which time they only receive a rare telephone call from Radu letting them know that he is still alive, but not disclosing his location or what he is doing. A bit of humor is interjected in reading about the mother and sister’s attempts to understand the English language and American way of life when they do finally arrive in the USA.Radu and Ioana eventually reunite and Radu learns that they have a son, Lucian. Unbeknown to one another, they each had secretly been working for the CIA after Radu’s disappearance. After the overthrow of Ceausescu’s regime, they are both offered positions in the new government by someone who had formerly worked for the Securitate. The irony in this turn of events prompts Ioana to declare, “Nobody gives a damn about ideals and principles. Politics is about power.”This novel makes the history of Romania’s totalitarian regime under Ceaucescu come alive as it is brought home by following the struggles of a family living through that period of time. It is a story of resilience and hope, a book well worth reading.

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    Velvet Totalitarianism - Claudia Moscovici

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