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Context and Origins of the Special Issue

• How did this Special Issue grow out of the presentations and conversations at the 2025 SRS conference in Cluj-Napoca?

DT: The idea for this Special Issue began as a panel co-organized by me and Diana Mărgărit for the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Society for Romanian Studies “Voices and Silences: 50 Years of the Society for Romanian Studies”, which took place between the 29th and 31st of May in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. As this title suggests, the Conference was meant to celebrate the Society’s more than 50 years of existence, going back to the first academic gatherings organized during the Cold War in the United States of America in the field of Romanian Studies by a group of enthusiastic American and Romanian-American scholars. Incidentally, the event was hosted by the Faculty of European Studies (Babeș-Bolyai University) during the month in which Romanians were called, a second time, to choose their President for a new 5-year mandate. These were some of the most, if not the most contentious and high stakes elections in Romania’s post-1989 democratic history. It is not an exaggeration to say that before Nicușor Dan’s election, Romania’s entire European and democratic path was thought to be in jeopardy. Due to alleged Russian interference, the Romanian Constitutional Court had annulled the 1^st round of presidential elections which had taken place on November 24^th, 2024. The annulment is probably unique in the history of the European Union.

Nevertheless, it should be interpreted within the broader context of the Russian war in Ukraine (2022 – ) and Russian hybrid warfare attacks on European public institutions. Our panel reflected upon this historic turmoil, but tried to offer more than a synchronic view of the so-called ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ in Romanian politics. We took a step back in time and, together with Ruxandra Gubernat and Henry Rammelt, looked at political and public discourse changes gradually unfolding since 2017, the year in which Romania experienced its biggest wave of large-scale protests post-1989. The Special Issue grew organically from our presentations, particularly once we realized, in face-to-face conversations, that too few political sciences articles had focused until then on these historic events.

• What makes the recent rise of new political actors and movement parties in Romania an important moment to examine right now?

DT: Romanian politics and Romania as a country find themselves at a crucial turning point. Romania is one the fastest growing economies in the EU, with household real income per capita growth at 134% between 2004 and 2024 according to Eurostat. Despite recent worries over its large budget deficit, most economic predictions about the country’s future are optimistic. However, Romania is also one of the EU states with, possibly, the largest number of Romanians living and working abroad. This fact has undoubtedly challenged the dynamic of our national and presidential elections over the past 35 years. The huge and heterogeneous community comprising millions of Romanians, also known as ‘Diaspora’, has mostly voted with candidates perceived to distance themselves from our communist legacy. Well, not anymore! Since 2024, a huge chunk of voters residing abroad have switched their allegiance to parties embracing a far right, nationalist message. This is even more puzzling since many of those who voted, for example, for AUR (the Alliance for the Union of Romanians) and George Simion, AUR party chief and presidential candidate, reside in countries where other far right parties have negatively stereotyped them.

In 2024, a general dissatisfaction with the ‘old’ political elite, a distinction that had become popular during the 2017 protests, suddenly came to mean dissatisfaction with democracy as a political system. Communist nostalgia and positive references to Nicolae Ceaușescu, the former dictator, are now commonplace.  In such volatile political environment and given uncertain international developments – let us not forget Romania shares a very long border with Ukraine – it is to be expected that new parties emerge. Can they help disperse the current dissatisfaction with the ‘old’, post-communist era politicians? Our Special Issue tried to gauge the current mood and offer some possible answers to this question

• Several contributions look closely at the 2024–2025 election cycle. What do these articles reveal about the shifts in political discourse and voter expectations during this period?

DT: I think we have partially answered this question in the above paragraph. Still, a couple more clarifications may be needed: the far right, extremist discourse in Romanian politics has embraced ‘democracy’ as a political claim. As bizarre as this may sound, ‘democracy’ is ‘defended’ by those who promote a completely undemocratic type of political behaviour and who have publicly quoted from, or praised controversial political figures such as Marshall Ion Antonescu and Iron Guard leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. There is also a trace of religious mysticism emerging from the shadows, with ultra-Orthodox groups in the Romanian Orthodox Church much closer to traditionalist positions, such as the ones embraced by Russian Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. The anti-globalist discourse, of Russian origins, has further muddied these political waters legitimating a new cleavage between the so-called European, globalist, progressive and the nationalist or so-called sovereigntist camps. Hidden within all these debates is a genuine wish, shared by most Romanians, for a modern Romania, one in which corrupt, clientelist networks of political influence are finally set aside. This is not only a battle over Romania’s future, but about democracy. The contributions in this Special Issue trace these connections, between communist and post-communist memory and explain how memory is instrumentalized in large scale protests.

Methods, Approaches, and Analytical Perspectives

• The authors use qualitative approaches such as discourse analysis, framing, and memory studies. How do these methods help illuminate the dynamics explored in the Special Issue?

DT: Qualitative and interpretive methodology & methods have become increasingly popular among social scientists. There are several reasons for this relatively recent popularity, but two stand out: (1) qualitative approaches are flexible when it comes to the type of data used in analyses, be they written, visual, and even sound; (2) ‘meaning’, a rather illusive concept, is more easily identified with the help of such methods, both content- and context-wise. The contributions to our Special Issue have embraced this synchronicity/diachronicity dialectic and relied on a variety of data sources for their analyses. We tried to understand and explain contemporary political changes by looking at public discourse transformations (Dana S. Trif), the emergence of a progressive, leftist party pertaining ideologically to western social democracy (Diana Mărgărit), and the narratives linking Romania’s communist and post-communist periods during the 2017 massive wave of street protests (Ruxandra Gubernat and Henry Rammelt). All these processes are historically ‘messy’ affairs, with political actors that are difficult to circumscribe analytically (for example the social movement #Rezist in 2017) and at times involving marginal ‘voices’ that nevertheless come out strongly in public discourse. Our approaches have allowed us the necessary flexibility when collecting and interpreting data, but they have also pushed us to be analytically rigorous and observant of quality criteria for ‘good’ research. Our intention was to strike the right balance among these competing requirements!

Literature, Memory, and the Politics of the Present

• This issue includes a ‘Source’ section featuring literary texts presented at the SRS Literary Salon. Why was it important to bring these literary voices into the journal at this moment?

DT: Thank you for this question! There is quite a bit of symbolism hiding within these choices, and I am glad LUP gives us the opportunity to explain how the current ‘Source’ materials came about. The ‘Literary Salon’ is a special event initially designed by the President of the Society for Romanian Studies, historian of religions James Kapaló (University College Cork), for the Opening Day of the Conference. The idea was to invite contemporary female writers to join the conference in a performative way, through live, bilingual – Romanian/English – readings of poetry and prose. Ruxandra Cesereanu, Laura T. Ilea, Florina Ilis, and Olga Ștefan are well-known, prize-winning authors who have between them several decades of work. Olga Ștefan, born in mid’ 80s, is the youngest of the group. Marius Conkan had written an introductory text for the Salon, in a much longer version, a fragment of which accompanies the translations of these works in this Special Issue.

Their participation was meant to bring together generational voices, with each writer representing one generation. All chosen texts conveyed the authors’ musings and reflections about Romania’s contemporary political struggles through the lens of their own biographies. Olga Ștefan’s poem, Transition kids, is a historic reference all too familiar to Romanian Millennials growing up in the ‘90s. Laura T. Ilea’s text is taken from her 2024 book, Nomadism. On Thought Becoming Body, with a fragment titled “Origins”, yet another biographical slicing of the so-called ‘transition’ period/a.k.a. the ‘90s. Florina Ilis’ The Book of Numberswas published in 2018, closer to 2017, the year of Romania’s largest post-1989 mass protests. Her story unravels the connections between the communist and post-communist past and present through family history. Finally, Ruxandra Cesereanu’s poem – Letter to a Friend and Back to the Country: A Manifesto– openly embraces the ambiguous relationship the poet has with her own country. All these texts manage to convey, in an artistic way, “l’esprit du temps”, the anxiety, turmoil, and dissatisfaction with the status quo characteristic of contemporary Romanian politics and public discourse. The choice to include them in our Special Issue was therefore a somewhat forgone conclusion. We believe that art and political analysis mirror each other and that in order to convey a complex message texts may borrow complementary styles.

• The introduction discusses both short-term political developments and longer historical threads. How does combining these perspectives help make sense of contemporary movement parties in Romania?

DT: Movement parties were defined by political scientist Herbert Kitschelt (Duke University) in 2006 as a chapter in the Handbook of party politics (Sage). Almost 20 years later we need this concept to analyze the rise of new political actors in Romanian politics and, to be fair, across Europe. Movement parties are parties that closely align themselves with spontaneous and sometimes prolonged massive street protests as well as with emerging social movements. The idea is a classic one for liberal social democracies: the people, the bearers of popular sovereignty and political legitimacy, issue through such large events relatively clear political, social, economic, and, at times, cultural demands. In a way, this is a new, collective type of civil disobedience to which traditional political parties, or the establishment, are expected to reply through public policy. Movement parties, originated from such public displays of anger, have lately appeared more trustworthy in carrying out the people’s will. But are these demands something new? And what do they tell us about the way public discourse shifts in time between the right and left ideological poles? In times of political volatility such as the current decade, a synchronic approach employed to research these phenomena clarifies popular demands and the actors carrying them forward politically. However, a diachronic view broadens our understanding of the demands themselves and how they relate to other historic events. Put simply, we can see better if, and how history repeats itself.

• Several articles reflect on the role of memory—especially post-communist memory—in shaping recent political mobilisation. What new insights emerge from this focus?

DT: Post-memory studies are a growing field of research. Many of the scholars working in this area have focused on the Holocaust and its generational effects. Post-communism has joined the list of historic periods in this growing research program with a focus on the post-1989 decades. What Ruxandra Gubernat and Henry Rammelt’s article offer the reader is a very persuasive argument: they show how many of the 2017 young protesters lacked personal memories of the communist period. However, through slogans and banners – “PSD (the Social Democratic Party) the red plague” and “Down with Communism” – they created narratives strongly engaging with this period. This was considered a sign that the political imaginary emerging during these protests carried strong links to the memory of communism itself, helping protesters frame their grievances against the perceived corrupt and authoritarian tendencies of post-communist political elites. On a more general level, Ruxandra and Henry’s analysis shows how the past becomes symbolic currency, re-used and, at times, re-invented to serve current purposes.

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