Culture, Politics and Ideology in the First Decade of the Ceaușescu Regime from the Perspective of Hungarian Theater Life in Romania
Culture, Politics and Ideology in the First Decade of the Ceaușescu Regime from the Perspective of Hungarian Theater Life in Romania

Summary/Abstract: During the communist era, theatre is characterized by a duplicity and “schizophrenic” situation. On the one hand, it continues the “traditional” way of the cultural mission, transmitting values, aesthetic impressions, asking questions about human existence, and on the other hand, it serves the regime. Throughout the communist regime, including this period the official Hungarian theatre and culture had a double load. By cultivating the so-called progressive culture (cultural elements that can be framed in the communist ideological discourse) they served the official line of the regime, transmitting direct or indirect communist propaganda, but at the same time, through careful selection, they contributed to preserving the tradition and the ethnocultural identity. At the beginning of the 1960s in the domestic and international political context, there is a change of cultural policy in Romania. The party addresses a new type of call, mobilizing intellectuals to build the sovereign communist Romania, to achieve the emancipation of the Romanian socialist nation. This change was the basis of the cultural policy in the early years of the Ceausescu regime. During the years of relative liberalization, the theatre from Romania, including the Hungarian one, benefited from some new opportunities compared to the Stalinist period: new artistic currents other than socialist realism, some openness to contemporary socialist and Western theatre, changes in repertoire politics, etc. This opening period will end in the early 1970s, after the publication of the July Theses. The long-term implication of the theses visibly changed the course of the party ideology. Instead of relaxing at the end of the Dej era and the beginning of the Ceausescu era, a new period of ideological constraint has been established. The effects on dramaturgy and repertoires will appear gradually, until the middle of the 70s. It is obvious that it has started a new stage in the life of the Hungarian theatre in Romania, as well. First, the ideological constraints will force an attempt to adapt, then the changes in the attitude of the party and in the policy towards the Hungarian minority will place the Hungarian theatre in another hypostasis, that of the struggle for survival.

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