Haunted Generations: Postmemory, Repression, and Communist Trauma
Haunted Generations: Postmemory, Repression, and Communist Trauma

Summary/Abstract: The descendants of individuals persecuted during communism in Romania do not constitute a generation in a sociological sense but rather a “category of memory”. Their engagement with the legacy of repression varies according to age and temporal proximity to the events. Drawing on research into the memory of communist repression among the offspring of former political detainees, this study argues that those who were children or adolescents during their parents’ persecution are gen-erally more inclined to testimony and remembrance. They often assume the position of quasi-witnesses and align their narratives closely with those of their parents. In contrast, descendants born after the period of repression encounter this past through mediated forms ‒ such as family narratives, silences, and written sources ‒and are less inclined to publicly articulate or transmit inherited trauma. An analy-sis of testimonies published in “Memoria. Revista gândirii arestate”, particularly in the section “The Second Circle of Suffering”, reveals their distinct memorial tropes. For direct witnesses of their parents’ persecution, the obligation to remem-ber and transmit ancestral experiences and values is closely linked to the expres-sion of personal suffering and loss. For those born long after repression ended, the memory of communist persecutions is shaped primarily by social frameworks of memory, identity formation, and cultural memory.

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