This article looks at the relations between Macedonian and Albanian intellectuals and the communist party in the Republic of Macedonia. More specifically, it focuses on the creation and development of national program by Macedonian intellectuals within state structure. The article argues that during the socialist period the party policies and the socialist Macedonian intellectuals were supporting each other in the realization of their common goals: the establishmentand consolidation of the Macedonian national program. It looks at intellectual production created by members of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences (MANU) to show how historiography and linguistics became the battlefields for the development of national ideology in Macedonia. Based on the establishment of these “invented” traditions, Macedonian scholars and socialist politicians made claims within Yugoslavia, but also internationally that Macedonians are a separate nation and that they have the right to an independent state after socialism. I show that Albanian intellectuals also developed an Albanian national program, only quietly and in the background. Simultaneously, the article argues that the Yugoslav policies of national determination, decentralization and self-expression reinforced ethnic differences in the country and assisted in the development of Albanian and Macedonian parallel national projects. The processes of inclusion and national consolidation, while excluding ‘the others’ from the national project, were legitimized and institutionalized by the creation of a national culture and politics by the intellectuals within the socialist state structures.

L’État communiste roumain s’est appuyé dans sa politique concernant le statut des femmes sur deux principaux piliers: la loi (prétendument égalitaire) et partis communistes de la région. Une particularité du cas roumain a été, en revanche, la promotion constante des femmes dans le parti et le suivi attentif des pourcentages. Cependant, malgré les mesures proactives prises dans les années 1970 et 1980, la représentation féminine au sein du PCR n’a jamais dépassé 36%. Une présence numériquement importante au sein du parti n’a pas conduit a une représentation similaire dans les instances politiques dirigeantes. Ici aussi, notre étude nous a permis de nuancer les appréciations et de mettre en évidence une disparité entre les organes locaux et les organes centraux du parti. Dans les comités du parti au niveau départemental, le pourcentage de femmes était a peu pres le meme (sinon plus élevé) que la moyenne nationale des femmes membres du parti. Au contraire, dans les instances centrales notamment dans le Comité Central, le Comité Politique Exécutif ou son Bureau, la présence des femmes restait plutôt une exception. Le cumul des fonctions a toutefois donné au niveau de l’opinion publique l’image d’une omniprésence féminine dans les postes de direction, aussi bien dans les organismes civiques que dans les instances du parti et les institutions d’Etat. Il nous a semblé intéressant de confronter cette image commune avec la situation réelle. L’analyse attentive des diff érentes instances nous a permis d’identifi er un groupe dirigeant formé par les femmes membres du parti «cumulardes». Il ne comprenait pas plus de 30 a 40 personnes. Le portrait général des femmes membres du parti, élues au Comité Central Parti Communiste Roumain, diff ere de l’image stéréotypée de l’ouvriere analphabete, militante du parti, promue uniquement pour l’adhésion totale au parti et moins pour des raisons méritocratiques. Depuis octobre 1945, la proportion des intellectuelles a été signifi cative, meme majoritaire pendant des deux décennies. Comme pour l’organisation féminine de masse, le Parti Communiste Roumain a désigné comme représentantes au Comité Central des femmes sur lesquelles on pouvait compter du point de vue professionnel et intellectuellement.

Readers are invited into a universe established by the discursive practices of “soft dictatorship” in Hungary between 1957 and 1989. The two major categories of our epistemic discourse analysis, representing the internal struggles of the intellectuals in the era, are manipulation and parrhesia. Manipulation is understood as an abuse of power; it impairs human collaboration and social development by delimiting social participation. Parrhesia is an act in which the speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, taking the risks and responsibilities of veridiction in crisis situations.

Starting with 1962, Monica Lovinescu became, for hundreds of thousands of Romanians, the voice of unbound freedom as editor with Radio Free Europe. Her well-known broadcasts, Theses and Antitheses in Paris and The Romanian Cultural Bulletin, revealed the true face of communist Romania while openly discussing the fate of literature, art, music or politics under dictatorship. Monica Lovinescu’s well-grounded opinions and her determination never to compromise made her a living example of moral integrity, which exiled and non-exiled Romanians constantly referred to.The impact of Monica Lovinescu’s live transmissions forced the Romanian Securitate to initiate and develop deftly devised plans to marginalize, belittle or even “neutralise” the rebellious “element”. Lovinescu’s refusal to collaborate with the communist authorities was followed by hostile press campaigns, closesurveillance by the Securitate officers and informants and, last but not least, an act of violent physical aggression against her in November 1977.Monica Lovinescu’s opposition to the communist regime continued, irrespective of the Securitate’s opening or closing her file. The Romanian Revolution of 1989marked the beginning of a new stage in Lovinescu’s career. She spoke as openly about the need for lustration and in favour of democratic values. Her unparalleled contribution to the cause of freedom needs to be properly assessed.

Explanations for the relative silence of Romanian intellectuals between 1945 and 1989 vary, though all centre upon the regime’s ability to coerce and control intellectual circles through its repressive and manipulative tools, such as its political police (the Securitate), a nationalist discourse that equated opposition with betrayal and an incentive-based approach (economic and social benefits). While structural constraints as well as a particular nationalistic culture, explain the limited dissent, they do not account for why dissent happened at all. This article focuses on agency as well as context examining not just the factors that influenced dissent but also analyzing the various forms of dissent which occurred during communism. It takes a historical analysis approach and relies upon a dataset obtained through original, open-ended interviews with leading Romanian intellectuals and primary sources (i.e. memoirs, open letters) to explain and analyze intellectual dissent. The article argues that individual acts of dissent show that despite the sophisticated mechanisms of indoctrination, propaganda and control, the party’s ability to atomize society was not absolute. Such Quijotic acts provided society with reference points outside the sphere of the Party itself and the grey zone of ethical minimalism.

This study discusses the case of mathematician and futurologist Mihai Botez, one of the most important Romanian dissident thinkers in the 1980s. Using unedited documents from personal archives, documents from the archives of the former Securitate, Radio Free Europe, as well as oral history sources, this study emphasizes how Mihai Botez’s dissidence emerged, the main directions of his dissident project, similarities in terms of ideas withother dissidents in Eastern Europe/Soviet Union, the relevance of his dissent in relation to Communist power and Romanian society.The study consists of two parts, each divided in several sub-themes. The first part of this study deals with investigating the intellectual roots of Botez’s dissidentthinking, discussing also the influence that his professional education had on the rise of his political consciousness. It also discusses the main directionsof Mihai Botez’s dissidence: the conceptualization of solitary dissidence as a first step towards individualizing a group of independent critical intellectuals,dissident strategies, and expected results.The second part deals with Mihai Botez’s works and research aimed at developing the cybernetics of Communist regimes. His dissident project aimedat bringing to light the parallel society that existed but which kept silent, encouraging diversity of views and creating pressure from society, one capable ofinfluencing government strategies.