A Talk with Gabriel Liiceanu of Romania
HUSARSKA, ANNA
CEAUSESCU'S LEGACY A Talk with Gabriel Liiceanu of Romania By Anna Husarska Bucharest Gabriel Liiceanu is a founding member of the Group for Social Dialogue, formed nine days after the...
...Thefollowing conversation took place one evening in Gabriel Liiceanu's home...
...The historical parties have been revived, but they have lost their traditional links...
...The elected authorities will have to deal somehow with the matter of liberalization...
...If those who hold power start lying, they lose all credibility, they cannot count on the confidence of the society...
...And they are lying after a revolution that was carried out against a lie...
...Liiceanu: No, I didn't...
...So long as there are no guarantees against these practices that traumatize the society, we cannot speak of trust...
...Liiceanu: You are right, and that is the whole drama of today's Romania...
...Husarska: I heard that you gave serious thought to running for President in the May elections...
...Here people went on a hunger strike and no one even asked what they wanted...
...I hope this will be possible during the two years before the next balloting...
...They are like ghosts, and the new generations feel it...
...Initially an informal association of 34 intellectual dissidents, the Group is now the main independent monitor of government actions...
...They are right, I do want to change the nation, but only in the sense of transforming its way of thinking...
...Liiceanu: Organizing an electoral campaign in such circumstances allows theuseofthe same tactics that were created by the previous regime...
...That is most serious...
...Maybe they have good intentions...
...Television did not help much...
...they claim they want democracy, but the question is whether they are capable of democracy...
...Husarska: Can this continue forever...
...During the past several months, as a representative of the Group for Social Dialogue, he has himself frequently been in the front line of negotiations with the authorities concerning many of the conflicts that have shaken Romania since Ceausescu's ouster...
...For several days a car with those"boys," as we call them, has been in front of my house, and the telephones are still bugged...
...they represent a much more clearly defined social group than students...
...The ignorance is not our fault...
...They have had more experience with resistance, opposition, direct political struggle...
...Liiceanu: No, there was no chance of carrying out the democratic education of the society...
...We couldn't even dream of founding free trade unions or creating links between intellectuals and workers...
...Humanitas currently has in preparation books by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, and Tadeusz Konwicki...
...A return to totalitarianism is impossible...
...Third, the authorities he about concrete things...
...Liiceanu: We are in the position of a sick man whose doctor, instead of curing him, is taking advantage of the illness...
...Probablythey are unable to act differently than they have...
...I said to the young people who distrusted Iliescu: You brought a criminal situation to an end, you should not fear anything now...
...Our situation is different than that of the Polish or Czechoslovak intellectuals...
...There is strong evidence that the authorities were not interested in assuring a democratic education...
...Husarska: Did you trust Iliescu at the beginning—in January, say...
...No one explained to the workers that privatization does not mean an ugly capitalist comes in a helicopter and steals the factory...
...Liiceanu: No...
...It also publishes a literary-political weekly, 22...
...One can even speak of a political crisis...
...The process of democratization, however, will take very long here...
...This is the most dramatic thing, that there is no alternative...
...Husarska: Was it possible to initiate this process during the election campaign...
...Theyalso have to learn, and it is not a favorable condition for the nation if those who govern and those who are governed have to learn about democracy simultaneously...
...In Romania we were kept apart from the very beginning by Nicolae Ceausescu's regime...
...Still, the refusal to speak with those holding a hunger strike [against members of the Communist nomenklatura running in the elections] is revolting...
...Husarska: Do you think that once their power is confirmed by the vote, the authorities will take the road of democratization...
...All of our moves were watched...
...When Vaclav Havel heard recently that a dozen or so people in Prague were on a hunger strike [aimed at outlawing the Communist Party and taking over its patrimony], he immediately responded by having talks with them...
...CEAUSESCU'S LEGACY A Talk with Gabriel Liiceanu of Romania By Anna Husarska Bucharest Gabriel Liiceanu is a founding member of the Group for Social Dialogue, formed nine days after the revolution here last December 22...
...For instance, General Diamandescu [the chief of police] said the other day on TV that force was not used against the demonstrators in University Square [on April 24...
...We have reason to believe something is being hidden from us...
...Liiceanu: My hesitation did not last long...
...Husarska: Can elections have a real impact in these conditions...
...Fifth, nothing was done to guarantee the personal safety of the candidates and the electoral campaign organizers...
...At that time, though, I did not imagine anyone could become so petrified in methods and procedures that would once more constitute a threat, given the nation's ignorance and helplessness...
...Husarska: So you consider holding the elections so quickly a mistake, or worse, a maneuver on the part of the provisional authorities...
...Liiceanu: No, I rather think it is because the miners are from the proletarian class...
...Fourth, as I said before, the tactics of the old regime have been used by the Front in its electoral campaign and no effort was made to assure equal chances for all...
...But I told myself we had to give him a chance, so that he could show what he wants and what heisabletodo...
...This is why the situation is dangerous, because they are not aware that they themselves are sick...
...We are sick not because of stupidity but because of our ignorance...
...I agreed to be a member of the Group for Social Dialogue precisely because I wanted to watch for any deviation from the truth among the authorities...
...A majority of the workers have a very distorted notion of capitalism—and this, again, is not out of stupidity but out of ignorance...
...Liiceanu: There is only one criterion for judging a government, whoever the person at the top may be: Does it tell the truth or does it he...
...Liiceanu: I do not think these people are necessarily cynical or corrupt...
...Ion Iliescu [the candidate of the National Salvation Front], an activist and member of the nomenklatura in the Communist Party, has had some experience...
...We need people who liberated themselves from the totalitarian mentality a long time ago...
...I spoke on television about the need to change the mentality of the people, and the newspaper Azi [organ of the National Salvation Front] accused me of wanting to change the nation, to make another one, as in the saying of Bertolt Brecht...
...One of them, Journal of Paltinish, argues that intellectuals should play amore active role in politics...
...A large part of the population does not identify itself with any party and is not represented...
...We are not yet ready for that, we must learn...
...I realized that I could not undertake such an important role...
...I also blame the authorities for the ethnic disorders in Tirgu Mures [between Romanians and Hungarians...
...Husarska: How would you sum up your opinion of the Iliescu government...
...Our lingua franca was French...
...Onecannotjudgeagovernment—even a provisional one—after one month...
...We were pushed to the margin, locked up in our studios...
...Why did you finally decide not to run...
...they are simply prisoners of their own past, the past of Communist Party activists...
...I think that today those rituals—the incredible manifestations of enthusiasm, the shouts of the crowd facing the speaker, whoever he is—all those primitive, manipulated reflexes belong to the epoch that supposedly ended in December 1989...
...First, the circumstances of the December revolution were never cleared up...
...Yet there is proof —video films, eyewitness accounts— that force was used...
...Second, no guarantees have been given that the Securitate and the entire apparatus of repression have been disbanded...
...It may not necessarily have been political, but at least he has had contact with people and can speak to the crowds...
...Husarska: But the so called historical parties [the National Liberal Party and the National Peasants Party] do not offer a serious alternative either...
...It is the natural consequence of 45 years of Romania's extraordinary isolation...
...Before the revolution Liiceanu, a 48year-old philosopher, worked at the Research Institute of the History and Theory of Art...
...Now we see that the government is refusing any dialogue with the very students who fought in University Square last December, while it instantly starts negotiations with miners who come to the capital with crowbars...
...Their mentality has been shaped over the last 30 years, and you don't change your mentality like shoes...
...Husarska: What would you say is the worst lie of this government...
...Early this year he became the head of Humanitas, a new incarnation of Editura Politica, the publishing house that used to issue collected works by Nicolae Ceausescu...
...We had no opportunity to participate in social life, let alone organize clandestine political activity...
...Husarska: Don't you think that is because the miners' demands concern salary raises, whereas the students are asking for radical and profound democratization...
...Liiceanu: There are many lies...
...Liiceanu has translated Plato and Heidegger into Romanian, and is the author of numerous books...
...Anna Husarska, a foreign editor of the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, is a frequent contributor to The New Leader...
...I can now say without doubt that the Romanian authorities are lying...
...With a little bit of good will the reality could be elucidated...
Vol. 73 • April 1990 • No. 7
