Writing History in a Propaganda Institute : Political Power and Network Dynamics in Communist Romania

Romania’s Party History Institute has been portrayed as a loyal executioner of the Communist Party’s will. Yet, recent investigations of the institute’s archive tell a different story. In 1990, the Institute for Historical and Socio-Political Studies of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (previously the Party History Institute) was closed. Since its foundation in 1951 it had produced thousands of books and journals for the Communist Party on the history of both the Party and Romania. This book is dedicated to the study of the Party History Institute, the history-writers employed there and the narratives they produced. By studying the history-writers and their host institution, the historiography produced under Communist rule has been re-contextualized. For the first time, this highly controversial institute and its vacillating role are scrutinized by a scholarly eye. Francesco Zavatti is a historian at Södertörn University, Sweden, and is affiliated with the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) and the School of Historical and Contemporary Studies.