A mass grave containing the bodies of three members of the Romanian anti-communist resistance group, White Guard, turned up on April 27th near the village
of Nepos in northern Romania. The grave contained bones and a boot that will undergo forensic analysis, said experts from the Romanian Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes.
The resistance members were identified
as Ioan Leonida Bodiu, Ioan Burdet and Toader Dumitru. They were
executed and buried by the Securitate, the Communist secret police, in
1949, and will be exhumed at the request of their relatives.
Two
years ago, on April 24 and 25, 2007, the Institute for the
Investigation of Communist Crimes, in co-operation with the Military
Prosecutor’s Office, unearthed the remains of nine men shot on March 9,
1950. They had also been buried in a mass grave near Bistrita-Nasaud.
Following inquiries, it was discovered the men were shot by a group of
soldiers with the Securitate, sent to capture and punish people for
their refusal to be conscripted, which was considered dissention by the
Communist regime.
In the postcommunist re-reckoning of Romanian history, the native resistance to communism has received limited attention. In fact,
details about what was called “anti-communist armed resistance” were not made public until after Ceausescu's overthrow in 1989. It was only then that the
public learnt about the numerous small groups of "haiducs" who had taken refuge in the Carpathian Mountains, where some resisted for ten years against the
troops of the Securitate. The last “haiduc” was killed in the mountains of Banat in 1962.
The Romanian resistance was one of the longest lasting armed movement in the former Soviet bloc. Its continued relegation to the realm of historical shadows
is partly due to the tendency to conflate resistance to communism and statements of fascist sympathy. Scholars are reluctant to provide historical accounts of
Romanian communist resistance for fear of being considered fascist revisionists. The end result is a significant, lamentable lack of scholarly work on the
Romanian resistance to communism.
If young Romanians are not educated about this non-fascist resistance to communism, they will be vulnerable to
cultural determinists and demagogues who argue that Romanians are not fit for democracy, that their traditions require strong leaders, that their history is a
testament of fatalism and defeat, that only a Romanian Putin or a local nationalist can preside over a secure Romanian nation. With the coming presidential
election, there is reason to be concerned about the Social Democratic candidate, Mircea Geoana, and his condescending view of Romanian citizens. Needless
to say, the confusion in Molodva also provides an excellent political distraction to the current economic crisis-- a distraction which could be mobilized as a
resurgent Romanian nationalism should unemployment and social discontent increase. The history of the Romanian resistance to communism offers an
empowering, alternate narrative to the helplessness and victimhood emphasized by extremists lining the halls of the Greater Romania Party.
In 1948, non-violent opponents of the Romanian communist regime were arrested. Liberal and social democratic leaders were taken to prison as "enemies of the
revolution", since they refused to compromise with the new communist "democracy" as instituted by the "will of the people". The members of the National
Peasant Party and the Legionaires, who openly opposed the Sovietization of Romania, were eliminated from public life. Since many were indeed political
fascists, their imprisonment was easily justified in the post World War II atmosphere. But most Romanian anti-communist resistance was not related to support
for fascism, but rather, to the extreme irrelevance of Marxist ideology to a primarily agrarian, non-industrial nation with the tiniest indigenous Communist party in
the Eastern bloc. Communism was truly a Soviet export to Romania; the resistance underlines this important and neglected fact.
Beginning in the summer of 1948, individuals or small groups went underground into the Carpathian mountains, forming various groups of armed resistance in
what was a relatively large movement, gathering several thousand people. The rebels came from all social strata and all areas of the country, spreading
everywhere the terrain could shield them. The movement is related to the spate of mass arrests hitting the country after the communist power seizure on the eve
of 1948, as well as to the political and economical measures which destroyed a large part of the peasantry and the middle class. People sought shelter in the mountains for different reasons-- some to escape imminent arrest, some who fled in fear after being economically ruined. Significantly, entire families took flight in late 1948 and early 1949.
Retreating in the mountains from internal or external oppressors was
a spontaneous and ancestral strategy of the Romanian peasantry. Significantly, the members of the armed resistance were not called
"partisans" by the population, but haiduci, the word for the generous bandits that had fought the Austrian occupiers and were considered folk heroes.
A further major component of the armed resistance consisted of individuals and groups motivated by anti-communist convictions and persuaded that only an armed engagement could contain increasing terror and prevent irrevocable communist takeover. Some of the resistance groups were led by ex-army officers and acted in a more coordinated and planned way. It appears that they put their hope in stirring up a more general armed insurrection, which never came to life. A smaller category of insurgents were Romanian refugees recruited in Europe by the Office of Policy Coordination, trained in France, Italy and Greece and then dropped in the Carpathians. It seems, however, that most of them, not being able to create local contacts imperative for survival, were soon captured.
Ion Gavrilă-Ogoranu led a resistance group in the Făgăraş Mountains from 1948 to 1956, and remained undetected until 1976. Among other haiduci in the anti-communist resistance, one must include the Cross and Sword Organization in the Rodna mountains, Decebal's Guards in Suceava, Fetea in Sibiu, Avram Iancu's Haiduci in Bistrita, the in Dobrogea, Capt. Brancusi Mihai in Gorj, the Haiduks of Mustel in the Southern Fagaras mountains, the Young Partisans of Romania in Bukovina, and many, many more.
The White Army, which I assume is another name for the White Guard, worked from the Apuseni mountains. Sadly, there is little detailed information about its members and its history online. Most searches lead me to information about the Soviet army or football teams. I will do my best to find more information in the coming week so that these men who died in the fight against communism can be properly acknowledged and honored.
Sources: Romanian Times + Wikipedia + Claudia Dobre's article in Memoria + Ionitoiu Cicerone's article for Gindirea Romaneasca + Tripatlas article