The Beginning of an Euphemism in Romanian Communist Propaganda about Literature and Culture: the “Socialist Humanism” (1961-1965)
This study aims to investigate a few coordinates about the functions of the “euphemism” in the Romanian communist propaganda between 1960 and 1979. The main goal is to observe the uses of the “Humanist Socialism”. In our opinion, this so called noble notion began to be employed as a soft alternative to the radical “Socialist Realism”, which dominated the cultural debates in the 1950. But, changing the word was not supposed to shift the perspective. The strategy integrated in the communist school of diversions. The senses of a highly rated concept were confiscated by the authorities in order to disguise a political state of fact. In our point of view, that was the persistence and revival of Marxist-Leninist ideology after 1965 (The 9th Congress of The Romanian Communist Party), after 1971 (the so called July Theses), concluding with Nicolae Ceausescu’s brochure Umanismul Socialist (The Socialist Humanism, 1979). All in all, this euphemistic method of manipulation planned to hide that communist regime was an anti-humanitarian one.
Keywords: communist regime, propaganda, Socialist Humanism, Marxist-Leninism, euphemism.