Politics of Memory or Politics of Oblivion? Anticommunist and Antifascist Approaches in Urban Space Public Policies (the case of Bucharest)

This paper aims at analyzing the relation between urban space policies and politics of ?dealing with the past? in post-communist Romania, starting from two types of policy bearing explicit political and symbolical content, in the case of Bucharest: toponimic changes (mostly street and public square names) and construction/demolition of statues representing historical or political figures. After looking over specific cases, these will be structured in two main directions as to the past they mean to deal with: the anticommunist approach and the antifascist approach - more precisely, the one aimed against the cult of Wartime Romania’s military dictator, Marshall Ion Antonescu. It should be briefly mentioned that after the fall of communism, street names referring explicitly to the regime were replaced with other names, sometimes referring to another historical period which is the Romanian monarchy. Furthermore, a certain rehabilitation of Marshall Ion Antonescu’s controversial figure was made possible during the transition, so street names in different Romanian cities were named after him and statues were built in his memory. All this was reversed after a 2002 decision of the Romanian government, transformed into a full legal text in 2006, banning ?the public praise of people who find themselves guilty of crimes against humanity?. Therefore, I shall try to discover the level of decision-making in each case, as well as the relevance of these types of urban policy in the politics of official memory (re)configuration in post-communist Romania. Placing them into the larger memory configuration process and context will help reveal structural differences between the anticommunist and antifascist approaches, including political stakes involved and expressed through political discourse. As well, it interests us to see if there is any relevance to the traditional left-right cleavage as different right or left wing political actors succeed to national or local power.