Oral History for Intellectual Biographies: Ornament or Essential Correctives to Archival/Textual Biases?

• In Event: Biographies and Post/Memories Discourses of the Communist Past in East Central Europe

Abstract

This contribution seeks to discuss the importance of oral history methodology for the recuperation of borderline intellectual biographies that have been either stigmatized by post-'89 revelations or indistinctly superposed to cases of political conformism. On the one hand, the studies meant to challenge the anti-communist paradigm by showing the existence of a porous Iron Curtain have relied on archival evidence of international organizations, on the records of socialist state institutions, or on press collections; they have thus obscured the differences between loyal, neutral or non-conformist intellectuals and have even reversed the intellectual and moral hierarchies existing at that time. This is because, to reverse the anti-communist canon focused on dissent, such studies have fallen into the extreme of relying only on state sources and media, thus re-endorsing the state vision about the cultural and scientific field and normalizing communist regimes as both bona fides international actors and knowledge producers. On the other hand, the contrasting paradigm has relied on the records of the secret police or Radio Free Europe, excluding "tainted" persons form the national canon of virtues, or altogether lynching those who "collaborated" with the secret police, and doing almost permanent damage to their memory. How does one write the history of intellectual transnational actors without moral absolutizations and still not eluding the moral and professional conditions of someone's travels, visibility, and competence?

Author

• Ioana Macrea-Toma, Open Society Archives / Central European University