Laszlo Alexandru
TEN SOPHISMS
english version by Axel H. Lenn
As Romania gets closer to rejoining Europe, the hottest topic on the public agenda is the intended disclosure of all the former collaborators of the Securitate. Romania’s Presidential administration had the initiative to declassify most of the secrete files and thus the most visible actors on the social stage – whether politicians, priests or writers – became an extremely interesting investigation subject. Certain confessions created sensation, some personalities admitted their past duplicity while others continued to deny it despite clear evidence.
Three professional categories were chosen to face the disclosure hurricane, not by chance, but considering mainly their forestage position. Politicians have an essential responsibility with the way things are going in Romania, by ensuring the democratic equilibrium, the legislative background and the actual administration of current problems. Priests and writers, on the other hand, are responsible with the moral and aesthetical health of the community. Just as a surgery cannot be performed unless surgical instruments are sterilized, neither can Romania materialize its intention to enter a new development phase as long as its most important social instruments are covered by pus.
In such turmoil, it’s not really pointless to examine the position adopted by the institutions that represent the aforementioned categories. Most Romanian political parties (except the extremist Romania Mare Party) saluted the disclosure operation – some of them requested it officially, while others simply accepted the conclusions. Important leaders of the Romanian Orthodox Church went for televised confessions of their youth sins, many times invoking extenuating circumstances. The Romanian Writers’ Union (RWU) was the last to express an official point of view.
These past fifteen years, the higher body of our intelligentsia proved disappointingly slow in assuming its public image. Its successive presidents never ceased to disappoint. Mircea Dinescu, prominent dissident in the final years of Ceauşescu’s dictatorship, once elected president of the dinosaur in Calea Victoriei, turned his attention to the writers’ social problems. His tumultuous presidency danced in delicate pirouettes of complicity with Romania’s neocommunist regime (see the University Square incident) and came to an end following corruption accusations (he took hold of a printing house). Laurenţiu Ulici, a second shelf literary critic, was mostly preoccupied with his career as a politician; he surrounded himself with former activists and chose to remain indifferent to all the open letters calling for a moral sanitation process. Eugen Uricaru, a trifling fiction writer, proclaimed himself leader following an agitated election meeting, and he had nothing else on his agenda but to prolong a dusted status quo while accumulating sinecure after sinecure to his benefit alone. He had to step down after Doina Cornea had spoken to the press about his former career as an informer for the Securitate, based on evidence from C.N.S.A.S. (The National Council for Studying the Securitate's Archives). The fact that Eugen Uricariu lost his case in court marked an official confirmation of the harsh accusations.
Thus, RWU remained profoundly indebted to make a clear, resolute intervention favouring moral requital. This institution should have been concerned not only with the financial means to eat their warm, subsidized dinner or to publish their volumes, but also with the ways to repent for their past cowardice, hypocrisy, ambiguity and collaborationism. All the conditions were met. The new RWU president was elected June 2005, following an inspiring oration, aiming to create a functional civic court with moral reflection attributes. The Romanian writer was invited to regain his social prestige and personal dignity. The man who had issued this invitation was a prominent literary critic, a well known figure on the cultural stage for the last four decades. Celebrated for his nuanced and decent opinions, he had the best deontological, managerial and charismatic qualities to proceed to the disagreeable indebtedness. The social and political context, as well as the readers’ expectations insistently urged him to carry out the task.
The new (old) turn of events under Nicolae Manolescu is yet again extremely disappointing. Devoted follower of his predecessors, who used their presidential seat as a springboard to more remunerable occupations, whether in the private enterprise or in politics, the ruling head of RWU turned to the diplomatic service. Just one year after being elected president of RWU, the director of România literară became Romania’s ambassador at the UNESCO. As for the promised moral reform...
The debate held on August 30, regarding the writers’ collaboration with the Securitate, was intensely mediated by Nicolae Manolescu, who feared the topic might explode in the public eye. This debate did not aim at exposing anyone’s guilt and complicity, but at calming the spirits, keeping things under control and imposing the institution’s hegemony over private views. Nicolae Manolescu, the RWU president, flanked by the ever conservative Eugen Simion, started playing the pizzicato cord of indulgence toward the former collaborationists who, according to his ideas, have been the real victims; he diluted culpabilities, he requested that the whole communist regime should be put to trial first, followed by the whole society, the Securitate as secret police and so on; writers should be the last to face investigations and public accusations.
The organizer found himself contradicted with a bunch of arguments and examples by some of the participants (Stelian Tănase, Varujan Vosganian, Bujor Nedelcovici etc.). Stuck in an acute persuasion insufficiency, having exhausted all the personal charm tricks, Nicolae Manolescu must have wanted to have the last word in this controversial matter and thus he published an official RWU statement in România literară (No. 38/2006). The content of this statement should be examined thoroughly. I’m going to reproduce it exactly:
The Executive Committee of the Romanian Writers’ Union has taken notice of the debate on secret files and former collaborators of the Securitate being disclosed, including all the views expressed by the writers who participated at the meeting on August 30 this year, at the central RWU office in Bucharest. The RWU Executive Committee considers that, compared to other professional categories, writers were neither more persecuted, nor more spared by the former Securitate. To their honor, it must be mentioned that the largest number of dissidents were writers and that the National Writers’ Councils and the National Writers’ Conferences of 1968-1989 constituted unique political protest forums in communist Romania.
Unfortunately, there are writers who collaborated with the former Securitate. There are writers who glorified the communist regime. The RWU Executive Committee considers that unveiling the truth is a must. The RWU Executive Committee will officially request C.N.S.A.S. to identify and investigate its members’ secret files.
Also, the RWU Executive Committee would like to stress that the former collaborators are not the main culprits in this case; it was the system which generated repression. Communism should be put to trial first, alongside those who ordered the crimes and those who carried out such orders, the old Nomenklatura, the Securitate officers – these are the main characters of that dark period. The secret file hysteria looks more and more like a manipulation and is on the brink of turning into a witch hunt and into civil war between generations.
The RWU Executive Committee calls for reason and restraint. We should focus on the source of evil, and not stir up for squeals and scuffles. The past should be known, not avenged.
Throughout time, the word sophism has had various meanings. Nowadays, by sophism we understand a fallacy, as expressed by a blockhead, or a tendentious judgement issued by the speaker with the intention of misleading the audience or to emphasize himself. This phenomenon signifies either an abnormality of the individual’s logical and critical capacities or a morally defect argumentation, and translates into ambiguous figures of speech, where language is concerned, or into spectacular reality distortions, where ideas are concerned. As Aristotle put it, “because there are people who care to look wise and not to be wise (sophistical wisdom is only apparent, unreal, and the sophist but a man who makes money out of apparent, unreal wisdom), it’s obvious that these people live to pretend they carry out the tasks of wisdom and not to carry them out effectively, without pretending”.
The statement issued by the RWU Executive Committee on the collaborationist and denunciating writers, just like many other similar views expressed by Nicolae Manolescu, the RWU president – in an attempt to postpone a public trial, to turn the guilty innocent, to maintain a clean social image – contains a wide range of sophisms, from the more traditional to the more surprising. I believe it’s worth mentioning them.
“The RWU Executive Committee considers that, compared to other professional categories, writers were neither more persecuted, nor more spared by the former Securitate” – we are being told sententiously. First of all, this is just an ordinary subjective opinion, obviously issued in the name of the aforementioned institution so that it should be taken for granted by the public. The RWU Executive Committee is by no means qualified to investigate the activity of the former Securitate (e.g. how many were persecuted, how many were spared). Expressing personal opinions on such a topic and claiming they stand for the verdict of a qualified institution illustrates the ab auctoritate sophism or the argumentum ad verecundiam. (The following sentence constitutes a classical example: “William Shakespeare published a study concluding that people should brush their teeth three times a day” – this is null and void, because William Shakespeare is not an oral hygiene expert.) The prepronouncement sophism is closely related to the aforementioned fallacy: although a real dimension of the large scale persecutions conducted by the former Securitate has not been precisely established yet, although this particular subject is currently fueling a major public debate, the RWU Executive Committee appears to know the outcome and considers itself qualified to share it. Truth targeting means selecting the existing information and rearranging it conveniently by emphases drifts and priority changes. In this particular case, when the writers’ secret files started to surface, signaling lamentable realities and scandalous compromises, RWU is trying to “bury” the subject, claiming there is nothing out of the ordinary, that writers were neither more persecuted nor more spared than other professional categories.
“To their honor, it must be mentioned that the largest number of dissidents were writers and that the National Writers’ Councils and the National Writers’ Conferences of 1968-1989 constituted unique political protest forums in communist Romania” – the precious opinion goes on. This sentence suffers from the defective generalization sophism, using the biased sample technique – i.e. choosing a non-representative group and abusively extending its features to the whole category it belongs to. (For example, many writers were active members of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party – Alexandru Balaci, Octavian Paler, D.R. Popescu, Valeriu Râpeanu etc. – but this does not mean that all the writers of the time were politically enslaved.) On the other hand, it is well known that dissident writers did not act as an institution, not at all on behalf of RWU, but on their own and against RWU commands. It must be mentioned that right after Paul Goma was arrested by the Securitate, in April 1977, the RWU Executive Committee (using Nicolae Manolescu’s vote to support the cause) excluded the famous dissident! And out he stays till this day! I consider the manipulation of past personal sacrifices in order to cover the dirt on the nowadays RWU’s face is – euphemistically speaking – coarse callousness.
The fifth sophism, using glaring exaggeration, considers that the National Writers’ Councils and the National Writers’ Conferences were the most important “political protest forums” in communist Romania. In other words, the partisans’ fight in the mountains in the ‘50s, the 1977 miners’ strike, the founding of S.L.O.M.R. (The Free Trade Union of the Working People of Romania), the 1987 Braşov revolt or Doinea Cornea’s international protests were not real political protests that could match the writers’ displeasures with limited printing, symbolic honorariums or insolent censorship! The “FIRST TO GET THE LAURELS, LAST TO GO TO WAR” slogan should be carved, among the nobiliary roses, on this guild’s coat of arms.
We are delighted to hear that “the RWU Executive Committee will officially request C.N.S.A.S. to identify and investigate its members’ secret files”. One should note that amphibology is the sophism of ambiguous, deceitful expression, not allowing the reader to fully understand the speaker’s real intentions. And this is the case here: whose secret files will be identified and investigated? The files of all the RWU members or the files of its leaders? It’s not exactly clear from the official statement. The amplitude of the moral sanitation process is (intentionally?) unclear. After all, who needs an official statement expressing nothing but good intentions?! Had the writers’ leaders turned up their sleeves and actually requested those files would have sufficed...
“Also, the RWU Executive Committee would like to stress that the former collaborators are not the main culprits in this case; it was the system which generated repression. Communism should be put to trial first, alongside those who ordered the crimes and those who carried out such orders, the old Nomenklatura, the Securitate officers – these are the main characters of that dark period. The secret file hysteria looks more and more like a manipulation and is on the brink of turning into a witch hunt and into a civil war between generations” – we are being informed in a thrilling key. Dissipating responsibility, however, is only a cheap trick. Any probation lawyer could “demonstrate” that the real culprit is not the murderer who strangled the old lady, but his family who failed to educate him, the society who failed to supervise him, the poverty he had to face etc. If Communism, nomenklaturism, the Securitate officers and other actors swarming around were to be put to trial first, it is more than obvious that the informers among writers will be trialed in their afterlife. Is there such a law providing that all these moral trials must be completed successively when they could very well take place simultaneously?
Appealing to fear (or the so-called argumentum in terrorem) represents the coarse sophism that the speaker uses to manipulate the listener’s fears and prejudiced ideas. The former collaborationists’ disclosure most certainly did not fuel any “civil war”, not even a conflict “between generations” in Germany, Poland or Hungary, so this will surely not occur at the Danube’s mouths or at the foot of the Balkans.
Before disguising his personal views in RWU Executive Committee statements, Nicolae Manolescu had other opportunities of expressing the same euphemizing, embellishing, exalting conceptions. Thus, in the interview he gave 22 Magazine (No. 813 / 4-10 October 2005), the Romanian writers’ leader said: “Regarding the moral purging process, (...) I’ve said that, as a rule, I stand against any type of purging. We don’t have a lustration law yet. In the end, I could find out the names of the RWU writers who were informers or agents of the Securitate. And what should I do about this? Should I publish the information to morally discredit them? There is no such thing as moral discrediting, since the Romanian Parliament and government shelter former collaborationists whose files are already known. Was Ristea Priboi morally discredited? What should I do to a 70-80 year old writer who’s living by the day? Should I stop helping him? How should I punish him? Wherefrom should I purge him? From a 1.700.000 lei pension? Purging is a must, but I believe the former Securitate officers should come first, not the informers”.
Card stacking is a trick used to rearrange clear facts in order to achieve a unilateral perspective. We do not have a lustration law yet, it’s true; this however does not suppress the need for disclosing the informers among writers, because the process itself is not subject to national legislation, but to public morality. RWU has indeed a main syndical attribute of social assistance, but this does not diminish its role as a moral and civic organism. The ruling RWU president was elected on exactly these principles he is treading upon.
Invoking mercy (or the so-called argumentum ad misericordiam) is an attempt to draw the collocutor’s support by appealing to feelings of compassion or guilt. There might just be a couple of 80 year old informers with 1.700.000 lei pensions, this however does not diminish the moral gravity of their lamentable duplicity. The truth cannot be sustained on feelings, because human emotions are often changing, while the laws of logic are not.
Looking at the ten sophisms above, so diverse in nature, thrown around by Nicolae Manolescu in order to impose his retrograde, diluting options, the admiration for the intellectual abilities grows dimmer while the disgust for the moral compromise grows stronger. From this corner of the academic province, I’d like to salute Romania’s representative at the UNESCO and to assure him that his new colleagues, the ambassadors, will be more than delighted with his sophistic abilities. On the other hand, however, his former subordinates, the writers, wouldn’t have deserved ni cet excès d’honneur, ni cette indignité.
(December 2006)