Mihail Roller

Mihail Roller (, first name also Mihai, also known as Rolea or Rollea; 6 May 1908 – 21 June 1958) was a Romanian communist activist, historian and propagandist, who held a rigid ideological control over Romanian historiography and culture in the early years of the communist regime. During his training in engineering, he rallied with the communist cells in Romania and abroad, joining the Romanian Communist Party while it was still an underground group. He collaborated with the Agitprop leaders Leonte Răutu and Iosif Chișinevschi, spent time in prison for his communist activity, and ultimately exiled himself to the Soviet Union, where he trained in Marxist historiography.

Returning to Romania upon the close of World War II, Roller carried out communist assignments in the field of culture. Under Răutu, he helped draft the official history textbook, monopolizing the historical narrative for over a decade. Turning the focus away from nationality and on class struggle, Roller's work sought to reeducate the traditionalist public, and depicted Romania as strongly linked to Slavic Europe. In advancing such theses, Roller censored out historical events, and, in one instance, recounted events that never took place in real life.

In the later 1950s, Roller found himself shut out by his communist peers. He was branded a deviationist by the party leadership members, probably because he had unwittingly exposed their secondary roles in early communist history. Roller died in mysterious circumstances, which do not exclude the possibility of suicide.

Biography

Early life and activity Roller was born in Buhuși, then a commune in Neamț County, to a Jewish family; as reported by Roller himself, his father was a rabbi, though some sources identify him as a functionary. The boy completed his secondary education in Bacău, Historian Lucian Boia writes that Roller, like other communist men of his generation, could not have been a card-carrying member at that stage, since that would have formed material proof of conspiratorial activity. More likely, Roller was inducted through a verbal statement.

A student at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin) and ParisTech between 1925 and 1931, Roller became a member of the Roter Frontkämpferbund. According to his autobiographical notes, he also served as leader of the Romanian Communist Group in France. After returning to the country in 1931, Roller was made editor of the PCdR's main gazette. Another fellow communist, Belu Zilber, later noted that Roller was already designated the PCdR historian, and promised an official post in the event of a communist takeover. According to political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu, Roller was also one of the Jewish and Bessarabian "déclassés" who gained top PCdR positions in the Chișinevschi–Răutu faction, and in fact a staunch anti-intellectual.

Arrests and declining health Known as "engineer Roller" or "Rolea" in files kept by the Kingdom of Romania's secret police, he first attracted the authorities' attention following the discovery of a secret printing press in Bucharest. He was again arrested in 1934 and 1938, although never sentenced due to lack of evidence.

Roller, who also supervised the creation of workers' antifascist sections in Bucharest in September 1934, is mentioned as one of the PCdR and PSU activists who signed a formal protest against "the numerous abusive and illegal acts perpetrated by the organs of repression". In May–October 1935, he served as chief ideological instructor for the communist party. He was them moved to another position, serving as the party secretary for the Lower Danube committee (Galați), following which he served on the Committee of Defense for Antifascist Prisoners, part of the International Red Aid (MOPR) network. In this capacity, Roller mobilized support for Pauker, at a time when she was facing trial for sedition. A note of May 1937 mentions the publication of his first standalone brochure, titled ("From the History of the Rights of Man") and prefaced by philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru. It was largely a posthumous homage to activist Constantin Costa-Foru. Police mentioned that it was already being sold in bookstores and by distributors of PCdR publications, and believed it was partly financed by the city's Baptist community, to whom a chapter was dedicated.

Soviet exile and return In July 1940, Roller, having narrowly escaped re-arrest by the Romanian authorities, left for Bessarabia, which had been recently occupied by the Soviets. He was for a while at Reni, in the Ukrainian SSR. Roller subsequently moved to the Moldavian SSR, at Chișinău, where he began working for the city's Tobacco Plant. In June 1941, just days before the start of Operation Barbarossa, he sent his résumé to Boris Stefanov, asking to be considered for membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Drawn into the PCdR group in Moscow, Roller continued working under Pauker, who had also joined the Romanian exile community. He also attended the History faculty of Moscow State University.

Following the coup of summer 1944, Roller, using his Soviet ideological training to his advantage, could join the party's propaganda structures. In 1945 he became deputy head of science and education at the central committee's Agitprop directorate, led by Leonte Răutu, remaining in that post until 1955. According to Tismăneanu, Roller had become a "scribe" of Romanian communism, one of several "fanatics" and "dilettantes" pushed up through PCdR promotions.

Mihail Roller signaled his return to Romanian historiography with the 1945 essay ("Pages Ignored from the History of Modern Romania"). It announced that the communist effort to reinterpret history had gained momentum: "The outlook of dialectical and historical materialism also arms us with the basic principles of scientific historical research." Roller went on to state that the capitalist historians had turned history into an occult science, since "it was in the interest of imperialism abroad, and of the exploiting classes within, that the history of the people and its struggles become public." This process, he proposed, was reversible. His editorials in the communist press made successive returns into the realm of Marxist-Leninist historiography. At Contemporanul, he outlined his suggestions about changing the chronology of Romanian history, and reinterpreted seminal events, such as the 1859 union of Romania, through a Marxist lens. Other such texts helped enshrine the myth of "illegalists" (clandestine communists of the 1930s and '40s) as freedom fighters. Also then, Frunză notes, Roller took part in the semi-compulsory Russification campaign, launching the agitprop slogan ("Let's learn the language of Lenin and Stalin!"). The pro-Soviet enterprise Editura Cartea Rusă published his tract Pedagogia în URSS ("Pedagogy in the USSR"), recommending the imitation of Soviet schooling.

By the summer of 1947, Roller's other party work involved exercising direct communist control over a left-wing student movement (the Democratic University Front) and instigating a purge of the "reactionary" professors. Reputedly, Roller is also responsible for the refusal to accept a gift of Constantin Brâncuși's modernist sculptures, thus depriving the Romanian state of a major art collection.

In November 1948, following the establishment of a Communist regime, he was elected to the Romanian Academy subsequent to the purge of a large number of members. Roller was part of a wave of new academicians; as noted by various authors, most of these were of peripheral importance in their fields, but were staunch adherents of communism and ready to act as ideological enforcers. Elected the Academy's Vice President (seconding Traian Săvulescu),

By March 1952, Roller was directly involved in vetting new members of the Academy, personally handling the reception of Matei Socor and the promotion of Ștefan Vencov. As he reported to Soviet diplomat Golichenkov, the reshuffling could ensure that Roller was "no longer alone among old reactionaries" such as Săvulescu (although he still approved induction for the latter's wife, Alice Aronescu-Săvulescu). When Săvulescu suggested that Academy publications should go uncensored, Roller intervened and reimposed "control", noting: "I am here to supervise and cut out those bits that catch my eye." Even the more traditionalist members of the communist academic establishment were irritated by Roller's interventions. Scholar Mihai Ralea allegedly called him "an incompetent, evil rube".

Early program Reviewing the impact of such directives, Lucian Boia calls Roller "the little dictator" of Romanian historiography, unchallenged after the "earthquake" of 1948 had invented a Romanian Marxist tradition. From 1948 to 1955, Roller was professor as well as chairman of the Romanian History department at the Political Military Academy. Roller was also a "historical reviewer" for a propaganda film retelling the 1848 events, with Geo Bogza as the screenwriter.

Following the 1948 election, Roller became a member of the Great National Assembly. In April 1949, he and Răutu were delegates to the Congress of Advocates of Peace under Mihail Sadoveanu (who reputedly eclipsed them both). That year, Roller rose to head the Agitprop section's education committee. This body was charged with writing school textbooks for use throughout the educational system, most of them translated from Russian. Under his direct tutelage, primary school pupils began learning about the "new teachers of the working class" (Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin), while Russian-language education began in 4th grade and continued through the third year of university.

The Roller directives are infamous for emphasizing the supposed grandeur of the Soviet Union under Stalin, but also for praising Tsarist Russia and the Slavic peoples. The other ideas emphasized included the condemnation of other foreigners, particularly Westerners, starting with Ancient Rome—the French, Italian and American libraries were shut down, their patrons arrested; condemnation of the formerly dominant boyars ("traitors" to the Ottomans) and bourgeoisie ("cosmopolitan" and "serving imperialist capitalists"); and minimization of the role played by historic Romanian figures. Romania's participation was therefore an "imperialist action", as were the occupation of Bessarabia and the intervention in Hungary.

The official view of Romanian history that these ideas represented was developed by Agitprop activists and the PMR's own History Institute, later becoming dogma when approved by party plenaries and congresses. Authoritative texts included the writings of Stalin, the "Short Course" History of the Soviet Communist Party, the decisions of the PMR's central committee and the writings and speeches of Gheorghiu-Dej. In the early years of the regime, scholars often imbued their work with an ideological tint by quoting Stalin or, to a lesser degree, Lenin. Taking their cue from a 1946 speech by Andrei Zhdanov, Răutu and Roller sought to replace the "bourgeois-reactionary" and "anti-Romanian" old historiography with dialectical materialism; the latter warned that failure to write a new history "would have left in the hands of the class enemy an ideological weapon against the working class".

Istoria R.P.R. His history textbook, the first Marxist synthesis of Romanian history, appeared in 1947, in one edition for advanced pupils and another for younger ones. It portrayed the country's history through the lens of Marxist stages of history: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism and socialism, advancing all the while through class struggle. The only history textbook allowed in schools, it has been described by Șerban Papacostea as "the vastest work of political mystification of Romania's past", making Roller "a symbol of the effort to adapt the Romanian past to the imperatives of the Soviet occupation and the 'internationalist' regime" imposed on the country. Stoian additionally suggests that Istoria... is a failure from a literary point of view. It is written in "wooden tongue" and its phrases have "the taste of sud". Historic figures were relegated to the exploitative classes, the suppression of these classes by the dictatorship of the proletariat being justified by their centuries of misdeeds. The Soviet Union was lavished with praise, the contributions of Slavs in Romanian history being highlighted, from the migratory period to the medieval period, to the War of Independence and the present. The very origin of the Romanians was narrated differently than before: Roller himself concluded that the influence of Slavic polities—Danube Bulgaria, Kievan Rus', Halych—was fundamental in shaping the lives of early Romanians. Classical Western values were attacked, more violently in later editions as the Cold War deepened. The Transylvanian School was renamed the "Latinist School", its leaders accused of hiding Slavic and Russian influence on Romanians and of promoting chauvinism. Of the leaders, only Nicolae Bălcescu was appreciated for combating feudalism and siding with Tsarist Russia; at the other end, Avram Iancu was chided for collaborating with the Austrian Empire. Roller's views of Bălcescu were almost entirely positive, and developed into a communist personality cult: counterfactually, Roller described Bălcescu's left-liberalism as a highly advanced form of utopian socialism and proto-Marxism. The 1859 union of the principalities only benefited the bourgeoisie by expanding the market for their products, and favored their class only, rather than the masses and the nation as a whole. Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who ruled over the unified state, was criticized as a hesitant reformer.

The creation of Greater Romania in 1918 was viewed, as regards the absorption of Bessarabia, as an "imperialist intervention against the socialist revolution in Russia". Likewise, the union of Transylvania, was an "intervention against the revolution in Hungary". The interwar chapter was headlined "The Increase in Romania's Enslavement to American, English and French Imperialism",

In this way, the class struggle and especially repression against the upper classes were legitimized: if the latter had stood against the masses for centuries, then taking away their properties through nationalization and incarcerating them seemed just. The events near the end of World War II were depicted as follows: the King Michael Coup was a "liberation by the Soviet Army" defending the country from imperialists; Northern Transylvania was restored thanks to the Soviets; the SovRoms aided in the country's economic recovery; the clauses favorable to Romania in the Paris Peace Treaties were due to the Soviets, while punitive ones originated with the imperialists. According to Stoian, the political history sections was largely reliant on fabricated and backdated documents, and justified the PCdR/PMR repression of its enemies, including the "right-wing social democrats" and the Zionists.

Criticism from Romanian and especially Soviet historians, acting on instructions from the Kremlin, found the text insufficiently Marxist-Leninist. In 1950, one Soviet took issue with the way the Transylvanian School was presented, considering that its Latinist orientation made it a "vassal of the Papacy" and charging it with chauvinism against Slavs and Hungarians. A Soviet delegation that visited Romania in 1949 ended by criticizing a number of elements in Roller's text. Pleșa does give credit to Roller for ordering publication of documents from the country's medieval period, previously missing from print nearly in their entirety, and of an index to the Hurmuzachi collection that had become virtually unusable. Although professional historians worked on these projects, he also notes that Roller did not consent to have the documents published in their original form, especially due to the exigencies of working at a Stakhanovite pace, and that the finished products did not reach a very high standard.

He helped plan the Romanian-Russian Museum in Bucharest and the Maxim Gorky Institute of Higher Education, devoted to training teachers of Russian language and literature. The magazine of which he was editor-in-chief, ("Studies"), first appeared in 1948. This was quarterly until 1955, then bimonthly until 1974, when it became monthly and its name was changed to Revista de Istorie. At the same time, magazines on a similar theme were shuttered: Revista Istorică, founded by Nicolae Iorga, Constantin C. Giurescu's Revista Istorică Română, Victor Papacostea's Balcanica and Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes. In one instance, Roller explained that, as long as the old teaching staff could include a "war criminal" such as Ion Petrovici, his own colleagues, Răutu and Chișinevschi, were fit to lecture in Marxism-Leninism at the University of Bucharest.

At times, Roller intervened on behalf of certain historians the regime considered undesirable, including the medievalist P. P. Panaitescu. When the Securitate secret police, charging past membership in the Iron Guard, arrested archaeologist Vladimir Dumitrescu while he was excavating at Hăbășești, Roller intervened several times with the police leadership, in particular Alexandru Drăghici and Gheorghe Pintilie, until his release was ultimately obtained. Other historians, after their release from prison, also asked Roller for help to start working again.

Impact on archaeology One particular area into which Roller injected communist ideology was Romanian archaeology. He shifted the emphasis from Roman Dacia to pre- and post-Roman periods, reflecting Marx' and Engels' view of the Roman Empire as supremely exploitative. He also adapted Stalin's remarks on the "unscientific position of old bourgeois historians" whose study of Russia reportedly began with Kievan Rus' and ignored what came before. In a Romanian context, this meant reversing the "denial of the development of human society prior to Dacia's conquest" by previous historians. He also emphasized Gheorghiu-Dej's position that Romanian territory had for over a millennium been robbed by Romans and barbarians, just as it had been by French, British or German imperialists.

In 1950, in an article on excavations made the previous year, he criticized Emil Condurachi, who had explored Histria, for not studying the native population before the "exploitative" Romans, urging a focus on the battles between Dacians and unconquered peoples against the Romans. He took issue with Ion Nestor for refusing to claim the presence of slaves at Monteoru: "some are afraid to place themselves on the proletariat's class position". Along with Radu Vulpe, he was berating for issuing field reports that were purely technical rather than ideologically shaded, concluding that "they do not seek to shed light, using scientific concepts, on the problems of the ancient history of the Romanian People's Republic". Condurachi was singled out for not using his report to attack Scarlat Lambrino, the previous head excavator at Histria, who as an exile in the West was "a sellout to Anglo-American imperialism". Roller's ideas on class struggle in Roman Dacia imposed the term "free Dacians" into the archaeological nomenclature. The name implicitly distinguished between Dacians in Roman territory, who were "unfree", and those roaming further east.

Țugui, by explaining Roller's errors, managed to attract Gheorghe Apostol and Nicolae Ceaușescu as supporters. He also drew to his side the Romanian Academy members Constantin Daicoviciu, David Prodan and Andrei Oțetea, as well as education minister Ilie Murgulescu, and later some of Roller's former collaborators, including Vasile Maciu, Victor Cheresteșiu and Barbu Câmpina. In early 1956, Oțetea, Daicoviciu and Câmpina sent Gheorghiu-Dej a document accusing Roller and close collaborators of plagiarism and unscientific scholarship. One effect of the moves against Roller was the 1955 firing of Aurel Roman as editor of Studii and his replacement with Oțetea (who the following year also replaced Cheresteșiu as head of the Bucharest History Institute), so that articles started to appear without Roller's approval. In 1955, he also lost his position at the Agitprop section and was transferred to become deputy director of the PMR History Institute, wielding more power than the titular head, Constantin Pîrvulescu. Also then, the regime was trying to coax Aurel Decei, a professional historian who had fled to Ankara, into returning and assuming a leadership position in academia. The task of negotiating with Decei fell on diplomat Gheorghe Pele, who noted: "Yes, we have gad this historian fella, a professor, this kike Roller, who has been falsifying history these past years [....]. They're just now getting rid of him."

By then, Roller was directing the effort to preserve samples of oral history, interviewing the former "illegalists" and building up a large collection of magnetic tape recordings. Reputedly, Roller's experiment in oral history had unwittingly managed to embarrass the communist leader: it presented Gheorghiu-Dej as more the secondary figure than the "illegalist" leader fashioned in official documents. In the spring of 1958, as the party celebrated 25 years since the Grivița Strike of 1933, the PMR Institute collection of recordings was in focus. A number of the "illegalists", especially those who did not receive the posts they expected after 1944, began to question whether Gheorghiu-Dej had played the leading role he claimed for himself during the strike, as well as criticizing the country's direction. The latter hastily called a plenary session of the central committee for 9–13 June, where a group of deviationists was "unmasked". The group was entirely composed of members who had belonged to the party when it was banned and included prominent figures such as Constantin Doncea and Grigore Răceanu. Officially, they were sanctioned for criticizing the leadership and its work methods as well as for attempting to organize a conference where party activity would be discussed. The underlying motive for the purge was their criticism of the party's stifling atmosphere and of the personality cult surrounding Gheorghiu-Dej.

The plenary session also criticized Roller, and afterwards, Paul Niculescu-Mizil presented the party leadership a report recommending that the entire leadership of the PMR Institute save the director be removed. At the same time as the plenary, a joint meeting of Romanian and Soviet historians took place at which Oțetea sharply criticized Roller for the unprofessionalism with which he published documents and announced they would be republished. The Soviets did not defend Roller, which the latter interpreted as a loss of support from his former allies.

Death and legacy Roller died on 21 June 1958, and Pleșa believes he most likely committed suicide. According to at least two accounts, Roller had also suffered a stroke or a heart attack some time during the "unmasking" sessions. He died without heirs. He had married Sara Zighelboim, whose brothers Avram and Ștrul were communist activists during the 1930s. She was originally from Bessarabia, and had returned there in 1940, shortly before Roller himself. Roller's death did not result in a thorough change to the historiographical ideas he had put forth. Class struggle and dialectical materialism continued to be taught in schools. While history writing did alter after 1960, with less emphasis placed on the "greatness" of the Soviet Union and on criticizing the West, and greater attention paid to previously neglected historical figures, this was due not so much to Roller's disappearance from the scene as to Romania's changed international position and gradual alienation from the Soviets. The role of guiding communist historiography fell on Marxists from the professional field, primarily Oțetea.

Tismăneanu and historian Cristian Vasile note that Roller's downfall was a sacrificial offering by Leonte Răutu, who survived the "unmasking" period and was still a culture boss under the national communism of the 1960s. Gheorghiu-Dej's successor Ceaușescu allowed young authors—Ileana Vrancea, Ion Cristoiu—or senior figures—Iorgu Iordan—, to publish works critical of the Zhdanov Doctrine. Although these mentioned Roller by name, Răutu was entirely exempt. Iordan calls Roller the "evil genie" of the Romanian Academy, and makes him responsible for the more "fanatical" decisions—such as granting posthumous Academy membership to the Marxist poet Dumitru Theodor Neculuță. A bizarre exception to this rule was an official reference work, the 1978 ("The Encyclopedia of Romanian Historiography"). It has an entry on Roller, which does not feature any negative commentary, while Răutu is entirely absent.

Roller's contribution was reevaluated again after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 toppled communism. Some of the first monographs dealing with Roller's career and its impact on Romania were published by Romulus Rusan, the Civic Alliance Foundation, and the Sighet Memorial of the Victims of Communism. At that stage, some authors described Roller's influence as criminal, and declared him an anti-Romanian by conviction. The books of antisemitic conspiracy theorist Iosif Constantin Drăgan cited Roller's case as evidence that Jewish communism was working against the Romanians. Despite such widespread condemnation of his theories, Roller's terminology was not entirely expunged from later Romanian research works. As noted in 1998 by archaeologist Petre Diaconu, the "meaningless and pernicious" concept of "free Dacians" has been taken for granted by numerous scientists in the field.