RRI Live!

Listen to Radio Romania International Live

Comic Books in Socialist Romania

Comic books, a form of Western urban pop culture, was for that reason a victim of communist regime censorship.

Comic Books in Socialist Romania
Comic Books in Socialist Romania

, 10.11.2014, 13:12

In Socialist Romania, the widest circulation was enjoyed by the magazine called “Cutezatorii” — “The Valiant”, the propaganda publication of the regime aimed at children under 14, the age ceiling for the Pioneers, the children’s communist organization. As such, it had a severely limited content.



The one publication that sparked the appetite of several generations of Romanian children for comics was undoubtedly Pif Gadget, as we were told by Ioan Stanomir, comic book historian:“Pif Gadget is one of the strangest and most convoluted stories of the Cold War. It was a magazine that grew out of the ruins of a magazine called Vaillant. Just like ‘The Valiant’ of Romania, it had a twofold purpose: entertainment, as a comic book, but also as a propaganda tool for the French Communist Party. The fact that Pif Gadget penetrated the communist bloc, especially Romania, was made possible by the tight relations that developed between Romania and France, after the 1965-1968 period. It is a relationship that blended on several levels with Gaullist France, as well as with communist subculture and counterculture. That also explains joint film productions. This is how Livre de poche came in from France, how French movies came here, and how this magazine came in, which was probably the most unusual thing in the landscape back then. Through this magazine, you could make contact with French culture; at the same time you made contact with Western culture, as filtered through that magazine. On yet another note, you made contact with a culture that was totally unusual for us, comic book culture. Whole generations of children learned French reading the comics, in a naïve and spontaneous way, and discovered that there was a character called Superman, who came from the planet Krypton. When Superman, played by Christopher Reeve, was seen on the silver screen by Romanian children, they already knew that character from Pif.”



Another major comic book hero in Romania was Rahan. Ioan Stanomir told us his take on the character: “Rahan is famous among Pif fans. He had a cult following, in the sense used in American and Western popular culture. Rahan is a man living at the beginning of the world. He is a link between humans who are not yet humans, and the humans who are about to become humans. He is very similar to American characters in American movies today, such as ‘10,000 BC’. He fights saber tooth tigers, mammoths, and teaches others how to discover their humanity. He is a sort of Prometheus unaware of his own condition. Rahan is still a cult character, if we look at comic book websites, especially Romanian ones. We can see a host of Rahan fans out there, keeping his memory alive. Rahan is based on Tarzan, which is a character that is alive in the West. He is a white man who ignores his condition in the heart of a black continent. This is a form of paternalism, the white man in relation to the black man who is at the beginnings of civilization. However, Pif was definitely not a racist magazine, because that contravened to Western leftist ideology. From this point of view, fed through a communist platform, the magazine was great for kids back then, because it taught them that there were French speaking children all over the place, Ivory Coast, Morocco, France and Romania. That meant you could have a pen pal in any of those countries. I think that the fight against racism, no matter what its ideological angle, is a noble fight, and it was wonderful for a kid in Romania to be able to talk to a kid from Morocco or Senegal. Pif made this possible.”



We asked Ioan Stanomir why there are no Romanian comic book heroes: “When they gave us at school ‘The Valiant’, we just rolled it up and hit each other over the head with it, like it was a toy. I didn’t like that magazine. The heroes we found in Pif were so many. There were Pif and Hercules, obviously. And many of them were adopted by us. We had Rahan, Placid and Muzo, Leonard, Doc Justice, these were our heroes. We couldn’t understand all they said, but we knew that there was this place they came from, nicely wrapped, with wonderful gadgets, and these were the magazines that made us happy. The children back then didn’t want to be pioneers. Even if they were made pioneers, like so many of us, that was not their dream. Their dream was to have those gadgets, those Western consumerist toys. You wanted that put-it-together-yourself glider, not the red pioneer scarf. You wanted the candy that actually tasted like candy, not the tasteless stuff in Romania. Western consumer culture gained ground, because, even in its ideological form, it had to do with a world that had color and had taste. Maybe today young people don’t get that. Taste had a huge role in the fall of communism. The fact that there was a cult of Cuban candy, a cult for Turbo chewing gum, which had taste, not like the Romanian chewing gum, which had none, that says it all. We were living in a world of tasteless clones. I couldn’t care less about the struggle of the underground communist movement. We loved the French underground fighters in the Resistance, they were much more likeable. Pif, in a bizarre and unintentional way, served capitalism in Romania, not communism.”



The history of comic books under socialism ended in 1989, and with it the special status that comic books had.

banner-Pro-Memoria.-960x540-1.jpg
The History Show Monday, 04 November 2024

The Spark(Scanteia) communist newspaper

The press was one of the communist regime’s most powerful weapons regarding propaganda. The freedom of expression and of the press was a right that...

The Spark(Scanteia) communist newspaper
RRI
The History Show Monday, 28 October 2024

Securitate and the KGB parting ways

The most feared institution of the Romanian communist state was the political police known as Securitate, created on the model of the NKVD, which...

Securitate and the KGB parting ways
Vasile Luca
The History Show Monday, 21 October 2024

Vasile Luca

From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1989, the Red Army imposed communist party regimes in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. They...

Vasile Luca
Gheorghe Gheorghiu –Dej şi Petru Groza /
The History Show Monday, 14 October 2024

The Romanian Communist Party and the Agrarian Reform

According to the Marxist-Leninist theses about means of production, property had to be common, owned by all those who used it and created added...

The Romanian Communist Party and the Agrarian Reform
The History Show Monday, 07 October 2024

The Romanian military fleet in WWII

The history of the Romanian military fleet begins in the middle of the 19th century, when, after the union of the two principalities of Moldova and...

The Romanian military fleet in WWII
The History Show Monday, 30 September 2024

Ana Pauker

Ana Pauker is one of the most conspicuous figureheads in the history of the communist regime in Romania. Ana Pauker played a crucial part in the team...

Ana Pauker
The History Show Monday, 23 September 2024

Nicolae Titulescu and the Romanian diplomacy in Europe in the 1930s

  The diplomacies of countries that gravitate around the powerful ones, always have the mission of being one step ahead of events. They must...

Nicolae Titulescu and the Romanian diplomacy in Europe in the 1930s
The History Show Monday, 16 September 2024

The early days of BBC’s Romanian-language broadcasting

In the world of radio broadcasting, the BBC needs no introduction. The BBC is one of the landmarks without which the history of radio broadcasting...

The early days of BBC’s Romanian-language broadcasting

Partners

Muzeul Național al Țăranului Român Muzeul Național al Țăranului Român
Liga Studentilor Romani din Strainatate - LSRS Liga Studentilor Romani din Strainatate - LSRS
Modernism | The Leading Romanian Art Magazine Online Modernism | The Leading Romanian Art Magazine Online
Institului European din România Institului European din România
Institutul Francez din România – Bucureşti Institutul Francez din România – Bucureşti
Muzeul Național de Artă al României Muzeul Național de Artă al României
Le petit Journal Le petit Journal
Radio Prague International Radio Prague International
Muzeul Național de Istorie a României Muzeul Național de Istorie a României
ARCUB ARCUB
Radio Canada International Radio Canada International
Muzeul Național al Satului „Dimitrie Gusti” Muzeul Național al Satului „Dimitrie Gusti”
SWI swissinfo.ch SWI swissinfo.ch
UBB Radio ONLINE UBB Radio ONLINE
Strona główna - English Section - polskieradio.pl Strona główna - English Section - polskieradio.pl
creart - Centrul de Creație Artă și Tradiție al Municipiului Bucuresti creart - Centrul de Creație Artă și Tradiție al Municipiului Bucuresti
italradio italradio
Institutul Confucius Institutul Confucius
BUCPRESS - știri din Cernăuți BUCPRESS - știri din Cernăuți

Affiliates

Euranet Plus Euranet Plus
AIB | the trade association for international broadcasters AIB | the trade association for international broadcasters
Digital Radio Mondiale Digital Radio Mondiale
News and current affairs from Germany and around the world News and current affairs from Germany and around the world
Comunità radiotelevisiva italofona Comunità radiotelevisiva italofona

Providers

RADIOCOM RADIOCOM
Zeno Media - The Everything Audio Company Zeno Media - The Everything Audio Company