Finding the enemy: Ethnicized state violence and population control in Ceaușescu’s Romania

This article focuses on the case of state violence in Communist Romania by departing from Michael Mann’s classic partition between despotic and infrastructural power.5 I seek to analyze how the generalized state violence of the early Communist period (despotic power) gradually evolved in Nicolae Ceau,sescu’s Romania into a quasi-cooperative relationship between citizens and Communist authorities (infrastructural power). The article first lays out a comparative historical framework of state violence in Communist Romania, followed by a brief presentation of the historiographical debate over the multiple and changing functions of the secret police in a totalitarian environment. The article then traces the ideological shift in the Romanian Communist regime’s stance toward minorities that evolved from the ethnic promotion policy of the early Communist period to active discrimination against non- Romanian minorities during Ceau,sescu’s rule.