Le but de cette recherche est de rendre compte de quelques dominantes de l’espace intellectuel roumain lors du passage du socialisme d’État à la démocratie représentative et des effets dans différentes sphères d’activité intellectuelle dus aux changements dans l’ordre social tenant de l’installation des du marché et de la disparition progressive d’une économie régie par l’État. Le terrain de la recherche est constitué par un groupement d'intellectuels mis en place les derniers jours de décembre 1989, au moment même des transformations politiques déclenchées par la chute du régime communiste en Roumaine. Le Groupe pour le Dialogue Social (GDS) fut le premier et resta le plus influent et stable groupement de la période postcommuniste ayant dans sa composition des auteurs ayant acquis leur reconnaissance sous le communisme, ainsi que de jeunes scientifiques formés également avant 1989. L’une des raisons de cette réussite consiste dans l’autorité culturelle accumulée par sa publication, l’hebdomadaire 22, qui se distingua parmi les publications intellectuelles et contribua de façon paradigmatique à la redéfinition de cet espace marqué après 1989 par l’intérêt accru pour des questions politiques et le monde politique. La nouveauté et la singularité du Groupe consistèrent en la durabilité du cumul des notoriétés : prestige obtenu par la majorité des membres comme auteurs de la période communiste, notoriété acquise par d'autres en tant que dissidents, mais aussi reconnaissance gagnée par certains autres à partir de 1990. Ces types de notoriété mis ensemble se sont manifestés par des engagements, collectifs et individuels, dont les formes furent multiples et diverses, consécutives et simultanées : textes publiés dans l'hebdomadaire du Groupe, interventions à l’occasion des rencontres avec des politiques, lettres ouvertes, expertise fournie aux organisations civiques ou à des structures politiques, articles publiés dans la presse spécialisée, essais et études politiques, participation à des associations civiques, enrôlement dans des partis politiques. La notoriété obtenue par bon nombre d’intellectuels du GDS, la durabilité du Groupe, sa tribune, 22, des investissements successifs dans la politique, du Groupe mais aussi individuellement, donnent du pouvoir à ses (re)présentations lorsque l’espace politique se structure autour du refus du communisme, l’« anticommunisme », et des anciens « communistes », membres de la nomenklatura surtout. Le GDS inclut des représentants des professions littéraires qui ont acquis leur reconnaissance et sont même devenus des figures notoires avant 1989, mais le GDS n’hésitera pas à intégrer aussi bien des journalistes que des juristes qui n’ont pas acquis leur reconnaissance comme auteurs, ne sont ni artistes ni scientifiques. L’hétérogénéité qui le caractérise, à travers une analyse de leurs trajectoires sociales et professionnelles et de leurs liens avec d’autres intellectuels et des politiques, permet d’esquisser des idées sur la situation et la place des intellectuels dans l’espace social pendant la période communiste mais surtout après 1989, et non seulement de ceux qui sont des membres de ce groupement. Ce travail traite des pratiques proprement intellectuelles, mais surtout discursives, dans une analyse des textes à visée scientifiques et des textes journalistiques, regardant du côté des modes et des moyens d’occuper l’espace public formé par ces discours et ceux qu’ils suscitaient. Empruntant une approche socio-historique et s’inscrivant dans une approche relationnelle, ce travail porte sur les diverses formes que prend la politisation au sein des champs spécifiques – militantisme, entrée en politique, mobilisation politique et démobilisation des intellectuels – et sur les professions intellectuelles à l’aube et à l’épreuve de la démocratie et au service du processus de démocratisation. / The purpose of this research is to account for some of the dominant features of the Romanian intellectual space in connection with the regime change that followed the collapse of state socialism. Transition to pluralism and representative democracy effected in different on the spheres of intellectual life, which echoed the transfiguration of the social order from a centralized and planned economy to new economic relations governed by the market. This research is focused on a group of intellectuals set up during the last days of December 1989 at the time of the political transformations triggered by the fall of the communist regime in Romania, and which avowed goal was to make sense of this dramatic change.The Group for Social Dialogue (GDS) has been the first such association to be established and remains the most influential and stable group of its kind. The group typically includes authors that acquired public recognition under the communist regime as well as young scientists that completed their academic and intellectual training in the last decade of state socialism. One of the reasons for their success was the cultural authority capitalized by the group’s weekly publication, 22, widely regarded as the most prominent intellectual outlets of post-communism. The regular contributors to the journal were instrumental in redefining a public space marked after 1989 by an increased interest for the political issues and politics. The distinctiveness and the sustainability of this venture were the cumulative result of the personal prestige abs cultural authority enjoyed by most of the members of the group either as well published and widely read authors of the communist period, or as former dissidents. This prestige and authority was gradually on other members, whose public career started after 1990. These types of notoriety, joined together, took many different forms of engagement, collective and individual, consecutive and simultaneous: texts published in the journal of the Group, public statements during various meetings with politicians, open letters, expertise provided to civic organizations or political structures, papers published in the specialised press, political essays and studies, participation in civic associations, political party enrolment. The personal notoriety gained by a considerable number of intellectuals of the GDS, the resilience of the Group, the circulation of its journal 22, sequential investments in politics, of the Group itself but also individually, conferred a significant amount of clout to its (re)presentations of politics at a time when the political realm was structured around the rejection of communism (the post-communist “anti-communism”), as opposed to the electoral and social influence exercised by former “communists”, especially by those members of the nomenklatura who succeeded to set the tone of post-communist politics. The Group included representatives of literary professions who achieved the recognition and have even become famous before 1989, but the GDS does not hesitate to integrate also journalists and lawyers who did not reach recognition as authors, artists or scientists. The research was by and large devoted to isolate and examine intellectual practices, especially discursive practices, in the analysis of scientific and journalistic texts, looking at ways and means deployed by intellectuals in order to occupy the public space. In a socio-historical approach and in a vision inspired nu the sociology of relations, this research was concerned with various forms taken by the politicisation within specific fields – militancy, entrance into politics, political mobilisation and demobilisation of the intellectuals –, and intellectual professions at the dawn of the democratic regime.

This dissertation concerns Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti (SKP) [the Swedish Communist Party] – in 1967 renamed Vänsterpartiet kommunisterna (VPK) [the Left Party – the Communists] and in 1990 renamed Vänsterpartiet (V) [the Left Party] – and the Party's process of coming to terms with history and its communist legacy. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the SKP/VPK/V's process of coming to terms with history for the period 1956-2006, and to set out and problematise the driving forces and constraining mechanisms of this process. The theoretical framework of the study consists of Gunnar Sjöblom’s theory about party strategies of political parties in multi-party systems and Michael Freeden’s conceptual approach to ideology analysis.      During the period of study the SKP/VPK/V has, like no other political party in Sweden, been ascribed historical guilt regarding its own party history but also regarding the effects of world communism. The Party has thus found itself in a situation where it has had history as an adversary. The process of coming to terms with history has mainly revolved around three issues: independence (1956-1977), international ties (1977-1989) and a broadening beyond the communist tradition (1986-2006). The internal debate within the Party has linked these issues to calls for change aimed at ridding the party of what is considered undesirable elements of the Communist legacy. By analysing the arguments pursued in favour of these calls, it is possible to pick out a number of the driving forces behind the Party's process of coming to terms with history, namely an ambition to obtain vote maximisation, programme realisation and maximisation of parliamentary influence. The urge to distance the Party from certain aspects of its communist past has thus been related to fundamental goals that political parties in multi-party systems seek to obtain.      The results of the dissertation show that it is possible to pick out five main constraining mechanisms in the Party's process of coming to terms with history. 1) The safeguarding of Party cohesion. 2) The safeguarding of the distinctive character of the Party.  3) The need to resist external pressure. 4) The desire to avoid unfair apportioning of blame. 5) The safeguarding of the right to define the substance of one's own ideology. The existence of these constraining mechanisms help to explain why the process of coming to terms with history lingered on for several decades, and also why it seems to have been a process of such complexity for the Swedish Communist and Post-Communist Party.