Life as an Alter Ego. Petrea Icoanei: Travesties and Clandestinity in the Anticommunist Resistance Movement

The paper analyzes the historical and symbolic aspects of the image of an anticommunist fighter, Teodor Şuşman junior, preserved in collective memory. Teodor Şuşman junior, son of Teodor Şuşman senior, leader of the anticommunist resistance movement in the Apuseni Mountains disguised himself as an icon painter after his father committed suicide in order to protect the community he belonged to against the persecution of the Securitate. The analyses of the oral history interviews discuss Teodor Şuşman junior’s travesty in the context of the history of clandestinity, of the marginal. They reveal that the community interpreted the two Şuşmans’ life according to symbolic patterns deeply embedded in collective thinking, their death being considered a sacrificial death taken on for the sake of the community.

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