Radio România Internațional

Tag: communism

  • Grandparents acting as museum guides

    Grandparents acting as museum guides

    The one-week “ski holiday”, as it is usually known, is scheduled in Romania in February. It is part of the secondary-school timetable. Also, its timeframe is subject to change, according to decisions taken by local municipalities.

    In Oradea, in the northwest, the Oradea Cris Rivers Museum – Museum Compound jointly with Bihor County Council and the Municipality of Oradea staged an activity themed “ With grandparents at the museum. Guides for one day “. During the February 18th and 23rd school holiday, grandparents and their grandchildren are invited to get acquainted with the history of the town. Accordingly, grandparents will have the opportunity to act as guides, for the grandchildren.

    Cristina Liana Pușcaș holds a Doctor’s degree in history. She is a museographer with the Oradea Town Museum, a section of the Oradea Cris Rivers Museum. Dr Puscas told us more about the project.

    “Practically, it is the 2nd edition of this program which we initially thought out in 2023. The following year, in 2024, we could not stage it since the museum underwent a thoroughgoing refurbishment process. We thought out the project to be implemented throughout the ski holiday, bearing in mind not all the children could afford going on such a trip, so quite a few of them stayed at home, in their hometowns, in Oradea, mostly, with their grandparents, who could afford going out for the day, in a bid to get acquainted with the history of the town, at once sharing their own life experience with their grandchildren.

    Last year, through this large-scale project of refurbishing the Town Museum section, we arranged a couple of museum areas, new exhibitions, quite a few of them dedicated to that specific period of communism, an era those grandparents used to live in, so their own life experience can be transposed into stories, in each of the dedicated rooms. “

    Dr Puscas told us more about the project.

    “They can, for instance, speak to the children about the significance of the fish placed on top of the TV set, about what those bottles of milk meant, how they were queuing up, the soda bottle, the petrol lamp reminding everyone of the fact that at that time, in the evening, they had power outages for a couple of hours, about the dial telephone.

    As part of the exhibition themed “Education in Oradea in the 20th century” we have a classroom of that time, with the school uniforms, with the pioneer’s uniform, we have the ink glass, the letter box, the abacuses, so much so that the stories and the life experience of those grandparents can be explained much easier. Another exhibition children may find extremely attractive is the one themed “The Discotheque of the 70s and the 80s”, since grandparents lived at that time, so they can spin the yarn of what life meant, at that time, for them, when they were young. “

    The museum staff also prepared additional info for the halls in the museum that were a little bit more difficult to explain by the grandparents turned guides, our interlocutor also said.

    “It goes without saying they cannot possible have such comprehensive notions, For instance, for World War One, we have prepared a brief piece of info on what the Romanian Army’s entering Oradea in 1919 actually meant, to be more specific, who Traian Mosoiu was, the hero who contributed to the liberation of the town. And speaking about the day-to-day life, in the communist times, we also have a flyer with info and images that can, in effect, trigger grandparents’ memories of what the communist times meant. “

    We asked Cristina Liana Pușcaș what the successful points were, of the 2023 edition of the project:

    “Taking a quick look at the photos of two years ago, I realized grandparents really came, with their grandchildren, and they were having a closer look at those objects. And from the photos, you could see them explaining how the telephone worked, for instance, with a dial, how a radio worked, how a turntable worked, for instance, what the vinyl was good for and from those photographs I even recalled grandparents truly got involved in the description of quite a few of those objects.

    As we speak, exhibitions are pretty well stocked with such objects, so grandparents will definitely have much more pieces of info at their fingertips, enabling them to give much more detailed explanations to their grandchildren. “

    The entrance fee for one ticket as part of this museum program is 10 lei per person, that is 2 Euros, for the master exhibitions of the Oradea Town Museum Section. The Oradea Museum Town Cultural Complex, based in the Oradea Fortress makes temporary and permanent exhibitions available for visitors.

    Here are some of the themes of the museum’s permanent exhibitions: ”Churches in the palace – archaeological research in the Princely Palace”. “The History of Bread” The History of Oradea Photography”, “The Convenience Store”, “Childhood in the Golden Age. The Resistance and repression in Bihor Memorial”. Then there is the “Moving Monuments Exhibition. Depersonalisation”, of fine artist Cătălin Bădărău. There are also The Oradea Greek-Catholic Bishopric Exhibition – Pages of History, the Exhibition of the Oradea Reformed Church and the Oradea Roman-Catholic Bishopric Exhibition.

  • The Spark(Scanteia) communist newspaper

    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 was gained in the 18th century. It was officially adopted as a universal right as stipulated in Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, issued in 1789. Notwithstanding, the communist and fascist totalitarian regimes have crippled such a right, turning it into a means of silencing the grassroots.

    In the regimes of the communist parties in Central and Eastern-European countries the entire press revolved around ideology. Yet the parties had their own newspapers, their official voices by means of which the essence of the regime expressed itself.

    In the Soviet Union, there used to be the newspaper Pravda or The Truth of 1912. Pravda still exists in the Russian Federation of today. In communist Bulgaria, until 1990, ”Rabotnichesko Delo” ” Workers’ acts “ was edited. In former Czechoslovakia, the party expressed itself through ”Rudé Právo” or “The Red Justice “, edited until 1995. In the former German Democratic Republic, ” Neues Deutschland” or ” The New Germany” has been issued since 1946 and is brought out to this day.

    In former Yugoslavia “Borba” or “Fight” was edited until 2009 and sparsely reissued ever since. In Poland, ”Trybuna Ludu” Or People’s Tribune could be read from 1948 to 1990. And in Hungary, the press market was dominated by ”Szabad Nép”, ”The Free People “ from 1942 to 1946, and ”Népszabadság” sau ”People’s Freedom” from 1956 to 2016.

    In Romania, the Romanian Communist Party spoke to society through The Spark, Scanteia, in Romanian.
    Founded in 1931, at a time when the Romanian Communist Party was illegal in Romania because it took affirmative action for the dismemberment of the country, The Spak was on and off issued until 1940. It took its name from Iskra or The Spark, Lenin’s newspaper in exile, edited between 1900 and 1905.

    « The Spark » was officially brought out for the first time on September 21st, 1944, as on August 30th The Red Army had occupied Bucharest, imposing the communist regime on the entire Romanian territory, until 1947. Art critic Radu Bogdan was interviewed by Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre in 1995. Born in 1920, the young Bogdan was a sympathizer of the communists and he had sporadic contacts with Romanian Communist party members in the war years. He became active immediately after the Soviets entered the country. Here he is, reminiscing, in 1995, how he contributed to the re-editing of the party newspaper.

    ”How did The Spark start? There were five of them, whom the party tasked with the editing of the first issue. Matei Socor headed the five: they Pavel Chirtoacă, engineer Solomon, Radu Mănescu and Iosif Ardelean, who later on had a job with the censorship.

    So it started with these five, with engineer Solomon having administrative duties. Then, in my head, I wanted to do journalism, I didn’t know how to start. Hearing that Radu Mănescu was going to publish a newspaper, I introduced myself and asked if I could join as well, that I wanted to do journalism. As a result, I was invited to take a seat and do volunteer work. It was the so-called romantic period; we were dealing in ideals! I can tell you that I have done proofreading. My colleague was Mirel Ilieșiu, a film director. So, I got a foothold there since the first issue of The Spark.”

    In the pages of the newspaper, idealistic communist intellectuals, older or newer opportunists, expressed themselves with extreme violence against democracy. One of them, Silviu Brucan, who survived the entire history of the regime and also had a public career after 1989, was among the most active. Radu Bogdan remembered the alert activity of the press in those years, especially that of The Spark, led by the sociologist Miron Constantinescu.

    “Matei Socor was at the head of The Spark only one day. After that, Matei Socor was moved to the national radio station, and became general manager. A few days after the first issues of Spark, Miron Constantinescu came, he came fresh from prison. We often did night work at The Spark. I slept next to him on the same mattress in the first days, on the floor, there were no beds there.

    The first editorial office of the newspaper Spark operated in the building of the former newspaper Curentul, headed by Pamfil Şeicaru. I was also Miron Constantinescu’s bodyguard during that period. But that’s just like those scarecrows in the field that aren’t real, because we weren’t walking around armed. But he went to the General Confederation of Labor every day and didn’t want to seem like he was walking the street alone, so he always took me with him. I looked like that, quite strong, I was tall. I didn’t have to face any attack. But for a few months I was like a kind of shadow for him.”

    In the following 40 years, The Spark was what her peers were, a simple propaganda rag that hid the material shortages and the brutal violations of rights faced by Romanians. Over the years, important names in Romanian science and culture published articles in the newspaper, the list of collaborators being a long one. For posterity, The Spark case is an example of how the press should not be.

  • Ana Pauker

    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 that instated the regime of the Communist Party in Romania, between 1947 and 1952. She was also a member of the Petru Groza government, the Communist Party’s first government in Romania. Ana Pauker also held positions in the Romanian Communist Party’s top-notch hierarchy, as well as in the hierarchy of then the Soviet Union’s Communist Party.

    Ana Pauker was born in the eastern Romanian county of Vaslui, in 1893. Her name was Hana Rabinsohn and she was born into a Jewish family: her grandfather was a rabbi. In France, in 1920, Hana met her future husband, Marcel Pauker, also a Jew. The Bucharest-born Marcel Pauker was a radical communist, and his wife Ana joined him in then the Comintern’s activities.

    Ana Pauker became a Soviet agent; she was arrested in 1922 and 1935. In 1941 she was released from prison and went to the then USSR. While still in prison, in 1938 Stalin had her husband executed on the grounds of Marcel Pauker’s being a Western spy. During the war, in Moscow, Ana Pauker was the head of the exiled Romanian group of communists, known as the Moscow faction.

    In 1994, Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre interviewed Ana Pauker’s son-in-law, Gheorghe Brătescu. He took the liberty to quote from a Soviet document, whereby his mother-in-law was appreciated for her qualities but also criticized for her inabilities:

    ”Her characterization, dated 1946, among other things, included the following: ‘among the RCP leaders, comrade Ana Pauker is the best prepared, theoretically, having a great influence among party members. That is why she is the one who, in fact and in all respects, leads the activity of the Romanian Communist Party’s Central Committee. She is very popular with the Romanian people as a result of her illegal communist activities of the past. Apart from her activity in the position of Central Committee Secretary, she heads the parliament’s communist group. She ensures the RCP’s collaboration with the other parties of the Democratic Bloc. She plays an active part in the activity of Women’s International Anti-Fascist Federation. Nevertheless, comrade Ana Pauker has a major weakness as an organizer. She does not use her influence hard enough, but also her authority, for the strengthening of the party ideologically and in terms of its organization’. “

    For Ana Pauker, the end of World War Two and the presence of the Soviet Army in Romania acted as a true launching pad, giving her access to then the political power’s top level. Ana Pauker was elected Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party’s Central Committee. After the forced abdication of King Mihai I on December 30, 1947, she was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.

    The early 1950s meant her downfall. In 1952, then the communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej began the elimination of the competing groups. Ana Pauker was a member of such a group, which also included her comrade Vasile Luca. Charged with right-wing deviationism and sabotage, the members of the group were given a prison sentence. Lucretiu Patrascu, one of Gheorghiu Dej’s avowed opponents, was executed. In 1953, Ana Pauker received a home confinement sentence. In 1954, she was expelled from the Communist Party. She lived until 1960 and earned her keep working as a translator of French and German with the Political Publishing House, yet officially she did not have the right to sign her work. She was a member of the translators’ team that created the first complete Romanian-language edition of Marx and Engels’ works.

    After 1965, then the new leader Nicolae Ceaușescu tried to rehabilitate some of the victims of Dej. Gheorghe Brătescu said Ana Pauker was not among them. Gheorghe Bratescu gave us details about her life.

    ”Never ever has there been an attempt to do that. Moreover, she did her work at the Political Publishing House in quite abnormal circumstances. She didn’t even get her salary from there; it was sent to her through the cleaning woman. The latter dispatched the materials the former was supposed to write, and on that occasion, the salary was being sent to her.

    As long as Gheorghiu-Dej lived, she was considered the most dangerous person, especially after the killing of Patrascanu. Which explains why, as regards her political activity, it was not until 1968 since her political activity had been spoken of. Moreover, in 1961, one year after she died, all her decorations were withdrawn from her. In other words, even her memory was somehow rated as being dangerous, so there was no such thing as a possible attempt of recovering. “

    1953 and 1960, paying visits to Ana Pauker were several people, among whom lawyer Radu Olteanu, defender of the communists and anti-fascists in the 1930 trials. But Ana Pauker also had another visitor, a former inmate. With details on that, here is Gheorghe Brătescu once again.

    ” She had no problem paying a visit, she was someone who did time with Ana Pauker, her name was Maria Andreescu, she was known as the Little Old Woman. As far as we could see, she also maintained contact with some of the old acquaintances, friends, comrades, admirers of Ana Pauker. When Ana was admitted to the Colentina hospital, then Maria Sarbu came and paid her a visit. And at the funeral, perhaps spurred by this Little Old Woman, that treacherous, opportunistic old man Gheorghe Cristescu participated, he somehow represented the old socialist movement. “

    Ana Pauker was, just like many others, an individual bedazzled by the ideals of a perfect society which, in practice, translated into terror. And she left this world defeated by its harsh reality.

  • August 23, 2024 UPDATE

    August 23, 2024 UPDATE

     

    EU The Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu discussed, on Thursday, in Brussels, with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, about the future European commissioner from Romania, about the implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, as well as about a new agreement on Romania’s budget deficit, which should extend over 7 years. Regarding the position of European commissioner, Marcel Ciolacu announced that he nominated Victor Negrescu, the current vice-president of the European Parliament. During the meeting, they tackled Romania’s accession to Schengen with its land borders, with the Prime Minister stressing that Ursula von der Leyen is the “biggest” supporter of this cause.

     

    DEFENCE The Chief of the defence staff, General Gheorghiţă Vlad, met on Thursday, in Bucharest, with his counterpart from the French Republic, General Thierry Burkhard, who is on an official visit to Romania. The talks between the two focused on the regional security situation, the progress in achieving full operational capacity of the NATO Battle Group in 2025, and the responsibilities of the French structures deployed to Romania in strengthening the Allied deterrence and defence posture. General Gheorghiţă Vlad emphasised that, in the last two years, the excellent cooperation between the two armies to ensure collective defence were also reflected in the increased interoperability between structures and in the development of training and quartering infrastructure. The visit also included a meeting of the two heads of defence with troops from the NATO Battle Group, at the Getica National Joint Training Center in Cincu. France is the lead nation of the NATO Battle Group.

     

    US ELECTION The Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination as a candidate for the US presidency, at the Democratic National Convention. She told her supporters that the country has a chance to overcome resentment, cynicism and division. Harris promised tax cuts for the middle class. As regards abortions, she accused her opponent, the former Republican President Donald Trump, of wanting to introduce a national ban. In terms of foreign policy, Harris said that dictators around the world support Trump, the BBC reports.

     

    COMMEMORATION The president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, in his message on the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism and Communism, says that populism and hate speech are once again present, under various forms. He argues that this is precisely why society as a whole must stay alert to the risk of all the values embraced by Romania being pushed into irrelevance. Iohannis also mentioned the crucial decision made by King Michael I, who acted with responsibility and dignity and changed the fateful course of WWII, saving the country from imminent disaster. In turn, PM Marcel Ciolacu reiterated the government’s firm commitment to fight all forms of extremism, and to strengthen civic engagement, by educating the youth with respect to all the landmarks in recent history.

     

    SCHOOLS Students in secondary schools and high schools in Romania will have more rules to observe in the new academic year. School rules stipulate, among other things, that students cannot hold mobile phones during classes and provide for penalties in case of violations. School operation rules have also been amended. Novelties include conduct grades for each module, separate tests for 9th grade admission, and a teacher in charge of EU-funded projects in each school, as well as online or hybrid classes for students in exceptional situations. On the other hand, secondary school and high school students with final grades above 9.50 will receive merits scholarships. For this academic year, the merit scholarship minimum amount is nearly EUR 90. This amount may be increased by school boards, depending on the budget earmarked by the local authorities.

     

    TENNIS The Romanian tennis player Gabriela Ruse managed to reach the singles main draw of the US Open Grand Slam tournament, which starts on Monday in New York, after defeating Alexandra Eala from the Philippines in 3 sets. Ruse will face Julia Grabher from Austria in the inaugural round. She is the third Romanian to reach the singles main draw at the US Open, after Ana Bogdan and Jaqueline Cristian entered the singles draw thanks to ranking. Cristian will play against Russia’s Daria Kasatkina, seeded 12, while Ana Bogdan will meet the Dutch Arantxa Rus in the first round. (AMP)

  • The Romanian Institute of Technical Documentation  

    The Romanian Institute of Technical Documentation  

     

    Institutional history is not always as interesting as the biography of a personality, or as the story of a breakthrough that changed everything that mankind used to know. Institutions are generally perceived as cold, depersonalized spaces, where an authority imposes its order on citizens. But the history of institutions is of great importance in knowing the past, because they also involve human creativity and daily routine for the people who work there.

     

    In Romania, after 1945, the communist regime was established, with the direct support of the Soviet occupation army. This meant the destruction of old institutions considered repressive of the working class, the distortion of others, as well as the establishment of new ones. One of the major problems faced by the communist regime in Romania was finding specialists, engineers in particular, to help restart the new centralized economy headed by the communist party. While part of Romania’s old technical elite had been thrown into prison on ideological grounds, the new elite was trying to make up for what had been lost and adapt to the new ideology. Thus, an institution that assumed the task of collecting information and drawing up syntheses related to the state of technological development was Romania’s Technical Documentation Institute, established in 1949.

     

    Engineer Gheorghe Anghel was the general director of the institution and in 2003 he recalled, at the microphone of Radio Romania’s Oral History Center, the beginnings: “The Technical Documentation Institute of Romania became appreciated as one of the best documentation and information institutes of the socialist bloc. Specialists from many countries came to learn how the information and documentation activity was organized in Romania. Apart from the National Institute of Information and Documentation, there were a number of 24 information-documentation offices, by branch and field, which in turn were specialized in promoting technical innovations in the field they represented.”

     

    Located in the center of Bucharest, on the Victory Boulevard, the Technical Documentation Institute was the main information and documentation entity for engineers. The institution was copied after a similar one in the Soviet Union, a huge institute, focused on this activity. The Romanian institute was equipped with an impressive technical book fund and substantial collections of specialized magazines from all technical fields. A generous reading room accommodated everyone who wanted to stay connected to the latest news in their field. The institute centralized technical knowledge, but at the level of each branch and field of activity it was also supported by information and documentation offices.

     

    Gheorghe Anghel talked about the activity of the institute: “The activity of the Institute and the offices was very complex. It was not limited only to the reception of books and magazines, but, in particular, to the promotion of content. Within the Institute there was a whole series of departments that processed the existing information in the pages of the magazines: from simply signaling the existence of the content of the existing magazines, by photocopying their summaries and organizing them into several collections, which were distributed on a subscription basis to those interested , to the actual processing of the content of specialized articles. The respective novelties were extracted from them and they were reported to the specialists in the national economy.”

     

    But although the institute was intended for engineers and technical documentation, the famous censorship was in place there too. Gheorghe Anghel: “We did not have the right to send all magazines to the reading hall. Some of them contained various articles that were not in tune with the party policy. So, there was a special stamp applied on the banned ones. They were registered at an office of secret documents and deposited there. The access was prohibited. I remember that there was an elaborate book in English that dealt with a certain mysterious phenomenon that had happened in the Urals. On the basis of documents published in the Soviet Union in specialized magazines, an English researcher had demonstrated that an atomic catastrophe had occurred in the Urals in which many people had perished. At that time these things were not public and were shrouded in mystery. It was not a fantasy, they were accurate documents published in the Soviet Union, in their magazines.”

     

    The institute held symposia and conferences, and by 1974 several hundred foreign-language people were working there. However, in 1974, Elena Ceaușescu, the wife of Nicolae Ceaușescu, head of the National Council for Science and Technology, decided to streamline the activity and reduced the number of employees to 160. However, in the 1980s, the general crisis of Romanian society also hit the institute. Due to the lack of foreign currency, the purchase of magazines and books had been drastically reduced. Those seeking to document themselves, could still read publications from the Soviet Union. The crisis of the institution was the crisis of the system that ended in 1989. (EE)

     

  • Communism and linguistics

    Communism and linguistics

    The communist regime tried to change not only people’s deepest convictions, but also the way they expressed their thoughts, ideas and feelings. The language of communism was commonly known as “wooden language” and Joseph Stalin contributed to its creation. In the summer of 1950, he penned three articles in Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, under the title “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”. In these articles, he outlined new research directions in linguistics that cancelled everything that had been written before. In Romania, which had been under the occupation of the Soviet troops since 1944, Stalin’s views were immediately adopted by the academic and research community, which was under the strict and brutal control of the ideological activists.

    The translator and philologist Micaela Ghițescu, who also served time as a political prisoner under the communist regime, went to university in 1949, one year after the education reform of 1948. The new education system introduced political education courses and favoured children coming from working-class backgrounds. In an interview for Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre she gave in 2002, Micaela Ghițescu recalled how politics affected education in two ways:

    “On the one hand, they would teach us Marxism-Leninism, which was a year-long course. But then, during the French class, we would talk about what they called ‘topical issues’. The French were at war in Indochina at the time, and we would discuss about this during our French class. I remember they used to tell us that the French soldiers were cannibals and that they ate Vietnamese prisoners. And we were supposed to accept this without asking any questions.”

    In 1948, Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr became the new star in linguistics, with his theory that all languages evolved from one original language gaining a lot of traction with linguists. Micaela Ghițescu recalls how she first got acquainted with some of Marr’s ideas that were turning upside down everything she and her generation had learnt in high school:

    “Marr’s theory, which was taught in the general linguistics course, raised all kind of question marks. Marr used to say that language is a superstructure and that changes to the social structure and organisation will lead to a change in language. Another theory was that language adopts the character of the latest conquering people, of the people that are the last to occupy a given land. So, as the Slavs were the last to arrive in these parts, it meant that the Romanian language had a Slavic character and was no longer to be considered a Romance language.”

    Marr’s linguistic theory, however, would be denounced by Stalin, who put the national language back in its pride of place. The national language was now no longer believed to have evolved out of a single original language and no longer an expression of superstructure, but the language of the working people. Micaela Ghițescu explains:

    “With the publication of Stalin’s views on linguistics, Marr’s theories fell out of favour. Stalin’s theory focuses on the quality of a people’s culture, and that’s what gives the language of a given land its specific nature. The Latin culture being prevalent in Romania, Romanian again became a Romance language, overnight. It was just before an exam, and I didn’t know what was going on. The exam was on the same day as the publication of what they described as ‘comrade Stalin’s outstanding contribution to linguistics’ and which overturned everything we had learnt at the course of Prof. Graur. We were to give the written exam in the morning and the oral text in the afternoon. So, for the morning exam, the professor was late, and when he arrived he told us to write whatever we wanted. And for the oral exam in the afternoon he told us to read the newspaper carrying Stalin’s views spread over several pages.”

    Stalin’s text also sparked reactions among historians. In an interview from 1993, the archaeologist Petre Diaconu recounted how a colleague ended up in prison:

    “In 1953, when ‘Marxism and Linguistics’ was published, everyone, from party educators to university professors would now say that everything that had been written on the subject of language before was to be discarded. The work of reference was now Stalin’s publication. During a public meeting at the History Institute, the then deputy director and also a party activist called Chereșteș got up and started telling us what comrade Stalin had said. It was at this point that an archaeologist called Vladimir Dumitrescu also got up and said we’d had enough of Stalin’s theories. This was sometime in spring and he was arrested in July, but it was only later that I realised the connection.”

    Stalin’s ambitions as a thinker on language lasted until his death in 1953. Although the language of communism continued to exist after his death and ideology to act as a straitjacket for free thought, a certain sense of relief was felt everywhere.

  • Cățelu District, an urban and architectural exercise on the outskirts of Bucharest

    Cățelu District, an urban and architectural exercise on the outskirts of Bucharest

    Fully installed as of 1947, after the abolition of monarchy, the communist regime that wanted to completely change the Romanian society by imprisoning its elites, had problems reaching one of its main goals, namely, that of improving the life of the working class. In 1953, a housing crisis started to be felt in Bucharest. Very few new blocks of flats had been erected to provide a decent living for the new proletarian class, brought to the cities from the countryside, to contribute to building socialism.



    Historian Andrei Răzvan Voinea explains: “In 1953, a plenary meeting of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) took place. It was decided that financing would be granted for the construction of housing units in Bucharest. In 1954, the construction of blocks of flats started in neighborhoods such as Vatra Luminoasă, Bucureștii Noi and Piaţa Muncii. However, no apartment was inaugurated that year because construction works take time. In the winter of 1954-1955, more precisely in January 1955, a rather alarming crisis was under way. It had been quite a severe winter, and the party decided it needed housing units urgently.


    And so the story of the Cățelu neighborhood begins. It was located on the eastern outskirts of Bucharest, close to the rural area and the commune with the same name – Cățelu. There, on an initial area of approximately 6,000 square meters, around 800 apartments were built in a first stage, in the second half of the 1950s. The housing units reminded of the rural vernacular architecture or the old urban slum that is terrace houses surrounded by gardens and open to a common space that encouraged community spirit.



    It all started from some improvised barracks where the workers employed at the factories in the area used to live, as historian Andrei Răzvan Voinea tells us: “They were basically shacks put there to temporarily house Bucharest workers. They were insufficient. However, in the summer of 1955, construction works began in Cățelu, as the party had ordered the construction of some minimalist houses that would be erected very quickly and thus play down the housing crisis. The area next to the Mihai Bravu road, which in the interwar period belonged to the Affordable Housing Society, was picked as a construction site. That was the context until July 1955, when the actual design projects and construction started.



    He also told us about the results: “Truth is the communists were very unprepared. They did not know what exactly the new socialist city they wanted to build was about to look like. They didnt have the slightest idea, because they did not have on their side the Romanian architectural and artistic avant-garde of the 1930s-1940s, that was definitely leftist, but was not from within the party. Consequently, influences came directly from Moscow and that’s how these neighborhoods appeared. Besides them, various functionalist experiments were carried out in the Rahova and Ferentari districts, also in the 1950s, the blocks of flats in the Piaţa Muncii area were built, with a somewhat more elaborate, different block. And then the Cățelu Experiment emerged, the architect of the project being Tiberiu Niga, a well-known architect, of course, with extraordinary projects in the 30s – 40s, one of the great Romanian architects. He received this task from the party: we want many homes in a very short time, preferably as small as possible to accommodate as many people as possible and to be as cheap as possible. And Niga came up with the idea of ​​this vernacular rural dwelling, in which you have a main room and a hall, as it was called in traditional Romanian architecture. To also compensate for the lack of materials, he improvised enormously. Inside, the living space had a maximum of 30-40 square meters. Then there was a very large veranda and those extraordinary public spaces. People basically occupied 30-40 square meters, but they went out, they had a terrace that everyone used to keep their bike, cart, pickles, a table, chairs and so on. And there was also a huge green space, practically a garden.



    According to any standard of decent living, those apartments were uncomfortable, but the communists knew well that the workers they were intended for came from the countryside where the conditions were even worse, explains historian Andrei Răzvan Voinea: “The apartments had 30 or so square meters, practically a studio where a family with children lived. Cramming 3-4 people into a home like that is difficult. But, again, let’s think about the context. These were workers who lived on the outskirts of the city in worse conditions than those. At least, in Cățelu there was electricity, hot water, a refrigerator, absolutely all this modern comfort. Moreover, a lot of restaurants, convenience stores, bookstores had been built. And Cățelu didnt just mean the apartment buildings, it meant a school, because two schools and a kindergarten were built there, there were green spaces almost everywhere and the workers were very close to work. And they didn’t have all those things before.



    In time, other blocks of flats were built around the Cățelu neighborhood as the communist regime systematized and modified the city’s infrastructure, as well as its social structure. But the homes imagined by Tiberiu Niga to create a bridge to the rural world from which the workers of the old times came are still there. (EE, LS)

  • December 21, 2023 UPDATE

    December 21, 2023 UPDATE

    December 1989 — On Thursday, Bucharest venued events commemorating the heroes who died for freedom in the anti-communist uprising 34 years ago. December 21, 1989 is considered the first day of the uprising in Bucharest, after the failed rally called by the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, followed by the setting up of barricades in the center of the city and the bloody repression of the anti-communist demonstrators. Launched a week before, in Timisoara (west) and extedned to other big cities, the Uprising culminated in Bucharest, on December 22, with the escape of Ceausescu from the headquarters of the central committee of the Communist party. Captured and tried summarily, Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were shot on December 25. Romania was the only communist country in Europe where the regime change was accompanied by a bloodshed. Over a thousand people were killed in December 1989. Young people must know that the freedom they have today was paid for with the lives of thousands of heroes, the PM Marcel Ciolacu said, emphasizing that the Romanian Revolution of December 1989 was the moment when the ideal of freedom defeated the terror strongly established among the population.



    Wind energy — The Romanian government approved, in Thursdays session, a draft law on the development of investments in the field of offshore wind energy in the Black Sea. According to the law the Energy Ministry is the authority in the field of offshore wind farms. “The adoption of a legislative framework for starting the exploitation of Romanias offshore wind resources is a vital step in ensuring Romanias energy independence and resilience, being, at the same time, something that Romania assumed under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan”, shows a press release of the Energy Ministry which also writes that the World Bank data show that Romania has an offshore wind potential of 76 GW of installed power, being a favorable environment for the development of this type of renewable energy. Through this project, Romania is making progress in achieving the desired transition and decarbonization of the energy system, as well as in consolidating its status as a regional leader in the field of energy – the release states.



    Statistics – Romania ranks 1st in the EU in terms of the number of deaths from preventable and treatable causes, shows the EU State of Health report for 2023. In 2020, 358 preventable deaths per 100,000 inhabitants were registered in Romania, almost double the EU average (180 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants) and 235 deaths from treatable causes per 100,000 inhabitants, 2.5 times higher than the EU average of 92 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Expenditure for healthcare per capita in Romania remains the lowest in the EU countries, while numerous categories are exempted from the payment of health insurance. Romania allocates only 6.5% of the GDP to health. Life expectancy at birth in Romania, increasing until 2019 to 75.3 years, decreased by almost 3 years to 72.8 years between 2019 and 2021, currently being the third lowest in the European Union and by 5.4 years lower than the EU average.



    Ukraine – The European Commission has allocated over 65 million Euros so that four member states can provide support to people fleeing the war started by the Russian Federation in Ukraine. The money is made available to Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania and comes from the Community Fund for Asylum, Migration and Integration. The money can be used, for example, to help Ukrainian refugees move from collective accommodation to private housing, for language and vocational training, and to access medical services. Currently, the European Union hosts over four million Ukrainians who benefit from temporary protection. (LS)


  • The centenary of Monica Lovinescu’s birth

    The centenary of Monica Lovinescu’s birth


    There is no doubt that Radio Free Europe was the most important source of free information, analysis and synthesis of the political, economic and cultural situation of Romania in the second half of the 20th century. The team of the Romanian service of Radio Free Europe was made up of prominent representatives of Romanian radio journalism, such as Monica Lovinescu, Noel Bernard, Mircea Carp, Vlad Georgescu, Neculai Constantin Munteanu and others.



    Monica Lovinescu, whose birth centenary was marked on November 19, is one of the strongest voices of anti-communist and anti-fascist Romania in exile, between 1945 and 1989. She was born in Bucharest as the daughter of the literary critic Eugen Lovinescu and the French teacher Ecaterina Bălăciou, the latter being killed in detention by the communist regime. A journalist and literary critic herself, Monica Lovinescu became an respected name in the field, just like her father. In 1947, at the age of 24, she emigrated to France where, together with her husband Virgil Ierunca, she created the most attractive cultural-political shows of Radio Free Europe. Her unmistakable voice, moral principles and impeccable professional ethics as well as her very pertinent observations and criticisms made her one of the stars of the radio station.



    Radio Romania’s Oral History Center had the opportunity to interview Monica Lovinescu in 1998. At that time, she spoke about the Paris office of Radio Free Europe, established in the early 1960s, the place where the famous shows that captured the Romanians’ attention were produced.



    Monica Lovinescu: “We were doing from here what other countries did not generally do, we were unique, the Romanian case was unique. We would broadcast my 1-hour show “Theses and Antitheses in Paris”, Virgil Ieruncas 40-minute show “Povestea vorbei” and twice the 20-minute programme “Actualitatea Romaneasca” , an update on culture from the country. So we occupied the studio for a whole day and had a number of broadcast hours that no other nation had.”



    Monica Lovinescu was a passionate radio journalist. The radio studio was equipped with proper technique, but in the Lovinescu – Ierunca home there was a tape recorder on which they recorded the texts and only went to the studio to mix them with music. Monica Lovinescu also spoke about the sources of information about Romania, considering the difficulties that the free press had due to the communist regime in Bucharest. Monica Lovinescu: “We used to document the situation in Romania in two ways. Through the newspapers, on the one hand, as subscribers to the main newspapers, made to Virgil Ierunca’s name and which were sent to a post office box so we wouldnt give out our home address. Also, we used to meet with at least four or five writers a month. We called them “clandestines”, that is, no Romanian writer knew that we were also seeing another writer. They knew we were seeing other writers, but didnt know who exactly. We kept this secret so we wouldnt expose them. So we knew the literary life and the big political problems from the inside.”



    An universal spirit, Monica Lovinescu did not speak, in her shows, only about Romania. Monica Lovinescu: “Theses and Antitheses in Paris was not only about Romanian literature, it was also about what was happening in Paris. Not so much from a French point of view, but rather as a weekly culture update. Paris was a kind of crossroads where everything related to the avant-garde and the most interesting exchange of ideas took place. The show was also about the achievements of some Romanians abroad, such as filmaker Lucian Pintilie, writers Mircea Eliade and Eugen Ionescu. They were all at this microphone and shows were made with them and about them.”



    Such an uncomfortable journalist could not leave the Bucharest regime indifferent, hence the decision to silence Monica Lovinescu. First, the regime began a smear campaign in the media. Then it turned to physical aggression.



    Monica Lovinescu: “In November 1977, the day before Paul Gomas arrival in Paris, on November 18 to be exact, two Palestinians were waiting for me. They asked me to enter the house because they had a message for me. It seemed suspicious to me because they called me “Madam Monica” and here “madam” attached to the first name is something very familiar, it is not used. This is how I realized it was a trap and didnt let them in. So they started hitting me in the head. I fell, I screamed, I fainted, someone came from the street, they ran away. The one who jumped to my aid ran after them, but could not find them. I had a broken nose and a swollen face and arm, but no major injuries.”


    Monica Lovinescu continued, even after 1989, to speak to Romanians about freedom, democracy, principles, history until her death in 2008. (EE)

  • A tour of the Communist period in Bucharest

    A tour of the Communist period in Bucharest


    Today we invite you to discover the capital of Romania through a special tour, which is very popular among foreign tourists. The tour of communism in Bucharest involves visiting all those places that still bear witness to the so-called Golden Age, which ended abruptly in December 1989. The Palace of the Parliament, the third largest administrative building in the world, according to the World Records Academy, or the Ceaușescu House, the residence of the former dictator of Romania, are just some of the tours objectives. Andreea Cosma is a specialized tour guide, and the tour she offers to tourists is comprehensive. In addition to various visits, information is provided about the daily life of Romanians, from a social, economic and cultural point of view.



    Here is Andreea Cosma: First of all, I think that every foreigner should take this tour because it will help them understand the Romanians behavior and way of being. Like it or not, we are still influenced by the almost 50 years of communism. Romanians should also take this tour, especially those from the younger generation, who do not really receive information about this epoch at school. The tour aims at understanding the changes brought and the impact had by the communist regime not only in the case of Romania and Bucharest, but also in the case of the people. This is what we are focusing on. Some of the sights we see on the route are, of course, the Peoples House or the Palace of the Parliament, the Schitul Maicilor – the Mothers’ Hermitage Church to highlight the story of the transmuted churches from the communist era. The tour also includes a visit to an old grocery store on Apolodor Street and a stop at the headquarters of the former Political Police – the Securitate, currently the Bucharest Police headquarters. The tour ends in Revolution Square.



    From an architectural point of view, the Palace of the Parliament remains one of the most controversial buildings in Romania. The building spans a surface of 365,000 square meters, ranks first in the world in the Book of Records in the category of administrative buildings for civil use, and third in the world respectively in terms of volume. It is also the heaviest and most expensive building in the world. The entire construction is the result of the effort of more than 100,000 people. Almost 20,000 workers were working in three shifts, 24 hours a day, during the peak of the construction period. For the construction, almost 100% Romanian materials were used. Andreea Cosma, our guide, recommends tourists, if they have time, to purchase the guided tour from inside the building. Visits should be booked 24 hours in advance, on the institution’s website, with the standard price standing at 60 lei (12 euros) for one adult.



    Andreea Cosma: In the pedestrian tour, we tell people about the demolitions that took place to make way for the most important symbol of Ceausescus megalomania. We also tell people about the construction of over 360,000 square meters, achieved in approximately five years, reminding them that it is a building in progress, not yet completed. We also tell them about the supposed tunnels that exist under the People’s House. From there, we take tourists to see another interesting objective that connects us to the story of Elena Ceaușescu. The building used to be the House of Technology and Science, what is now the headquarters of the Romanian Academy. It was supposed to be a sort of office for Elena Ceausescu, who had very successfully graduated three years of schooling, and then finished her life with a PhD in chemistry, without doing the studies, of course. It is interesting, nonetheless, to see how the communist propaganda managed to show us how people from very poor backgrounds managed to reach the upper echelons.



    The next objective was erected in the mid-1960s, known at the time as Spring Palace. It was expanded between 1970 and 1972. This was the residence of the dictator’s family. Various wood essences of various colors, from domestic sources, were used for the interior decorations. You can also see an impressive collection of paintings, as well as many manually manufactured tapestries and mosaics. The tour is in Romanian and English, and the standard fare is about 11 Euro.



    Here is Andreea Cosma, a tour guide: “I always mention the Spring Palace. It is very interesting to visit. The main residence of the two Ceausescu dictators was turned into a museum, and it is very interesting to see their lifestyle. We go there and see the luxury and the opulence they lived in, by contrast with the rest of the population. The entire Primaverii, or Spring, neighborhood is worth taking in step by step, ideally with a guide that tells you the story of each house. Each has a story related to the family that resided there, and about the dynamic within each family, including their relationship with the Ceausescus.



    Andreea Cosma, a tour guide, mentioned another building that stands witness to the Ceausescu period: the Dambovita Center, or Radio House, as it was referred to until 2015. The construction started in 1986 on the place where a horse race track used to be, and it was supposed to house the National History Museum of the Socialist Republic of Romania.



    It is another story written during an era that many remember with sadness, but which today has become fascinating: “Since the tour is organized like a story, going through all the major changes that communism brought, describing its impact on our lives, with no exception, all tourists were impressed by the end. They understood better why we, Romanians, are the way we are, each with his or her individual experience, when it comes to relating to other Romanians. In terms of countries of origin, we had a very large number of people from the USA. This was a bit surprising to me. Up until the pandemic, there was not a single tour without at least one tourist from the UK. The situation changed last year. There was not a single tour without at least one tourist from the US. Otherwise, most are from the west of Europe, and very few from Asia, South America, and Africa.



    The price of a Real Tour of Communism experience is between 18 and 24 Euro. The most expensive version is a private tour. Generally, tours are with the public, with 15 people at most, so that each tourist can be offered proper attention. (LS, CC)

  • Philosopher Mihai Sora

    Philosopher Mihai Sora

    Philosopher and essayist Mihai Sora has recently passed away in his home in Bucharest. Sora was one of the Romanian intellectuals who had outlived several political regimes. Sora was also a witness of the great changes that marked the 20th century. His substantial work aside, Sora also compelled recognition for several other performances, still unparalleled to this day. If a classification of the longest-living writers were to be compiled, Sora would definitely have a place in the upper echelon. Very few human beings can boast having lived 106 years. Another feat could be the year of his birth. Sora was born when World War One was in full swing, while at the end of the war Greater Romania came into being, in 1918. Mihai Sora even used to say I am older than Greater Romania. Another feat was the publication, in 1947, by the Gallimard Publishers in Paris, of his volume Du dialogue intérieur. Fragment d’une anthropologie métaphysique. (On the Inner Dialogue. Fragments of a metaphysical anthropology). Sora was the first Romanian to have seen one of his books brought out by the posh French publisher. Sora is also one of the oldest protesters: at the age of 100, Mihai Sora joined the protesters who mounted antigovernmental protest rallies in Bucharest’s Victory Square in 2017.



    Mihai Șora was born in November 1916 into the family of a priest, in Banat, then one of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’ provinces with a predominantly Romanian-speaking population. He read Philosophy and Classics with the University of Bucharest. In 1938, Sora was granted a scholarship in France. In World War Two, during the German occupation of France, Sora wrote a doctoral dissertation about the great French philosopher Blaise Pascal. It is World War Two that Mihai Sora’s communist deviation dates from. Sora enlisted as a member of the French Communist Party. His deeply anti-fascist feelings, shared by so many other intellectuals, were manipulated and hijacked, and steered towards taking sides with the other facet of the criminal totalitarian regime, communism. However, his biography would fortunately cure him of the communist illusion. In 1948, Sora returned to Romania to visit his parents, but the communist regime in Romania banned him from returning to France, where his wife and children were waiting for him. Sora was thus forced to stay in Romania and live here for the rest for his life.



    Mihai Șora used to be close to the Iasi Group, a group of intellectuals who were trying to oppose the communist regime in the 1970s, a group made of writers, essayists, philosophers, translators.



    Sorin Antohi was one of the members of the Iasi Group. He reminisced what Mihai Sora used to do for them, whenever needed.



    Tereza Culianu-Petrescu didn’t mince her words: Mihai Șora was our friend, the man who came to Iasi so many times. He used to spend so much time with us and we need to say the things that are less well-known. Yes, he carried documents that had to be taken out of the country, letters, magazine issues, so many other things that had to be taken out of the country. They had to be sent abroad in various ways, via various channels. And yes, Mihai Sora at least three times acted as the carrier for those documents that had to be sent abroad.



    After 1945, Romania had the full experience of the communist utopia. The intellectuals, together with society, had been experiencing the same material and spiritual frustrations. The daily absurd had gained its momentum.



    Sorin Antohi recalled how Mihai Sora, then cured of any political illusion, behaved in an episode where the reality and the ideological utopia were clearly delineated from one another.



    I should like to evoke Mihai Sora one last time, as follows: there is a heated discussion on the Internet and everywhere else about him, in every respect and in any direction. I shall soon publish a text bearing the title Mihai Sora’s Silences. People don’t know anything about it because they haven’t seen it, they didn’t witness anything, so they know nothing about his silences. And if meaningful silences ever existed, they were Mihai Sora’s silences. Let me give you just one example: during a conference on utopia I organized at the Iasi University in 1986, Mihai Sora, was, from my point of view, the special guest star. All of them were special guest stars, but he was the most special guest star. Mihai Sora stood up from his seat when I gave him the floor, he made for the pedestal he was supposed to speak from, he fixed the audience in the hall with a rather steady gaze, he looked to the left, he looked to the right, he walked back to the seat he stood up from and got himself seated quietly. Just as I also said then, I’m also saying the same right now: there are things about which silence is sometimes more eloquent. Instead of speaking about utopia in a dystopia, just as we were trying to do, in our own form of subversion and counterculture, Mihai Sora kept silent.



    After 1989, Mihai Șora had his own contribution to the rebirth of political life in Romania, being appointed Education Minister. He also took part in the consolidation of Romania’s civil society as a member of the Group for Social Dialogue and of the Civic Alliance. To the end of his life, Mihai Sora remained a distinct and active public voice. (EN)


  • Romania’s political icons of the mid 20th century

    Romania’s political icons of the mid 20th century

    Politics has always fueled endless discussion
    topics, while for their most part, political discussions translate into stark
    disagreements. Very few politicians of those whom we today take for figureheads
    are squeaky clean, and that because human beings make mistakes. Nonetheless, that
    does not mean there were not truly remarkable politicians who became landmarks
    for posterity. Their exceptionality was provided by the manner in which they
    acted under extremely difficult circumstances, for themselves and for their communities.
    One such exceptional politician, here, in Romania, was Iuliu Maniu. We recall
    that on January 8th we commemorated 150 years since his birthday.


    Iuliu Maniu was born in 1873 in the locality of Șimleul Silvaniei, in
    today’s north-western Romania. Iuliu Maniu followed his father’s footsteps and
    had a similar career path, that of a lawyer. Iuliu Maniu earned his Doctor’s degree
    in Law from the University of Vienna, in 1896. Maniu embraced the political
    career, first being an activist with the National Romanian Party. In 1906 he was
    elected deputy in the Hungarian parliament. In 1915 he was drafted into the Austrian-Hungarian
    army and dispatched on the Italian front. At the end of the war, in 1918 Maniu
    participated in the Alba Iulia Assembly which ruled the unification with
    Romanian of the then Austrian-Hungarian territories predominantly inhabited by Romanians.
    In Greater Romania, jointly with Ion Mihalache, Maniu founded the National
    Peasant party in 1926. Between 1918 and 1945 Maniu was three times Prime
    Minister of Romania. An out-and-out democrat, Maniu turned down collaborations of
    all sorts, with the fascist dictatorship but especially with the communist one.
    On February 5, 1953, at the age of 75, Maniu was sentenced to prison. He later died because of the detention conditions
    in the Sighet prison.


    Iuliu Maniu was one of the strongest and most polarizing personalities
    of the Romanian society in the first half of the 20t century. Incorruptible, charismatic,
    tenacious, Maniu was, indeed, the figurehead the Romanians needed in the most
    trying times of their history. Maniu is unanimously remembered as a role model but
    also as a special man. Radio Romania’s Oral History Center Archive has loads of
    audio testimonials about Maniu. We
    have selected two of them. Ioana Berindei is the daughter of Ioan Hudita, a National
    Peasant Party prominent member. In 2000, Ioana recalled Iuliu Maniu, sir,
    just like she used to call him. Ioana told us Maniu was a man of great modestly
    and kindness.

    Maniu had the rare
    quality of being modest! A very nice man, with a warm voice. He used to join us
    for lunch, I can still remember once I went out to welcome him to our home and
    he used to tell us, me and my sister, Good afternoon, my dear young ladies And
    he had a spot on his lapel and I asked him would he allow me to clean it. Oh,
    I’m so ashamed! says he. And I told him such things happened and would he allow
    me to clean it, so he doesn’t pay another visit with the spot uncleaned. And
    mister Maniu was ill, back then, whenever he got himself seated his knees ached,
    he walked with difficulty, but I never saw him nervous or irritated by
    something. His being calm was so very soothing for everybody around. As a politician
    he was uncompromising. That’s what my father most loved about him. He never
    gave an inch! His detractors used to say Maniu was so very slow in taking a
    decision. This is sheer mean malice, all politicians have their enemies, you cannot
    be perfect or you cannot possibly work without somebody opposing you. But then
    again, it was not because my father loved him or because I met him, but let me
    tell you, there wasn’t a single flaw I found about him.


    Sergiu Macarie used to be active in the National-Peasant youth. In
    2000 he confessed that the Soviets’ arrival in Romania was an alarm signal for
    the Romanian society which mobilized against its enemies. Maniu defied his old
    age and, fighting his illness, got actively involved in that.


    Less than two, maybe three days passed before we
    had our clashes with the communist gangs. We staged larger meetings and we knew
    straight away they would turn up. Of the party’s prominent members who always
    joined us there was Ilie Lazar. In
    the Palace Square we all gathered and acclaimed the king and the king would
    show up in the balcony, standing ovations followed, and our moments of heaven.
    And, as soon as that happened, trucks with workers always turned up, they had
    clubs. For instance, on May 15, 1946, we were celebrating 98 years from the
    speech Simion Barnutiu delivered on the Freedom Plain in Blaj, and Maniu came
    too. On our way out, all around the Romanian Atheneum and on the opposite side we
    saw cars teeming with workers with clubs. We really hard a hard time trying to
    get the president out of there, there was a door at the far end of the building, which was
    never used, we forced it open so we could get him out of there.


    Iuliu Maniu was more than an honest politician; he was an icon of democracy
    itself. Between 1944 and 1947,
    when the implementation of the communist regime in Romania occurred at its fiercest,
    Maniu was considered the West’s most important dialogue partner. His sacrifice
    in Sighet turned Maniu into one of Romania’s major political landmarks in the
    20th century. (EN)

  • Romanian exile and anti-communist espionage

    Romanian exile and anti-communist espionage





    Meticulously researched and studied, the archives of communism continue to reveal dramatic life stories and surprising information that complete the history of this dictatorship. Recently, historian Lucian Vasile discovered and recreated the adventures of Romanians in exile who, in the early 1950s, undertook espionage actions against the communist regime. These actions were organized, for the most part, by a structure called the Intelligence Service of the Romanian Military in Exile (ISRME) and aimed at attracting collaborators to spy on the communist institutions from within and to collect data that, in the context of the Cold War, could have benefited Western organizations in the event of the destabilization of the Bucharest regime. What plans they had, what they managed to do concretely and how they were caught, in the end, we all learn from the book Spies War. The secret actions of the Romanian exile at the beginning of communism written by Lucian Vasile, who told us about his book:

    Those in exile organized themselves at the proposal of the French secret services, and there was a big argument there, because the French would have wanted the Romanian service to be a pocket structure of theirs, while the Romanians in the diaspora wanted to be independent, to be equal partners to the French. And they succeeded at least from 1950 to 1952. In 1951, the American secret services were already appearing, working with the French to form an information pole that would represent the West, and also collaborating with the Romanian services related to the conventional organization of exile, i.e. by the Romanian National Committee, even going as far as King Mihai, who was aware of this service and had even appointed the official head of the structure, General Dumitru Puiu Petrescu. But there were, of course, other structures, either people acting on their own, or some more organized ones from the Legionary Movement who wanted to get out of political ostracism and legitimize themselves by collaborating with the American services. In fact, they were also the most involved in all these very direct actions of parachuting into Romania, of sending some secret agents who should have done something, although even for them it was not very clear what.







    For their part, the communist authorities – with the help of the USSR – knew how to counter the actions of spies in exile as effectively as possible. Bucharest’s counterintelligence was – and I’m sorry to say it – it was one step, if not two, ahead of every operation carried out from exile. It was really a battle between David and Goliath, says historian Lucian Vasile:







    The spies we know about are actually spies who have been captured. There were certainly some informative wins too, but we don’t know about them. Perhaps only in Western archives can we find information about these achievements. In contrast, those who were captured by the communist counterintelligence did not do much harm. The few people who formed the Romanian military intelligence service in exile tried but failed to send essential information. In other ways, however, they managed to obtain information about the airports and the Soviet military equipment existing in the country, about the troop movements in the East, about the fortifications on the Black Sea. There were some successes. But how useful were they? Hard to say. I would say that rather they would have been useful in case the third World War had broken out, so expected by many Romanians in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

    Within ISRME, the brains of the operations was the aviation commander Mihail (Mișu) Opran, the head of the counterintelligence office and the de facto leader of the secret service. One of the double agents with whom he worked was Mihail Țantu, in his turn an aviation officer, a member of the first paratrooper company of the Romanian army during the Second World War, a political prisoner at the beginning of communism, the hero of an escape from prison too unusual not to be seen as suspicious. He fled the country and ended up working within SIMRE, which, by the way, actually sent him back to Romania. Historian Lucian Vasile tells how some of the actions coordinated by Opran and put into practice by people like Țantu were carried out.









    Some actions were carried out by agents and through parachuting, others were done by recruiting someone who went from Bucharest to Paris and then came back with the informational material by which they were supposed to recruit agents and then send information to the West. The capture was done differently with respect to the paratroopers. In the early 1950s, almost all of them were captured. In 1953, a trial was staged for them, called the trial of the paratroopers. It had been an independent project of the American services, but the Communists staged a big trial, which remained somewhat mentioned in historiography. The mercenaries, at least, were caught by accident. At one point they were surprised by a little girl on the field, one of the teams, and there they had a choice. Should we kill her or not? And they chose not to kill her. It snowballed from there, because the little girl discovered the weapons and alerted the authorities. The authorities figured out that someone had been parachuted in, so it must have been someone from there. Let’s see who’s from this area and missing from home. Little by little they, they managed to capture one of them who confessed everything in the investigations. And from there it was just a hunt, a spy hunt.

    Although without notable successes, the espionage actions organized by the Romanian exile in the early 1950s were marked by a certain effervescence that diminished after the removal of Mihail Opran from the SIMRE leadership. (MI)

  • Fascism in Romania in the troubled 1930s

    Fascism in Romania in the troubled 1930s




    Fascism and communism are the two forms of totalitarianism that manifested,
    fully-fledged, in the 20th century. This was the century when
    liberal democracy had been going through the most serious of crises. Totalitarianism
    succeeded in persuading a great many people that it was a better solution to the flaws of democracy.




    In Romania, totalitarianism vigorously took hold of people’s minds. Fascism
    manipulated ideas and especially feelings, churlishly simplifying them and
    turning them into killing tools. The Legionnaire Movement and its party, The
    Iron Guard, were the most radical fascist means of expression for the far-right
    totalitarian thought. But before we got them the way they were known, their
    foundation was laid by the Blood Brotherhoods, the organization that initiated those
    who shared the fascist ideas. Coming into being in 1923, as organizations of
    the nationalist youth, at the initiative of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the future
    leader of the Iron Guard, the Blood Brotherhoods draw and trained new staunch
    members.


    Radio Romania’s Oral History Center in the past decades has recorded
    interviews with former members of the Blood Brotherhoods. In 1997, Alexandru
    Bancescu of Câmpulung Moldovenesc recalled how a session unfolded, of
    the Blood Brotherhoods, in his native town.


    The shared legionnaire orientation
    made us all brothers. There were moments of prayer, there was, in the parlance of
    the Blood Brotherhoods, a moment of friendship, by means of which we provided
    our education. We were honest in speaking about our shortcomings, every one of
    us took their own correction measures, we tried to correct each other and we punished
    ourselves at a time when that was needed to correct our imperfections and turn
    a human being into a personality. We did physical exercises to strengthen our
    bodies, we set up camp nights with the Blood Brotherhoods, towards Rarau at the
    Devil’s Mill or somewhere else, where very many people had come, from all over
    Moldavia. We used to meet there, we used to sing, telling stories about our
    people, our country, our history.


    In 1999, Mircea Dumitrescu of Bucharest span the yarn of how he joined
    the Blood Brotherhoods when he was 13.

    I approached them through reading and discussions with
    my classmates. What had I read? For the Legionnaires, a book written by Corneliu
    Codreanu, I had read The Blood Brotherhood, written by Gheorghe Istrate,
    the organizer of the Blood Brotherhoods, A Generation’s Creed, by Ion
    Mota, From the Legionnaire World, other legionnaire books. Where would I find
    them? There was a group in Buftea who did that. One of them was shot in 39′ by
    Carol II’s police. I knew him, I knew his father. The others were doctors in
    economy, the Stan brothers. I would talk to them through my father and my
    father’s friends.


    What was
    expected from the young members? The behavior of a new type of man, a man of
    the future, as Dumitrescu said:


    What were we supposed to become? First of all, we were told we were not Christian
    enough. Every day, the 40th share of our time, that is 36 minutes, had to be
    devoted to our relationship with Christ. That meant reading from the New Testament,
    mentally checking everything we had done during the day, to see if we’d
    committed any sin. After that, we would be told that there could be no
    relationship with God without a relationship with the person next to us. Also,
    the 40th share of our spending had to be set aside, to help those in need. That
    means that if, for instance, I ate an ice-cream costing 40 lei, 1 leu had to be
    saved for those who may have needed that money. We were also checked. We had a
    little notebook, titled my notebook, where we were supposed to record
    everything, about spending our time and our money.


    The
    strongly Christian education attracted not only those interested in acquiring a
    new ethic identity, but it also translated into a selection that would give
    birth to an elite. In 1994, priest Ilie Tinta described the selection of the
    members of the Blood Brotherhoods.


    Usually, we would select students that had good grades and an exemplary
    behavior. We never took students who couldn’t pass their exams. The
    persecutions of 1938-1939 left us a bit short of members, as the Security were
    chasing us, but we managed to get through. In 1940, when the Movement was
    rendered legal for a while, during the ministry of Antonescu, I was the head of
    the Blood Brotherhoods at the Nifon Seminary in Bucharest .


    But time
    does not carve ideas in stone, it changes everything. After the end of the
    fascist period, in 1945, the other face of totalitarianism, communism, emerged
    in central and eastern Europe. And some of the members of the Blood Brotherhoods,
    those who managed to stay out of prison, would give birth to part of the
    anti-Communist resistance movement. (EN, MI)







  • The Romanian Revolution the reestablishment of democracy

    The Romanian Revolution the reestablishment of democracy

    The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 will always be the most important event in Romania’s history in the second half of the 20th century. So great were the changes that it brought along and the energies that it unleashed, that nothing has ever been the same.



    The communist regime was installed in Central and Eastern Europe, Romania included, in a short period of approximately 3 years. Until 1948 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania and Hungary had been under the control of communist party governments, imposed by the presence of the Soviet army in its offensive against Nazism. According to historians, WW2 was, for the Soviet regime, an unexpected chance to recover, after catastrophic economic and social policies implemented as of 1918. In the absence of WW2, the Soviet Union would have most probably undergone reforms after Stalin’s death in 1953.



    Between 1945/1948 and 1989, an authoritarian regime, oblivious to any fundamental rights and liberties was in power. The communist tyranny, however, had the fascist dictatorship as predecessor, during the war. Unfortunately, for half of Europe, the end of war would not bring along the end of brutal regimes. In Romania, Ceausescu’s regime brought its 22 million citizens to their knees. Stripped of the most basic rights, the Romanians also had to bear the brunt of Ceausescu’s irrational ambition to fully pay the country’s foreign debt, which triggered a complete degradation of its people’s living standards.



    The events in the second half of December 1989 are well-known. On December 1989, in Timisoara, people took to the streets in protest at the eviction of pastor Laszlo Tokes. Protests extended and the repressive forces reacted by opening fire and killing several hundred protesters. On December 21st, in Bucharest, the crowds summoned by Ceausescu to listen to his speech started shouting slogans against him. In the evening, protesters who were still on the streets built barricades and the regime’s forces reacted just like they had done in Timisoara – by opening fire. On December 22nd, a huge protest action staged by the large industrial platforms scared Ceausescu, who fled by helicopter from the top of the Communist Party’s Central Committee building. The dictator and his wife were eventually captured, tried during an emergency trial and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on December 25th, 1989, when Ceausescu and his wife were executed. Around 1,200 Romanians paid with their lives the rebirth of Romanian democracy.



    Petru Creția was a philosopher, writer and translator of Platos works into Romanian. Marked by the events, on December 21st, 1989, the day before Ceausescu’s fall, he wrote a manifesto broadcast on Radio Free Europe. His manifesto describes the lowest level that humankind reached under communist. The recording with Cretia’s voice has been kept in Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre. His words describe the destiny of several generations of Romanians but are also a warning to future generations: “It is the end of century in Romania and, along with it, the inevitable end of a terrible time for this country. It bared such mystifying names, that it’s enough to turn it upside down to see the truth. The demonic species that have shaken not only the planet, but the very definition of humanity, found their death in the sufferance and blood of this end-of-the century. The great crisis of the human species, that found its expression in Hitlerism, Stalinism and Maoism, is about to end, no matter how hard their terrible heirs struggle to survive in a few places of the world, and how many the number of the Asian, African, South-American and even European imitators and epigones of these doomed regimes is. They are all alike, they say and do the same things, they are all pathetic caricatures, despicable marionettes of the nations’ fate. And now, in all the places where the fate of the planet is decided, their time has come as well. These ten-hand autocrats, these pontiffs of false religions, have become anachronic. We will remember them only in the name of the death, of the tortured and of the starved, of all those who suffered during their horrific reign.



    The most terrible century in history ended in 1989. The evil will most certainly not disappear. But just like a vaccine, it will not cure but it will at least protect the world from a new ideological plague. (EE)