Radio România Internațional

Tag: communism

Construction sites in Communist Romania

Besides the big national sites involving gigantic projects, there were also smaller ones where factories were being built as well as blocks of flats, motorways and railroads. Romanias national construction sites were those for infrastructure such as hydropower plants, railroads, waterways like the Danube-Black Sea Canal, the Transfagarasan motorway that is crossing the Carpathians, the Peoples House (which later was turned into the Palace of Parliament) and the modern centre of the capital city, Bucharest.

Construction sites in communism were meant as a proof that the regime was still active making fresh jobs and houses for the people and that the communist leaders were the only ones able to bring joy to the people. However, the communist construction sites had a dark side, where inmates, sometimes political dissidents, as well as army troops were used as workforce. Improper safety standards leading to a large number of occupational accidents, as well as the tight control exerted by the then political police, the Securitate, made these construction sites look more like concentration camps. Add to it the lack of economic performance and loss incurred through waste, mismanagement and theft and youll get a clear picture of what a communist construction site looked like.

Historian Dinu Giurescu used to work for Sovromconstructia, a communist enterprise specialized in building motorways. He was dispatched to the site after having attended courses in road-building techniques by specialized engineers as well as classes of political economy and Marxism. In an interview he gave to Radio Romania in 2002, he explained how he ended up doing a different job than what he had initially chosen.

Dinu Giurescu: “I was a technician and had to calculate the efficiency and pays for various teams of workers. I was what they called at that time a tallier, and was doing the job while in my third and fourth years at the faculty. Back in the 1948-1949 period I wanted to become a teacher. I figured out that things were going in a certain direction at that time and I didnt have, what they called a good, ‘sound file. I graduated from the faculty in 1949 and remember I wasnt allowed to take my graduation exam.

The young intellectual Giurescu was forced to join a different social class of people, the working class: “People generally gave me a warm welcome when I joined their team and I am not speaking here about the other blue collars like me. However, I soon realized it was a jungle out there, joined by all the social-political losers. They were former army officers, lawyers, magistrates and accountants who wanted to get a safer job. There were all sorts of people on that site, some young and some old and I particularly remember a nice young guy, Dumitrescu, former officer in the Royal Guard. The sites chief engineer and the other chiefs we had were very interested in our activity and used to tell me: ‘make sure the workers are happy with their salaries and all. We dont want them to give up their jobs. We also had workers coming from the villages nearby.

Dinu Giurgescu has also worked on the building site of the aerodrome in Bacau, a secret military facility. He remembers that the site was under special supervision: “The site was closely monitored because it was a military facility. During the summer, army builders were brought in to work alongside us. The General Labour Directorate employees, who were not deemed worthy of wearing the uniform and defend the country, were incorporated into the directorates battalions. They wore blue-purple or blue-grey uniforms. They were simply used to provide manual labour. They would spend the whole duration of their military service, which lasted for two or three years, doing manual labour, and had their own supervisors. However, when they were sent to our site, they didnt have a supervisor, so I had to take over this task. I was on good terms with the warrant officer and I would sometime turn a blind eye to help them do their quotas.

One of the events no one who was around in the 1950s would ever forget was the death of Stalin. Dinu Giurgescu remembers he was at the building site when he learnt the news of Stalins death: “We were summoned to the canteen, which also served as a meeting hall, and someone informed us, in a very grave tone, of the death of the ‘greatest genius mankind had ever known, that is comrade Iosif Vissarionovici Stalin. They read out from an article in the newspaper Scanteia on this subject. Two or three people took the floor. We all knew what happened and behaved accordingly. My colleague Grigore Ioan told me privately afterwards: ‘The butcher is dead, I wonder what comes next. Three or four days after Stalins death I went to Bucharest for a few days and met one of the supervisors, Anton he was called, at the train station, and he told me: ‘Do you know Clement Gotwald of Czechoslovakia has also died?. And we smiled at each other, saying: ‘Maybe others will die, too. Thats what we were thinking, but our leaders didnt die.

The communist building policy came to an end in 1989. Although some say today it was not all bad, it had a mainly repressive purpose, which far outdid its basic function.

16 October 2017
August 23, 2017 UPDATE

VISIT – The President of France Emmanuel Macron will be on an official visit to Romania on Thursday, and will have talks with president Klaus Iohannis and Prime Minister Mihai Tudose. The two presidents will give a joint press conference at the end of the bilateral talks and will visit the National Village Museum. The two heads of state are expected to have an open dialogue on boosting bilateral trade, as well as on cooperation during the 2018-2019 Romania-France Cultural Season, an important cultural project. Another focal point on the agenda of talks is Romanias Schengen accession, after the two presidents agreed, in June, to strengthen dialogue so that a favourable decision on Romanias joining the free movement area be made as soon as possible.

JUDICIARY – The President of Romania Klaus Iohannis says the proposed changes to the laws regulating the judicial sector, announced on Wednesday by Justice Minister Tudorel Toader, are an attack against the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and the anti-corruption fight. Iohannis says the pressure on the judiciary comes completely against the commitments made by Romania upon joining the EU in 2007, and will keep the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism active indefinitely, so as to enable the European Commission to monitor the Romanian judicial sector. President Iohannis explains such changes require public debate and consultations with the magistrates. Under one of the proposed amendments, Public Ministry chiefs would be appointed by the Prosecutors Department of the Higher Council of Magistrates, based on nominations by the Justice Minister, through a transparent procedure that bypasses the head of state. Minister Toader also intends to make the Judicial Inspection Corps subordinated to the Justice Ministry and to extend the term in office for chief prosecutors from 3 to 4 years. Once passed by the Cabinet, the bill will be sent to Parliament for endorsement.

REMEMBRANCE DAY – The signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact on August 23, 1939 is a confirmation that Fascism, Nazism and Communism are mere forms of the same antidemocratic expressions of hatred and intolerance, says Romanias President, Klaus Iohannis, in a message sent on Wednesday, commemorating the Remembrance Day for the Victims of Fascism and Communism. The president added that the pact concluded by the Nazi and Soviet foreign ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Veaceslav Molotov, respectively, was an odious act against the Romanians ideal of peace and freedom. The Romanian Centennial must find us consistent in the struggle to defend democracy, the rule of law and individual liberties. Let us not forget that for more than one-half of the one hundred years since the achievement of the national ideal we lived under dictatorships, and many of the personalities who contributed to the Greater Union were persecuted by totalitarian regimes. Therefore, our efforts must now be directed towards the condemnation of all actions that could affect the democratic path that Romania embarked on, in December 1989, and consolidated by its NATO and EU membership. In the current European and global context, marked by many challenges and uncertainties, defending and consolidating the rule of law, democracy and freedom against any enemies hostile to open societies is a priority, the president also said. In the wake of the Soviet-Nazi agreement, following an ultimatum given in the summer of 1940, Moscow annexed Romanias eastern territories of Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and Hertza. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Romanians left their homes in the way of the occupiers, and other tens of thousands were arrested, executed or deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

AFGHANISTAN – Romania welcomes the announcement made by the U.S. President, Donald Trump, on increasing US troops in Afghanistan by 4,000 military, the Romanian Defence Minister Adrian Ţuţuianu has said. Ţuţuianu has added that Romania, too, might increase the number of troops it contributes to the “Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan. At present, some 620 Romanian military are deployed in that Central-Asian state, Bucharest being the Alliances fourth largest contributor of troops.

(translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

23 August 2017
The 1948 Education Reform

The communist regime that was freshly instated in 1945 initiated the education reform as well as the promotion of the underprivileged, actually the workers who were obedient to the party line. The new education system translated in the dismantling of the old system and its replacement with another one, where the so-called sound social origin had a strong bearing on people future career. In fact, the aforementioned concept was a political criterion, doing away with competition and fostering the policy of staff training supporting the new regime.

Engineer Stefan Barlea held high-ranking positions in the party and state hierarchy. Barlea was one of those whom the regime strongly favored and could have access to education. Yet quite unlike other people who made the most of their affiliation to the new regime having no qualities whatsoever, Barlea was a top-performing pupil, graduating from the “Gheorghe Lazar high school, one of Bucharests elite high schools. In 2002, in an interview for Radio Romanias Oral History Center, Barlea recalled how changes in education had been perceived in the wake of the 1948 education reform:

Stefan Barlea: “A major change occurred, whereby high school students were allowed to graduate a year earlier, in the case of those concerned, and I was one of them. New higher education programs emerged, addressing people who came to class straight from their workplace. Workers schools, in two years time, trained high-school graduates, being closely linked to faculties. Concurrently, to those who were completing their high-school studies under various programs and also worked on the production line, access was facilitated to faculties, and those people could pursue a university program and do their day job at the same time. Also, there were faculties that signed up graduates of workers schools, so that the students overall social condition could be improved. Such educational broadmindedness was extremely enticing for the younger generation. And then youth and student organizations started to gain momentum. There was the National Students Union at that time, which was growing. These training classes significantly increased youngsters access to higher education.

The 1948 reform of the education system turned the values of traditional education upside down. The high-school graduation exam was no longer compulsory, and admission to faculties was facilitated for those with no high-school studies, on condition that they concurrently complete their high-school studies. With details on that, here is Stefan Barlea once again:

Stefan Barlea: “When I enrolled, I found out there wasnt a single faculty that didnt offer preparatory classes for prospective candidates who wanted to enroll, and everyone was free to attend. The classes were offered with the assistance of university professors, teaching assistants, there were a great many youngsters attending: it was there that for the first time in my life I met those who came straight from the workers school, I met those who had completed their courses just like we did, so that they could gain admission to university. There were outstanding teachers who would adopt a different method. They would write a problem on the blackboard, a problem that required knowledge of synthetic information. And that was true of various subjects, math, physics and others. And they would ask if anyone in the classroom wanted to solve the problem. One student would go at the blackboard to solve the problem with the help of the teacher, who would give him various useful hints, thus tackling a whole range of mathematical concepts. Afterwards, the teacher would write another problem on the blackboard. If the respective student did not know how to solve it, he would take his seat back in the classroom, and another one would go at the blackboard to solve it.

The reform was meant to create a new type of student, a new context for students, in which the main priorities had to be the acceptance of poverty and the shaping up of class conscience. Here is Ştefan Bârlea back at the microphone:

Stefan Barlea: “The students from the workers school had an advantage. They had a separate examination sheet for the oral examination. I dont know the procedure for the written exams. All the students from the workers school automatically passed the oral exams, so it was crystal-clear who came from that school. Only those who had not studied at all did not pass the oral exams. The system tried to help them, but the situation was difficult. The Mechanics Faculty was transformed and turned into a Faculty for Engineers and Economists. I attended that faculty where I met very many students from the workers schools. They urged us to set up the learning groups again, which were officially created for the members of the Union of Young Communists (UTC) and of the youth organizations. As they came from the workers school, they knew all about trade unions. We elected them members in the trade union, because they knew how to best represent us.

Loyalty to the regime was rewarded. And the communist students, the partys future pillars, accepted the compromise. Ştefan Bârlea has more details:

Stefan Barlea: “There was a system of scholarships for students, which provided them with meals and accommodation, money for personal needs amounting to 30 lei, soap, toothpaste and other stuff. There was a standard scholarship consisting in the aforementioned things. I did not need accommodation, but the meals were useful. I used to eat lunch and dinner at the mess hall. There were also merit scholarships, and I benefited from such a republican scholarship after the first semester. The newly established faculty benefited from such a system of scholarships, the republican ones amounted to 500 lei, as much as a salary, and that was a big incentive for me.

The 1948 education reform changed the structure of the Romanian education system. However, communist ideology had a negative impact on education, despite the introduction of quality standards in the system in the years that followed the reform.

(translated by: Eugen Nasta, Lacramioara Simion)

24 July 2017
The Romanian Revolution and the Revival of Democracy

Around the mid-19th century, the word revolution started to refer mainly to an overthrow of old ideas and practices, a renewal of society overall. Politics underwent a sea change, both in terms of political ideas, and in terms of promoting change, as often as possible. Revolution was believed to be the engine of history, with Marxism being the ideology that had the biggest influence on the way revolution was seen. Marxism said that class struggle was what moved humanity forward. Revolution is seen by it to be a process of insurrection, by which capitalism had to be removed and destroyed, as well as a continuous process, after the proletariat had grabbed power and transformed society.

After Marxism grabbed power in Russia in 1917 in the form of Leninism, and then took over with Soviet occupation of Central and Eastern Europe, the revolution was supposed to continue until it prevailed all over the world. However, the soviet regime and the concept of revolution as social upheaval failed in its project of becoming the superior form of human life. Communism meant repressing some of the most elementary human rights, and brought with it widespread impoverishment. Historians and political scientists saw the 1989 revolutions in Central Europe, which came as a natural effect of the dramatic drop in living standards, as a return to democracy. The revolutions in 1989 are no longer seen as founding events for social upheaval, but for building democracy. In 1989, the understanding of the word revolution went back to the original meaning, that of revolving back to a starting point, a significance given to it by the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688. The 1989 revolutions are glorious revolutions because they put an end to tyranny and returned dignity to political man.

Every year in December, Romanians commemorate the fall of communism and a return to normalcy. Paid in death and injury, the return to democracy became the most important of political values, the more important as time tends to take the edge off it. The first stirrings of anti-communism occurred in Timisoara on 16 December 1989, continuing in Bucharest on December 21 and 22, culminating with the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Political scientist Ioan Stanomir believes that the date of 22 December 1989 has all the features of a founding moment, or, in this case, as he puts it, a re-founding moment: “22 December indisputably represents the final point of the communist period. We should emphasize this aspect, because some of the politicians on the rise after December 1989 tried to minimize the anti-communist and democratic dimension of popular protests that led to the fall of the Ceausescu regime. I insist on this aspect. It was not just about removing a dictator who dishonored this country, but also about affirming values which, though not very clearly defined, were subsumed to a wish to eliminate the communist regime with its cortege of material privations and dramatic restriction of freedoms.”

However, ridding people of the inheritance and reflexes of communism proved to be a lengthy process, which few back then understood properly, as being a painful effort to separate public good from public evil, to have a perspective on the past and another on the future.

Here is Ioan Stanomir again: “22 December is similar to Janus, an event with two faces. On the one hand, it is the process of celebrating freedom; on the other it is the moment when the drama of the terrorists begins. Were it not for the terrorists and the deaths that occurred in conditions very hard to clarify to this day, 22 December would most likely have had a different future. Let us not forget that there is a cemetery of the Heroes of the Revolution, and that the people buried there are there mostly as a result of the action of the mysterious terrorists after 22 December 1989.”

Romanian democracy was revitalized and the pluralism of opinions was a sign of societal recovery. Historical parties that had been banned by the communist regime were being recreated, people were free to come up with ideas and act accordingly. Their voices started to be heard and the politicians’ behavior was adjusting to the electorate’s demands.

Ioan Stanomir: “December 22, 1989 was indeed a moment of fraternity and fraternization followed quite quickly by a lack of unity among the political class. Romanian citizens were divided, and what triggered this division was the National Salvation Front (FSN) and Ion Iliescu, that also confiscated the moment of December 22 to the benefit of a party-state. This was the beginning of the end for this dream, for this illusion of fraternization. December 22nd was followed by January 1990, with the protests of the democratic parties who were violently repressed, then by February 1990, March 1990 and the incidents in Targu Mures, the University Square and finally the miners’ riot in June 1990.”

The Romanian Revolution of 1989, Europe’s most violent return to democracy, was paid with the lives of 12 hundred people. The passing of time makes people get used to certain living standards and freedom is now seen as an essential right. Nevertheless, history reminds people the fact that things have not always been like that, and the year 1989 is the most recent such example.

19 December 2016
Unearthing communist crimes

The burial places of many victims of the communist regime had been, for dozens of years, unknown. But as the communist regime collapsed in 1989, the Romanian society initiated a series of actions in a bid to find the victims of communism, buried in unknown or God-forsaken places.

Historian Marius Oprea is the one who in 2006 set up and ran the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes. Oprea and his team initiated forensic archaeology campaigns, with 4 or 5 such campaigns being run each year. Ten years on, we talked with historian Marius Oprea about the outcome of the campaigns ran by his institute. Marius Oprea authored several volumes on the Securitate, one of the communist regime’s retaliatory instruments. One of his volumes was turned into a documentary film, entitled Four Ways to Die.

With details on his fieldwork, here is historian Marius Oprea: “In the early 1950s during our searches across the country, we fond many places where people had been shot dead and then buried by the Secret Police, with the place not being marked in any way. Apart from that, we also made searches in detention places, namely in Aiud, Periprava and Targu Ocna. Next year we will also expand our fieldwork to concentration camps in Balta Brailei, in Salcia, Frecatei and Agaua, where we found several mass graves. We will analyze the bones of the people buried there. It is a difficult job as we start off from documents and testimonials and then find something else on the field, 50-60 years after those crimes had been perpetrated. We often find it hard and sometimes impossible to spot the places where the people killed had been buried, because constructions were erected over them, just as it happened with the people killed in Cluj, at the Securitate headquarters. In other cases, such sites have simply vanished from people’s memory. We haven’t always found out where the mass graves were, but our success rate is over 60%, which is relevant for what we do.”

We asked Marius Oprea how many victims have been unearthed so far: “We haven’t worked out their exact number, but I can say we found 50 of the people executed for having put up armed resistance against the communist regime. We found 70 other people shot in penitentiaries. We don’t know their exact numbers as in many cases the bones got mixed up. We don’t know for sure if all the bones we found, like those we found in Sighet, belong to former political prisoners. This remains to be established by forensic investigation. As soon as we discover skeletons of people killed by Securitate, for whom we have documents and whose identity is known to us, we call criminal investigators. We’ve had an excellent collaboration so far, although there were gaps in our work together, mostly in the early days of our work, when criminal investigators didn’t quite get what exactly we did. For them, such cases had for long been classified, being rated as sheer manslaughter cases. But we did not give in and insisted that such cases should not be rated as simple manslaughter cases but as crimes against humanity. And that’s how in the long run, the ruling of sentences was possible, for Ion Ficior and Alexandru Visinescu. I only hope that the punishing of those guilty of crimes against humanity during the communist regime will continue. We gather direct material evidence, that is the bones of the people who were killed.”

Executions were carried out by shooting, which was the standard procedure at the time. Marius Oprea gave us details about their staging: “There were several types of execution, most of them disguised as standard procedure for attempted escape from secure escort. This means that the detainees were taken out of the Securitate facilities for so-called reenactments. In reality they were taken off the van and shot by machine-gun. Some of them would even get an extra bullet in the head. Others were just shot from behind, such as a 74 year old, semi-paralyzed man, who was shot like that after he was taken out ‘for a stroll’. His ‘guilt’ was that he had given grapes to some partisans. We also found some of those people’s bones, and in their stomachs there were grape seeds, as the grapes the old man had given them was their last meal.”

Behind every skeleton there is a story, and the documentary called “Four Ways to Die” tells stories about the life and death of four people whose only guilt was to have stood against communism. Marius Oprea: “It was one of the Securitate practices to instate fear through various means of excessive violence. People from the victims’ villages would learn about the latter being killed and thus their resistance to collectivization was broken. I estimated that some 10,000 people fell victim to such executions, including people sentenced for various felonies, but in the case of whom the Securitate decided the sentences had been too mild. Under the pretense of carrying the inmates from one penitentiary to another, the Securitate was simply killing them. 16 detainees transferred from Constanta to Timisoara, for instance, were killed on the road, somewhere near Lugoj. We also found 5 detainees transferred from Gherla to Timisoara for a so-called additional investigation, in which they never took part. Only their coats came back to Gherla, and we found the minutes validating the return of those items.”

Marius Oprea believes that a national programme would be a necessary last homage paid by Romanian society to the fighters for freedom who were killed in the field and buried without a cross.

5 December 2016
“The Ever Forward!” Generation

However, the philosophy of history tells us that history, memory and truth are nothing but fragments of what belonged to the individual and the community. And the nostalgia that sometimes seizes us sends us to a past which, more often than not, we try to trim into something more beautiful, unpleasant as it may have been.

The memory of Communism is still something difficult to take responsibility for and its brunt is still hard to bear, although nostalgia has somehow rendered it more human. After decades of communist regime, and after other decades when research studies exposed Communisms fateful errors, it was nostalgia that had people come to terms with Communism and its blamable acts. “The Ever Forward generation is the generation of those who were children in the 1970s and the 1980s and who now make up Romanias mature generation.

This generation is also the generation of the decree children, of the children who were born as a result of Decree no. 770 of 1966, which officially banned abortion. Named after the pioneers slogan, “Ever Forward, this generation has now reached the age of nostalgia. Let it be mentioned that people with this kind of nostalgia no longer pine for the communist regime, but for the age that defined them as nostalgic.

In the 1990, “the Ever Forward generation viewed the nostalgia of the elderly with a mix of revolt and indifference. However, as years had gone by, “the Ever Forward generation was in turn seized by nostalgia, playfully at first, deeper and deeper afterwards. Historians Simona Preda and Valeriu Antonovici interviewed 22 personalities on their childhood in the communist regime, when, to a certain extent, parents did not have to worry about their children. A volume was the outcome of that, entitled “Ever Forward! Memories of Childhood, as well as a documentary film.

Simona Preda spoke about the exercise she did jointly with the interviewees as about an act of common introspection, which is not deprived of the traps of distorted perception: What is the difficulty when you speak about childhood? It may seem something of the ordinary, but it is very hard to speak about your own childhood. It is all the more difficult when you find yourself in front of the camera. It is very hard for you to find your bearings, to update yourself, to yet again find yourself in a time which, after so long, you may run the risk of blemishing its memories with an ideological grid you identified as such, much later, after many, many years. The moment you had to deal with adults, when you were exposed to talks, research studies, ideological influences, youre likely to run the risk of placing yourself ‘a posteriori towards things that sometimes you used to experience in a particular manner, things you used to feel in a certain way or things you enjoyed in a specific manner, when you were a child. The main trap for us, when we deal with memoirs and memories, is that belated relation which is eventually contaminated by maturity. Accordingly, memoirs and oral history studies will always be affected by the passage of time. Generally, when we bring history into discussion, even when we bring our own individuality into discussion, we actually deal only with interpretations. We can no longer recapture reality or us, just as we were, with good or bad, with sensational things or which only seemed sensational to us, at the time, no matter how much we would have liked to do that.

The nostalgia for childhood in Communism is easier to understand than other types of nostalgia, because its about the age of innocence, the age at which the world around is good, pure, beautiful, and you are surrounded by affection and attention. That is why the entire arsenal of objections, situations, life facts from that childhood, though ideologized at the maximum, is perceived with benevolence. The quasi-military structure of the pioneers organizations, the red flag, the slogans, the school uniforms, text-books, the entire universe of a 1970-1980 child, though representing a life style in a political regime that deeply humiliated its citizens, are treated with mercy and tolerance.

Just like all those who have recollected their communist childhood, Simona Preda knows that those times must never come back again, but people cannot forget: “There is this possibility of recovering, to a certain extent, what we liked or what we would have liked to have. Or to recover ourselves as we would have liked to be. And its all about the passing of time. I believe that the protagonists were sincere, and there are moments when you can actually feel that honesty breaking through the screen. There are moments when we ask questions about certain aspects relating to our past. I dont believe that we can give diagnostics or perform sociological assessments after several dozens of interviews. We could not do that after three, thirty, three hundred, three million or 23 million, as the population was at one time. Each and every one of us lived their own childhood, lived their own moments of nostalgia, of greatness or humiliation, and I dont think we can draw up standard prescriptions. As somebody once said, I did not spend my childhood in Communism, I spent my childhood during my childhood.

The “Ever Forward generation is the generation that had the historic chance to get rid of the most oppressive regime in history. Its the generation that turned Romania into what it is today, the generation that, despite third-age nostalgias, still has a say in what is happening.

14 November 2016
Bread during Communism

The communist regime took over the role of protector of the famished and the exploited, and proclaimed its ability to provide the population with whatever they needed in terms of nourishment. However, the food rationalization of the 1980s and, unofficially, of bread too, clearly revealed the lack of political vision of the most humanist ideology of all time. One of the regime’s favourite logos was “No work without bread, no bread without work.”

Maxim Berghianu was the president of the State Planning Commission and held several top level government positions. Interviewed in 2002 by the Oral History Center, Berghianu recalled how Nicolae Ceausescu took the initiative of reducing the consumption of bread in the mid 1970s.

Maxim Berghianu: “I have never heard him say anything about something that impressed him and which he would apply here, something good that is. He would always notice whatever was the meanest. For instance, last time I saw them they had just come from a visit to France. I don’t remember who the French president was then, Pompidou or Mitterand….probably Mitterand. What do you think he had noticed? That at the reception party, people would get only one bun, not two or three as it happened at our reception parties. So the conclusion was that we were wasting food and we ate too much bread, and that the peasants were feeding bread on poultry and pigs. After that he came up with the idea of reducing bread consumption by 20%. That was on the New Year’s Eve.”

Although Berghianu didn’t think that was a good idea, and although he was not supported by the other participants in the meeting, he tried to influence Ceausescu and have him give up this idea:

“I was working in the food industry department, I was no longer minister and I was not a member of the executive committee. I was a state-secretary as they had demoted me for spending money on a public swimming pool. We were asked to provide statistics to see the evolution of bread consumption. He called Angelo Miculescu, who was a deputy prime-minister and minister of development, also Ilie Verdet, filling in Maurer’s position as prime-minister, and Ana Muresan from trade. And he told them: “as of tomorrow, bread consumption shall be reduced by 20%. Draw up a bill and bring it to me to sign it.” Nobody said anything, they all just nodded. But I said: ‘Comrade Ceausescu, I would like to raise several issues. Bread consumption has lowered by the year, we even have a chart to prove that. You will see a reduction of 8-10% as compared to …I don’t know which year. But the production and consumption of specialized products has increased: buns and croissants. However, all in all, the consumption has gone down. “It’s not true”, he said, “we shall reduce bread consumption”. “There is something else”, I insisted, “bread is the only product for which people do not have to queue.” He got even angrier. “No queues! We like to say that we have 3000 calories per inhabitant, of which 1500 from bread!” If somebody else had supported me, maybe he would have given up the idea. But they said, “Look at him, the smart pants, all the others agree with us.”

People received the measure with hostility. Maxim Berghianu: “In less than two weeks we began hearing news about strikes in Galati. People used to interrupt their work at the plant and rush to buy some bread as by the time their shift was over they could no longer find any. In Ploiesti, southern Romania, you could read on train carriages “We want bread!” “Won’t work without bread!”. The situation was serious. Ceausescu summoned us on January 16th. He didn’t call all of us, just Angelo and me this time. He ordered us: “Give them as much bread as they need! Draw up a plan and we’ll take the wheat out of the state reserves so they can have as much bread as they want.” We left him and went to Verdet , who also asked Ana Muresan to join us. I told Miculescu: “Sir, didn’t I tell you that was a bad move? Why did we need to curb bread consumption?” Of course after a week I got sacked from the food industry department. But I believe it wasn’t only that…because Ceausescu started to alter food recipes, to reduce the amount of alcohol in alcoholic beverages, sugar in sweets, canned food and so on. All that lowered the quality in products and I didn’t want to give my approval. Then it was the situation with the bread. I got transferred to the Ministry of Labour so I had nothing more to do with the economy. That was it! My point is that Ceausescu seemed to be inspired only by what was evil. For instance, from North Korea he got the idea of food factories, which he wanted to implement in Romania, too. But how can you do that to a people with such a great cuisine and gastronomic tradition? How can you possibly force them to eat their traditional food in cafeterias, all because this is what you saw in Korea?”

Until the end of the communist regime, bread remained for Romanians a symbol of freedom, of the people’s right to build the life they wanted.

7 November 2016
Ecourile revoluţiei anticomuniste din Ungaria în România

Pe 23 octombrie 1956, acum 60 de ani, la Budapesta începea eroica luptă a Ungariei de ieşire de sub tirania exercitată de partidul comunist, susţinut de ocupantul sovietic. Începute de studenţi şi susţinute de liderul reformist Imre Nagy, demonstraţiile paşnice s-au transformat în lupte armate atunci când Uniunea Sovietică a intervenit cu trupe pentru a lichida tentativa Ungariei de a scăpa controlului său.

În România, ocupată şi ea de sovietici care instalaseră un regim comunist ca în Ungaria, mişcările de stradă de la Budapesta au avut efect mai ales în mediile studenţeşti. Centrele studenţeşti de la Timişoara, Cluj, Oradea, aproape de frontiera cu Ungaria, dar şi la Iaşi şi la Bucureşti, au reacţionat şi studenţii s-au raliat protestelor colegilor lor din ţara vecină. Regimul mai represiv şi absenţa unor lideri reformatori la vârful puterii nu au permis ca demonstraţiile din România să fie de aceeaşi amploare precum cele din Ungaria.

Politicianul Nestor Bădiceanu din Oradea, foarte aproape de graniţa cu Ungaria, a fost intervievat de Centrul de Istorie Orală din Radiodifuziunea Română în legătură cu ce a trăit în octombrie 1956: ”Atmosfera din Oradea, unde posturile de radio şi unde populaţia maghiară e 30% din oraş şi radiourile mergeau la maxim, cu geamurile deschise, era o euforie. Oradea trăia aproape de graniţă. Se aştepta dintr-un moment într-altul, uite, domle, să înceapă şi la noi. Adică să se generalizeze fenomenul. Am avut speranţe în plus. Atunci fusesem la Lugoj şi la dus şi la întors am văzut tancuri debarcând în absolut toate gările care aveau rampe de descărcare. Erau trenuri care au venit şi după aia au luat drumul Ungariei. Ruşii, cu forţa care o aveau în Ungaria, nu puteau face mare lucru şi a trebuit să maseze trupe serioase pentru a putea face faţă armatei ungare. Pe care şi-aşa au decapitat-o într-un mod foarte ruşinos, l-au chemat pe ministrul de război la tratative şi l-au arestat lăsând armata fără conducere.

Andrei Banc, student la Facultatea de Ziaristică din Bucureşti în 1956, îşi aducea aminte cum au fost reprimaţi colegi ai săi: ”Cele mai multe arestări şi tulburări au fost la Drept şi la Filozofie în perioada aceea, nu la Politehnică sau la Construcţii, ceea ce într-un fel este firesc pentru că studenţii de aici erau ceva mai politizaţi. Cam jumătate erau căminişti, adică erau studenţi din provincie. În general, acţiunile care au avut loc, arestările care au avut loc, excluderile s-au petrecut în acest mediu. Noi, ăştia care eram în Bucureşti, eram oarecum izolaţi de ei. Ei erau o masă compactă şi în masa asta au izbucnit tulburările. Trebuie, de asemenea, înţeles că în masa asta de la cămin erau şi informatori, adică erau studenţi care turnau. Dar, în orice caz, faptul că o bună parte din studenţi erau la cămin, fetele separat, băieţii separat, a contribuit la crearea atmosferei care a produs tulburările din 1956. Nu a fost mai mult, a fost o vânzoleală. Securitatea era destul de bine informată de oamenii pe care îi avea infiltraţi, ca ei să nu apuce să declanşeze o mişcare cum a fost în Ungaria.”

Revendicările studenţilor români porneau de la marile lipsuri materiale, dar nu ele erau principalele motive de nemulţumire. Oamenii simţeau că profunda criză putea fi depăşită dacă ţara ar fi avut o conducere aleasă democratic. Andrei Banc: ”Revendicările nu au fost de ordin material. Una dintre primele revendicări a fost să se scoată limba rusă. Revendicările au fost politice, erau generale, nu erau atât de antisocialiste cum au fost în Ungaria. Ţin minte că erau revendicări legate de ceea ce era în programă, o mai mare libertate şi un acces mai mare la tradiţiile culturale din România, la filozofia străină care ne ajungea prin intermediul cursurilor, adică ni se preda ceea ce considerat duşmănos, ca să folosesc termenul de atunci, dar nu aveam cum să citim în original lucrurile astea. Nimeni nu a cerut atunci înlăturarea socialismului, nu a cerut înlocuirea partidului comunist, sau desfiinţarea UTC-ului, nu au fost revendicările din Ungaria. Au fost câteva revendicări, dacă nu mă înşel, privind modificarea Constituţiei, ale celor de la Drept.”

Profesorul Ion Agrigoroaie de la Facultatea de Istorie a Universităţii din Iaşi era şi el student în 1956. Şi el îşi aducea aminte ce au păţit colegi ai săi în urma solidarizării cu revoluţia ungară: ”În 1956 sau la începutul anului următor, după revoluţia din Ungaria a existat o stare de tensiune foarte puternică. Un coleg cu un an mai mic a fost arestat de la cămin în 1957 pentru un simplu banc politic în legătură cu sovieticii şi cu intrarea lor în Ungaria şi pentru care a făcut 7 ani de închisoare. S-a ştiut ce se întâmpla în Ungaria, chiar dacă de multe ori erau prezentate lucrurile prin prisma unor acţiuni considerate “teroriste” din partea revoluţionarilor maghiari. S-a ştiut, de pildă, despre episodul Imre Nagy şi faptul că a fost dat pe mâna forţelor represive. Era foarte dificil de a afla toate lucrurile, dar eu n-aş vrea să laud generaţia mea.”

Revoluţia din Ungaria din 1956 a avut ecouri în România şi mii de studenţi care au participat la adunări publice au fost arestaţi, alţii exmatriculaţi. Se declanşa al doilea val al represiunii comuniste, semn că un regim comunist nu putea fi reformat.

24 October 2016
Peles Castle

Ceremonies marking 150 years since the instatement of the Romanian monarchy have also been venued by the Peles Castle, a landmark of the Romanian Royal House situated in Sinaia, one of the most popular mountain resorts in Romania, which partly owes its fame to this emblematic building. It was in Sinaia that the new sovereign of Romania chose to build an authentic royal residence, of unparalleled beauty, as compared to what he found upon his arrival in Romania, in 1866.

Construction works started in 1873, and the foundation stone was laid two years later. The official inauguration was held in 1883, but works continued and were completed rather late, in 1914. Thus, Peles Castle has become an architectural landmark of the late 19th century in Romania, says art critic Ruxandra Beldiman, who authored the book “Peles Castle. An Expression of German historicism.” But who are the builders and architects who worked on the Peles Castle along the years? Ruxandra Beldiman tries an answer.

Ruxandra Beldiman: “In a first stage, Wilhelm von Doderer, a professor from Vienna, who had earlier worked at Baile Herculane (Herculane Baths), and later on, Johannes Schulz’s aide who remained at Peles until 1881 had a significant contribution. In a second stage, after 1895, works were taken over by the Czech architect Karel Liman, who also became the director of the royal architecture office.

As Carol I wanted to propose a political and social model of German inspiration, his residence was to bear the same hallmarks. He didn’t want Peles to be a residence where to relax or spend his leisure time, but he regarded it as a residence of high political and symbolic value. He designed it as a cradle for his dynasty, a dream that came true in 1893, when Prince Carol, the future king Carol II was born, and later on when Prince Mihai was born on the Peles royal estate, which became a place where significant political decisions were made.”

Architects Schultz and Liman were followed by Emil Andre Lecomte du Nouy, the architect who also worked on the Princely Church in Curtea de Arges, who was joined by various fine artists and decorators. Consequently, Peles Castle owes its appearance to the transformations brought to it in 1894. The castle covers an area of 3,400 square meters, has a ground floor, two floors and an attic. The interior is just as spectacular as, if not more spectacular, than the exterior. Art critic Ruxandra Beldiman has more.

Ruxandra Beldiman: “Stylistically speaking, Peles is emblematic of the late 19th century European architecture. As regards the façade, we notice a mixture of German and Italian architectural styles, German Neo-Renaissance being illustrated by the wooden structure incorporated in the masonry, in the upper part of the building, whereas the lower part of the castle is of Italian inspiration. The interior boasts a wider variety of styles, such as German Neo-Renaissance, which was the favorite style of Carol I, as well as Neo-Renaissance in 19th century Florence or the Austrian Baroque, with several halls being decorated in Moorish-Ottoman style and last but not least, Art-Nouveau.”

Walking through the Peleş Castle’s rooms, visitors may be surprised to discover paintings by Gustav Klimt, which are quite different from those that made him famous. Ruxanda Beldiman is back at the microphone.

Ruxandra Beldiman: “Gustav Klimt together with his brother Ernst and a friend from faculty set up an interior decoration workshop in Vienna in 1879. At the time, Klimt was not famous. It was only 16 years later that his star began to rise, so at the Peleş Castle they worked in their quality as a subcontracting company. Therefore, by accident, the Peleş Castle came to have among its assets valuable paintings by Klimt, given that his youth paintings started to be reassessed. These paintings are atypical because, when he worked at the Peleş Castle, he used the techniques he learned in school, namely the academic style. And I’m referring to the Gallery of King Carol’s ancestors on the Main Staircase and the reproductions after the grand old masters. Another piece by Klimt, close to the art nouveau style, is the frieze that decorates the theater hall: Muses, Masks and Allegories. The frieze, made in 1884, has several elements that allude to the style that would later make Gustav Klimt famous.”

Nationalized in 1948, turned into a museum between 1953 and 1975, the Peleş Museum is today open to visitors. During Communism, a part of the castles’ assets was transferred to other museums and to the Communist Party’s Economic Department. There have been attempts to recuperate the assets integrally, but they have failed. Nevertheless, by capitalizing on the building ‘in situ’ and by initiating a large-scale restoration work starting in 1975, the Communist regime managed to preserve the Peleş Castle that has eventually survived. Today it belongs to its rightful owners, the heirs of King Carol I: the Royal House of Romania.

21 May 2016
The workers’ faculty

The communist party seized power in Romania on March
6th, 1945, with the help of the Soviet Union and immediately started
the transformation of society based on the Soviet model. The 1948 reform of the
education system made possible the emergence of an unusual form of higher
education: the workers’ faculty. Universities were considered by communist
ideology as a manifestation of capitalist exploitation. As workers were now the
focus of the communist regime, university was meant to transform man educated
in a proletarian spirit into a new type of man. One of the purposes of the
workers’ faculty was to create new cadres able to replace the former ones. The
workers’ faculty was also a means of gaining and exerting control over the
young people.

Andrei Banc was a radio and TV journalist who went to
university in the mid-1950s, at a time when the workers’ faculty system was
flourishing. In a 2002 interview to Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre, Andrei
Banc described how young people could join the workers’ faculty:

When I went to university in 1955, the communist
regime had only been in power for 10 years, actually just 9 years if we start
counting from the 1946 elections. In these nine years, the communists had
created an entire state apparatus. This is how many workers, that is people
with an acceptable background and a healthy social origin, ended up in
leadership positions although some of them had not even finished high school.
So they were offered the chance to fast-track high school and study for another
two years at the workers’ faculty. The two-year long workers’ faculty replaced
the fact high school education, because many who attended hadn’t even graduated
from secondary school. So, basically they finished high school in two years,
which was not as bad as it would seem today. My generation also finished high
school in two years, after the Russian model. More than one third of my
colleagues came from the workers’ faculty and were much older than the rest of
us.

The students of the worker’s faculty were adults who
had adhered to the communist ideology and supported the new regime. One of
their responsibilities was to provide guidance to the younger generation.
Andrei Banc explains:

When they finish high school today, young people are
19 or 20 years old. At this age, most of my female colleagues had already been
married. Some of them had even given birth. Many got married to people with an
official residence in Bucharest, which meant they would be secured a job in
Bucharest. Some of our colleagues from the workers’ faculty were twice our age.
Today, when I am in my 60s and they are in their 70s and 80s this age
difference doesn’t matter any more. But it mattered when I was 16 and they were
32, they were twice my age. They were married people, with children, many also
with a job. They were people with responsibilities and couldn’t afford doing
all the crazy things you do when you are young. They were under pressure, not
only because they were party members, but also because they came from working
class families, so they couldn’t do anything reckless that would cost them
their jobs and their faculty place, they had families to support. It was not
that simple for them.

The students from the workers’ faculty occupied the
leadership positions in all students’ organisations. Andrei Banc once again:

In a way, they were the arm of the Communist Party
in universities, whether the philosophy faculty or the law school. The party
secretaries in each faculty were chosen from among the students of the worker’s
faculty. This was also the case with my faculty’s party secretary, who was, in
fact, an admirable man. These people were not necessarily narrow-minded
individuals. This guy, for example, who was twice my age, was a journalist for
the Munca newspaper. The members of the Workers’ Youth Bureau were
elected democratically, while the party secretary was in fact appointed and he
would be an older student of the workers’ faculty. Another type of workers’
faculty student was someone who already had a very important job and who
wouldn’t show up for classes, only for exams. One such man was Dumitru Aninoiu.
I was part of a study group with Aninoiu and some other students, preparing for
our exams. They had no notes, and knew absolutely nothing. There were 10 or 12
of us in the study group: we, the regular students, who were younger and
generally better prepared, and a few students from the workers’ faculty, who
were a bit slower learners. Aninoiu, who had no education whatsoever, was a
director in the Press Directorate. So, there was us, the younger students and
the workers’ group full of serious people.

The
workers’ faculty was a parasitical entity feeding on Romania’s higher education
system. It was a structure the communist regime needed to create its own
cadres. In the 1960s, it formed the basis of the ideological education system.

25 April 2016
The culture of shortages

During communist times, shortages were the
norm, and some historians even speak of a culture of shortages. In the 1980s,
when poverty had become generalised and more acute than ever, shortages of all
kind were a fact of life. Historians have looked into letters written by
ordinary people to institutions of the state, complaining about this fact.

Given the deplorable economic situation caused
by the policies of an incompetent and obsessive regime, relationships between
people were deeply affected by the culture of shortages. Historian Mioara
Anton, from the Nicolae Iorga History Institute of Bucharest, described the
mechanism:

The shortages, the restrictions, the rations
imposed by the Ceausescu regime to hide a disastrous economic reality often
generated ingenious solutions to make everything permitted and accessible.
Informal networks were thus created able to provide a solution to apparently
insurmountable problems of everyday life, from facilitating an abortion to
obtaining a better job, getting away with a misdemeanour or obtaining goods.
These networks involved people from all walks of life, with all kinds of
interests and needs. Informal networks were based on rules different from the
official norm, and were a profitable alternative, especially for whoever ran
them, but also for the people who had to resort to them. This secondary economy
was dependent on the state sector, using its resources and channels of
distribution.

These social networks overlapped with the
authorities and the official policies. Even though they created underground
societal models, they were closely tied to everyday life, and the authorities
were perfectly aware of their existence. Mioara Anton explains:

Informal networks were typical of communist
regimes. They existed not only in Romania, but also all over the communist
bloc. Documentary sources such as memoirs, diaries, interviews with small time
activists, the people who got by and the artisans of the networks that ran
through every party and state structure allow us to put together an image of
everyday practices at the time. We also have official documents, notes and
reports, which show the development and importance of these networks within the
whole of the command economy. Their multiplication was directly tied in with
the criminalisation of the practice in the sense of an expansion of the
phenomenon of corruption and the generalisation of shortages. For example, the
campaign to eradicate baksheesh initiated in the early 1970, alongside the
fight against social parasites, were among the few public attempts of the
regime to mobilise society to institute norms to be generally accepted, which,
according to official rhetoric, would have led to all citizens behaving
correctly.

The regime attempted to react against the ill
effects of shortages. Historian Mioara Anton once again:

As the state’s economic development programmes
started failing, new rules were issued to manage shortages. One example is a
programme for self-management and self-provision launched in 1981, which barred
people from purchasing goods from anywhere else than their place of residence.
A year later, the Rational Nutrition Programme was introduced, followed by
ration cards, alongside special legislation that punished economic activities
generated by shortagaes. The Ceausescu regime never admitted to the utter
failure of central planning reflected in the five-year plan of quality or that
of scientific revolution. In 1982, Iulian Dobrescu, head of production planning,
tried to persuade Ceausescu to adapt production planning to world economic
trends, but that was to no avail. Dobrescu insisted that a fair quality to
quantity ratio would have led to economic growth and less shortage for the
population. His suggestions were ignored, and he resigned.

At first sight, shortages were the result of
the economic crisis, but in fact they were rooted in the nature of the regime,
according to historian Mioara Anton:

Another factor that encouraged the development
of the informal economy was what American historian Ken Jowitt called the
‘familism’ of the regime. The party’s monopoly was undermined by a culture of
clientelism within the political elites that facilitated illegal or
semi-illegal transactions. The party allowed and even encouraged certain
traditional political attitudes and behaviour in the top tiers of the party and
society. The image that the head of the party had of reality was more than
optimistic. In his opinion, per capita consumption had risen, there was a wide
array of products available in shops, even if they didn’t cater to all tastes,
and healthcare was at normal levels.

The culture of shortages ended in 1989 with the
collapse of the communist regime. Its legacy, however, in the form of informal
underground networks, survived its fall, becoming the foundation of the
emerging market economy.

4 April 2016
Trade Unions in Communism

The Romanian communist party, with direct support from the Red Army, grabbed power in Romania across the board in the years immediately following WWII. One of the mechanisms it used was trade unions. Before the war, these were workers associations created in earnest. They tended to be left leaning, as they were all over Europe, but this didnt affect their true purpose.

After 1945 everything was about to change, including trade unions. Lenin called trade unions the ‘conveyor belt of the Communist party, sending decisions to the people. In other words, the unions translated the will of the party for people who were not politically engaged. Unions were rallied to the cause, and the party used them to control most material benefits that workers had. This was so pervasive that it became a source of jokes. One popular joke said that the Communist party member eats without paying, while the trade union member pays without eating. Vlad Nisipeanu was an apparatchik who held important positions in the union movement. In a 1999 interview recorded by the Oral History Center of Radio Romania he spoke about the relationship between the party and unions:

“At first, the party had few members, and if you were not a party member, you were a union member. You paid your dues, and you were given tasks from the party through the union. The head of the union was a member of the party, the party chairman for the city was in the Party City Office, the head of the factory party organization was in the management of the factory, everything tied in. It wasnt a job for just anybody. Some unions were allowed to give people a home provided by the party. Sometimes the party could not fire you, because sometimes unions could countermand such a decision. The unions sent you to professional training courses, granted you financial aid, or subsidized vacations. The unions helped people get promoted, get raises, they were a force to be reckoned with.

While it was compulsory to be a member of a trade union, this was a form of control of the work force, but that also meant a lot of money to go around, thanks to the dues. Here is Vlad Nisipeanu again:

“Trade unions had a lot of money, dues were 1 or 2% of the monthly salary, and the country had 6 or 7 million union members, so you see money was piling up! It didnt even get spent. Trade unions were wealthy. I had a good life with the unions, because I was not very politically engaged. I was in the union international section, and I was great. I was talking to Poles, Czechs and Bulgarians. I spoke Russian pretty well. I went to Moscow a few times, I went on delegations to Warsaw, to Czechoslovakia, in all the Soviet bloc countries. They sent me to Korea in 1963. You could also write in the press through unions, they had a newspaper called “Labor. The union movement was a force to be reckoned with, and it was used by the party as such.

Romanian unions also held congresses, and quite often they invited communist activists from Western countries. Vlad Nisipeanu recalls a young female activist from Chile:

“These congresses were attended by Westerners as well. I remember a journalist and union activist from Latin America, from Chile. She said that she could not say she was traveling to a communist country, so she asked for a visa for Spain or France, then she came here. It so happened that her name appeared in the newspaper the following day. I tried to cut it out of the copy, but there were pictures too. And then there was another problem. My folks, who waited for all the guests at the airport to take them to the hotel, did not see that her passport got stamped. What was she supposed to do? She was liable to get arrested for traveling to a communist country. When she left, I wanted to encourage her, because she was such a nice person. I told her that, after crossing the ocean, she should throw her passport in the toilet and pay the 5-dollar fine. That way she could get rid of the stamp attesting she had traveled to Romania.

Trade unions in the communist period worked the same way as society at large across Romania. Even though they had a lot of leverage to face the powers that be, they were obedient, and regular folks saw them as tools of the regime, as opposed to their role of associations supposed to protect the common good.

(Translated by C. Cotoiu)

4 January 2016
Corneliu Coposu, Godfather of Romanian Democracy

One of the most important things that one can do in life is leave a legacy, which is not as important materially as it is symbolically, especially as a role model. Such was the life of Corneliu Coposu, who died on 11 November 1995. He is remembered as a martyr of democracy and one of the most important figures in its rebirth after 1989, after almost half a century of Communist dictatorship. He left behind a major legacy of political and religious beliefs, integrity and physical and mental resilience in resisting the regime, which coaxed many into collaborating. ‘History’s Devil’, as Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski called the red terror regime, plagued Corneliu Coposu until 1989.

The regime tried to co-opt him, to corrupt his soul and convictions, and compromise him. Based on his own testimony, as well as documents found in the archives of the former political police, after being released from prison, Coposu was arrested 27 times for short bouts, his house was searched dozens of times, and 3,000 personal documents were seized.

After 1989, Coposu was a man around whom people clustered in the attempt to restore the Romanian society, with its politics and culture, gravely altered by the Communist past. In 1995, when he passed away, Coposu had on his side a great number of Romanians determined to make a change. His immense suffering during the dictatorship had much to do with the sympathy he engendered. After 17 years of political prison, he managed to confirm that truth eventually triumphs. His modesty was exemplary. He emphasized the fact that he was not an individual role model, but a mere representative of a whole generation that lived to tell the terrible tale of suffering they endured in prison.

He was born on 20 May 1914, in Salaj. His father was a Greek Catholic priest. He studied law, became a lawyer and got his PhD from the University of Cluj. He was a close associate of National Peasant Party leader Iuliu Maniu, as his personal assistant. He was arrested on July 14 1947, along with the entire leadership of that party, and was given a mock prosecution by the newly instated Communist regime. He was sentenced to hard labor for life, but was released in 1964. 9 of the 17 years he spent in jail were in complete seclusion, during which time he almost forgot how to speak.

His worst experience was the time spent in prison in Ramnicu Sarat. Here he is telling us about it:

“The prison in Ramnicu Sarat had 34 cells, 16 each on the ground floor and the top floor, divided by fence wire. It also had 2 side cells and 4 punishment cells in the cellar. Each cell was 3 meters by 2. They were honeycombed, one next to the other, at a height of 3 meters and had an inaccessible little window, 45 by 30 cm, shuttered on the outside, so no light could come through. There was a 15-watt light bulb shining permanently, shedding a mortuary light. There was no heating, the jail had been built around 1900 and it had thick walls. It had two rows of walls, 5 or 6 meters high, and between them was a control corridor. The second wall had the watchtowers where armed soldiers patrolled.”

The totalitarian regime did not call the prisoners by name. It gave them numbers. In 1993, Coposu recalled for us what life for him and the other detainees was like:

“Each detainee had a number which was the cell number, our names were not known. We were identified by our cell number. Each prisoner, being alone, was denied any conversation or relation with any other occupant in a cell, and for a long time conversations were in Morse code, knocked into the wall, until the system was uncovered and severe punishment was meted out. After that, we coughed the Morse code, which was exhausting, especially given the extremely frail condition we were in. I was in cell 1, and above me, in cell 32, was Ion Mihalache, who initially could be contacted by Morse code, until 4 or 5 years later, when his hearing failed and he could no longer react to the knocks on the wall.”

Asked if he would have lived his life differently had he been able to turn back time, he answered: “I looked into my conscience, I reviewed all my suffering and misery in prison, during the years of detention, the persecutions during the years after I got out of the penitentiary, and I believe that I would not have a choice. I would opt for the same destiny at the drop of a hat. I think our destinies are prescribed to us from birth. I am not a fatalist, but I think that even if I had some alternatives, I would choose the same past I have lived, and which I would repeat serenely.”

(Translated by C. Cotoiu / Edited by E. Enache)

16 November 2015
Panait Istrati, the man with no political leanings

Panait Istrati was one the most complex Romanian writers. Born in the Romanian town of Braila in 1884, he is equally seen as a French writer. His work is influenced by a strong social message, laying a significant emphasis on the world of the proletariat and the disenfranchised. Istrati adhered to communism from the early days of his youth. However, he was one of the first to have broken away with its ideology after his visits to the Soviet Union. Professor Ioan Stanomir will now be explaining Panait Istratis political and intellectual affiliation.

Panait Istrati veered towards communism having adopted a stance which was very familiar to a great many European intellectuals: the stance of dissatisfaction and social revolt. We should not forget that Panait Istrati was, over and above anything else, a socialist, he was very close to Cristian Rakovski, he bore witness to Romanias strikes in their early form at the turn of the 20th century, and that his family background was marked by hardship and marred by a dire social condition. All that had built into Panait Istratis intellectual character. And theres also something else we must take into account: he was very familiar with the French intellectual milieus, where he was viewed and rated as a voice for the downtrodden and the underprivileged. In that respect, Istrati and Gorki have diverging and similar destinies. Istrati was a communist, then broke with its ideology and turned lucid. Gorki befriended the Bolsheviks, supported them, he was a friend of Lenin, set off in exile in the early stages of the Bolshevik power, he returned and would be signed up by Stalin. Istrati and Gorki have something in common: European fame and an ideological commitment, the idea of a writer assigned to fulfil his mission by the social class he comes from.“

In 1927, Istrati visited Moscow and Kiev. In 1929, he would travel to Soviet Russia again and it was then that the veil was lifted form his eyes, which basically meant the communist regime was far from what it advocated in theory. He wrote ‘Vers l’autre flamme. Confession pour vaincus, ‘To the Other Flame. Confession for the Defeated where he highlighted the communist regimes abusive actions and which came out as something utterly shocking. When the book was brought out, Istrati would be isolated and accused of fascism. Ioan Stanomir again.

A trip to the Soviet Union is not necessarily a reason for an awakening, it could be an even greater opportunity to go blind once again. The exception confirms the rule, since there are very few travellers who, once they got to the Soviet Union, lacked the strength to go beyond the veil they themselves had put before their own eyes. Let us not forget Beatrice and Sidney Webb who visited the Soviet Union and returned with eulogizing and delirious texts about the Soviet Union. Let us not forget Herbert George Wells visited the Soviet Union and it looks like the visit had no impact whatsoever on his literary outlook. There are two names we need to mention as regards this so-called awakening. They are Panait Istrati and Andre Gide. Both reached the Soviet Union and both wrote books that placed them in a very delicate situation. Let us not forget the fact Istrati was mainly accused of betraying the cause of anti-fascism and the cause of democracy by bespattering the Soviet Union. The USSR was the main bulwark for the anti-fascist and democratic fight at that time, from the viewpoint of the communist imaginary.

But it was against the Stalinist crimes and not the communist ideology Panait Istrati rose. An admirer of Trotski, he would write he no longer adhered to the revolution until that was made “with a pure, with a childs soul. Ioan Stanomir believes Istrati actually broke way with Leninism.

Trotski was an armed prophet, he was armed against his own people. The Red Army, which Trotski created, was an oppressive tool used above all against the Russian people. It was the Red Army that destroyed the peasants class in the civil war. Trotski stood out as the anti-bureaucratic and anti-totalitarian alternative from the perspective of the radical left. Istrati broke with Leninism, better said, he noticed a huge rift existed between what leftists in general perceived as being Leninism and what the anti-Stalinist leftists perceived as being Stalinism. Istrati never denied his far-left convictions, its just that he took a step back, noticing that in Stalins Russia Leninist principles were disregarded. Panait Istrati, just like his peers, fell prey to a terrible illusion: the one stating that Leninism was different from Stalinism and that Leninism was not a form of totalitarianism.

How did the communist regime in Romania use Panait Istrati? Ioan Stranomir.

“Panait Istrati became an asset for the communist regime in Romania, mainly after the 1960s. It was not without good cause that such a thing occurred at a time when the French-Romanian cooperation was being strengthened. Its quite certain that Istrati was something the communist regime took advantage of, when the relationship with France was re-launched. Panait Istrati was a child of France, a Gorki of the Balkans promoted by the French, by the far-left literary circles, and French communists would come to Romania to shoot their productions and to engender a democratic-popular Romanian filmmaking industry. A wave of translations would follow, since part of Istratis texts were in French. If we take a look at the ‘Everymans Library collection which includes outlines of his life and work, we can notice the care with which the episode of Istratis apostasy is placed in a context, described as a transient spell, one which had been however balanced out by Panait Istratis substantial contribution to the workers movement.

Just as history has shown, Panait Istrati was one of the defeated. A defeated man who, like many before him, pursued happiness for the oppressed but who only succeeded in sinking society into deeper misery.

12 October 2015
Romania’s Arms Industry in the Communist Regime

Weapons and ammunition have always been a source of
income for manufactures, as people have always been driven by the urge to wage
wars. The emergence of the state meant protecting and favouring the production
of weapons, for national security reasons as well as for money-making purposes.
There is no secret that wars have always meant business opportunities and
technological progress. Cynical and harrowing as it may be, the reality of war
has contributed to the progress of many countries’ economies and the emergence
out of the economic crisis, just as it happened in the Second World War.

At the end of World War Two, Romania was
rated as a defeated country. Accordingly, restrictions were imposed on Romania
regarding the number of military it was allowed to have and the weapons the
country could manufacture. However, the communist government in Bucharest could
not give up on its weapons and ammunition production altogether, since partisan
groups in the mountains posed a permanent challenge and the government had no choice other than take
it.

Romanian weapons industry in late and during the
1950s manufactured individual light weaponry, such as handguns, rifles and
grenade launchers. From a military point of view, Romania had joined the Warsaw
Pact, an alliance set up in 1955 at the initiative of the Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev. The alliance was made of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the
German Democratic Republic, Poland, Hungary and the USSR. Being part of the
USSR-led alliance meant levelling the standards for military equipment.

In the early 1960, Romania started distancing itself from the USSR, which, among other things, meant devising a
strategy for the national defence industry. Although a member of the Warsaw
Pact military alliance, Romania felt
the need to develop such an industry. In an interview he gave in 2002 to the
Romanian Television’s Oral History Centre, the President of the State Planning
Committee, Maxim Berghianu, explained the underlying reasons for the emergence
of the national weapons industry.

The weapons industry was
booming, and that for two reasons: first, for fear we might be fatefully
indebted, lest our friends in the Mutual Economic Assistance Council would play
their own game with us regarding weapons, and also to avoid being dependant on
Russians only. Secondly, apart from supplying the army, it was also important
for exports. And that, because it was the most valuable and best-paid export
category, in foreign currency. We did not export tanks. We exported personnel
carriers, armoured vehicles, we extensively exported that kind of individual
weaponry, AKG assault rifles, grenade launchers. We manufactured ammunition for
cannons on a large scale, we also made cannons. We had the 150 mm cannon, with
a range of 40-50 kilometres. We also manufactured explosive charge,
trinitrotoluene.

Most of the
Romanian army’s equipment and military technique were imported from the USSR.
After the invasion of Czechoslovakia, in 1968, Romania speeded up the process
of setting up its own armament industry, with its research-design and execution
phases. The Institute of Armament Research and Technology, Ammunition and
Optical Equipment was working on ground forces equipment, while a similar
institution manufactured aviation equipment. Romania thus started to
manufacture heavy weapons such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, howitzers,
cannons, fighter jets, rocket launchers and machine-guns, as well as more
sophisticated light weapons such as submachine guns and sniper rifles. Military
vehicles were also manufactured.

According
to Maxim Berghianu, the new project was
entirely the initiative of Romania’s new leader, Nicolae Ceusescu, who replaced
Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, a sort of Romanian Stalin, in the country’s top
position:

The plans usually came to us from Ceausescu
after being previously discussed in strategic terms, with military experts. We
had a defense industry sector just like we had a machine-engineering sector.
The vice president of the first was Ceandru, an aviation officer. The plans
were discussed with the experts, but the supreme commander had the final say.
Our job was to say if it can be done, if it has potential or not, where it
should be manufactured and what materials were needed to build it.

Aviation
was seen as one of the priorities of the domestic armament industry, a field
with tradition in the interwar period, which was subsequently dropped because of
the pressure put by the USSR. Maxim Berghianu:

We
revived the aviation industry. A large factory was set up in Bacau and another
one in Craiova, while engines were manufactured in Bucharest. Ceausescu liked
the idea of having his own aviation industry. Having an aviation industry meant
having a modern industry, given all the materials involved and the
state-of-the-art measurement and control devices. At the same time with the
development of the industry building power generation machinery for thermal and
hydro plants, we had to develop the electronic and electro-technical industry,
which we needed to produce high voltage devices. So we set up the Electroputere factory, a modern factory
manufacturing high voltage devices, while we developed the low voltage devices
in Bucharest, at the Electroaparataj and Electromagnetica factories. We had to
also work on the electronic and optical industry. The Pipera industrial complex
was designed as a compound.

The
Romanian armament industry was a successful project until the early 1980s.
However, the communist regime’s lack of economic results made it entirely
unproductive by 1989.

28 September 2015