Radio România Internațional

Tag: communist regime

  • The Moromete Family: Father and Son – the   end of the trilogy inspired by Marin Preda   

    The Moromete Family: Father and Son – the   end of the trilogy inspired by Marin Preda   

    Stere Gulea’s The Moromete Family: Father and Son was one of the most anticipated Romanian feature films of 2024. It marks the final episode in a unique trilogy in Romanian cinematography, inspired by the life and works of Romanian novelist Marin Preda. The first film was launched in 1988, a quite accurate adaptation of the first volume of the novel The Moromete Family. Screened in 2018, the sequel, The Moromete Family: On the Edge of Time draws on the second volume, Life as Prey as well as on Marin Preda’s literary articles. Written by Stere Gulea, the final part of the trilogy was inspired by Marin Preda’s private journals, as well as documents and archives that helped rebuild the mood of the 1950s, a time of great social and ideological upheaval, also marked by the coming to power of the Communist Party, which soon became the only official party in Romania. The Moromete Family: Father and Son picks up where the second film left off, telling the story of Niculae, Ilie Moromete’s youngest-born, who is now a successful writer. A persona of the author himself, Niculae is disappointed with his father’s political beliefs and by other writers who are forced to abide by ideological constraints. The film also dwells on two major artists who made a powerful impression on Marin Preda’s career: Nina Cassian and Aurora Cornu. “The film traces Marin Preda’s behavior and attitudes at the time in various political contexts. I’ve tried to understand and retrace his remarkable journey through fiction. I very much liked the idea of making a film about that period which is now largely passed into oblivion”, filmmaker Stere Gulea said.

     

    Olimpia Melinte plays Vera Solomon, a character inspired by Nina Cassian. We’ve asked her to tell us more about the changes operated to Stere Gulea’s script and how she researched her part in the film, given that Nina Cassian was a multi-faceted artist, at times both accomplice and troublemaker for the Stalinist regime of the time.

     

    “It all started with a casting. I met Stere Gulea, and as I got to learn more about the script and his expectations, I eventually concluded that it was fate that I should portray this character. On the physical side, there’s little resemblance between Nina Cassian and I. What we do have in common is a passion for poetry, music, drawing and painting, as Nina Cassian really loved the fine arts. She was an accomplished artist, and I think her passion helped her overcome that very difficult time in her life, when for a long time she chose to sing instead of write, due to the complicated political context. Her passion for the arts was what struck a powerful impression in me. As for the research, I spent a lot of time talking to and rehearsing with Stere Gulea. I also read Nina’s journals, the interviews she gave, everything I could find online about her. Obviously, that included the documentary on Nina Cassian, “The distance between myself and I”, directed by Mona Nicoară and Dana Bunescu, I found it really helpful. It helped me to understand this artist better, because I must confess I was a little prejudiced against her. But all my preconceptions vanished as soon as I started working, because I really wanted to understand Nina deeply and intimately, as other people had failed to do, and as she can be understood towards the end of her life, thanks to the documentary I mentioned. There were times when Nina Cassian would put away her public persona, when she allowed herself to live this love story with Marin Preda, a love that is hard to put into words.”

     

    Olimpia Melinte also told us how the relationship between Marin Preda and Nina Cassian was reconstructed in the movie.

     

    “We haven’t set out to provide explanations, because in life it is not always that one gets to explain oneself. Or maybe many years later, when two people reconnect, they get to explain some things. As far as our characters go, we’ve tried to reconstruct their relationship using their diaries, and we wanted our reconstruction to be as close as possible to how things actually went. It was tremendous work for all of us, because the script got changed many, many times, new scenes were introduced as we went, because Mr. Gulea kept working the whole time. Sometimes we would find a new scene introduced right on the day of the shot. For instance, the story of Marin Preda and Nina Cassian was not a major direction in the original script, when we started rehearsing. But I think it gained weight as we progressed with our work, and I’m glad it did, because it was quite important in their lives.”

     

    Apart from Olimpia Melinte, the cast includes some of the most highly appreciated Romanian actors. Alex Călin plays Niculae Moromete and Horaţiu Mălăele plays Ilie Moromete for the second time in his career. In The Moromete Family 3, the public will also see Mara Bugarin, Răzvan Vasilescu, Iulian Postelnicu, Cătălin Herlo, Dana Dogaru, Toma Cuzin, Ana Ciontea, Laurențiu Bănescu, Conrad Mericoffer, Ioan Andrei Ionescu, Andreea Bibiri, Ilinca Hărnuț, Dorina Chiriac and Oana Pellea.

     

    Cristian Niculescu was in charge with the set design, and Dana Păpăruz did the costume design. The cinematographer was Vivi Drăgan Vasile, Alexandra Gulea did the editing, Ioan Filip and Dan-Ștefan Rucăreanu did the sound design, and Cristian Lolea wrote the score for the movie.

     

    The Moromete Family 3 was screened in many national film festivals (TIFF, TIFF Chișinău, Romanian Film Nights (Serile Filmului Românesc) – Iași, Film in the Village (Film in Sat) – Peștișani, TIFF Timișoara), and won the audience award at the 2024 Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF). (VP, AMP)

  • Arion Roșu (1924-2007)

    Arion Roșu (1924-2007)

    Indian
    and Oriental studies have had a number of remarkable representatives in Romania
    as well. The first was Mircea Eliade, born in 1907, a reputed writer and
    historian of religions, who had a vast scientific and didactic career in the
    West. The following generation of experts in Indian studies included Sergiu
    Al-George, Anton Zigmund-Cerbu, Eliza Zigmund-Cerbu, Marcel Leibovici and Arion
    Roșu, the four latter being members of the Bucharest-based Jewish community.


    Arion
    Roșu was born February 1, 1924 in Bucharest, and passed away on April 4, 2007
    in Versailles, France, at the age of 83. He studied classical philology at
    University of Bucharest, and specialized in Indian studies, in Ayurveda and the
    history of classical Indian medicine. In 1964, he moved to France, where he
    continued his studies at La Sorbonne and defended his doctoral thesis about the
    psychological concepts in Indian medical literature. He published extensive
    scientific papers and volumes about India and classical Indian culture.


    The
    Institute for the History of Religions of the Romanian Academy paid homage to
    Arion Roșu by naming a study after him. Indian specialist Eugen Ciurtin, the
    director of the Institute, knew Arion Roșu, and was actually his student.
    Ciurtin says Roșu was an accomplished scholar, his works being representative
    not just for Romania.


    Arion
    Roșu is not a parochial figure, representing a single place, he was a European
    scholar, to say the least. For instance, Professor David Gordon-White, who
    teaches history of religions at University of California, studied with two
    world authors who guided his career. One was published for the first time in
    the USA, a certain Mircea Eliade, whereas the other was first published in
    Europe, Arion Roșu. The fact that they happen to be Romanian is just our manner
    of understanding the evolution of Indian studies, of humanistic culture, at the
    end of the 20th century. Arion Roșu is a personality whose works
    displayed extraordinary durability. He is the only Romanian-born specialist in
    Indian and Oriental studies who, at the time of his death, was given the unique
    honor of having an obituary signed by Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat in Journal Asiatique,
    the oldest periodical of Oriental studies in Europe, which has been published
    in the last two centuries without interruption.


    Ayurveda
    or Indian classical medicine has always fascinated people across time and
    space. It also enthralled Arion Roșu. Eugen Ciurtin told us more:


    Arion
    Roșu
    distinguished himself as a historian of religions, particularly of Indian
    studies, with a special focus on classical Sanskrit medical literature. Why is
    this so important? Because of all the ancient cultures, only a few have an
    original medical system. In other words, there are only a few civilizations,
    including those of Egypt, China, India or Greece, that first looked at the
    human body with all its wonders and diseases. Devoting yourself to classical
    Ayurveda meant reconstructing the science and philosophy of ancient Indian
    culture.


    All
    Romanian Orientalists were influenced by Mircea Eliade, who was a beacon for
    young Romanians who wanted to discover the secrets of India. Among them were a
    few Jewish students who were forced to explain their Fascist options to their
    teacher. We asked Eugen Ciurtin how Arion Roșu reacted to Eliade’s biography:


    I
    talked to Arion Roșu on a number of occasions in Versailles, where he settled after turning 70, and I
    took it upon myself to tell him that in 1996 the extraordinary and painful
    Journal of Mihail Sebastian had been published. Then, he would select and cut
    out articles from major French publications and had them sent to me. The
    articles discussed the rightist formation of Mircea Eliade, who had been
    influenced by Monsignor Vladimir Ghyka, who helped him convert to Catholicism
    in the wake of the Romanian communist authorities’ anti-Jewish drive. He found
    it hard to understand how someone so gifted and kind as Mircea Eliade would end
    up a captive of European far-right ideology for such a long time. There are
    documents in which Arion Roșu condemns this situation. But because he felt his
    destiny was bound to Eliade’s, because he always admired his amazing intellect
    that helped him conquer the whole planet, Arion Roșu wanted to be fair and share the science. At
    the same time, he would be very harsh when some of his colleagues failed to
    grasp their predicament.


    Arion
    Roșu is an
    iconic representative of Indian studies at global level, whose emblematic
    contributions are used in specialised academic circles. And this makes him a
    product of world literature. (VP)

  • The Romanian Revolution, 30 years on

    The Romanian Revolution, 30 years on

    The communist dictatorship was set
    up in Romania after the Second World War, when Soviet troops occupied Romania.
    Paradoxically, the regime that endured half a century took only one week to
    collapse. Unable to further cope with the austerity and oppression of Nicolae
    Ceausescu’s regime, living with hunger, cold and in the dark, deprived of
    elementary rights and encouraged by the cascading collapse of the Soviet
    regimes in East-European countries, it took only a spark for Romanians to take
    to the streets. On December 16, 1989, the protest staged by a dozen supporters
    of the Hungarian-born Reformed priest Laszlo Tokes, whom the authorities were
    planning to deport from Timisoara, western Romania, turned into a genuine
    rebellion.

    Protesters grew from a few hundreds to thousands, then tens of
    thousands of people of various ethnicities and confessions. The security forces
    immediately resorted to arrests. Then the army, the political police the
    Securitate as well as the militia took point, firing on the crowd of
    protesters. Factories and plants were left unmanned, while students went on
    strike to join the protesting workers. Eventually, the army withdrew to their
    barracks. On December 20, Timisoara thus became the first city in Romania free
    of communism. On the 21st, the Revolution engulfed other large cities
    in the west and center of the country, and events peaked with a massive protest
    staged in Bucharest, which the communists again tried to stifle with bloodshed.

    On December 22, Ceausescu fled by helicopter the communist party’s central
    committee, besieged by hundreds of thousands of people. Captured and subjected
    to a speedy trial, he was executed on the 25th, leaving behind a
    country in ruins and mourning. Over 1,100 people were killed over December
    16-25, mostly after Ceausescu ran away. The official version of the time was
    that these people had been killed by the so-called terrorists, people still
    loyal to the regime, whose identity is yet to be ascertained. Military
    prosecutors now investigating the Revolution Case however have pointed the
    finger at Ion Iliescu, the man commonly acknowledged to have orchestrated the
    change of regime, himself one of Ceausescu’s ministers in the 70s, and at his
    close associates as well. Prosecutors say they are responsible for creating
    this terrorist psychosis, which fueled the loss of human lives.

    The massacre
    aimed at building the legitimacy of the new Government had its desired effect.
    In May 1990 the first free elections were held after the events of ’89. Ion
    Iliescu won the election by a landslide, with over 85% of the votes, from the
    first round of election. His party, dubbed the National Salvation Front, won
    two thirds of the seats in the newly created Parliament. Prosecutors claim
    Iliescu and his acolytes formed a dissident group that sought to remove dictator
    Nicolae Ceausescu from power and to maintain Romania under Soviet influence.
    Today a member of the European Union and NATO and deeply attacked to Western
    democratic values, Romania is the living proof that the scenario of the
    pro-Moscow conspirators failed.

    (Translated by V. Palcu)

  • Liviu Babes, a civic martyr

    Liviu Babes, a civic martyr

    The
    date is March 2nd, 1989. A man who had set himself ablaze was skiing
    downhill along the Bradu ski slope in Poiana Brasov, and could be seen by
    hundreds of tourists. He fell near a tree, reeking with smoke and yelling. With
    a final effort, the man took out a piece of cardboard from his burning coat,
    reading Stop Murder. Brasov= Auschwitz. It was an act of protest against the
    catastrophic condition of the Romanian society, fatefully masterminded by the
    communist regime. It was also a message of solidarity with the November 1987
    workers’ anti-communist strikes mounted at the Steagul Rosu and Tractorul
    plants in Brasov, brutally repressed by the communist regime.


    Thirty years on, it is still hard to accept Liviu
    Babes’s extreme gesture. It was a cry of desperation and helplessness as an
    answer to the lack of perspective regarding Romanians’ day-to-day life back
    then. His sacrifice made Liviu Babes a civic martyr, much the same way other
    people were during the communist regime. At this point, worth mentioning are
    the names of other people from the former Soviet bloc countries who set
    themselves ablaze as a form of protest. Among them, the Czechs Jan Palach,
    Evžen Plocek and Jan Zajíc, the Polish Ryszard Siwiec, Lithuanian Romas
    Kalanta, the Ukrainian Oleksa Hirnyk, or the Hungarian Sandor Bauer.


    Liviu Babes was born on September 10, 1942 and was an
    electrician supervisor with the Fabricated Parts Enterprise in Brasov. Babes was
    also an amateur painter. On the back of his last painting, Babes unassumingly
    wrote the German word Ende, a couple of weeks ahead of his life’s fated
    momentum. What really had a strong bearing on Babes was the degradation of
    Romania’s political, economic, social, cultural and moral condition in the
    1980s. The workers’ strikes at the Steagul Rosu and Tractorul factories only
    strengthened his resolution to do something. But what actually influenced Babes
    the most in his decision was peoples’ being so passive. According to his wife,
    Liviu Babes never stopped wondering about that.


    Journalist and writer Mircea Brenciu is the author of The
    Martyr, a volume dedicated to Liviu Babes. Brenciu wrote the book feeling it
    was his duty to do it, yet writing the book was equally an honor and a
    privilege for him. Mircea Brenciu referred to Babes as an intellectual, while
    his extreme gesture carried a strong civic message with it. Mircea Brenciu.


    Babes was an intellectual, and a
    very refined one too. He had exhibitions, he sold paintings, and at the time,
    he was kind of a trending fine artist in Brasov. As far as his attitude is
    concerned, his is a gesture of self-sacrifice, a gesture only an intellectual
    could do. Babes is part of the Romanian elite that could no longer stand the
    communist atrocities. However, he was closely linked to the people, since
    through his profession, he was just a supervisor with a fabricated parts
    enterprise, working with ordinary people. He actually provided the connection
    between the two social categories. His gesture is one of great cultural value
    and he made it after careful consideration. He premeditated his act with great
    lucidity and the message he conveys as he skis downhill setting himself ablaze
    is indicative of a certain cultural level. The cardboard he displayed on the
    slope and on which you could read Stop Murder. Braşov = Auschwitz is not the
    work of an ordinary man.


    In 1968, the Czech student Jan Palach set himself on
    fire, in protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, which suppressed
    the Prague Spring. Mircea Brenciu spoke about the difference between the two
    gestures.


    In terms of accomplishment and level of
    premeditation, what Babes did was superior to Jan Palach’s gesture. What Babes
    did was heroic, it was like an ancient tragedy. Jan Palach’s gesture was an
    auto-da-fe (an act of faith) at a time of psychological burst, of losing
    control. Babes did it with due consideration. Before setting himself on fire in
    Poiana Brasov, he met with friends, was quite merry and told them how life was
    starting right then. He understood that under those conditions of strict
    supervision by the political police, the Securitate, he could not have done
    something so dramatic if he had told anybody. He knew there were snitches everywhere
    and he had to be careful in order not to raise any suspicion. Palach’s
    self-immolation came in the presence of hundreds and thousands of Czechs
    protesting against the invasion, while Babes did it by himself, just him
    against the terrible Ceausescu dictatorship.


    One of
    the difficulties encountered while writing the book The Martyr, Mircea
    Brenciu told us, was to find sources and documents:


    From the moment he set himself on fire
    and was taken by an ambulance, nobody learnt anything about him. What is
    strange is that he died quite fast for someone who got burnt. People with third
    degree burns do not die on that very day, they make it for a few days, and then
    their kidneys fail. Babes died on the very same day, and when he was sent home
    to be buried, his family was not allowed to lift the lid of the casket.
    Exhumation might help, but I doubt something significant would be found. It’s
    only speculation.


    Babes was buried in an isolated corner of the Brasov
    County Cemetery, under strict supervision by the political police. 12 hours
    after the event, the ‘Free Europe’ radio station broadcast the news, and this
    is how the free world found out about Liviu Babes, the civic martyr who died 30
    years ago.







  • Radio Yerevan

    Radio Yerevan


    Political jokes were among the favorite pastimes of Romanians during the communist regime. However, they were by no means specific to Romania. Political jokes were pervasive in all former communist countries, with local variations. The best ones came from the USSR, and they provided a welcome means of poking fun at daily hardship. Political jokes depicted comical situations, often absurd, whose protagonists were regular people, repressive state institutions, and political leaders. The main protagonist of Romanian political jokes before 1989 was Bula, whose name itself is a crude play on words. More often than not, Bula was a naïve witness to surrounding realities.



    One other very popular formula for jokes was the one featuring the fictional radio station Radio Yerevan, which supposedly provided answers to questions sent in by listeners from across the Soviet bloc. The jokes were as brief as they were cutting. One example would be:


    A listener asks: Is it true that capitalist society is on the brink of the precipice? Radio Yerevan answers: Of course. They are looking at us plummeting.



    We talked to historian Eduard Antonian why a fictional radio station had the name of a real city, the capital of Soviet Armenia:


    “Radio Yerevan jokes were a form of dissidence, even in the Soviet Union. Most of the jokes were political in nature. It was a way of making fun of stark reality. A famous Radio Yerevan joke was that about the zebra, which was simply a donkey dressed in a striped prison suit. I remember that, back in the early 1990s, after Armenia became independent, the director of the actual Radio Yerevan station came to Bucharest, and was baffled as to why his station was so famous in Romania. When he landed at the airport, the border guards asked him what his occupation was, and he said he was the director of Radio Yerevan. They all burst out laughing, and he didnt understand why. On top of that, they asked him to tell them some jokes about his radio station. A friend of mine was telling me that, when the present director of Radio Yerevan was appointed, he posted on his Facebook page: Careful, I am the new director of Radio Yerevan, and any joke you tell will be taken personally. “



    In the Soviet Union, as in any other country, people circulated clichés specific to every country, just like in every country they have stereotypes about each region. Eduard Antonian believes that Radio Yerevan was picked as the center of these jokes because Armenians were perceived as being particularly astute:


    “In the former Soviet Union, with its mélange of people, each ethnicity was presented differently. For instance, Tadjiks and Uzbeks were thought to be less sophisticated, and not too bright. Russians and Ukrainians represented the Slavic spirit, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were seen as more Western, while Armenians were believed to be sharp and witty. They knew how to turn any situation to their advantage, and to that of people around them. Most humorists in the former USSR were Armenian, they represented Caucasian wit, as Caucasians were seen as being people who knew how to enjoy life. The communist regime in Armenia was not as repressive as in other republics, like Ukraine, for instance. I would mention here the man called The Survivor, or The Master of Unending Postponement, Anastas Mikoian, the man who settled the Cuban Missile Crisis.”



    Radio Yerevan jokes were customized to fit each country in particular. To take Romanias example, Nicolae Ceausescu was famous for his long winded speeches. The deeply underhanded joke related to that goes: A listener asks Radio Yerevan: Can one die from cancer of the throat? The answer: Yes, but he doesnt have it, you know!



    Eduard Antonian also pointed out that eventually the jokes branched out into the non-political:


    “Most of the jokes were political jokes, but they eventually started being regular jokes too. Obviously, the jokes were locally adapted. For instance, I remember one joke that goes: A Radio Yerevan reporter was panicking in Prague as the Soviet tanks were rolling in. He saw a taxi and ran to the driver, who was lazily leaning against his car. He asked in a panic: Is this taxi free? The driver retorts: Of course not, its Czech! These jokes were a platform to vent frustrations. I dont know of any published collection of these jokes, but the Internet is full of them.”



    As much as these jokes amused the inhabitants of the Soviet bloc, they lost their reason for being, but they did not lose any of their savor for the people who still remember the times.




  • Truth, manipulation and propaganda in documentary films

    Truth, manipulation and propaganda in documentary films

    Film critic Ileana Birsan and documentary filmmakers Alexandru Solomon, Oana Giurgiu and Claudiu Mitcu were the guests of the latest event held by the Carturesti bookshop and CINEPUB dedicated to documentary films and their public.



    A well-documented history of Romanian Jews. 133 years ago, a small community from Moinesti leaves for the Holy Land to establish one of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine. Since then, the journey of the Jews to Israel has been intertwined with the history of modern Romania in a love/hate relationship whose influences we won’t be able to assess anytime soon. The story is presented visually in Dadaist style, thus paying tribute to the initiators of this movement, Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco, two Jews originating from Romania. This is a short summary of the 2015 documentary film called Aliyah DaDa directed by Oana Giurgiu. Asked why she chose documentary film making for a career, Oana Giurgiu said this kind of film leaves a testimony over time. She also said it was regrettable that not many documentary films were made in Romania in the 1990s. Oana Giurgiu:



    “Before this film, I was involved in cinema vérité and television documentary. For me it was important to go beyond my limits. It took me one year or two to find an appropriate working formula, because I found it very hard to break out of my comfort zone. For this film I had many materials from the archives and very many photos, portrait photos, because at the time only such types of photos used to be made. And if Dadaists did it otherwise, I decided to build with the help of collages”.



    Claudiu Mitcu directed many documentaries among which “Australia” produced by HBO, which received the Romanian Filmmakers Union prize in 2010. The French Embassy in Romania granted him the Human Rights Prize for the documentaries Australia and Two of us. In the debate held on the occasion of the Week of Documentaries on CINEPUB, Claudiu Mitcu said that for him the documentary was important because it presented real-life, contemporary stories, important for society. Claudiu Mitcu:



    “Many of my films are visually ugly because on many occasions I do not direct. I am only behind the camera. But I believe that, in this way, films are more credible, and that it is more useful for the viewer to see in this way the topics and stories that I am trying to present. Even if it is not filmed in a beautiful way, even if certain things are lost through a less artistic way of filming, the message is stronger and more credible. Of the 7 documentaries, two are similar in style. Each documentary has its own style and it is actually the nature of the topic that gives its style.”



    Alexandru Solomon has written and directed over 15 documentaries including The Man with 1000 Eyes (2001), The Great Communist Robbery (2004), Cold Waves (2007), Kapitalism (2010) and Four Homelands (2015). Taking over Oana Giurgiu’s comparison between the media and documentary films, Solomon pointed out that although most of the stories a documentary can tell may appear in the media as well, that doesn’t diminish the importance of documentaries. In his opinion, the media is some sort of a fast food whereas a documentary is a slow food, giving society a chance to ponder on its problems. Solomon also went on to say the fact that the transition of the 1990s had not been depicted in a documentary was a huge loss.



    “The discussion about a documentarian’s objectivity seems old-fashioned to me. A documentarian tries to give an angle over some part of the reality. There is the possibility to choose the direction you want to depict. And the fact that you place the camera in a certain place, it means that you’ve made a choice. So, there is this conflict, between your choice and the moment you want to capture on camera.”



    Alexandru Solomon is also promoting documentaries in his capacity as director of the One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival, an event due over March 13th and 19th. During the festival, 60 documentaries selected out of the 13 hundred enlisted are to be screened in theatres around Bucharest. Several related events, such as debates, workshops and exhibitions are also to take place during the festival. Fear and its various outcomes is the main theme of this 10th edition of One World Romania. Corrupt politicians from around the world take advantage of our fears and weaknesses to manipulate us. The weak are being harassed daily by those in power but some of the most determined are running against the flood risking everything to beat the system. One World Romania films go back to the origins of our fears, presenting ways we can overcome them. Among the festival’s traditional themes is justice, a theme very popular both in USA and Romania. There is a festival section entitled “Fearless Justice” presenting cases of citizens from Russia, Chad, Peru and Mexico who are fighting for justice or who get together in order to combat state aggression. (Translated by C. Mateescu, L. Simion and D. Bilt)

  • Romania’s Iron Border

    Romania’s Iron Border

    Back in the 1980s Romanias western border witnessed real tragedies that few people know about today. Some of the Romanians who tried to illegally cross the border into the free world, got either killed, maimed or served years in prison. Some of them got away and made it to Western Europe, where they shared the stories of those who tried to flee the communist inferno. The accounts of the people attempting to swim across the Danube are truly haunting.



    According to a volume signed by Doina Magheti and Johann Steiner, ‘Silent Graves (Mormintele Tac), about 16 thousand people tried to cross Romanias western border illegally. Twelve thousand were captured and served prison sentences of up to six months each, but the exact number of those who died at the hands of border guards remains unknown. Cemeteries with graves of unidentified people whose deadly sin was the desire to live in freedom lie on either side of the Danube. Those who tried to cross Romanias western border in search of a better life in the West came to be called “frontieristi, that is, “frontier people in Romanian. Dan Danila was born in Sibiu and attempted to cross the Danube in a rubber dinghy back in 1986. During the discussion he had with us he spoke about the psychological training he underwent before the crossing.



    Dan Danila: “Preparation for the crossing, I mean the psychological preparation, took years. It was a complex battle between fear, despair and courage. After all, courage stemmed from the desperate situation the two of us were in at the time. It wasnt something we decided on the spot. We had just graduated from university, we were young, but not reckless. We prepared everything, studied maps of Romania and other regions, learnt how to use a compass and bought camouflage fishermen clothing. Instead of traveling towards the Danube from Herculane Spa, as did all those who tried to cross the river, we went in the opposite direction, moving inland so as not to raise suspicions. We went into the woods advancing deep into wild territory, using only the compass. After a couple of rough nights, sleeping in ditches and holes in the ground and wearing our makeshift ghillie suits, we managed to launch the boat, but couldnt row properly because we were too afraid not to be caught. For a while we failed to coordinate and we moved in circles very close to the river bank.



    Summer was the season mostly preferred by these so-called “frontier people, the season with the largest number of crossing attempts. Border patrols resorted to all means to stop them; they shot them in the head or ran them over with motorboats. Those captured were beaten unconscious and some of them were killed and buried right on the border trail. Trained dogs were used to track them down, and in some cases dead bodies were left unburied as a warning for others. The Yugoslav authorities repeatedly complained to the Romanian side for the dead bodies that were clogging the pump systems at the Iron Gates hydropower plant. Dan Danila and his friend decided to cross the Danube off-season, so to say.



    Dan Danila: “We crossed the Danube in spring; it was in late March, the beginning of April, and we preferred that time because we wanted to take border guards by surprise. It was hot in summer and therefore easier for the guards to monitor the border. When the weather outside was colder, guards needed a break every once in a while, to get warm. The season was not very popular with those attempting an escape. In summertime people even dared to swim across the Danube to Yugoslavia.



    The difficulty of these escape plans was that once you crossed the border, there was no guarantee that Yugoslav or Hungarian border guards would not send you back to Romania. And thats exactly what happened to Dan Danila and his friend.



    Dan Danila: “We managed to cross the Danube and were sent to a refugee camp in Belgrade, where we stayed for a couple of months. Migrating to the USA didnt appeal much to my friend, whod have rather remained in Europe. He convinced me to leave the camp and we tried to make it to Austria, but got caught by the Yugoslav guards and sent back to Romania. We had found out that dictator Ceausescu had granted a general amnesty and thats why we decided to push the envelope a little bit. We knew we would not go to jail. They would have given us a good beating and set us free eventually.



    If we looked strictly at the wording of the law, any illegal border-crossing attempt remains a crime. But when the law is only an instrument in the hands of a repressive totalitarian regime, those trying to leave it cannot not be regarded as criminals. Those who tried to cross the border and live their lives in freedom found themselves alone in the fight against dictator Ceausescus criminal regime, and the case of Dan Danila and his friend is illustrative of the way in which the communists used to treat their citizens.

  • The Ceausescu Regime and the Uprising Against It

    The Ceausescu Regime and the Uprising Against It

    Of all the communist countries in Europe to undergo regime change in 1989, Romania was the only one where blood was spilled in the process. Commentators say Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime was the most likely to use violence against its own people if need be, as shown by the brutal repression of the workers’ demonstrations in Brasov in November 1987. Unfortunately, the situation was even worse in December 1989. We asked historian Ioan Scurtu, a former director of the Institute of the Romanian Revolution, if the bloodshed of December 1989 could have been avoided considering the nature of Ceausescu’s regime:



    Ioan Scurtu: “In theory, it could. However, if we look at what distinguished Ceausescu from the leaders of Europe’s other socialist countries, we realise he was in fact the only one who rejected Gorbachev’s ideas about Glasnost and Perestroika because he believed they undermined socialism and eventually lead to its downfall. As a result, after 1987, Ceausescu became one of the most rigid political leaders in central and south-eastern Europe, clinging to the ideals of Marx, Engels and Lenin and refusing to accept that societies had evolved and that new times called for new ways of consolidating socialism and communism.”



    In the opinion of historian Ioan Scurtu, the obsession with Romania’s complete independence was another characteristic of the Ceausescu regime:



    Ioan Scurtu: “Ceausescu was the only leader who insisted that his country was to pay back all its foreign debt, saying this was the only means by which it could achieve its economic as well as political independence. This led to massive exports of goods, from industrial to food products, which caused a severe food crisis. The food for the population thus started to be rationed, for the first time in a long while.”



    A prisoner of Marxist clichés about the economy, Nicolae Ceausescu initiated disastrous policies, the burden of which was too heavy for the people:



    Ioan Scurtu: “A third characteristic feature of the Ceausescu regime was the strong development of the petrochemical industry which was a huge energy consumer. Ceausescu thus decided to save energy at the expense of the people, by cutting their heating and electricity, with serious consequences. This generated a general state of discontent, especially after April 1989 when Romania announced it had paid back its entire foreign debt. Having achieved this, Ceausescu wanted Romania to become a lender itself and benefit from the interest on the loans given to other states. In a nutshell, Romania was in a far more vulnerable position than all the other socialist countries, so people were extremely unhappy. This is what prompted millions of people to take to the streets in December 1989 and demand that Ceausescu be removed from power.”



    We asked historian Ioan Scurtu why there was no reformist voice within the Romanian Communist Party to call for Ceausescu’s removal and ensure a peaceful regime change:



    Ioan Scurtu: “Ceausescu was a shrewd man and in a short period of time, in only 6 or 7 years, he managed to rid himself of any potential rivals to the leadership of the party and the country. He promoted instead people who were entirely devoted to him and who didn’t have any backbone. In his memoirs, Dumitru Popescu, who used to be a member of the Executive Political Committee of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, recalled that Nicolae Ceausescu was always the only one speaking during the committee’s meeting, while everybody else sat and listened. He remembered getting terrible headaches during those meetings and having to walk all the way home in a luxury Bucharest district to calm down afterwards. In my opinion, this man never realised that his position also implied some responsibility, so if Ceausescu was doing all the talking while everybody else listened, this is also because the others accepted a situation that I think is humiliating. The most shocking moment was when Ceausescu, outraged that no drastic measures were being taken against protesters in Timisoara in December 1989, said he could no longer work with the Executive Political Committee and told its members to choose another leader. Everybody then just asked him not to leave the committee and assured him of their loyalty. So not even in the 24th hour did anybody have the courage to oppose him and say: ‘ok, we’ll take note of your resignation and tell the people Nicolae Ceausescu has stepped down.’ Perhaps things would have been different and all the bloodshed could have been avoided. The opportunism of these people played a very important role in the dramatic events that followed.”



    Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime did fall in the end, but for this to happen, 1,204 Romanians had to die.

  • The history of press in Romania. Student press in 1970-1980

    The history of press in Romania. Student press in 1970-1980

    Under direct ideological control, the press in the communist years had a sinuous evolution and coincided with the periods of transformation underwent by the regime itself. In the 1950s and in the first half of the 1960s, the rigidity and dogmatism of the regime forced the press to use a militant, hysterical and aggressive tone. The ideological relaxation in the mid 1960s helped the press change. Although neither the pressure nor the censorship stopped, publications started using a more moderate language and the importance attached to professionalism grew.



    Student press was only an offspring of the central press and emulated its style. The liberalization that occurred in the 1960s targeted student press in particular, with the aim of observing the trends followed by the new generations. New magazines appeared, characterized by a higher level of professionalism as compared to the previous one, such as Echinox in Cluj or Alma Mater and Opinia studenteasca in Iasi. Constantin Dumitru, editor-in-chief of Opinia Studenteasca, which was established in 1974, recalls how the reform of the student press went.



    “The early days of student press in Romania go back to the year 1968. It’s no coincidence, it’s a wonderful year that meant a lot to Romania. There had been some pieces of student press before, in 1964, but they were very much in the kolkhoz style, like in the communist billboards. The genuine student press started developing in 1968. To tell you the truth, that happened against an approval given by the Central Committee, and actually from dictator Ceausescu himself, who wanted to see how people would think in a free way. It was an experiment Ceausescu’s personal advisors convinced him to carry out. It was a moment of freedom, of freedom of the press, communist as it was, and I got to know it first-hand. But they could not afford to do that experiment with Scanteia, it would have been nonsensical.”



    The new style in communist press also translated into the Press Directorate adopting a more refined way of doing censorship, and journalists had to fight a more subtle battle.



    “The Press Directorate was the main censorship body. It was made up of people specializing in deciphering encrypted messages, in seeing what was in between the lines and also to see whether those texts somehow attacked, directly or indirectly, in a subversive way, the political interests of the communist regime. Unfortunately, most of the people working there, with a few exceptions, were just morons who believed the word ‘subversive itself was a threat to communism. I remember how we used to mock and make fun of them when we were students. For instance, we published a poem by Miron Blaga, ‘Day Newborn of My Ancestors’. The comrade from the Directorate did not know what ‘Day Newborn’ in the title meant. It’s simple, I told him, it’s just a pun referring to Danubius and donaris. So, he exclaimed enlightened, this means Danube! And the poem was greenlighted for publication. Whenever we could, we would trick them. And we did that all the time, because they were stupid and uneducated.”



    One devious measure taken by the regime was to pass censorship responsibilities to editors in chief. Despite that, however, there were serious irregularities occurring from time to time.



    ”The Communist Party took a brilliant measure. When I started working as a journalist, at the age of 18, the system of censorship was already in place but I also lived to see it disappear. Why? Because the Communist Party was clever enough to do away with it as it were. So they called us, editors-in-chief and deputies to editors-in-chief and told us: ‘Comrades, starting today there is no more censorship’. We were so happy to hear that! ‘You are going to be the censors’. And our joy faded. Usually, the editor in chief had the final word with respect to approving articles, nobody would dare challenge him. They would become careful only when something special caught their attention, something like the photo of Ceausescu without an eye, or Ceausescu bald. Even so, there were things like that happening. For instance, the president of France came on a visit to Romania at one point. He was very tall, and he was received at the airport by Ceausescu. And the photo depicting this moment was ridiculous. As the French president was way taller then Ceausescu, and Ceausescu was holding his hat in hand, the comrades decided to put a hat on Ceausescu’s head, but they forgot to eliminate the one he was holding in his hand. So this is how he appeared in the Scanteia newspaper, with two hats. A few people were sacked and that was it. Their stupidity made up for the lack of freedom. The intention was not to run a revolution, many times a stupid thing would just come out.”



    Today Constantin Dumitru believes that despite the rigors of censorship, journalists were able to work in acceptable conditions. But that only depended on the work ethic of those who assumed their role as journalist with decency.



    “We at Opinia Studenteasca did no propaganda at all. I can print those editorials even today, and I’m afraid that they are better written than editorials are today. It also depended on what strategy you adopted. Echinox too had good editorials. To others, an editorial was just a certain façade, behind which they could write what they wanted. Communist editorials would usually pay heed to authorities, it was the kind of publication that worked for the regime. But that did not happen with good student publications. An editorial was something different. We did not do politics. At Opinia studenteasca, the one that I headed between 1974 and 1975, there was no single praising article. Not even one line. So, it was possible.”



    The press in the 1970-1980s was representative for the political, economic, social and cultural reality of those years. It went down in history as a chapter in the life of a despicable regime, where society’s expectations were totally different from what the regime provided.

  • The “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy of Social-Political Studies

    The “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy of Social-Political Studies

    Communism was the first doctrine, political regime and form of societal organization to proclaim its exclusive reliance on rational knowledge. Everything that went against its precepts had to be done away with. Therefore, the truths underlying the new society, all knowledge and science had to be redefined. This is why the “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy of Social-Political Studies was set up as a higher education institution that would train the new political activists able to further the cause of the regime.



    Established on March 21st, 1945, by the Romanian Communist Party, under the name “The Workers’ University of the Romanian Communist Party,” the institution was designed to undermine the traditional concept of “university” and the intellectuals, as a social category. The institution was given the name “Stefan Gheorghiu,” in memory of a 19th Century Socialist activist, whose personality was brought back into the spotlight in 1971 by the communist regime, in response to the growing capitalist ideology. Here is historian Cosmin Popa, from the “Nicolae Iorga” History Institute in Bucharest:



    “The establishment of the Academy of Social Sciences in the early 1970s may be seen as a symptom of the Romanian communist regime’s turning to conservatism. It was also an evident signal that the party and its leaders sought to reinstate a particular ideological primacy. The massive changes in power structures, the reinstatement of collective leadership and of the internal party democracy, carrying on the reforms designed to respond to the challenges of a very dynamic capitalism, all these features are specific to all communist states in the 1960s-1970s.”



    In Romania, the communist regime was from the very beginning affected by a lack of legitimacy and by the fact that in 1945 the country’s most distinguished intellectuals would not cooperate with the communists. In the mid-1960s however, the regime’s new openness to intellectuals was an offer than not so many people would decline. Here is historian Cosmin Popa again:



    “The late 1960s were in Nicolae Ceausescu’s view the time when the Party could assess the success of its efforts to win over the intellectuals. In an address given during a meeting of party activists in the education and research sector in September 1969, and designed to detail and explain the message launched by Ceausescu himself at the Party’s 10th Congress, a senior party leader, Paul Niculescu-Mizil said the distinction between intellectuals old and new was no longer operational. As he put it, Romania had a united intellectual class, whose members mostly came from among the workers. This speech offered a set of clues to read the party policy with respect to the specific features of Romanian communism, pointing to the party’s relation with the intellectuals, and the principles on which the organization of the education and research system was based. The regime was working on the right assumption that society was witnessing a scientific revolution that strengthened the political role of intellectuals. The increase in the number and role of intellectuals also prompted a change in the institutions in charge with the ideological management of this class, because its success was critical to the building of communism.”



    On October the 3rd, 1971, the Executive Committee of the Romanian Communist Party passed a resolution on the establishment of the “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy for social-political education and the training of senior party members, attached to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The institution was designed to educate new activists, in all fields of activity, preparing them for positions in the party and the government apparatus. The regime’s distrust in the ideological work of the traditional research institutions strengthened the role of the “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy. One of the pretexts was that traditional institutions had no activity relevant to the country’s economy.



    “The ideological control over social sciences was not the main goal of these efforts. In fact, nobody doubted the efficiency of the mechanisms of control over intellectuals, which already existed in all institutions. What the party leadership originally intended was to improve the professional training of political leaders and the spending of resources. Economists in particular were subject to Ceausescu’s criticism and were targeted by propaganda workers. The regime saw itself as strong enough to no longer have to insist on the coercive dimension of ideological control. The party was beginning to feel its dynamism was hindered by the bourgeois forms of research organization and professional recognition. In Ceausescu’s view, the old institutions with their intellectuals isolated from real life failed to respond promptly to the needs generated by a fast economic development. Furthermore, they were sometimes a problem for those in charge with propaganda.”



    In spite of the regime’s plans to make it an elite university, the “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy was perceived by specialists as a mere tool of the regime. It constantly failed to become more than an attachment of the repressive apparatus, and shortly after the 1989 Revolution it was dismantled altogether.