Radio România Internațional

Category: The History Show

  • 80 years since the installation of Petru Groza’s pro-communist government

    80 years since the installation of Petru Groza’s pro-communist government

    March 6, 1945, is one of the dates with a deeply negative significance in the history of contemporary Romania. On that day, following pressure from the Soviet emissary Andrey Vyshinsky, a government was installed that was formed by the National Democratic Front, an alliance led by the Romanian Communist Party, a government chaired by the lawyer Petru Groza. His government, considered by historians as being one of the most harmful, is responsible for the Sovietization of Romania and its economic, political, social and cultural transformation from a free and democratic country into a repressive and totalitarian one. Through the measures taken, the Groza government nationalised the means of production, various facilities and private homes, amended the legislation regulating the organisation of economic facilities, abolished political parties and made it easier for the courts to send hundreds of thousands of innocent people to prison. 

    In February 1945, groups of communists began protest actions against the government led by General Nicolae Rădescu with the aim of destabilising it and creating an artificial crisis. The deterioration of the political climate at that time was described in 1976 by Constantin Vişoianu, Minister of Foreign Affairs in that government, in an interview to Radio Free Europe. Vişoianu recalled how Andrey Vyshinsky forced King Michael I to sack Rădescu:

    “It was in that atmosphere and amid that turmoil that Vyshinsky arrived in Bucharest on February 26, 1945. The Soviet embassy informed me, as I was at that time the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, that Mr. Vyshinsky wished to be received by the King the next day. Although it was an improper request, I advised the King to accept it. The next day Vyshinsky had his first audience with the King, which I also attended. Vyshinsky began to explain what he thought the situation in Romania at that moment meant, saying all sorts of untrue things: that the government was not democratic enough, that it could not keep the masses under control, that it was not making enough efforts to calm the tensions. It was simply not true, but his idea was that the government was not democratic enough and that it had to be changed. He asked the King to replace the Radescu government as soon as possible. This first audience was conducted in a civilised tone.”

    The king tried to delay Radescu’s replacement to gain time. But Vyshinsky was not willing to wait. A second and less cordial visit followed, as Constantin Vişoianu recalls:

    “On February 27, Vyshinsky again asked to be received by the king. I was present at this audience as well. Vyshinsky’s tone became more brutal and he declared on behalf of his government that the present situation could no longer continue. ‘Your Majesty must intervene urgently and put an end to this intolerable state of affairs by instating a more democratic government’. He even demanded that the king immediately demand Radescu’s resignation and install a more democratic government. The king explained to him that the government was the most democratic possible, since representatives of the most important parties were there, including the communists, and that it was supported by the entire Romanian nation. Vyshinsky insisted that the Rădescu government was not democratic, without providing any justification. I intervened and explained to Vyshinsky Romania’s political and constitutional system, telling him that our king could not appoint the members of government, a task that belonged to the political parties. He insisted, demanding that a people’s government be formed immediately. And with that he left.”

    Vyshinsky’s third audience with the king was the beginning of the end for Romanian democracy. Constantin Vişoianu:

    “The next day, February 28, Vyshinsky requested a new audience with the king at 3:30 p.m. I was also present at the meeting again. This time, Vyshinsky’s tone was extremely violent. He said: ‘I have come to find out Your Majesty’s decision’. The king replied that he had informed the government of the Soviet representative’s wishes and that negotiations were currently taking place with the party representatives. Vyshinsky said: ‘That is not enough, I consider the Radescu government to be a fascist government and that it must be got rid of.’ He began to threaten, saying that the situation was very serious and that the new government must be installed by 6:00 p.m., that is, in two hours. He stood up, banged his fist on the table, and left, slamming the door so hard that the plaster around it cracked. And that’s how the third audience ended, at which I tried to explain to Vyshinsky that the king could not dismiss the government without consulting the leaders of the parties that formed it. Vyshinsky replied with false politeness that he had not come to talk to the foreign minister but to the king. I also informed the English and the American representatives of the attitude of the Soviet representative, since Vyshinsky was speaking on behalf of the Allied Control Commission of which the Allied powers were members. Unfortunately, the policy pursued at that time by the Americans and the British was not of much help to us.”

    The appointment of Petru Groza to a government approved by the communists was the price that had to be paid to avoid bloodshed. But, on March 9, 1945, it also marked the return under Romanian control of Northern Transylvania, a territory ceded to Hungary in 1940 following the Vienna Diktat.

  • The “Reflector” television show

    The “Reflector” television show

     

    The history of the mass media during communist years includes a small, somewhat honourable chapter, in which journalists tried to implement professional ethics and be the voice of society. The years between 1966 and 1971 were the best for the media under the communist regime, and some shows were successful with the public. This was the case of the “Reflector” television show in which dysfunctions in public institutions and abuse by political actors were exposed to public judgment.

     

    “Reflector” was an attempt at trustworthy journalism, although within certain limits. The ideology of the Romanian Communist Party was off limits, and so were the nature of the government’s power, the social and political order. Equally taboo were the leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, his family and relatives, senior party officials, the army, the repressive apparatus formed by the Militia and the Securitate, the judiciary and the financial-banking sector. As a rule, “Reflector” addressed abuse and irregularities in the consumer economy sector.

     

    “Reflector” started in 1967 and was designed after similar shows in the Western press. The opening of the Romanian Television to the West was due to the journalists Silviu Brucan, the president of the public television broadcaster, influenced by the US media, and Tudor Vornicu, a former correspondent in France and familiar with the French media.

     

    The journalist Ion Bucheru, then vice-president of the Romanian Television, was the one who coordinated the show’s production team. In a 1997 interview for the Oral History Centre of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, Bucheru explained what the success of the segment actually meant:

     

    Ion Bucheru: “I was in charge of ‘Reflector’ on behalf of the institution’s management. During those years, Reflector had come to be aired twice a week, while another show, ‘Ancheta sociala’ (‘Social Inquiry’), was broadcast at least every two weeks. ‘Reflector’ was 20-25 minute long, and ‘Ancheta’ had reached 50 minutes and even an hour, it had become an institution. People would write to ‘Reflector’ and to ‘Ancheta sociala’. The 5 people who were producing the ‘Reflector’ were like prosecutors who exercised their profession on behalf of the people. They had personal correspondence, they were simply called by people who no longer had any other hope or by institutions that had exhausted all legal means of settling disputes with private individuals or with other institutions.”

     

    Appearing on television in those days, especially in outrageous cases of abuse, incompetence or negligent handling of public property, was something of an ominous prospect for anyone. That is why the name ‘Reflector’ sparked panic whenever it was pronounced.

     

    Ion Bucheru: “We had reached a point where we were ending the ‘Reflector’ segment with a frame, an image and a text. The image showed a black car driving away in exhaust smoke or dust, and the text would read, ‘In this car, comrade minister so-and-so is leaving the ministry, probably summoned in a hurry to a party meeting, so hurried that he didn’t have time to talk to the ‘Reflector’ reporter who asked for his opinion on this issue that you’ve just seen and which is happening within the scope of his responsibilities’. This was frequently said on air. Well, when a company manager or a deputy minister heard about or got news on the phone that ‘Reflector’ had arrived on the premises or that someone from ‘Reflector’ had called to say that they would come in tomorrow or the day after to shoot, you can’t imagine the commotion that would create!”

     

    July 1971, with the announcement of the infamous “Theses” by Nicolae Ceaușescu himself, under the official name “Proposed measures for the improvement of political-ideological activity, of the Marxist–Leninist education of Party members, of all working people,” meant a U-turn from the regime’s previous openness. It was a return to the harshness of the Stalinist years, a great surprise for the Western countries that had appreciated the Romanian leader’s position up to then.

     

    That return also impacted the “Reflector”, which gradually lost its incisiveness and appeal.

     

    Ion Bucheru: “The July Theses sprang from Ceaușescu’s mind, head and pen following a scandal caused by the television. After 1968, Ceaușescu had reached the peak of his popularity, of domestic and international prestige. It was a time when Romania was viewed internationally as some kind of miracle in this corner of Europe. It was a time when foreign heads of state opened their doors, gates, even the most conservative ones, even those who had previously rejected any thought of ​​welcoming Ceauşescu or conferring him the honours worthy of head of state. It was a time when if you said you were a Romanian journalist abroad, and I experienced this firsthand and I can say this with full knowledge of the facts, you were received not with sympathy but with a kind of brotherhood. We would go abroad without equipment, without money, without logistical means, because we were poor, poorly equipped and really underpaid. But there was such a wave of sympathy around us that we were given so much of what we didn’t have and they had in abundance.”

     

    Eventually shut down in the mid-1980s, when the entire television broadcast had been cut to two hours a day, ‘Reflector’ was re-established after 1989. But in the new era of freedom, it never reached the same level of popularity. (AMP)

  • The Demolition of Bucharest’s Religious Heritage

    The Demolition of Bucharest’s Religious Heritage

    The history of the religious heritage of Bucharest in the 20th century, especially in its second half, was one of mortal blows inflicted by the communist regime. The heritage losses were great and irreparable, among them the famous Văcărești Monastery, the largest Orthodox monastery in Southeastern Europe, being razed to the ground without hesitation. Most of the stories of religious heritage lost between the 1950s and 1980s reveal the attitude of disdain and arrogance that the regime and its activists had towards Romania’s past. Historian Speranța Diaconescu worked at the Office for National Cultural Heritage of the Municipality of Bucharest. In 1997, interviewed by the Oral History Center of the Romanian Broadcasting Corporation, she showed how the regime treated the religious heritage that irritated it.

    “Things followed an upward curve, but there was a continuum in the sense that the demolitions started from the beginning of the regime, intensifying along the way. Meaning that, with the construction of various new areas of the capital, the construction stages also included demolitions of important objectives, historical and architectural objectives, which were not protected. And this from the very beginning. There was the church at Stejarului in Palace Square, which fell when the Palace Hall and the entire housing complex there were built. This policy was continued in the 50s-60s. Only that then there were one or two, the very large scale occurring when a construction was built on a large area, the Civic Center area, a construction on an area not only large, but an area with a historical tradition for Bucharest. The area included many churches, many old houses, and at that time the loss for the historical and architectural heritage of the city of Bucharest was very great.”

    The peak of contempt was reached in the 1980s, when the so-called urban systematization policy of Bucharest began. At that time, the religious heritage located in the new civic center that Nicolae Ceaușescu was building over old Bucharest was demolished or shifted. Speranța Diaconescu also remembered the case of the Pantelimon church, located on an island on the eastern edge of Bucharest, demolished in 1986.

    “There were the archaeological excavations, there was the cleaning of the site, the saving of important pieces of heritage, and the actual demolition. These would be the stages. The problem was that there was the funerary monument of Alexandru Ghica and some building outlines, the church inscription from 1752, a tombstone from the 18th century, a door frame, a column from the Pantelimon Church, a stone and wood candlestick, painted and gilded, which was something special, and I think a unique one, from 1752. It was located at the head of the funerary monument of Prince Alexandru II Ghica, who also had his tombstone there. All of them were very beautifully crafted, in a fairly good state of preservation.”

    The disdain for heritage was generalized, from decision-makers to simple workers. Here is Speranța Diaconescu.

    “Lifting the tombstone, they found Alexandru Ghica’s sarcophagus. And then something strange and unpleasant happened. They thought of doing archaeological research with this corpse, being very well embalmed, in a lead coffin and a wooden coffin. Through the visor that the lead coffin had, it was visible that the body was quite well preserved. Carbonized, but well preserved. And then the lead coffin was opened, the wooden coffin was opened and they started to take measurements, to take off his shirt, to take off his belt to see if there was a gold medallion, or if he maybe have something made of gold under his belt. There was a whole commission present. They were very indignant that he only had a single cross and a ring. He was supposed to be a pretender to the throne of the United Principalities, he was supposed to be a personality, how could he have so little? The fact is that it was decided to take the lead coffin to the museum, because it was a museum piece, and what was left of the poor ruler was stuffed into a plastic bag and left in a bush. Because he had already begun to smell. And we had to, together with a colleague, fight with all our might to make him a rough coffin, out of some wretched boards, and to dig a grave for him. It is true, the priest also helped us with this, he was willing to give up one of the places in the church park. I also did a kind of reburial. Not necessarily because my conscience was gnawing at me, but it seemed so unfair to me for this personality of our history to suffer such a thing that I felt the obligation to commemorate him.”

    In the second half of the 20th century, the religious heritage of Bucharest was trampled on literally, not just figuratively. And what stood back then remains only in documents.

  • Centennial of the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate

    Centennial of the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate

    In 2025, the Romanian Orthodox Church marks 140 years since the recognition of its Autocephaly (April 25th, 1885) and 100 years since its elevation to the rank of Patriarchate (February 4th, 1925). We talked with the historian Dragoș Ursu from the National Museum of the Union in Alba Iulia to find out details about the symbolic significance of the centennial: “After the unions of 1918 of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania, we were in another church register in which the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodoxy, was the most relevant. At least that was the case from a quantitative point of view and not only at that time, because we know that in Soviet Russia there was an ongoing process of repression of the Church, the Russian Church being almost abolished. Thus, the Romanian Orthodoxy was the strongest at that time and, first of all, the question of church unification arose. At the time, in 1918, after the formation of Greater Romania, we had four different church traditions: the Kingdom, the Metropolitan Bishopric of Transylvania, the Metropolitan Bishopric of Bukovina, which belonged to the Austrian side of the Austro-Hungarian dualism, and the Metropolitan Bishopric of Bessarabia, subject to a Russification process for more than 100 years. Somehow, all four of these traditions had to be brought together. It was a process that ran successfully for six years, ending in 1925. Along with the church unifications there arose the issue of proclaiming the Romanian Patriarchate, a church of such magnitude, with more than 15 million believers, which, at that time, was the most vigorous Orthodox church, I would say, if we consider our local patriotism. The ecumenical patriarchate was under pressure from the Turks, the new Turkish republic, and the Russian Church was under pressure from the Soviet state. Thus, Romanian Orthodoxy was the strongest and deserved this patriarchate status.”

     

    Eventually, 1925 was the year of the completion of a process that symbolically, politically and administratively endorsed the new entity. Dragoș Ursu is back with details: “The year begins with the meeting of the Synod on February 4, 1925, when, at the proposal of Metropolitan Bishop Nectarie of Bukovina, the decision to elevate it to the rank of Patriarchate is approved. Then, it passes through the Senate and is approved by Parliament. In the summer and autumn of 1925, in August and September, the Ecumenical Patriarchate gives the ‘tomos’ or the law which recognized, from its point of view, the Church that until then had patronized the Romanian Orthodox Church. And on November 1, 1925, a symbolic ceremony takes places to enthrone the Metropolitan Primate Miron Cristea as Patriarch of Romania. The process of what we call the elevation to the rank of Patriarchate covers two elements: on the one hand, the ecclesiastical unification of the four Orthodox institutional traditions after the 1918 political unions of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania, and on the other hand, implicitly, the recognition of this new Church, much larger and much stronger, at the level of the entire European and global Orthodoxy by raising it to the rank of Patriarchate.”

     

    We asked Dragoș Ursu how could one sum up the merits of the six Romanian Orthodox patriarchs so far?: “If we make a brief review of the patriarchs, we can say that Miron Cristea was the patriarch of the unification and the first patriarch of the Orthodox Church who laid the foundations for the institutional and theological-educational development of the Church. Nicodim Munteanu, the second patriarch, is the patriarch of war and dictatorships. His patriarchate of 9 years, between 1939-1948, had this misfortune, it overlapped all the dictatorships, that of Carol II, of Ion Antonescu, of the Legionary Movement, the war and the process of turning Romania into a communist country, process that came at the end of his patriarchate. Then we have the controversial figure of Iustinian Marina, on the one hand seen as the Red Patriarch who collaborated with the communist regime, and, on the other hand, from the perspective of the Church, seen as the one who managed to save the Church in the sense of institutional consolidation to face the pressure of the communist regime. Then, we have the patriarch Iustin with a short patriarchate, also for 9 years, in which he had theological and cultural initiatives, initiating projects related to the theology of the Church. But he also had the misfortune of the pressure of the Ceaușescu regime, of the beginning of Bucharest’s urban planning and the demolition of churches. Next is the patriarch Teoctist, also seen from two perspectives: on the one hand, his name is linked to the end of communism and the close relationship with the Ceaușescu regime, an, on the other, he was the patriarch of transition, of European integration. If we think about it, he was the patriarch during whose rule Pope John Paul II came to Romania, on a symbolic visit in 1999, the first visit of a pope to a predominantly Orthodox country. Last but not least, we have the current patriarch. It is difficult to evaluate someone who is still alive, for a historian it is more difficult to evaluate the present. But we can see the figure of Patriarch Daniel as the one who supports the development of the Church, especially in the diaspora, as the Church followed the Romanians in the diaspora. The development of the Church in Bessarabia can also be attributed to him, especially in the current context of the war. We see that Romanian Orthodoxy in Bessarabia is consolidating, and this is a good sign. Last but not least, he is the patriarch of the National Cathedral, this project that had been envisaged by the very Miron Cristea in 1925, since the establishment of the Patriarchate, a project that the chances to be completed under the current patriarch’s rule.”

     

    The history of the centennial of the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate coincides with that of the 20th century, as the people lived it and as the historians researched it. Other challenges will surely follow, the answers to which will be given by those who will face them. (LS)

  • Romanian-Japanese Diplomatic Relations

    Romanian-Japanese Diplomatic Relations

    Regardless of physical distances, people, communities and societies come closer because they feel and desire closeness. Until the 20th century, when globalization reduced everything, people had a natural attraction to their more distant peers. They wanted to learn their customs, learn their language, and get to know their mentalities. Romanians and Japanese have known each other formally for approximately 125 years, the writings of the Romanian traveler Nicolae Milescu Spătarul about the Japanese from the second half of the 17th century being from a time when the movement of people was reduced.

    At the beginning of the 20th century, more precisely in 1902, the Japanese ambassador to Vienna initiated contacts with the Romanian side and expressed his desire for bilateral relations to be established between the two countries. A trade treaty was signed that year that would constitute the legal basis for the development of the relationship. At the outbreak of the First World War, Romania and Japan were on the same side of the trenches, in the Entente alliance. In August 1917, Romania opened its diplomatic representation in Tokyo, with Japan doing the same five years later, in 1922. Between 1922 and 1927, the Romanian legation in Tokyo was closed due to budget cuts, but after 1927, when the Romanian legation reopened, relations would operate uninterruptedly until September 1944. During World War II, Romania and Japan were allies again, this time within the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

    After the war, relations resumed in 1959, and Ion Datcu was appointed Romania’s ambassador to Japan in 1966. In 1994, interviewed by the Oral History Center of the Romanian Broadcasting Company, Datcu recalled that when he arrived at the post, he did not find many Japanese officials who knew much about the country he came from.

    “Regarding Romania, I was amazed by the little knowledge that existed in parliamentary circles, even among members of the government. They knew very little, and I remember, at that time, when we were discussing certain issues, even European ones, they could not understand the fact that we had different positions from the Soviet Union. They saw this part of Europe as a block of a monolith. In fact, this was not only a Japanese thing, I found the same thing in the USA. But I want to say that businessmen, on the other hand, knew things, had interests. I visited many enterprises, we were already buying ships, building ships, I also christened some ore carriers, fishing vessels were bought. Even the big electronic equipment companies were prospecting the market. I noticed this interesting difference between politicians and businessmen. There was a big discrepancy.”

    But Ion Datcu was going to get a big surprise at the meeting with the Japanese sovereign.

    “Emperor Hirohito was an extraordinarily likable man, beyond his aura of mysticism, he was an extremely warm, approachable man. And I had the incredible surprise that the emperor knew more about Romania than the members of the government at that time. He started talking to me about the Danube Delta and was a great specialist in fauna, especially in fish. And he even showed me this, he had some books, and then I promised him ‘Your Majesty, I’ll do my best’, and when I went on vacation and I brought him some books that I found, with maps of the Danube Delta, and I offered them to him. And he kept asking me, ‘How long will this paradise in Europe last?’ And I came up with the idea, I said ‘Maybe you come once and see the Danube, the Danube Delta and the Black Sea’, this area that he considered to be of great interest for his studies. He had probably studied biology and studied various animals from these waters.”

    Romanian-Japanese relations were dominated by economic issues. Ion Datcu even said that the Japanese had invented a new type of diplomacy, the economic one.

    “My mandate in Bucharest was, indeed, almost entirely economic. At that time, we had the idea of modernizing a series of industrial capacities, including the aluminum factory. I remember doing it with a company, Marubeni, we built a fleet, and we were trying to export as well and we even managed to export billets to a country that produced steel of certain types and sizes, they produced ball bearings and many other products, I even remember an egg paste. It was not a very big political interest from the Romanian government’s point of view. At that time, Japan was an economic interest, and from the Japanese point of view it was the flowering period of the so-called economic diplomacy. They inaugurated economic diplomacy. For me, who had studied these aspects a lot, I had the impression that economic diplomacy could not be done apart from politics, apart from military factors and so on, as is normal. The truth is that the Japanese, indeed, developed and refined economic diplomacy. What did this mean? Their foreign policy and diplomatic priorities were established, apart from the United States of America, in the neighboring area and elsewhere, according to economic interests.”

    Romania and Japan, two countries located at a great distance from each other, already have a century-old tradition of bilateral contacts. It is a tradition that keeps them close through the past, but also through the values of the present.

  • 50 Years Since the Helsinki Accords

    50 Years Since the Helsinki Accords

    After 1945, Europe was brutally divided, and the hopes of Europeans that at the end of the Second World War, once freed from fascism, they would return to normal, were shattered. The Iron Curtain that divided Europe into the Western, prosperous and democratic, and the Eastern, impoverished and tyrannized by communism, passed through the middle of Germany and its capital Berlin. For about two decades, until the late 1960s and early 1970s, the two Europes regarded each other with hatred and tensions had reached paroxysms, especially during the missile crisis of 1962. But if in Western Europe one can see the will of those nations to be part of a democratic system, in Eastern Europe the will of the nations occupied by the Soviets and driven into hatred against other Europeans was trampled underfoot. The anti-communist uprisings in Poland and East Germany in 1953, the one in Hungary in 1956 and the one in Czechoslovakia in 1968, all brutally suppressed by the Soviets, proved that Eastern Europeans did not want to be the enemies of Western Europeans.

    But with the passage of time and the change of generations, attitudes would change. Europeans, both Western and Eastern, would find the solution to live in peace and proposed new concepts such as détente in relations on the old continent. The new mentalities materialized in the creation of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), a forum for discussions on thorny issues between Europeans. The capital of Finland, as a neutral country, was chosen for the first meeting of the forum in July 1973. Another meeting followed in Geneva, in September 1973, and two years later, in August 1975, the Final Act was signed in Helsinki, with Nicolae Ceaușescu as Romania’s signature. Although it had mainly European relevance, in the end, 57 countries, some from North America and Asia, also signed the Act. Diplomat and professor Cristian Diaconescu, former foreign minister, described the changes that occurred in European relations.

    “Since the 1970s, however, the two blocs had entered into a logic of attempted calm, attempted relaxation. Preliminary negotiations began in 1972, gradually it was agreed that this conference in Helsinki on August 1, 1975 would adopt a Final Act covering four areas, signed by all European states at that time, Canada and the United States, except Albania, which did not want to participate.”

    The 10 articles of the Act are also known as the Decalogue of the Conference, and are stated as follows: equality of sovereignties and respect for the rights deriving from it; abstention from the threat or use of force; inviolability of borders; territorial integrity of states; peaceful settlement of disputes; non-interference in internal affairs; respect for human rights and fundamental rights, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief; equal rights and self-determination of peoples; cooperation between states; mutual trust and in international law. Cristian Diaconescu summarized the principles from which the Decalogue was derived.

    “The Helsinki Final Act referred to four areas. The first area was the political-military area, which covered the obvious political and military area: territorial integrity, border definition, peaceful settlement of disputes, and the implementation of confidence-building and security measures. The second area referred to the economic dimension. The third to the humanitarian dimension, and here, appropriate to the problems of our days, we discuss freedom of migration, reunification of families divided by internal borders, cultural exchanges, freedom of the press. And, finally, the last chapter was regarding the establishment of a periodicity of mechanisms, debates and the study of implementation. There were also meetings of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, such as those on security and cooperation in Europe before 1990, in 1977 and 1978 in Belgrade, in 1980 and 1983 in Madrid, and in 1986 and 1989 in Vienna. And we arrive to 1990, for two years, when it became the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in a multilateral framework institutionalized on these four levels. The OSCE, the CSCE at that time, was the only multilateral organization that debated such topics.”

    After 1990, when the wave of civic revolutions of 1989 swept away the communist tyrannies in the eastern half of Europe, the new changes also touched the legacy of the Helsinki Final Act. It remained valid, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) appeared in place of the CSCE through a new document. Here is Cristian Diaconescu.

    “The Vienna Document was adopted. This document referred precisely to measures to increase confidence and security. What did this document contain? A willingness to notify each other in relation to military activities, in relation to various actions with political-military connotations that could generate a threat. And then, in order not to interpret such a development in one way or another across borders, early warning was necessary.”

    Starting in the 1970s, Europeans knew how to give their continent a new security architecture. The challenges of the following years were not lacking, and the cases of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, most tragically, and that of the former Czechoslovakia, tested the viability of the principles and concepts of common security and cooperation. The legacy of the Helsinki Final Act led to the strengthening of the conviction that war is not a solution, but today Europeans must be prepared for anything.

  • The unfinished Bucharest

    The unfinished Bucharest

    In the Romanian area, modern cities began to develop after the European model around the 1830s. At that time, some provisions of the Organic Laws referred to urban planning measures that had to be taken, in order to increase the living standards of the inhabitants. The city that set the tone for the changes was the capital Bucharest, the one that experimented with ideas circulated in different periods, which reverberated in the smaller urban regions. Bucharest’s urban micro-history is largely Romania’s urban macro-history, with often contradictory visions of how people’s lives should look like, combining inertia and conservative mentalities with ambitions and innovative transformations.

     

    From the writings of those who visited Bucharest in different periods of its modern existence, we learn that it was a city in the process of change, where the East and the West met. It was a city that looked up to the great European capitals and aimed to keep up with them and the novelties of the times. The list of those who held the position of mayor of the Romanian capital includes the journalist and politician C. A. Rosetti, the writer Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, the politician Vintilă Brătianu and others. However, two names stand out, two names that managed the most consistent development of the capital: the liberal lawyer and politician Pake Protopopescu, mayor between 1888 and 1891, and the lawyer and politician Dem I. Dobrescu, mayor between 1929 and 1934. The two, mayors during the reign of Kings Carol I and Carol II, the sovereigns to whose names the main lines of development of Bucharest are linked, managed to mobilize resources for major urban projects, such as networks of streets, running water and sewage, and public transport, as well as the systematization of the Dâmbovița and Colentina rivers.

     

    After 1945, the communist regime also came up with urban development projects. During this time, extensive transformations took place, but also projects that could even be considered anti-urban. The city expanded and gained height, more was built vertically than had been built previously, and the influx of rural population attracted by the development of industry increased, especially starting in the 1970s. The two leaders of socialist Romania, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, from 1945 to 1965, and Nicolae Ceaușescu, from 1965 to 1989, also left their decisive mark on the Romanian capital.

     

    No city is ever finished, as it follows the course of the lives of those who inhabit it, and Bucharest is no exception. Cezar Buiumaci is a historian of the city of Bucharest, a museographer at the Bucharest Municipality Museum. He is responsible for the latest editorial release, “The Unfinished City”, about the profound transformations of the Romanian capital during the years of the socialist regime between 1945 and 1989: “The Unfinished City is an unfinished work, unfinished in the sense that there are so many aspects of the city’s components, of the transformations, that an author must end the research at a certain point. I started the research because I personally wanted to understand what happened to this city. It was a mixture of disparate information in different books and articles, none of which truly and objectively dealt with the communist period, and people’s memories that are corrupted by certain influences, especially the passage of time.”

     

    From a small community on the outskirts of the Ottoman area, the capital of the Principality of Wallachia, as it was around the 1800s, to what it is today, during the course of 225 years, Bucharest has experienced a lot. It has gone through natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, fires, epidemics, but also through man-made ones such as revolutions, wars, military occupations and the systematization of the 1980s. Cezar Buiumaci wanted to know how Romanians came to have the capital they have today and wrote a book: “What happened to this city? What about all these neighborhoods, with this city that surrounds the city? How come we have the neighborhoods of Militari, Drumul Taberei, Crângasi and others, all of which surround the old city? So I tried to find out what happened and I put all the information here so that everyone can understand why the city is unfinished and what has happened over time in Bucharest. The historian Răzvan Theodorescu said that Bucharest had three great founders: Carol I, Carol II and Ceaușescu. I disagree and say that the third founder is not Ceaușescu but Dej. This city has become as big as a country, it is surrounded by several other cities, all these neighborhoods are as big as a city, the city within the city, was built during Dej’s time. Ceaușescu is not the founder of this city, he is the one who destroyed and deconstructed it in a way that it can no longer be reassembled. Moreover, there was no consistency and no project was carried out to the end, no systematization project, not even the destruction project was carried out to the end. The city is unfinished in many ways.”

     

    Today’s Bucharest is a city where transformations took place both in the core of its old settlement and in the hinterland. Names of old neighborhoods such as Cotroceni, Vatra luminosă, Dudești, Ferentari, Bucureștii Noi are in the current vocabulary of Bucharesters along with names of neighborhoods from the socialist years such as Titan, Berceni, Drumul Taberei and those after 1989 such as Brâncuși, Latin, Francez and Cosmopolis.

  • The Centennial of the Romanian Chess Federation

    The Centennial of the Romanian Chess Federation

    Considered a “sport of the mind” due to its high degree of complexity, anticipation of the opponent’s strategy, speed in decision-making, and intense use of memory, chess has attracted and will continue to attract many practitioners. It is viewed as a miniature military confrontation and used as a metaphor to describe a complex situation in which two parties duel. In the 19th century, the best players in Europe met in cafes where they played without a time limit for a game or a move, but they played for a stake. In Paris there was a famous cafe, Cafe de la Regence, and in St. Petersburg there was the Dominique cafe, with billiards, checkers, and chess rooms. It was competed with by the Reiter cafe, located a short distance away, and in Moscow the Pekin cafe in Theater Square was famous. The best players of a famous cafe could be considered professional chess players. Back then, there were no clubs, and chess games were usually played in cafes, sometimes for money.

    The history of the “sport of the mind” in Romania celebrated the centenary of the Romanian Chess Federation at the beginning of 1925. But the practice of the sport in the Romanian space came earlier. Although part of the Ottoman space for several centuries, where the practice of chess dates back to the Middle Ages, in the Romanian Principalities chess was brought from France around the revolution of 1848. Ștefan Baciu is a chess player and historian of this sport, and from him we learned details about the practice of chess in Romania.

    “Chess was also played in the cafes in the Romanian space, among the passionate players being personalities of that era. A Romanian born near Cernăuţi, George Marcu or Georg Marco, published in the specialized magazine Wiener Schachzeitung a game that he had played against his brother, Mihai, in the Europa cafe in Cernăuţi. Chess was also played with passion in Bucharest cafes. Manolache Costache Epureanu, president of the Council of Ministers towards the end of the 19th century, was expected at a government meeting, but he was playing chess in a cafe, the incident being presented in a sketch by I.L. Caragiale. The first chess clubs were also founded in cafes. Thus, in 1875, the Austrian violinist Ludovic Wiest, professor at the Bucharest Conservatory, organized the first chess salon in Bucharest, in the Concordia cafe on Smârdan Street, in the old center of Bucharest. In 1892, the first chess club in Bucharest was founded, at the Kuebler cafe. Women did not have access to cafes, but wealthy people had solutions. Thus, the industrialist Basil Assan had set up a chess salon in the house he owned in Bucharest where he could play with his three daughters.”

    Among the founders of this club was Hercule Anton Gudju, who read law in Paris in the early 1880s and had won several strong tournaments in the French capital. The one who would be decisively involved in the founding of the Romanian Chess Federation was his son, Ion Gudju, a member of the Bucharest Chess Club. In the summer of 1924, Ion Gudju, George Davidescu and Leon Loewenton had played a team chess tournament in Paris, during the Summer Olympics. On July 20, 1924, after the last round of the tournament, 15 delegates signed the founding act of the International Chess Federation, “Fédération Internationale des Échecs” (FIDE), one of the signatories being the Romanian Ion Gudju.

    After returning from Paris, the young Ion Gudju traveled throughout the country to discuss with the representatives of the chess clubs in Greater Romania the establishment of a national federation. Ștefan Baciu tells us what happened next.

    “On January 4, 1925, representatives of 26 chess clubs formed the Provisional Committee of the Romanian Chess Federation. Adam Hențiescu was elected president of this committee, a personality of the era, who was also the president of the Bucharest Chess Club. Born in Transylvania, Adam Hențiu, aged 21, crossed the mountains to fight in the 1877 War of Independence. After the war, he changed his surname from Hențiu to Hențiescu and settled in Bucharest where he graduated from the University, obtaining a pharmacist’s diploma. He was a promoter of the union of Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania, he fought as a volunteer in the First World War. Unfortunately, Adam Hențiescu died before the Romanian Chess Federation was truly established. Among the members of the Initiative Committee was Alexandru Tyroler from Timișoara, who won the first national champion title in the history of Romanian chess in 1926. Among the good players of that period, we can also mention Nicolae Brody from Cluj and Janos Balogh from Miercurea Ciuc, who remained in the history of chess with a defense that bears his name. The Initiative Committee also included university professors, lawyers and politicians.”

    In 1925, chess circles were established in cities, high schools and universities in Greater Romania, 9 of them in Bucharest. The act of establishment of the Romanian Chess Federation was formalized in Bucharest, on March 14, 1926, on the occasion of the first congress of the Romanian Chess Federation. The economic crisis of 1929-1933 also had an impact on the chess movement in Romania, and in 1932 and 1933, the national individual men’s championship was no longer organized. And the Romanian team, after a constant presence in the first editions of the Chess Olympiads, did not participate in the editions of 1937 and 1939.

  • Romania – FRG diplomatic relations

    Romania – FRG diplomatic relations

     

    The fact that, after 1945, there were two German states on Europe s map, was the effect of deep divergences between the US, Great Britain and the USSR regarding the future of the country that had triggered the terrible war. The two Germanys, West and East, were in hostile terms. Walter Hallstein, the first president of the European Economic Community, had given the name to the doctrine by which the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) did not have diplomatic relations with the countries that had recognized the Democratic Republic of Germany (DRG), while the countries that were part of a group, out of solidarity, did not have diplomatic ties with the German state from the opposite bloc. Thus, Romania, located in the communist bloc, did not have diplomatic ties with the Federal Republic of Germany.

     

    Things would change, however, starting the second half of the 1960s. In 1967, Romania managed to establish diplomatic relations with West Germany due to changes in the approach to European relations. With two reciprocal visits, that of the Romanian Foreign Minister Corneliu Mănescu to the FRG and that of the West German Foreign Minister Willy Brandt to Bucharest, the foundations of rapprochement would be laid. In 1994, the Oral History Center of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting interviewed diplomat Vasile Șandru, who remembered the context in which the changes took place: “The visit of Vice Chancellor Wili Brandt, who was also Foreign Minister at the time, took place after Romania had established diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. The context was as follows: in the summer of 1966, the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Treaty had convened in Bucharest. In the document adopted on that occasion, the idea of ​​convening a European conference on collaboration and security in Europe was launched. There was also a provision that advocated the normalization of relations with both German states. In keeping with this document, Romania initiated the establishment of normal diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany, doing so from its own positions, by its own decision, without any consultations with its allies. Of course, this generated a reaction of dissatisfaction, especially from the Soviet Union and the other states participating in the Warsaw Treaty, which argued that the establishment of relations with Germany should have been done through a collective act.”

     

    Perceptions were reset: “Romania’s initiative had a positive echo in Federal Germany and, at the beginning of 1967, the action of establishing diplomatic relations took place. Previously, Romania had established official consular and commercial relations with West Germany. We already had a commercial-consular representation in Cologne. Now it was time to raise these relations to the highest level of diplomatic relations. From the Federal Germany s point of view, establishing diplomatic relations with Romania meant, in fact, abandoning the Hallstein doctrine, which was a spectacular step, I would say, even in the context of the Cold War. West Germany had had, until then, a very firm attitude in not establishing any kind of relations with the states that had relations with the German Democratic Republic. The position of the Federal Republic of Germany was not to recognize the existence of a second German state.”

     

    Vasile Șandru believes that personal involvement also contributed a lot to creating a new atmosphere: “Willy Brandt went to the seaside where he was received by Nicolae Ceaușescu with whom he had a conversation that lasted about five hours. With Nicolae Ceaușescu, the discussions were predominantly political and referred not only to the political situation in Europe, but also to the party-line ties between the communist and socialist parties. How did Willy Brandt approach this visit? He came with his wife and son, Lars – he had a son who became a participant in these leftist movements in Germany. So he approached the issue of the visit not only on a political level, but also on a personal level, to get closer to our country. Mrs. Brandt and her son had a separate program on the coast. They had a very interesting program, they were very satisfied with the visit, they were also able to see some Romanian traditional shows and visited cultural sites. It was a visit with a program that also helped them make an idea about Romania.”

     

    In 1997, Communist dignitary Paul Niculescu-Mizil said that, beyond the optimism with which we regard it today, there was more to it than we suspect: “When I was in prison, I listened to a television report by Cornel Mănescu, about how diplomatic relations with the FRG were established. He said that he went to Germany, that he met with Brandt and Brandt said let’s establish diplomatic relations, then they shook hands and said yes, we agree. Let’s be serious. I know how those relations were established; I was a member of the Permanent Presidium. This problem was discussed and re-discussed, how to do it, how to get to this, how the Soviets will react, if it is good, if it is not good. This was discussed for days and days. And when he left, Mănescu had a clear mandate, to go and end diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany, as the only option. I was part of many delegations, it would be absurd to say anything else. I had a mandate from home, and if it did not match the situation there, I would have to report back home and ask for approval.”

     

    In 1967, Romania was the second country in the communist bloc to establish relations with West Germany, after the USSR. It was a diplomatic move through which old ties of the Romanian space with the entire German space were restored.

  • The Romanian Revolution – 35

    The Romanian Revolution – 35

     

    We often talk about big resets when a type of leader wins the elections in a country with a major global influence, as was Donald Trump’s victory in November 2024 in the US. But big resets are those that occur when significant changes take place in large and important geopolitical areas, as was the year 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. At that time, the communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania ceded power or were violently removed by popular anger. The Romanian case is that of the change of a regime through violent means, the most violent of all the changes since 1989.

     

    Long commented on since 1989, although less visible than in other years, the Romanian Revolution continues to be, at 35 years on, the main reference point for everything that connects Romanians to their daily lives. Its legacy is indisputably positive and the changes that have occurred since then have brought a significant increase in the living standards, a consistent presence in the most important military and civil alliances that are NATO, the European Union and the Schengen area. All of this was possible thanks to the sacrifice of protesters in December 1989 and the constant effort made by the several tens of millions of Romanians over the past 35 years.

     

    Historians analyze the past and from them we learn what has happened to humanity up to the present. Historian Virgiliu Țârău, professor with Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, talked about the change 35 years ago and the difficult path, the so-called “transition”: “Although we still have a little time, about a decade, until we equal and exceed, in terms of time frame, the East European communism, let us note that the transition from this regime to the democratic one was both short and long. The time of change was short, intense, revolutionary, the time of transformation and, especially, of metabolizing the transformation was a long, diverse and complex one. It had distinct trajectories in the transition at regional and national levels. As such, if the change was apparently rapid, the transition was a long process, one in which the transplantation of a new system on the social, political, economic, cultural and mentality roots of communism, proved laborious and sometimes contradictory. “

     

    The Romanian revolution can only be understood in the spirit of the European time that produced it. It is nothing more than a particular case of the big reset that led to today’s reality. Virgiliu Țârău: “The cumulative events of 1989 took the world in a new direction. It has been said that it was a Eurocentric, democratic, liberal and integrative one, one in which Eastern Europe transformed itself, peacefully or not, giving up the political order and the communist regimes. It was one that led to the unification of Germany and then Europe, in an ambitious project: from Portugal to the Baltic states. The windows that opened then, created the premises of another globalization, but also of a world that seemed to have overcome the realities of the Cold War.”

     

     

    In the analysis made in 1989 by the British historian Timothy Garton Ash, the ways in which communist power in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe was removed were peaceful, through elections, or through revolutionary violence. Virgiliu Țârău spoke about the one specific to Romania, the revolution: “This was associated with the events that took place in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania in the last months of 1989. This difference underlined by Timothy Garton Ash was made taking into account especially the contestation of communist power in the street, the pressure from bottom to top, which germinated and led to the removal of communist elites from power. The opacity and project stagnation of the elders Honecker, Husak and Ceaușescu, the blindness and violence of their reactions, the lack of dialogue within the communist power circles, but also of dialogue with the opposition structures, were other ingredients of this second type of change in Garton Ash’s opinion. Protest, contestation and political removal were associated with the fall of the Wall, the velvet or bloody takeover of power that accompanied the change in 1989.”

     

    Regardless of the manner in which they emerged from the stage of history, peaceful or violent, communist regimes were rotten. Virgiliu Țârău: “Beyond external influences, strategic games, historical evidence shows us that communist systems succumbed from within, that those guilty of this implosion were the communist leaders themselves, incapable of managing an increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional system. In essence, no longer viable and legitimate, communism was abandoned precisely by those who managed its destiny, members of the system and technocrats alike. In conclusion, by transforming the Iron Continent into a nylon one, subversion from within became increasingly consistent. The lack of resources to solve the debt problem put them in a position to negotiate and, finally, to hand over power, when the street protests could no longer be managed.”

    The Romanian Revolution of 1989 is part of the big reset of Central and Eastern Europe. It produced positive effects in all aspects of the life of societies that 35 years ago were desperately struggling with economic misery and closed horizons.

  • The Romanian Revolution Narrated to Young People

    The Romanian Revolution Narrated to Young People

     

    December is the month when, since 1989, Romanians have commemorated the fall of the communist regime, a regime that had trampled their rights, freedoms and their very essence as human beings for almost half a century. They commemorate that December 1989 because the return to normality was achieved through bloodshed, as the communist regime exited history through violence, just as it had emerged.

     

    As time passes and emotions cool down, people become able to look at those events with a clearer eye, and the younger generations of Romanians look at December 1989 with the curiosity and the detachment of those who have not been directly affected by it.

     

    It is worrying that many young people today lack an accurate picture of the political regime that the young people of 1989 threw into the dustbin of history, and even worse, that they say they see no problem with living during those times. But the young people of 1989 try to shed light on the significance of what they did, for today’s generations to better understand what their grandparents and parents had gone through.

     

    The historian and writer Alina Pavelescu, a member of the generation that made the 1989 revolution, wrote a book on “The 1989 Revolution Narrated to Those Who Haven’t Lived It.” We asked her if there was a message that the 1989 generation managed to convey to the future generations:

     

    Alina Pavelescu: “Obviously, we should have done it, and we should have found the meaning of what happened to us in the last 35 years. But we haven’t managed to do it so far, and we can only hope that we will be wiser from now on. I could only offer my personal testimony, as a person for whom this topic is still emotionally loaded, even 35 years later. And it is precisely this emotional burden, which all of us who witnessed the 1989 Revolution directly still carry, this emotional burden is what prevents us from seeing things clearly. But, at least, we can tell our stories honestly, so that people younger than us understand how the 1989 Revolution changed their lives for the better, and so that they find meaning in it for us, if we cannot do it.”

     

    Alina Pavelescu felt that she had something to say to today’s and tomorrow’s generations about the year 1989. And she chose to do this in a book:

     

    Alina Pavelescu: “I set out first and foremost to stimulate critical thinking in young people. I realize that they are presented with different stories and different versions and that, probably, they are wondering where the truth is, among all these versions. And so, the first thing I did was to present to them all the theories and hypotheses that I identified in the revolution narratives, with their arguments for and against. But, I admit, in the epilogue of this book I could not help but tell them specifically that the Revolution of 1989 was, indeed, a revolution because it radically changed all of our lives. We owe the freedom of the last 35 years to this event, even if we did not really know what to do with this freedom and we have always had the feeling that someone stole it from under our noses. But even so, the fact that we have it, that we have not yet lost it, is something we owe to the Revolution of 1989 and to the people who sacrificed themselves then, those who sat down in front of the rifles in the street, those who died.”

     

    Combining the talent of a writer and the skills of a historian, Alina Pavelescu wrote about the year 1989, confronting conflicting views and blending professional requirements, personal memories and value judgments.

     

    Alina Pavelescu: “A historian should provide a coherent and true story, or at least as close to the truth as possible, as close as possible to the intersection of the truth of certain events. It is not for historians to give lectures, necessarily, or not necessarily lectures beyond the personal example that we all have the right to use. But I fear that in Eastern Europe and in Romania, where history is all too often the terrain of political struggles in which identities and the way we define our identities are constantly the subject of political competitions, historians will never truly manage to stay in their ivory tower. And so, if this is the context in which we live, I think the most honest thing for us is to acknowledge this context and try to do things as well as possible from our perspective and within this context. I do not think that we should close ourselves in the ivory tower, I do not think the ivory tower is a realistic option. At the same time, we should not let others transform our subject, namely history, into just a battlefield in which politicians fight.”

     

    No matter how much time passes and regardless of perceptions, the year 1989 will remain a year of grace. It is, like it or not, the boundary between what is detestable and what is good in this world. (AMP)

  • The 35th anniversary of the Romanian revolution

    The 35th anniversary of the Romanian revolution

    A small protest began on December 16, 1989 in Timișoara that would lead to an avalanche of demonstrations across the country. This will result, on December 22, in the ousting of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his regime, but some 1,150 people were killed and 4,100 wounded in the process. Of those who died then in Timișoara, the regime tried to make the bodies of 44 of them disappear: they were taken to Bucharest, put in the ovens at the crematorium, and their ashes thrown into the sewer in the Popești-Leordeni village, in the south of Bucharest.

    The people who rose up in Timișoara fought against the regime that had come to power after 1945 and for their rights and for a better life. On December 16, 1989, very few people could ever imagine what would happen in the following days. The journalist Mircea Carp, one of the former directors of the Free Europe radio station, recalled, in a 1997 interview given to the Oral History Center of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, the feverish expectations that everyone had:

    “After the events in Brasov in 1987, in 1988 and 1989 the Iron Curtain began to fall, with lots of things happening in quick succession, in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Only in Romania things seemed to stand still, nothing was moving. Ceausescu seemed to be very much in control of the situation, so much so that he was even able to go on an official visit to Iran, from where he returned after he was told serious things were happening back home. But Ceausescu never believed that his position was at risk.”

    Europe in 1989 was seething, and the emergence of Solidarity on the Polish political scene in the spring was the signal for the return to life. By December, throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the wind of change could not be stopped. For Mircea Carp, the start of the Romanian revolution in Timișoara was a fulfillment of a burning desire, but also a shock:

    “December 1989 came and with this first spark, the events in Timisoara. I have to say that they took us by surprise in terms of the moment when they happened, because, of course, we had prepared both mentally and in terms of the content of our shows for a possible regime change in Romania. But, in itself, the 16th and the following day, the 17th of December 1989, came unexpectedly for us. As for me, I was taking a few days off, I wasn’t even in the office those days. My colleague Sorin Cunea was the first to broadcast on the airwaves what was happening in Timisoara.  Starting from December 18, we organized ourselves and started working in teams and working 24 hours a day. We worked in teams of 3 or 4 people, non-stop, preparing all these shows in a hurry based only on information we had from press agencies abroad and from some people who had been travelling back from Romania.”

    The Romanians who had lived for so many decades in fear and humiliation had a very important moral support in the Romanian language radio stations. Mircea Carp said that during the days of the outbreak in Timișoara, he and his station did their duty as best they could:

    “The moment when the revolution started, and we were on alert, the other radio stations and Free Europe, maybe first of all Free Europe. But, in any case, we did not effectively contribute to the start of the events of December through incendiary broadcasts, through broadcasts that would encourage the population to rise up against the regime. Maybe it would have been better, maybe it would have been worse. My point of view is that the American government, I’m talking about Voice of America or Free Europe, would in no way have allowed our radio stations to encourage an action that would lead to a bloody revolution, a revolution that would to cost human lives and destruction.”

    On December 16, 1989, 35 years ago, the book on Romania’s recent history began to be written in Timișoara.

  • The Mathematics Journal

    The Mathematics Journal

     

    In its almost 250-year long history, the Romanian print media records the longest uninterrupted publication of a magazine: “Gazeta Matematica” (The Mathematics Journal), a specialised magazine for mathematics lovers, published in 1895 in Bucharest at the initiative of a group of mathematicians and engineers. The five founders were the engineers Victor Balaban, Vasile Cristescu, Ion Ionescu, Mihail Roco and Ioan Zottu. After Balaban’s untimely death, the mathematician Constanța Pompilian was co-opted into the group. Soon, the original group broadened to include the engineers Tancred Constantinescu, Emanoil Davidescu, Mauriciu Kinbaum and Nicolae Niculescu and the mathematicians Andrei Ioachimescu and Gheorghe Țițeica.

     

    In the 129 years of continuous publication, “Gazeta Matematica” was the platform for Romania’s best mathematicians, researchers, teachers, engineers, economists, students and other lovers of the field to express themselves. The magazine also features the work of foreign mathematicians. “Gazeta Matematica” educated generations of enthusiasts and organised competitions for them. At first, the magazine was published in 16 pages, with a circulation of 144 copies, which were sold on subscriptions. Then, the number of buyers increased, with the highest circulation recorded in the 1980s, when an issue was published in 120,000 copies.

     

    With such a tradition, “Gazeta Matematica” is also a source for research into the development of education in Romania. The mathematician and writer Bogdan Suceavă cites the wealth of information that “Gazeta” provides in this regard:

     

    Bogdan Suceavă: “The fact that there is a database with a lot of problems, spanning 129 years, means that one can look at various historical layers, at various ways of thinking about education, and of finding problems suitable for a certain age range. These models are in the Gazeta. For more than a century, there have been enough examples, enough strategies have been tried, and an interesting population sample has been seen to respond to them. The fact that we have so many examples, so many ways of thinking about the Gazeta enables us to see how this experience is of interest in a broader context.”

     

    Over its long history that carries on today, the “Gazeta Matematica” has had high standards and has constantly encouraged creative thinking. Bogdan Suceavă recalls such an episode of original thinking:

     

    Bogdan Suceavă: “An interesting case was Sebastian Kaufman, who forgot some trigonometry formulas during an oral exam. He was criticised, he couldn’t het away with it. No problem, Kaufman learned trigonometry and ended up doing research using techniques that have to do with the polar coordinate system. His work was published just months before Romania entered World War I. What was his paper about? Just as we have the power of a point with respect to a circle, a concept introduced by Jakob Steiner in 1826, we can have the power of a point with respect to a plane algebraic curve. He proposed to write it in polar coordinates and see what happens. It was an extraordinary paper, written by a remarkable high school student. This was the Gazeta environment. He prepared for the competition, for the Gazeta contest, he met with evaluators, he was far from perfect. He was criticised and felt compelled to improve, and out of this environment something creative emerged. The same Kaufman problem was later on studied after World War II, and I don’t think we can find anything else published about this before 1956. The fact that a high school student was doing something like this in Bucharest is quite remarkable.”

     

    “Gazeta Matematica” is also linked to the emergence of the influential International Mathematical Olympiad. Romania has participated in all editions so far and has won 78 gold medals, 146 silver, 45 bronze medals and 6 honourable mentions, thus ranking 6th in the all-time ranking. Romania hosted 6 editions, in 1959, 1960, 1969, 1978, 1999 and 2018. Bogdan Suceavă:

     

    Bogdan Suceavă: “The idea of the International Olympiads came from the Romanian Society of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, the talks took place between 1956 and 1959. The first edition was in ’59. At that time, the president of the Society was Grigore Moisil, with Caius Iacob and Nicolae Teodorescu as vice-presidents. From a political point of view, it was not easy to organise an international event at that time, there were multiple constraints. The first of them was to obtain all the necessary approvals. The second was that of international contacts and the level of prestige required in order to start an international project of such magnitude. They used the Gazeta contest as a model and if we compare the format, this was the initial pattern: there were not many problems to solve in a very short time, but rather problems that required a lot of thinking time, about an hour and a half per problem. This was the initial concept and it was very similar to what had been attempted before World War I in Romania. The proponents of the idea felt that the Gazeta model could be of international interest. This is worth noting, compared with other competitions that existed at the time.”

     

    “Gazeta Matematica” is the benchmark publication of Romanian mathematicians, of the Romanian school of mathematics. There is mathematics, but there is also education, there is also history, there is also collective mentality, there is also generational change. And, above all, it is a tradition that carries on. (AMP)

  • Soviet prisoners in Romania

    Soviet prisoners in Romania

    Romania took sides with Germany in World War Two. On June 22nd, 1941, jointly with Germany, Romania began military operations against the Soviet Union. However, we need to say the Soviet Union had been the aggressor state, the year before. In June 1940, in the aftermath of two cession ultimatums the Soviets issued to the Romanian government, the Soviet Union occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Romanian territories of the east and the north. Among other things, just as it would happen in any military operation, there also were prisoners.

    Over June 22nd, 1941 and August 23rd, 1944, the Romanian Army captured 91,060 Soviet soldiers. Of them, 90%, that is 82, 057 military, were sent to Romania, in 12 concentration camps. According to the dictionary compiled by historians Alesandru Duțu, Florica Dobre and Leonida Loghin “The Romanian Army in World War Two”, of those who were detained in concentration camps,13,682 who were of Romanian origin from Bessarabia and Bukovina were released. Other 5,223 died, while 3,331 escaped.

    On August 23rd, 1944, Romania pulled out of the alliance with Germany and on Romanian territory there were 59, 856 Soviet prisoners, of whom 2, 794 were officers, while 57, 062 were NCOs and soldiers. Considering the prisoners’ ethnic origin, 25, 533 were Ukrainians, 17,833 Russians, 2,497 Kalmuks, 2,039 Uzbeks, 1,917 Turks, 1,588 Cossacks, 1,501 Armenians, 1,600 Georgians, 601 Tartars, 293 Jews, 252 Polish, 186 Bulgarians, 150 Ossetins, 117 Azeri, as well as other several dozens of ethnic groups, in smaller numbers.

    Documents reveal the Soviet prisoners in Romania were treated in accordance with the existing international legislation. Early into the war the living conditions were dire, and it was because of such conditions that most of the deaths were reported. Yet they improved rapidly, the reports compiled by the Romanian Army’s control commission mentioning the progress.

    The Soviet prisoners were confined in concentration camps, accommodation, food, hygiene and medical assistance conditions were provided for them, they were interrogated and were given the chance to work.

    Colonel Anton Dumitrescu took part in the act of August 23rd, 1944, himself and four NCOs being the ones who arrested Marshall Ion Antonescu and vice-Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu.

    In a 1974 interview stored in Radio Romania’s Oral History Center, he recalled how, prior to his arresting Antonescu, he was sent to gather intel on the center of Soviet prisoners in Slobozia. The Romanian intelligence service had found out the Germans prepared that center as a launching site of the operations against the Romanian army, should the latter defect.

    ”In Slobozia there was a big centre with Russian prisoners. The Germans had garnished the entire camp with Vlasov troops. The Vlasov troops were the Russians who, led by general Vlasov, had taken sides with the Germans. And, in German uniforms, fought against the Russians. However, from the intelligence I had, the Germans wanted to be sure about that center should something happen with us, with the Vlasovs taking sides with the Russians and fighting against us.

    I had been in contact with the Vlasovs in the Caucasus when, indeed, those people in no way wanted to surrender because the Soviets would have killed them. They were dead set on fighting. The entire region there was teeming with refugees from Moldavia and from Bessarabia and I did not see any Vlasov whatsoever.”

    Engineer Miron Tașcă used to work in Braila, at the French-Romanian plant, with a mixed, civilian and military production. In 1995, he reminisced the Soviet prisoners who worked at the Braila-based plant and what happened with them, after the Soviets reached Romanian territory.

    ”We, during the war, at the factory in Braila, also worked with a series of prisoners. They were treated very well, they did not work on the machines, they did manual jobs, downloading and uploading stuff, and cleaning. Those prisoners, the Soviets set them free, took them and brought them back to Russia. The moment they were taken, they also knew they had to leave.

    One of them, who told me he was an Uzbek, said he no longer wanted to return to the USSR. He asked me to go at all lengths to keep him there, he was a hard-working, silent and quiet boy. Of course, something like that was not possible. Prisoners were investigated, numbered, completely taken over, and that’s when he also left, the poor thing. But he was the one who under no circumstances wanted to return. Others did not want to return either, likeminded people, that is. Perhaps they did not know what was in store for them, but he, from the very beginning said he did not want to return. “

    A student of the military school during the war, Catrinel Dumitrescu, in 1998 said that, prior to seeing Soviet military after 1944, he had also seen them as prisoners:

    ”I had seen Russians before, they were prisoners. There were, in our country, about 10-20 Russian prisoners who were free to work. They were accommodated with the gendarmes post and worked in the cleaning of roads, of roadside ditches, they called in at private residences and did menial jobs there, they received food and suchlike. After August 23rd, 1944, the first ones to flee, not to the East but to the West, were those Russians! ‘Cause they knew what was going to come. “

    Soviet war prisoners in Romania are a less well-known chapter in Romanian modern history. It is that kind of chapter that still takes its time to reach public consciousness.

  • Giuseppe Mazzini and the Romanians

    Giuseppe Mazzini and the Romanians

    Romania is the creation of ideas from Western Europe in the first half of the 19th century and of the lobby led by the generation of young Romanian political elite, educated in the West, the so-called Pașoptisti. The ideas of ethnic nation, union in one state and form of government had the greatest impact on the Romanian public. One of the most influential thinkers in the Romanian public space was the Italian lawyer and publicist Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), a remarkable representative of the Risorgimento, the Italian renaissance movement of the 19th century.

     

     

    A radical democrat, republican, revolutionary and fighter for the unification of Italy, Mazzini was born during the Napoleonic wars in Genoa and was raised and educated in keeping with the Jacobin ideas of the French Revolution. One of the driving ideas of the French revolutionary spirit was the legacy of ancient Rome to which Mazzini adhered with all conviction. In the late 1820s, he joined the Carbonarian movement that fought against multinational empires, especially Austria. In 1831, Mazzini founded the Young Italy Society. During the revolution of 1848, in the organization of which he was involved and which proclaimed the republic, Mazzini held the highest political position. The sharp writings of the Italian revolutionary mobilized an important part of the young Romanian intellectuals from Wallachia much more stronger than it mobilized those from Moldova. The idea of the Romanian ethnic nation, the Latinity and the union of the two Romanian principalities, constituted the central axis of the revolutionary program of the 1848 Romanian generation.

     

     

    Historian Remus Tanasă is the author of the volume Apostle of the nation. Mazzini and the birth of modern Romania in which the influence that the Italian revolutionary had on the Romanian spirit is described. The Romanian elites appropriated Mazzini’s ideas, applied them to the Romanian case they wrote about in the Western press, brought them and spread them in the two principalities.

     

     

    Remus Tanasă: A part of the Romanian elites discovered Mazzini in the 1830s, before and around the People’s Spring of 1848-1849. Mazzini was one of the three triumvirs of the Second Roman Republic for a brief period of a few months. The Pope was driven from Rome and the Eternal City was ruled by a triumvirate. Of the three, Mazzini was the most important, primus inter pares.

     

     

    Mazzini’s ideas gained followers especially in Wallachia, where the revolutionary ideas were stronger and where the European movement of 1848 had ended with the appointment of a revolutionary government. According to Remus Tanasă, the most important names of Romanian 1848 elites were bewitched by Mazzini’s words, including Nicolae Bălcescu: The first two names are Dumitru Brătianu, the older brother of Ion C. Brătianu, and C. A. Rosetti. Dumitru Brătianu even joined one of Mazzini’s initiatives in London, the Central European Democratic Committee, which was operational between 1850 and 1853. Mazzini’s ideas sprouted in the Romanian space later, after the end of the Crimean War in 1856. The second name, C. A. Rosetti, was much more closely related to Mazzini in temperament, though they never met. He is one of the Romanians who had Mazzini’s portrait on his desk until the death of the latter.

     

     

    Remus Tanasă showed how the Romanians used the Italian’s writings: Mazzini promoted several controversial ideas. The most important for the Romanian space and for the 1848 elites was the idea of nation. Mazzini was a tireless promoter of the idea that made the nation a political subject through the nation-state. This is why one of Mazzini’s nicknames was that of apostle of the nation. In the period after 1848, it was necessary for the Romanians to make known their roots, their identity. Even Mazzini, until 1848, was confused about the identity of the Romanians. After 1848, the Romanian elites not only wrote about Romanians in languages of European circulation, but also, through the revolutionary moment in Bucharest, they managed to draw the attention of decision-makers and of various revolutionary camps in the West regarding the Latin identity of Romanians.

     

     

    A staunch republican, Giuseppe Mazzini opposed the idea of monarchy. The Romanian elites understood that some of his ideas were far too advanced for a peripheral European political society, as the Romanians were. Remus Tanasa: Our 1848 elites, of course, were also republicans in the beginning. But they realized that in a Europe of monarchies, the republican idea could not win. So they gave priority to the idea of nation and national unity of the Romanians, leaving the idea of a republic in the background. Paradoxically, Mazzini did not want and did not intend to give up the idea of a republic. As regards the Romanians, he advised Dumitru Brătianu to accept and negotiate with statesmen from the West, leaving aside the idea of a republic.

     

     

    As it always happens, political ideas live their heyday and are always subject to criticism and reformulation. Towards 1900, Mazzinis ideas lose their influence in Romania, and circulated only as legacy of the past.