Radio România Internațional

Category: The History Show

  • Romania and North Korea

    Romania and North Korea

    Romania and North Korea had a very close relationship, which began in the 1970s. The two leaders, Nicolae Ceausescu and Kim Ir Sen, paid visits to each other, liked each other, trying to boost bilateral relations and bring their countries closer. A very rigid interpretation of the Marxist-Leninist ideology and the wish to emancipate from under the Soviet and Chinese influence, respectively, were the core elements of this relation. Consequently, Romania and North Korea found ways of dialogue and cooperation.



    In 1970, Colonel Emil Burghelea was designated military attaché to Pyongyang. In an interview to the Oral History Centre of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation in 2000, he explained the context in which he was appointed military attaché although he didnt speak Korean and was not prepared at all to hold that post.



    Emil Burghelea: The main arguments I was given were that as an officer I could easily adjust to any conditions, and that I was fluent in Russian, a language spoken by many Koreans. Furthermore, there were Koreans who spoke Romanian, too. So, all conditions were met for me to accomplish my tasks in Korea. During the Korean War, several thousand children from Korea came to Prahova Valley, in Romania. They learnt Romanian very well, as children are fast learners. Children of military attaches lived in hostels here, and then returned to Korea, all of them having a very good command of the Romanian language. Here is a joke: during one of the Romanian governmental and military visits, the delegation led by Emil Bodnaras was received ceremoniously by the Korean state and party leaders. Bodnaras was offered very good accommodation. He was an officer by profession, just like me, and a former illegalist, well aware of what life in the army and banned political parties involved. He was accompanied by a Romanian language interpreter. He told us that he wanted to know how many Koreans were speaking Romanian, and on a free day, while enjoying a moment of relaxation, Bodnaras had the idea of telling a rather dirty joke. I remember Bodnaras telling us the interpreter didnt even start to translate it that 10 people burst into laughter. How well did they speak Romanian? Well, they were speaking a broken language. For instance, they were using the phrase “fatherly father. I told them a father is a father. Whats that fatherly father? Later on, I understood they were trying to avoid confusion with Koreas leader, who was referred to as the father of the nation.



    Meanwhile, relations between Romania and North Korea got tighter and tighter, even privileged, according to Col. Emil Burghelea:



    Emil Burghelea: “The relations between our countries were excellent, because the leaders of the state and party had close relations, and I myself had a privileged status as a military attaché in North Korea. I had access where no other military attaché had, not even the Russian or the Chinese ones. They had a reserved attitude towards the great powers, even if two million Chinese had died in the Korean War. There were lots of exchanges and delegations, including in the field of weapons trade, and usually the co-chair of the delegation or government commission was the controversial General Vasile Ionel. There was also a joint economic commission, there were many such organizations designed to strengthen collaboration in all areas.



    Romania was exporting large amounts of trucks, cars, machine tools and industrial products to Korea:



    Emil Burghelea: “Every single request I made was met, even the personal ones. I had some trouble with one of the kids that was back in Romania, and it got to the point where a minister gave up his seat in an airplane for my wife to be able to go back home and take care of him. I was not the type to make too many requests, but that was a serious situation. They would answer right away, I had access to places where no one else had, from their underground weapons factories to their fortifications on the DMZ. They were running around desperately trying to build a weapons industry for themselves. They worked in medieval conditions, but they were turning out weapons. I mean the conditions were very, very difficult, like the Middle Ages, when they made cannons out of cherry tree trunks. They made special steel for cannons, and you couldnt but be amazed at how they managed to pull that off. Back in Romania, we were always told to go to the West to get information, with lots of money spent for this purpose. One other thing was that of mobilizing Koreans, caught as they were between four great powers, Russia, China, Japan and the US. We were giving them automated lathes built at Arad and Brasov. And we found out that they would remove the labels saying Made in Romania, put labels in Korean on them, then sent them to South Korea and claimed they were manufactured by them. We knew what they were doing, but we didnt say anything. They stole from others too, not just from us.



    The Romanian-North Korean friendship reached legendary proportions. Some historians say that Ceausescu was strongly influenced by North Korea. After 1989, relations between the two countries were substantially re-evaluated.

  • The history of Radio Romania International

    The history of Radio Romania International

    The foreign language programming at the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation was initially intended for diplomats posted in Bucharest, starting in 1932. That was the year when the first broadcasts in French and English, with news and current affairs, went on the air. During WWII, the foreign language service of the Romanian Radio was informing people abroad on the course of the war and on how the population reacted. After the war, the foreign language service gained in importance, and was renamed as the Foreign Service broadcast service. It became a propaganda tool for communist Romania.



    In 1950, Sergiu Leverescu graduated from the French language high school in Bucharest, but had difficulties in getting a job at the French department at Radio Romania, because his parents were not working class. He provided an interview with Radio Romania’s Oral History Center in 1998:



    “There were few on the staff back then, and we were organized as follows: a head of department, two translators and two controllers. Those people were entitled to check and make sure that the texts in French was in line with the Romanian language texts that came to us from other sections. Back then the foreign language sections did not do any editorial work of their own; everything came from two central departments, a foreign department and a domestic one. They were made up of editors who were sending us, at the foreign language sections, the materials that went on air; the news bulletins, commentaries and other materials, and we translated them. The translator translated, the controller checked it against the original, and then it was sent to a reader, who recorded them. Nothing was live, everything was recorded, at least for foreign service broadcasts. The translations were typed on a typewriter, in three copies: one copy went to the reader, one went to a broadcast controller, after the text had been reviewed and maybe corrected, the controller assisted the reader in the studio, with a second copy in their hand, to see if any mistake was made or if anything was missed out of the initial text. A third copy was provided to someone else, who was not in the department, and who was on a different floor to make sure that the reader read exactly what was written. It was multi-step control.”



    In 1955, an English woman, Marjorie, married a Romanian, Stavarache Negrea. They settled in Romania, and they ended up working at the English department of Radio Romania. Marjorie Negrea was a reader and controller, as she confessed in 1997.



    “When I got to Romania, I went to the Central Party Committee. They told me that if I wanted to settle in Romania and work here, I would get a recommendation to work in broadcasting, if they needed people to speak English. I passed a few tests, and I corrected some translated texts. And then I became a reader. I was a reader and political controller and it was an interesting thing. I was reading the translation and saw if it was absolutely correct politically. I was on good terms with everyone, I didn’t know Romanian well, and it was hard, but generally it was all right.”



    There were moments when the ideological pressure subsided, according to Sergiu Levescu, who recalled for us a moment such the one on 20 July, 1969:


    “One moment when we held a non-political meeting at the Foreign Service was the moon landing. When Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module, we gathered in the office of editor-in-chief Hortensia Roman, to listen to the broadcast. It was really emotional… when the lunar landing actually occurred, I burst out in joy, along with Hortensia Roman. This was no longer about imperialists.”



    In the 1950s, when she worked at Radio Romania, Maria Lovinescu was first in the Foreign Department of the Foreign Service, then ended up in the Italian Department. In 1995, she recalled the dialog with listeners through letters:


    “At first we didn’t get too many letters. Then they multiplied. There were a lot of questions. They were interested in what was going on in Romania. They were usually from a certain audience, of a certain social sphere, but generally most of the people who wrote to us were interested in traditional music and culture. We had a lot of programs on the scenery and beauty of the country. They wanted to know how to get here. I had the impression that the political side interested them less, or even not at all. If they had been interested, I think they would have had more direct means for that, such as newspapers.”



    Radio Romania International reorganized after 1989 on the democratic principles of a new informative radio station. Its history is problematic, just like the history of Romania and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945.

  • Epidemics on Romanian Territories

    Epidemics on Romanian Territories

    Historians
    are unanimous in describing epidemics as a strong factor influencing human
    civilization just like any other major
    event. The epidemics that had the strongest impact were those of plague,
    smallpox and cholera. The plague, also called ‘the black death’, known in the
    Romanian Principalities as the black ulcer, has killed the biggest number of
    people throughout history. According to some historians, the great plague epidemic
    of the mid 17th century left around
    75 million people dead. It was not until late 19th century,
    in 1894 , that the French Alexandre Yersin discovered the bacteria causing the
    pest, and with it the remedy against the most terrible disease ever. Before Yersin’
    s great discovery, the only cure against the plague was the ‘survival of the
    fittest’, which meant that the only people who could save their lives were
    those immune to the bacteria or those developing a less serious form of the
    disease.


    The Romanian
    territories were also hit by epidemics that had a strong impact on how people
    viewed the world. Professor Octavian Buda, currently teaching the history of
    medicine at the Carol Davila Medicine and Pharmacy University in Bucharest,
    spoke about plague in the 15th century on Romanian territory,
    actually a follow-up to the great plague epidemic in the previous century.


    Octavian Buda: There is a series of
    accounts provided by foreign physicians who were employed by various courts of
    that time, like those of Stephen the Great, Matei Basarab or Vasile Lupu. The
    big problem is to identify the clinical picture, since the meaning of the
    generic word ulcer, for instance, was rather broad. In demotic parlance,
    ulcer means disease, precisely. And then it is something rather hard to
    define. We do not have specific information on Iancu of Hunedoara’s case. Most
    likely, it was linked to the theatre of operations in the south. One of the
    extensions of the latest plague epidemics in Western Europe occurred through the
    Dalmatian ports of Dubrovnik or Ragusa. The Romanian medicine historian,
    Nicolae Vatamanu, has even come up with an unusual idea, but based on evidence,
    namely that in the famous battle of Razboieni, known to have been won by the
    Ottoman Sultan Muhammad the 2nd, against Stephen the Great, which
    was a Pyrrhic victory, an episode of a pest coming from Urals and Crimea
    interfered. It is a take on the event which deserves to be examined very
    carefully.


    Plague
    epidemics occurred periodically in the next centuries. The 1666 London plague
    epidemic was horrendous, although of a smaller-scale than the previous ones. In
    the Romanian Principalities, the 18th century saw the beginning of
    the Phanariot rule, and the first Phanariot ruler, Nicolae Mavrocordat, was
    killed by the plague in 1730. But the epidemic with the highest impact started
    in the period 1813-1814 during Caragea’s rule, being called Caragea’s plague.
    Thus the Phanariot rule was metaphorically considered ominous in Romania’s
    history, given that it started and ended with a plague epidemic. Octavian Buda
    talked about the measures taken by the Wallachian authorities and the methods
    used to fight the epidemic.


    Octavian Buda: Quarantine
    measures were taken down the Danube River up to Bucharest, slum bailiffs were designated
    and the number of gravediggers was increased. They were assigned to take care
    of corpses and to administer the places where the victims were buried. The
    gravedigger’s guild became very active and they earned very high salaries.
    Their job was to gather the corpses and bury them. Gravediggers
    were recruited from among the people who were infected with the plague bacteria
    and had survived the infection, this being considered a very good anti-epidemic
    measure. It seems that the then rulers empirically became aware of the fact
    that the survivors of the plague had acquired some immunity. Historian Ion
    Ghica referred to the gravediggers in very negative terms. When they passed by
    the houses of rich people they tore rags from the plague-infected people to
    spread the infection. Even if they risked the death penalty, they killed the
    plague-infected people in the street or buried them alive to no longer take the
    pain to transport them to hospital. An interesting story is found in the report
    of a gravedigger: ‘today I gathered around 15 corpses which I loaded in the
    cart from the Dudesti plain, but I reached the destination with only 14 corpses
    as one of them suddenly stood up and ran for his life’.


    The
    people’s desperation could not be contained either by priests or by healers.
    They found relief in alcohol, the best friend of dismayed people. Octavian
    Buda: Given
    the lack of efficient treatments, alcohol consumed in large quantities helped
    people appease their angst. But restrictions were introduced in this respect
    too. There were healers who promised the plague-infected people healing if they
    touched a turtle. There was a hospital for treating the plague in Bucharest, in
    Dudesti, and there was also the Saint Vissarion hospital where a lazaretto was
    set up after the Venetian model, where plague-infected people were confined.


    The extreme
    frost of the winter of 1813-1814 abated the peak of the contagion but did not
    eradicate the disease. According to reports by the Austrian consul to Bucharest
    Fleischak von Hackenau, as many as 4,500 people died during Caragea’s plague.
    The plague was called Caragea’s Plague because it was brought by a person in
    the entourage of the prince who was eager to come to Bucharest to take power.
    This plague put an end to an epoch, ushering in the modern age.

  • The Phanariot Manuscript

    The Phanariot Manuscript

    Some historians like to think of their occupation as a precise science. Others, however, believe that history can be familiar, which would make it no less interesting. They also believe it can be made more relevant through literary procedures, by creating fiction that helps bring to life past eras, morays and mentalities. Historic fiction as a current holds historic novels to be as important for knowing the past as history based on figures and data.



    There are many literary productions, especially novels, based on authentic historical sources which make history exciting. Doina Rusti is a writer who has read hundreds of documents dating back to the 1770-1830 period, in order to write the newly published novel “The Phanariot Manuscript”. She uncovered there the story of a young man seeking his fortune in Bucharest. Many more lives and destinies, which weave in and out, are entangled in his story. One of the characters Doina Rusti features is Prince Alexandru Moruzi, who lived between 1750 and 1816.



    Doina Rusti: “I am interested in Moruzi, a Phanariot ruler. He was a prince with a very interesting life, who has left behind perhaps the largest number of documents. Moruzi was of Greek extraction and married a Romanian, he held the throne in Wallachia and Moldavia for several short stints, and what got my attention was the fact that he dictated his ideas almost daily. He left behind a whole lot of documents, allowing us to find out what life was like in the Phanariot period. He had a terrible fate, because he was imprisoned by the Turks and sent as a galley slave, working the oars. This character pervades the novel, and at some point I set aside the story of the main character in order to talk about Moruzi’s shadow that looms over Bucharest and became my main character.”



    Early 19th century Bucharest was an amalgam of languages and ethnic groups, a Babel tower. One of the major characters in the book was Delizorzo, an alien in that Wallachian melting pot.



    Doina Rusti: “Many of the Greeks who came here were in fact Aromanians, Vlachs or Megleno-Romanians, they knew Romanian well, and almost all of them had some connection to the Romanian world. In fact, this is why they were coming here in the first place, they knew Romanian and could get by. One of them was a Metropolitan bishop, the one who overthrew Metropolitan Filaret, and his name was preserved to this day. Filaret was overthrown by Dositei Filiti, known by the moniker of Delizorzo. This Greek came to the Romanian principalities, with a Greek cultural background. He was born of a Greek father and an Albanian mother, who was in fact Vlach. This combination was quite commonplace in the Balkans. Delizorzo was the nickname that the bishop got from the inhabitants of Bucharest, a name I left as such in the novel, and which I had a very hard time working out. It is a funny little name, half Turkish and half Greek. ‘Deli’ means ‘crazy’ in Turkish, but it was meant in a good way, as an endearment, so the name meant ‘crazy Zorzo’. ‘Zorzos’ was a common name in the Balkans, and it sounded so funny to Romanians that they turned it into a nickname. He was quite scatterbrained, like a nutty professor.”



    The young man who came to Bucharest to better his station was provided by Doina Rusti with the experiences of another character, a contemporary: “This character, which I found in a manuscript, amazed me by his concise story. He was a Vlach who came to Bucharest setting himself up for great things, who claimed he was a Greek, a foreigner, the son of Radu, a typically Romanian name. In the original manuscript he was called Ion, son of Radu. It was much better to pass for Greek than for Vlach. This Vlach who pretends to be Greek came to be the slave of Doicescu, a nobleman. His is a story of love, desperation and slavery. Ion, son of Radu, came to Bucharest, where he was mistaken for Leun, a character mentioned in many documents. I made the connection between Ion, son of Radu, and Leun not because this happened to Ion, but because the documents mentioning Leun are so numerous. Leun was a butler, by all accounts French, a lad of 17, who was serving Count Khasatov, the first Russian consul to Bucharest. This Leon, which even Prince Moruzi called ‘Leun’, disappeared one night. There are lots of written documents from the prince himself, ordering for ‘the knave Leun’ to be found, to the point where one starts wondering why the city guard was looking for him. We know he wore green garb, fairly off color, tight pants, so-called ‘German clothing’, and probably had a ponytail. I found a document in which I finally found out what Leun did. Moruzi himself said that when he was apprehended he was taken to a Bucharest trader, as the trader’s daughter was waiting for him. The boy was supposed to marry her, but he fled, which angered the entire city of Bucharest, because no one could comprehend how a servant could refuse such an honorable proposition. Which is why they were desperately seeking him, to get him married, and he had fled the arranged marriage. I transferred this story from a real document to my story of Ion, son of Radu. Ion comes to Bucharest to make it big, he did not want to join the Greek liberation army, led by General Lambros, he wanted to live his life, because Ion, son of Radu, was just 17 years old.”



    Historical documents can be as confusing as the reality they supposedly represent, just like literary works. They are the stories of people, ambiguous and incomplete.

  • Panait Istrati, the man with no political leanings

    Panait Istrati, the man with no political leanings

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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


  • “The Gypsies’ Camp”

    “The Gypsies’ Camp”

    The only epic in the Romanian language “Tiganiada or “The Gypsies Camp published in a final version by Jacques Byck between 1800 and 1812 reflects the enlightenment ideas of the Transylvanian School whose representative is Ion Budai Deleanu, the author of this epic.

    Despite the appearance of joviality, “The Gypsies Camp is one of the most important debates about the political situation of the Romanian medieval space seen from the perspective of the Enlightenment. Literary critic Paul Cernat will next talk about the emergence and significance of Ion Budai Deleanus “The Gypsies Camp.


    “The Gypsies Camp is more than a simple ‘game, as the author himself called it. It is a writing with marked political connotations. The epic includes an entire debate about the best Gypsy social structure, which also alludes to other social structures. It is an almost encoded text and a discussion on it from the perspective of the Enlightenment and even of the French Revolution, which Ion Budai-Deleanu masterfully renders in the form of a poem, would be more than interesting and instructive. The poem is one of the most important pieces of writing of the Transylvanian School and Id say that, at a literary level, it is by far one of the most significant. But there is more than literature in this poem. It is an extremely complex, very sophisticated ideological writing and it is incredible how, at a time when ‘the Romanian language was not very developed, someone could write such an epic that subtly and sophisticatedly debated the most advanced ideas of the time, the Enlightenment ideas which Ion Budai Deleanu knew very well. There are also esoteric and freemasonic elements in the poem, which is a genuine manifesto of the Transylvanian School, in a way. Unfortunately this manifesto did not have the echo it deserved. As you may know, ‘The Gypsies Camp was perceived well in a certain cultural age.



    The meditation on the power relations in the 15th century Romanian space to which Ion Budai Deleanu‘s epic invites us, also includes anti-feudal nuances. 4 centuries later, the Transylvanian School highlighted the ideas propagated by the French Revolution, against the feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges. The epic was properly perceived starting with the second half of the 19th century, during the Junimea literary society. Here is Paul Cernat with further details:



    “The social dimension is less visible, but the ideological one is very present. And so is the linguistic one, I dare say. In order to reach the social dimension you must first get past some allegoric layers. This heroic-comical epic takes us back to the time of Vlad the Impaler. Moreover, beyond this layer, beyond the utopia and the reference to Rabelais, there is a mental format derived from the society specific to the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. Ion Budai Deleanu was definitely a man of his time, which intended his writing to have an immediate political impact. It did not have the expected impact after all, but thats a different story. Still, it offers a pretty accurate image of the society of that time.



    The title of the work itself makes readers think about ancient epics. In the early 19th century, the author of The Gipsies Camp chose a comic note with cultural references to the ancient times, for linguistic reasons.



    “The very first songs make reference to the comic mini-epic ‘Batrachomyomachia or ‘The Frog-Mouse War by Homer, ‘Omer and ‘Omir, as he is very often referred to in the ‘Gypsies Camp. This option is possible in a comic mini-epic, due to language insufficiencies, to paraphrase writer Budai-Deleanu. The Romanian language, which was spoken at the time, was not ready, was not capable of absorbing the needed linguistic terms of a tragedy, of a dramatic epic written in a high register. So, the only version left was to write a popular, comic epic. It is well known that the epic has two possible registers: dramatic and comic. Budai-Deleanu has chosen the second version, not for the register of ‘The Iliad and ‘The Odyssey, but for the register used by Homer in the ‘Batrachomyomachia. However, apart from the comic style, he approached a series of very dramatic themes as well as a whole ideological debate on what form of government would be better. Beyond any doubt, it is a meditation on the way in which power corrupts and destroys a society, as happened in the case of the 15th century gypsy society. Actually, the option for the “Gypsies Camp also has its deeper, esoteric layers of meaning, stemming form ancient Egypt. We know gypsies were also called Egyptian, so all sorts of references are being made, to the pyramids, to the philosophy of the famous alchemist of Alexandria, Hermes Trismegistos, who stood on an equal footing with the Egyptian God Thot. This tends to be rather intricate, and since the notion of gypsies “covers the others as well, just as Budai Deleanu said, gypsies are actually the Romanians. Its a metaphor, an attempt of placing a larger category into abyss.



    Ion Budai Deleanus “Gypsies Camp is “a way of speaking, using an allegorical clue, about things that used to be of crucial importance for the 19th century Romanian society. The subtleties that one of the most prominent representatives of the Transylvanian School makes use of in his work are actually elements that make up a masterpiece with significant ideological implications.

  • Romania’s Arms Industry in the Communist Regime

    Romania’s Arms Industry in the Communist Regime

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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





  • Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej and Stalinism in Romania

    Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej and Stalinism in Romania

    Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, Romania’s first communist leader and one of the masterminds of the process of Sovietisation that started in 1945 under the control of the Red Army, died in 1965. He had been the pioneer of a new type of politics, the single, totalitarian, communist party politics. Historians view Dej as one of the executioners of Romanian democracy, a Comintern agent in the interwar years, who reached top-level positions at the end of WW2.



    Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej was born in 1901 into a family of workers, and married a working class girl as well. He worked as an electrician at the CFR Grivita works. At the age of 29 he joined the communist party, and between 1933 and 1944 he was jailed for his role in the 1933 strike at the Grivita works. Just ahead of Romania’s switching sides in the war, on August 23, 1944, Dej was released from prison and became the leader of the Romanian communist party. While in detention, in the 1940s, he shared the cell with Nicolae Ceausescu, the one who took over power after Dej died.



    Stefan Barlea met both these communist leaders, Dej and Ceausescu, and took advantage of these friendships. Interviewed in 2002 by Radio Romania’s Oral History Centre, Barlea admitted that the leadership type embodied by both Dej and Ceausescu could not have been possible in a different political system:



    “The system was built on the two leaders of the party and of the state during communism, Dej and Ceausescu. I believe that if it hadn’t been them, if it had been other people, better or worse than these two, the fundamental features of the system would have been the same. If you read the history of the 20th Century, you see that similar things happened in a lot of other countries. The mastermind of the economic, social and political construction in Romania was Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej. And he created Ceausescu as well. Towards the end of his life, Dej probably felt he had to sweeten people’s lives a little, to correct a few mistakes that had been made in the past, with or without foreign influences, so he must have died a little more at peace knowing that there were no more political prisoners in Romania and that there was some economic development. In my opinion, as far as politics was concerned, Dej was certain that the Party would find the best solution to carry on his work after he was gone. This is probably why, on his deathbed, he did not nominate anyone in particular to take his place. This is apparently a common feature of all dictators, because as far as I know Stalin did the same, and so did Lenin and Mao.”



    Dej was a devious and ruthless political leader, who did not hesitate to murder his opponents. Some claim that the death of the communist leader Stefan Foris in the 1940s was Dej’s doing. The death of Lucretiu Patrascanu, a known opponent of Dej, was without doubt planned by the latter, and so was the ousting of a competing group within the Communist Party, headed by Ana Pauker. Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej’s name is tied both to the Sovietisation of Romania and to the Romanian communists’ attempt to escape the tight control of the USSR in the early 1960s. Rumors had it that Dej was subject to radiation poisoning during a meeting in Moscow, as punishment for his attempt to take a distance from the USSR. Stefan Barlea:



    “We felt that Gheorghiu Dej was deeply involved in the economic affairs of the country. Not only that, but in 1945-1946 he held various top positions in important ministries. He was the senior vice-president of the government, and he chaired the committees for economic stability and economic reconstruction, and step by step he brought into the Cabinet a lot of members of the Party’s political bureau. He had a double control over the government, and at an important stage, between 1952 and 1955, he headed the government. At that time three key ministers resigned from the cabinet, the finance minister Vasile Luca, the foreign minister Ana Pauker and the interior minister Teohari Georgescu. This is how Gheorghiu Dej killed two birds in one stone, because he cleaned both the government and the party leadership of his opponents. He basically took over the helm of the government, nominating Petru Groza as president of the National Assembly.”



    Stefan Barlea says Dej made no nominations for who should succeed him, but that Nicolae Ceausescu was his favorite.


    “Everybody knew that Dej was ill, he had a bladder polyp and had undergone surgery, but they didn’t know his exact condition. Or maybe only the people closest to him did. About one month or so before he died, we had the last bureau meeting of the Central Committee of the Working Youth Union. This meeting was held in a small hall near his office, in the old building of the Central Committee. Ceausescu was extremely tired. We had drawn up a report, Trofin was senior secretary, and we started to say what we had done, as usual. Ceausescu listened for a short while, and then, in few words, he talked about the role of the youth organization and how important it was for its members to be aware that they are the party’s reserve pool. At that time we took his words to be just another speech. But right after Gheorghiu Dej died, we understood what he meant, he wanted support to become the head of the party. And all of us who worked in the youth organization knew, even before it was officially announced, that it would be Ceausescu who would replace Gheorghiu Dej. And this is how it happened.”



    Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej died on March 19, 1965 in Bucharest. Nicolae Ceausescu took his place. But 50 years ago, communist Romania only changed its leaders, not its governance style.

  • Armenian Refugees to Romania

    Armenian Refugees to Romania

    The 20th Century is known, among other things, as being the century of genocide. The first major genocide of the century was that perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians on its territory. As many as 1.5 million Armenians perished, about half of the total population. The official motivation of the Ottoman authorities was the fact that the Armenians had fraternized with the Russian army. In reality, however, the reasons were political, such as nationalism and the pan-Turanic ideology, economic – Greeks and Armenians held sway over trade and banking in the Ottoman Empire – as well as religious. It all started with men being seized and taken to work on roads and railroads, and there they were beaten and starved to death. On April 24, 1915, Talaat Pasha, Grand Vizier and Minister of Communications, issued an order for whole families to be deported.



    The luckiest of them managed to save themselves, some of them by finding their way to Romania, as we were told by historian Eduard Antonian. He told us that the history of Armenian refugees in Romania started in late 19th Century, after the genocide of 1895-1896:



    Eduard Antonian: “As many as 350,000 Armenians were massacred under the orders of Abdulhamid II, also known as the Red Sultan. As a result, a good part of the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire took refuge in Romania. To this day, about 10% of the Armenian community in Romania are descendants of the people who came here after the first genocide. The first refugees were still fairly well off, and they could leave the Ottoman Empire with some savings. Which is why they opened stores here, went on with their lives, and integrated perfectly in Romanian society.



    We asked Eduard Antonian how the people who got to Romania managed to escape:



    Eduard Antonian: “Those hapless people were helped even by the Arab and Turkish population, civilians. Some of them were just lucky. Many managed to bribe their way through the Ottoman bureaucracy, many got lucky thanks to foreign missions, because the US got heavily involved in the matter. They had a well organized embassy, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who later wrote his memoirs, in which he denounced the crimes perpetrated against Armenians, got involved in helping Armenians. There were also Danish and German Protestant missionaries who helped the people who got away.



    By historical estimates, around 20,000 Armenian refugees, about a quarter of which were orphaned, found shelter in Romania and were helped out by the fellow Armenians who were already living here. They came in several waves, mostly after the war was over. Eduard Antonian reconstructed the route taken by those who, for an entire century, were trying to escape a world of death and destruction:



    Eduard Antonian: “In Istanbul, as it happened with my grandfather and his children, they took a French boat and went to Constanta. The boat carried a few thousand orphans from the genocide. In Romania there was a well organised Armenian community, and a wealthy one. There were major figures of their time among them, such as Krikor Zambaccian, Grigore Trancu-Iasi, the Manisarian brothers, the biggest grain wholesalers in south-east Europe. The Union of Armenians was set up in 1919 for the specific purpose of helping the refugees, and its first president was Grigore Trancu-Iasi. When the refugees reached Constanta, the public was horrified. The newspaper Adevarul in 1915 had correspondents in Istanbul, who sent in reports on the genocide. The Romanian public opinion was already aware of what was happening to the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Armenad Manisarian, the second president of the Union of Armenians, went to Prime Minister Bratianu and asked what was to be done with the Armenian refugees. Bratianu asked him if he vouched for the refugees from all points of view. And Manisarian said yes. They got official approval, and all the refugees settled here, and later got citizenship. Refugees came here with the so-called Nansen passports, which were granted to stateless people, and were valid only one way. When the orphans got here, the Armenian community mobilized and bought several hectares in Strunga, near Iasi. They built an orphanage there, with a school and teaching staff, and this is where the orphans grew up. They learned trades and built a life for themselves, and many were adopted by Armenian families. Many of them opened shops, like my grand-grandfather, who opened a cobbler shop in Bucharest.



    In time, the trauma of war faded, but was never forgotten. Eduard Antonian told us that the Armenian refugees lived constantly between shocking memories and hope:



    Eduard Antonian: “The Armenian refugees from the Ottoman Empire never ceased to consider themselves anything other than Ottoman citizens, they were good citizens, they paid their taxes, took up military service, they spoke Turkish. The people of the community whose parents escaped genocide said that the latter spoke Turkish whenever they didnt want the children to know what they were saying. To this day, a few of the elders in the community still speak it. Unfortunately, in 1945 a part of them, hoodwinked by Soviet propaganda, repatriated to Armenia. They were told that they now had their own country. In 1991, when Armenia declared its independence, some of the children of those who went to Armenia with the Red Army came back to Romania.

  • The personality of a great Romanian politician, Lascar Catargiu

    The personality of a great Romanian politician, Lascar Catargiu

    Lascar Catargiu was born in 1823, at a time when his country had embarked on a process of modernisation and consolidation of its national identity. He held various local administration positions in Moldavia until 1859.



    Even though he was a Conservative, he was in favour of the union of Moldavia and Wallachia, and voted for the election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as ruler of the two countries together. He was among the most determined Romanian politicians. In coalition with the Liberals, he was also in favour of removing Cuza from power when his rule threatened the existence of the Romanian state. He was a member of the regency in 1866 which took over when Cuza was deposed, and he was also a staunch supporter of constitutional monarchy and of the foreign dynasty. He was a conciliatory spirit, and was a Conservative leader who provided balance in his party. Lascar Catargiu was one of the providential figures in 19th century Romania. According to historian Sorin Cristescu, in 1871 he saved Romania from destabilisation.



    Sorin Cristescu: “His role was totally special, he saved the rule of Carol I at a certain point. A dramatic moment was in March 1871, when he faced a very difficult situation. We can never know if Carol was determined to abdicate, but he intervened in force, while the Liberals staged a rally meant to compromise the German presence in Bucharest and the countrys ruler. He came to the ruler as a lieutenant regent, and told him that he would offer a strong government, which the country needed if he was to be appointed prime minister.



    What made Catargiu the leader of the Conservatives, a party full of strong personalities?



    Sorin Cristescu: “When Carol came to Romania, Catargiu was a respected figure, and then he became the first chairman of the Council of Ministers appointed by Carol on May 11, 1866. He served until 13 July 1866. How did he become the leader of the Conservatives? Lets look at how the Conservatives were, and we will see a party of strong personalities. They were highly educated people, and the best known among them were Petre P. Carp and Titu Maiorescu. We can see Lascar Catargiu as a man without pretences, either as a good speaker or as an intellectual. He was a modest man, but people felt at ease around him. If you heard a conversation between him and Petre P. Carp you could feel at a loss. Carp was always talking down to his fellow party members. This made Lascar Catargiu much liked by everyone. He was a modest man, which made everyone want him as a party boss and he never offended anyone.



    The government headed by Lascar Catargiu between 1871 and 1875 was the one that led Romania to independence.



    Sorin Cristescu: “That government was the first since the union of the Principalities to rule its entire four year term. That was unheard of. He was very efficient, he regulated the difficult financial situation. He was so effective that he easily won the elections. He exercised his independence by defying the Ottoman sultans order issued to Carol I that barred Romania from signing trade agreements with other states. He signed the trade agreement with Austria in 1875, showing that Romania was practically independent. He would have led for four more years, were it not for the August 1875 Christian revolt in Bosnia Herzegovina. In a few months, everyone understood that a war was looming between the Ottomans and the Russians, and that Romania would have to get involved. Regardless of the outcome of the war, 3 counties in the south of Bessarabia, Cahul, Ismail and Bolgrad, would have to be ceded. No one wanted to have his name associated with territorial concessions. The Conservatives surely did not want to, so they stepped down.



    “That, Your Majesty, Cannot Be is one of the best-known lines of the time. It belonged to Lascar Catargiu, and it shows determination, courage and unbending will when he was pushed to the edge, even by the Queen.



    Sorin Cristescu: “At the time he spoke these words, Catargiu was interior minister in the government led by another Conservative, General Ioan Emanoil Florescu. He was opposed to a plan by the Queen to have Crown Prince Ferdinand married to her lady in attendance Elena Vacarescu. He expressed best the position of an elite group that coalesced all of a sudden around a proposal. Ferdinands marriage to Elena Vacarescu did not split the Romanian nobility in two, not even, as Elena Vacarescu put it woefully, the closest relatives of their families. The way Lascar Catargiu put it was liked by everyone best.



    In 1899, at the age of 76, Lascar Catargiu died of a heart attack, the very day that King Carol I appointed him Prime Minister for the fourth time. In his obituary written by historian and philosopher Titu Maiorescu, the latter said: “He was honest and tireless in the minutiae of administration. These qualities and his courage were at the core of the authority he enjoyed within the Conservative Party.


  • Romania’s Balkan policy after World War Two

    Romania’s Balkan policy after World War Two

    Before 1940, Romania’s policy in the Balkans had been mainly focusing on cooperation and making alliances with various state entities. After World War 2, until the mid-1950s, Romania’s policy in the Balkans was controlled by the USSR and it was only after Stalin’s death in 1953 that Romania started its own initiatives in the region. The country tried to reach out beyond the barriers imposed by the post-war delineation in the Balkans, where Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania where under the communist grip, while Turkey and Greece had democratic regimes.



    Attempting to improve its international image, in the aftermath of its intervention against the anti-communist revolution in Hungary in 1956, the Soviet Union eased its grip granting some freedom to its satellite countries. In Romania’s case the Soviets took this process a step further by pulling their troops out of this territory in 1958. Romania wanted to make the most of this freedom and tried an economical and cultural rapprochement with its neighbours.



    In an interview with the Oral History Department, Valentin Lipatti, a former ambassador, essay-writer and translator, spoke about the initiative of denuclearizing the Balkans at that time.



    Valentin Lipatti: “Romania’s first major initiative after the war was Prime Minister Chivu Stoica’s 1957 proposal to denuclearize the Balkans. It was a major, daring initiative, which of course, slammed against a wall of rejection. Whereas Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were largely in favour of denuclearization or turning the Balkans into a region free of atomic bombs, NATO members Greece and Turkey stood against it, and the initiative, no matter how inspired, failed. It wasn’t completely buried, but kept dormant for a year or two. However, this idea of denuclearizing the Balkans got momentum and snowballed into a movement that eventually comprised other parts of the globe.”



    With the barrier between communism and democracy seemingly impossible to overcome, cultural cooperation proved to be the only way to cross it.



    Valentin Lipatti: “Concurrently with this governmental initiative, which proved difficult because it involved the military sector, and military issues were always the most prickly, a major cooperation process commenced in the Balkans, in the cultural field, consisting in exchanges in education, sciences and culture. But that was at non-governmental level only. And this kind of multilateral cooperation went on for years at this level, which was easier to accomplish and had only few obstacles. This is how a number of associations and organisations operated, such as the Balkan Medical Union, which had been founded between the two wars, the Balkan Union of Mathematicians as well as the younger International Association of South-eastern European Studies, set up in 1963. These professional associations and organisations maintained a sense of trust and cooperation in scientific areas and professional environments in the Balkans.”



    The Balkan Cooperation Committee, headed by Mihail Ghelmegeanu, was designed to coordinate cultural activities. However, its success was limited.



    Valentin Lipatti: “The Balkan Cooperation Committee, headed by Mihail Ghelmegeanu, was a non-governmental committee lobbying for peace. Such organisations were very much in fashion at that time. There was this idea, mainly coming from the Soviet Union, of holding world-level peace conferences, regional conferences for peace, against imperialism, and so on. In the Balkans, this Committee was set up, focusing on defending peace in the Balkans. It was a multilateral committee, but it did not have a large-scale activity. More important were those professional associations, of medical doctors, architects, archaeologists, geologists, scientists, historians, writers. Their efficiency was twofold. First, a specific cooperation project was established in a given profession, in the field of history, let’s say, or in the field of language studies, or in archaeology. It resulted in research studies, research activities, reviews, colloquia, a multilateral professional activity between the Balkan countries, between specialists from Balkan states. Thanks to this kind of cooperation, these professional circles maintained a climate of good neighbourhood, reliability, friendship and trust.”



    However, at a 1976 governmental meeting in Athens, focusing on economic and technical cooperation, the flaws of that kind of policy came to light.



    Valentin Lipatti: “The objective Romania was firmly pursuing, just like Yugoslavia, Turkey, and to a certain extent Greece, was to create some kind of follow-up. That is, to create an institutional framework, because one conference, a one-off event, good as it may be, doesn’t amount to much, people forget it. And in this respect, we had to face Bulgaria’s staunch opposition. Our Bulgarian friends claimed they had not been authorised to approve anything like this. Generally, a five-way consensus was quite easy to get. But it was enough for a country to veto, and the decision could not be approved. Bulgaria was voicing the Soviet Unions’ view, and at that time Moscow did not favour economic cooperation in the Balkans, which in time could get out of its control. It saw a common Balkan regional market as a threat, because Romania and Bulgaria were socialist countries, but Turkey, Greece, non-aligned Yugoslavia could take that cooperation to a direction the Soviet Union did not want it to go. So the Bulgarians were instructed to veto the follow-up. That blow below the belt dealt by the Bulgarians blocked the multilateral process for long, for quite a few years, actually.”



    The success of Romania’s policy in the Balkans during the communist years was limited. The clashing interests within the same bloc, as well as the different political regimes, were reasons enough to hinder Balkan regional cooperation.

  • Romania’s communists before communism

    Romania’s communists before communism

    Before the installation of the communist regime under Soviet occupation, the supporters of the communist ideology were seen as idealists. Although they made up a marginal group, their message was vocal because of the radical nature of the model they proposed. In Romania, communist ideas only appealed to a small public, and when communism became the official state ideology in Russia, they became even more marginal. Bolshevik Russia became Romanias main enemy, due both to the historical relations between the two countries and the aggressive policy of the Communist International, known as “Comintern. The supporters of communism in Romania before the installation of the communist regime were believed to be on the USSRs payroll and suspected of harbouring anti-Romanian sentiments.



    Historian Adrian Cioroianu was the coordinator of a book containing the biographies of some of the Romanian communist leaders before 1945, when communism came to power in this country. Names like Vasile Luca, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Petre Constantinescu Iasi, Ana Pauker, Nicolae Ceausescu and Petre Gheorghe were representative figures of the ruling power in Romania between 1945 and 1989. Adrian Cioroianu:



    “In the countries neighbouring the Soviet Union, the number of communists was relatively low, perhaps also because of the fears concerning Russian expansionism. However, there were also different nuances to consider. In Romania, for example, the Communist Party had been banned as early as 1924, while Czechoslovakia had a bigger proletariat and a social foundation for the development of left and far-left politics. When looking at this period, I believe it is essential to make the distinction, when it comes to public discourse, between truth based on historical documents and preconceived ideas. In Romania before the installation of the communist regime, there were about several thousand people who, for one reason or another, believed in the future of the type of left-wing politics that was being experimented in the Soviet Union. We should not make the mistake of judging the 1930s from what we know today. We must accept the idea that just like in the case of the far right and the local legionnaire movement, which attracted many young people, a number of people, from lawyers to workers, had left-wing sympathies. They believed that the model adopted by the Soviet Union could usher in a better future.



    Intellectuals, members of the middle classes, workers, all those who embraced the communist ideology did so for different reasons. For example, the Romanian intellectuals who applauded the Soviet Union were influenced by the West. Adrian Cioroianu explains:



    “Paradoxically, these were people who followed the developments in the West very closely. The number of communists in the West was growing at the time, and people like Lucretiu Patrascanu and Petre Constantinescu-Iasi joined the communist movement by becoming members of a French trade union, as was also the case with Petre Constantinescu-Iasi. Lucretiu Patrascanu became acquainted with the works of various Russian authors through French translations. It must have been a sensitive issue for a Romanian with leftist ideas in the 1930s to see the communist movement thrive in the West, especially in France, which was a focus of interest for many Romanians. Of course it was easy to make the mistake of thinking that the progressist groups in the West were open to what was going on in Moscow. In the USSR, the Soviet propaganda machine worked flawlessly. We now know that well-established intellectuals from France and Britain, as well as pre-Hitler Germany and Italy, who were taken in by it. The same happened in Romania, albeit on a smaller scale. Of course, were not talking about hundreds of thousands of people, not even tens of thousands. We should be aware, however, that we wont find any records with the members of the Romanian Communist Party, because this party had been banned in 1924. So we will never know their exact number. The intelligence service of the then regime wanted to make it look like there were few communists in Romania, keeping a close eye on them but playing down their importance. During the communist period, many claimed they had been members of the Communist Party during the ban, much more than there had actually been.



    Does the idealism of those who embraced the communist ideology make them exempt from any responsibility for what followed? Adrian Cioroianu:



    “What we have written about in this book is the story of people who became very famous. These are well-documented cases, and today we know that each of these people, with the exception of Petre Gheorghe, also played a part in the events that followed after August 23, 1944. We look at their activity in the 1930s, but we cannot avoid talking about what happened afterwards, we cannot deny that they benefited from the events of the 1930s. Its part of their official biographies, and genuine myths were created around their lives. One such example is Nicolae Ceausescu, perhaps the most spectacular case of them all. Historians are walking on thin ice trying to establish the truth, as their number was not very large indeed but it was by no means as small as we would like it to be. Were not talking here about only 800 people, as has been commonly believed, and neither about 1,000 people. Our research points to several thousands. Its difficult to say how many of them were socialists and how many communists. During their trials many of them denied any connection with the communist movement, only to state exactly the opposite when the communists came to power in the 1940s.



    The Romanians who had been communists before communism was officially instated in the country were compared to a messianic sect, a subversive organisation with mystical beliefs in spite of their atheism. History has proven that they knew how to be pragmatic as well when the time came.

  • The Trans-Dniestr War

    The Trans-Dniestr War

    The reforms initiated by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, known as perestroika and glasnost, in mid 1980s, have been to no avail for the Soviet Union. Its collapse in 1991 confirmed the bankruptcy of the system set up in 1917 following Lenins Bolshevik revolution. But the collapse of the Soviet Union has left room for armed conflicts. These conflicts were actually frozen or postponed although the Communist regime had intimated that brutal intervention had done away with the likelihood of conflicts being solved by armed intervention.



    The demise of the old Soviet system also meant rethinking the way in which Russia, the former USSRs successor, could maintain its leverage on the former Soviet republics. One of the methods was to encourage separatist movements. The first on the Kremlins list were Georgia and Moldova, Ukraine being considered still a faithful state to Moscow. As early as 1990, the self-styled republics of South Ossetia and Abhazia proclaimed their independence from Georgia while in Moldova there emerged the Trans-Dniester republic or Transdniester and Gagauzia.



    The proclamation of the Moldovan republic of Dniester on September 1990 after the Republic of Moldova had proclaimed its sovereignty on June 23rd 1990 opened the path for separatist movements. According to the 1989 census, in Trans-Dniester there lived 39.9% Moldovans, 28.3% Ukrainians, 25.4% Russians and 1.9% Bulgarians. After Moldova became a UN member state, on March 2nd 1992, the Moldovan president Mircea Snegur authorized the military intervention against the rebel forces, after they had attacked police stations loyal to Chisinau on the eastern bank of the Dniester river and in Tiraspol. The rebels, backed by the Soviet troops of the 14th army, consolidated their control on a large part of the disputed region. The outnumbered Moldovan army has never been able to regain control over Transniestr, despite mediations in the past 25 years.



    Mircea Druc was the Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova between May 25th 1990 and May 28th 1991. When the conflict broke out, he was one of the leaders of the opposition Christian – Democratic Popular Front, in the opposition. In his opinion, the war in Transdniestr could not have been avoided:



    I believe that the Russian – Romanian war on the Dniestr in 1992 was impossible to avoid, no matter how hard we would try now to put the blame on one party or another. The misfortune, for Besserabians and for those living on the left bank of Dniestr, was that the arsenals and the warehouses of weapons evacuated by the Soviet army from the countries of the former socialist camp had been left across the Dniestr. So, the place was full of armament from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria. The armament there was worth over 4 billion dollars. In 1989 and 1990, with Gorbachevs perestroika in full swing, the conflict between Tiraspol and Chisinau started, as Tiraspol, alongside other anti-Gorbachev and anti-perestroika forces could not admit that the Soviet Union was falling apart. They refused the simple truth that all empires disappear sooner of later. Until August 1991 they kept hoping they could save the Soviet Union. But all their hopes were scattered on December 5th 1991, when the presidents of Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine signed the document that made the USSRs dismantling official. According to Mircea Druc, the war also had a strong economic motivation that was as important as the geo-strategic one. Mircea Druc:



    “And then, something quite predictable happened. The interest groups in Chisinau were facing the dilemma of how to divide the Soviet heritage, the earnings of the collective farms (kolkhoz) and of the state-owned farms (sovkhoz) for which people living between rivers Niester and Prut had been working so hard, for over 50 years. In Transdniester, they used to talk about it in trivial terms, saying they would not allow the stupid Moldovans and the Fascist Romanians lay their hands on the 4 billion dollars. They used to curse Boris Eltin and other Russian leaders who had decided that everything on the territory of a former Soviet socialist republic was the property of that republic. They were determined not to share anything with anyone. So they decided to resist it. If it wasnt for this money, Chisinau and Tiraspol wouldnt have fought that hard and a third force would not have stepped in. I wonder why the Soviet troops and the center did not treat us, the Romanians from Bessarabia, the same way they treated the Baltic ‘aristocrats? In my opinion, they knew Romanians from Bessarabia were very determined and that bloodshed would be inevitable. But when there was an opportunity for Snegur to be given the 4 billions, they said no. Even Eltins democrats in Moscow decided to intervene with the 14th army. Eventually we found out that the entire arsenal had been sold and that Rutkoi and Cernomardin had decided where the money should go. 23 years later, theres nothing left, nothing to be shared.



    The conflict left 600 people dead on both sides. In 1992, following a convention on the conflicts peaceful resolution, signed by the Republic of Moldova and Russia, a status-quo was decided, which in fact meant a continuation of the conflict between Chisinau and Tiraspol.



  • The “snake pit” of the Jilava communist prison

    The “snake pit” of the Jilava communist prison

    Jilava Penitentiary was built on the site of Fort 13, which used to form part of a system of fortifications built during the reign of the first king of Romania, Carol I, in late 19th century, to defend the city of Bucharest. To consolidate its rule, the communist government installed by the Soviets in 1945 carried out massive arrests among the democratic opposition and anyone who opposed them.



    Jilava became a transit prison where the detainees were interrogated and processed before being sent to other penitentiaries to serve their sentence. The people who were detained in Jilava have dreadful memories of this place. The violent treatment began as soon as they entered the gates of the prison: they had to walk between two lines of guards with clubs, leather thongs or rubber batons that hit them indiscriminately as they walked. Then came the body and clothing search. They were then put into overcrowded cells, some of them holding up of 200 people, where they were introduced to the “snake pit, the place between the floor and the line of bunks, where they were supposed to sleep, which hardly qualifies as a place of rest. It was called the “snake pit because of the way in which you had to crawl to get in there.



    Constantin Ion was a high school student in 1949, when he was arrested. He was in a student organisation that printed and distributed anti-communist fliers. His recollections of the time he spent in Jilava were recorded by Radio Romanias Centre for Oral History in 2000:



    “I remember they put me in a room in Jilava with 160 others during the summer months, June, July and August. I remember those bunks, the shelves we were supposed to sleep on. We lied on them crammed into each other, so tight that we could only turn all at once. The rule was that the latest arrivals would sleep in the snake pit, on the cement floor. In that room, so cramped, even though we werent fed much, and it was just a tepid weak soup, you still had to use the toilet. We had a wooden bucket that eventually filled and spilled its contents on the floor. Many of us even had to sleep in urine. There was an epidemic of boils among us, and the people who were sleeping on the bunks, during the night, tired and tormented, fell on top of the people on the floor, who were also infested with all sorts of things. They cried out, it hurt when someone fell on top of you.



    Alexandru Marinescu of Nucsoara was arrested in 1949 for owning guns. Nucsoara was at the core of the most famous anti-communist resistance group, known as the Arsenescu-Arnautoiu group. Marinescu was a high school student at the time. He also has a vivid recollection of what it was like to sleep in the “snake pit:



    “You slept under the bunk, and in the winter of 1950 or 1951, there were often 15 or 20 people who could not find room to lie down. You couldnt fit a needle in there. These people, the 15 or 20 people who didnt have room to sleep, gathered on one side of the room clumped together. When the guards changed, we would wake up another group of 15 or 20 people and swap places with them so that we could also get some sleep. There was no such thing as a mattress, there were no blankets, no bed sheets, just the naked wood. In some of the rooms they sometimes had some raggedy floor spreads. Our hips were like a draft oxs neck, blackened and horny, a scaly layer of skin. The rule in each room was that if you were new to the room, even if you came from another prison with 5 or 10 years behind it, you were still considered the newcomer. The new person would start with the worst conditions there were, the worst place to sleep. After I came to the room, there was a period of time when they were bringing in less people, so I had room to sleep, next to the slop bucket. If I slept on the right side, I slept facing the bucket, and in the night you risked being sprayed on the face by the ones using the bucket. So I was sleeping on the left side, with my back to the bucket, straight on the concrete.



    Ion Preda, who was arrested in 1949 for providing food to the Arnautoiu group, tells a similar story from the “snake pit:



    “They put us into the ‘snake pit, and there was no place to lay your head. We put our boots under our heads, we had no covers, nothing, not even a floor spread. We slept straight on the cement. Some people had eczemas all over, others couldnt breathe, or had swollen eyes… and we only had a tiny window. When it got too rowdy in the cell, the guard used to close the window as punishment. We ran out of air, we were smothering. And they left us like that for about half an hour, then opened the window. Thats what was happening at Jilava.



    The “snake pit was just one of many constant humiliations that dehumanised the inmates, crushing their respect for self and others.

  • The Greek Political Diaspora in Communist Romania

    The Greek Political Diaspora in Communist Romania

    Between 1946 and 1949, Greece suffered a crippling civil war between the USSR-sponsored communist guerrillas and Greek government forces. The confrontation started with an attack by communist rebels in the Yugoslav-Albanian border area. The communists wanted to topple the monarchy, which they deemed Fascist, in order to set up a socialist republic. However, the conflict between Stalin and Tito resulted in the defeat of the Greek communists, which turned to Moscow for support. Tito closed his borders with Greece, and the communist guerrillas were cut off from support. Albania, under Tito’s influence at the time, also denied the communists support. Until September 1949, the communist fighters either gave themselves up or crossed into Albania, most of them going on to other Soviet bloc and communist countries.



    Romania became the favorite destination for these refugees. 200,000 Greek political asylum seekers got to socialist countries, and of them 11,500 to 12,000 ended up in Romania including the former fighters and their families. Romania got the largest number of children, around 5,700, starting with 1948, of a total of around 28,000 Greek children who were taken by their families to 7 communist states. The largest colony of Greek children was in Sinaia, between 1948 and 1953. In the hotels of that resort, 1,700 children resided, joined by a few thousand North Korean children who fled the war of 1950-1953.



    Romania already had a population of Greeks settled over some time. When Romania fell into the Soviet sphere, it was a favorite destination of Yugoslavs and Albanians fleeing their country. Historian Radu Tudorancea, from the Nicolae Iorga History Institute in Bucharest, told us how the Greek communists were received in Romania.



    Radu Tudorancea: “A part of the former Greek fighters who fled the country at the end of the civil war came to Romania. They got support from the authorities in Bucharest; the wounded got treatment, the others got support in order to adapt to the country and integrate into society. The fact that Romania already had a sizable Greek community eased the process, especially since, beginning in 1948, the pro-communist faction of the Greek community had managed, with support from the Romanian authorities, to take control of the community and form a new entity, called the Hellenic Patriotic Union. The few supporters of the royalist cause in Romania got sidelined.”



    The Romanian communist government lavished generous support on the former communist fighters. The support was across the board, from living accommodations to medical care to stipends. As any other country taken over by the Soviets, Romania manipulated the public information on those people.



    Here is Radu Tudorancea with details: “The Greek civil war was closely followed in Romania, and was written on extensively in the party newspapers. As expected, this took the form of an acid campaign, coordinated by the party, which leaned heavily towards the cause of the Greek communist ‘partisans’, as they were known, denigrating heavily the Anglo-American side and its role in the Greek civil war. Greek communist leader Nikos Zahariadis had sent to Romania as early as January 1948 one Lefteris Apostolou, which was dubbed representative of the so-called democratic government of Greece. He was a liaison with the Romanian authorities, channeled aid from the People’s Republic of Romania to the guerrillas, helping the wounded and preparing the colonies of Greek children that were to come to Romania. The Romanian authorities earmarked significant sums of money for migrant support from Greece. The financial support was secured through a sizable budget for the Greek Communist Party. For 1951 alone, $300,000 were secured, on top of regular expenses. These amounts only grew. In 1952, around $750,000 were earmarked for publishing houses, in addition to many other expenses. The steering committee of the Greek Communist Party was moved to Bucharest, and many in the leadership were given luxury houses in the top party neighborhood, in various secret villas.”



    The Greek refugees never gave up on the struggle in their country. They believed their defeat to be temporary, and they were ready to go back and take up the fight once again, if the international situation became favorable. Romania became a base for Greek communist action, and they were trained by Greek ideologues with training in Moscow behind them.



    Here is Radu Tudorancea once again: “Expecting a resumption of the struggle in Greece, the activists in Romania kept the former guerrillas in a state of readiness. In 1950, a school was set up in Breaza, a political school with teachers like Nikos Zahariadis and Vasilis Bartsiotas. That entity was supposed to train underground agents in Greece to support the communist cause. Between 1952 and 1955, over 120 such activists and agents were sent to Greece clandestinely, and many of them were seized by the Greek police.”



    Stalin’s death and the end of Sovietization in Romania put an end to the Greek communist movement in the country. Once Romania and Greece normalized relations, the armed struggle effectively came to an end.