Radio România Internațional

Category: The History Show

  • Romanian Economy During the Reign of King Carol the 1st

    Romanian Economy During the Reign of King Carol the 1st

    Carol I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the ruling prince of the United Romanian Principalities starting 1867 and the first king of Romania as of May 10, 1881, is still described as the most important state personality in Romanian history. During his 48-year reign, Romania gained its independence and became a constitutional monarchy: at that time, the foundation was also laid for the modern Romanian state. In terms of domestic policy, Carol I tried to strike a balance between various factors, favoring a climate of discipline and rigor, two qualities he acquired tanks to his Prussian-style upbringing, in a family with a strong dynastic tradition.



    King Carol I gave his support for all economic structures to become modern, in a country whose political structures were still very much backward halfway through the 19th century. The capital city Bucharest itself resembled a country-side town. Yet Carol’s disciplined mind, a feature typical of all Germanic monarchs, as well as his experience as a King, were instrumental to speeding up Romania’s modernization. A politically astute personality, the King succeeded in having both liberal and conservative governments come to power, so that none of the two sides could have the possibility to undermine his authority.



    Immediately after his arrival in the country, Carol I introduced an extremely important monetary reform, bringing the Leu on the money market. Although at that time it had not been an independent country, Romania managed to impose its own currency in 1867. Initially, only the metal coin was issued. Later, however, once Romania’s National Bank was founded, and also with the boost of private capital, in 1880 bank notes had also started being issued. With the help of the National Bank, but also through private capital, by early 20th century no less than 24 banks had been founded, while by 1914 an additional 210 were founded in Romania.



    During the reign of Carol I, Romanian economy was predominantly agrarian. More than half of the peasants held plots of farmland with a surface area smaller than 5 hectares, while between 5 and 10 hectares of farmland were required for the support of one single family. It was a time of uncertainty for Romanian agriculture, so the so-called “people’s banks” were established. Such banks developed mainly because their managers were locals who were familiar with the circumstances of the local economy, and knew those who would take out loans. Most of the agricultural production was provided by the great landowners and for its most part was export-bound.



    During the first forty years of Carol I’s reign, the country’s farming production grew six times. Agriculture provided a strong foundation for the entire economy, which had a strong bearing on Romanian industry. Crude oil extraction and refining saw a strong progress. Textile and foodstuff factories doubled their numbers. The influence of foreign capital on Romanian industry, however, led to the country’s industrial potential being clustered in certain regions, while other regions across the country were lagging behind. The Germans controlled 35% of the industry; following them were the British with 25%, the Dutch with 13%, the French with 10% and the Americans with 5.5%. The Romanian capital accounted for a meagre 5.5%. Between 1903 and 1914, most of the companies were founded, which later on would dominate Romania’s oil industry until the outset of the Second World War. Associate Professor Alin Ciupala, of the University of Bucharest’s History Faculty, has the details.



    “During the reign of Carol I, Romanian economy remained an agrarian one, just as it used to be until 1866 and just as it would be in the interwar period. Yet a certain amount of change did occur. Late into the 19th century, a couple of resources were being put to good use, such as the crude oil deposits. For Romania, crude oil was an extraordinary opportunity and shortly afterwards the world’s biggest oil companies started doing business in Romania. Crude oil revitalized the country’s economy, since it was exploited by joint venture companies the Romanian state had set up with foreign companies. Profits, therefore, soon started coming in and the Romanian Government used the money primarily to develop infrastructure. Also, in 1887, the first important industry-boosting law was promulgated, aimed at stepping up the development of that sector of Romanian economy. However, as I said before, despite the fact that lots of new elements would appear until the First World War, Romanian economy was a predominantly agrarian one, and the main revenues were provided by the exploitation of the farmland. That also posed a big social problem, since the Romanian village was dominated by the existence of the large-scale land ownership. There were no small-time landowners, capable of representing the biggest part of land ownership, quite the contrary — in Romania there were big farmland estates, and that led to a rather low rate of agricultural progress. There was little to no interest in investing significant amounts of money in the development of agriculture, as long as big landowners were in need of cheap workforce.”



    Quite unlike industrialized European states, urban areas could not absorb Romania’s large rural population given the country’s still weak industry. So strong was the mounting social pressure that in 1907 an unprecedented social movement broke out. The peasants’ uprising got the whole world witness the failures of King Carol I’st reign, within a year since the opening of the 1906 Jubilee Exhibition, which was meant to showcase Romania’s economic progress during King Carol I’s 40-year reign.




  • The Vienna Arbitration

    The Vienna Arbitration

    In the 1940s Romania promoted a foreign policy that was supposed to guarantee the integrity of its borders. As of 1938 Germany stood out as the European power calling the shots in Europe, while France and Great Britain adopted a more defensive policy. Therefore Romania decided to come closer to Germany, the only country that could guarantee its borders. However, the rapprochement took place later, after France capitulated in the summer of 1940. Hungary and Bulgaria, Germany’s allies, that had territorial claims over Romania, took advantage of their favorable status and asked to have their claims met. Gheorghe Barbul participated in the negotiations following which Romania had to concede northern Transylvania to Hungary in the summer of 1940. He recalled in an interview given in 1995 to the Center for Oral History of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation the circumstances of Romania’s rapprochement to Germany:



    “I remember Hitler’s letter dated July 15, 1940, which was an answer to a letter sent by King Carol in which he offered Germany Romania’s friendship. It writes about territorial problems saying that Romania, at a time when it had a position of strength, annexed territories from its neighbors. Having lost that position, Hitler found it normal to negotiate an arrangement between Romania and Hungary, on the one hand, and between Romania and Bulgaria on the other. Romania had already lost Bessarabia. Hitler said that if an agreement was not reached, Germany would no longer show interest in what was going on in southeastern Europe, since Germany was strong enough to not need Romania’s oil. It was a kind of ultimatum, in the sense that Romania would remain on its own if it didn’t want to negotiate with its neighbors. And the threats from Russia, Hungary and Bulgaria were looming.”



    Under these circumstances, Romania showed willingness to start negotiations with Hungary and Bulgaria. On August 16, 1940 negotiations were started in Turnu Severin (in the southern county of Mehedinti) between Romania and Hungary. The Hungarian delegation asked the Romanian delegation led by Valer Pop to concede a territory of 69 thousand square kilometers, with a population of 3.9 million inhabitants. The secretary of the Romanian delegation, Gheorghe Barbul, recalls the atmosphere during the talks:



    “We were on a ship anchored in the port of Turnu Severin and were heading for the town hall headquarters or the prefect’s office to meet with the Hungarian delegation led by Count Hory. Talks lasted for 3 or 4 days, if I’m not mistaken. Each day was the same. The Hungarians would ask: What territories are you willing to surrender? To which Valer Pop, the head of the Romanian delegation, would give the same answer: it’s not a territorial dispute between Romania and Hungary, it’s rather a matter of nationalities. We surrender as much territory as needed for the exchange of population that could be made between Romania and Hungary. That is the Hungarians in central Transylvania, in Targu Mures or elsewhere would be transferred to the western Romanian border, in Crisana, and the Romanians would go to those territories from where the Hungarians left. The Hungarians would not accept Romania’s proposal and talks were protracted without an agreement being reached. Then the talks in Targu Mures were suspended with no positive result being obtained”.



    Unhappy with the failure of the meeting, Hungary called on Germany and Italy to intervene to settle the conflict. On August 26, 1940, the German and Italian foreign ministers, Ribbentrop and Ciano, asked the two countries to come at a mediation meeting. Convened in Vienna, for the meeting with the Hungarian representatives, Romania was represented in the negotiations by its then foreign minister, Mihail Manoilescu. Gheorghe Barbul is back at the microphone with more:



    “This was not a negotiation. Manoilescu, who headed the Romanian delegation, was presented with the new map of Romania. Seeing it, Manoilescu fainted and he needed medical care. There was nothing else to be done than informing the authorities in Bucharest, who hesitated to approve the new map. It took quite a while for the approval from Bucharest to reach Vienna. Meanwhile the Germans exerted a lot of pressure saying that there was an understanding between the Soviets and Hungarians, according to which, in case of failed negotiations in Vienna, they would undertake common military action against Romania. The rumor went that the Russians would go as far as the eastern Carpathians and the Hungarians would go deep into the heart of Transylvania. On August 24th the Germans had already told Romania that Soviet troops had been deployed on the Prut River. That seemed to be true, but not even today could one surely tell whether it was just blackmail or the mere truth”.



    Irritated by the Romanians’ refusal to settle the conflict, Ribbentrop and Ciano threatened Manoilescu that a potential new refusal would have very serious consequences for Romania. The Crown Council convened in Bucharest and the participants gave 19 votes for and 10 against the arbitration of the Axis. The next day, at the Belvedere Palace, the 4 delegations concluded the arbitration act under which Hungary was granted the northern half of Transylvania. 4 years later, following tougher negotiations, northern Transylvania was returned to Romania.


  • The student Press in Communist Romania – The “Amfiteatru” Magazine

    The student Press in Communist Romania – The “Amfiteatru” Magazine

    A propaganda instrument of the Communist regime, the press was its top priority. As a rule, the press was associated with censorship. The General Press and Print Department was charged with controlling and supervising any piece of information targeting the public at large and was subordinated to the Romanian Communist Party’s Central Committee. Despite strict control, there were exceptions from the party’s general policy, which were not able however to weaken the regime. The Communist regime’s obsession was so big, that one of the exceptions grabbed more attention than necessary, given the measures taken against it.



    Constantin Dumitru was an editor-in-chief with the student’s magazine “Amfiteatru” published by the Union of the Romanian Communist Students’ Associations. He recalls how the Communists banned an issue of the magazine he coordinated because of certain poems written by poet Ana Blandiana, which were considered an attack against the regime.



    ”It was December 1984. When reading Ana Blandiana’s poems, I obviously had a certain reflex and I told myself, this cannot be published. But then I wondered, why shouldn’t it? So I okayed them for print. I took the magazine to the Romanian Communist Students’ Association, because it wasn’t us who gave the print approval. After the Press Directorate was dismantled, the approval was given by the central bodies that controlled the publications, namely the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Union and the Council of the Romanian Communist Students’ Association. We, the editors in chief and deputy editors in chief, would approve the publication of each article in part. However, further approval by a higher authority was required, because they didn’t trust us. Another comrade had to check everything. I was the deputy editor in chief, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Union and a member of the Communist Youth Council, because, let’s be honest, one could not be editor in chief unless one was a member of the nomenklatura. Constanţa Buzea, poet Adrian Paunescu’s first wife, was the head of the poetry department. And all she did was to approve the publication. Grigore Arbore was in charge with the respective issue, but I made the decision.”



    “Amfiteatru” had a monthly circulation of 7,000 copies, of which 3,000 were distributed in kiosks, 1,000 went to subscribers and another 3,000, paid for by the Union of the Communist Students’ Associations of Romania, were distributed to halls. Constantin Dumitru recalls how the scandal started:



    ”I went to the Nifon attic to visit a friend of mine, a fine artist, to brag about it. I just couldn’t help myself. So I took the galley proof with me, went to him and said ‘Look what I’ve done!’ I had no idea he was working for the Securitate. In a way I reported myself. That’s why they kicked me out. For having bragged I did it. What happened next was easy to predict. I was kicked out from all organisations I was part of. Meetings were held in my absence for this particular purpose. I found about them from the Free Europe radio station. Then, on January 15, 1985 I was fired. I was unemployed for about three months. Then I was hired by the Labour Protection magazine, against my will. My wife, pregnant at the time, was fired as well, to make her pay too for what I had done. After all, we had a contract and I violated it. But I did not complain then and I don’t complain now. I had a big salary, my own driver and secretary, all of these just to show respect to comrade Ceausescu and I still wasn’t showing him enough respect. It was at that time that I stopped looking up to politicians.”



    As officially there could be no unemployment back in those days, Constantin Dumitru was given a job with a magazine specializing in industrial labour safety, but not in a management position. We asked him about the consequences of banning that issue of “Amfiteatru” magazine:



    “Back in the day, photocopying was not for everyone, as it is now, you needed a lot of official passes for it. Copying machines of any kind were closely monitored. One of the greatest shocks I had was when a political police officer told me years later that those poems were copied five or six thousand times in Romania back then. In a manner of speaking, it made up an entire regular issue of the magazine, in fact it was double the issue of the magazine. And if so many Securitate officers were writing so many reports, there is no way Radio Free Europe wouldn’t catch on, and so those poems were broadcast on Radio Free Europe after I got dismissed. Not before that, though. The communists made a mistake, in a way. If they hadn’t made such a big deal out of it, it would have blown over. As that beautiful poem said, ‘I believe we are a vegetal people, who has ever seen a tree revolt?’ That poem was truly beautiful”.


    After 1989, Constantin Dumitru had the opportunity of meeting the poetess that got him fired:



    “As strange as that may sound, I didn’t know Ana Blandiana. I had published some of her pieces, but didn’t know her. No harm came to her, as opposed to me. The more so as she later published ‘Shallot the Tomcat’ at Ion Creanga Publishing House, which got more people fired. I was at the US Embassy in 1990, and writer Mircea Dinescu comes to me and said: ‘Hey, here’s your buddy, Ana Blandiana.’ He couldn’t believe I’d never met her. He went to Ana Blandiana and told her that I was the one that got her published in Amfiteatru. To which Ana Blandiana replied with a line that I truly admire: ‘That was his job!’ And I realized that she was right, that was my job. I did my job, and so did she, I suspect.”



    Constantin Dumitru learned a lesson that should be valuable for others too. When you tell the truth, no matter how inconvenient, no price is too small to pay, because the satisfaction is even greater.

  • Romanian Prisoners in the USSR after WWII

    Romanian Prisoners in the USSR after WWII

    The number of Romanian prisoners in the Soviet Union after WWII cannot be established exactly. Until August 23rd 1944, when Romania joined the United Nations coalition, almost 165 thousand Romanian soldiers were reported missing, most of them being prisoners. After August 23rd the Soviets disarmed and took as many as 100 thousand Romanian prisoners. According to Soviet official sources, which should be taken with a grain of salt, though, back in 1946 there were 50 thousand Romanian prisoners in the USSR.



    The stories of these people, most of whom got lost in the huge Soviet machinery, will probably never be known. Although the Soviet archives are open for consultation, the huge amount of documents makes the task of historians quite difficult. Romanian historians are trying to find out as much as possible. One of them, Vitalie Văratec, is the author of the book “Romanian Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union. Documents 1941-1956”. He told us about the difficulties he encountered when consulting the archives in Moscow.



    Vitalie Văratec: “Today we are not able to establish the exact number of Romanian prisoners. The documents of that period use such phrases as ‘people reported missing’. No one knows what happened to these people, how they disappeared, maybe they fell into a river or died when pushing through a barricade. One of the colleagues who worked with me on the book tried to make a list of people who died in the battle in Ţiganca village, and concluded that no one can establish for certain how many people died, how many were made prisoner and how many disappeared. They are listed as ‘missing people’ because no one knows what happened to them. And I’m talking about the soldiers who fought on the Prut River, not to mention those who fought on the Don River bend sector, on the Dnieper or in Stalingrad”.



    The status of the Romanian and other prisoners was interpreted according to the Soviet reading of the international law regarding the people captured in battles and conflicts:



    Vitalie Văratec: “The POWs in the Soviet Union had a different status, generally in line with the one established under the 1929 Geneva Convention. But there were also many differences, given that the Soviet Union promoted at political, official level the principle of class conflict and officers were subject to a different treatment. The Soviet Union also had different views on using prisoners of war as labour force. Although the Geneva Convention established that prisoners could not be used in the military industry or in whatever was related to the army’s interests, the Soviet Union disregarded it. Actually, the same happened in Nazi Germany.”



    The toughest conditions in labour camps had to do with the food. According to Vitalie Varatec, despite the tremendous amount of ideological pressure, Soviet physicians stated that the way prisoners were treated was below any acceptable standard.



    Vitalie Văratec: “A great number of prisoners died of starvation. Russian historians gave a lot of attention to the issue. A researcher based in Volgograd, Dr Sidorov, even published a comprehensive volume focusing on the progress of the food ration given to prisoners during the war. He revealed that the decisions taken in the second half of 1942 claimed the lives of thousands of people. The struggling economy left the Soviet state with no choice but purchase huge amounts of grains from the USA, so they could not provide the minimum ration for the prisoners. And as the number of POWs had grown dramatically after the Stalingrad and the Don River Bend battles, in the first months of 1943, an official medical examination was even requested. Despite that regime, which relied on fear of the proletarian anger, there were Soviet physicians who said that the official food rations could not provide for a normal life. According to their calculations, the number of calories prisoners received only ensured their survival if they made no effort whatsoever. And they were certainly not enough for people taken to work.”



    The prisoners in Soviet camps were leading a horrible life. But in spite of the gloomy prospects, people continued to hope:



    Vitalie Văratec: “I’ve come across statistical data on the number of dead, sick or ailing prisoners. There are also interesting data indicating the number of escapes. Apart from the names of the prisoners who managed to escape, there are also data about those who got caught. Some 3.2% of those who escaped got caught. Most of those who managed to escape were Romanians. I wondered why this was the case. An Italian researcher is trying to find an answer to this issue and speaks of a so-called Romanian mafia along the prisoners of war in the USSR. It is true that a first big group of over 30,000 prisoners, was made up of Romanians who had fought in Stalingrad. I’ve also found testimonies by civilians. An old woman said that in the morning, when she passed by the camp, on her way to school, she stopped near the barbed wire and looked at the prisoners who were standing in line. The Romanians were making the sign of the cross, and the Germans were pointing fingers at them and giggling. Then, I realized that the Romanians adjusted better than others to those harsh conditions, maybe thanks to the Orthodox spirit. Based on this principle, they found more understanding.”



    The generation of the Romanian prisoners experienced one of the most violent changes imposed on the Romanian society by the communist regime, against the backdrop of a humanitarian crisis cased by war. The suffering of Romanian prisoners and the losses that Romania suffered in the USSR, have never been compensated.

  • The 70th anniversary of the mass deportation of the Jews in Northern Transylvania

    The 70th anniversary of the mass deportation of the Jews in Northern Transylvania

    On 19th March 1944, Hitler ordered the occupation of Hungary by the German army and the creation of a new government led by the far right, fascist and anti-Semite Arrow Cross Party. Dubbed Operation Margarethe I, the plan was designed to prevent Hungary from leaving the Axis, following the example of Italy in 1943. A similar plan to occupy Romania, known under the code name of Margarethe II, was also in the possession of the German ambassador to Bucharest, Manfred von Killinger.



    The coming to power of the Arrow Cross Party led by Ferenc Szalasi brought about a massive wave of anti-Semite repression in Northern Transylvania. The region had been under Hungary’s control following the Second Vienna Award of August 30, 1940. Various estimates place the number of Jews who perished in Nazi death camps between May and October 1944 at between 150,000 and 200,000. Some 15,000 Jews were deported in the 1941-1944 period. In Hungary, hundreds of Jews never even made it to the extermination camps, as the Arrow Cross militiamen lined them up along the Danube and shot them in the head, their bodies disposed in the Danube.



    70 years have passed since the anti-Semite violence in Northern Transylvania. Back then, both the Romanian and the Hungarian civil population made efforts to shelter and protect the oppressed in Transylvania. Gheorghe Moldovan was only a student back in 1941. 56 years later he told the Centre for Oral History of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation about an organisation aimed at helping Jews created in the part of Transylvania which was still under Romanian administration:



    “After Northern Transylvania was ceded to Hungary, the house of father Macavei in Blaj became a safe heaven for refugees from Gherla. Among them were the history teacher Mihali Semproniu and his wife Natalia and the French teacher Gheorghe Pop. They were all good people. Shortly after my arrival there I learned that they were very well organised. They had an association for helping Jews in Northern Transylvania and Romania led by Mihali Semproniu. I acted as the middleman, letting people know when the time and place of the group’s meetings. At one point, I got in touch with four families: the Veiss family, the Grun family, the Holtzinger family and the Menden family. Of course there were many others. They would usually meet at Mihali’s house or in other locations”.



    The members of this association would often cross the border to keep in touch with anyone in need of help. Their small victories in Transylvania also helped shield Jews living in Romania against the laws of racial persecution, Gheorghe Moldovan recalls:



    “At the time father Macavei acted as our country’s representative in Budapest, since we had no embassy. He led a group of priests who gathered as much information as possible about the situation of Romanians and Jews in Northern Transylvania. There also was a Jew who often came to Blaj crossing the border illegally. I never knew his name. He would consult with Mihali and his men in order to grant safe passage to Jews fleeing Hungary all the way to Israel or to other free countries. The association operated from 1940 until 1948. There were quite a few Jews living in Blaj at the time and they even had a synagogue. They were all under the protection of the association. No harm ever came to them, they were never deported, not even sent to labour camps. They just minded their own business. Professor Mihali was particularly very active. Whenever anyone had a problem, he would step in and take the matters into his own hands. Together with father Macavei he protected everyone in Blaj and its surroundings against all kinds of oppression. No one got hurt. Their activity was widespread. Mihali’s wife would cross into Northern Transylvania to go to the family house in Gherla or go to Sangeorgiu de Padure for medical treatment, but in fact all this time she was in permanent contact with the Jews in Northern Transylvania, helping them too”.



    Gheorghe Moldovan had the rare opportunity to meet face to face with a prominent figure of the time, the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews who crossed the Romanian border.



    “First of all, he saved them from deportation. In other parts of the country Jews were clustered and sent behind enemy lines or to labour camps, though not to death camps. The Jews in Northern Transylvania, however, faced the threat of being sent to Auschwitz and other death camps. This man would arrange for the Jews to cross the border illegally. I met this man in person. He would often drop by, and he even thanked me personally. He seemed to match all the descriptions I’ve read about Wallenberg. He was a tall man, very special and very brave”.



    The ordeal of the Jews in Northern Transylvania would finally end on October 25, 1944, with the liberation of the region by Soviet and Romanian troops.

  • The reign of Constantin Brancoveanu

    The reign of Constantin Brancoveanu

    Around 15th of August 1714, Brancoveanu, who was 60 at the time, was beheaded together with his four sons and his aide Ianache Vacarescu, after 5 months of detention in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul. We asked Bogdan Murgescu, who teaches the history of the Ottoman Empire at the Faculty of History of the Bucharest University, to give us a general description of Constantin Brancoveanu’s reign:


    Bogdan Murgescu: “Constantin Brancoveanu was seen as a good administrator. We know of his attempts at fiscal reform and his efforts to keep a better account of public money. From a treasury record kept over a period of 10 years we find that he was very careful about how the money was spent. We also know that he was an economical man, so he increased both the treasury funds and his own wealth. The Turks referred to him as ‘the gold prince’ because he was believed to be very rich. Part of his wealth was in his own country, in the form of property and money, and another was deposited abroad, for example in Venice. He also built many churches and princely residences and supported the development of culture.”



    Constantin Brancoveanu was known to be a strict tax collector, something that earned him a lot of opposition. Bogdan Murgescu explains: “Taxes are not a popular thing in any society. Pressures were naturally exerted on taxpayers. We know from the treasure record that noblemen were sometimes even forced to take out loans in order to give money to the treasury. Apart from this, the stability ensured by his reign was very important, because the ruler generally did his best to prevent his country from being affected by the wars taking place around its borders. He wasn’t very successful in this respect in the first part of his reign, when his country saw an Austrian invasion. Later, however, Wallachia was generally spared foreign military intervention and therefore destruction, being able to enjoy relative prosperity.”



    Critics mainly blamed Brancoveanu for his so-called “Turkophilia”, at a time when Wallachia could have taken advantage of the aggressive anti-Ottoman policy initiated by Austria.



    Bogdan Murgescu once again: “Brancoveanu was criticised for many things, depending on what part of his reign we’re looking at, because his was a very long reign that lasted 25 years and 4 months. In the beginning, he was criticised for not joining the Christians against the Ottomans. He ascended to the throne at a time when Serban Cantacuzino was inclined to join forces with the Austrians, but then the Austrian army entered Wallachia. Brancoveanu opposed the Austrians and fought along the Ottomans. Another controversial moment was in 1711, when the metropolitan bishop and some of the noblemen plotted against the ruler and part of the army joined the Russians. Brancoveanu was again very cautious and basically kept Wallachia on the side of the Ottoman Empire.”



    Under the circumstances, Brancoveanu’s tragic death at the hands of the Turks is all the more surprising and, according to the historian Bogdan Murgescu, still somewhat of a mystery: “Brancoveanu’s execution presents us with a problem. He was deposed from the throne and then taken to Istanbul, kept in prison and tortured to reveal where he kept his wealth. His execution is difficult to understand from an Ottoman perspective. There is no clear indication as to what the Ottomans blamed him for, apart from the fact that he had accumulated a lot of wealth and had been maintaining ties with the neighbouring states, albeit not so close as to pose a threat to Ottoman dominance. We still don’t have a convincing explanation why the Ottomans decided to kill him and his entire family. Historical records point to no clear justification for this deed. There are records of the complaints made against him, including from Romanian noblemen, but his execution was an excessive measure even for Ottoman standards.”



    Romanian clerical voices spread the idea that Brancoveanu died as a martyr, because he would not renounce the Christian faith, but historians are sceptical about this explanation, says Bogdan Murgescu: “According to a common practice at the time, someone who was convicted to death but converted to Islam before his execution could be pardoned. However, it is hard to believe that Brancoveanu was executed merely because he was a Christian. The Turks appointed Stefan Cantacuzino, also a Christian, to take Brancoveanu’s place. And when Stefan Cantacuzino and his father were themselves executed, the Turks appointed Nicolae Mavrocordat, who was also a Christian. So there was never any question about changing the way in which Wallachia was governed.”



    Constantin Brancoveanu and his sons were canonised by the Romanian Orthodox Church in the early 1990s.


  • “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy of Social and Political Studies

    “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy of Social and Political Studies

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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


  • Exploring Underground Bucharest

    Exploring Underground Bucharest

    One of the most mysterious stories about Romania’s capital city Bucharest, is, in fact – just like in the case of any other big city – that of the city below the city, the story of underground Bucharest. Narrow streets, abandoned tunnels and labyrinths are only some of the elements that make up Bucharest’s secret history. Beyond any paranormal theories and the stories of those who believe in the existence of a secret city, the underground Bucharest truly exists. Exploring it can definitely teach one a lesson of Romanian history. In the Medieval period, wine producers and traders used to have their cellars down there. They were large enough to allow the access of carts for the loading and unloading of the traditional wine demijohns.



    In the 19th century, new constructions with evacuation tunnels emerged, such as the 1-kilometer long tunnel linking the Ghica Tei Palace, in north-eastern Bucharest, to the Plumbuita Monastery. Then there is the Schitu Magureanu church, in the northwestern side of the Cismigiu Park, in central Bucharest, which is connected by underground tunnels to the Kretzulescu Palace, located approximately 100 meters eastwards. However, the most famous underground area in Bucharest is the one under the Revolution Square, in central Bucharest.



    Augustin Ioan is a professor of History of Architecture at the ‘Ion Mincu’ University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest. He tells us why underground Bucharest can be more attractive than the city itself:



    ”The underground city is not as uninteresting as it may seem, for two main reasons. The first reason is that the underground world is a recurrent theme in Bucharest’s history. This obsession with underground passages and tunnels emerged from the people’s need to protect themselves from the Turkish invasion, given that Bucharest, just like all extra-Carpathian cities, was not fortified because the Ottomans did not allow it. So this obsession with having underground access ways was quite common in Bucharest’s history. Ruler Alexandru Ipsilanti is said to have built, in the late 18th century, a tunnel connecting the current Royal Residence on the Victoriei Boulevard to his palace, located in the area of today’s Parliament Palace. The Bucharest’s current mayor has recently said that if these tunnels truly exist, they should be presented to the public. At least some of these tunnels that people speak of, really existed. The Ghica Palace surely has underground passages for carriages. I have seen them myself. They were used to buy some time in case the Ottomans sent out an order for the ruler’s ousting.”



    The Romanian Revolution of 1989 gave people another reason to be fascinated with underground Bucharest. That period was characterized by a real psychosis, as the Romanian society had a hard time dealing with the radical changes that occurred. The fear of ‘terrorists’, those anonymous people who would bring death and then walk freely around the city did nothing but enhance the psychosis. Augustin Ioan knows stories recollected by witnesses as being their own:



    “The theme of the underground Bucharest reappeared during the 1989 Revolution, when terrorists were believed to be living below the city and just pop up in various places at the surface, when least expected. Some even pretended to know their exit spots, some hatchways in today’s Revolution Square. This story has never been confirmed. This obsession can be psychoanalyzed, and I myself have tried to analyze that. Public psychology works well in this situation and it can clearly be identified when it comes to the Parliament Palace. This continuous mapping of the building, of its underground is present in the public subconscious, just like the theme of master builder Manole. Mentions about the underground area below this building can be found in various texts and books. A lieutenant who used to work at the Parliament Palace, which, at the time, was known as the People’s House, said he had witnessed how a man was buried alive in concrete. Rumors about it spread after 1989. It’s stories like this that create urban myths.”



    The Parliament Palace is the most spectacular building in Bucharest, initially called the House of the Romanian Socialist Republic and then People’s House. Of course, it has its own share of mystery. Part of a group of journalists in the early 1990s, Augustin Ioan visited the underground levels of the building. Down there, architect Anda Stefan took some amazing photos, which she later presented in an exhibition:



    “There were some workers, in a basement, who were building a spa room and were just fixing the tiles. They were asked who hired them to do that. No one admitted they were following someone else’s orders. In an attempt to prove he knew nothing of it, the building’s administrator called some TV journalists to visit the building’s underground levels. The last level had no lights, except from those of the cameras. Some amazing photos were taken there and a fellow architect even used the camera flash. She did not see what she was photographing; she just took photos in the dark. After processing the film she saw pictures of something fabulous: inscriptions instigating to anarchy, Masonic symbols and other things like that, in a place where access is denied. What’s sure is that the place was full of garbage and needed to be cleaned.”



    Secret stories have always fascinated people more than every-day reality. And Bucharest has many secret stories and places that still need to be discovered.




  • Romania and the Greek Civil War (1946-1948)

    Romania and the Greek Civil War (1946-1948)

    Romania fell into the Soviet sphere of influence and was Sovietized, while Greece fell into the Anglo-American sphere, adopting democracy. Until 1941, Romania’s relations with Greece had been friendly, with the exception of the late 19th and early 20th century.



    When German troops transited Romania towards the Balkans, in the autumn of 1941, Greece condemned the violation of the 1934 protocols signed by the Balkan Entente (also called Balkan Pact), made up of Romania, Greece and Yugoslavia.



    Relations between Romania and Greece became even more complicated after 1945. Under Soviet occupation, Romania could not resume normal relations with Greece’s legitimate government because of pressure from the communist regime. In Greece, communist guerrillas would drive the country into a civil war between 1946 and 1949. Like other communist governments in countries under Soviet occupation, the Romanian communist authorities supported the Greek partisans.



    Apostolos Patelakis, a professor at the University of Thessalonica, told us about the events: “In the initial stage of the civil war, 1946-1947, the Greek communists were supported particularly by Tito and Stalin, who offered them moral and material support. Then followed Dimitrov’s Bulgaria and Enver Hoxha’s Albania. The Greek communists wanted to liberate Northern Greece and to create a free Greece, and asked socialist states to support them with everything they needed to achieve that lofty goal. In August 1947, representatives of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania meeting in the Slovenian resort of Bled, agreed to help morally and materially the Greek democratic army, calling on the governments of Romania and Hungary to collaborate better towards this end. At the conference of September 1947, held in Poland, with the aim of creating the Cominform, the issue of the civil war in Greece was also discussed. At that event, Gheorghiu-Dej made a proposal to make it mandatory for all parties to support the Greek Communist Party. Poland’s representative, Wladyslaw Gomulka made a proposal for the Greek issue to become emblematic for the fight of all communist parties and democratic forces.”



    The row and ensuing rift between Tito and Stalin affected the help offered by Socialist states to the Greek communists. Consequently, they moved their centre of coordination from Belgrade to Bucharest, where they set up an embassy of the communist government headed by General Markos, designating Lefteris Apostolou as ambassador. They also set up a radio station and a press agency.



    Apostolos Patelakis has further details: “On January 14th 1948, Lefteris Apostolou sent a 30-page report to the Romanian Communist Party, presenting the situation in Greece, the causes of the civil war, and asked diplomatically for Romania to set up the first friendly relations with the provisional government. I quote: ‘I must add that the help that the Romanian people has provided so far exceeds that provided by any other democratic country, and this is a fact, which neither my party, nor the Greek people will forget’ unquote. Of course, that was not true, the greatest support the Greeks had gotten had been from Yugoslavia, but it was a statement meant to flatter the Romanians. Between 1947 and 1948, the Romanian communists sent to Greece basic foods, clothing, medication, weaponry, such as light automatic weapons, machine guns, grenades, explosives, as well as horses and fuel. Starting in April 1948, while the war was in full swing, Romania started receiving thousands of Greek children, as well as hundreds of ill and wounded partisans.”



    The agreements between the Soviets and the Britons were to decide the fate of the Greek communists, and the fate of anti-communist partisans in Romania. It was a simple bargain: Stalin would give up supporting communist guerrillas, while Churchill would not encourage a policy of obstructing the communist regime in Romania, a policy pursued by the Romanian king and the democratic political parties.



    Apostolos Patelakis: “When the Greek political migrants came here, in 1948, first the children arrived, then in 1949 the adults, and they felt much better here than in other countries. They got sent to 7 countries. In some countries, like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Uzbekistan, the locals hadn’t even heard of Greeks, so the migrants found themselves in a totally foreign environment. In Romania there already were Greek communities, bilingual people, who could communicate with everyone, they felt closer to Greece. Some of the 28,000 children evacuated after the civil war went to the Democratic Republic of Germany. Imagine the shock those children had, the more so as the Germans had demanded older and more educated children, in order to reduce the problems they would have. At home they heard all the time stories of the Germans, the Fascists, and then they had to go there and hear the German language all around. Those who got to Romania were luckier, at least initially. The civil war was in northern Greece, in the mountains, where a lot of Aromanian families lived. Among these children were Aromanian children, who acted as translators. Those kids understood the language better, it was much easier for them to learn Romanian than for the others.”



    A lot of Greek communists took the road to exile leading to Romania. The policy of negotiation had prevailed against ideas and expectations.

  • People for sale in communist Romania

    People for sale in communist Romania

    With an economy ruined by war, by payment of war reparations to the Soviet Union and by systematic plundering, communist Romania was struggling to ensure minimum living standards for its people. The Securitate, the communist political police that had also undertaken an economic role, showed unlimited resourcefulness in procuring hard currency. And one of the ways to make money for the state was to sell people, more specifically those people who wished to leave Romania, especially members of the Jewish and German minorities. But in the 1970s and 1980s, such payments became a prerequisite for leaving Romania, and even ethnic Romanians who wished to flee the country could be “bought” by their relatives abroad.



    Germina Nagat is a researcher with the National Council for Studying the Archives of the Securitate. She told us how people began being sold by the communist authorities of the time:



    ”One of the files, the Foreign Intelligence Service file no. 2871, reports an incident that I believe could be a starting point in our efforts to understand how it all began. In May 1958, the Romanian Securitate office in London reported to Bucharest that arrangements had been made for renting an airplane to carry 11 Landrace pigs, purchased through a British dealer called Henry Jakober, code name Kraus. He might be the central figure in initiating and broadening the operative arrangement, as it was called, through which the Securitate took hundreds of thousands of people out of the country, most of them belonging to the ethnic Jewish and German communities. Born in 1900 in Moravia, in the former Habsburg Empire and having emigrated to England in the 1930s, a successful businessman and familiar with Romania since before WW1, Jakober was, in 1958, the manager of Oil Cakes & Doyle Seeds based in London. He had strong business relations with the Agriculture Ministry, the Ministry of Commerce and many companies in the People’s Republic of Romania. He understood Romanian well and even spoke it a little. In his discussions with his partners in Bucharest, most of them under cover officers working for the Securitate, he voiced anti-royalist views and great admiration for the political developments in Romania. At first, Mr. Jakober undertook to provide Romania not only with livestock, but also with genetic material from Denmark, and in May 1958 a first purchase of Landrace pigs is made.”



    The transition from buying farm animals to buying people was swift, owing much to the resilience of the businessman and to the cash-hungry Securitate:



    “One year after the first successful transaction, in May 1959, a report by Directorate 1 mentions that the British MP John Platz tried to persuade the Romanian authorities to allow a Jewish family to leave the country. At first, Jakober, who claimed to be talking on behalf of the British MP, was told that it was not a matter for the Ministry of Commerce to deal with, but that the contacts of those in charge would be provided to him. In September 1959, the Romanian citizen Beri Bernard (Marcu) sent a memo to the Interior Ministry, requesting the release from prison of his father, sentenced to forced labour in 1954 for hard currency trafficking. In this memo, Mr. Bernard offers to pay damages of 10,000 US dollars to the Romanian state, and explains that the money originates from his relatives abroad and will be paid in exchange for the release from prison and a visa for Israel. Bernard’s request was granted, and this seems to be the first visa sold for money, with the approval of high-level officials. What is important, in my opinion, was that the money also covered the release from prison.”



    The business potential of the deal was much greater, and the regime in Bucharest had no intention of missing on such an opportunity. Germina Nagat:



    “After successfully completing other imports of swine, poultry, cattle and other commodities, in April 1960 the Securitate decides on the following course of action, following talks with Mr. Jakober in London: upon the arrival of the first shipment of cattle or sheep into the country, Mentzer Marcu, Beri’s father, would get an exit visa, since Jakober would not get a single cent until Mentzer had gone. Then Beri Marcu’s relatives would be allowed to go after the shipment of Corriedale sheep arrived, while Beri would be allowed to go after the shipment of Zebu cattle arrived. The documents we quoted capture the moment when the bargaining per head of person started in earnest, as between true business people. The trade negotiations for cattle, sheep and swine were carried out at first concurrently with those for releasing people, and were recorded in the same documents. After farm animals, which included a few Collie puppies, the Securitate asked Jakober for feed, for milking machines, for machinery for the drug industry, and others as well. In November 1961, the basic rule was that all deals were cash-on-delivery only. The Romanian authorities, interested in special products and equally in money, issued without hesitation approvals for emigration, required for, quote, ‘re-establishing normal relations with Jakober, also with a view to ensuring future deals.’”



    Even though at some point the Bucharest authorities sought a way out of that business, it was much too tempting and lucrative to let go. 11,000 Deutschmarks was the fee in the 1980s for an ethnic German with higher education to be allowed to travel to West Germany. It is difficult to estimate the total amounts this business had generated. For ethnic Saxons alone, figures speak of 250,000 to as many as 400,000 people whose freedom was bought.


  • Recollections of Brancusi

    Recollections of Brancusi

    Constantin Brancusi is the best known Romanian fine artist. Around the world, no other Romanian artist received so much appreciation, or was so much acclaimed, or had their name so closely tied to a fine arts field, as Brancusi’s name has been associated with sculpture.



    However, Constantin Brancusi did not love fame, nor did he ever seek it. On the contrary, he was an austere man, too concerned with his art to pay much attention to other people and the media. That is one of the main reasons why there are no recorded interviews of Brancusi, and footage of the great artist is scarce. However, Brancusi lived in the memory of those who knew him and who were interviewed by Radio Romania’s Oral History Center.



    One of those who knew Brancusi was art critic George Oprescu. In 1963, he gave Radio Romania an account of the two meetings he had with Brancusi. The first one was after World War One, in the artist’s studio in Paris, on Impasse Ronsin, where Brancusi lived for half a century, from 1907 until his death, in 1957.



    George Oprescu: “Brancusi’s studio, which was very roomy, had huge old timber beams, some of them 50-60 centimeters wide and several meters long, brought over from a village in Brittany, where several houses had collapsed. Piled one on top of the other, the beams awaited the artist’s accomplished hand. It had the air of a cave, an underground place where a mythological one-eyed creature was set on turning wood into things that the world would marvel at. At that time I was passionate about Wagner and Wagner’s mythology, so this is what I thought when I saw it.”



    In 1937, Oprescu returned to Paris, in Brancusi’s studio, and what he saw was an artist in a slightly changed setting, and an artist who had changed as well:



    George Oprescu: “This time, what made his studio unique were no longer the huge timber beams that used to be there. By that time, Brancusi’s main interest had shifted to stone and polished metal sculpture. Such works, placed on mobile platforms that electric mechanisms set in motion, kind of took me by surprise, in a rather unpleasant way. Then we had a meal, cooked by the artist himself, and we talked for at least two hours about what I saw. What was striking in Brancusi’s look, something that I couldn’t forget for years after I first saw him, was some sort of rustic loftiness, his strong, agile, although not very tall, body. I particularly remember the eyes, as they were extraordinary! They were quite meaningful, you could always tell what was going on in his heart and mind. You could read his heart by simply looking into his eyes. He was soft-spoken and very articulated. And on that night he had something of an artist who had deciphered the ultimate truth about art.”



    Dyspré Paleolog was a Radio Romania journalist back in the time of the Second World War, who took refuge in Paris following the Soviet occupation. As a student, he started visiting Brancusi, who used to be his father’s university colleague.



    Dyspré Paleolog “He was very close to my dad. They had been very close friends in their student years. My father wrote some of the first books about Brancusi. The last one, which I had printed in French, caused quite a sensation in culture of Paris and was highly appreciated by those who knew Brancusi well. While in France the sculptor also befriended a young down-and-out student. He told me, ’Lad, be smart and keep away from the Romanian Legation’. Those words proved quite helpful at the time. I paid him 5 or 6 visits and had interesting discussions. Brancusi had little connection with Romanians, he avoided the Romanian immigrants, who were going through a difficult period, and were very divided. Some of the Romanians in Paris were anti-communists, others were democrats and there were also left-wingers. Very few were rabid communists. I also stayed away from them, just as Brancusi.”



    Professor and officer Virgil Coifan recollected a festivity that took place close to the monuments in Targu Jiu back in 1938.



    Virgil Coifan: “We went to the park in Targu Jiu and were waiting for the prefect to come. The headmaster of the school in Tismana met Brancusi and they were having a friendly talk. I don’t remember whether they were relatives or just close friends. He said to Brancusi, ‘hey maestro, the people around here, the locals, say you’ve been mocking them with these monuments!’ And Brancusi retorted: ‘That’s what Mr. Tatarascu’s opponents say.’ Brancusi went on adding how much the Tatarascu family had assisted him in the works and that it was Aretia Tatarascu who insisted the most on him doing the monument.”

  • Corneliu Coposu

    Corneliu Coposu

    Corneliu Coposu was the quintessential Romanian politician, who kept in touch with democratic Romania before the communist dictatorship. He made an essential contribution to the rebirth of the democratic spirit of 1989. Romanian society owes him hugely for the role model he constituted, for his faith in the duty to fight for freedom, justice and honor, for the devotion he showed his comrades in the Romanian Gulag.



    He was born on May 20, 1914, a Greek Catholic priest’s son, in north western Romania. He read law, and got his PhD at Cluj University. He was a personal assistant to National Peasant Party leader Iuliu Maniu. As such, he was arrested on July 14, 1947, alongside the entire leadership of the party, in a political frame-up of the communist government. He was sentenced to life in prison, and was released in the 1964 amnesty, after 17 years of hard time, 9 of which were spent in solitary at the Ramnicu Sarat prison. Corneliu Coposu survived the extermination regime imposed after 1945. Asked in 1993 by journalist Lucia Hossu-Longin whether he would have done things differently, he said no.



    Corneliu Coposu: “No. I took stock of my past, looked back through all the suffering and misery I had to put up with in jail, in all the years of detention, during the persecutions after I was released, and I don’t think I actually had a choice. I would go through the same in the blink of an eye. I believe our destinies are given to us. I am not a fatalist, but I believe that if I was presented with alternatives, I would choose the same past I lived with serenity.”



    Meeting such people is a privilege. For Corneliu Coposu, the cornerstone of his life was the time he spent in Ramnicu Sarat prison:



    Corneliu Coposu: “The Ramnicu Sarat prison had 34 cells, 16 each on the ground floor and first floor, divided by a wire fence. There were two side cells and 4 solitary cells in the basement. Each cell was 3 by 2 meters. They were laid out in a honeycomb, 3 meters high there was an inaccessible little window, 45 by 30 cm wide, shuttered on the outside, not letting light in. There was a 15 watt light bulb shining at all times, which shed a light as if in a funeral home. There was no heating, the jail was built sometime around 1900, with thick walls. It had two rows of very high walls, 5 to 6 meters high, with a running space between them. On the second wall there were the towers where armed soldiers stood guard.”



    The totalitarian regime did not treat people as living beings, but rather as numbers. In 1993, Corneliu Coposu reminisced about his life in prison:



    Corneliu Coposu: ‘Each prisoner had a number which was the number of their cell, no one had a name. We were identified by the cell we were in. Each inmate was banned from speaking to others and having any ties with others, and most conversations were through Morse code knocked into the walls, until that was uncovered as well, and severe punishment was meted out. After that we coughed out Morse code to each other, which was exhausting, especially given how emaciated we were. I had cell number 1, and in cell 32, above me, was Ion Mihalache, who could be got in touch with by Morse code for 4 or 5 years, until he lost his hearing so much he would not react even to the knocks on the walls.”



    After 1989, Corneliu Coposu believed Romania needed a strong personality to rebuild the country and restore its confidence. He believed that person was King Mihai I.



    Corneliu Coposu: “My royalist attitude is based on my firm conviction that right now in Romania there is no one who has the vocation of polarizing the sympathies and confidence of the majority of the population aside from King Mihai. There is no one else. Since there is no such person in our political environment, to enjoy the confidence of the majority population, to guarantee domestic stability and trust abroad, our only recourse is the king who put fatherland first in 1944, with a staunch anti-communist attitude, who showed the prestige and wisdom of being an impartial arbiter in Romanian politics. The motivation of this royalist attitude is pragmatic, leaving aside any sentimentalism and romanticism. If there was any other personality able to gain the trust and the sympathy of the Romanian people, maybe a restoration of monarchy would not be necessary. We cannot create first rank personalities as if growing chicken in a factory. We would need 30 to 40 more years were we to follow such an objective.”



    In 2014, the whole of Europe observed the centennial of WWI. Romania also celebrated 100 years since the birth of Corneliu Coposu, the man that helped the country find the right path.

  • Romanian Communists in the French Resistance

    Romanian Communists in the French Resistance

    The generation of people who fought against Fascism strongly believed in the lofty ideals of socialism and communism. Some of those ideals even had the support of decent people, who found racism outrageous. Fascist aggression throughout Europe was a strong enough reason for young left-of-center militants to mobilize against the worst evil history had ever imagined. According to internationalist Marxist-Leninist doctrine, Fascism was nothing else but the embodiment of capitalism’s most evil spirit, namely nationalism.



    For Romanian communists, the occupation of France was the sign it was high time they did something about it. Renowned Romanian-born historian Vladimir Tismaneanu, a University of Maryland professor in the United States, was born into a family with strong Marxist roots. Both parents had fought in the Spanish Civil War, where his father lost an arm in action. Vladimir Tismaneanu’s aunt used to be active in the French Resistance, and even received the highest decoration. Vladimir Tismaneanu recalled an episode of the journey his mother made to Spain in 1936, when she joined the International Brigades as a volunteer. It was the birth of the Romanian anti-Fascist resistance in the Second World War.



    Vladimir Tismaneanu: “Via France, mother headed for Spain. It was the policy of non-intervention that practically banned people from straight out joining the International Brigades in Spain. Those people’s route took them through Italy, and that’s how my father got there, or through France. Mother arrived in France, in Paris, which was the hub where the French Communist Party’s Foreign Bureau had its headquarters. At that time mother was rather naive, and let me just recall a telling episode. She set foot in Paris, where she stayed for a month, she was given a room, and she got her training. The most important man in the movement in Paris was Palmiro Togliatti, who was a representative of the Spain — Moscow — Paris axis. My mother took the train to Perpignan, and in her naiveté she saw no problem in buying a newspaper to read on the train. Imagine what newspaper she bought? Officially she was traveling as an art history student to visit monasteries. And she bought L’Humanite. It was her first big mistake, since she was traveling to Spain, speaking with a foreign accent and besides, she bought L’Humanite. There was only one person in the compartment with her, and at the end of their journey, as they were getting off, the man told her, ‘You’re going to Spain to join the International Brigades.’ She denied it, but the man told her, ‘Girl, if you do that again, make sure you don’t buy L’Humanite the next time. You just don’t strut around reading the French Communist Party’s official newspaper.’ The man was the communist elected official of the region.”



    Internationalism was the issue that caused most of the Romanian resistance fighters from France choose a side. Here is Vladimir Tismaneanu again:



    Vladimir Tismaneanu: “Worth mentioning here is the definition Stalin gave to proletarian internationalism. By definition, Marxism was an internationalist doctrine. Nationalism and Marxism are not complementary. If you’re an honest nationalist, you cannot be a Marxist, and if you are a Marxist, you cannot be a nationalist. Things are very clear in this respect. There were all sorts of alloys and alliances, that’s another kettle of fish, it’s precisely that which needs explaining. Stalin gave the definition of proletarian internationalism, the famous litmus test. The litmus test for proletarian internationalism, Stalin used to say in 1927, and that was still valid until the Soviet-Chinese conflict, was the attitude towards the Soviet Union. No one was a genuine internationalist if they questioned the validity of the Soviet Bolshevik party.“



    Olga Bancic, Cristina Luca, Mihail Florescu, Gheorghe Gaston Marin and Alexandru Jar were among some of the most active personalities of Romanian communist diaspora in France. However, there were other anti-Fascist intellectuals who took up that line. One such important person was pilot and inventor Traian Vuia. We also wanted to find out from Vladimir Tismaneanu if Traian Vuia had any ties with the French Resistance and the Romanian communists in France.



    Vladimir Tismaneanu: ”I know those ties were very strong, I know that from my aunt, I also know they met several times. Also, there was a strong connection with Elena Vacarescu, she was responsible for that connection, through writer Ilarie Voronca. The same thing happened with Elvira Popescu. We cannot deny that prominent Romanian intellectuals were leftists, and there’s another name that comes to mind, that of ballerina Lisette Codreanu, Brancusi’s friend. That was a discrepancy: intellectuals in Romania did not have any leftist leanings, yet when they arrived in Paris, they all became leftists. All of them were either leaning towards the socialist left or the communist left. Vuia had never been a communist in any way, as far as I know, but he had ties with them, he gave them money, shelter and connections in villages, he had a holiday house which was used by the Resistance. It was that kind of connections which in northern France could lead to many complications. When De Gaulle removed the communists from the government in 1946, when Thorez was a minister, the Cold War began. In 1948 and 1949, communists faced large-scale expulsion from France, and that’s when Mihai Sora returned, for instance. Some of them hadn’t managed to become French citizens.”



    Once Fascism was destroyed, those who had believed in a better world heaved a sigh of relief. They got the feeling socialism would bring salvation to mankind, and would also put an end to all suffering. But the course history took was quite different.

  • Literature and politics between 1965 and 1974

    Literature and politics between 1965 and 1974

    Through the special persuasion enforced by literary texts, through the characters’ rather primitive outline, but very generous in elating people’s purely instinctual feelings, the regime had gained more success than literary historians are willing to admit.



    The literary art and craft of the 1950s was that of Socialist Realism, a method implemented by Soviet cultural agents. As early as 1965, young communist leader Nicolae Ceusescu’s regime seemed set out to initiate Romania’s renewal, by ostensibly giving up on ideology. Thus, literature was freed from the tight straps of Socialist Realism, a style of realistic art.



    By implementing such a measure, the regime won the support of a string of intellectuals, who were gullible enough to believe the time of change had really come. Yet, those who kept such a hope alive and had offered their services to the regime, realized in the 1980s that Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime was little short of a differently disguised Stalinist regime.



    Historian Cristian Vasile, with the Bucharest-based “Nicolae Iorga” History Institute will now be presenting two cases of intellectuals who worked closely with the new literary canon imposed by Ceausescu’s regime between 1965 and 1974. They are the literary historian and translator Alexandru Balaci (1916-2002) and prose writer Alexandru Ivasiuc (1933-1977).



    Cristian Vasile recalled that Alexandru Balaci, in his capacity as deputy culture minister, tried to defend the new literary writing method, specific to Socialist Realism, while on a visit to Bulgaria, in 1967.



    Cristian Vasile: ”Balaci held meetings with Communist Party activists from several cities, with cultural personalities, he visited various cultural and arts institutions. Furthermore, he gave lectures at the Higher Party School in Sofia. According to Romanian sources, Alexandru Balaci gave four lectures, at the end of which he had to answer at least 80 questions. There were a couple of questions which, even if they were not tricky, begged for an answer formulated with utmost care, paying special heed to nuances and deep meanings, requiring diplomatic ability. Some of the participants asked questions about the literature of ethnic minorities living in Romania and the stage of cultural relations between Romania and the USSR. But the most interesting question, by far, was the following: what is the Romanian intellectuals’ stance on Socialist Realism? At first sight, there was something anachronistic-dogmatic and provocative about the question, for two reasons: Socialist Realism was the only accepted literary writing method. Associated with Stalinism, it was imposed by the Soviets. In this context, it is worth mentioning that the Bulgarian communists were much closer to the Kremlin than the Romanians. Secondly, Nicolae Ceausescu and the party and cultural bureaucracy had allegedly ceased to demand from intellectuals to stick to the conventions of Socialist Realism. They did so at least at a declarative level. The only writing method of the 1950s had somehow been replaced by Socialist Humanism, which was very often mentioned in party documents and in Ceausescu’s speeches. When hearing the question, Alexandru Balaci seemed rather confused and asked his interlocutors to define Socialist Realism, in the new context.”



    The other case mentioned by historian Cristian Vasile is that of writer Alexandru Ivasiuc, which is, by far, more saddening.



    Historian Cristian Vasile has further details: “Against the backdrop of the 1956 Budapest Revolution, the future writer, at the time a philosophy student, contested the very idea of teaching a course entitled ‘The Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism’, which was considered of utmost importance at the time. Ivasiuc refused to get disciplined from a Marxist-Leninist ideological perspective and paid for his defiance, being sentenced to 7-year imprisonment and compelled to forced domicile. Apart from contesting the reason behind teaching this course, he planned to take action and rally Romanian students to the Hungarian Revolution. During his maturity years, Alexandru Ivasiuc experienced a strange transformation. He chose to embrace a strange form of Marxism, which brought him closer to a political regime, which less than a decade before, had considered him an enemy, instigator and counter-revolutionary person, and which had thrown him into prison. Although he experienced all types of humiliations specific to the concentrationary universe and was compelled to forced domicile between 1956 and 1963, he seemed obsessed with the relation between the individual and power and tried to get reintegrated into society in the mid 1960’s, in an attempt to get closer to his ideological masters. Shortly after 1963, he was a member of the staff of the US embassy in Bucharest. Concurrently, he started writing a lot, holding various leading positions. His change became visible, even in his novels ‘Interval’, ‘Knowledge of Night’, ‘Birds’, and ‘Illumination’. Some literary critics and historians underlined that unlike the then political prose, namely ‘the novel of the obsessive decade’, which was apparently rehabilitating those aggressed by the regime, from a fictional perspective, the former political detainee Alexandru Ivasiuc’s writings were actually rehabilitating torturers, condemning the real victims once more. Whether or not Ivasiuc was honestly, sincerely and not cynically converted to Marxism, his case illustrates the success of the perverse mechanism of communist pedagogy. Many of his public appearances left the audience with the impression that he was a man who had undergone deep inner transformations.”



    Just like the whole cultural policy pursued by the Ceausescu regime, Socialist Humanism disappeared in 1989. It is one more example that imposture in art, in spite of the temporary support of the political power, can’t impose itself as a real value.

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

    The “Stefan Gheorghiu” Academy of Social-Political Studies

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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