Category: The History Show

Nicknamed “Mignon” by her mother, after an opera by the 19th century French musician Ambroise Thomas, and “Marioara”, in a more Romanian version of her name, this modest and sensitive princess was to have a troubled life. After marrying King Alexander I, she would become the first and only Queen of Yugoslavia.

Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was baptised in the Orthodox Church a few months after being born. In her book of memoirs entitled “The Story of My Life”, her mother described her as an easy-going and tender-hearted child, always with a smile on her face. Marie attended private classes together with her siblings, one of their teachers being the historian Nicolae Iorga. During the First World War, she took refuge in the Moldavian capital Iasi together with the entire royal family and the government. After the war, the young princess was separated from her brother, who went to further his studies in Britain and whom she would only meet again 25 years later, in exile.

On 9th June 1922, at 22, Mignon married Alexander I, the unifier of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians into the future Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The timid, unpretentious and even fragile princess thus became queen. She had met her husband in 1921 during a visit by the Yugoslav sovereign to Romania. Their relationship translated not only into a matrimonial alliance, but also an attempt at regional cooperation. Their engagement party was held in Bucharest and their wedding in Belgrade, with members of various European royal families in attendance.

As a queen, Mignon learnt the language of her subjects and gave birth to three sons: the future King Peter II, Tomislav and Andrej. It is said that the new queen won the hearts of her people from the very beginning. In 1934, however, her ordeal started as her husband, Alexander I was assassinated in Marseille. People who knew her said she never smiled again after her husband died, and she dressed in mourning for the rest of her life.

She also stood by her son, the underage king Peter II. When the regent Paul Karageorgevic accepted Hitler’s request to allow his troops to transit Yugoslavia on their way to Greece, Migon was openly opposed. A new shock came when Germany occupied Yugoslavia. Mignon and her son managed to flee the country and seek refuge in Switzerland. After the war, Tito’s communist guerrillas seized power, instated a republican government and banned the legitimate sovereign Peter II from entering the country.

In the spring of 1947, a communist decree stripped queen Marie Karageorgevic of her Yugoslav citizenship and confiscated her entire fortune. “I have lost everything and for ever”, she wrote in a letter to Queen Elena, the mother of King Michael I of Romania, in the spring of 1947. “I have lost the country of my parents, the country of my subjects, my husband, my crown, the throne of my son and most of the wealth I have inherited. I only have my three sons, freedom I cannot use and old age, much too old to enjoy the pleasures of life.”

Following a trial before the Palace of Justice in Belgrade on 14th April 2014, the Supreme Tribunal ruled that the decree issued by the communist authorities was a violation of Queen Marie’s human rights for political and ideological reasons. A request to restore her rights had been filed by her heirs, her sons Tomislav and Andrej Karageorgevic, and her grandchildren Lavinia, Katarina, Dimity and Mikhailo.

We asked Lucian Marino, a journalist working for Radio Novi Sad, to comment on this decision of the Serbian tribunal: “The queen’s civic rights have been restored. The ruling of the Supreme Tribunal of Serbia was an expected, normal and logical decision, all the more so as Serbia is moving closer to Europe and respects all civic rights. Besides the amnesty granted to the Karageorgevic family, the amnesty of Queen Marie, as a citizen, means her heirs are entitled to their inheritance. I’m sure the president’s safe contains many objects which used to belong to the queen.”

Mignon died on 22nd June 1961 in London. The Serb government has decided to set up a committee in charge of organising the exhumation and transfer of the earthly remains of the members of the Royal House of Karageorgevic to be re-interred at the Royal Mausoleum in Oplenac, near Belgrade.

The end of Stalinism did not lead to the disappearance of Soviet practices meant to consolidate the former USSR’s sphere of influence. The brutal intervention against the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 as well as the massive military clampdown in Czechoslovakia in 1968 made it clear to Moscow’s satellite countries and to the entire world that the Soviet Union had no intention to abandon its leading position in the international communist movement.

Nevertheless, back in the 1960s, the Romanian Workers Party made its first attempt to break free from the Soviet influence. Between April 15th and 22nd 1964, an extended meeting of the Romanian Workers Party ended in a declaration on the party’s position on issues related to the international communist and workers’ movement which included several principles such as, the observance of one country’s national sovereignty and independence, the principle of non-intervention in domestic issues, the mutual benefit and respect, the recognition of national specificity, history, and the right of every party to build its own path to communism.

According to some historians, the new direction in Romania’s foreign policy was not quite toeing the Soviet line. This courageous stand had attracted the Romanian president of the time Gheorghiu Dej the nickname of “the maverick of Eastern Europe”, a description that also applied later to his successor Nicolae Ceausescu, who came to power in 1965. The historian Larry Watts believes that Romania’s moves towards a certain independence from Moscow started in fact earlier, shortly after Stalin’s death:

“In my opinion this was not to a fresh start, but the continuation of a policy that started much earlier. Many people in the West who were interested in this area were almost exclusively concerned with the economic implications of this declaration. Economic issues sparked off a series of conflicts between Romania and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance within hours of Stalin’s death. Romania’s position was constantly monitored since 1961 and was the focus of most reports conducted by intelligence agencies, such as those of the United States.”

Larry Watts says security and foreign policies were of great concern for the Romanian communists. He describes the series of events that led to Romania’s attempt to shake off Soviet influence:

“One of the events that led to a big crisis was a statement made by prime minister Gheorghe Maurer in 1964 regarding the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis. In both crises, Moscow had the armies of all the Warsaw Pact states on high alert ignoring the communist parties in these satellite countries. However, this was not the case with Romania. The situation called for a clear declaration from Romania with regard to its independence and national policy. The Cuban missile crisis made things even worse. In 1956, and even by 1962, Romania was in the same situation as the other members of the Warsaw Pact, whereby the ruling communist parties were trying to control state institutions and policies. For the first time after Stalin’s death it became possible to renegotiate these relations and make them more balanced. What Romania wanted was to also enjoy the authority that comes along with its responsibilities.”

The American historian also spoke about the arguments used by Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej to distance Romania from the Soviet Union at the time:

“The Cuban missile crisis was a great revelation, in that it showed that the USSR was capable of starting a big war, even a nuclear war, without telling its allies. In 1964, during talks with the Chinese prim minister Zhou Enlai, Gheorghiu Dej for the first time admitted that Moscow was capable of such actions without any kind of consultation. Consultation was at the foundation of the Warsaw Pact, which Romania had also signed believing that no one would overstep its boundaries. The main problem was how to reduce the possibility that the USSR could use its nuclear weapons. The second problem was how to prevent the USSR from taking international unilateral action without involving Romania into a war, not necessarily a nuclear war. In his first public announcement after the 1964 declaration, Gheorghiu Dej said the response of the Warsaw Pact to nuclear threats from NATO and the US should not be nuclear escalation and threats of starting a nuclear war, but on the contrary, de-escalation. The fundamental observation made by Romania was that the Warsaw Pact and NATO share the same reality. Any unilateral action initiated by either side would affect both sides.”

Romania’s policy of distancing itself from the USSR would be continued by Dej’s successor, Nicolae Ceausescu. However, by the late 1970s it became clear that leaving the Soviet sphere of influence while maintaining the Soviet principles was not necessarily a realistic endeavour.

In spite of its brutality, the communist regime had to keep up the appearance of humanity, creativity and pacifism. The violence of its installation had to be justified, and supported by reasons for which society had to make sacrifices on its way to socialism. Scientific socialism was born, speaking to people of justice, but especially of the inevitability of socialism emerging in society sooner or later.

Cristina Petrescu, a professor with the School of Political and Administrative Sciences of the Bucharest University, co-authored the series of volumes ‘The Encyclopedia of the Communist Regime’. She said that the communist party instituted scientific socialism as an academic discipline in a discretionary manner:

“The development of this discipline in Romania reflected, on the one hand, the policy of emancipation perpetrated by the Romanian Workers’ Party, later the Romanian Communist Party, under the tutelage of the Soviet Union starting in the late 1950s. On the other hand, led to the rewriting of the history of the party by re-evaluating the so-called local traditions of the workers’ movement. At the same time, it produced along the decades a gradual deprofessionalization of this area, created under communism through a blending of history, sociology, philosophy and political economy, thanks to the strict control of the party, which was the only legitimate keeper of this domain. The party controlled all domains, especially the humanities and social sciences. The difference is that scientific socialism and its corpus of knowledge was created by the party.”

Scientific socialism, however, did have a much older history. Starting with Engels, it became the distinctive mark of Marxism, which purported to explain everything about the world. Here is Cristina Petrescu:

“The origin of this term is in Prodhon’s writings, the first person to formulate this concept in his book ‘What Is Property?’. It is a concept which Marx did not use in his works, but which became tremendously popular due to Friedrich Engels and his limited issue book known under various titles, initially titled ‘Anti-Duhring’. The first and third chapters were published in French under the subtitle ‘Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism’. After that, the German version came out, with a slightly different title, and with less impact – ‘The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science’ – a title which was used for the Romanian version of the book in the late 19th century. The book’s translation in Romanian appeared before the first English version, which popularized the term ‘Utopian Socialism’ as totally different from ‘scientific socialism’.”

The two inventions of scientific socialism were the two types of laws. The laws of the development of mankind were those of historical materialism, while the laws of capitalist contradictions were illustrated by the law of added value. Lenin was the one who developed what Engels had said, inventing Marxist Leninism, in which scientific socialism was a science of humanity whose truths were exclusively held by the party. As a revolution in thinking, and an avant-garde, it had the mission of showing society what it had to do. Cristina Petrescu told us that its roots in Romania could be seen towards the end of the Gheorghiu-Dej era, who had been the first communist leader in Romania, between 1947 and 1965:

“During the time of Gheorghiu-Dej, the term ‘scientific socialism’ did not appear in official documents. The origin of the discipline, however, is in that period. A decree of the party issued at the 3rd Romanian Workers’ Party Congress, in 1960, told us that it was time to issue the first textbooks of social sciences, which should blend, quote ‘ideas of Marxist Leninism with the experience specific to our people’, unquote. The declaration of April 1964 conveyed the well-known ideas attributed to Khrushchev, according to whom each party was free to choose its own path to communism. In consequence, scientific socialism had generally valid laws, but on the other hand there were concrete historical conditions in each country which had to be studied as such.”

In the early 1970s, scientific socialism had taken shape, and the new course that Romanian society had to follow towards communism had been plotted. Cristina Petrescu gave us details:

“If we look into the ‘Small Dictionary of Philosophy’ of 1973, we see that scientific socialism already had a definition, taking over the Leninist idea of 3 constituent parts of Marxist Leninism. It introduces the idea that there is a generally valid truth, with generally valid laws, but with special conditions in each country, which have to be studied as such. The directives of the Ceausescu period led to a development of this discipline. Ceausescu continued the effort to issue domestic textbooks of scientific socialism, adding the idea of capitalizing on local traditions“.

Scientific socialism, which had become official dogma, invaded all other areas of education. It was by far the most hated university course, in spite of the fact that it was supposed to be the method to reveal truths about the world, as understood by the Marxist neurosis.

He posed as a reformist and his position during the Prague Spring was widely appreciated. By imposing his own distinct leadership style, Nicolae Ceausescu tried to pursue a transparent decision-making policy, appearing to be very receptive to the wishes and opinions of ordinary citizens. In this respect, he tried to be different from his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, the Romanian version of Stalin.

It was eventually clear that Nicolae Ceauscu’s approach to politics, despite its initial dose of authenticity, was a strategy to legitimise his own brand of despotism. It is this apparent authenticity that earned him the support of ordinary people. The historian Mioara Anton from the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History in Bucharest believes Ceausescu’s strategy in the early days of his career was to build an image by which to dissociate himself explicitly from a compromising past. She studied the relationship of Ceausescu’s regime with the citizens as it transpires from three types of documents: letters and invitations, requests for restoring the rights by victims of the former regime and applications to join the Communist Party:

“The first category was a direct consequence of the decree against pregnancy terminations of October 1966, and of that of January 1967 granting the amount of 1,000 lei a month to mothers about to give birth to their third child. The amount was also granted for every following child, often supplemented for larger families. The plan of 4 children per family, but especially this government grant, produced a prodigious amount of letters. The letters display the immense joy of having another child, but also the precarious economic situation of most of the petitioners. These documents hide the drama facing Romanian families. The heavily publicized involvement of the Secretary General creates a new kind of solidarity and a new image for him: brother, loving father, protective parent. Nicolae Ceausescu was invited to take part in the events that were important for citizens, such as weddings and baptisms. People who wanted to make him more sensitive to their situation were baptizing their children Nicolae, or held baptisms around his birthday, January 26.”

Rehabilitating the people who had suffered during the Dej regime was another strong point in the policy of granting Ceausescu legitimacy.

Mioara Anton: “The party plenary meeting of 1968 caused an avalanche of applications and petitions for setting things right in the case of abuses perpetrated against former party members. The revision commissions analysed both political and criminal offences. In light of the plenary meeting of April, a new generation of activists and party members built spotless biographies. The history of the party gains a new context starting from these letters after 1956. Petitioners start requesting recognition of the party credentials, pensions, re-inclusion in party and state structures, recognition of their work record, as well as specific benefits, such as pensions, homes, promotion in army ranks, or the ranks of the political police. Greek Orthodox bishop Alexandru Todea, however, pushed the limits when he sent a letter to Ceausescu on April 27, 1968, writing bitterly, with pain and disgust that the process of rehabilitation had changed nothing in the attitude of the authorities towards him. What Todea did not know is that the plenary did not intend to reconsider the long chain of political trials organized in Romania after 1947.”

The Romanians’ traditional anti-Russian attitude was cultivated to the extreme by Ceausescu, as of 1968, and was a cornerstone of his political behaviour, up to his downfall in 1989.

Mioara Anton: “The emotions that ran high in 1968 caused a very strong anti-Soviet reaction among the regular people, who took the intervention in Czechoslovakia as a potential aggression against Romania. Mihai Rusu, a technical control operator, suggested a state bond system to finance the purchase of tanks and aircraft to defend the country. An anonymous person expressed amazement at the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and assured the Secretary General that all the workers of the Socialist Republic of Romania are united around the party like a rock wall, against any enemy that might threaten the sovereignty of the fatherland. Letters from regular people, anonymous or signed, from every social category, placed Ceausescu in the ranks of historic heroes of the nation who resisted foreign threats.”

In 1974, Nicolae Ceausescu’s personal regime became totally opposed to what it appeared to be between 1965 and 1971. He became more and more despotic, resembling more and more the Stalinist regime which it had taken such pains to distance itself from.

Greeks are the oldest people to make it to these regions and leave their prints on the territories that are currently Romanian soil. Some of the first settlements they established on the Black Sea coast were Hystria, Tomis and Callatis, a couple of centuries before Christ. Dobrogea, a Romanian province between the Danube Delta and the Black Sea was the cradle of many Greek communities whose presence has been preserved up to these days in the local toponymy. A town in northern Dobrogea as well as the highest peak of Dobrogea Mountains are called Greci, which is the Romanian for Greeks. Not far from Dobrogea Mountains there lies the Enisala fortress, founded by Byzantine Greeks and Genovese merchants back in the 13th century.

The Greeks started to focus their attention on northern Danube in mid-15th century, after the biggest tragedy of the Christian-Orthodox world, the 1453 fall of Constantinople before the Ottoman armies led by Mehmed the Conqueror. According to historian Georgeta Penelea-Filiti, a world that died in Byzantium was to come back to life again on the Romanian territories.

After the fall of Byzantium, the Greeks started looking at the Romanian territories as a potential haven. Shortly after that Bucharest was first documented. As a coincidence, the first historical record of this small market town dates from 1459, 6 years after the fall of Byzantium, in 1453. The fall of Byzantium put an end to a whole world characterized by extraordinary vivacity and urban, political, legal and institutional development. The conquest of this Greek world by the Turks, who came from a different environment and culture, led to an inevitable clash. Many Greeks were thus forced to leave Byzantium. The Cantacuzinos were one of the most prominent Greek families. Of imperial descent, very wealthy and industrious, they eventually arrived in the Romanian territories after first moving to Bulgaria. They came here in the 17th century at a time when the country was torn by political infighting and ended playing a major role in Romanian history, becoming a champion of national sentiment. This assimilation of the Greeks had thus become a reality.”

After 1453, many Greeks moved north of the Danube. Their settling in Wallachia, in particular Bucharest, must be viewed as a continual, non-linear process generated by economic, political and, in some cases, personal reasons. Georgeta Penelea Filiti explains:

“The Greeks did not come to the area of present-day Bucharest only as princes, although there was one about whom they said was a maker of rulers, because he had managed to turn into subjects all the competitors to Wallachia’s princely seat. Those who came to Wallachia were attracted by lots of possibilities, potential gains and an easy living, so they were from many social categories and various walks of life. By reading the documents of the time I came to a conclusion. Most of the Greeks were into either trade and finances, or culture. And here we talk about something that would characterize Romania’s history for hundreds of years after 1453. Romanians were benevolent, tolerant, gentile, but passive. Therefore, that dynamic element came as something good for them. The Greeks came with their good and bad. Obviously, people surrounding rulers were also driven by that wave. A tax collector is never somebody that people like, but along with tax collectors also came professors, doctors, legal advisors. They all helped coagulate our urban society, rendering it more dynamic and more cultural.”

A peak moment of the Greek presence in Bucharest was the 18th century, during the so-called Phanariot Period. It was a time when princes from Greek families were sent here to rule. Thanks to some of these families, the cultural level of the province increased. Georgeta Penelea-Filiti:

“We must mention the large number of Greek people who came to Bucharest, started working here, got rich and even resorted to a so-called ‘marriage strategy’, which is still used nowadays. In order to better integrate themselves into the local community, Greek men started marrying Romanian women. Many Greek men decided to settle in Wallachia for good. In 1719, one of them said that Constantinople was a city that no longer interested him, as in Wallachia he had found everything he needed. Also in the 18th century, another Greek man confessed that if there was a paradise, it had to look a lot like Wallachia. The large number of Greeks in Bucharest made people consider it a Greek city.”

Among the Romanian personalities of Greek descent we can mention writers Ion Luca Caragiale and Panait Istrati, artists Hariclea Darclee and Jean Moscopol, politician I.G. Duca, industrialist Nicolae Malaxa and banker Zanni Chrissoveloni.

In 1945 Romania took sides with the powers that crushed the Axis Coalition. However, Romania was considered a defeated country, on account of its joining Germany in the Second World War until August 23rd, 1944. The Peace Convention ascribed Romania that particular status, which was all the more relevant in the Convention’s foreword. “The Government and the Higher Command of Romania, acknowledging the defeat of Romania in the war against the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the other United Nations, has consented to the terms of the armistice as they were laid out by the Governments of the three aforementioned allied Powers, acting in the interest of the United Nations”.

Romania was forced to pay hefty reparations. The payments had to be made in installments, over a six-year period. When it failed to meet a deadline, according to the schedule set by the Allied Control Commission, Romania had to make a monthly extra payment of 5 per cent of its overdue payment. Overall damages accounted for as much as 300 million US Dollars, given that an ounce of gold was traded for 35 Dollars, while the price of Romanian commodities that were to be delivered followed the world standards of 1938, with a 15 per cent increase for rail transport and a 10 per cent increase for other categories. In fact, the price for those goods had gone up by 33 percent as compared to the standard price of 1938. Calculations made back then revealed that the 300 million dollars accounted for more than 55 per cent of Romania’s GDP, which in 1945 stood at 519 million dollars.

Actually, Romania paid a lot more than the double of the reparations that had to be paid as stipulated in the peace treaties. The Soviets were very cunning in finding ways to plunder Romania’s economy, so they set up the joint Sov-rom [Soviet-Romanian] enterprises, in the production sector as well as in the raw material exploitation sectors. Sovrompetrol was the first such enterprise, set up on July 17, 1045. Apart from the railway industry, the oil industry was hit hard by the war. The crude oil production in 1944 stood at an all-time low reported for the Second World War, accounting for 3.52 million tons, that is 63 per cent of the average production of 1941-1944. In order to pay part of its debts, Romania had to deliver the USSR 10, 200,000 tons of crude oil each year.

Maxim Berghianu was the head of what was to become the State Planning Committee. In 2001, when he was interviewed by Romanian Radio’s Oral History center, Berghianu believed that part of the blame for Romania’s being plundered by the Soviets had to be laid on the West. Berghianu revealed that lots of Romanian companies with foreign capital, like the IAR aircraft factory, joined the Sovroms. And oil was part of that as well.

“When the West took the decision to turn us over to Russia, back then they got the best out of it, since these enterprises had foreign capital, and the IAR had been working for the Germans. It was the Messerschmitt aircraft factory that later made tractors. Then there were the Sovroms, then the chemical industry, with many of its venues tailored for weaponry and producing TNT and dynamite. So what we got were Sovrom Tractor, SovromChim, SovromGaz, Sovrompetrol. The Russians penetrated the richest areas, rich in raw material resources, where they thought they were highly likely to make a profit. Not to mention uranium, which they exploited ruthlessly.”

Sovrompetrol, just like other companies of its kind, was a real burden on Romania’s economy, faced with massive shortcomings by the early 1950s. The Romanian communist leaders were very much aware of that, and they started taking measures, as Gheorghe Apostol, advisor to leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, recounts in 1994:

“Romanian economy was under the USSR’s control through those Sovroms. We were investing in industry, agriculture, in all sectors of the economy, but they would reap all the benefits. At a reception on November 7th, 1952, at the Soviet Embassy, before going to Stalin, Dej summoned us. He wanted to talk to us about a proposal made by the Soviet government to sovromize methane gas too, as they had already done with oil. And Dej said: ‘That’s it! We will not give in any more! This Sovrom issue requires a solution based on mutual agreement, and for that we need to take action. We are now going to the Soviet Embassy. I will pretend to be drinking and I will tell them what we think about these Sovroms.”

It is a well known fact that major decisions are made in informal circumstances and Romanian communists tried to take advantage of that principle too.

“At the end of a reception, the ambassador and his deputies would ask us to join them in a room nearby, where there was also food and drinks, in order to discuss both domestic and international matters. And I recall that meeting, with Dej sitting next to the Soviet Ambassador and the Soviet Government Representative for Sovroms and, suddenly, I heard him say: ‘Comrade, would you please tell me what capital export means?’ And the other one said: ‘What’s the point of this question?’ And Dej replied: ‘We make the investments and you take the benefits’. And this is how the conversation ended.”

Sovroms and Sovrompetrol could only be dismantled after the death of Stalin. The first ones disappeared in 1956, among which Sovrompetrol, after 12 years of functioning, instead of 6, as initially planned. The last sovroms were dismantled in 1959, after 14 years.

In 1945 Romania took sides with the powers that crushed the Axis Coalition. However, Romania was considered a defeated country, on account of its joining Germany in the Second World War until August 23rd, 1944. The Peace Convention ascribed Romania that particular status, which was all the more relevant in the Convention’s foreword. “The Government and the Higher Command of Romania, acknowledging the defeat of Romania in the war against the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the other United Nations, has consented to the terms of the armistice as they were laid out by the Governments of the three aforementioned allied Powers, acting in the interest of the United Nations”.

Romania was forced to pay hefty reparations. The payments had to be made in installments, over a six-year period. When it failed to meet a deadline, according to the schedule set by the Allied Control Commission, Romania had to make a monthly extra payment of 5 per cent of its overdue payment. Overall damages accounted for as much as 300 million US Dollars, given that an ounce of gold was traded for 35 Dollars, while the price of Romanian commodities that were to be delivered followed the world standards of 1938, with a 15 per cent increase for rail transport and a 10 per cent increase for other categories. In fact, the price for those goods had gone up by 33 percent as compared to the standard price of 1938. Calculations made back then revealed that the 300 million dollars accounted for more than 55 per cent of Romania’s GDP, which in 1945 stood at 519 million dollars.

Actually, Romania paid a lot more than the double of the reparations that had to be paid as stipulated in the peace treaties. The Soviets were very cunning in finding ways to plunder Romania’s economy, so they set up the joint Sov-rom [Soviet-Romanian] enterprises, in the production sector as well as in the raw material exploitation sectors. Sovrompetrol was the first such enterprise, set up on July 17, 1045. Apart from the railway industry, the oil industry was hit hard by the war. The crude oil production in 1944 stood at an all-time low reported for the Second World War, accounting for 3.52 million tons, that is 63 per cent of the average production of 1941-1944. In order to pay part of its debts, Romania had to deliver the USSR 10, 200,000 tons of crude oil each year.

Maxim Berghianu was the head of what was to become the State Planning Committee. In 2001, when he was interviewed by Romanian Radio’s Oral History center, Berghianu believed that part of the blame for Romania’s being plundered by the Soviets had to be laid on the West. Berghianu revealed that lots of Romanian companies with foreign capital, like the IAR aircraft factory, joined the Sovroms. And oil was part of that as well.

“When the West took the decision to turn us over to Russia, back then they got the best out of it, since these enterprises had foreign capital, and the IAR had been working for the Germans. It was the Messerschmitt aircraft factory that later made tractors. Then there were the Sovroms, then the chemical industry, with many of its venues tailored for weaponry and producing TNT and dynamite. So what we got were Sovrom Tractor, SovromChim, SovromGaz, Sovrompetrol. The Russians penetrated the richest areas, rich in raw material resources, where they thought they were highly likely to make a profit. Not to mention uranium, which they exploited ruthlessly.”

Sovrompetrol, just like other companies of its kind, was a real burden on Romania’s economy, faced with massive shortcomings by the early 1950s. The Romanian communist leaders were very much aware of that, and they started taking measures, as Gheorghe Apostol, advisor to leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, recounts in 1994:

“Romanian economy was under the USSR’s control through those Sovroms. We were investing in industry, agriculture, in all sectors of the economy, but they would reap all the benefits. At a reception on November 7th, 1952, at the Soviet Embassy, before going to Stalin, Dej summoned us. He wanted to talk to us about a proposal made by the Soviet government to sovromize methane gas too, as they had already done with oil. And Dej said: ‘That’s it! We will not give in any more! This Sovrom issue requires a solution based on mutual agreement, and for that we need to take action. We are now going to the Soviet Embassy. I will pretend to be drinking and I will tell them what we think about these Sovroms.”

It is a well known fact that major decisions are made in informal circumstances and Romanian communists tried to take advantage of that principle too.

“At the end of a reception, the ambassador and his deputies would ask us to join them in a room nearby, where there was also food and drinks, in order to discuss both domestic and international matters. And I recall that meeting, with Dej sitting next to the Soviet Ambassador and the Soviet Government Representative for Sovroms and, suddenly, I heard him say: ‘Comrade, would you please tell me what capital export means?’ And the other one said: ‘What’s the point of this question?’ And Dej replied: ‘We make the investments and you take the benefits’. And this is how the conversation ended.”

Sovroms and Sovrompetrol could only be dismantled after the death of Stalin. The first ones disappeared in 1956, among which Sovrompetrol, after 12 years of functioning, instead of 6, as initially planned. The last sovroms were dismantled in 1959, after 14 years.

Historical eras are sometimes marked by strong personalities, be they in politics, social life or culture. Strong personalities are influential people, trend setters, and quite often controversial. In interwar Romania, one of the most controversial figures was philosopher and professor Nae Ionescu, a proponent of nationalism and anti-Semitism and an adept of the Romanian version of existentialism. He was director of the Cuvantul magazine, and many important Romanian interwar intellectuals were shaped by his school, such as Mircea Eliade, Mircea Vulcanescu, Mihail Sebastian and Emil Cioran. He was politically involved, he supported King Carol II, and then became a mentor of the Fascist Iron Guard.

Nae Ionescu was born in Braila in 1890. He graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1912, and then taught high school. In his youth he was a socialist, then he migrated to fascism. In the 1920s and ‘30s, he gained notoriety as a journalist with an incisive style. He was also active in hip social circles, having affairs, among others, with musician George Enescu’s future wife.

In spite of his qualities, it was in 1938, with great difficulty, that Nae Ionescu managed to become a professor at the School of Letters and Philosophy, under philosopher Petre Negulescu. Nae Ionescu stood out from the start as an intellectual who was against traditional customs of academic culture and the official political culture in Romania at that time. He was controversial for both the right and the left, for the cultural mainstream in the academia and in public opinion, according to historian Florin Muller from the Bucharest University School of History:

Florin Muller: “He was praised by Mircea Eliade in the most enthusiastic language, while also being accused in the most serious terms by the Marxist left and by rationalist intellectuals like Tudor Vianu, Serban Cioculescu and Mihai Ralea. Nae Ionescu was assessed by very different intellectuals in strongly contrasting terms. For Eliade, Ionescu was a philosophical brain, a truly reflective mind. Without being popular, Nae Ionescu always cultivated creative, dynamic and heroic elements. For Mihail Sebastian, a contributor to Cuvantul magazine, a Jewish intellectual who was very close to Nae Ionescu, the philosopher was a true moral guide. This meant that Ionescu allowed the creative forces of young intellectuals to be unleashed. These very favorable images were counterbalanced by the radically negative image presented by left wing rationalist academic intellectuals. One of them, the radical communist Lucretiu Patrascanu, believed Nae Ionescu to be a typical example of the decay of Romanian intellectuals, only interested in social climbing, with no foundation, no desire for truth, a two faced individual. Ionescu, in Patrascanu’s opinion, only distorted thinking, promoting the most egregious nationalist and anti-Semitic policy. There were also voices on the radical right, like Nichifor Crainic, who saw Nae Ionescu as one who had used unscrupulous instruments to become director of the magazine Cuvantul, doing everything to bury the spirit of fair competition and fair nationalist politics typical of Cuvantul around 1926-1927.”

Historian Florin Muller says Ionescu was a proven plagiarist, but he insists on providing the nuances of the context in which that happened:

Florin Muller: ”Zevedei Barbu is one of the people who analyzed and noticed the similarities, the near plagiarism that Nae Ionescu produced, comparing them to works by western scholars like Spengler. Barbu noticed certain themes and passage were copied, along with phrases and examples. Max Scheler is another author who was used in an almost fraudulent way by Nae Ionescu. In strictly technical terms, Nae Ionescu practiced a form of fairly visible plagiarism, which should be thoroughly rejected by the academia. At the same time, for Nae Ionescu it was important for these ideas, concepts and spiritual configurations to become a part of the intimate structure of the creator, and only then could one talk about internalizing them and properly conveying them in the consciousness of others. Nae Ionescu is in an area between parallel mirrors, he was seen as a creator of consciousness, a mentoring spirit for nationalism, anti-Semitism, and against democracy.”

Ionescu’s thinking was not constant, and Florin Muller says that his political opinions and attitude were influenced by historical events:

Florin Muller: “What is the outline of Nae Ionescu’s political thinking between 1924 and 1940, the year of his death? It had three stages. The first one tried to build a model of real mass democracy, of peasant orientation. The second was the justification of divinely appointed monarchy, a marginal theory in Romanian political thinking, which belongs more in the Middle Ages than in modern times. The last stage, which began in 1933, was that of extolling the totalitarian, collectivist and even crypto-socialist model of the Legionnaire movement. Why are these three stages important? Because the anti-Semitism issue takes distinct forms in the three stages of his thinking.”

Nae Ionescu died in 1940 under suspicious circumstances, which fed all sorts of rumors. However, the fascination and revulsion he sparked in others defined him as a strong personality, an angel and a demon all at once.

Just like any new idea, in Romania crimation was mostly promoted by intellectuals, and had no impact on the ordinary people or on the traditionalist elites, at least in the beginning. In time, people got used to this idea, which had been promoted for reasons related to public hygiene. Cremation was seen as a more practical version of burial.

The concept of cremation brought along new words that had never been used in the Romanian language before, such as cremation and cremationist. The Romanian writer, philosopher and theologian Nichifor Crainic, one of the opponents of cremation in the interwar period, introduced the term asher, the pejorative version of cremationist. Historian Marius Rotar, president of the Romanian Cremationist Association, was our guide into the history of cremation in Romania. He has given us details about the beginnings of this practice.

Marius Rotar: “We are talking about the second half of the 19th century. This was, of course, a western trend, which was also introduced in Romania. Its supporters were members of an elite. Physicians were the first to promote cremation for utilitarian reasons, and there were some famous figures in this respect, such as Constantin I. Istrati. In his PhD thesis of 1876, entitled Removing Bodies, he openly supported the idea of incineration. He was several times minister, mayor of Bucharest and also Chairman of the Romanian Academy. As a confirmation of his belief in cremation, he himself was incinerated at the Pere Lachaise crematory in Paris. Personalities such as director of the National Theatre in Iasi, Mihail Codreanu, and University Professor Constantin Tiron, from the same city, were also staunch supporters of cremation. There were, however, some differences between the way in which Transylvania and Romania adopted the idea of cremation. In Transylvania, it faced more vehement criticism from people. What is interesting is that until WWI, the reaction of the Romanian Orthodox Church to this idea was not as violent as expected. It was only in 1900 that several articles on cremation appeared in the Theological Review and in the Romanian Orthodox Church Magazine. Until 1914 the idea of cremation was foreign to the Romanian space and there was no crematorium there.”

The opening of the “Cenusa” human crematorium in Bucharest, in 1928, marked an increase in the number of cremation supporters. Marius Rotar says, however, that those who embraced that option were not necessarily atheists or anti-Christians.

Marius Rotar: “What is interesting is that in Romania those who supported cremation did not deny Christianity and did not declare themselves supporters of atheism, except for Constantin Tiron in Iasi. Romanian cremationists were idealists; they did not imagine the Romanian Christian Church would react that vehemently. In the interwar period, the Romanian cremationist’s profile did not change, except for the fact that the group of supporters was upsized by member of the lower classes.”

Marius Rotar tells us about the difficulties faced by the advocates of cremation in Romania:

Marius Rotar: “It’s mainly about financial difficulties. It would have been impossible to build the crematorium without direct support from the City Hall. There were at least five mayors who supported the idea of cremation, most notably Ion Costinescu, who was to become a minister of health. He was also the chairman of the Cenusa Society. The idea was to cremate the bodies that remained unclaimed, mainly homeless people and people living on the margins of society. Bodies of dead children were also sometimes cremated, as we can see from articles in Flacara Sacra magazine and the crematorium’s records.”

We asked Marius Rotar what happened after the Second World War?

Marius Rotar: “After 1945, the cremationist movement in Romania received a heavy blow when the publication of Flacara Sacra magazine was discontinued. The idea of cremation did not win more popularity and the number of cremations only increased from 248 in 1928 to 552 in 1947, which is very little, almost insignificant. The installation of the communist regime did not lead to an increase in the number of cremations. On the contrary, their number decreased. Only 260 cremations were performed in 1953, for example. The idea of the New Man and how the communists actively supported cremations is not confirmed by statistics. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the number of cremations started growing again to reach a peak in the 1980s. However, this growth can also be explained by the increase in Bucharest’s population at the time.”

The list of famous Romanians who chose to be cremated instead of buried includes the religious historian Mircea Eliade and his disciple Ioan Petru Culianu, the literary critic Matei Calinescu, the journalist Felix Aderca, the historian Adolf Armbruster, the singer Doina Badea, the acrtress Clody Bertola, the political analyst Silviu Brucan and the linguist Theodor Capidan. Today, cremation is a controversial practice and has very few supporters in Romania.

The Parliament Palace has always been the most controversial building in Bucharest. It is, above anything else, a symbol of the communist totalitarianism, the very epitome of architectural kitsch. It is also a space of the unknown and a sort of unmapped territory, although it is the work of a system that used to know and control everything. Initially named The House of the Socialist Republic of Romania, the building was designed by a team of architects headed by Anca Petrescu and was aimed at marking a new era of maximum development in Romania’s history. Many things were said about Anca Petrescu after 1989, and some people even pretend to know everything about her. But that is far from the truth. There are plenty of myths and urban legends about this building and about Nicolae Ceausescu, the man who ordered its construction. Augustin Ioan is a professor with the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest. He told us more about the stories that used to circulate during his student years, in the 1980s. :

“A source of these stories used to be the former rector of the University of Architecture, Cornel Dumitrescu, who, after the death of Ceausescu’s personal architect, Cezar Lazarescu, took over this post exactly at the time when the building was being erected. Dumitrescu often spent time in Club A, a place where people used to talk about things they would never mention in public. In Club A, after drinking a bottle of whiskey that would give him the excuse of talking nonsense, just like a drunk man would, he used to recount his meetings with Ceausescu. Some of them were quite extraordinary, and as accurate as they could be after a bottle of whiskey. I heard things about blueprints made by Ceausescu himself, but no one ever saw them. One of the architects of the Palace Hall though, said he personally witnessed one of Ceausescu’s drawing sessions. There were lots of similar stories. Ceausescu was said to have asked, for instance, not to have round windows at the upper floors, for fear that birds might get inside the building. Also, he supposedly ordered architects to make all boulevards perfectly straight. What’s certain is that he understood nothing about the technique of building such a palace. Everything that had to be rebuilt at his request, after visits he had paid to the construction site — and we’re talking here about entire parts of the building – was made without having a scale model. Whole parts of the building were just being added or demolished whenever Ceausescu ordered it.”

Beyond any urban legends, there are questions about the Parliament Palace that nobody can answer. One of these questions is related to the very name of the building. It’s still uncertain whether the name of People’s House, that replaced the building’s old name, was given after 1989 or it had circulated before as part of the urban folklore. Augustin Ioan:

”There are a few things that nobody knows. No one knows, for instance, exactly how much the construction cost. What we can tell is that in 1991 Rupert Murdoch offered 2 billion US dollars for it. I don’t know if it was a fair price, we were at a stage then when we would say out loud ‘our country is not for sale’. He planned to turn it into an infotainment centre, an information centre for the entire South-East Europe. Equally interesting are the stories after 1989, and I’ve witnessed a really funny one. In 1999, a strange gentleman came from the US to the Bucharest City Hall. He represented a huge investment fund that administered the wealth of Michael Jackson and of some Native American tribes. And he asked for permission to build a Dracula theme park on the plot behind the building, as a starting point for trips to Bran Castle and other places related to the myth of Dracula. The connection between a Dracula Theme Park and the Parliament Palace is food for thought even today.”

The unknown elements of the Parliament Palace give the place an aura of mystery and an almost Gothic quality. It is a unique entity, which almost devours those who enter it. Augustin Ioan:

”This building remains largely uncharted territory. There’s a lot more to it than we know. There is no overall blueprint for it, because from the very beginning it was a state secret, and construction works were conducted on limited sectors. Whoever was in charge of a hall would only receive the interior outline of the hall, they had no idea of the overall structure of the building. We can’t even call it an architectural item, because it is actually a set of items. It is comparable to a settlement, both in terms of its size, and in terms of its relations with the city it destroyed in ordered to replace. It virtually pushes the city away, it is a building guarded by armed sentinels, and, quite ironically, it is still protected by a stone fence, although it is the most public building in Romania. It’s simply a rural item amplified tens of thousands of times. And another interesting thing: the competition held several years ago for its restoration only concerned the front of the building. What’s behind? The Uranus boulevard and the Salvation Cathedral will be built behind the building.”

The People’s House also fuelled the imagination of those who believe in the catacombs of Bucharest. People interested in paranormal experiences believe there is another Bucharest underneath what we can see, and the Parliament Palace is connected to it by means of countless tunnels. What we know is that there is at least one tunnel, as Augustin Ioan confirmed. But some people believe the huge building is connected to the ones around it, such as the Defence Ministry building, or even to more remote ones, such as the Cotroceni Palace. One thing that encourages such suspicions is that the building has 7 underground levels, including an anti-atomic bunker for 3000 people.

The Parliament Palace together with its surroundings make up a special universe, separated from the city that has failed to integrate it. And an expensive universe, too, given that the budget for its maintenance is equal to the budget of Ploiesti, a city with over 200 thousand inhabitants.

On June 1, 1942, Marshal Ion Antonescu started the deportation of the Rroma, Romania’s gypsy population, sending them to labor camps in Transdnestr. The number of people involved varies in estimates between 25,000 and 38,000, of which around 1,500 survived the war. Living and working conditions were dire, and the terrible death toll was mainly due to dysentery and typhoid fever. In spite of protests from the king Mihai I and Queen Mother Elena, the Antonescu government neither set the Rroma free nor improved their living conditions. The official line was that nomadic Rroma were a social peril.

This tragedy, however, gave birth to myths of its own, such as the one of the cardboard boats. According to that story, the Rroma were put on dingy boats made of cardboard and sent across the river Bug. The shabby boats fell apart in the water, sending people to their deaths. Adrian Nicolae Furtuna spoke to us about his research into this myth as head of investigative research.

“There are no archive documents mentioning this episode, and, of all the survivors we and others interviewed, none mention this cardboard boat incident, as an eye-witness or otherwise. The story goes that the Rroma were put on a cardboard boat, then left to drift on the river Bug until the boat got wet and just sank along with the people inside. This story has a drop of irony and hilarity to it, if we were to compare the way in which Jews were dying in Transdnestr. In this cardboard boat case, the comparison raises a lot of questions. As far as our research has managed to reveal, this myth originates in the sinking of the ship Struma, which occurred in February 1942. The Rroma looked at this event and reformulated it in line with their culture. This social representation was encouraged by several elements. One of them was Marshal Antonescu’s initial plan to deport the Rroma by waterways. Before being deported, they were identified, and the gendarmes went house to house to tell them who was going to be deported. A social representation is an entire chain. There are also documents showing how many Rroma and how many horse-drawn carts were going to arrive in every city harbor on the Danube. The Rroma thought they were going to be drowned, as the Jews had been.”

Young Rroma nowadays are barely aware of the porajmos, the Romani holocaust. Adrian Nicolae Furtuna spoke to us about generational memory works, and how other recollections of tragedies become myth.

“We try to go beyond the myth, trying to see what this memory comprised. Most young Rroma have no hard data on the deportation to Transdnestr. They don’t know the year when it happened, don’t know key words, such as Bug or Transdnestr, but they know the cardboard boat story. They associate it with the Holocaust in the West. This happens because the Jewish Holocaust has received much wider media coverage. Many of the young Rroma say that the deportees were gassed in Transdnestr, which did not happen. However, we wanted to see how history gets conveyed from one generation to the next. In the case of the Rroma, this process is different, because the Rroma left behind mostly myths and tales. Rudar Romani, whose traditional occupation was woodworking, claimed that they were not deported because the Royal House used wooden spoons and wooden bathtubs. Of course some of the Rudar have been deported, but the Rudar villages that were not displaced claimed that this happened because they manufactured goods for the Royal House. Here is yet another myth that is very telling when it comes to traditional Rroma culture.”

The cardboard boat myth has the function of keeping alive the memory of the Rroma genocide.

Vm Track: “I was interviewing a 90 year-old lady. She hadn’t been deported, but at her age she could give me loads of hands-on information about the general situation. Her grandson walked in on the interview, and told her to tell the story of the Antonescu’s cardboard boats. And he was laughing as he said it. When I go into communities of Rroma, sometimes I go with a camera team, who tell the people that we are looking for survivors. And they just laugh and tell each other ‘Why don’t you invite these people over, you’ve been there, at the Bug.’ This shows you the way in which the Rroma see the event, and the historical root of the deportation is its social criteria. Most of the Rroma deported had not fixed residence, no fixed job, it was a social cleansing. This in turn caused a sort of ridicule: ‘so my neighbor who doesn’t have a job gets deported and I don’t”. There was no solidarity among people, and the function of the myth of cardboard boats is one of memory conservation. It is an ironic sort of conservation, however, different from the way in which a man from a western culture would behave when referring to such a tragic event as deportation.”

Even if the cardboard boat episode is merely a historical artifact, contributing to the shaping of Rroma identity, the wider genocide cannot be denied.

The basement of the “Vasile Parvan” Institute of Archeology in Bucharest has long been home to a number of 60 lead tablets, each measuring 15 cm in length and 10 cm in width. Their recent discovery has flared a genuine frenzy among history and mystery fans. Each tablet bears a variety of inscriptions such as letters, symbols and images that apparently seem unrelated. History enthusiasts believe the tablets to be of Dacian origin. Many stories revolve around the tablets, each more eccentric than the next, with a somewhat strong impact in the Romanian public sphere. Specialists have repeatedly come up with evidence that the tablets date back to the mid-19th century. Their claims however have done little to reign in the imagination of the population, who continue to feed on the alternative accounts of history enthusiasts. Some say the tablets, which were originally discovered in Campina, some 100 km north of Bucharest, bear inscriptions in Dacian.

Radu Bajenaru, an archaeologist with the “Vasile Parvan” Institute of Archaology explains some of the arguments of specialists who challenge the authenticity of the tablets.

“There are two sides as to the origin of these tablets. On the one hand there are archaeology and old history specialists who by and large seem to argue against their authenticity, claiming they originated under Dacian administration, as far back as 200 years ago. On the other hand there are certain history enthusiasts, people passionate about old history and myths who are trying to legitimate their authenticity with no other basis than their own knowledge. They are trying to reconstruct Geto-Dacian society from two thousand years ago. Of course there are pros and cons to each side of the debate. I for one believe that evidence in favour of a more recent point of origin, some time in the 19th century, are much stronger. More specifically, recent analysis of the metal they are made of clearly show that the lead from which they were forged was typical of 19th-century printing craft. Secondly, all the engravings, the entire iconography and the inscriptions on these tablets reflect things that were known in the 19th century. They tell us nothing new about the history of Geto-Dacians as compared to what we knew 150 years ago. We are told nothing about what was discovered afterwards. Thirdly, great historians specializing in antiquity, and by that I particularly refer to Parvan, whose scholarly expertise and accuracy are unchallenged, were familiar with these tablets. When Parvan wrote his works he didn’t pay much attention to them, as he already knew their story”.

What was the broader cultural climate at the time the tablets were discovered?

“Those who challenge their origin mistakenly call them fakes. A fake is in fact a forged copy of an original work of art or object. Rather these are genuine 19th-century creations from the Campina-Sinaia region, most likely belonging to Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu. Hasdeu was an encyclopaedist and a man with a wide cultural background. He had both the financial means and the intellectual ability to produce such objects. It is quite obvious, at present, that they are representations of Hasdeu’s vision of Geto-Dacian history. For this reason these tablets can hardly serve as historical evidence. The only peculiar thing about them is that sign language, which is allegedly Geto-Dacian, a weird grouping of Greek, Cyrillic, Latin and Oriental characters. Of course, a refined linguist such as Hasdeu, for all his scholarship, would have found it quite easy to piece them together. There have been attempts to decipher them, some of them successful I’ve been told, which I find absolutely ridiculous. These characters cannot make up a language proper. This would be the only novelty these tablets bring about, the need to decipher the information from the engravings. Even if we did that, no matter how fanciful that may sound, even if we did understand what Hasdeu wanted to convey on these tablets, I still think it wouldn’t be of much help to us, given the level of knowledge in the mid-19th century”.

If we were to believe this side of the story, what pushed Hasdeu into making these tablets in the first place, and how should we identify with them?

“It was not Hasdeu’s intention to be misleading. He was actually a man of his age, he didn’t want to forge objects, he meant no harm, he would have genuinely desired to do good. He must be seen as an enlightened figure, an all-knowing person keen on learning and disseminating as much as possible. And the tablets were but one of the means he chose to do this. It was commonplace at the time to do things like this. I see nothing wrong in that. It is, however, wrong to try and make these objects 2000 years older. If we took them for what they are, namely the production of a learned man, it would be just fine. It is a serious matter that such things become arguments in an effort to legitimate a history we know little about. There is little these tablets can do to change our understanding of this age. What I just don’t seem to understand is why anyone would want to make people believe these tablets are genuine. There were no such things in antiquity, no where in the ancient world can we find this type of engravings. I don’t see any sound reason why we should have them”.

The mid-19th century, an age of so-called “national fakes”, was dominated by Romanticist ideology. Besides the tablets, Hasdeu is also credited for another two creations, the so-called “Diploma from Barlad of 1134”, and the Charter of Yurg Koriatovich of 1347. Fortunately, history today is different from what it meant 150 years ago.

The Red Cross was set up in Romania in 1876. Its first headquarters was on the premises of Coltea Hospital in the center of Bucharest. The Red Cross got its baptism of fire right away: a fully stocked ambulance carrying a doctor and several paramedics left Romania to assist the wounded in the Serbian-Turkish war. In the Russian-Romanian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, Romania’s war of independence, the Red Cross was already a seasoned organization. One of the greatest personalities associated with it was Queen Marie, King Ferdinand’s wife, whose picture, dressed in a nurse’s uniform and making the rounds in field hospitals in WWI, made headlines the world over.

We have selected for you some testimonies by former Red Cross workers, preserved by Radio Romania’s Center for Oral History. The first is Ani Cicio-Pop Birtolan, daughter of a Transylvanian Romanian political leader.

Ani Cicio-Pop Birtolan: “I was already grown up during the war. Working for the Red Cross, we didn’t discriminate. I was in a hospital where there were soldiers without arms and legs, we were spoon-feeding them. We did everything we could to make their lives a bit better. And then we decided to have a permanent stall in the railway station with our Romanian ladies from the Red Cross, serving hot tea and home baked buns. We told ourselves that we had to have a manifesto. If I only had a single copy of that manifesto written with the indescribable enthusiasm of youth, because for the life of me I cannot remember it. I know I rushed to the piano and we started singing ‘Awaken, Romanians!’ and ‘To Arms!’. It was the folly of youth.”

Mircea Carp was an officer, and was close to the Americans working with the Red Cross. Before fleeing Romania, he was arrested by the newly minted communist authorities under the pretext that he had ties with the Americans:

Mircea Carp: “Between March 1947 and the moment I got arrested, I led some teams that were bringing American aid to Iasi and Vaslui. This is where the investigators were trying to push the investigation, me carrying secret messages from the American authorities to various elements of the Red Cross in Vaslui, and especially Iasi. I managed to weasel out of it, by telling half-truths, without giving any information. I admitted that I carried sealed envelopes on two occasions. I said that in both instances, since I was an officer, I could not just open the envelope to see what was inside. The investigators insisted that they knew the envelopes contained intelligence or military instructions for the Red Cross in Iasi and Vaslui, which was obviously preposterous, because the Americans were doing no such thing at that time. Not to mention that it was a mission to assist the population in areas afflicted by drought. So I admitted I had carried envelopes, but I said that they were opened right in front of me in Iasi and Vaslui, and they contained instructions as to how to distribute American aid. There was nothing there whatsoever about espionage, sabotage or any such thing.”

Alexandru Smochina was a political prisoner, and when he reached the prison camp in Madagan, in the Far East, he was told that he could send letters to Romania through the Red Cross:

Alexandru Smochina: “They called all of us, foreigners, to the mess hall, there were Koreans, Japanese, Bulgarians, Serbs, Hungarians, Finns, Romanians, Baltic people, Soviet citizens, Greeks, from Asia there were Persians, many, many peoples. Someone came there, and just told us that we had the right to write home to our families. We were given postcards from the Red Cross and Red Crescent for that purpose. He told us to write to our parents. They gave us a postcard each, and told us we could write every month. We could ask for a postcard every month. He told us that we also have the right to receive parcels, that we could also receive money, and told us what we could not get, like weapons and such. That made us very happy, and we all wrote, right on the spot. He gathered up the postcards, but because I was being moved from one camp to another all the time, I didn’t get an answer from my wife and daughter.”

What the Red Cross has brought is brotherhood between national branches and general compassion shown to people, no matter which side they fought for or what religion they had. The Romanian Red Cross was a manifestation of human solidarity, transcending hatred between people and countries. It carried out impeccably its mission of bringing a ray of light and hope into the lives of people in troubled times.

The Ottoman sphere of influence covered several states which were gravitating on the geopolitical orbit of the Empire. Being located in a region controlled by the Turks, the Romanian Principalities had to pay tribute to the Sublime Porte. The economic obligations or the tribute paid by the Romanian Principalities to the Porte varied along the years, becoming an increasingly heavier burden. One of the most toxic effects of that was corruption. The emergence, crystallisation and persistence of a bribe culture, which stifled economic development, were even worse than the existence of economic obligations as such. Romanian reformers in the late 18th century and early 19th century considered the Principalities’ duties to the Porte the main cause of the poor management of public money, which in turn triggered a disastrous economic situation.

The payment of tribute started with the so-called “haraci”, during the short rule of Vlad I the Usurper, in Wallachia, in 1395. The “haraci” became a constant duty, which would be paid by successive rulers, even by the descendents of Mircea the Old. As regards Moldavia, during the rule of Petru Aron, the first “haraci” was paid in the summer of 1456, as a consequence of a political agreement signed in 1455. Historian Bogdan Murgescu from the Faculty of History with the Bucharest University briefly described the structure of economic obligations paid by the Romanian Principalities to the Sublime Porte during the years.

”The haraci was an established sum of money that the ruler of a vassal country had to pay to the Porte. But the haraci was not the only tribute paid to the Ottoman Empire. There were also the so-called pesches or gifts, which consisted either in money or objects like furs, falcons, horses and other items. The quantum of the haraci varied along the years. At first, the haraci was the most important payment, and the pesches were occasional gifts. In a nutshell, this was the list of economic obligations.”

The history of the Ottoman power shows how the economic obligations changed along the years. When the sultans were carrying out military campaigns, to expand the empire, the tributes were higher, and vice versa, the tributes got smaller when the decline of the Ottoman Empire started. Bogdan Murgescu:

”With the Romanian Principalities’ growing dependency on the Ottoman Empire, additional claims were made by the Porte. The Turks didn’t require exclusively money, as they also made claims relating to supplying of the Ottoman armies or of the ottoman strongholds, and even to the supplying of Constantinople itself. They also requested products, a certain number of animals, wood for ships and constructions, and sometimes even labour force for military constructions.”

The ascension to the throne in the two principalities was the result of a real bid. Huge amounts of money were requested by the Porte and those claiming the throne didn’t hesitate to pay them, regarding the payment as an investment.” Here is Bogdan Murgescu again.

“ Amounts of money were raised unofficially in a move that had more to do with haggling for the princely throne. Boyars used to pay their way to the throne or to bribe the ruler to keep their positions at the court. The bribes consisted mainly of money, jewellery or valuable artefacts. In order to keep his throne, the vassal king had to bribe the sultan or the high dignitaries in Istanbul. As most of the rulers were appointed by the Ottoman Porte, these bribes were increasingly higher exceeding the official tribute. The money paid for the throne in the 16th century exceeded the official amounts and all the other duties that had to be paid to the Porte. This custom of bribing one’s way to the throne lasted until the 17th and the 18th century. ”

The harach would go directly into the official treasury of the Ottoman Empire, while the peschesh was the personal money of the sultan, his wife, the great councillor or other dignitaries of the empire. Bogdan Murgescu told us more about how these economic contributions used to be a burden for the Romanian provinces as compared to other regions of the Ottoman Empire.

”The Romanian Principalities were only a small part of the territories under Ottoman occupation and so was their financial contribution to the Empire, which accounted for less than 10% of the official amount of the total tribute paid to the Porte. But the bribes paid to the high-ranking Ottoman officials at that time were significantly higher than the tribute. And the Turks collected more money in bribes from the Romanian Principalities than from the territories under the administration of Ottoman governors. So, it was good business for the Porte to preserve the autonomy of the Romanian Principalities. And the rulers of these Principalities were bringing more money to the empire than the provinces under their administration.”

The Ottoman influence started to dim in late 18th century and early 19th century, and so did the financial contributions to the Porte. The last contribution, the harach, disappeared in 1877, when it was used to fund Wallachia’s armed foreces, which eventually brought its independence.

Some photos become universal symbolic images of an outstanding event and stand the test of time, preserving their symbolism unaltered. The photos of Czech photographer Josef Koudelka are very telling of what happened during the Prague Spring of 1968, when Czechoslovakia was endeavoring to escape the Soviet influence.

Josef Koudelka was very lucky to be in the streets of Prague in August 1968 and to have his camera on him, as he could immortalize and show to the whole world the barbarism with which the Soviet Union and its allies were shattering the Czech people’s freedom aspirations. Returned from Romania only two days before the Warsaw Pact troops’ attack, Koudelka took the photos that he subsequently took out of the country in secret and published in France in 1969.

Romania did not participate in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 as it considered the move an act of aggression against a fellow Socialist state. Colonel Alexandru Osca, a military historian, wrote several books about the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops and about Romania’s non-involvement:

Alexandru Osca: “This was the largest-scale invasion of a state after WWII. Ceausescu was not invited to participate and was not informed about the invasion either. The leaders of Warsaw Pact countries met at the highest level 6 times. We cannot tell now what Ceausecu would have done if he had been asked about Romania’s participation in the invasion. “

Historian Petre Otu, the director of the Institute of Defense and Military History Political Studies has read the declassified documents showing that Nicolae Ceausescu knew about the campaign the Warsaw Pact countries were preparing against Czechoslovakia.

Petre Otu: “Ceausescu knew about the invasion. One of the very prompt and accurate sources was a Polish officer whose family took refuge in Romania in 1939 where they stayed until 1944. He was part of the Warsaw Pact command. The adviser to the Romanian embassy in Warsaw had been a high school colleague of the Polish officer. This was the channel through which very accurate information was received about the Soviets’ preparation for invasion. Ceausescu was informed by Ion Stanescu and, when he left for Prague, he ordered that the message received from the Polish officer be translated in the Czech language. In Prague he conveyed it to Dubcek. Upon his return, Stanescu asked Ceausescu if he had conveyed the message to Dubcek. Ceausescu answered: ‘Yes, but this guy… either he doesn’t know anything or he doesn’t want to know anything’. Ceausescu was discontent with Dubcek’s reaction.”

The relationship between Romania and Czechoslovakia was not close until 1968. In 1964, when the Valev plan was drafted, under which Romania was assigned the role of an agrarian economy in the Communist bloc, Czechoslovakia used its influence for this plan to be imposed. Petre Otu showed how the relationship between Romania and Czechoslovakia developed:

Petre Otu: “The Czech leaders were very reluctant about cooperating with Ceausescu until July. They tried to avoid him because any association with Ceausescu could be reason enough for the Soviets to invade Czechoslovakia. After they got wind of the Soviet upcoming invasion they reconsidered their relation with Romania. Ceausescu went to Prague to sign the mutual assistance treaty. This led to the theory according to which that was the birth of the Little Entente in the interwar period. Information from memorialist sources confirms that the Soviets were closely following this Danube alliance. Based on this information, the fighting squads of young men and patriotic guards, a sort of paramilitary formations, were secretly prepared so as to be able to participate in the August 23rd military parade. It was an extraordinary effort and Ceausescu, knowing about the invasion, made the preparations in secret”.

In 1968 there were 8 thousand Czech tourists in Romania and another 400 in Bulgaria, who then came to Romania. As they could not return to Czechoslovakia they were accommodated in the hotels of the National Tourism Office, and they were given money until the situation got settled a little bit in their country and they could return safe and sound.