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The study investigates the history of prisons in general. In particular, the author outlines how this process has been developed in Romania. The study is conceived and analysed taking into consideration the historical evolution of humanity, firstly the appearance of prisons is approached and afterwards their evolution until the XVIIIth ce ntury. Later on the reform process of the punitive feudal systems until the establishment of modern prisons is analysed. The study pays special attention to the penitentiary system under the communist regime (in particular, the author analyses the penitentiary system in communist Romania). At the end of the study, the penitentiary system in the post-communist period is analysed, suggesting some prospective visions on the future of penitentiaries.

An insightful look through the history of punishment and prisons offers a new perspective on the changes that have been undergone or would occur in the Romanian penitentiary system. In the last instance the Romanian punishment and prisons have not displayed the same functions from their origin till now. The study of documents, old chronics and writings of various historians unveil huge differences in thinking the punishment and the role of prison in different historic ages. There were times when the prisons were situated either in the center of society (in country's Principe or boyars' courts) or times when they were placed at society's periphery. The execution was public or hidden. A trip in the history of the Romanian detention system opens a wide window toward the future of this social system.

In the interwar Romanian democracy, the main actor in this political mechanism around which the electoral system and the political parties were rounding was the King. He was designating a party in order to form the government, and afterwards the elections organized by the cabinet were inevitably won by the political party in power. As no party was designated one after another to rule the government, the sequence in power was simply and efficiently ensured. Winning the elections for each party in power was closed related to the voters dedicated to the government, meaning those who were giving their votes to the leading power. And this way, the interwar electoral puzzle was completed. The cohort of voters willing to vote for the government was influenced by many indicators such as cultural (literate) and economic ones, so that the electoral behavior differences between regions like Oltenia and Banat were significant, taking into consideration the economic gaps. Therefore, the electoral comparison between Romania and Dobrudja in the interwar period makes sense.

This study consists in an analysis of the modern Romanian conservatism's evolution. Starting with the semantic definition of the term "conservative", the author sketches the circumstances of its use in the Romanian political language in the middle of the 19thcentury and later in political practice. The author highlights that in the 50's and the 60's decades of the 19th century there was a great interest in a precise definition of the term in the political vocabulary. It was the time when "conservative" together with its antonym "liberal" were two political terms just entering the political language. Also in Romania, the conservatism defined its identity from the ideas of natural progress, organic evolution, order and legality in the spirit of the ideas of E. Burke, already common in the political imagology of the European conservatism. At the beginning of the 20th century Romanian conservatives continued to use the specific vocabulary and ideas of the former century, trying to unveil the consequences of the forced modernisation of the country, so that later, after the First World War, to disappear as a party from the political stage; conservative doctrine persisted in a fragmentary form in the interwar period.

The author examines the creation and functioning of the Romanian propaganda office at the General Commission of Romania for the New York World's Fair (1939-1940). He analyses two previously unpublished documents from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, relevant to the topic under scrutiny. The activity of the office was coordinated by the diplomat Andrei Popovici. His subordinates were the press attach. from the Romanian Legation in the USA, Horia Babeş, Paul Sterian, economic councillor, and Petre Neagoe, writer. The monthly budget was 750 $ (the rate of those years) for the daily expenses and salaries. The propaganda office started its activity in January 1939. It used to publish a bulletin, to help issuing stamps, to prepare propaganda posters, to publish and translate brochures. It also used to send presentations of Romania to journals, such as Cleveland News , Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, New York World Telegram etc., and articles on Romania to newspapers (Annalist, Journal of Commerce etc.), or to occasional publications (Going to the Fair, a Preview, International Guide etc.). The images the propaganda office used to handle were reproducing usual elements of the domestic and foreign official discourse of Charles II: Romania was a totally new country, based on a new social contract ("the royal revolution"), that was looking persistently towards "tomorrow's world" (the slogan of the American fair); this future was build with Romanian resources and strengths, mobilized by "the king of young people and of the peasants".

The study catches a glimpse of the different faces of "communist death", imagined as "assumed death", "egalitarian death", or exemplary (i.e., heroic) death. In fact, this was really the death of individuality. The goal of this study was achieved through transdisciplinary methodologies, which involve the specific tools of social investigation, interconnected disciplines (see political history, political, cultural and funerary anthropology, social psychology, art and architecture history), through convergent usage of historical sources specific to recent history (official documents, newspapers of the Stalinist period, memory literature, ethnographic sources, funerary inscriptions, interviews). The aim is to present the operations involved in the ideologization of death, a process demanded by "the hunger for legitimacy" of the communist system.