Suchergebnisse

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.

This article explores the emergence and development of anarchist ideas and groups in Romania in the period 1880-1945. Western revolutionary trends such as socialism had permeated, by the 1880s, the Romanian cultural-political space. Socialism has been studied extensively and it only seems reasonable to extend the scope of previous research to other revolutionary movements or ideologies of the same period that have not benefitted from much or any scholar attention. To this date, researchers in the fields of history or political science have not provided any comprehensive study on Romanian anarchism and, consequently, the aim of the following endeavor is to offer a first sketch of the history of Romanian anarchism. This article is based on information drawn from primary sources such as radical journals of the epoch discussed, documents belonging to state institutions charged with surveillance of radical political activity, as well as memoirs; it is also based on works by western scholars that have focused on European anarchism.

The unification process for the workers' movements was the final step for the communists in their effort to gain total control of the political power. The tactics of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) were labeled "the salami tactics" because the party progressively eliminated all their enemies and used conjectural allies -such as the social democrats (PSD)- in order to reach their aim. This article describes the process whereby the organization of the PCR in alliance with the PSD obtained political power in the period 1945-1948 in the Ialomiţa county. The author focuses his analysis on two types of actions: the violent overtake of the local power (including mayors, police officers, governmental representatives, etc.) and the unification of the PCR and PSD in order to achieve a Single Workers' Party, in which the communists prevailed. As a result of the unification process, according to the official records, almost 7% of the population in this county was a member of the Single Workers' Party in February 1948. The Ialomiţa County is a very interesting, yet paradigmatic case, because in that period the region was a predominantly agricultural, with a small working class (2%), and the communists could not seize power by legal means. The study mainly relies upon local archival documents and upon the contemporary local media reports, which are carefully examined to discern between actual relevant data and their propagandistic content.

This article explores a number of the themes that late researcher and professor Alexandru Duţu treated in his the articles, book reviews and interviews published in the Romanian cultural and opinion press between 1990 and 1998 (Arc. Litere. Arte & Meşteşuguri, Cotidianul. Litere Arte. Idei, Dilema, Secolul XX, Transilvania, Viaţa Românească etc.). As some of these themes are covered also in his scientific works, the study contributes thus to an inventory of the historical premises for Duţu's ideas on the formal and contradictory duality of the modern world, including the duality of "organic" and "organized solidarities", as well as the Janus-like nature of liberty or of liberties. Furthermore, it investigates his view on the reconstitution within the orthodox space of the Romanian cultural and political tradition, "ravaged" by the rationalism of the 19th century modernization efforts. This "aggression" led to the emergence of a new image of tradition, in folkloric tones, that has stubbornly endured also throughout the protochronism preached by the communist regime. Finally, the article approaches the sensitive theme of human condition during communism and the Duţu's self- professed "inner exile", as well as on his reactions as a citizen of the polis. All these stem from this long scholarly history of dual worlds, particularly the condition of the individual for more than three centuries: that of a relentless search for the lost harmony between the "world within" and the "world outside"), as well as from the internalization of his personal development.