Suchergebnisse

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 He analyses two previously unpublished documents from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, relevant to the topic under scrutiny.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 author sketches a vivid intellectual history of the content and bearing of Raymond Aron's work, particularly with respect to the great scholar's analyses of totalitarian regimes and of Marxism as a "Christian heresy". He describes the dominant themes of the French philosopher, political scientist, sociologist, historian and journalist from The Opium of the Intellectuals, to Progress and Disillusion: the Dialectics of Modern Society, or Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations; from De Gaulle, Israel and the Jews to Politics and History, or to Main Currents in Sociological Thought; from Marxism and the Existentialists, to Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity; and from In Defense of Decadent Europe, to the Memoirs and to the Committed Observer… and this list is not an exhaustive one. He writes about the most prominent of Aron's contemporaries, and about his most enthusiastic followers, particularly in the Western world. As an autobiographical detail, Tismăneanu does not fail to mention Aron's readership among the Romanian students before the fall of the Berlin wall, a triumphant moment which the great champion of "methodological doubt" and the enemy of total metaphysics and ideological orthodoxies did not live to witness.

The study focuses on the analysis of a minor literature selection. My application, being determined by the nature of the selected theme (the major historical literature, which offers important interpretative reference points, usually does not appeal to the repertory characteristic of the historiographic and mythologizing imagery), is also conditioned by a personal concern pertaining to the resurgence, in recent years, of this type of imagery that usually affects the perception of historicity as well as the structuring of civil society. The themes of postcommunist Dacianism represent a thin catalog of theories and motives, which primarily aim to the reinvention of the traditional historiographic discourse through the reinterpretation of the older or more recent archaeological discoveries from a Dacianist perspective. The anti-Semitic themes from the post-communist discourse disseminated especially in connection to the instauration of the communist regime in Romania, are connected to the new radicalisms as well. Publishers that promote nationalist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and fictional along with historical Dacianist literature are also responsible for the dissemination of extremist ideas using Dacianist rhetoric. This minor literature, ignored by the academic establishment, but benefiting from a large segment of culture consumers, has had appeal especially among adolescents attracted by the soteriological profile of Dacian heroes. The influence of texts can be explained by the manner in which major themes of the national historical discourse are vulgarized and reinterpreted from the perspective of some rhetoric of crises. The search for heroes in an ancient and hypothetical "golden age" (we refer to the Pelasgic Empire) is part of the already obsolete repertoire of mythological reconstructions. The refuge in the past (in fact, a sign of maladjustment and the inability for social and identitary reformulation) and sacrifice become the reference points for the socio-cultural behavior proposed in a world, which is considered hostile and conspiring. Anti-Semitic attitudes go hand in hand with the instances of identitary exacerbation produced on the traditional basis of victimology, on the Orthodoxist-Dacianist exaltations. We cannot but to be astonished by the nationalist mixture, which paradoxically combine Dacianism and Orthodoxism, or Dacianism and alternative religions, the latter occurrence being also violently anti-Semitic through its rejection of Judaism as a subversive and unilateral religion. In conclusion, post-communist Dacianism (promoted especially by the Dacia Revival International Society ), as an answer to the identitary crisis, fits into the autochtonist historiographic trend, while more radical approaches (see the extremist publications and the books recently published especially by the "Obiectiv" Publishing House from Craiova) are somehow closely related to both the "interwar prophetism", which they vulgarize, and to the legionary mystique too.