Suchergebnisse

This article compares the ideas of two political thinkers representative for their time and region - Kautilya (of ancient India) and Machiavelli (of modern Europe). The analysis reveals important similarities and differences, and offers potential explanations for the findings. Most significantly, the similarities between Kautyla's Arthasastra and Machiavelli's Prince are visible particularly when it comes to their treatment of war, 'state' administration, diplomacy, monarchy and the features of a good leader. Such similarities suggest that the development of modern European philosophy has been influenced by other cultural spaces, including Ancient India.

This article discusses the case of Ion Grigorescu, and of his ambiguous relationship with the communist regime, which he registered through a form of "documentary realism". Through his "realgrams" Grigorescu documented real life experiences in an innovatory approach to the majority of Romanian artists of the time using photographs of his everyday environment, and being inspired by his social and political context. Grigorescu is thus an artist committed to the public space and assuming a critical stance without it being discursive, pedant or moralizing. The approach of this study is descriptive, based on the artists' artworks and self-descriptions, and seeking to situate Grigorescu's approach in the context of the communist regime and its transformation after 1990 into a democratic regime. The conclusions show that Grigorescu's artworks are anti-system, criticizing any establishment, no matter in which regime he finds himself. His contestation is specific to a committed artist that chooses to express his freedom of expression beyond his own studio.

During the communist regime, photography was a popular activity due to the existence of the Association of Photographic Artists. Its members weren't professional artists, but mostly people with technical backgrounds, and who transformed their hobby into a job. The lack of interest of Romanian artists in photography (except for a few particular cases such as Ion Grigorescu or Ștefan Bertalan) can be explained by the fact that there were no photo-video departments within the art universities and the Romanian Artists' Union (UAP), the only form of institutional organization of the Romanian artists, had no special photography department. Therefore, the photographic practice in communist Romania was linked to the Association of Photographic Artists and not to the Romanian Artists' Union. The evolution of its activity in the period between 1968 and 1978, and the impact that politics had on it transpire very well from the evolution of the Fotografia magazine, the only photo periodical of that era. This article shows that even in a creative field, which was overlooked by the Communist Party, the echoes of the official political discourse were felt, mainly after 1975. We have outlined two aesthetic trends in the mid-1970s. One was the photograph obtained by laboratory procedures, supported by a depoliticized discourse and the second was a pseudo reportage photography, namely the communist propaganda photography.

Starting from the case of Ion Irimescu, this article discusses the issue of continuity among Romanian visual artists before and after 1944. In this study, I argue that it was essential for the visual artists' survival and establishment as artists during the communist regime to enter into a clientpatron relationship. The existence of this relationship meant access for the artists to financial funds, promotion within the UAP, and protection from the measures, which the Securitate could have taken against them. This article is divided into four sections. Every section examines an episode from the life of Ion Irimescu. His interwar biography is presented in the first section, and his adaptation to the communist regime is the subject of the second part of this study. The last two parts analyse the factors which facilitated his confirmation and promotion as a state artist after 1944 and the relation of the artist with the Securitate.

Cinematography was deliberately organized, financed and oriented towards the purposes of the system and consequently became the most effective element of political and cultural pedagogy. The synchronic correlation between word and image, the power of visual suggestibility, empathy as an emotional response to the actors' performance - all these had immediate effects on the collective imaginary, on the perception of reality as a social and identity-forging project determined by the emergence of the ideological discourse. The Romanian socialist cinematography from the time of Ceauşescu synthesized and systemized a coherent and explicit system of values wherein it integrated the message of literary and other artistic works, of variegated forms of cultural expression, so that Romanian cultural axiology could find new possibilities to stand out in strict dependence to the institutional and optional structures of mass culture. The cinema per se thus became a sort of pedagogy for universal use, rendering the past heroic, as it exacerbated the national ego via the instruments of entertainment. Highly permeated ideologically and quasi entirely subordinated to the Communist cultural policies, the cinema production, carried out because of the appeal to emotions and collective memory, thus became part of the official discourse and orientated its issues, especially after the 11th Congress of RCP, according with the political and ideological interests of the national Communist project. The analysis focuses on the Romanian historical films with subjects and episodes relevant for the ancient and mediaeval history, in relation with the efforts of identity reconstruction, coordinated during the Communist regime in relationship with the project of the socialist nation's building and, after 1989, in relationship with the attempt of reconsolidating, sometimes from a radical perspective, the nationalist mythologies. Socialist patriotism thus incorporated many stereotypes drawn out from the ante-bellum, as well as from the inter-bellum Romanian spirit: the lyric of self-identification expressed by the film soundtrack and by the majestic character of the heroic gestures, the heroic epic obvious in the popular ballad pattern of pre-modern nature, the activist pedagogy specific to all forms of identitarianism. Despite all this ideological infusion, the mythology of Romanian historical films during the Communist nationalist times remains one of a sadistic-masochistic nature, cultivating the fear towards the Other, fatalism, expectation and obedience, all chronic and historicized.

This article is a case study of the Romanian Artists' Union during the Thaw as an institution potentially capable of renewal by creatively applying the rules imposed in the totalitarian communist State. The methodology used is that of archival research through the use of the concepts of Repressive State Apparatus, Ideological State Apparatus (Althusser), dispositif (Foucault), and habitus (Bourdieu). The text shows that from 1953 until 1957, in the context of similar changes in the Soviet Union, the Union of Romanian Fine Artists underwent a gradual transformation, which culminated with the change of the Management Board and a professionalization on specific criteria of the structure. The characteristics of the modern foucauldian dispositif, that the Union acquired in the period of the Thaw, remained valid in the next period, of reideologisation (1958-1963). The conclusions are that even in conditions of totalitarianism, subjects and structures can introduce creative elements into the process of reproduction of a given order, by modifying this order.

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 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.

The article is an attempt to draw a brief historical comparison between censorship in interwar and in communist Romania respectively. Paradoxically, there are not too many genuine scientific studies on censorship, in a country well-known for its repressive approach against culture during its recent and not so recent history. The analysis uses the works of the novelist and historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, as an illustrative case study among other prior to 1989 examples, especially in order to prove the much harsher nature of the communist regime.

The criminal treatment of juveniles in the European Union was regulated in earlier times and has evolved by national legislation of Member States, international treaties, documents of the Council of Europe, as well as by European Union Treaties, European Parliament Resolutions and Press Releases of the European Commission. The regulatory divergence of criminal treatment of juveniles in EU countries implies the need to elaborate certain minimum rules to prevent and to combat juvenile delinquency, oriented to education of minors and their punishment.

The aim of the article is to reframe the political ideas Dimitrie Gusti has been expressed alongside two decades of the interwar period, through the conservative political doctrine. Dimitrie Gusti did not relate his political perspective to the conservative label. Still, his political commitments and ideas, as these have been summed up in 1932-1933, when he was Ministry of Public Education in a Government led by National Peasant Party, allow seeing him amongst the leading personalities who has resumed the prewar conservatism in Romania. My arguments revolve around this latter thesis.

The name is one of the essential basic elements of the identity of a local collectivity. The local collectivity is self-identified and individualized through its name, in relation to the other collectivities of the same type.
The name of local collectivities have functioned and developed during the centuries. Their meaning, content and evolution provide the valuable information concerning the evolution of local collectivities over time.
The return to the traditional names of local territorial collectivities was the first stage of the attempts to the territorial-administrative reform in Moldova.
Although, many localities have reestablished their historical names, the process is not ended. Still today, one can find in toponymic landscape of Moldova, the names of localities which are improper to the national spirit and historical traditions.
The procedure regarding the assignment or change of the designation and the return to the historical names of local collectivities is in the process of examination.

The paper analyzes the institutional transformation of cultural policies in postcommunist Romania and the correspondent emergence of an art market in Romania. The case studies considered show that both artists and policy makers adapted to extraneous expectations and patterns rather than promoting new visions and models. The "triangle metaphor" forged by Magda Cârneci, representing the relationship between artists, the state and the Union of Visual Artists (UAP), offers the basis for analysing the game of continuity and change after the fall of Romanian communism.

Cahul district of the Republic of Moldova has a natural, economic and tourist potential still poorly exploited in the Euroregional context. For a better capitalization of the existing potential and opportunities, the enhancement of the cultural and archaeological heritage from all historical epochs is welcome.
The beneficial effects will be felt firstly, at the level of infrastructure, by building tourist sites and, secondly, by improving the tourist experience and performance. The premises of a viable neighborhood, such as the Lower Danube, are also given by the way in which the identity and cultural resources of the communities that are part of the Euroregion are distributed and capitalized. Recourse to events and processes during historical development is necessary and useful, especially since there is sufficient evidence of good coexistence at the Mouth of the Danube and its inclusion in the natural course of the history of western civilization.