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“Sociologists in Communism. The beginnings of a profession without status” is a collective volume coordinated by Sorin Mitulescu and contains the stories of some sociology graduates in 1975 and of some of their teachers at that time. The book is both an essay in sociology and a collection of oral history papers. We understand from reading the book that sociology was at that time the victim of the oscillations in Romanian politics between the desire for modernization (especially technological) and the fearful and dogmatic conservatism that had penetrated all social levels. Sociologists in communism want to be a starting point in a broader debate on the role of sociology and the sociologist, both in the past and in the present. He discusses several topics such as the relationship between sociology and power, the professional mobility of sociologists, the relationship between personal life and the career of a practicing sociologist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the ideological mutations that occur by turning the written text into an adaptation, using the protagonists that play the role of the marginal, both in the novel and in the movie, facilitating the breakthrough in the peripheral universe. Transmedia reveals the construction of the same fictional word, but the shift lies in the swinging between ideological isms: progressivism and conservatism, capitalism and anti-capitalism. This study is focused on recent literature and its adaptations. Characters have got the same name, they live in similar universes, but the main aim of this paper is to identify the shifts that result from turning the written message into a visual one. The same “story” can take a different ideological turn, therefore, both creations must be taken into consideration, in order to comprehend the global message. The ”double-creations” chosen to illustrate this point are: Love Sick by Cecilia Ștefănescu, motivating this choice by the progressivism of the adaptation in contrast to the conservatism of the novel, concentrating on the queer component; I am an old communist hag! by Dan Lungu where the focus falls on the anti-capitalist view, whereas the novel concentrates on an anti-communism ideology; Soldiers by Adrian Schiop, a case where the movie diminishes the focus on the progressivism, shifting the prespective on the universal love story between Adi and Alberto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to achieve their functional purpose – that of organizing the urban landscape and helping locating people and geographical objectives through an efficient addressing system – street names are bound to remain stable spatial landmarks. On the other hand, street names are also semiotic devices of signifying space with the political and commemorative agenda of the ruling power. This latter characteristic renders them vulnerable to successive renaming following important power-shifts and especially regime changes. What happens when the ideological imperative of politicizing the street nomenclature undermines its functional requirement of providing spatial orientation through extensive renaming? Such a tensional situation is examined in the case of postwar Sibiu between 1945 and 1948, when the city endured a thorough redefinition of its toponymy under the political regime of communist “popular democracy” in Romania. The paper quantifies the scope of toponymic revision and then evaluates the content of these street name changes in terms of three major concepts: class, ethnicity, and gender. Grounded on the results of this analysis, the paper advances the notion of “mercurial street names”. It concludes by arguing that such a concept should complement the existing metaphoricity underpinning the scholarship in place-name studies, which draw on “text”, “discourse”, and “palimpsest” to conceive of the processes of street (re)naming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a case for analyzing the way in which the novel of Communism is approached by Mihai Iovănel in his History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020. This is a topic that was intensely discussed by Romanian literary criticism in Post-communism and represents the weakness of Romanian literature, either by it not being able to give a sufficiently convincing novel, or by not being able to agree upon how this novel should look. Accordingly, the critics had difficulties in labeling any novel that had been published after ‘89s as “the novel of communism.” The first part of the article is a panning of recent discussions about this term in relation to the analysis made by Iovănel in his History. The second part aims to trace out a network of this type of novel in the literatures of Central and Eastern Europe and to try to identify its particularities through a comparative analysis. The last part consists of a study case of the novels Acasă, pe câmpia Armaghedonului [At home, on the Field of Armageddon] by Marta Petreu and Bureți de Fag [Oyster Mushrooms] by Mihai Duțescu. The latter has been published after the History and both novels are analyzed from the perspective of the novel of communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate how the interpretation of the Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu’ work verifies the European transition from a rationalist conception of “genius” (according to which “genius” is a phenomenon subjected to the laws of nature/ society) to an irrationalist conception, where “genius” becomes a supernatural, transcendental, miraculous or inexplicable phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the anti-communist rhetoric of the popular Ukrainian video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl which was developed by GSC Game World and released in 2007. In this paper I argue that, in order to mount a humanist critique against Soviet communism, the game borrows the anti-colonial discursive structure of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness filtered through the video game F.E.A.R. If colonialism is predicated on the juxtaposition of territorial expansion and a progressive temporality towards a civilizational ideal, then Heart of Darkness and F.E.A.R. convey a critique of colonialism by highlighting how spatial progress brings about temporal regression manifested as a dissolution of the self. To show this, they employ the doppelgänger convention. Both protagonists representing white civilization are on quest to find a character who has been ‘contaminated’ by the ‘heart of darkness.’ This latter character is eventually revealed to be a negative cultural doppelgänger of the protagonist who has assimilated otherness to the point of no return. By the same token, in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl the psychological regression of the protagonist is mapped onto spatial progress towards the heart of communism, in this case Reactor #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. reworks the doppelgänger convention by identifying the protagonist with the character ‘gone native,’ i.e. gone communist, not only symbolically, but also physically. This enables the game to put forth two scenarios, namely one where the main character overcomes communism, and one where he embraces it. By offering both endings, the game maintains two contradictory views on the communist past. One ending suggests that communism can eventually be overcome, while the other postulates the communist past is here to stay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to provide an overview of the evolution of the Romanian novel from the publication perspective between 1965-1989. Through the employed methodology, the quantitative analysis, it will be observed in which measure the events and the regulations from the political system influence the dynamic of the Romanian novel production. In addition to this, it will be observing the geographical distribution of the publishing houses and the modifications which appears about their editorial hierarchy as a consequence of the newly implemented rules of the political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the content of the cadre file of Henri H. Stahl preserved in the Archives of the University of Bucharest’s Rectorate. In the form in which it has been preserved after 1989, the personnel file of H.H. Stahl seems, from several points of view, atypical. If we compare it with the cadre files of the 1950s, it surprises by the apparent “goodwill” of the communist cadres towards H.H. Stahl. This ideological solicitude is manifested in the interpretation given to main cultural and political events in H.H. Stahl’s life. In other circumstances such political past could be labeled as unusable in a communist context. Equally curious and noteworthy is the issue of the ethnic origin attributed (and not necessarily real or assumed by the one described in the file), more precisely the issue of Stahl’s nationality ( Jewish) which was recorded in the file. Analyzing Stahl cadre file we can wonder if the integrity of this dossier has not been compromised by removing, extracting or modifying documents by the personel staff services or by someone else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to address the written and narrated memories of Henri H. Stahl who left behind two memorial works: Memories and Thoughts from the Old School of “Sociological Monographs”, published in 1981, and the collection of interviews from 1985-1987, which appeared in 2000, under the title Monography as Utopia. Although they were conceived only a few years apart, the two forms of memoirs show some significant differences. In the following study, I will present the specifics of each of them, in order to later propose a brief comparative analysis of the two texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines the complex relationship between cultural association and spiritual dissociation in the works of expat author Petru Popescu. While it has often been argued that Popescu has perfectly adapted to the American publishing market by internalizing American cultural values, the interviews he conducted in Romania, as well as his novels in Romanian, which are far more complex than his American ones, speak for a different reality. What I have attempted to show is that Petru Popescu not only did not spiritually abandon Romania, but that his most complex works are tied to Romanian cultural, emotional and linguistic realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze how the literary magazines in the early years of Romanian post-communism began to update their strong anti-communist position with a series of doubts concerning capitalism. It was not about capitalism per se, which inspired a rather favorable perception, but about the austerity measures imposed after 1989 during the transition from the communist centralized market to the post-communist free market. Given its generosity toward financing the literary superstructure, the communist regime began to be reconsidered in a rather favorable light when compared to the financially decompressed post-communist present. The inherent comparison between the "generous" communism and the austere capitalism triggered an ideological tension relevant for the postcommunist Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As everywhere, words of English origin, used as such, as linguistic calques or adapted to the native languages, entered Romanian and settled comfortably in people's vocabulary as a mark of democracy that had to manifest at linguistic level, too, after years of totalitarianism when communication used to be achieved in a rudimentary, inexpressive way through linguistic clichés meant to conceal reality. Unobtrusive at first, when used just in contexts strictly related to certain fields, Anglicisms were taken by common language, gained ground and are, at present, used without discernment, becoming commonplace in everyday speech. The paper approaches the impact the excessive use of words of English origin has lately had upon the quality of the Romanian language which takes steps from the old wooden language of communism to a new one that abounds in lexical creations imitated after English words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to identify some of the motivations of exile in the case of Romanian writers and painters of Jewish or German origin during the 20th century, and to assess the possibilities of their artistic assimilation into the European or world culture, according to the strategies and modes of creative discourse: from the experimental character of the avant-garde to the apparently aestheticizing forms having opposed the official discourses of the communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the substantial actions of the Romanian Secret Police between 1968 and 1976, by monitoring the oneiric group and, particularly, one of its leaders, Dumitru Ţepeneag, as revealed by the surveillance files from the Documentary Fund of the National Council for the Study of the Secret Police Archives. The repressive apparatus of the totalitarian regime had persuasive methods of intimidation and compelling, including inoculation of fear, constant harassment or limitation of resources by censorship. These measures would remain inefficient in Ţepeneag's case, and the tactics adopted by the Secret Police Security would follow a different strategy aimed at the writer's isolation and denigration. The findings show that these measures would prove effective in neutralizing not only the writer, but the entire oneiric group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Monday Literary Club had a very important role in creating, educating, and shaping what the History of the Romanian Literature calls "Generation '80". In a recent interview, Florin Iaru, one of the first and the most important members of this generation, tells us how he sees the activity and the role of the club within the age, but also the Romanian literature. Based on his opinion, on the one hand, the Monday Literary Club brought together very valuable people and tried to make the most of them, and on the other hand, the communist regime played a very important role in the poets' life and poetry. I consider the Monday Literary Club very important for the Romanian history, not only from a literary point of view, but also because of its implications at the time, its strength in defending human rights, the freedom of speaking, the mere daily existence of a citizen who wants to express his opinions freely. This paper starts from my Research within the National Security Archives (CNSAS), which regards the communist implication in this literary club's existence: collaboration notes and very interesting so called "informational" reports regarding the members of this club. It tries to argue how important was, and still is, the activity of the Monday Literary Club during the communist period, but also its literary, historical, and political implications for the time before it was forbidden and after its closure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I investigate the multiple and ambiguous ways in which the Romanian critic Eugen Lovinescu instrumentalized one hundred years ago the concept of „intellectualization” regarding the process of Romanian literature evolution towards modernity, a process associated with abandoning its rural roots in order to become thematically more urbane oriented. I also investigate the polemical echoes of Lovinescu’s action during the Interwar period and after, especially during the Communist era (1948-89), when his texts and thesis were largely deformed in order to both subvert and accommodate the Communist regime agenda towards peasant and rural literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Romanian filmmaking, the fall of Ceausescu's regime and, with it, of communism set in motion an entire movement seeking to retrieve the history of 1948-1989; on the one hand, this movement was in tune with similar local artistic manifestations and, on the other hand, with the variations of the political attitudes undertaken by the post-1989 generations. Many of the films launched after the Revolution approached the construction of a negative image of communism, especially by exposing its wrongdoings, where the center of gravity was the communist used as an essentially negative character vital for the operation of the victim-aggressor binomial. This study focuses on the main recurrences associated with the portrayal of the communist in the post-1990 Romanian film; thus, this analysis seeks to open bridges toward the understanding of the ways in which the domestic film allowed the anticommunist discourse to shape it, but it also looks into the modalities in which films, in their turn, shaped the said anti-communist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]