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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]

The paper analyses aspects of literature works as presented in article published in the periocal "Flacăra" (July - December 1979)1, one of the propagandistic instrument of the Romanian Communist Party. The Flacăra newspaper includes a series of articles that highlight the folding of certain authors and their vision regarding the dogma of the communist regime, the periodical representing a strong factor of influence among the general public. [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]

The present paperwork analyses motherhood as literary theme in Ioana Nicolaie's novel Cartea Reghinei (2019). The novel forms a trilogy together with Pelinul negru (2017) and Tot înainte (2021), but it also communicates on different levels with the author's other novels. The first part of the study focuses on the relationship between the narrative perspective and the authorial subjectivity, especially since the autobiographical vein of the novel is quite significant, while the main character is also built on this autobiographical foundation. The novel, however, makes possible several reading perspectives, and the experience of motherhood is particularized by the socio-political context. Therefore, the second part of the paper deals with this particularization, but demonstrates that the novel also emphasizes deeper meanings of motherhood as an essential experience. [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]

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]

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]

The study analyses decree no. 177 from the 4th of August 1948 for general regime of religious cults. The paper follows the changes added to religious life in Romania, specially the situation of Romanian Orthodox Church. This decree led path for communist regime to install a severe control over religious life, succeeding to subordinate it to politics. Communist legislation, mostly of soviet origin, determined many changes over the Orthodox Church, but also to other religious cults recognized in Romania. Communist authorities established as a purpose, by adopting a favorable legislative framework, the use of religious cults in means of propaganda and manipulation of the people. Apparently, communist laws appeared to assure large liberties to religious life. It has been suggested the idea that, for the first time in the history of Romania, religious cults will enjoy absolute freedom. In fact, in the content of the Decree there were stipulations that would consciously violate the freedom of manifestation of religious cults and the activity developed by them, aspects characteristic of totalitarian regimes. At a first glance, the 1948 law did not elucidate the true intentions of the regime, yet it gave the regime the first and most important lever of control over religious life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the reading of Ruxandra Ceseranu's novel Un singur cer deasupra lor as a modem apocrypha presenting a historiosophic vision of Romania's fate in the second half of the 20th century with the use of apocalyptic themes and symbolic imagery. The analysis consists of tracing references to the Book of Revelation which is a key element to the interpretation of the novel, and to other biblical books and themes. The analysis is supplemented with an attempt at describing the most significant archetypical and cultural symbols, and the remnants of bygone traditions that provide the second reading to those historically-grounded stories. References to folk tales based on Christian imaginary world further strengthen the proposition of the apocryphal nature of the work. The additional argument supporting my thesis is the polyphonic and multilayer structure of the novel that combines subjective visions and mythical interpretations with the factual layer, and the use of palimpsest technique consisting of interweaving texts of other authors into the main narration. The paper does not address the question of the conformity of the literary vision with the source documents and historical prototypes of certain episodes and persons. Those matters were partly commented on by the author in the afterword. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims at analysing the trajectories of the Romanian intellectuals immediately after the Revolution in 1989, and the fall of Communism. During the Communist years, the term itself (intellectual) had been used with ideological connotations. The intellectual (as a social value) was discussed according to the Marxist ideology, taking into consideration his concrete usefulness and his contribution to the Communist society. Immediately after 1989, the fundamental dilemma faced by the Romanian intellectual represents the necessity of the implication of the intellectuals inside the society or, on the contrary, the isolation in an Ivory Tower of creation. The second challenge aimed at the necessity of synchronizing the Romanian elite with the European one; the topics for debate in Western and Eastern Europe during the Cold War were fundamentally different. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence and the commitment of the Romanian intellectuals in reshaping the Post- Communist Romanian society. [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]

Security is a complex, multi-dimensional approach context. In broad terms, it represents the ability to protect its citizens. The sole holder of the legitimate right to use intra-state and inter-state force is obliged through the consequence and expression of its sovereignty to protect and guarantee its citizens’ rights and freedoms and ensure the conditions for the exercise of their rights and freedoms. After the dissolution of the communist political and military bloc, security develops as a global concept that tends to include traditional political and military dimensions, new dimensions, such as economic, energy or security, individual rights, and freedoms. This study addresses Romania’s security policy, its evolution after 1990 and until now. The paper aims to highlight Romania’s position as a territory and its role in the regional context regarding security. Its statute as a NATO and E.U. member, and strategic partner of the United States, determined a permanent update of its security policy and proposed objectives, correlated with those of the entities to which it belongs. From the point of view of security policy, Romania has an important geostrategic role and can stand out as a regional leader due to the threats it could be subjected to. The study will highlight that its security policy provides many benefits for the country’s citizens and its institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a brief study of sociological research in the archives. The method used is that of observation, respectively of the comparative study of the documents and interpretation of the selected information. The researcher aims to bring in actuality and to present, especially for young readers, secure and unclassified information about the communist educational system and the party propaganda. The paper contains few comments, the content, almost entirely consisting of official data and information belonging to the Archives Fund of the Town Committee Targu Jiu of the RCP. Most of the research activity in archives has been allocated to study "the education through work and for work", "the propaganda work" of the party and "the political-ideological education", as forms of mass education in the communist totalitarian stateThe article, by its content especially well documented, is constituted in a guidebook for those who are concerned with the research of the totalitarian communist regime in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuming that 1989 was a moment of an affirmation of the political cultures belonging to the Central and Eastern Europe's countries, this article attempts to highlight the specific elements of the overthrow of communism in Poland. In this regard, we analyze the Solidarnosc phenomenon from the perspective of the Polish political culture essential dichotomy : insurectionism vs. organic work. The main conclusion of this paper, entitled „The year 1989 in Poland. The Political Virtue of Moderation and the Conservative Vocation of Polish Solidarity“, is that the roundtable in the 1989 Poland represented the victory of Polish civil society in achieving a synthesis of the most important trends of the Polish political tradition, by assuming the conservative value of moderation as the principal political attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe the process of Romanian collectivization between 1949-1962. The Communist Constitution from 1948 and the Land Reform from 1945 played also an important role to the Romanian collectivization. The process of collectivization has affected all the categories of peasants and his main goal was the abolition of agricultural private property and the consolidation of collective farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper advocates a contemporany reading of the volum of Ghiță Ionescu, „Comunismul în România“. Being a relevant picture of the communist regime, the volume guides the discussion towards the theory of „communist legacy“,a general formula designating the genetic explanation of post-communism. This is, therefore, the theoretical perspective under which we propose to (re)reading this book. [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]

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]

As its title suggests, this article represents a short analysis of the official discourse immediately after the 1989 Romanian revolution. The paper points out the similarities between Ion Iliescu's and National Salvation Front (N. S. F.)'s representatives speeches on one hand, and those of the Communist leaders in the late 40's and at the beginning of the 50's, on the other hand. Surprisingly, there are also a few similarities with the discourse of the executed dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. We also tried to underline the nature of the relations between the authorities and the opposition. For the new authorities from Bucharest, the opposition was to have only a formal role. In reality, no real opposition to the official policy was tolerated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents Walzer's pluralist approach to justice as contrasted with standard egalitarian liberalist accounts such as Rawls's. Walzer's notion of "complex equality" is discussed in order to see whether by defending the sort of socialism attached to it, he can be still situated within the liberal tradition of thought, or the so-called "socialism of o liberal kind", as he likes to term it, means a moving away from the basic liberal principles. In my view, since Walzer's conventionalist and contextualist account of justice is inextricably linked to some philosophical, metatheoretical suppositions, revealing them could be useful to illuminate such a problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on both fascism and communism in an attempt to analyze them as politics „pioneering” phenomena. My goal is to see the way fascism and communism as historical realities, ideal-types, and as tropes were perceived, understood, and defined. The multiple nature of the two concepts when used by opponents and proponents comes under scrutiny and helps me understand the legacy of the recent past, including stereotypes, prejudgments, stigmas, a metaphoric and polemic type of discourse and so on, over post war historical writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I begin the present paper by asking the following question: why, when discussing the effects that the communist regime had on women, the underlying assumption is that the communist policies directed at women's emancipation can not be regarded as feminist policies? To answer this question, I analyse the exchange of arguments that took place in Aspasia Journal (2007), on the issue of communist feminism as contradictio in terminis. I first analyse Mihaela Miroiu's argument, that pleads for a structural incompatibility between feminism and comunism, and continue by examining the dynamic of the counter-arguments offered by other theorists. Through the present inquiry I try to show that, although the authors' arguments are convergent with regard to the structural incompatibility between feminism and communism, the tension of the debate rests in the different emphasis put on the existence of feminism as social practice in communism. By introducing the discussion on feminism and communism in the language of political ideologies, the existence of feminism as social practice, although important, proves insufficient for holding that feminism, as political ideology, existed in the communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper starts from the theoretical perspective opened by the culturalist approach, that introduced the so-called break from the end of '50s in cultural studies, and took into consideration the meaning of the concept popular culture not as opposite to that of elite culture or high culture, but as a term which refers to the cultural products, practices and artefacts produced by and for people, also with a special focus on their complex relationship with the political and economic agenda of the period. The research focuses on the popular culture in the communist Romanian society between 1947-1989. The general objective of this larger study was to outline the main aspects of the popular culture in the communist Romania and to identify the popular culture practices and artefacts and their roots. In this paper there will be presented the results regarding the folk culture as a distinct part of the popular culture. I analyzed both the practices of folk culture (what is included in the term of lived culture) and the products and artefacts of folk culture (as a part of the larger concept of lifestyle). Besides this, because these issues have been little explored from this perspective in Romania, I also paid close attention to unanticipated themes that could arise from the empirical research. The method used for accomplishing the objectives of the research was the social biography (in the form of life histories). More exactly, I used the technique of 'multiple autobiographies', understanding the term in its classic sense, as subjects' narrations about themselves, about their own lives. This method allowed me to obtain 'subjective' data about the 'lived culture', and also about the existence, evolution, appropriation, negotiation, resistance or rejection of the popular culture products, which in the end could lead us to outline the situation of popular culture elements in Romania in the communist epoch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The paper follows the internal evolution of the Cluj County (1948-1949) and of the Cluj Region (1949-1952) Healthcare System. It starts by presenting the reorganization of the sanitary circumscriptions and it continues by offering data on the nationalization of the medical and pharmaceutical units, on the new communist personnel policy, on the increasing anti-epidemical measures (a top-priority of that time) and on the growth in number of healthcare units during the first years of the "popular" regime. Based entirely on archival sources, since the subject's bibliography is almost inexistent, the research draws the image of a system that was trying, along with the whole society, to meet the requirements of the new socialist power structure. [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 our study we consider the treatment of socio-economic, political and psychosocial topics. We want to show how four decades of dictatorship destroyed any idea of freedom, but also how once it was obtained, a part of the population looked at it with some fear. Thus, the post-communist regime had to be a reaction to the previous regime. In the case of the states of central and eastern europe, we understand that a need for democratization has been a demand produced by this reaction. It was wanted to build an opposite of the former communist regime, but the difficulty of building democracy was caused by the presence of the legacies of the old regime. [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]

This article analyzes the close relations developed between the Romanian and Spanish Communist parties in the context of the Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia. It explores the similarities and differences between the visions of Nicolae Ceaușescu and Santiago Carrillo on the reform of the world Communist movement and also the new meaning attributed by both to proletarian internationalism. Drawing on transcripts of their conversations in crucial political moments, the article reveals how Eastern and Western Communists found ways to work together in order to undermine Soviet control over world Communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]