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Our paper examines the influence of the historical legacy regarding the impact of the border of the former Habsburg Empire, the former political membership of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), and perceptions about the communist past - in understanding the current tolerance of bribery in Romania, more than 25 years after the fall of communism. We started from an existing background suggesting that in the aftermath of the fall of communism, Romania underwent significant socio-economic changes, with persisting regional disparities accentuated by historical and cultural legacies. Using representative data from the European and World Values Survey joint dataset v.2.0, other relevant sources (Public Opinion Barometer from 2000 and 2007), variable selection and analysis methods based on DK/NA value treatment, binary derivations, the LASSO pack in Stata 17.0 together with different types of regressions including OLS, binary and ordered logistic ones, cross-validations both random and based on wellestablished criteria (mixed-effects modeling), and collinearity removal techniques based on maximum accepted values of the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF), the results highlight that respondents from certain Romanian macro-regions that experienced higher levels of membership in the PCR and positive views about communism are less likely to be tolerant of bribery. It appears that if the region of residence was part of the former Habsburg Empire, current intentions for bribery are higher. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the propensity to bribe is negatively affected by current macro elements, such as higher crime levels, material deprivation, urban connectivity or lower levels of migration abroad, and left-wing voting preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on an early role in the theatrical career of the actor, director, and scenographer Liviu Ciulei (1923-2011), created on the stage of the theatre gifted to him by his father, the civil engineer Liviu Ciulley, in 1946. The role in question is Pyotr from the play The Last Ones by Russian playwright Maxim Gorky, which premiered at the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest on the 16th of March 1948. My point is that Liviu Ciulei was drawn to this play by a psychodramatic impulse, finding in it issues related to his father who, like the protagonist in Gorky's play, had embroiled his family in a major scandal when his son was only thirteen years old. The season in which the play premiered was marked by the increasing interference of communist authorities in art, so the intense psychodramatic process through which Liviu Ciulei consciously or unconsciously worked through his early adolescent trauma intertwined with the collective drama represented by the imposition of the Soviet-enforced communist regime in Romania at the end of World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Musei Brukenthal is the property of Brukenthal National Museum and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Geographers have studied memory for decades, but there is currently a renewed interest in places of postmemory: sites to which memories of a past are connected, that engage those who have no living memory of the past in question. By combining a process-tracing approach to several post-communist surveys with in-depth interviews with members of the younger generation about their postmemories of the communist past, this paper explores places associated with postmemories of communism amongst young people in contemporary Romania, focusing on two types of place: (1) mega-constructions, prisons and deportation sites; and (2) sites connected to everyday life (home, shops, hospitals). The findings suggest that "postmemories in places" are reproduced and co-produced by younger people in a nuanced and complex way. Spatial postmemories of communism are not simply formed by parental or grandparental experiences of communism itself, but are also shaped by experiences of the initial post-communist period. Younger people's complex range of "postmemories in places" toward the communist past are politically multivalent: postmemory of specific sites related to the cultural welfare of the communist past did not necessarily indicate a political commitment to its restoration amongst interviewees; and postmemories of political violence associated with particular sites did not preclude unilateral pride in national achievements prior to 1989. Furthermore, "postmemory in place" is not a passive process, but one that is shaped by both a critical attitude to the responses of older generations toward particular places, and the challenges of the capitalist present. [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]

Fertility in Romania dropped rapidly after the collapse of the communist rule, placing the country among those with low fertility rates, and started to grow again after the year 2014. The paper approaches the dynamic of fertility in Romania, focusing on the period when fertility grew again. Using data from the semi-panel conducted by World Values Survey Romanian in 2012 and 2018, the paper looks at the changes in fertility in Romania based on micro-level data and studying trends in cohort fertility among women of fertile age and the drivers of these changes. The cohort analysis indicates that birth postponement is the main mechanism leading to the growth in fertility in Romania in the past decade. At the same time, the results provide support to the uncertainty explanation, the fear of job losing having negative impact on the number of children born by a woman. Altogether, the results suggest that Romania does not yet reach the second gender revolution, that has gender equality in private sphere at its core, fertility decision relying on traditional factors such as economic uncertainty and patriarchal model, with the male partner being the main breadwinner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses the intricate issue of legitimation of non-democratic regimes by focusing on the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu during a particular time span, namely, 1965-77. This author contends that the issue of legitimation of communist rule in Romania should be addressed not only from the perspective of recent history and communist studies, but also from the perspective of history of intelligence. Thus, this paper demonstrates that in the particular context of August 1968, the Ceauşescu regime acquired "limited legitimacy through consent." Furthermore, from the perspective of history of intelligence, this paper argues that certain communist spy novels set forth fictional characters of Securitate officers as defenders of the Romanian "socialist nation" against the hostile actions of Western spies. Thus, for a limited period of time such spy novels contributed to persuading some segments of society to believe that the Securitate's mission was actually to protect the nation against foreign, that is, Western enemies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dacoromania Litteraria is the property of ACADEMIA ROMANA Filiala Cluj-Napoca Institutul de Lingvistica si Istorie Literara "Sextil Puscariu" and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This introduction provides some insights on this special issue of Mortality, entitled Dying and Death in Former Communist European Countries, setting the issue against the general background of death studies and, more specifically, of death studies in eastern European countries. Some relevant references to the Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe International Conference, organised in Romania, at the '1 Decembrie 1918ʹ University of Alba Iulia, Romania, between 2007 and 2019, are also made. The rationale and also the limitations of this special issue are brought into attention. The papers that form this issue are briefly presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the contents of a pocket-sized booklet entitled Ghidul ilustrat al comunismului românesc (The Illustrated Guide to Romanian Communism), which was published to counter growing nostalgia for the communist era that is popular among Romania's young people. Influenced by family members and the media, the postmemory of Romanian communism among the country's youth tends to focus on the positive aspects of the communist period and ignore the crimes of the postwar regime. The guide provides a selective reading of the history of Romanian communism and identifies repression as its main feature. The critical visual analysis of the images in the guide identifies the various forms that repression took during communist rule. It targeted not only individuals but also entire social groups, who faced imprisonment on political grounds. At the same time, the repression took quotidian form as the regime extended its control over people's private lives and even their habits of consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the methodological and discursive transition in Aurel Voina's theoretical conceptualisation of cosmetic science. The primary focus is the rewriting of personal and professional identity, assessing how Aurel Voina negotiated his conceptual and practical expertise from his role as eugenics ideologue and policy maker in the interwar era, to a much more marginal position as medical professional in Communist Romania. The aim is to identify common elements and identify how deep did the historical manipulation protrude. This paper thus offers a closer view of political changes determining calibrations in physical and conceptual self-representation, considering concepts of fluid identity and manipulation of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Muzeelor is the property of National Institute for Cultural Research & Training (NIRCT) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present paper addresses the image of women in the first decade of the communist oppression in Romania, a subject not well developed in the sociological literature. The text is a fragment of a wider study, designed in two main and opposing parts. The first one is an analysis of the official state approved version of reality, done by researching the Scânteia newspaper, the official trumpet of the communist power, documenting all the published references related to women between September 1944 and February 1954. After browsing almost 30,000 pages, each mention of a woman in the text (in general or in particular, regardless of nationality, sociocultural, economic or political background) was selected and entered into a database that grew to over 18,600 references. In other words, the official history of women in the Romanian media, narrated by the Communist Party’s newspapers and political speeches, pre-approved and censored to suit the new power’s ambitions was the main focus. The study appeared in 2022 in London (Bulumac, 2022). The second part, the present text, is still under development. However, it represents a reality check. Because behind all the official image promoted and propaganda regarding women, there was another history. Or shall we say a real herstory, that was not published in the written press, that was not told either at school or even in the close circles of friends because of the communist induced state of terror. One must note that the timeframe in question was considered to be the harshest repressive regime that the country endured until the Revolution of December 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper "Minority groups in Romania during the communist regime'' aims to tackle the difficulties that the presented groups faced during the communist regime. The challenges that the respective groups faced were different in nature from economic to social inclusion and education. In this paper, relevant and defining methods are presented in order to understand the full length of the problems of the biggest (in number) minority groups and what they had to face in the communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper revisits the issue of women's emancipation in communism and its consequences in terms of the double burden imposed on them. The state-approved reproductive policies are analysed in terms of their ideological dimension and also of their practical consequences on the liberated women's lives. Due emphasis is attached to the recent research and to the emerging re-evaluations of the "red century" and its impact on women. The focus is constantly dual throughout the paper: women in the Soviet Union and women in Romania where we tend to see, just like in all communist states, a replication of the Soviet blueprint, which justifies the interest attached to the condition of the Soviet women after their emancipation. A personal touch in the form of anecdotes illuminating the hypocrisy of the communist propaganda and the communist overall vision will add a distinctly real-life Romanian dimension. The personal anecdotes are intended to further validate the research findings, while also highlighting the current challenges facing women when making their reproductive decisions in the post-communist society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the development of trade union sport organization, concept, structure, and policy during the last period of communism in Romania. Elite sport was extremely developed and successful. The concept was, however, centred on workplace gymnastics and 'Daciada', a national mass sport competition, which was adapted to communist ideology to increase nationalism, production and performance. The structure of workplace gymnastics introduced different terms such as gearing gymnastics, production break gymnastics, moment gymnastics and individual gymnastics. This had the responsibility to educate the masses for the practice of regular physical activities to develop elite sports (for the most talented) and mass sport (as leisure and healthy activity for the rest of the people). The conclusions highlight how workplace gymnastics was promoted only by propaganda. It was not really practiced by the workers. Some men preferred ludic or relaxing activities, while some women were interested in health and aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the manifesting of Romania’s independence from Moscow in 1968, based on diplomatic documents from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belgium. Romania’s dialogue with Moscow, Prague, Belgrade and Paris are presented in this article. The article proves that beyond the political regime, the national interest of Romania was permanent and it has manifested itself when it had this chance. It was an act of courage, openness and prestige. It was a risky move, but Romania managed to avoid a Soviet invasion. Internally, however, the Bucharest regime did not embark on the path of reforms, but of neo-Stalinism, the cult of personality and communist ideological correctness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the origin of the post-communist historical accounts tackling the 1945– 1968 period, which almost unanimously interpret this past as a clash between those in power and those who considered this power illegitimate. According to it, in communist Romania, there were only a handful of perpetrators from the secret police and a large majority of innocent victims, who tried to resist their reign of terror and repression. This paper argues that this mainstream interpretation emerged – paradoxically enough – from the post-1968 official accounts of the 1945–1968 period. It was Nicolae Ceaușescu’s belated de-Stalinization and his public condemnation of the crimes committed by the Securitate that generated an enduring discourse, which essentialized the role of the secret police in submitting the Romanian society to the communist rule, while by default absolving anyone else of responsibility. Ceaușescu’s indictment of the secret police, however, was built upon previous inquiries upon abuses committed against political prisoners, which – interestingly enough—his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, ordered after Stalin’s death but never made public. These inquiries came out of the archives of the former secret police only after 1989 and their opening constituted a “revelation” for a new generation of professionals who lacked the personal experience of 1968, and turned such communist-produced documents into uncritically used sources for accounting terror and repression. The irony is that secret police documents suggest the communist regime maintained its power rather by attracting the collaboration of individuals who tried to integrate themselves into the new society. Such accounts that read differently the secret police documents and illustrate the multiplicity of responses to the communist dictatorship, which ranged from compliance to defiance, are yet very rare in the Romanian post-1989 historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the course of the second half of the twentieth century, the consolidation of the institutional and normative framework in heritage protection and preservation was marked by continuity in Western European societies. This meant that heritage lists, and in particular, the values for which assets had been listed, were not subjected to major changes or revisions. However, in 1989, this opportunity was provided to former socialist European countries once their regimes had become obsolete. In this context, not only was history reassessed but opportunities emerged that allowed the opening of a new chapter in the politics of heritage preservation. The current paper discusses the continuities and discontinuities of heritage legitimisation following the dismissal of the communist regime in Romania. In particular, it focuses on the impact of the historical break of 1989, as well as the transition, on the heritage evaluation and listing processes. The role of the state in these processes will be questioned against the background of a fragile institutional and normative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Romania, the literary approach to the recent communist past centred on everyday life under the communist regime is usually associated with a nostalgic communist perspective. By reading communist nostalgia in the context of the communist politics that pervaded every aspect of everyday life, this paper traces the connections between narratives and moral responsibility at the level of Romanian literary productions. Many of the topics included in the collective volumes that bring together personal narratives of the past resonate with and influence the fictional creations of the past; in many cases, combining personal testimonies with fictional characters offered an improved mechanism for dealing with the past. The paper argues that the topic of daily life experiences under the communist regime can be further developed, raising awareness of the lack of discussions about moral responsibility at the societal level in post-totalitarian Romania. Even if the younger generations can use the literary narratives of the past to re-appropriate their predecessors' life stories, the reduction of the past to visual or linguistic stereotypes deepens the separation between public and private memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many states in post-communist East-Central Europe have established memorial museums which aim to tell the story of suffering under the communist regime. They also seek to encourage visitors to develop empathy for the victims of communist repression. This paper explores the responses of a group of young people to a memorial museum in Romania (Sighet Memorial Museum), focusing on how these visitors experienced empathy for the victims of communist-era violence. Data were collected using focus groups. Most participants showed a degree of empathy for the victims of suffering but this was usually shallow in nature. However some visitors displayed more "active" empathy (characterized by deeper imaginative and cognitive engagement). The paper explores how both the design and environment of the museum and the background experiences of visitors influenced the development of empathy. It argues that empathy is not an automatic response to suffering and instead can be considered as an interaction between the design of the museum and the background knowledge of visitors. The paper argues that empathy is an important means for young people to participate in remembering the communist period, and is a means to make "prosthetic" memories of an authoritarian past which they have not experienced first-hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anniversaries dedicated to historical events from Romania's history were a regular phenomenon during the years Nicolae Ceaușescu was in power. This was a particularity due to the fact that the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) wanted to gain national legitimacy, which it lacked due to its seizing of power with Soviet aid. One of these celebrated events was the 375 years anniversary of the Unification of 1600, which took place in 1975. It was organized due to the fact that the Communist regime deemed Michael the Brave as the most important figure of its cult of heroes. He gained such an image because of his accomplishment of national unification. This accomplishment was in line with party policy, which promoted the "national unity myth" which stated that throughout history, the Romanians from Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania were aware that they were the same people and their struggle against foreign invaders was done in the name of national independence. Therefore, PCR stressed the importance of "honoring the memory of the ancestors" as a component of its policy. The aim of this paper is to present the historical discourse used by preeminent historians in the papers published on the occasion of the anniversary. We shall observe how some historians presented the Unification using a term that didn't toe with the party line. Their interpretations of this historical event were somewhat different from the official canon. We shall also present the event's celebration from May 20th 1975, when a gathering took place at Alba Iulia in honor of the Unification and of the city's 2000 years anniversary. Thus, we shall see what the party's predominantly biased perspective stated. Consequently, we shall have a better picture of how it differed from the one used by historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Although the phenomenon of the amateur comedy brigades was widespread after the 1960s in communist Romania, there is a lacuna in addressing this topic in academic publications. A few academic studies focus on the "clandestine" political humor while "official", statesupported humor during Romanian communist regime is much less addressed and explored. This paper aims to fill this gap. To this end, it addresses the topic of amateur rural comedy brigades in communist Romania, focusing on a rural comedy brigade from Vaslui County which performed at the comedy festivals organized by the state. The main purpose of the state-supported humor was to educate "the people" in light of the new man's ideology, and integrate them into artificial organizations. Although this project was never fully successful, the cultural hegemony of the moment regarded humor as a weapon of social amendment. Correspondingly, "laughing for the state" represented a form of euphemized submission to authority whose political dimensions have been many times overlooked in the studies dedicated to the communist culture. The paper concludes that humor's power to intervene politically cannot be simplistically divided into collaboration with and resistance to the communist status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When examining the representation of women in Romania's communist society, the woman's magazine Femeia is often cited and used as a case study. My paper examines the representation of women in advertising that appears in Cinema magazine between 1968-1974, a periodical that aimed to address all those interested in film, regardless of gender. I first examine the context in which advertising appeared in Cinema, arguing that it was symptomatic of the beginning of the brief period of relaxation in Romanian politics of the time. As advertising is usually associated with the consumer culture in Capitalism, I consider the differences between the way advertising functions in Western magazines as opposed to how it functions in Cinema, a magazine published in the communist context. I use close textual analysis of specific examples of adverts from the magazine highlighting the central role that women had in them. I consider the representation of women in terms of the double burden as both workers and caretakers for the family but also in terms of how they are used to showcase specific products. In doing so, I hope to add to the area of scholarship that examines the representation of women, with a case study that has not been analysed from this perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Romanian communist state constructed a public library system as one of its national propaganda instruments. Within the context that encouraged the development of a public library national system, this paper presents the history of library and information sciences education programs and directions established during the communist era. Using oral-history interviews with librarians who worked in the public library system in the 1970s and 1980s, the paper discusses the effects these programs had on the professional knowledge and practices within public librarianship. During the last decades of the regime, public librarians employed alternative practices and resources in their education as the state's official training became limited and eventually obsolete. However, these alternatives created only a narrow professional-development opportunity for librarians. In spite of librarians' personal efforts, there was no significant change in the way that public libraries were defined and used by the communist society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the USSR boycott of the 1984 Olympic Games and Nicolae Ceausescu’s decision to send the Romanian Olympic team to Los Angeles, from an internal politics perspective. All the existing analyses study the situation from the perspective of international relations but the aim of this paper is to analyze the ways that Ceausescu incorporates this decision into his own ideology and how the Romanian people were informed. The sports news was published in the newspaperSportuland some inScanteia(‘The Official Newspaper of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Parti’). We will analyze all the relevant material from January until the end of August 1984 and will focus on the characteristics of propaganda and censorship used to convince the population about Ceausescu’s reasons to participate at the Olympic Games despite the situation. Dominated by the idea of a ‘multilateral developed society’, Ceausescu incorporated sport as part of this ideology and in the case of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, he manipulated the population through the media in a particular manner, centred on his ‘cult of personality’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World War I led to changes both on a European and a global level. Romania is a significant case/example considering the fact that in 1918, after the fall of the multinational empires, it achieved the goal of national unity. In the following years, the Romanian state promoted the peace established then, in order to strengthen its territorial integrity and alliances. The institutions of the national security system worked, since the end of the military actions, to fulfil this strategic objective. Both the army and the national intelligence services were confronted with complex threats. "Great Romania" had, at the time, three neighbouring countries with an obvious revisionist foreign policy and territorial claims - Hungary, Bulgaria and Soviet Russia. By far the most dangerous enemy (both in terms of force and means) was the Soviet Union which never accepted the territorial losses of the Tsarist Empire and the loss of Bessarabia. Lenin's Russia and then Stalin's Soviet Union attempted, in the two decades that separated WW I and WW II, to destabilize the Romanian state through means and methods that echo the modern "hybrid warfare" - from propaganda performed by the communist movement aimed at changing the constitutional order, to various attempts to ignite peasant revolutions (as a pretext for the Red Army intervention), and factory strikes, to an intensive espionage activity. The paper aims to analyse on the one hand the ample subversive actions of the soviet secret services and, on the other, to look at the countermeasures that the Romanian intelligence structures adopted for their annihilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the way in which the Romanian monarchy was perceived in Romanian historiography and in the daily Scânteia, the press organ of the Romanian Workers' Party, in the first communist decade, 1948- 1959. The perception of the monarchy in the historiography and press of the "obsessive decade" was eminently negative. The situation can be explained by the fact that the new political regime in Bucharest aimed to paint a dark past for national history, in contrast to the new development options of the country based on the light coming from Moscow. Those who did not agree to enter this interpretive grid suffered greatly, many of the historians and media people who opposed the dominant ideology ending up in the prisons of communist Romania [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the sociological theory of literature, constraints on the creation and share of cultural works can be placed between two extremes: one with a high level of politicization and the other with a high level of commercialization (Sapiro, 2003). The overall objective of the present research is to follow the principles of Sociology of Translation to closely map and analyse the publishing activity of Romania concerning China and Chinese literature during the two stages of Romanian Communism - 1948-1965 and 1965-1989. This paper proposes, thus, an extended approach to literature, to its cultural, political and economic reception. In achieving the proposed objectives, the research expands far beyond the literary text itself, to its macro context, analysing, through quantitative research methods, a statistical database created based on two phases - the first part containing literary and non-fictional works that address and discuss issues related to China; the second part includes literary translations of Chinese literature into Romanian, either by direct translation or by an intermediate language. Throughout this paper we will map not only the number of works, but also the topics approached by writers along the two periods of the political life of Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first half of the 20th century, Romanian music flourished through the creation of a group of composers that were of great value. This generation of artists, although formed in schools of the West, kept in touch with the Romanian culture and worked to develop it and promote it. In this context, the consequences of World War II meant that Romania fell under Soviet control, and as a result, the Soviet ideology encroached on all aspects of Romania's society. The communist authorities realized the potential influence that culture and the arts could have, thus subjugating them to the new social-realist agenda. This paper explores the impact that the Stalinization period had on Romanian composers and the music they created, from censure to monitoring and, ultimately, control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2019, Romania celebrates 30 years of liberty, after the fallout of communism, as a result of the revolution which started on December 16, 1989. This paper aims to draw the evolution of the cult of personality in the Scânteia newspaper, through analysis of its three important steps: the beginning, the highest level, and the downfall. Also, it was conducted a detailed discourse analysis, so the subtleties of the language were revealed, which were essential for the evolution of the cult. The articles were analyzed in detail, to observe the descriptions and the prases given to the Romanian president. The analysis also focused on the days after the start of the revolution and the fall of communism, in order to compare the articles about Nicolae Ceaușescu. [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]

Controlled by the communist movement of the country, the Union of Hungarian Workers of Romania (MADOSZ) was founded in 1934 in the Romanian Kingdom. Shortly after its creation it managed to spark a revolt in the Gyimes valley of the Eastern Carpathians. A national-revolutionary organization at its inception, MADOSZ became one of the few Romanian popular front organizations after 1936, only to be banned with all the political parties in 1938. In this paper, I’m addressing the core questions of the history of the organisation, focusing mainly on the double determination of the movement. Can MADOSZ be solely as the Trojan horse of the interests of the Soviet Union? What other dimensions of its existence can be highlighted? How was the organisation embedded in the political system of the Romanian Kingdom and what were its views regarding the modernisation of Transylvanian society? How were the members of the movement perceived and addressed and how did their fate turn after 1945? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the idea of “recuperative memory” with respect to the process of coming to terms with the past after the fall of the Romanian Communist regime in 1989. Its method is to examine the mechanisms used by recuperative memory in order to re-appropriate the past and emphasize the inherently mediated and multifaceted nature of this process. Using various examples from oral testimonies, autobiographical writings, literary works, and cinema, the paper argues that the role of recuperative memory is not only to facilitate the process of coming to terms with the past, but also to offer the material necessary to sustain a viable politics of memory. This entails providing a platform for the intergenerational transmission of memory and knowledge for those who did not live under the Communist regime, filling in this way the intergenerational gap, despite the lack of political class engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to highlight the manner in which communist ideology and mythology superimpose over specific symbols of the Christian imaginary by replacing them with its prefabricated system of reading and comprehending literary worlds. As secular religions, dictatorial regimes directly compete with divinity aspiring to dethrone and substitute it in an effort of re-writing history with its humanitarian pretenses. Immediately after its inauguration in Romania, communism intended to create, by using all necessary mean, a literary corpus of itself which would disseminate a coherent message with the supreme promise that it was to bring about heaven on earth. Their propaganda was formulated and conducted via literature and art as well, in the attempt to make this message intelligible and accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Drama was thus one of communism's favorite channels to impart its ideology to the masses, in the hope that the new plays would bestow the regime a human face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyse the activity of Romanian Consulates in two Scandinavian countries, Denmark and Norway, with particular focus on the first decades of the postwar period. Thus, the objective of this paper is to identify the main problems encountered by Romanian Consulates in Copenhagen and Oslo, as well as the solutions found to overcome them. The article is based on the analysis of the work plans and the annual reports preserved in The Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Romania on the activity of the consular offices, both during the rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, as well as at the beginning of Ceausescu's rule. The openness of the Romanian authorities after 1965 towards the West offers new perspectives for the analysis of the Romanian consular services in the two Scandinavian countries, which can anticipate the evolution of the Romanian consular diplomacy, its difficulties as well as its achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the promotion and practice of physical exercise and sport in relation to social class and the shifting roles of women in communist-governed Romania during the 1980s. Since sport played a central role in communist ideology, especially as a means of maintaining a healthy and growing workforce, the government encouraged physical activity through gymnastics at work (in the form of "production gymnastics"), in public wellness centers, and at home. In this study, the authors trace societal shifts related to changing policies and laws through corresponding shifts in the representation of female bodies engaged in sport and exercise by the media. Content analysis of Romanian magazine and newspaper articles published during the 1980s reveals how group physical exercises, such as maintenance gymnastics, were promoted to working-class women and how images of women became increasingly feminized and sexualized, thereby reinforcing new norms of feminine beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the debates concerning Mircea Vulcănescu's legacy in present-day Romanian public life. An important intellectual from the interwar period who wrote on a variety of topics ranging from theology to philosophy, Vulcănescu became a member of Ion Antonescu's Cabinet and was directly involved in the economic spoliation of the Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust. Condemned for his actions in the postwar period, Vulcănescu was sentenced to prison and died before carrying out his sentence, as a result of improper living conditions. After 1989, Vulcănescu's supporters have portrayed him as a martyr whose death was symbolic of the destruction of Romanian culture by communism. Notwithstanding his tragic death, the article argues that his conviction was in line with those pronounced by the international war-crimes tribunals. Looking at the attempts to obfuscate the true cause of the trial and Vulcănescu's involvement in the Antonescu regime, the study shows that they impede the coming to terms with the past. Resistance to engaging with the memory of the Holocaust in Romania is shown to come from nationalistic and conservative public figures, intellectuals and officials in the Romanian Orthodox Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Problems of Sustainable Development / Problemy Ekorozwoju is the property of Faculty of Environmental Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the changes that occurred in the Romanian medical system since the communism's collapse and until nowadays and to determine the evolution of the population's health status during this period. During the last 25 years, the public Romanian healthcare system has been struggling to cope with underfunding. Our results indicate that this fact had a significant influence on both the medical assistance, reflected in physicians' emigration and poor healthcare conditions, especially in rural areas, and on the individuals' health status, Romania being far behind other EU states from this point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the censored fragments of Mircea Ivănescu's Romanian translation of Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms, published by Univers Publishing House in 1978, as well as the translator's (or the censor's?) contribution to the 'edulcoration' of certain details that did not comply with the Communist ethics of the late 1970s; it also discusses the reason why the Romanian version underwent a purging process at the time. Another issue tackled in the paper is the appraisal of Ivănescu's merits and demerits as a renowned translator, in general, and as the translator of Capote's novel, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the mnemonic battle fought over the Romanian communist past between the active forces of intellectual democratic elites and the passive resistance of the majority of the population. The former try to impose a narrative of cultural trauma regarding the communist past against the latter's popular resistance expressed by strong nostalgic attachments towards the same communist past. The paper investigates the formation of the new official consensus on the communist legacy as cultural trauma, proposing a three stage sequence of its articulation: i) the breakthrough made by detention memorialistic literature in the aftermath of 1989 Revolution; ii) the officialization of 'communism-as-cultural-trauma' narrative by the Tismăneanu Report condemning the communist regime; iii) the institutionalization of the cultural trauma narrative in the educational system. All these struggles over the memory of communism from the part of the anticommunist political elites are tacitly countered by strong popular nostalgia, as revealed by extensive survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Encounters in Theory & History of Education / Rencontres en Theorie et Histoire de l'Educacion is the property of Queen's University, Faculty of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper deals with the moment in 1948-1949, when the representative organization of the Romanian Roma unsuccessfully tried to obtain for them from the communist authorities the status of a national minority. For the Romanian Communist Party, the Roma represented a population that had to be brought into its sphere of influence. Discussions on the establishment of the People's Union of the Roma lasted for several months but eventually led to the rejection of the request of the Roma leaders. The institutions involved in these discussions created documents, some of which are kept in the archives and allow us to study this moment in time. An archival document of particular importance for understanding what happened in those years and for understanding the motivations behind the communist authorities' decision not to grant the status of a national minority to the Roma is the study titled "The Gypsy Problem" in the Romanian People's Republic, which was drawn up by the Department for the Issues of Coinhabiting Nationalities in the context of the negotiations in the first months of 1949 between the ministry's leadership and the Roma leaders in connection with the recognition of the Roma as a national minority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the complex phenomenon of the reeducation in Communist prisons. The author gives several examples of political prisoners that underwent reeducation to prove that despite its magnitude reeducation was not irreversible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Quality of Life (1018-0389) / Calitatea Vietii is the property of Romanian Academy Publishing House / Editura Academiei Romane and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)