Books

Marius Oprea
"Banalitatea raului". O istorie a a Securitatii in documente
["The Banality of Evil": Documentary History of the Securitate]


with an introductory study by Dennis Deletant

Polirom, Iasi
2002

"The Romanian Securitate had a peculiar reputation among all the political secret police agencies in Eastern Europe. The obsession with the subject was so strong in the Western mass media at the time of the 1989 Revolution, that the word Securitate was even included in the Oxford English Dictionary. Such an obsession did not fully reveal how efficiently the Securitate controlled peoples' minds as an unrelenting tool of a regime that, in the context of the postwar repression, might have only been surpassed in Eastern Europe by Enver Hoxha's in Albania. Just like other structures of political terror, the Securitate made use of its best instrument, fear, and the extent this fear was spread among the population explains its success. The legacy of this fear would influence for years the types of behavior Romanians would adopt especially if they are not convinced that the coercive measures of the past were not abandoned…. Nothing in their history prepared the Romanians for the reign of terror that fell upon them in 1944. This collection offers documents about the instrument of this terror. Only after the Securitate wiped out a large part of the categories of professionals and independent peasantry could the Communist Party count on the obedience of a subdued people, for whom fear became a second nature." (Dennis Deletant)

Zoltan Rostas
Chipurile orasului. Istorii de viata in Bucuresti - Secolul XX
[The city's many faces: Life histories in Bucharest. 20th century]

with an introduction by Andrei Pippidi

Polirom, Iasi
2002

"The present book does not intend to stimulate nostalgia, though this emotion would be justified, as, through the pages of the volume, we shall meet with the souvenirs of our parents. And, among the records collected here, many come from popular sources, from workmen, small shopkeepers or maids, a counterbalance to the witnesses from the upper-middle-class, who remember what they were seeing when they lived on their estates or at balls at the royal palace. One disproportion, however, cannot be denied: more attention is paid to minorities than to Romanians. It is not surprising: in Bucharest, the society was multicultural, as it is no longer, and the social changes brought about by the Second World War and continued over the next half century affected mainly two categories, exactly those two that were blatantly distinct: the aristocracy and the ethnic minorities. Both were on their way to extinction in the 1980s, when Zoltan Rostas began his enquiry, hence, therefore, his interest. The social homogenization experienced by our generation is just now becoming an abject of study, while we are witnesses to another stratification, this time without being enforced by ideology." (Andrei Pippidi)

Marius Oprea, Stejarel Olaru
Ziua care nu se uita. 15 noiembrie 1987
[The Unforgettable Day: November 15, 1987]

Polirom, Iasi
2002

"On 15 November 1987, in response to the wage cuts imposed by the management for the non-fulfillment of production targets, a group of workers from the Steagul Rosu (Red Flag) truck plant in Brasov initiated a revolt that made history. In the context of chronic food shortages and heating restrictions-particularly distressing for a city located in a mountainous area, the Brasov workers generated one of the most daring collective protests in Ceausescu's Romania. They went on strike, marched into the town where they were joined by numerous city dwellers in their protest and, finally, attacked and damaged heavily the building of the local branch of the Party. The present volume gathers precious testimonies by many of those involved in the events. It is a book about real people who speak of their feelings during the revolt and their sufferings during the interrogatories carried out by the Securitate." (Dragos Petrescu)

Marius Oprea, Nicolae Videnie, Ioana Cirstocea, Andreea Nastase, Stejarel Olaru
Securistii Partidului. Serviciul de Cadre al P.C.R. ca politie politica
[The Party and the Securitate: The Romanian Communist Party's Cadre Service as Political Police]

Polirom, Iasi
2002

This work comprises studies and original documents selected from 929 files originally preserved in the archives of the Brasov Municipal Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP). Based on numerous documents related to the inquiries carried out by the cadre inspectors of the RCP during the 1960s and 1970s, the volume explores the intricate relationship between the Party and the Secret Police-the Securitate-in communist Romania.

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Gérard Althabe
Secera si buldozerul. Scornicesti si Nucsoara, mecanisme de aservire a taranului roman
[The Sickle and the Bulldozer: Scornicesti and Nucsoara, Boundage Mechanims of the Romanian Peasant]

Polirom, Iasi
2002

This is the story of two villages. One of them, Nucsoara, is a village in the mountains that opposed communism. Many of its inhabitants were detained, tortured or executed. The other, Scornicesti, is a village in the plain and because it was also the place were Ceausescu was born, the post-1968 communist regime was determined to transform it into a town. While Nucsoara escaped collectivization and remained an isle of private property in communist Romania, in Scornicesti the land became collective property and the town was subjected to Ceausescu's experiments in the rural world. The story of the two villages, from 1946 to the present, is the story of the rural society in Romania during communism. Today, one of them became a town, while the other is slowly dying. The consequences of collectivization, modernization and systematization are longlasting and the Romanian village is trapped in underdevelopment and a new kind of dependency, abused by greedy elites for whom politics is "a matter of taking care of one's personal interest at the expense of the public interest" as Ion Mihalache described it.

Smaranda Vultur, editor
Memoria salvata. Evreii din Banat ieri si azi
[The Rescued Memory: Jews from Banat, Now and Then]

Polirom, Iasi
2002

"Recounting one's life may mean different things to different persons: this fact is well emphasized in the interviews. (…) For some, their personal life identifies, from a certain point on, with that of the community, for others, it mainly represents a chronology; some see mostly its good parts, others, more challenged by fate or history, focus on one traumatic event.
Today, the Jewish community in Banat comprises, unfortunately no more than 400-500 persons, who live mainly in Timisoara, Lugoj and Resita. Thus it is an almost exclusively urban population (with a few exceptions, those who have lived in rural area come mostly from Northern Transylvania). Family history often refers to the space of Central Europe, as well as to that of Transylvania or, more rarely, to the ones of Muntenia, Moldova or Bucovina. This makes the history of the space we have been studying overlap with national and European history. The historical record of the two World Wars, that of the expansion of the right and the left totalitarian regimes during the 20th century, the history of anti-Semitism, Zionism or the creation of the state of Israel impinge upon personal or community history." (Smaranda Vultur)

IRIR's Yearbook 2002

On Holocaust and Communism

Polirom, Iasi
2002

IRIR's Yearbook 2003

On Romanian history writing: past and present • Romania's foreign policy • From the history of the Romanian exile • Book reviews


Polirom, Iasi
2003

Working Papers

Susan Eckman
Freedom and Power in Post-Communist Romania

Alina Mungiu, Gerard Althabe
Peasants into Citizens: Reinventing Politics in a Rural Society

Ioana Cirstocea
La construction politique de l'indentite feminine pendant le Regime Communiste Roumain (1945-1965)