ARHITECTURA ȘI CONDIȚIA ARHITECTULUI ÎN ROMÂNIA ANILOR ’50 – PRESIUNEA REALISMULUI SOCIALIST ȘI PROBLEMA RESPECTĂRII DREPTURILOR OMULUI
Architecture and the Condition of the Architect in Romania in the 1950s – the pressure of Socialist Realism and the Problem of respect for Human Rights

Summary/Abstract: The evolution of architecture and the condition of the architect in Romania in the ’50s were marked by the influence of politics, the regime imported from the East being imposed by force and with disrespect for democratic norms and fundamental human rights. The regime dictated by Moscow blatantly violates fundamental human rights, from freedom of thought, conscience and expression, to freedom of the practice of religion, of opinion and its freely communication, to the most serious abuses of denial of free movement of the person, both within the borders of the respective state, and of the right to leave one’s own country or to return to it. And the series of endless abuses of Stalinist-inspired government, largely legislated by rules specific to totalitarian regimes, culminated in a particularly frequent violation of the right not to be arrested or arbitrarily detained, to receive a fair trial, or to be protected by law from arbitrary interference in personal life. To injustice, purges from specific professional bodies and social marginalization, the architects’ guild responded by resistance or emigration. Under the influence of the Soviet example, socialist realism will be promoted from 1948, being condemned the architectural „cosmopolitanism” (constructivism, functionalism, formalism, purism),first of all being described as „decadent” avant-garde solutions and cubism. Consequently, if the post-war reconstruction in the West was based on the principles of modern architecture, approached in a rationalist spirit, in the regimes of popular democracy established under the control of Moscow the architectural restoration process was carried out using the rules of anachronistic and costly neoclassicism. In Romanian architecture, socialist realism did not have the monopoly it assumed in literature or the massive influence it had in other arts, probably also due to the specific time lag between the architectural project and its execution; In the Romanian architecture of 1949-56, socialist realism did not take root as strongly as the political factor would have liked, projects dependent on previous architectural experience coexisting with the plans of strategic constructions that, under the rule of politically supported ideology, illustrated the principles of socialist realism.

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