Dezbaterea „Archiva Moldaviae” la bilanț: un deceniu de cercetări independente și lansarea volumului XI/2019 al revistei
The “Archiva Moldaviae” Debate: A Balance Sheet of a Decade of Independent Research and the Launch of the Journal’s Volume XI/2019

Summary/Abstract: On the occasion of the tenth anniversary since the foundation of the journal “Archiva Moldaviae”, the Romanian Society of Historical Studies (SSIR), which provides logistical and academic support to this publication, organized a joint event, hosting both the launch of the most recent volume of the journal and an academic debate. This discussion took place on February 17, 2020, on the premises of the “A. D. Xenopol” Institute of History in Iași. Members of the journal’s editorial board, of the SSIR, joined by researchers who had published their work in the previous issues of the journal, as well as by members of the broader public interested in historical research attended the event. The speakers included, among others, Mihai Amăriuței, Cătălin Botoșineanu, Marius Chelcu, Mihai Chiper, Gheorghe Cliveti, Victor Cojocaru, Dorin Dobrincu, Florea Ioncioaia, Leonidas Rados, Flavius Solomon, and Petronel Zahariuc.The concept of “independent research” could certainly elicit a reaction of puz-zlement or even rejection, particularly from those historians who choose to follow the nationalist, state-centered, holistic, unifying, and centralizing tradition in Romanian historiography. This tradition went through various shapes, adaptations, reinterpreta-tions and adjustments. The gradual distancing of historians from the state’s patronage and control – the state being defined, in this case, both from a philosophical and admi-nistrative point of view –, their liberty to openly pursue their investigations as liberal, critically minded, and autonomous intellectuals is essential for the production of independent research works. The emergence of the “Archiva Moldaviae” journal was itself directly linked to the need for the assertion and growth of the freedom of speech, to the rejection of political, intellectual, and administrative control and pressures of any kind, to the refusal to tolerate any ideologically or politically driven instrumental uses and abuses of history. Approaching the past, investigating it freely and critically, without any authoritarian intrusions from outside the profession, has a particular significance for those societies which have experienced totalitarianism. There is only so much autonomy and independence in the field of research as the historians are willing to accept and fight for. As the participants emphasized, scholarly independence is a construct, a work in progress. It can only be built and secured in a certain favorable political and cultural context.

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