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The present collection of 'Studies on Art and Architecture' contains presentations given at the annual conference of the Estonian Art Historians' Association in 2007, as well as some complementary articles that were added at the suggestion of the author of this introduction, as they were related to the general subject of the collection. The question that forms the subject, 'Quo vadis, art history?', has for some time been seriously looked into in the international arena of our profession.
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This article analyses Armin Tuulse's evolution into a scientist in Estonia in the 1930s and his post-war scholarly activities in Sweden. The important problems of the article include disputes of German and Swedish art historians on different cultural regions, searches for originality in Estonian art and a study of the methods of medieval sacral art.
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In the 1930s, Armin Tuulse's research was mainly focused on castles. He summed up the results in his doctoral dissertation on Estonian and Latvian castles, published in 1942. The book is constructed on the typology of castles. Research of the following decades has revealed new data on Estonian castles, complementing and sometimes correcting Tuulse's views. But, on the whole, his book has maintained its importance.
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This article discusses three stone reliefs from sixteenth-century Tallinn. The reliefs were previously treated by four eminent Estonian art historians - Sten Karling, Armin Tuulse, Mai Lumiste and Helmi Üprus. Their modes of seeing and describing the reliefs, evaluations of artistic quality and hypotheses concerning the meaning of the motifs depicted are compared. Clearly these are very different and even contradictory, depending on the researchers' personal tastes and methodological tools, as well as the historically determined ideological background at the time of publication. Contemporary ways of approaching the artifacts in question and interpreting their iconography are proposed by the author.
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The article discusses the emergence of Villem Raam (1910-1996) as an art historian in 1938-1941, observing his remarkable activities as an art critic and reviewer of art exhibitions, and his work in the field of art history, primarily in developing further and specifying the treatment of Ants Laikmaa's and Jaan Koort's works.
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Ceausescu’s political image in the West had been seriously affected by the Romanian economical crisis and the austerity measures that the Romanians had to deal with. Ceausescu’s idea of simultaneous abolishment of NATO and the Warsaw Treaty, his ambition to reimburse the entire Romania’s external debt and his refusal to contract new external credit contracts affected the way Western political and military leaders perceived Romania.
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This paper is an overview of the main political, legal, and institutional frameworks in which the Communist regime, seating in Romania from 1945, imposed the collectivization of agriculture to the Romanian peasantry. The author points out also on human sufferings of that Soviet-inspired policies. Mentioning the countless number of victims, the collectivization destroyed the normal development of the Romanian agriculture with difficult consequences to this day.
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After 70 years of existence the „Soviet empire” collapsed. What led to the disappearence of the Soviet system was not a military defeat but its incapacity to keep the pace with the economical advance of the Western world. The breakdown of the Communism was seen as a miracle by millions of people whose lives changed profoundly. Besides this perception, the change in system was also an inexorable phenomenon imposed by the laws of history. According to these laws oppression makes people fight for their freedom and a coercitive system can function only as long as it is economically and socially viable. Once the collapse began, it could not be stopped. That was the way the Communist system broke down and all Eastern European nations won back their freedom.
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This article is a first installment of a series devoted to the French-Romanian relations in the 60’s. The author pursues to throw light on the mechanisms set in motion after the diplomatic negotiations, leading to rapprochement between Bucharest and Paris by the middle of the decade. This year 1964 was a crucial moment for the Romanian-French rapprochement. The article focuses on the visit of the Romanian Prime-Minister, Ion Gh. Maurer, in France, in the summer of 1964 and its immediate results. One of the most important moment of the visit was the meeting between Maurer and the President of the French Republic, General De Gaulle.
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In 1958-1961 a second wave of collectivization hit the Hungarian peasant household. In order to achieve their goals the Communist authorities used propagandistic tools as well as physical and psychologically violence against peasant who refused to join the agricultural cooperatives. The article presents the methods used by the Communist regime in Budapest in order to achieve collectivization and the consequences this phenomenon had on the economical and social situation of the peasants as well on their state of mind.
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The adoption of the R.C.P. Declaration in April 1964 generated a profound crisis at the level of Romanian-Soviet relations. In order to ease the tensions between the two parts, a R.C.P. delegation headed by Ion Gheorghe Maurer went to Moscow where several rounds of meetings with the Soviet counterpart took place. Both the Sovroms and Bessarabia were listed on the issues most vividly discussed.
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ION ILIESCU, 1971 – The Year of Ideological Changes in Romania II On June 9, 2009, the former president Ion Iliescu presented in N.I.S.T. a lecture regarding the causes and consequences of the ideological change that Nicolae Ceausescu initiated in the summer of 1971. The article presents the second part of the conference dedicated to discussions. FLOREA DUMITRESCU, The Economic and Social Evolution in the Romanian Society in the ’60’s –’80’s, XX century In this article, Florea Dumitrescu, former Minister of Finance and Governer of the National Bank during the Communist regime discusses a series of elements that founded Romania’s developemnt policy in the ’60’s –’80’s, XX century. If initially the credits from the I.M.F. and the World Bank had an important role in Romanian economical development, afterwards the decision of the Romanian leadership to reimburse in advance the external debt created a lot of tensions in the realm of the national economy. The restrictive measures taken by the government in 1980-1989 led to an excessive depreciation of industrial equipment, decreasing the production quality and the diminishing of workers’ revenues. ION BAURCEANU, Remembrances from Aiud Ion Baurceanu was born in 1931 in Comanesti-Covurlui – Galati. He was arrested in 1951, subjected to a trial for anticommunist activity and sentenced to 15 years of forced labor, 5 years of civic degradation by the Bucharest Military Court. He was improsoned at Jilava, the lead mines from Baia Sprie and Cavnic, Aiud-Zarca, Gherla-Zarca, Periprava, Galati. He was pardoned in 1964, while he was imprisoned at Jilava. The article we publish respresent a short rememberance of his passing through the penitentiary of extermination from Aiud.
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In 1963, Ilie Tugui, who was at that time officer at a miltary unit in Targu Mures, sent two anonymous letters to the Television and to „Scanteia”, R.C.P. main journal. Using a poetical and literary language, Tugui criticized the policy of the Great Powers, including the Soviet Union toward the small countries and also talked about the effects of „the socialist transformation of agriculture”. The author was sentenced to seven years in prison, was incancerated in Targu Mures penitentiary and died on April 1, 1964, the official cause of death was suicide by hanging. The documents that were available to historians in order to retrace Tugui’s case were mainly produced by the prosecution. This situation have turned Tugui’s case into one illustrative of the limits of recent history sources.
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Adriana Georgescu (1920-2005) A law graduate, Adriana Georgescu was also a movie critic at „Universul literar” and nurse in a military hospital. In 1943 the Gestapo hunted her because of the chronicles she wrote of the German movies presented in the theaters from Bucharest. After 23 August 1944 she became a political reporter for the journal „Viitorul” and soon she worked with the Prime Minister Nicolae Radescu as his secretary. Adriana Georgescu was arrested on 29 July 1945. She was brutally tortured (her head hit by the walls, whipped with a sleeve filled with sand), drugged and raped in order to transform her in a traitor used for condemning the liberal figures. Adriana Georgescu was sentenced, set free and then arrested again A. Georgescu succeeded in fleeing to West with the help of some friends. She died on 29 October 2005, in Stevenage, England. Manea Mănescu (1916-2009) After the 1989 revolution, Manea Mănescu was portrayed as an example of total obedience of Ceausescu couple. Neither his former colleagues remembered him differently, as seen in their memories. This is why certain biographical details extracted from Manea Mănescu’s R.C.P. cadre file may come as a surprise.
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In 1918, both Poland and Romania shared a similar destiny: they became victims of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Non Aggression Treaty and were invaded by the Soviet Union at the beginning of the War World II. After the war ended both countries were economically and military integrated into organizations created by the Soviets: the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (1949) and the Warsaw Treaty (1955). Unlike Poland, in Romania there wasn’t a real process of destalinization. The rise of Polish Solidarnosc, in August 1980, generated reactions throughout the world. In spite of the Romanian Communist regime repressiveness, Iulius Filip, a military master in Cluj-Napoca, sent a letter of solidarity to the Polish Sindicate.
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The personal notebooks („Revisions and addenda”, 1943-1952) of the Romanian philosopher Constantin Radulescu-Motru, represent a rich research material for studying the Romanian culture after the Second World War. The thinker, who lived the last decade of his life during the Communist regime, felt the need to explain, revise and re-analyze his philosophical and political ideas and attitudes. His notebooks, first published only 40 years after his death, contain valuable and interesting information, relevant for a proper understanding of the Romanian culture, society and their destiny after the events on August, 23, 1944.
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