Constantin Virgil Negoiţă- despre etica postmodernistă
The post modern novel “Impotriva lui Mango” published by Constantin Virgil Negoita at the Paralela 45 Publishing House in 2004 is analyzed here by Mircea A. Diaconu.
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The post modern novel “Impotriva lui Mango” published by Constantin Virgil Negoita at the Paralela 45 Publishing House in 2004 is analyzed here by Mircea A. Diaconu.
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A journey late in the night, by train to Suceava; the streets of Suceava early in the morning, the experience of Putna on the commemorative event, officials and common people gathered for the commemoration; the journey back to Bucharest and the dispersing of the Putna pilgrims through the big city.All these snap shots make this article inciting.
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The article is a review of Mircea Petean’s book “Cartea de la Jucu Nobil”published at the Limes Publishing House Cluj Napoca in 2003.
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The recent decision of the Tiraspol administration to close down all the Latin letter writing Romanian schools in Tiraspol is labeled by the author of this article as a Russian diversion meant to de-stabilize the Moldavian Republic’s independence
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In the article published in the weekly magazine “Timpul de dimineata” the writer Constantin Tanase reproaches the Moldavian intellectuals the lack of interest for the national holiday “Our Language”(31 of August was declared the official day of the Romanian Language).
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The series of essays gathered under the title “Cosmograme” continue with a dissertation on the creed of dada literary and philosophic movement.
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This is the second part of a study on Cioran’s work signed by Ion Turcanu.
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Based on this innovative literary source, the composer created a libretto of his mono-opera „Ateh or the revelations of the Khazar princess”. As a librettist, Ghenadie Ciobanu chose three fragments from the lexicon-novel written by M. Pavic, being captivated especially by the historical actuality of the theme and by the awareness that the “khazars represents a metaphor of a small nation, which survives through the powers and significant religions”
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The analysis of a work in the sense set forward by musicology is putting the creation in the centre and assembling it as a unitary element, in which the composer, the musical idea, the interpreter and the listener contribute altogether to the process of communication.The lack of a temporal perspective is redeemed thereof by the cognition of art from its genesis in an overview of the human, social, ethic and aesthetic, of the creative circumstances and up to the consumption by the audience to whom it had been addressed.
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Like the violin, cello, oboe, clarinet, etc. which are instruments musicians play as a whole orchestra, the voice is also an instrument by means of which the choir singers are manifest in the whole to which they belong. The quality of choral sonority is influenced by the knowledge and talent which the conductor puts into practice in educating the chorus singing voice through vocalize. This study aims to make a point of the importance of vocalize, a defining aspect in achieving singing technique, sound, timbre and psychological homogeneity of chorus.
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Among the composers who have contributed to broadening the limits of the universe of contemporary music Helmuth Lachenmann is well known. At the end of the 1960s using the method of the “dialectical structuralism” Helmuth Lachenmann developed what he defined as “musique concrète instrumentale” – a music made up of mainly noisy tones produced through the non-conventional use of voices and traditional instruments. The composer integrated these new sounds into the European symphonic tradition. In his work Helmuth Lachenmann attempts to prevail over the stereotypes and inertia of auditory perception, as well as to pin down a new understanding of beauty, that he defined as “habit rejection”.
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The new treatment of melodrama and cycle of the poems put on music is certain. The continuity of the hero from the character of a comedy of masks and modification of this tradition in a context of expressionism is revealed. Influence of magic of numbers on structure of work is shown. Modification of elements of recent romanticism and symbolism in semantics of work is disclosed.
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This article sets under scientific light the particularity of the monumental art and monumentality in art, their correlations with other genders of space art.
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The value of the music composed by Aurel Stroe is attributed not only to the valuable thinking approach which the composer creates before effectively composing the sonorous work of art, but especially to the ideational constellation left behind by every musical work composed by him. In the last three concerts composed in the last decades of his composition work, Aurel Stroe developed a composition outlook which crucially oversteps the borders of music, amplifying the soloist-related metaphor beyond the limits brought to by the composition work of the XXth century.
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George Enescu, a founder of the modern Romanian composition school, had a major influence on the Romanian musical work due to his view on composition. Tudor Ciortea, an important composer of the 70s and 80s, was one of the musicians who took over aspects specific to George Enescu’s style. An important part of Tudor Ciortea’s composition work (1903-1982) depicts the assimilation of the elements specific to the Enescian musical language adapted to the Transylvanian composer’s particular style. In Cvintetul cu pian (The Piano Quintet) by T. Ciortea one can identify, as if reproduced under a musical shape, the composer’s study on Sonata a III-a pentru pian şi vioară (The IIIrd Sonata for Piano and Violin) op. 2, which was published.
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The study treats lautar tradition from Moldova, which is an outstanding musical-cultural phenomenon and a component part of traditional musical culture from Moldova. Nowadays the lautar tradition preserved well in the northern and southern part of Moldova. The research contains references to different aspects of the lautar phenomenon, including bands, lautars’ musical instruments and others. We think that the establishment of lautar tradition’s role and importance, not only as a part of our traditional culture, but also in a much larger culturalgeographical area is one of the priorities of the local ethnomusicology.
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The history of pianistic pedagogy determined by the instrument development has followed the evolution of pianistic pedagogy in its most important landmarks. We did not set out to exhaustively describe this evolution; we focused our considerations upon the period of the years1950-1960. There is necessary to mention that the object of our approach stood for the issue of pianistic pedagogy and not the pianistics in itself.
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The first reading emphasizes a particular trait that raises the dramatic creation of Valeriu Turcanu to a distinct dimension compared to other Romanian dramatic texts. The defining attribute that characterizes his works is the biblical motif.
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Cultural horizons of humanity in any geographic or time space confess the acute and steadfast need of people for music; studied by ethnomusicologists or anthropologists, each type of spiritual culture highlights rites, sacred ceremonies or festive elements from which music is never absent in any of its forms, from the chanting of spells or incantations to shouting or acclamations.
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During the last decades of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century, phanariot princes from the two Romanian Principalities created, in their own name, as good Christians, or in the name of the state, as good administrators, a lot of charitable establishments. Charitable organizations have always been seen as one of the most important sides of a good administration and, during the 19th century, as a sign of progress and a proof of patriotism. Actions benefiting the poor express the social solidarity vision of the upper class. As in other parts of Europe where a debate took place about the integration of the poor in society, authorities do not accept practices such as begging and they try to impose a working obligation for all able poors. Beginning with the second half of the 18th century, several prince acts forbade the begging. Disabled poors are either sent to monasteries or they are payed for staying out of the street. In 1775, the Department of the public guardian (Departamentul Epitropiei Obşteşti) was created. It was the first public institution in charge with poors, orphans, schools and other municipal problems in Bucharest. The 19th century has witnessed of an attempt to reorganize, rationalise and improve the social measures initiated during the 18th century. Public pensions for the poors (especially for widows) are still available and efforts to forbid the begging have never stopped. Beggars with a family were also receiving a pension but they were forbidden to beg on the streets or in churches. Beggars with no family were confined to a special establishment. Begging was clearly associated to an illicit job. In 1832, an institution (Eforia caselor făcătoare de bine şi de folos obştesc) was created by the Organic Acts in order to deal with all these problems. This institution was also in charge with orphans (or abandoned children). Until 3 years old, children were raised by a nanny paid by the state. After that, children were supposed to be sent in an establishment meant to be built in the meantime. This establishment was ment to accommodate 200 children. As the establishment for children was always associated with the one for beggars, it never got the chance to be created. In practice, children over 3 years old were also raised by nannies and they were sent in training schools or in public schools. Following the Organic Acts, 120 beggars were receiving help from the state. 70 of them were accommodated in the establishment and 50 were receiving a pension. In reality l, it was very difficult to put these measures in practice. The compromise solution chosen by the authorities was to send beggars to monasteries. Since 1835, the Beggar Houses from Plumbuita and Malamucu, in Walachia, recceived public subsidies. Beginning with 1841-1842, Walachia public subsidies also covered the expenses of the Establishment for insane people and beggars from Mărcuţa.
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The study approaches the ways in which the charity societies from Cluj and Oradea, during the period between the two world wars, have come to help the persons and those categories of people affected by the poverty and diseases. In these two cities from Transylvania, the communities have founded support associations or societies with charity purposes. Their big number that exists in all ethnic groups – Romanian, Hungarian, and Israeli – proves, on one hand, the reality of some serious issues concerning the individual and group existence and, on the other hand, the benevolent involvement of the persons eager to help those in need. There were used documents from the county departments of Bihor and Cluj-Napoca of the National Archives, as well as information from the journals of the two cities.
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Social assistance is a system of material assistance for people unable to work and who do not have the means to live. The attitudes and roles of the towns in this system varied from one period to another. During the Principality towns of Transylvania, town communities were the administrators coordinating social assistance work, although they did not have a preestablished program to do so yet. Towns constantly mind that institutions doing social assistance are well run and the financial support for them is provided. Town leadership is also keen on problems regarding social assistance to be solved. The leadership finds financial and human resources able to implement decisions of the town council. Social assistance work is burdened more and more on the shoulders of the almshouses which will gradually become centers of social assistance. Planning social assistance was the prerogative of the town leadership, while implementation was the task of the master of the almshouse. Sources of the period inform us of four almshouses in Oradea, three for a short period of time in Cluj, two in Braşov, Sibiu, Bistriţa, Sighişoara, Mediaş, Timişoara and one in each of the following towns: Târgu-Mureş Râşnov, Teiuş, Turda, Aiud, Feldioara, Crainimăt, Alba Iulia, Satu- Mare, Baia Mare, Ineu, Lipova. Treatment of diseases gradually becomes a specific activity of physicians, chemists, barbers and bath masters. Therefore social and medical assistance start to become different activities, each having its own development.
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The study gives a reading of the organization of the charitable enterprises and the settings of their financing in Sibiu after the Reformation. The investigation of the sources related to the charitable enterprises in Sibiu reveals two types of institutions by which the poor-relief was realized: (1) the persistence of the medieval hospitals: the Holy Spirit hospital and the leprosarium; (2) the establishment of new charitable foundations: the organization of the so-called custodians of alms and the poor box. In its social policy the city followed the trend of its times: being influenced by the Reformation, it tried to centralize the duties of the poor-relief by establishing a common fund. The establishing of a central deposit of social relief (the so-called poor box, located at the city hall) widened the area of the charitable duties (mostly in spite of an educational program: supporting the students abroad and founding the college), yet it did not mean financial transparency regarding the money used for the social policy. No balances were made of the amounts received and paid; the poor box was not completely separated from the city budget. Due to this fact the stock did not become an office, but remained a simple supplementary fund. The effectiveness of the effort to create a stable fund was probably also lessened by the perpetual lack of money, the poor box contributed to the conservation of the institutions inherited from the Middle Ages and to the diminishing of a productive control over them.
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The archaeological evidence points towards the existence of two successive wooden buildings. The second was destroyed by fire. The tomb intersected by the stone foundations of the Hospital could only have been dug in consecrated ground, belonging either to a monastic church or to a parish church. On the other hand, the archaeological research produced fragments of kitchen pottery and animal bones, as well as the remains of a smithy forge. All these are relevant to the activity of a community. After 1292, the building was transformed into a church (chapel) with sacristy on its south side. The inside of the church (chapel) as well as the nearby ground became the graveyard of the hospital community. Towards the end of the 14th century, the Medieval Hospital developed north and south of the church. Towards the middle of the 16th century, a variety of reasons caused a whole complex of buildings to cluster around the church. The rooms were arranged around and in connection with the church. New buildings were erected around the two hospital yards; they allowed access to both the present Asylum Street and Tower Street. The church underwent repair works in 1761: it received a new vault and a new roof. At the beginning of the 20th century, an aberrant project damaged the church. It was given to the city, but it was not demolished, as it had originally been planned.
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The first Romanian-owned bank easily established in Transylvania in the Austro-Hungarian dualistic age, the “Albina” Bank was a real national institution which helped the economic strengthening and cultural and political assertion of the Romanian nation in the province. In addition to crediting the peasants to buy the Hungarian and Saxons noblemen’s land get into debt to banks in Budapest and Vienna, funding the school and Romanian churches, the “Albina” Bank has provided, from the annual profit, amounts to social objectives. These are: the high school students’ eating houses, hospitals, popular kitchens offering food to the poors in cities, orphanages, TBC dispensaries, victims of floods and earthquakes in various provinces of the empire. What is worthy to note is that all the aid charities have included the suffering, “regardless of religious affiliation and ethnicity”. This was a truly European way of understanding the need for solidarity to the face of the difficulties and trials of life.
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In the beginning there are analyzed the concept of medieval charity and the instruments which they operate, namely hospital, confraternity, guild, private action. The confraternities, through their nature are defined as charitable and religious associations. The subject of this scientific meeting calls for a restricted area of investigation, the object of this study being the laic estate confraternities from the main Transylvanian towns, including the professional confraternities. The confraternities operate in the domain of social maintenance, bonds which will belong afterwards to the urban administration: this is why the town’s management consents and encourages their activity, mainly when their platform answers the needs of the society. There are clearly pointed out the confraternal charity directions of manifestation, namely: 1. the obsequies organization for their own members but also for the poor and foreigners (fraternitas exulum: Corpus Christi from Sibiu and Saint Catherine from Cluj), 2. financial help from the own pay office for private persons or even for the town council, 3. support for a hospital (various members from Transylvania join the Holy Spirit confraternity from Rome and through recurring dues they support the establishments of the Holy Spirit order, seven in all in Transylvania). The kept regulations, the founding documents show a genuine program of good deeds, having as final purpose the soul redemption. Their activity must be connected to the age mentality, marked by the obsession of the “eternal life”; therefore their main role is in funeral organization.
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In a time when the overall modernization of the Romanian society had already extended to the social welfare domain, shortly after the establishment of the National Bank of Romania, this institution involved itself in the financial support of the charitable acts which were initiated by some charity organizations, taking into consideration the fact that the towns in the Romanian Old Kingdom were facing numerous problems – floods, fires, epidemics and poverty. In the same time, being another act of charity, the NBR began to offer assistance to its own employees who were passing through difficult moments in their lives (deaths in their families, illnesses etc.), then the NBR started to organize an institutionalised system of protection for its own employees. Gradually, these acts of the bank became more frequent and more consistent, and they also got a more accurate description in the documents of the time. Generally speaking, according to the bank’s managerial team, the attitude of the bank regarding the marginal or semi-marginal urban population originated in the fact that it was a national institution, as the Governor Mitiţă Constantinescu said in February 1938, in a speech full of metaphors held at the Ordinary General Assembly of the members of the Institute of Pension Administrators, Loans and Financial Support for the NBR’s Personnel. Thus, in accordance to Mitiţă Constantinescu’s words: “The National Bank of Romania, my dear gentlemen, apart from keeping a strict and systematic administration of its objective affairs, has always shown a generous and broad attitude of understanding all necessities and distresses of all kinds (social, moral, cultural, state or national ones) and the means of the bank have been ungrudgingly put at the disposal of all these necessities in a philanthropic manner, either to support, to help these irrefutable cultural and national necessities, or out of plain generosity.” Usually, these charitable acts of the bank intended for the exterior, consisted of large or smaller amounts of money which were given both to charity organizations and to people who, temporarily or permanently, being in the situation of not having enough means of subsistence, were trying to find a solution and retorted to the goodwill of the bank. The documents in the NBR Archives offer the researchers the possibility to analyse this dimension from double perspective – from the benefactor’s and the beneficiary’s points of view, but for different chronological sequences. Thus, for the period 1880-1918, we can track, in the decisions of the General Council and those of the Board of Directors, the evolution of the sums granted by the bank and the names of the charity organisations that received them. Yet, it is not possible to find the names of the people who solicited the bank’s financial support and neither can we discover the reasons they used in order to persuade the bank.
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The present study seeks to focus on a less researched medieval category in the Romanian area, namely the mişei. They are rarely mentioned in Wallachia, and are only subject to indirect reference via later documents or the traces they left on local place names. The name mişei is borrowed from Latin, where it was used in reference to those poverty-stricken or to lepers. Leprosy entered Europe ever since the Antiquity, and was brought from the East. The first specific isolation measures have been passed on to us since the Carolingian dynasty. At the turn of the second millennium, the number of leper hospitals increases; these were quasi-monastic institutions which endured only via donations. Their climax was the 13th century, since after 1300, the leper was superseded by the plague. Late sources reveal that one such hospital was also in place near the town of Câmpulung, the foremost Catholic settlement in Wallachia. Leper care facilities had been introduced south of the Carpathians by the Saxons (the saşi) who had colonized this town. The term mişei comes to support this, as well as the presence in Câmpulung of a Catholic church with St Elisabeth as its patron, which had stood out by its care for the lepers, and by the fact that one neighbouring village, Măţău, was tax-exempted, in exchange for looking after the lepers in town. Tax-exemptions, which had been granted ever since the emergence of Wallachia, have endured until the 18th century, long after the leper had disappeared from the area. Several place names („la Mişei”, „Crucea mişeilor”) are an indication that a leper hospital had also existed near another town with a large Catholic community in Wallachia: Râmnicul Vâlcea.
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Charity activities had an important role in the starting up and the maintaining the first modern hospitals from the Romanian principalities, the process being developed in the 18-19 centuries. The most donors were from boyar’s class and their charity initiatives were supported by the most important institutions of the times: the Reign and the Church. Besides these ones, there were also other classes who made donations such as: upper clergy, wealthy tradesmen and craftsmen, officers, physicians, lawyers, professors et alii. The nature and the amount of the donations were various: domains and other rural possessions, different urban possessions, money, mobile possessions, reign and boyars incomes and taxes, worship objects, medical instruments etc. The reasons and the circumstances which made donations possible were various. In most cases the piety was the main reason of the charity activities. There were also other reasons such as: civic spirit, urban community solidarity, patriotism, modern education and liberal thinking. The absence of direct heirs and the risk of misspending fortunes were other circumstances which emphasized the predilection for charity activities. Health problems, physical and psycho suffering, traumatic experiences from donor’s life, the direct contact with the ill people and with the hospitals influenced philanthropists to offer donations for the hospitals. The spirit o social competition, the vanity or some personal interests were other reasons for charity activities of those times. Not the last, the press had been an instrument of encouraging charity actions, including those concerning hospitals support. Therefore, besides the obvious religious aspect, the charity had also a social and symbolic character. The charity offer a social reputation, aspect that is suggested very clear by the donation paper and confirmed by the setting up of a large number of hospitals in a short period.
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As a general rule, in European urban milieu, a system of social assistance and protection existed since the middle ages, intended for poor members of the community. Romanian towns from Moldavia and Walachia are no exception to this rule, and historical data demonstrate the existence of such facilities. Buzău, a town cited in historical documents since 1431, shows interesting feature in this respect. Gradually, the old institution having assured protection to old, needy and sick persons, like the bishopric, the monasteries, the hermitages and the parochial churches were replaced by modern facilities for health and social assistance (hospital, asylum, medical surgery, pharmacy). Since the founding of a bishopric in Buzău, the town becomes not only an ecclesiastical centre, but also a generator of numerous building initiatives, mostly with social role. The turning point marking the replacement of medieval health care facilities with modern ones was the moment the Gârlaşi hospital was builds in 1790 by Maria Minculeasa, on the precinct of the church of Gârlaşi she had founded 10 years before. After this, the foundations for social care appear at an alert pace, assuring the citizens of Buzau, victims of wars, fires, earthquakes and deceases a much needed assistance. At the middle of the 20th century, a complex and efficient sanitary and social assistance system was perfected. In this context a number of remarkable biologists and doctors appear, like the unique Romanian having received the Nobel Prize for medicine, George Emil Palade, born in Buzau and having studied at the Hasdeu high school till 1929.
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In Transylvania the institutionalized charity started in second half of the 19th century. Also in Gherla the Orphanage for boys was founded in 1860 and for girls in 1903. My study focused on the circumstances in which these institutions were set up and closed, their economic background, the house rules, and presents the people who worked there as well as the effects of the world wars on these institutions. It also tries to give an insight into the orphans’ daily life. I used 3 important sources for the presentation of the orphans’ way of living: a diary written by children between 1917 and 1919; a record of the house rules dating from 1876; the memories of Gizella Korbuly and Emilia Görög, two former orphans from different periods.
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The potential of the outlet market is a decisive factor in earmarking investments to big commercial units, e.g. malls (which gather together a wide range of shops and services units, restaurants, recreation and entertainment areas, cinema-halls, banks, swimming-pools, play-grounds for children, etc.), or supermarkets, chains of stores usually set up by transnational companies. The logic behind the establishment and diffusion in the territory of these commercial units closely correlates with the location of banks, according to the spatial, income-based segregation of the population. Thus, large commercial units (malls and hypermarkets) are frequently opened up in large cities with macro-regional polarising functions and a positive economic dynamic that ensures an outlet market competitive enough, in terms of both financial and quantitative considerations, so as to guarantee profitability. On the other hand, investments in towns that are at the base of the urban hierarchy materialise in supermarkets, but if towns have below 30,000 inhabitants they are considered to be unprofitable. The same pyramidal distribution observed in the case of financial investments holds also for commercial units, provided that the extent of the investment is directly proportional to the size of the respective town. The east/west financial segregation mirrors the development of commercial services, this type of investment being drawn mainly by Bucharest and the large cities from Transylvania and Banat. Thus, the largest malls are situated mainly in Bucharest and in four western metropolises: Timişoara, Cluj-Napoca, Arad and Oradea. Most malls built in Bucharest (Bucharest Mall, Plaza Romania, City Mall and Liberty Center) have been raised on the site of the unfinished buildings of former food complexes (mockingly, people used to call them “hunger circuses”), whose construction had begun in the 1980s in convergence areas of population flows, subsequently contributing to the development of their neighbourhoods. The next investments had in view either empty spaces on the outskirts of the city (Carrefour and Metro Militari, Cora Pantelimon), using the rail-and-road infrastructure in place at the margin of Bucharest, or the sites of former industrial units later demolished (e.g. Cora Lujerului, built on the site of a dairy factory, could use Cotroceni railway station), similarly AFI Cotroceni Mall, situated on the premises of the former UMEB plant, had the advantage of a railway infrastructure. Advantageous locations lead in time to the development of commercial parks: Bǎneasa outside Bucharest on DN1 highway to Ploieşti; Militari on A1 to Piteşti and Dragonul-Roşu on the highway to Voluntari-Urziceni. A similar commercial park is scheduled to develop in the Lujerului-Cotroceni area and encompass also Cora Lujerului hypermarket, Plaza Romania and AFI Cotroceni malls.
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Fragments of the novel "Arrival in Bucharest" by Thomas Prinz (Ankunft in Bukarest - Köln, Dittrich Verlag, 1996).
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Article about the heroes of spy fiction: choosing a name, showing (or not) virility, exercising seduction and patience. An analyisis and comparison of of the features of the fiction heroes and the standards and requirements of the real life ones.
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RAF: a product of the disintegration of the student movement at the end of the 60ies. Memories, interpretations, hypoteses.
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Article trying to describe the relationship between the poet Joseph Brodsky and a country - Poland.
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Belgrade´s face after the war: changes, improvements, replacements, appearances, news, consequences.
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The inhabitants of the little countries in Central Europe live with a sentiment of shame and they often do not realize that. Article about contrasts: Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, about a united Europe and also about the egoism of the countries in Eastern and Central Europe, the countries in Western Europe and the division of Europe and also reasons for all these to happen.
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Article about Rasputin, and Edvard Radzinski's book about him.
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Article about the immigrants in Italy and generally in Europe, how they are viewed by the "general public", how the general public is encouraged to view them by different left or right parties. "The immigrants do the work we do not feel like doing", "The left protects only the immigrant workers and they forgot about us, the Italian workers", "our economy needs these immigrants" are a few slogans and quotations from the article.
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Article about the government of Alberto Fufimori and about the "man in the shadow". The article was written in May 2001.
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Literary review of Tzvetan Todorov's book: "Mémoire du mal, tentation du bien"
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The 1927 generation in Romania: Mihail Sebastian, Mircea Eliade, Nae Ionescu, Eugen Ionescu, E. M. Cioran.
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The word "culture" was not used during the European Parliament campaign and elections. Not even during the negociations for enlargement. The article contains Jean Monnet´s words: "If we were to start everything again from the start, we should start with culture". The article states that the uniqueness of the European culture lays in the fact that there are 40 different cultures (in spite the desire of standardisation). About mass culture, the "European cultural project" and the state practices in the communist Europe before 1989.
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Dialogue with Professor Dr. Sanda Golopenţia about her book "Ultima carte" (The Latest Book), a book that comprises the texts of the Anton Golopentia - arrested by the communists as wittness in "The Patrascanu Case". Anton Golopentia died in prison after 18 years of detention.
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Article about the elections in Italy in 2001 and Berlusconi's victory, article about public virtues and private vices, about left and right, ideology, disputes and opposition in Italy.
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• „Lista Schindler” a culturii basarabene • Nicolae Leahu, poetul – cronică de Mircea V. Ciobanu • Dialog cu fifi nalul amânat: Leo Butnaru – Aureliu Busuioc • Versuri de Svetlana Corobceanu şi Vasile Iftime • Proză de Lucreţia Bârlădeanu şi Iulian Ciocan • Cătălin Dorian Florescu, un romancier al exilului • Praga literară. Scriitori cehi contemporani: Jaroslav Hašek şi Michal Viewegh Despre Herta Müller, memorie şi literatură – interviu cu dna Beate Köhler, director al Institutului Goethe din Bucureş
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Răsfoind presa culturală, atenția mi-a fost atrasă de un nume, cel al lui Cătălin Dorian Florescu. Am citit într-un interviu că locuiește la Zürich, este de profesie psihoterapeut și pînă în anul 2001 s-a chinuit cu ajutorul psihologiei Gestaltiste să-i vindece de năravul lor pe dependenții de droguri, de atunci este scriitor full-time și liber-profesionist care își cîștigă existența din scris. În prezent caută să-și vindece traumele din biografia sa proprie și să se despartă de trecut scriind cărți.
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Stimată doamnă director Beate Köhler, pe 6 decembrie 2012, la Chișinău, va fi inaugurată expoziția „Herta Müller: cercul drăcesc al cuvintelor”. Vă rog să ne vorbiți, pentru început, despre acest important eveniment, care va avea loc la Muzeul de Istorie și Arheologie din Moldova. Cum a apărut ideea organizării expoziției, pe ce concept se bazează, în ce orașe a mai fost prezentată?
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La Târgul de Carte „Gaudeamus” din acest an de la București, Republica Moldova a fost Invitat de Onoare. Despre evenimentele de la Târg cu participarea scriitorilor și editorilor basarabeni, dar și despre felul cum și-a onorat Republica Moldova (Ministerul Culturii de la Chișinău) această invitație, i-am rugat să ne vorbească, în cadrul unui Chestionar cu întrebări „personalizate”, pe câțiva fericiți participanți la această manifestare. Revista Contrafort nu a fost prezentă la Gaudeamus. Invitația din partea Ministerului Culturii (prin telefon, amabilă și încărcată de complimente și aprecieri…) a venit doar cu două zile înainte de deschiderea Târgului. E ușor de ghicit că am refuzat – politicos – să improvizăm o participare. Dincolo de faptul că împrejurări mai puțin favorabile ne-au împiedicat să ajungem la Gaudeamus pe cont propriu, am rămas totuși cu uimirea că Ministerul Culturii moldovean a avut, pentru prima dată în cei 18 ani de când există Contrafortul, ideea să ne contacteze, să ne propună să ne alăturăm unui „demers de reprezentare” ofi cial la București. Să însemne oare că, după 3 ani de la răsturnarea regimului Voronin, statul moldovean încearcă să colaboreze cu intelectualii independenți de la Chișinău?
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Electoral marketing refers to the relationship between politician and voter, while institutional marketing refers to the relationship between political and national official. Political marketing can be defined as a set of techniques aimed at creating and promoting the image of a man or a political institution, depending on the audience at which it is desired to vote or public trust. In this assembly to take account of the needs of that audience, the vectors of transmission of information and the interaction of that politician (or political institution) and other political actors in the market. Marketingului entry into politics means the ability to manage a number of accurate data to coordinate and schedule the political action.
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In this paper I offer a possible explanation of the early development of the Environmental Policy of the European Union by resorting to the historical institutionalist paradigm. I hold that the evolution of this policy, purportedly peculiar in that it was basically absent from the original treaties, can be adequately explained by this paradigm, due to the fact that it can illustrate how the original institutional arrangement led ultimately to consequences that were far from what the actors involved in setting up that arrangement intended. An important caveat concerns the fact that throughout the paper I use a specific meaning of historical institutionalism, i.e. one that is fully compatible with the introduction of ideas and norms in the explanans.
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This paper aims to present, on the one hand, the measures taken by NATO during the Summit in Newport (4th-5th september 2014) for the Eastern Europe and, on the other hand, to analyze the role of Romania and also of the Black Sea region in the new security plan of the North Atlantic Alliance.
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This article discusses the contribution of the theory of developmentalism by the alternative ways that it proposes in development area. This theory generated much criticism and demonstrated ambiguity, but it has gained importance by focusing on imperative of social change. It becomes important the ideological dispute between the two rival systems: the capitalist development model, proposed by demo-liberal West, based on Max Weber’s conception of capitalist development and the communist model that proposed the solution of socialist growth. The marxist-leninist theory centered on class struggle formed the basis for the dependence theories. This new approach in the aria of comparative politics goes beyond the descriptive comparativism, limitated to a single case and it focused on different areas of political, social, cultural, economic and not just geographically.
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The Superior Council of Magistracy represent a cornerstone of the Romanian court management system. This responsibility is partly shared with the Ministry of Justice. The reform of the court management system in Romania has been and still is disputable, the main actors being on one hand the magistrates and on the other the Ministry of Justice. While observing this „dispute“ we may discover a third actor, namely the European Union, who has entered scene in the context of Romania’s European integration. This research is looking to plausibly explain which was the part played by the EU and how did it influence the above mentioned reform, with special emphasis on the Superior Council of Magistracy.
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Before being an element of constitutional order, the judicial system is a public service. Arbitrating disputes, conflict resolution and prosecuting crimes are, first of all, valuable functions for the community. This article presents the Romanian judiciary especially from this perspective. The relation between politics and the judiciary was particularly problematic in recent years. The judicial institutions’ struggle for autonomy was accompanied by unprecedented political crises. Yet, the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) continuously encouraged institutional reform, initiating very active anti-corruption policies, as well as the implementation of new civil and criminal procedure rules. At the same time, we can notice the rapid increase in the volume of new causes recorded by courts of law in civil matters, which entails the risk of severe deterioration of public legal services and requires an appropriate administrative response.
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The present study attempts to define the concept of discrimination, in order to highlight several manifestation forms, this endeavour being absolutely necessary with relation to its analysis, making possible the moral and the judicial sanction exerted by society. Keeping in mind that discrimination is venom to society, as well as to the connections between its members, the demonstation of the discriminatory deed requires credible and credible instruments and means.
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The single party was the militarized political institution of the new authoritarian regime lead by King Carol II by using the armed hand of single organization in the state, The National Guard. The militarization of policy represented the main dimension of the regime and the state architecture revealed the single party capacity to militarize the administrative institutions. The architecture of National Renaissance Front was similar to a military unit, the official attributions of the National Guard consisted in the maintenance of order in the territory, and unofficially regarded the monitoring of members and opposites of the party and regime, by control and surveillance activity. The National Guard was politicized institution of the regime and of the single party which proved its inefficiency because of the subordination of the commandant general to the single party. Militaries lead the single organization as well as the National Guard.
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Organizational culture is crucial in maintaining the effectiveness of an organization. Globalization, under ubiquitous appearance, influences the behavioral managerial and valuable substrate of existing organizations. Taken extended sense, organizational culture is a collective mental programming that distinguishes the members of an organization to another. In this context, globalization can be focused on identifying those scheduling algorithms that avoid as many „bugs“ or to identify the components of an organizational culture in which to develop a syntropy framework, components considered stabilizing but which can slow or prevent the continuous and sustainable development.
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Over the past five decades there have been regionalization bills in Europe, more or less successful. The representative ones for the subject in question are those elaborated in Francophile and Francophone countries such as: the Bill concerning the Regionalization of France (April 27th 1969); The Egmont Pact, Belgium (May 24th 1977); the Regionalization of Poland, coordinated by Jerzy Buzek (January 1999); the Bill regarding the Regionalization of Romania (2013). In 2013 Romania, the division of the national territory in eight regions has some objectives that seem to be taken from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The Gaullist pattern of regionalization and the manner in which it operationalizes the sharing of competences between regions and departments, the common elements between the current Romanian political scene and the Belgian Egmont Pact, the supremacy of some cities that are apparently more insignificant to the detriment of others according to the Polish model, all these represent problematic aspects that demand pertinent solutions within the project of regionalization of Romania.
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This article analyzes the close relations developed between the Romanian and Spanish Communist parties in the context of the Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia. It explores the similarities and differences between the visions of Nicolae Ceaușescu and Santiago Carrillo on the reform of the world Communist movement and also the new meaning attributed by both to proletarian internationalism. Drawing on transcripts of their conversations in crucial political moments, the article reveals how Eastern and Western Communists found ways to work together in order to undermine Soviet control over world Communism.
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This study tries to point out just a few of the most important characteristics of the toughest totalitarian regime of the contemporary period, that of the Cambodia’s Khmer Rouges. I underlined the main particularities that make it quite different from other Communist regimes of the XX-th century. I attempted also to establish a few connections and similarities with the belletristic literature, mainly with George Orwell’s work. In my approach, I started from the premise that the British writer was known as one of the most famous authors of anti-utopian novels. With the aid of the belletristic writing, I tried also to use an interdisciplinary approach.
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At the end of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the Great Powers came to take the control of its territories. Having a strategic position at the southern gate of Europe, all of Turkish lands were very important for the First World War winners, both to secure European borders and to develop the trade between Europe and Middle East. On the other side, under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk command, a new Turkey with a strong nationalist way decided to fight for emancipating. Winning the war with the Great Powers not only in a military way, but also from a diplomatic perspective, the new Turkey became a modern regional power, having institutions and laws that assured its prosperity and security. Taking into consideration the independence war evolution, this paper wants also to show the diplomatic capability of Turkish leaders to balance between powers involved in the region.
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Starting with the years 1829-1830 after the conclusion of The Treaty of Adrianople, the political and economical relations undergo modifications amid the Greek issue and acceleration of the disintegration process of The Ottoman Empire. This geopolitical and economical context favoured the appearance of a very interesting ethno-political mosaic in the Balkan Peninsula because it was about the issue of ethnical balance within the context of Ottoma authority disappearance. This is the general context of emergence of new states in East Europe as it was the case with Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Romania.
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On 21 of August 1989, when Tadeusz Mazowiecki – one of the leader of the „Solidarity“ trade union (Solidarność) – was appointed to lead the Government, Poland made an important step in falling out the totalitarianism. This event wired the leaders form the Communist Block, who were witnessing how the power get out of their hands. Nicolae Ceaușescu, considered the last conservative leader form Eastern Europe, got wise to the news from Poland. He called an emergency meeting of the Political Executive Committee of Romanian Communist Party in order to blame the „involvement“ of „American imperialists“ in domestic policy of the Government from Warsaw. He was also angry to Polish comrades who did not succeed to pull down the influence of Solidarność during the last ten years. Ceaușescu called in the action the states bellow the Iron Curtain in order to defend the socialism in Poland.
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In December 1972, the Romanian Government signed the agreement of accession to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In the following years, Romania received investment credits and, consequently, overcame the growth rate of several capitalist states. Nevertheless, the Communist regime in Bucharest chose to expand the economic sectors highly energy intensive and heavily polluting. As the ’70s oil crisis led to a worldwide energy crisis, the Romanian industry faced difficult times in terms of effectiveness, competitiveness and external costs of environmental pollution. It had been built coal-electrical and great siderurgical & chemical plants, and both caused extremely air pollution. At the end of the ’80s, Romania recorded high pollution indicators of soil, subsoil, water and within the atmosphere down to the evacuation of residual waste and lack of investments in filtering of industrial stack. In the end, the phenomenon damaged the inhabitants’ health status of the polluted areas, causing high rates of different forms of cancer and respiratory illnesses.
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In 1953, Radu Dinulescu, former chief of the 2nd Section within the General Staff of the Romanian Army, was convicted to 15 years of forced labor and 10 years of civic degradation. He was found guilty of several counts among which the involvement in the organization of the Iași Pogrom and the deportation of Jews. After several developments of the legal situation under the incidence of the political, the Supreme Court of Justice acquited him of war crimes in 1998.
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The document we publish is an analysis drafted by U.M. 0544 (Foreign Intelligence of the Securitate). It reflects the objectives of Ronald Reagan administration towards the Soviet Union and its allies. Drafted in September 1981, the analysis indicates the C.I.A. as the primary intelligence service to influence the development of dissent in Romania. According to the document, C.I.A. objectives were to be implemented through the broadcastings of Radio Free Europe and undercover agents.
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Cadres has been one of the main Sections of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. In order to highlight the importance of this Section in the political structures, the study aims to analyze its organizational development in the Romanian communist regime. I also analyzed its main duties, in order to reveal the contribution of this political structure in imposing the control and order over the society.
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The article presents the minutes of Romanian-Soviet Talks in Moscow, in May 1970. The meeting was organized at Romanian initiative and aimed at discussing sensitive issues in economic bilateral cooperation, and divergences between the two parts in foreign relations and with the international communist movement. The Soviet part used the opportunity to rise past Romanian political stands such as the establishing of diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1967, Romanian apart stand in the Middle East crisis in 1967, the Czechoslovakian crisis in August 1968, the Sino-Soviet conflict, the visit of president Richard Nixon in Bucharest, in August 1989, and the Romanian opening to the West. The two parts came to an agreement and they decided on the signing of a new Treaty of friendship, collaboration and mutual assistance in July 1970.
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This paper sets out to offer insight into the tragic destiny of a man who was always in search of a life with better perspectives, dissatisfied with what fate had in store for him, refusing the conventional ways and means to accommodate to the society of the time. The false interpretation of the possibilities of gaining recognition, the illegal ways chosen to reach his goals, left their mark on the subsequent life of the young man who at the age of 30 was awaiting the execution of death sentence and already had multiple experiences related to the prisons of the regimes behind the Iron Curtain. These antecedents, corroborated with the obvious repulsion toward the Communist regime have diminished his possibilities of existence, leaving him no other choice after his imprisonment than to struggle for survival within the system network. The almost two decades of cooperation with the Romanian secret police - although it brought him employment, place of residence, a more decent family life, travels abroad, personal success -, eventually became unbearable and he finally chose to emigrate. In the interpretation of events we have leaned mainly on the personal informative files, network files and investigation files kept at the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security and at the National Council for Research of Securitate Archives, on information obtained with the help of the oral history method, and last, but not least, on the documents kept by family members.
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In all ex-communist states the issue of citizens collaborating with secret services proved to be very sensitive, as it discusses the moral identity of individuals and, step by step, that of larger communities. The resolution of the collaborators’ issue followed in countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania the German model of „Gauck Office” (BStU). In Romania, it witnessed significant transformations following decisions of the Constitutional Court, which altered the role of CNSAS (2008, 2012). The study is focused in two main topics. The first refers to the institutional analysis of CNSAS, aiming at several sub-topics: i) institutional transformations from the 1999-2013 period, from the perspective of democratization through transitional justice; ii) defining types of “collaboration” with the Securitate, according to actors categories, following legislative changes; iii) the impact of the Constitutional Court decisions upon CNSAS accomplishment of evidences concerning the statute of Securitate “collaborator”. The second topic refers to the effects of collaborating with the Securitate in the public opinion. To this end, some cases will be analyzed, in order to emphasize the plural and contradictory character of public perception concerning collaboration with the Securitate.
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After the Secret Report, read by the Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev at the 20th Communist Congress in 1956, an illusion of liberalism appear in the Soviet Union. Among others, cultural ties between Romanian People’s Republic and the Soviet Moldova started. After few years, these actions were seen as nationalistic propaganda. However, it was a new start for the old Bessarabian question to be raised in the billateral discussions between Romania and the USSR.
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In the period between 21 and 31 of December 1989 in the martyr city of Sibiu there were registered more than 102 victims, among which 25 were officers and noncommissioned officers of the Militia, two employees of the Securitate, 4 military representatives from the Ministry of National Defense (three of them have shot one another) and almost 300 wounded persons, a lot of material and cultural loses which could not be evaluated and an undetermined number of people traumatized for the rest of their lives. Numerous buildings in the city have been destroyed, some of them being attacked with heavy military equipment under the accusation that they were hiding terrorists. It is not hard to imagine how a city were the army has used shootings looked like. In ten days not less than two million sleeves and missiles of all kinds have been used in this context. The events that took place in December 1989 in Sibiu demonstrate in the most convincing way that the repression against the population, the diversions, the massacres and acts of terrorism were not done by the Securitate officers.
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The condemning by the Romanian authorities of the military intervention in Czechoslovakia, on 21 august 1968, led to an escalation of tension in Romanian-Soviet relations. For the first time after the Communist regime was set up in Romania, Bucharest leaders considered a military confrontation with Eastern big brother. The document we publish is a monitoring of Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding Romanian-Soviet Relations between 21 August-13 September 1968, a climax of tension between the two countries.
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The historiography of the Soviet type communist regimes granted special attention to the repressive dimension of these regimes, which was often associated to the totalitarian terror, whose purpose was the destruction of the old society and all forms of opposition adjacent to it, with the aim to establish a new order. But the dynamics of Stalinist terror did not only targeted the opponents or the class enemies. Just as frequently, the attention of those who were monitoring the perils that could affect the party, focused also onto their own cadres. Communist parties developed organizational structures the purpose of which was the internal surveillance of everything it could turn into a deviation from the rules imposed by Party line, thus becoming a threat. These institutions evolved as tools of control of the sociopolitical body of the Party, often endowed with discretionary powers, as to decide the exclusion from the Party ranks (purges), and even violent later repercussions (repression). The present paper canvasses an important chapter of the Romanian Workers Party’s purge history, by bringing into discussion an yet unknown document – a memorandum of a what seems to be an underground party structure, which entitles itself as the “Central Committee of the Communist Independent Party”.
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Within Romanian-American political agenda, the topic of Jewish emigration was granted special attention. The matter was discussed with Jewish organizations in the USA, especially in 1970’s and it was motivated by the Romanian interest in obtaining Most Favoured Nation clause. The document we published is the minutes of 11 June 1975 meeting in Washington between Nicolae Ceauşescu and representatives of American Jewish Organizations, given their known influence both within Administration and Congress.
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This paper tries to fill in at least a few of the many gaps in the biography of Al. Daneliuk-Ştefanski, the fourth general secretary of the Communist Party of Romania (C.P.R.). Romanian-language sources devote little space to that communist leader. The document above-published is an autobiography from Daneliuk-Ştefanski’s personal file existing in the archival fund related to R.C.P. from the Archive of the Comintern. In order to introduce the document, I presented the state of the art in Romanian historiography about Daneliuk-Ştefanski and I described the major parts of the document placing it into the historical context. Resuming, the document focuses mainly on the early years of his political carrier, when he lived in the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary Russia.
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Immediately after the end of the Second World War, under the strong influence of the atomic bombing of Japan, the Soviet Union implemented a complex program with the purpose of upgrading the technology of the Red Army. The atomic bomb, the construction of reactive armament and the anti-missile shield were among the pillars of the program for remilitarization of an important part of the soviet post-war economy. Being sure that the Soviet Union can only keep its war conquests by reaching the same level of military potential as the USA, Stalin began from 1945 an arming race, while subordinating the economic reconstruction of the country to its military objectives. The immediate result was the reaching of a superior level of technology in the construction of military gear, but also the foundation of a grand military industrial complex, which would substantially slow down the economic development of the civic society. In this way, the cohesion of a society which barely made it through the war and which was waiting for a set of reforms to relax the limits of the system was greatly damaged. Since the first years of the post-war era, while being sustained by an unbalanced economy and an exhausted society, the soviet military industrial complex has proved to be a much too heavier burden for the system as a whole. While gaining the Superpower status, exclusively because of the force of its army, Stalin would condemn the soviet communism and not only to a longstanding economic and social downfall, which would only be toned down by the ignorance of the West and the chance of the international economic cycles, but which would never stop entirely.
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The article consists in the reflections of the author regarding the events that led to World War I. That was a war that ended a civilisation and marked the beginning of a turmoil in which the entire world was thrown into. Also, the author discusses the meanings of two crucial events: the visit of the Russian imperial family in Romania, on June 1, 1914, and the talks held in the Romanian Crown Council regarding the choosing of the political alliance – Antanta or the Central Powers.
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