Contents/Sommaire

ransylvanian eview Vol. XXVII T R No. 2 /Revue de Transylvanie Summer 2018

Contents/Sommaire Romanian Academy Chairman: • Paradigms Academician Ioan-Aurel Pop Romania’s Entry in the First World War As Seen in the Russian Military Press 3 Center for Andrei Emilciuc Transylvanian Studies Organization and Activity of the Moldovan Military Congress (20–27 October 1917) 16 Vitalie Ciobanu Mihai Taºcã The Moldovan Bloc in the Country Council: The Creator of Bessarabia’s Destiny 33 Gheorghe E. Cojocaru The Cultural Prelude to Bessarabia’s Union with Romania 41 Ion Negrei The Union of Bessarabia with Romania in the Cultural Propaganda System of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (1960–1970) 53 Valentin Burlacu • Transsilvanica Historical-Economic Aspects Pertaining to the Bishopric of Transylvania As Reflected in the Pontifical Tithe Register (1332–1337) 68 Robert-Marius Mihalache Utopian Thinking in Transylvania: German and Hungarian Case Studies 83 Ştefan Borbély • Tangencies Religious Landscape in Post-revolutionary Russia: The Case of Ekaterinburg 92 Elena Glavatskaya On the cover: Infant Mortality Now and Then: Marc Verlan, The Dual Role of Economic Resources 104 Welcome to Marioca’s World Gunnar Thorvaldsen (2014), oil on canvas, 120×90cm The Nurse and the Rural World: Transylvanian Review continues the A Successful Relation for Biomedicine 122 tradition of Revue de Transylvanie, Elena Bãrbulescu founded by Silviu Dragomir, which was published in Cluj and then in Sibiu • Literature between 1934 and 1944. Representations of History in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Transylvanian Review is published The Remains of the Day 137 quarterly by the Center for Transylvanian Studies and the Romanian Academy. Ana Maria Hopârtean • Editorial Events Editorial Board Cesare Alzati, Ph.D. Un récit exemplaire 142 Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Istituto Andrei State di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea, Università Cattolica, Milan, Italy • Book Reviews Horst Fassel, Ph.D. Institut für donauschwäbische Geschichte Wolfgang Zimmermann and Josef Wolf, eds., und Landeskunde, Tübingen, Germany Die Türkenkriege des 18 Jahrhunderts: Wahrnehmen – Konrad Gündisch, Ph.D. Wissen – Erinnern Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa, (reviewed by Sandra Hirsch) 148 Oldenburg, Germany Antonio D’Alessandri, Harald Heppner, Ph.D. Sulle vie dell’esilio: I rivoluzionari romeni dopo il 1848 Institut für Geschichte, Graz, Austria Paul E. Michelson, Ph.D. (reviewed by Ion Cârja) 150 Huntington University, Indiana, USA William Mulligan, Momčilo Pavlović, Ph.D. The Origins of the First World War Director of the Institute of Contemporary History, Belgrade, Serbia (reviewed by Iuliu-Marius Morariu) 153 Alexandru Zub, Ph.D. Alberto Castaldini, Academician, honorary director of A. D. Il Dio nascosto e la possibilità di Auschwitz: Xenopol Institute of History, Iaºi, Romania Prospettive filosofiche e teologiche sull’Olocausto Editorial Staff Ioan-Aurel Pop Daniela Mârza (reviewed by Francesco Fogliotti) 154 Ioan Bolovan Robert-M. Mihalache Raveca Divricean Alexandru Simon • Contributors 160 Maria Ghitta Florian D. Soporan Rudolf Gräf George State Virgil Leon Translated by This issue of the Transylvanian Review Bogdan Aldea—English has been published with the support Liana Lãpãdatu—French of Babeº-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. Desktop Publishing Edith Fogarasi Cosmina Varga Publication indexed and abstracted in the Correspondence, manuscripts and books ® Thomson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index should be sent to: Transylvanian Review, and in Arts & Humanities Citation Index®, Centrul de Studii Transilvane (Center for Transylvanian Studies) and included in ebsco’s and elsevier’s products. 12–14 Mihail Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania. ISSN 1221-1249 All material copyright © 2018 by the Center for Transylvanian Studies and the Printed in Romania by Color Print Romanian Academy. Reproduction or use 66, 22 Decembrie 1989 St., without written permission is prohibited. zalãu 450031, Romania [email protected] Tel. (0040)260-660598 www.centruldestudiitransilvane.ro paradigms

Romania’s Entry in the First World War As Seen in the Russian Military A n d r e i E m i l c i u c Press

On the eve of the Great War, the “Romania—who had ob- Russian military press had a strictly served the war for two years— defined structure, which—to a great extent—was maintained during the had enough time to analyze war years. The central publication of the battle conditions, and the War Ministry was the scientific military magazine Военный сборник thus to prepare, perfect, and (The military almanac) (1858–1917), develop its armed forces.” as well as the Русский инвалид (The Russian invalid) (1862–1917) newspaper.1 These two were followed by the publications of the military districts and of the Cossack troops, i.e. The Military Newspaper in Vilna (issued by the chiefs of staff of the military district in Vilna, 1906–1915), The Military Newspaper in Turkestan (the chiefs of staff of the military district in Turkestan, 1906–1915), The Mili- Andrei Emilciuc tary Messenger of Warsaw (the chiefs of Senior researcher at the Institute of His staff of the military district of Warsaw, tory, Academy of Sciences of Moldova. Coeditor of the vol. Primul Rãzboi Mon- 1906–1914), The Far East (the chiefs dial ºi Basarabia (1914–1918) (Culegere of staff of the military district of Ir- de studii ºi articole) (The First World kutsk, 1913–1914), etc. Apart from War and Bessarabia, 1914–1918: A col the officials, there were also private lection of studies and articles) (2015). editors who issued periodicals dealing 4 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) with military topics. Consequently, we shall mention here the military and literary magazine Развѣдчикъ (The scout), edited in Saint Petersburg/Petrograd by librarian V. A. Berezovsky, a reserve captain in the Russian army. To sum up, at the outbreak of the war in Russia, approximately 60 periodicals devoted to military topics were being printed.2 In the context of the intensification of the war preparations, in order to secure the military plans and structures, several measures were adopted to strengthen the censorship. On 28 January 1914, the list of information prohibited for publication in the press for military reasons was published; this list would be completed with new interdictions in the issues of 12 and 26 July 1914.3 On 20 July/2 August, one day after Germany declared war on it, Russia adopted the “Provisional Regulation on Military Censorship,” diligently prepared in advance. According to this regulation, a “total” military censorship was set up in all regions included in the military operations, while in the other regions the censorship was to be “partial.” Paragraphs from the articles and materials taken from the periodicals issued in the regions where the military censorship did not fully function would also be submitted for censorship. Typesetting a periodical in a printing house was allowed only after the editors had presented the permission to prepare for and to print bearing the signature of a local military censor.4 This only hindered the activity of journalists, whose materials would be published only when the information presented was no longer of interest for the public.5 In Saint Petersburg,6 the military censorship commission was set up on 20 July 1914, at the order of the Army General Staff, even though there was a military censor already working in that city. In the second capital, Moscow, which was not yet under the war regime, but was an important center for the publication of periodicals, in March 1915 the military censorship would also be instituted.7 Mention should also be made that, on 31 July 1915, the list of information prohibited from appearing in the press for military reasons would suffer another series of modifications and corrections. The restrictions were then expanded and also included the information that might have affected the diplomatic and defensive security of Russia’s allies.8 In approaching the proposed topic, one should not omit the fact that, in wartime, the official press increased its propagandistic mission in order to convince the country’s citizens, the existing and the prospective allies, about the firm unity of the Russian people, about Russia’s force and the legitimacy of its military actions, on the one hand, and about the weakness of the enemy and their atrocities, on the other hand. A very important role in the management of propaganda during the war was played in the Russian Empire by the Informa- tion Office attached to the Directorate-General for Press and Prints. The office, which at the beginning of war had over 600 collaborators, had been set up Paradigms • 5 in 1906 in order to provide “positive” information to the press reflecting the government’s point of view. This office cooperated closely with the Petrograd Telegraph Agency, with the Office of Russian Journalists, as well as with other news agencies and offices, press commissions, as well as private publications. The Bulletin of the Information Office was published daily, and the government agencies supplied the official press releases to it. The Bulletin was meant for the editorial boards of the periodicals.9 As the Crown Council—convened at Peleº Castle in Sinaia, on 21 July/3 Au- gust 1914—decided that Romania should maintain its neutrality given the non- fulfilment of the conditions for the “casus foederis” mentioned in art. 2 of the treaty with Austria-Hungary, the Entente countries—especially Russia —were hoping to attract Romania on their side. Those circumstances required that the information published in the Russian press about the potential ally be carefully drafted in order not to harm the relations between the two states. Moreover, in the first months of the war, the Russian military press would publish data strictly related to the incidents and troops movements on Romania’s border, as well as information about the visits to Bucharest of certain high officials of the belligerent countries. The year 1915 saw the publication in the Russian military newspapers of the first politically-oriented materials about Romania and its entry into the war. The Russian press started to make public the information about the political actions and pro-Entente movements in Bucharest. We believe that this information was mainly meant to serve Russia’s domestic interests, in an attempt to strengthen the beliefs of its own army about the imminent entry of the Romanian army into the war on the side of the Entente, thus easing the military burden, as well as the certainty of the victory against the enemy. Furthermore, they started taking up and publishing the calls made in the Romanian press in support of the quick entry of Romania into the war on the side of the Entente. They frequently quoted materials from newspapers such as Adevãrul or Roumanie, which were actively involved in the campaign for Romania’s entry into the war on the side of France and England, and, consequently, of Russia. The harsh criticism of Austria-Hungary and of its ally, Germany, found in the pages of the aforementioned newspapers, suited perfectly the needs of the Russian editors. Mention should be made that the collaborators of the abovementioned Infor- mation Office were minutely examining the Russian and foreign periodical press— from the allied, neutral, and enemy states. Increased attention was paid to the press in England, France, the usa, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Italy, and the Balkan states. The analysis was not only meant to analyze general information, but particular aspects as well. Certain materials were sent to the editorial boards of the Russian newspapers, accompanied by the recommendation to publish.10 6 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Moreover, Petrograd would subsidize a number of Romanian newspapers, including the aforementioned ones, Adevãrul and Roumanie, because—as the Russian ambassador (minister) to Bucharest, Stanisław Koziełł-Poklewski, mentioned in his telegram no. 10 of 18 May 1915—“the number of newspapers advocating for the Entente is decreasing due to German corruption.”11 Fur- thermore, the Information Office attached to the Russian General Staff had special funds to subsidize the printed publications in Russia, as well as beyond its borders, in strong collaboration with the Russian government. This way, the Information Office was trying to consolidate its influence over the public opinion in the empire and outside its borders, especially in the neutral states. Various articles, previously published by the Office’s employees, were sent to the numerous journalists—Romanian journalists included—“collaborating” with the institution.12 This type of materials increased significantly after Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 10/23 May 1915. In the issue of 9/22 May 1915 of the Русский инвалид newspaper, there is an excerpt from the Adevãrul newspaper of 28 April stating, among other things, that to Germany’s threats “Italy responded by concluding an alliance with the Triple Entente, while Romania will also not delay in properly responding to these threats. Bulgaria will never fight against Russia. Germany’s situation is becoming critical.”13 The promotion of the idea according to which the Romanians were eager to join the Entente alongside the Italians continues in the issue of 14/27 May of the same newspaper, which also includes a material distributed by the Petrograd Telegraph Agency. The material mentions that “in Bucharest, military censorship has been introduced for telegrams. The news from Italy stirs increasing interest; however, the Govern- ment still claims that Romania should pursue its own interests and maintain its neutrality. Take Ionescu’s and Filipescu’s supporters are asking Romania to join forces with their bigger Latin sister. Some say that the Romanian Government deliberately withheld the telegrams from Italy, which have not arrived for two days now, in order to avoid popular manifestations in support of Romania’s entry into the war.”14 The same issue also includes an excerpt from the Adevãrul newspaper of 3 May: “Germany has actually spent several millions to make Italy and Romania maintain their neutrality, and it was actually hoping to receive the help of these two countries, sparing no expense in order to get them involved in the war against Russia, but even so Germany has failed.”15 When taking up materials from the Romanian press, the emphasis fell almost entirely on the Adevãrul and Roumanie newspapers. There were very few exceptions. As such, in the same issue of 14/27 May 1915, Русский инвалид wrote that the L’Indepéndence Roumaine newspaper, which analyzed the stages of the war, presently in its 11th month, at the end of the article called upon the Paradigms • 7

Romanian public opinion to maintain their calm and composure in the context of the events that were taking place (Italy’s entry into the war), since Roma- nia’s interests could only be protected by the discipline and unity of its sons: “Impetus and reckless actions can damage our homeland.”16 It is possible that for some Russian military strategists Romania’s neutrality was more important than its entry into the war on the side of the Entente. Widening the battlefront could have brought more disadvantages than the advantages of gaining a new ally. However, this position was definitely a minority one, since the publication of the Russian War Ministry insisted upon the materials promoting Romania’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente. The enemy’s denigration by way of the Romanian press was also often prac- ticed. In the issue of 17/30 May 1915, the editors of the publication of the War Ministry published an excerpt from the Roumanie newspaper of 7/20 May 1915:

Due to its barbarous way of leading the war, Germany has become the most un- popular country in the eyes of the neutral states. Until the beginning of the war, there were countries that admired Germany, even loved it. Now, the Germans have alienated everyone. The reason—the policy of terror, widely applied by the Germans, especially the terror manifested in its most abominable and criminal forms. The horrific wracking of Belgium, the atrocities against the peaceful population, the air raids, the bellicose attacks against commercial ships, which ended in the sinking of the Lusitania, the use of asphyxiating gas, the poisoning of wells—all these lie behind the infinite hatred of the entire civilized world against the Germans.17

The opportunity presented by Italy’s entry into the war was emphasized for the readers through the promotion of the conviction that this step would inevitably lead to the entry into the war on the side of the Entente also of Romania, which had been hesitant about it until that moment. As such, the issue of 21 May/3 June 1915 of the Русский инвалид newspaper distributed the information of the Petrograd Telegraph Agency regarding the rally of 18/31 May 1915 organized in Ciºmigiu Park of Bucharest by the Romanian Cultural League, the organization of the Transylvanian emigrants, and other patriotic organizations, in support of Italy. According to the accounts, the manifestation gathered 15,000 people led by the members of the National Committee for “immediate action” and of the Romanian Cultural League, the former ministers Filipescu, Take Ionescu, Istrati, Delavrancea, and the Transylvanian priest Vasile Lucaciu, as well as university professors, soldiers, and civilians from all social classes. The event description abounds in pathos: 8 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

The marchers organized a grandiose procession headed by the flags of the patriotic organizations. Singing Romanian and Italian patriotic songs, they walked towards the Italian embassy in Bucharest. On their way there, the marchers were supported by the passersby. When they reached the headquarters of the Germanophile newspaper Minerva, they held a hostile manifestation, shouting “Down with the traitors!” All the streets around the Italian embassy were full of people ceaselessly shouting “Long live friendly Italy! Long live Greater Romania!” Italy’s envoy, Marquis Fasciotti, received the marchers’ delegation. In his speech, Istrati, the former minister, mentioned the blood relation connecting the two Latin peoples, wished the Italian army victory in all battles, and expressed his wish that the Romanian army would fight alongside the Italian one. In his turn, Father Lucaciu expressed his confidence that soon the shores of the Danube would be patrolled by Latin guards together with their Italian brothers in arms. Marquis Fasciotti thanked the inhabitants of the capital for expressing their sympathy for Italy and finished his speech by shouting Long live Greater Romania!

The Agency pompously mentioned that “it was the most grandiose manifestation that Bucharest had ever seen, and was carried out in complete order, except for one incident when a person from the crowd threw rotten eggs at the balcony where Italy’s envoy and other high officials were standing. That person was immediately seized and was identified as a German citizen.”18 To emphasize the belief that the Romanians really wanted to enter the war on the side of the Entente, in its 22 May/4 June 1915 issue, the same periodical republished the call of the Adevãrul newspaper of 13 May according to which “we have to stand up against Austria and Germany, as honor and fairness demand; moreover, we must fight against Austria, as this is the only way to build Greater Romania.”19 Next, in the issue of 28 May/10 June 1915, an excerpt was taken from the Roumanie newspaper of 19 May/1 June, called “God Bless Italy”:

The die has been cast; if we were unable to do it before Italy, if we were unable to draw our swords out of the sheaths together with Italy, then we will soon follow it. Staying neutral is not what we should do. Shouting “Long live Italy!” means “Long live the war on the side of Italy!” Austria-Hungary represents a common enemy not just because it keeps under its dominance hundreds of thousands of Ital- ians, for whose liberation they’ve started the fight, while millions of Romanians are still waiting. With it, the entire world has to be freed. In Italy, the idea about the national demands has become secondary; in their case, just like in our case, what comes first is the determination to obtain in Europe a place for the small peoples, to free the world from Prussian military authoritarianism.20 Paradigms • 9

At the end of 1915, a Press Office was attached to the General Staff; the head of this new office was Mikhail Lemke, reserve staff-captain. The Office was meant to “normalize” the relations between the periodical press and the Russian Army High Command. Its task was to “correctly” inform the press on the development of the military operations and of the battles in Russia and abroad, as well as to prevent the unwanted interpretation of the military information circulating in the press despite the existence of military censorship. For this purpose, Colonel A. M. Machulsky and other officers of the General Staff, responsible for the collaboration with the press, held talks with the journalists and prepared the press releases on military matters. Together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Press Office drafted and edited special unofficial brochures for distribution in the neutral states in order to create a public opinion favorable to Russia, and to counteract the messages of the hostile press. The whole office prepared articles, which were then distributed for publication in the unofficial news columns of newspapers. For their publication, connections with the editorial boards were set up; the latter did what was requested of them in an informal manner, printing the texts under the guise of editorial board articles.21 Therefore, it is clear that not all the materials published in the Russian press, irrespective of their topics, necessarily expressed the point of view of the editorial board about the events to follow, especially if they were not bearing any signature.

he Romanian Government signed the famous treaty with the states of the Entente on 4/17 August 1916, and on 14/27 August 1916 the T Crown Council was convened to formally issue a statement about Ro- mania’s attitude towards the world conflagration and the accomplishment of the Romanian centuries-old political and national ideal. In the evening of the same day, Romania declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In their turn, Germany and Turkey declared war on Romania on 15/28 and on 17/30 August, respectively. On 18/31 August, Bulgaria attacked Romania without any declaration of war, which only came on 1 September 1916. The issue of 15/28 August 1916 of the Русский инвалид newspaper talks about Romania’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente, but only oblique- ly and indirectly. The foreign news column on the fourth page includes the information published by the Timpul newspaper on 13/26 August according to which Hungarian military details of 40–50 soldiers were ceaselessly monitoring the border, while important military forces were massing in Timiº. The article also states that “in two or three days’ time, the border with Hungary will be closed, and the trains arriving from Romania in Predeal are full of German and Austrian subjects leaving Romania.”22 The frontispiece announced that the next 10 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) issue would be out in three days, on 17 August 1916 (30 August according to the new calendar). Romania’s entry into the war was given just a little more than half of the second page and a column on page three only in the Wednesday issue of 17/30 Au- gust 1916. In the article signed with the initials M. B., called “The New Front,” the author informed that “the opening of the fifth front has been long awaited, and the signs that this moment was coming were given by the recent transports of military ammunition from the Russian territory to Romania, by the meetings and patriotic demonstrations in Bucharest, by the telegram of 13 August from Stockholm, as well as by the fact that the Romanian king rejected the proposal made by Berlin to appoint a special envoy to Bucharest, in the person of the Duke of Meklenburg, to discuss the situation thus created.” The author then states that Romania’s entry into the war was “important for us from a military point of view.” Moreover, the author underlines the moral and political impetus given to the Russian forces. The second article, signed with the initials V. E., focuses on the examination of the Romanian fleet on the Danube, compared with the Austro-Hungarian one. The author notices that the Romanian fleet was more modern, while the Austrian one, although larger, was outclassed in what speed, equipment, and armor thickness were concerned. “Since during the river battles there will be mainly single-ship engagements, the Romanian fleet will most certainly have the advantage,” the author concluded. In the end, the author also stated that even if the actions of the Romanian fleet focused on the defense of the Danube border, the Romanian ports would serve as intermediary bases for the operations on the Bulgarian shore.23 Furthermore, in the foreign news column on page three, announcements were made, in no chronological order, first that on 15/28 August in Bucharest “King Ferdinand called for the general mobilization, and there is huge enthusiasm all over the city.” Then, that on 12/25 August a major in the Romanian General Staff was appointed as military agent in Petrograd instead of Colonel Holban. In the end, the newspaper wrote about the day of 14/27 August and the decision of the Crown Council, and about the note handed to the Austro- Hungarian envoy in Bucharest, Count von Czernin, which referred to the jus- tification of Romania’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente. All these pieces of news were presented in less than a column out of the five on the page.24 The issue of 18/31 August 1916 of the same newspaper contains a new article about the war on the Danube, reiterating the importance of Romania’s entry into the war for the control of the German-Bulgarian-Ottoman communications. The unsigned article concludes by stating that “due to its excellent strategic loca- tion on the shores of the Danube and to its strong river fleet, Romania would be certainly successful in this theater of war.”25 The Telegram Department received Paradigms • 11 information dated 17/30 August from the Romanian battlefront that the Rus- sian armies, which had crossed the border into Romanian territory, were met by the population with admiration and rare enthusiasm: “Romanians everywhere are showing a strong feeling of sympathy towards the Russian armies and are asking them to sing the Russian anthem. The military operations assigned to the Russian army are being excellently carried out. This is what makes Romanians so enthusiastic, and they will be ready in the nearest future to join the Russians in the war against their common enemy.” Also on 17/30 August, the newspaper reported on the fierce battles fought in the Carpathian gorges. Thus, the newspaper stated that Romania’s entry into the war “has caused much anxiety in Berlin, where they constantly blame Austria for this. The indifference shown to this topic has consequently generated profound indignation in Germany.” On the same day, the newspaper spoke about the movement of trains towards the border with Bulgaria, where Romania’s entry into the war had allegedly “caused great restlessness.”26 The issue of 19 August/1 September 1916 again featured information according to which the allied Russian armies, which had started to cross Dobruja, were being greeted by the population with enthusiasm. Furthermore, it indicated that the Commander of the Russian armies in Romania had arrived in Bucha- rest, accompanied by five officers. As they were moving from the railway station to the Russian mission, the capital’s inhabitants organized a noisy welcome for the newly arrived guests.27 The account continued in the same bombastic style:

The declaration of 14/27 August for the mobilization of the Romanian army in- duced an indescribable state of happiness among the inhabitants of Bucharest, who had been impatiently waiting for this great event on all the streets of the capital. The royal family was enthusiastically hailed by the crowd, who threw bouquets of flowers towards the vehicle transporting the king, the queen, and the crown prince. Patriotic speeches were given, in which the speakers praised the king, who—like a true and great Romanian—had managed to satisfy the univocal hope of the people for the accomplishment of the national ideal. Thousands of inhabitants walked towards the Russian embassy and the allied ones, where manifestations were held.

In what followed, the newspaper included a translation of King Ferdinand I’s manifesto to the Romanian people on Romania’s entry into the war. The article also stated that in Galaþi the population had received the mobilization order with enthusiasm: “The crowds of marchers, who were singing patriotic songs, received the army troops with great admiration. Very warm was also the rally near the Russian consulate, which lasted until three in the morning. The large number of participants were showing their happiness, continuously cheering the con- 12 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

sulate.” The same newspaper officially informed the Romanian subjects scattered across the entire territory of Russia about the Decree No. 2784 of 14/27 August on the general mobilization.28 The issue of 26 August/8 September 1916 of the Разведчик magazine, which until then had avoided the issue of Romania’s entry into the war, only published a photo of King Ferdinand I, which read “Our new ally, the Romanian King Ferdinand I.”29 It was only in the next issue of 30 August/12 September 1916 that Romania’s entry into the war was given a larger editorial space, in an article that filled three editorial pages and was signed with the initials K. A., dedicated to the Romanian armed forces. The article starts by acknowledging the fact that, on 15 August, Ro- “Our new ally, the Romanian mania had declared war on the Austro-Hungarian King Ferdinand I” Empire; consequently, Germany declared war on Romania, while Bulgaria’s and Turkey’s envoys to Bucharest requested their passports. With this, the author notes, “we, and together with us the Entente states, have obtained a new ally, while the Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Turks are forced to consider a new enemy, whose entry into the world conflagration can only be considered of utmost importance. For two years, Romania has witnessed the bloody fight in Europe, and now, since it has taken the side of the Entente states, this can only represent a confirmation of the fact that our enemies’ objective is irreversibly lost.” Next, the author presents arguments in support of his statements. He states that “the entry of a well- prepared and organized army on the side of the Entente is even more important since, two years after the beginning of the war, our enemies no longer have top soldiers, and their armies are made up of quickly trained officers and soldiers, whose qualifications are rather questionable. Romania—who had observed the war for two years—had enough time to analyze the battle conditions, and thus to prepare, perfect, and develop its armed forces.”30 Further on, the author analyses the Romanian armed forces in terms of training, number, and equipment. Somewhat contrary to the provisions of the Cen- sorship Regulation, the author states that, according to the available data, the Romanian army annually conscripts 51,000 recruits, while the armed forces are made up of 368 battalions, 102 squadrons, 122 batteries (980 cannons), and army corps with special and auxiliary purposes (technical, aerial, transport, Paradigms • 13

etc.). The ground forces are made up of five army corps and 10 divisions. As to the total number of soldiers, since it was a state secret, the author estimated it according to the formula of 12% of the country’s population, stating that the army should include somewhere between 750 thousand and 1 million persons who could contribute to the defense of the country. The author also lists Romania’s most A group of Romanian officers and soldiers in front important river combat vessels of the monument erected with their own hands which had been commissioned in on the battlefield in Grivitza, after having conclud- 1907, and which represented, in ed a peace treaty with the Bulgarians in 1913. the author’s point of view, “the best type of vessel in Europe.” Next, the author presents the technical specifications of these vessels and concludes by stating that the Romanian fleet had 200 officers and 3,200 sailors.31 In the conclusion, the author states that “the fact that Romania has joined the Entente states is of utmost importance, because until now Austria-Hungary has thought its back was covered, and from now on it becomes vulnerable. More- A group of officers of Queen Elizabeth Second over, following Romania’s entry Marine Regiment led by King Ferdinand I and the crown prince: 1) King Ferdinand I; into the war, we have free access to 2) Prince Carol; 3) Prime Minister Brãtianu; the Balkan Peninsula. It is possible 4) General Cotescu. that, very soon, our armies and the Romanian ones, just like 1877 at Pleven, will fight together and entwine new laurels in the crown of victory.” The text is illustrated with two photos: a group of Romanian soldiers in Grivitza, after the conclusion of the peace with the Bulgarians (1913), and a group of officers of Queen Elizabeth Second Marine Regiment led by King Ferdinand I, Prince Carol, Prime Minister Brãtianu, and General Cotescu.32 14 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

he analysis of the Russian press in the period 1914–1916 shows that Romania’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente was a very im- Tportant topic not only for the editors—career officers themselves—, but also for the Russian army high command. The Information Office attached to the Directorate-General for Press and Prints, the Press Office attached to the General Staff, as well as the Russian press agencies were closely monitoring and trying to influence the evolution of the Romanian public opinion regarding Ro- mania’s entry into the war as an ally. Certainly, the main target of the materials suggesting that Romanians would join the fight against Russia’s enemies were the Russian soldiers in the trenches, the main readers of these periodicals, with the purpose of giving them the certainty of the final victory. q

Notes

1. During 1910–1914, Lieutenant General V. V. Belyaev was editor-in-chief of the Русский инвалид newspaper; on 9 November 1914, however, he was appointed commander of the 83rd Infantry Division, which he led in the First World War, and on 19 June 1915 he was appointed chief of staff of the 12th Army. After an interim period, the management of the newspaper was taken up by Lieutenant Gen- eral A. I. Zvonnikov, who, in 1895–1910, had been a permanent contributor to the Развѣдчикъ magazine. 2. Д. Г. Гужва, “Военные газеты и журналы в годы Первой мировой войны как основное средство информирования русской армии,” in Русская публицистика и периодика эпохи Первой мировой войны: политика и поэтика. Исследования и материалы (Moscow, 2013), 546. 3. Собрание узаконений и распоряжений правительства, СПб., 1914. No. 26, No. 2066, С. 821–822, No. 203, Ст. 2752. 4. Временное положение о военной цензуре [Утверждено 20 июля 1914 года], Пг., 1914, 1–15. 5. В. Новоселов, “Печать и война,” Пробуждение 2 (1915): 580. 6. The name of the city changed to Petrograd on 18/31 August 1914. 7. Г. А. Салтык and А. А. Строева, “Первая мировая война: к истории военной цензуры,” Ученые записки. Электронный научный журнал Курского государственного университета 3 (19) (2011): 29. 8. Собрание узаконений и распоряжений правительства, СПб., 1915, No. 313, Ст. 2904. 9. Н. Л. Волковский, История информационных войн, Ч. 2, СПб., 2003, 108. 10. Ibid. 11. Procesul dezastrului naþional: Documente secrete din Arhiva diplomaticã a ministerului de externe din Petrograd (Iaşi, 1918). Paradigms • 15

12. Волковский, 108–109. 13. Русский инвалид, 102 (1915): 2. Here and hereafter, we include our own translation from Russian of the materials published in the Romanian press, as we were not able to find the original Romanian texts. 14. Ibid., 104 (1915): 3. 15. Ibid., 105 (1915): 3. 16. Ibid., 110 (1915): 2. 17. Ibid., 107 (1915): 2. 18. Ibid., 110 (1915): 2. 19. Ibid., 111 (1915): 2. 20. Ibid., 115 (1915): 2. 21. Волковский, 25. 22. Русский инвалид, 218 (1916): 4. 23. Ibid., 219 (1916): 2. 24. Ibid., 3. 25. Ibid., 220 (1916): 5. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 221 (1916): 5–6. 28. Ibid., 6. 29. Разведчик, 1346 (23 August 1916): 535. 30. Ibid., 1347 (30 August 1916): 550. 31. Ibid., 551. 32. Ibid., 549–551.

Abstract Romania’s Entry in the First World War As Seen in the Russian Military Press

The analysis of the Russian military press from 1914–1916 demonstrates that Romania’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente was an important issue not only for the editors themselves, but also for the Russian army high command. The Information Office attached to the Directorate- General for Press and Prints, the Press Office attached to the General Staff, and the Russian press agencies were closely monitoring and trying to influence the evolution of the Romanian public opinion regarding Romania’s entry into the war as an ally. The main task of the materials suggesting that Romanians would join the fight against Russia’s enemies was to inspire the certainty of the final victory among the Russian soldiers in the trenches, the main readers of these periodicals.

Keywords World War I, Russian military press, censorship, Entente, Romania Organization and Activity of the Moldovan Military

V i t a l i e C i o b a n u Congress M i h a i T a ªc Ã (20–27 October 1917)

The Situation in Bessarabia and the Actions Undertaken to Summon the Congress

uring 1917, the idea of an autonomous Bessarabia and D of establishing an institution to rule the territory—revived im- The Eparchial House in Kishinew, mediately after the fall of the empire which hosted the Moldovan Military Con- and after Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication gress (20–27 October 1917). on 2 February 1917—started being supported by most professional associations and national political parties. They joined the movement for national liberation that included teachers, students, the clergy, peasants, co-operative members, etc., and Bessarabian soldiers, the large majority of which were far from Bessarabia’s territory, either on the battlefields of World War Vitalie Ciobanu I, or in the garrisons behind the front.1 Director of the Center for Culture and Through the decisions adopted, Military History of the Ministry of De- fense of the Republic of Moldova. the congresses of the clergy, teachers, co-operative members, etc. held in the Mihai Taºcã spring of 1917 outlined some objec- Senior researcher at the Institute of Legal tives for Bessarabia. However, none and Political Research of Academy of Sci- of the adopted documents clearly in- ences of Moldova. dicated the specific path the province Paradigms • 17 should take. Under these circumstances, it was the military who took responsibility for Bessarabia’s destiny, fully understanding that what they needed were concrete, urgent and efficient actions. For the first time, the idea of summoning a Moldovan military congress, which would solve the abovementioned problems, was discussed in the meeting of the Moldovan Executive Committee of the Deputies’ Council of Soldiers, Officers and the Navy within the Odessa Garrison held on 19 June 1917.2 The representatives of the national military committees3 in Odessa, Kishinev, Sev- astopol, and Iaºi jointly agreed to summon the Moldovan Military Congress in Kishinev on 20 October 1917.4 Similar decisions were taken by other committees of the Bessarabian soldiers. The organization of the military congress required several stages. On 20 September 1917, in Odessa,5 a joint meeting was held with the members of the Moldovan committees of the regiments, military companies, military batte ries, ship committees, representatives of the Black Sea fleet, and Moldovan military units from the Odessa Garrison. The meeting, chaired by Vasile Matveev, brought into discussion several issues, among which Sub-lieutenant Ion Pãscãluþã’s request to organize a military congress. Consequently, on 22 September 1917, Captain Emanoil Catelly, interim president of the Moldovan Executive Committee of the Deputies’ Council of Soldiers, Officers and the Navy within the Odessa Garrison, issued an instruction for the volunteer ªtefan Holban regarding his secondment to the Great General Headquarters of the supreme commander and to the War Ministry.6 In accordance with another mandate,7 signed on 27 September 1917 by the president of the same Moldovan association, ªtefan Holban and Ion Pãscãluþã were seconded to the Great General Headquarters with the purpose of personally submitting to the supreme commander several requests among which the one regarding the summoning of the Moldovan military congress in Kishinev.8 Gherman Pântea considered that the organization of the military congress was set for 29 September when the General Committee gave their consent for the summoning of the military congress. From minutes no. 31 of the aforementioned structure one can understand that the organization of the Bessara- bian Military Congress was unanimously supported by all those present.9 Sub- lieutenant Ion Pãscãluþã took the floor on this matter and mentioned he had information that over 2,000 soldiers might attend the congress. Listening to the speakers’ opinions, the committee set up a commission whose purpose was to individually and urgently solve the problem of the delegates’ secondment to the General Headquarters. The commission proposed a resolution to the committee, which was unanimously adopted.10 To support this approach, a decision was made to delegate Sub-lieutenant Ion Pãscãluþã, volunteer ªtefan Holban, and Lieutenant Anatolie Popa to the Great General Headquarters as of 1 October. 18 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

On 30 September, the Moldovan Central Executive Committee took the decision to delegate the aforementioned soldiers to the Great General Headquar- ters in Mogilev, basically with the same indications of the Moldovan Executive Committee in Odessa. In his memoirs, ªtefan Holban mentioned that the one who came up with the idea of organizing the committee on his own responsibility was General Nikolay Dukhonin,11 located in Mogilev.12 Following the discussions with the Great General Headquarters in Mogilev,13 the delegation sent, from the very office of the aforementioned commission, the following telegram:

To all… To all… To all… Commanders and Presidents of the Committees of military districts, battlefronts, armies, companies, and special military units. With the approval of the Provisional Government, the General Military Con- gress of the Moldovan soldiers everywhere in Russia is summoned in Kishinev, Bessarabia, on 20 October. Please spread the word to elect and appoint two soldiers and one officer for every 240 Moldovan soldiers. In those units where their number is under the indicated figure, brigades, divisions and military corps shall be grouped so that all Moldovan soldiers are represented. The delegates shall have on them written letters of delegation, as well as a travel allowance for five (5) days. Delegates of the Central Committee of the Moldovan Military, Sub-lieutenant Ion Pãscãluþã, Ştefan Holban.14

According to the author, the text was written by Ion Pãscãluþã, while Ştefan Holban, who personally sent it, supposedly added the final lines: “Delegates of the Central Committee of the Moldovan Military, Sub-lieutenant Ion Pãscãluþã, Ştefan Holban.”15 On 7 October, the Moldovan Central Executive Committee of the Soldiers, Officers, and Sailors’ Deputy Council discussed, in a secret meeting, the categorical refusal of the Russian Great General Headquarters to authorize the summoning of the Moldovan Military Congress. Defying this decision, the committee’s members decided to organize the congress without the permission of the Russian authorities. The committee sent to the commanders of all military units a telegram with the following text:

To the commanders of the army, army corps, and divisions. Based on authorization no. 378764 issued by the Supreme Commander (Gen- eralissimo) and by Kerensky, President of the Council of Ministers, the Moldovan Military Congress has been approved for 20 October 1917, in the city of Kishinev. Paradigms • 19

We hereby ask your approval for the appointment of two soldiers and one officer for every Moldovan company, issuing for them the necessary letters of delegation and giving them the travel allowance for ten (10) days.16

Obeying military discipline, and recalling the anarchy and chaos that had affected the former empire, the unit commanders did not question the content of the telegram and fulfilled the written requests. At the meeting of the Moldovan Central Executive Committee of the Sol- diers, Officers, and Sailors’ Deputy Council on 13 October 1917, Ion Buzdugan proposed that the official date for the arrival of the delegates should be 18 Oc- tober, even if they had arrived earlier. They also accepted the proposal to create a commission in charge of the verification of all credentials, which was supposed to establish the veracity of the documents presented by the delegates.17 The joint meeting of all Moldovan military committees in the Odessa Gar- rison, which was held on 14 October 1917, discussed the results obtained by the delegation at the Great Russian General Headquarters and the War Ministry. They had been sent there to obtain the authorization for the summoning of the Moldovan Military Congress. The meeting of the Kishinev military committee on 17 October was mostly dedicated to some practical aspects pertaining to the organization of the congress. Soldier Petru Dascãl’s proposal was to set up a committee for the administration of the congress works and for the accommodation of the representatives sent to the congress.18 In his memoirs, Gherman Pântea claimed that the Government in Petrograd learnt about the summoning of the congress and ordered both the administrative and the revolutionary bodies to stop its organization, as well as to arrest those who had signed the telegram. Under these circumstances, on 19 October was held an extraordinary meeting of the Moldovan Central Executive Committee,19 where representatives from other garrisons also participated, leading to a total of 50 people. Ion Pãscãluþã presented the activity report of the congress organization committee. During the debates the issue of its postponement was also raised, knowing that some of the delegates might not arrive on time for the congress or, generally, might not participate at all, as they had received telegrams from the Great General Head- quarters informing them that the forum had not been approved by the central authorities.20 One proposal was that the works of the congress should start on 21 October in order to facilitate the timely arrival of all delegates. These initiatives were not supported by President Gherman Pântea and by Vasile Þanþu, representative of the Odessa military association, who insisted that the congress should begin the following day, specifying that the hotel rooms had already been booked and 20 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) that most of the delegates had already arrived. After long debates, a decision was finally reached: the congress was to begin on 20 October, at 1 o’clock in the afternoon.21 At the meeting they also drew up the congress rules of procedure, perfected the details regarding the reports to be drafted by the deputies, set the time limit for speeches, etc. The congress participants received free transportation by tram in the city of Kishinev for its entire duration, based on an agreement concluded with the Belgian company managing the Kishinev railway transport company at that time.22

On the Number of Delegates Who Participated in the Congress

ne widely debated topic in the specialist literature, in the memoirs of the direct participants in the event, as well as in the periodicals of that O time is related to the number of representatives who were present at the military congress. The high interest in the number of delegates, which somehow legitimated the congress and the adopted decisions, generated a sort of competition; as such, the aforementioned documents presented different numbers, and some of them gave numbers that represented only half of what other figures mentioned. The minimum number indicated was 500, while the maximum one was of 1,000 delegates. Moreover, since it was a military congress, most of the authors were obviously of the opinion that the participants were only soldiers. However, there was another idea circulating which stated that in the congress also participated delegations of civilians from the Bessarabian professional committees, as well as representatives of the ethnic minorities. Finally, the number of the representatives who participated in the meetings on each day of the congress was also discussed. Historian Valeriu Popovschi, in his valuable work Biroul de organizare a Sfatului Þãrii: 27 octombrie–21 noiembrie 1917 (The organizational board of the Country Council: 27 October–21 No- vember 1917), following an in-depth research, grouped the authors according to the figure they gave for the number of representatives participating in the congress. In the abovementioned book, the author noticed that the specialist literature operated with numbers of 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 989, and 1,000 representatives/participants in the congress. It is worth mentioning that, during the meeting held on 29 September, Ion Pãscãluþã announced that the number of representatives they expected was around 2,000. Paradigms • 21

It is important to add that the number of delegates should have been much bigger, if the instructions in the telegram sent from the Great Russian General Headquarters by Ion Pãscãluþã and Ştefan Holban, which instructed the military units to delegate 1 officer and 2 soldiers for every 250 soldiers, and 1 officer and 1 soldier for the units with less than 100 people, had been exactly complied with, and if one takes into account that, according to some historical sources for 1917, the Russian army had somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 Bessarabian soldiers. Let us examine the figures given by the authors and the extent to which the data presented had a real basis. The number of 500 delegates was mentioned by some of the authors who had been direct participants in the works of the congress or had been contemporary with the event. Among those were Dimitrie Bogos, ªtefan Ciobanu, Gher- man Pântea, and Onisifor Ghibu.23 As such, Captain Gheorghe Andronachi and Vasile Harea,24 deputy to the Country Council, mentioned the number of 600 delegates. This figure is confirmed by Mihail Minciunã, who, as correspondent of the Soldatul moldovan newspaper to that congress, in his report published in no. 8 of 4 November, remarked that on the first day of the congress “over 500 representatives were present,” while on the second day “all day long there were representatives of the Moldovan soldiers on the battlefields who arrived and their number exceeded 600.” Ion Inculeþ, who opened the proceedings on the first day of the congress, acting as a representative of the Commissioner of Bessarabia, opted for the number of 700 participants,25 a number confirmed by ªtefan Holban, the future deputy to the Country Council.26 The number of 800 participants was mentioned by the editors of a 1918 manuscript on Bessarabia’s history, by Sub-lieutenant Dumitru Mârza, a direct participant in the event, by Pan Halippa in his later memoirs, by Eugen Holban, son of ªtefan Holban,27 as well as by contemporary authors.28 Ion Pelivan, Ion Nistor, and Elena Alistar are some of the authors who stated that 900 delegates participated in the congress,29 a number mentioned by some contemporary authors as well.30 Some authors gave the exact number of 989 participants,31 a number which was taken as such by contemporary authors.32 A work published eight years after the congress announced the number of 1,000 delegates.33 An original idea was brought forward by Captain Gheorghe Andronachi, who mentioned that in the congress had participated more than 600 Moldovan delegates, officers and soldiers from all battlefronts, including approximately 500 delegates from various professional institutions,34 as the author called them. 22 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

What is, therefore, the real number of participants? Mention should be made, first of all, that most documents concerning the Moldovan Military Congress are in the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova,35 but also in the archives in Bucharest. In the files kept at the National Archives, which were probably put together by the Commission appointed for the organization of this congress, we find: delegates’ mandates and identification papers; certificates issued to the delegates—which confirmed their participation in the congress; certificates issued by the Committee’s president for the organization of the congress, addressed to the unit commanders who were required to pay to the delegates the appropriate allowance; delegates’ accompanying papers. Following the analysis of these documents, we can make the following remarks. As to the data/numbers mentioned by those who were contemporary to the event, we believe they are different because, on the one hand, not all delegates arrived on the first day of the congress (as a result of the analysis of the archive materials, we have established that some of the delegates—due to various reasons—arrived in Kishinev with a certain delay, on 21–22 or even 23 October), while other delegates left earlier than the official closing ceremony (if we judge by the number of days stated in the delegation paper for the congress, for some of the delegates the last day of stay in Kishinev was 25 October; therefore, some of them were forced to go back to their military units). Finally, some authors— knowing that the hall of the diocese had 1,000 seats—estimated the number of the people present in the room at a certain moment according to the perception they had over the number of people in the hall. Moreover, another highly plausible idea was brought up, namely, that some delegates who went to Kishinev either before the beginning of the congress, or during its works, also went to their homes to see their parents, wives, and children, so that, given these circumstances, establishing the exact number of participants was even more problematic. Contemporary authors, however, took up the data presented by other authors. The fact that the delegates’ mandates were thoroughly verified was also indicated at the beginning of Mihai Minciunã’s article, published in the Soldatul moldovan newspaper.36 The number of delegates to be presented herein has been established based on several sources. The first source we used were the delegates’ mandates and identification papers. Most of them were made on a template, written on forms or on paper with the header of the company/regiment/division that issued them. Arriving in Kishinev, the delegates presented their mandates to the commission in charge of the congress organization. Paradigms • 23

The first document verification took place on the premises of the Moldovan Central Executive Committee, where delegates went to announce their arrival and to receive information regarding their accommodation. The congress organization commission made some remarks on those mandates, i.e. they wrote a registration number and, in most cases, the date of arrival. As such, on the mandates and identification papers found there are some remarks, usually written in black ink, in ascending order from 1 to 608. There was one other mandate that we managed to identify, which did not have a number written on it, and we assigned it the number 609.37 From other sources, we were able to identify the attendance of Captain Gheorghe Andronachi, who led a deputation of 19 people, all delegates of the 185th Infantry Regiment.38 Other delegates were identified from other sources: 1. The name of a delegate whose mandate was not identified was established based on the certificate issued to the participant by the president of the Com- mittee in charge of the congress organization, addressed to the commander of the unit, through which he was asked to give the delegate the legal allowance, according to the norms set by the War Ministry. 2. Another 18 delegates were identified from a list set up by the Congress Commission on the first day of works,39 names that do not appear on other lists. 3. Thirteen people were identified based on the minutes and reports drafted at the congress. For instance, Gherman Pântea, who was one of the main orga- nizers of the congress, Ion Buzdugan, Nicolae Grosu, Anton Rujinã, speakers at the congress, etc. whose names we have not come across on any of the lists and who did not have a mandate. Consequently, based on the analyzed documents, we can accept that 680 delegates participated in the congress, among them eight civilians; we therefore confirm Gheorghe Andronachi’s hypothesis which stated that there were also civilians among the congress participants, but their number is smaller than the one mentioned by the aforementioned author. We will, however, admit that the real number of delegates was higher.

The Works of the Congress

he agenda was published two days before the opening of the congress works, on 18 October 1917, in the Svobodnaia Bessarabia40 newspaper. T The fourteen subjects to be discussed were: the election of the praesidium; greetings; the report on the Central Committee; the autonomy of Bessarabia; the nationalization (Moldovenization) of armies; Bessarabia and its leadership; field work; on what is happening now and on the elections to the 24 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Founding Assembly; on cultural enlightenment; the nationalization (Moldo- venization) of schools and high offices in Bessarabia; on the Moldovans living on the other side of the Dniester; the election of Moldovan representatives—one for the Republic Council, one for the High Command of all Armies, and one for the War Ministry; the election of the three representatives in the Peoples’ Council; the National Fund (money).41 The Moldovan Military Congress, also known as the First Congress, carried out its works on 20–27 October 1917 in the hall of the diocese. People’s interests and expectations regarding the congress were high.42 The delegates started their march on Aleksandrovskaia Street at 2:20 in the afternoon, moving towards the hall of the diocese, bearing national flags, and accompanied by a military orchestra.43 The works of the congress started at 3 p.m. with the singing of La Marseillaise.44 Gherman Pantea congratulated the congress on behalf of the Moldovan Central Executive Committee of Soldiers, Officers, and Sailors’ Deputy Council, making the proposal to move on to the election of the praesidium. The congress was also saluted by the representatives of the local authorities, of the political parties, community and national organizations on the battlefront and behind it. Among the first speakers who also set the tone of the meeting were military delegates as well. Vasile Þanþu, Nicolae Secarã, Andrei Scobioalã, Gri- gore Cazacliu, Anton Crihan, Alexandru Moraru, Emanoil Catelly, Constantin Osoianu, Vasile Matveev, Ion Codreanu, a member of the Executive Committee of the Guberniya Soviet of the Peasants’ Deputies in Bessarabia, Ion Pãscãluþã, etc.45 Representatives of the Armenian and Jewish communities, of the Moldo- van society, of teachers, of co-operative members, of the Moldovan National Party, etc. also took the floor. Toma Jalbã, the representative of the Moldovans on the other side of the Dniester, asked the congress not to forget about the Transnistrians in this historic moment.46 During the first day of the congress several congratulatory telegrams sent to the congress were read. The meeting of 21 October was presided by the chairman of the congress, Vasile Cijevschi,47 a cavalry officer. He compared the Bessarabian assembly to the Peoples’ Congress in Kiev,48 arguing in favor of autonomy and explaining the term to the participants. Then, the rapporteur explained the meaning of the terms autonomy and federation, and argued that they were necessary for a pros- perous life. Deputy Teofil Ioncu, who brought additional information to what Cijevschi had already said about the Peoples’ Congress in Kiev, also referred to self-determination, encouraging the participants to declare the absolute independence of the province from Russia, making a direct proposal for the establishment of an Paradigms • 25 institution to rule the province, the purpose of which would be to implement the idea of national self-determination.49 Ion Buzdugan gave detailed information about the possible forms of autonomy, explained their meaning in the life of the peoples, and mentioned that the most appropriate form of leadership for Bessarabia would be the republic. Following a speech on the history of the land, Ştefan Holban argued in favor of the Bessarabians’ legitimacy and historical right to a wide autonomy, also referring to the illegalities of the occupation, as well as to the duplicitous policies of old Russia.50 After a break, the delegates presented some resolutions regarding the issue of autonomy. Then, they took a vote on the declaration of the autonomy of Bessarabia, which was unanimously adopted. The Resolution of the Moldovan Military Congress of 21 October 1917 stated the following:

On the Autonomy of Bessarabia Taking into account the national culture of the Moldovan people and their history, starting from the principle of revolution whereby each people has the right to decide their own fate, the Congress, wishing to unite the Moldovan people and to establish their national rights and the betterment of their economy and culture, took the decision To declare the territorial and political autonomy of Bessarabia In order to protect the rights and interests of the autonomy of Bessarabia from the interim occupation, to be a representative body of the Moldovan people.

The historical document was received with great enthusiasm, the audience kept cheering “hooray, hooray,” as well as “long live free and autonomous Bessara- bia.” On 22 October, the meeting started at 3 o’clock in the afternoon; on its agenda was the nationalization of military units. Nicolae Furtunã, at that time commander of the First Moldovan Regiment, presented to the congress a detailed report on the creation of the national army. Anton Crihan, organizer and inspector of the military cohorts set up in Bessarabia as of August 1917,51 reported to the congress on those military units exclusively composed of Bessara- bian soldiers, mentioning that they were the very first national military units created in the province with the purpose of restoring order and protecting the population from the anarchy that was affecting the territory situated between the Prut and Dniester rivers. Anton Crihan requested that the Moldovan cavalrymen from the town of Novogeorgievsk and from other places in Russia should be transferred to Bessarabia, where national units were already being created. Lieutenant Valentin Prohniþchi proposed the creation of two regiments of 15,000 people each.52 26 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Until 10 o’clock in the evening, when the meeting came to an end, several speeches and debates followed; as a result, some resolutions were proposed and were submitted to the secretariat. During the meeting of 23 October, opened at 10 o’clock in the morning, and chaired by Gherman Pântea, the final resolution for the organization of the national military units was read and unanimously voted. The decision regarding the Moldovan rapid intervention militia units (cohorts) was also read. The congress took the decision to increase up to 100 the number of already existing Bessarabian rapid intervention militia units (cohorts), each having 100 men.53 During the same meeting, they discussed the creation of a Supreme Council for the administration of Bessarabia. Rapporteur Ion Buzdugan argued for the necessity of a Council to manage all the affairs of Bessarabia, mentioning that it should be, however, created by the people. Its name should be the Country Council (Sfatul Þãrii, the Council of the land of Bessarabia); Ion Buzdugan also proposed that this new institution be composed of 100 deputies, distributed as follows: 30 members representing the Military Congress; 30 representing the peasants; 10 from the Moldovan parties and organizations; 30 representing other nationalities in Bessarabia. Vasile Þanþu came up with the proposal to elect 120 deputies to the Country Council, where 40 of them should represent the Military Congress, underlining the fact that they had to be elected from among those worthy and famous, and that these proposals should be explicitly submitted by the representatives of the battlefronts, districts, associations, etc. However, most participants opted for the election of deputies according to the counties, and they asked for the creation of the Country Council without any delay. Other speakers also took the floor, and they asked for the immediate creation of Bessarabia’s Country Council. A third proposal was presented, which asked for the appointment of candidates according to battlefronts, military districts, organizations, and also counties. In what regards the Country Council, the first Moldovan Military Congress in Russia decided:

To immediately create the Country Council, the purpose of which is to manage all affairs of autonomous Bessarabia. To set up the Country Council with 120 members, as follows: 44 representatives from the Military Congress, which are to be elected immediately; 30 representatives of the Moldovan peasants; 10 of the Moldovan parties and organizations; 36 representatives of the other Bessarabian nationalities, according to the ratio—70% Moldovans, 30% other nationalities. Moreover, to offer—besides the 120 seats—10 seats to the Moldovans from the other side of the Dniester, if they accept them.54 Paradigms • 27

After a four-hour break, the participants brought up a topic with profound social implications: the agrarian issue and the one of colonization. As a result of the debates held on these topics, the congress adopted a decision according to which the land would be distributed to “those who would work the land with their own hands.” On the same day, the congress also talked about the Russian situation at that moment, as well as about the attitude to be adopted towards the Constituent Assembly.55 On 24 October, after the adoption of those resolutions, some of the delegates insistently asked to discuss again the structure of the Country Council. The meetings that followed included the other subjects that were on the congress agenda. The resolution regarding the Moldovans who were living on the other side of the Dniester was supported by the large majority of deputies, and they decided that the Transnistrians be given ten seats in the future legislative body. Another issue that was discussed dealt with the organization of national schools. Participants asked for concrete measures for the nationalization of the educational institutions; teachers and professors were told to become involved as much as possible in the process of nationalization and of making Romanian the language of instruction.56 The subjects that dealt with cultural enlightenment, the organization of the Moldovan schools for soldiers, the setting up of libraries, and the nationalization of the schools in Bessarabia were all discussed together. The meeting held on 25 October started with the future regulation for the election of deputies to the legislative institution. The following meetings discussed the criteria to be followed for the distribution of the deputy mandates. The congress also elected a liquidation committee for the implementation of the decisions voted and adopted at the congress. On 26 October, at 6 o’clock in the evening, the works of the congress were declared closed. On 27 October, the meetings were more technical in nature. They were already dealing with the organization of and elections to the Country Council. On the last day, the congress elected a Board for the Organization of the Country Council57 made up of five people, the purpose of which was to regulate the principles and the representation criteria in the legislature, and to set the agenda for the first meetings of the Country Council.58

he soldiers’ actions gave new impetus to the timid attempts of the civil society, which had been previously unable to regulate the legal rela- T tions between the province and the center, to establish the legal status of Bessarabia under the new conditions, or to create a legislature for Bessarabia 28 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) called upon decide the fate of the province located between the Prut and the Dniester rivers. The Moldovan Military Congress held in the autumn of 1917 took the initiative and the responsibility for the destiny of the province by declaring, on 21 October, the political and territorial autonomy of Bessarabia, while on 23 October it set the foundations of the legislative body of the country, i.e., the Country Council. q

Notes

1. For a chronology of the events in Bessarabia in 1917–1918, see Mihai Adauge, Eugenia Danu, and Valeriu Popovschi, Miºcarea naþionalã din Basarabia: Cronica evenimentelor din anii 1917–1918 (Kishinev, 1998). 2. National Archives of the Republic of Moldova, F. 727, inv. 2, file 8, fols. 16–17v. (hereafter cited as narm). 3. The Bessarabian soldiers organised themselves in national military committees of the Russian army, which represented an element of the fight for national freedom. As of April 1917, the Bessarabian soldiers from the military units on the battlefront and behind it were organised based on ethnic principles. Various structures of our soldiers were set up in the main centers where other Moldovan soldiers were concentrated: Kishinev, Bender, Iaºi, Roman, Odessa, Sevastopol, Kiev, Novogeor- gievsk, Ekaterinoslav, Kherson, Voznesensk, and many other cities. 4. Cãpitan Gh. V. Andronachi, Albumul Basarabiei ín jurul marelui eveniment al Unirii (Kishinev, 1933), 129. 5. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 6, fols. 169–169v. Minutes no. 53, of the extraordinary meeting of 20 September 1917 of the joint Moldovan regimental, company, and battery committees, the Executive Moldovan Committee, the representatives of the Black Sea fleet soldiers, and of other Moldovan units within the Odessa garrison, which took place under the chairmanship of Sub-lieutenant Vasile Matveev and of the secretary, volunteer Toma Cecati. 6. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 6, fol. 168. 7. The instruction read: “By seconding you to the General Headquarters, we hereby authorise and strongly ask you to vigorously insist to obtain and solve the following matters: obtain the authorisation and support for the summoning of the Moldovan Military Congress in Kishinev; complete the 40th Reserve Infantry Regiment only with Moldovans and Bessarabians; rename the 40th Reserve Infantry Regiment as the ‘First Moldovan Reserve Regiment’; rename the 129th Light Artillery Battery for antiaircraft operations of the 5th Reserve Artillery Division, completed only with Moldovans, as ‘ªtefan cel Mare First Moldovan Antiaircraft Battery’; rename the 145th Light Artillery Battery for antiaircraft operations of the 5th Reserve Artillery Paradigms • 29

Division, completed only with Moldovans, as ‘Basarab Second Moldovan Antiair- craft Battery.’” narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 6, fol. 170. 8. Ibid. 9. Gherman Pântea, Unirea Basarabiei, acte şi documente cu ocazia împlinirii a 25 ani de la sãvârşirea marelui act istoric (Odessa, 1943), 43; narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 16, fols. 22–24. 10. For the approval of the instruction, a commission was set up, in which were elected: Sub-lieutenant Nicolae Secarã and the volunteer Bâtcã, as well as Anton Ruginã— with 17 votes and 2 abstentions; Anton Crihan—unanimously; Ion Dascãl—unanimously. The commission had to draft a report to be approved in the following ordinary meeting. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 16, fol. 23. 11. General Nikolay Dukhonin was appointed head of the Great General Headquarters of the Russian Army on 10 September 1917. On 25 October, during the Bolshevik revolution, he asked the Bolsheviks to cease their action against the government. On 29 October, Kerensky appointed him as Supreme Commander simultaneously with his departure to Petersburg. He was killed by the Bolsheviks on 20 November 1917 while he handed over his position to their representative. 12. Alexandru Bobeica, Sfatul Þãrii, stindard al renaşterii naþionale (Kishinev, 1993), 57; ªtefan Holban, “Evenimentele premergãtoare congresului ostaºilor moldoveni 1917,” Patrimoniu (Kishinev) 1 (1991): 12–13. 13. In his memoirs, ªtefan Holban mentioned that the telegram had been written on the ledge of a window at the post office in the Great General Headquarters, located in the building of the railway station in Mogilev. Holban, 13. 14. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 38, fols. 1–1v. 15. Andronachi, 127–128. 16. Gherman Pântea, Rolul organizaþiilor militare moldoveneşti în actul Unirii Basarabiei (Kishinev, 1932), 28. 17. The Committee’s president announced that the delegates had already started to arrive for the Moldovan Military Congress set for 20 October that year and that some of them had not received any type of instructions or mandates and no one had information about the financial means they needed for food and lodging, especially since the beginning of the congress was still one whole week away. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 6, fol. 144. 18. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 6, fol. 48. Minutes no. 38 of the Plenary Meeting of the Moldovan Central Executive Committee of 17 October 1917. The agenda was presented, which included several topics. Regarding the necessity to set up and elect a committee to manage the activity of the congress and to accommodate the delegates, the committee decided to set up the commission and to elect its members. 19. Minutes no. 39 of the extraordinary meeting of the Moldovan Central Executive Committee of 19 October 1917. The meeting was opened by the President of the committee, Sub-lieutenant Gherman Pântea. Because the meeting on 19 October was an extraordinary one, to discuss the matters regarding the Moldovan Congress to be inaugurated on 20 October, the president of the committee, Pântea, proposed 30 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

to the assembly that honorary guests, who had come to the Moldovan Military Congress as representatives of various units and battlefronts, should be able to participate. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 9, fol. 179. 20. Ibid. 21. To encourage the attending representatives, Ion Pãscãluþã presented to the assembly the actions of the delegation that was sent to the Great General Headquarters with the purpose of requesting the authorisation for the inauguration of the Moldovan Military Congress on 20 October; from what he presented, one can understand that the congress was authorised. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 9, fol. 179. 22. Ibid. 23. dimitrie Bogos, La rãspântie: Moldova de la Nistru în anii 1917–1918 (Kishinev, 1924), 67; Ştefan Ciobanu, Unirea Basarabiei: Studiu şi documente cu privire la mişcarea naþionalã din Basarabia în anii 1917–1918 (Kishinev, 1993), 53; Pântea, Rolul organizaþiilor militare moldoveneşti, 30–31; Onisifor Ghibu, Cum s-a fãcut Unirea Basarabiei (Sibiu, 1925), 13; id., Cu gândul la Basarabia (Arad, 1926), 127; id., Pe baricadele vieþii: În Basarabia revoluþionarã (1917–1918): Amintiri, edited by Octavian O. Ghibu, foreword by Iurie Colesnic (Kishinev, 1992), 401, 402, 424. 24. Andronachi, 129; Vasile Harea, “Mãrturia unei generaþii,” manuscript, Romanian National Archives, Iaşi Branch, Vasile Harea personal collection, file 38f, p. 2384. 25. Ion Inculeþ, O revoluþie trãitã (Kishinev, 1994), 101; Eugen Şt. Holban, Ostaşii Mol dovei: Monumente istorice (1917–1918): Rolul ostaºilor Moldovei în fãurirea renaºterii naþionale ºi Unirii (Kishinev, 1995), 38 etc. 26. Holban, 15. 27. “Basarabia sub dominaþia ruseascã (1812–1917),” manuscript, narm, coll. 727, inv. 2, file 1, fol. 62; Dumitru Mârza, “Amintiri cu date istorice asupra pregãtirii Unirii Basarabiei cu Patria Mamã, organizarea şi activitatea Sfatului Þãrii al Basarabiei, organizarea unitãþilor din fosta Republicã Moldoveneascã,” manuscript, narm, coll. 727, inv. 2, file 98, fol. 5, etc. 28. O paginã din istoria Basarabiei: Sfatul Þãrii (1917–1918), eds. Ion Negrei and Dinu Poştarencu (Kishinev, 2004), 139; Mihai Taşcã, “Un document inedit scris de Dumitru Mârza, deputat în Sfatul Þãrii, ce reflectã evenimentele din Basarabia din anii 1917–1918,” Transilvania (Sibiu), new ser., 3–4 (2008): 63; Demir Dragnev and Ion Varta, Istoria românilor: Epoca modernã: Curs de lecþii (Kishinev, 2000), 194; Lidia Pãdureac, Relaþiile româno-sovietice (1917–1934) (Kishinev, 2003), 19; Gheor ghe E. Cojocaru, Sfatul Þãrii: Itinerar (Kishinev, 1998), 30. 29. Elena Alistar, “Fizionomia socialã şi politicã a Sfatului Þãrii,” Viaþa Basarabiei (Kishinev) 4–5 (1933): 44, and the review Cugetul (Kishinev) 1 (2006): 6; Ion Nistor, Istoria Basarabiei (Cernãuþi, 1923), 415. 30. Iurie Colesnic and Vasile Þanþu, Basarabia necunoscutã, vol. 2 (Kishinev, 1997), p. 162; Dumitru Suciu, Monarhia şi fãurirea României Mari (1866–1918) (Bucharest, 1997), 195; Stelian Neagoe, Istoria unirii românilor (Bucharest, 1993), 255; Keith Hitchins, România (1866–1947), 3rd ed., rev. and enl., transl. George G. Potra and Delia Rãzdolescu (Bucharest, 2004), 313, etc. Paradigms • 31

31. Cartea Unirii, 1918–1928 (Bucharest, 1929), 54; Alexandru V. Boldur, Basarabia şi relaþiile româno-ruse: Chestiunea Basarabiei şi dreptul internaþional (Bucharest, 1927), 30; id., Basarabia româneascã (Bucharest, 1943), 129; id., Istoria Basarabiei, 2nd edition (Bucharest, 1992), 499; Ion Pelivan, L’Union de la Bessarabie à la mère-patrie/ La Roumanie (Bucharest, n.d.), 28; id., Chronology in the Most Important Events of the Life of Bessarabia (Paris, 1920), 14. 32. Ioan Scurtu, Dumitru Almaş, Armand Goşu, Ion Pavelescu, and Gheorghe I. Ioniþã, Istoria Basarabiei de la începuturi pânã în 1994 (Bucharest, 1994), 107; Ioan Scurtu, Dumitru Almaş, Armand Goşu, Ion Pavelescu, Gheorghe I. Ioniþã, Ion Şişcanu, Nicolae Enciu, and Gheorghe E. Cojocaru, Istoria Basarabiei de la începuturi pânã în 1998, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. (Bucharest, 1998), 82; id., Istoria Basarabiei de la începuturi pânã în 2003, 3rd ed., rev. and enl. (Bucharest, 2003), 126; Aspects des relations russo-roumaines: Rétrospectives et orientations (Paris, 1967), 69; Charles King, Moldovenii: România, Rusia şi politica culturalã, transl. Diana Stanciu (Kishinev, 2002), 32, etc. 33. Carl Uhlig, Die Bessarabische Frage: Eine geopolitische Betrachtung (Breslau, 1926), 57 etc. 34. Andronachi, p. 129. The researcher backs up Vitalie N. Ciobanu in that the number of civilians amounted to 300. Vitalie N. Ciobanu, Militarii basarabeni 1917–1918: Studiu ºi documente (Kishinev, 2010), 69. 35. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 39, file 40, file 43; Central National Historical Archives (Bucharest), coll. Pan Halippa, Ion Pelivan etc. (hereafter cited as cnha). 36. Soldatul moldovan (Kishinev), no. 7, 26 October 1917. 37. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 40, fol. 20. 38. cnha, coll. Ion Pelivan, file 469, fols. 9–9v. 39. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 43, fols. 63–83. 40. Svobodnaia Bessarabia (Kishinev), no. 141, 18 October 1917. 41. cnha, coll. Ion Pelivan, file 356. From the archive of Ion Pelivan. Minutes of the Moldovan Military Congress in Russia held in Kishinev on 20–27 October 1917. 42. Cuvânt moldovenesc (Kishinev), no. 91, 20 October 1917. 43. pântea, Unirea Basarabiei, 43–47. 44. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 18, fol. 1. 45. Bogos, 100. 46. pântea, Unirea Basarabiei, 49–50. 47. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 18, fol. 2. 48. Bogos, 100. The Peoples’ Congress in Kiev, as some authors underline, played an important role in the evolution of the idea of autonomy of the peoples living in Rus- sia. The congress was held on 6–15 September 1917. There were also six delegates from Bessarabia who participated in the forum. Vasile Cijevschi was elected vice- president of the Kiev Congress; he addressed the congress together with Teofil Ioncu and Vladimir Cazacliu. Dumitru Th. Pârvu, Problema Basarabiei, în lumina principiilor actelor juridice internaþionale (Bucharest, 2013), 216; Ion Inculeþ, O rev- oluþie trãitã (Kishinev, 1994), 97–98. 49. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 18, fol. 3. 32 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

50. Ibid., fols. 2–8. Minutes of the first Moldovan Military Congress in Russia held in Kishinev on 20–27 October 1917. 51. Ibid., fol. 3v. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., fols. 2–8. 54. Ibid. For a summary of the activities carried out by the Country Council, see Mihai Taºcã, Basarabia—pãmânt românesc: Antologie, vol. 1 (Kishinev, 2017), 7–37; narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 18, fols. 2–8. 55. narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 18, fols. 2–8. Minutes of the first Moldovan Military Con- gress in Russia held in Kishinev on 20–27 October 1917. 56. Hristea Dãscãlescu, Revoluþia de la 1917 în Basarabia, lupta moldovenilor pentru limba, şcoala şi cultura naþionalã (Kishinev, 1938), 71–72. 57. Valeriu Popovschi, Biroul de Organizare a Sfatului Þãrii (27 octombrie–21 noiembrie 1917): Studiu ºi documente (Kishinev, 2013), 140–149; narm, F. 727, inv. 2, file 3, fols. 19–33; file 20, fols. 1–31; file 41, fols. 1–5; file 92, fols. 1–20; file 99, fols. 25–34; Minutes of the Moldovan Military Congress, kept with the Archives in Bessarabia, 1936, nos. 2–3, pp. 121–131. 58. Popovschi, 7; Cojocaru, Sfatul Þãrii: Itinerar, 25–30; id., “Constituirea Sfatului Þãrii: O abordare istoricã şi istoriograficã,” Transilvania, new ser., 3–4 (2008).

Abstract Organization and Activity of the Moldovan Military Congress (20–27 October 1917)

The authors analyze the events and the situation in Bessarabia in the autumn of 1917, presenting the activity of the Moldovan Military Congress, which took the initiative and the responsibility for the destiny of the province by declaring, on 21 October, the political and territorial autonomy of Bessarabia, and on 23 October set the foundations of the legislative body of the country, Sfatul Þãrii (Country Council), the Parliament of the Moldovan Democratic Republic.

Keywords Bessarabia, the Soldiers, Officers, and Sailors’ Deputy Council, autonomy, Country Council The Moldovan Bloc in the Country Council

G h e o r gh e E. The Creator of Bessarabia’s C o j o c a r u Destiny

One hundred years ago, in the festivity hall of the Boys High School No. 3 in Kishinev, the voice of history began to be heard: awakened to their national life, on that exact day, a handful of individuals who loved their people and country gathered in that hall seeking to take into their own hands the fate of Bessarabia, alien- Country Council (1917–1918) ated in 1812. A lot of things had been said until that moment, in the various meetings held on the territory of Bessarabia, as well as abroad, about the necessity of a Country Council as a representative institution at the level of the province, which could assume the entire responsibility for the fate of the former tsarist guberniya, which, under the existing conditions, could only lead to the self-determination of the people living between the Prut and the Dniester rivers, as was happening on almost the entire territory of the Gheorghe E. Cojocaru Director of the Institute of History, Aca former Russian Empire. The ideas of demy of Sciences of Moldova. Author, a provincial Diet, of Bessarabia’s au- among others, of the vol. Sfatul Þãrii: tonomy, of solving the agrarian prob- Itinerar (The Country Council: An itine lem, of being educated in their native rary) (1998). tongue, of making the Church turn to- 34 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) wards the lower categories of the population were all going hand in hand with the claims for democratic freedoms and rights. Won through the emancipating effort of the Russian revolution, those rights had to be put in the service of a noble cause, they had to take a national form in order to acquire greater appeal and consistency all over Bessarabia. If the revolution had opened the path towards freedom, then the way to overcome the past was not easy at all, especially since the revolution itself, at a certain point, had started to deny its own ideals and to devour its artisans. At such a turning point was summoned in Kishinev a great Moldovan Mili- tary Congress, on the tricolor flags of which one could read the unanimous desire of putting themselves in the service of the oppressed people living east of the Prut River. Having arrived with representative mandates from the various units on the Eastern Front, on 21 October, the more than 800 delegates firmly declared themselves in favor of Bessarabia’s autonomy; it was also the moment when a current emerged, favoring the re-inclusion of the territory between the Prut and the Dniester rivers into Romania.1 In the then context of the Rus- sian Revolution, declaring Bessarabia’s autonomy marked a first and irreversible step towards national self-determination. The congress decided to establish the Country Council, also electing the first deputies of the prospective legislative forum, which would lay the foundations of the future Moldovan Bloc, as a parliamentary faction. As to the method of election, by delegation, of the Country Council members, the representativeness and legitimacy of this institution were often questioned. Certainly, the elections through a direct vote were preferred, if only there had been people to organize them, if only there had existed an elec- toral law that took into account Bessarabia’s specificity, if only the land had not been subjected to all the misfortunes caused by the proximity to the Romanian front, if only the 300 thousand young Bessarabians sent to the battlefront— which represented around 25% of the mature population of the land—had been able to cast their votes, too. However, since all those circumstances lacked, the only means of preventing arbitrariness and abuse in Bessarabia was the collective will for self-determination and the pursuit of national interest. It is here that lies the historic merit of the Moldovan Military Congress, the merit of having defined the mechanism and of having initiated the procedure for the creation of the Country Council, of assuming power in a moment of great distress, and of giving it a strong democratic and national expression. A bureau for the organization of the Country Council, elected in the Con- gress, carried out in less than one hundred days a series of organizational activities, the purpose of which was to set up a democratic and representative parliamentary institution. The initiative and tone of all those actions belonged to the deputies who would later organize themselves in the Moldovan Bloc, while Paradigms • 35 their leaders would fully speak their mind in all the 15 meetings of the bureau. The 70% quota given to the representatives of the Romanian population in the Country Council was not a simple statistical finding. It reflected the great preoc- cupation of those who had initiated the national movement for the provincial Diet to be a national democratic institution, which should really serve those who, living in the territory between the Prut and the Dniester rivers, had had no one to talk to or anyone to protect them for more than one hundred years. Consequently, on 19 November, the Ardealul newspaper published a short announcement, signed by Vasile Þanþu, president of the organization office of the Country Council, which stated: “The inauguration of the Country Council has been set for 21 November 1917, irrespective of the number of deputies present. All deputies are invited to participate on the mentioned date.”2 No less than 95 deputies participated on the set date. The opening of the works of the Country Council confirmed the capacity for national creation, channeling political developments on a parliamentary path, of the Western type, complying with the democratic principle of the separation of powers. In the context created after the Bolshevik party took the power in Petrograd, the path of free Bessarabia had nothing in common with dictatorship and class discrimination, the new authorities in Kishinev being willing to see in V. I. Ulianov’s (Lenin’s) Government only an executive arm of Russia within their natural borders. The young Bessarabian political class saw their mission as the defense of democratic values, the modernization of society, national emancipation and self-determination. If a parliamentary majority had not been formed around the Moldovan Bloc, which had attracted the most enlightened and determined minds in Bessarabia at that time, without their excellent organization or their solidary efforts, all those objectives would have remained unfulfilled. Thanks to their leaders’ wisdom, the Moldovan Bloc pursued the identification of a consensus in the Country Council activities, making reasonable com- promises, as in the case of the election of Ion Inculeþ as head of the legislative institution, instead of Ion Pelivan, the incontestable leader of the Bloc, or in the formation of the leadership bodies of Parliament and of the first Bessarabian Government, where seats were also offered to the ethnic minorities. In what concerns its social profile, the Moldovan Bloc included people whose political convictions were left-wing, reformist, European democratic, but also widely inclined towards the ideas of national emancipation and serving the common good. The proclamation of the Democratic Republic of Moldova, on 2 December 1917, as an expression of the aspirations for national emancipation, marked a first step towards the separation from the former metropolis, and consolidated the framework of a parliamentary political system. It is worth mentioning that, 36 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) among the fundamental demands of the 1917 national movement, formulated after the collapse of the tsarist autocracy, there was nothing regarding the formation of a separate entity of Bessarabia, more specifically of a republic. A Diet of the territory between the Prut and the Dniester rivers, Bessarabia’s autonomy, a series of other objectives of great political, social, and national breadth were all envisaged. However, the idea of proclaiming a republic would appear much later. The first one to publicly express this idea was Ion Buzdugan, on 21 Octo- ber 1917, during the debates on Bessarabia’s autonomy held at the Moldovan Military Congress in Kishinev. The issue was approached by Ion Inculeþ, after his election as president of the Country Council on 21 November 1917. Inculeþ said that, based on the right to self-determination gained after the Revolution, Bessarabia “would have to become a democratic republic, an indivisible part of the great Russian Democratic Federative Republic.”3 Among the first supporters of the idea of a “Bessarabian democratic republic” was Pantelimon Erhan,4 who had been elected to run the executive institution of Bessarabia. Mention should be made that both of them were sent by the Provisional Government in Petrograd to “deepen” the revolution in Kishinev. Here is a contribution—disregarded by historiography—of the “envoys” of the former metropolis, which opened new horizons for the national movement in the territory.5 As a sum of factors and conditions, the context played an essential role in the proclamation of the Moldovan Democratic Republic. As the national fringes of the former Tsarist Empire proclaimed themselves republics one by one, the creation of the Moldovan Republic was rightfully triggered by the contamina- tion with all those ideas and projects, as well as based on the right to national self-determination.6 On 7 November, neighboring Ukraine proclaimed itself a Popular Republic, while previously, as a result of the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd, Russia had also declared itself a Federative Republic of Soviets, which precipitated the inclusion on the Country Council’s agenda of the matter regarding the declaration of an autonomous Bessarabia—proclaimed by the Military Congress as a Moldo- van Democratic Republic—even more so since on the entire territory of former Russia there were talks about the possible creation of a federative community of the new national republics, in which, at that stage, the Kishinev leaders also intended to participate. However, to be able to sit at the same table with the representatives of the new national republics and to plead in favor of Bessara- bia’s interests, they needed an special form of representation at the level of the province, as well as an incontestable mandate from an entity equal in status to those of the future project partners. A large part of the population and of the various social and political organizations supported the authority of the Country Council and the proclamation Paradigms • 37 of the Moldovan Republic,7 which subscribed to the fundamental democratic values and aimed for a series of social and economic reforms. The new entity had, therefore, the necessary internal legitimacy, and expected external recognition. The very formation of the Moldovan Democratic Republic, between the Prut and the Dniester rivers, between Khotin and the Black Sea, conferred upon Bessarabia an equal status with the Republic of Ukraine or Russia, and marked a new and irreversible stage on the path to national self-determination. During the troubled times at the end of 1917 and beginning of 1918, when a military structure from outside Bessarabia, but which had established itself in Kishinev, the Battlefront Section of the Odessa rumcerod, maliciously attacked the Country Council, the leaders of the Moldovan Bloc, mandated by the legislature, took the courageous action of asking for external help, putting Bessarabia under the protection of the Romanian army, which had crossed the Prut River with the consent of the Entente countries, and which could not have been a foreign army to those who had been alienated from their brothers 106 years before. Neither could it have been “an intervention army”—as the Soviet historiography claimed—on the territory of a republic that had requested its assistance. The dissolution by the Bolshevik authorities, on 5 January 1918, of the Con- stituent Assembly of the entire Russia, which was expected to legalize the great “Russian Democratic Federative Republic,” cancelled all the efforts of willingly bringing back together the former national territories, which had as a consequence the categorical abandonment of the old project and the reconsideration of the process of national self-determination. The Ukrainian Popular Republic declared its independence, while the Country Council was also determined to take this decisive step. Just like the declaration of 2 December, the declaration of independence of the Moldovan Democratic Republic bears the clear mark of the Moldovan Bloc, being unanimously adopted on 24 January 1918. It seemed the time had come to start the promised agrarian, constitutional, and administrative reforms. How- ever, given the hardships of the previous year of the Great War, it was absolutely necessary for Bessarabia not only to protect its present, but also to ensure its future. The solution could not have come from anyone else but from those who had advanced and promoted a comprehensive national program, suitable for the Bessarabian population, and who, under the new conditions, had to decide which path to follow—to choose between the unpredictability of staying on their own in the turbulent Eastern area, or to make an effort to overcome their own condition and to unite Stephen the Great’s old province with Romania, pursu- ing a Western orientation. For the Moldovan Bloc, the leaders of which had an appropriate perspective on the gravity of the domestic and foreign situation of the Moldovan Republic, that issue did not have the character of a dilemma, as 38 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Bessarabia would find its natural place in the Romanian family. However, not only did its return home have to end a historical injustice, but, more than that, it had to bring in the life of the entire Romanian society new freedoms and democratic reforms, in order to broaden and strengthen its European developmental horizon. This is the meaning that one has to keep in mind when thinking about the overwhelming vote of the Moldovan Bloc and of the other deputies who had joined it in support of Bessarabia’s union with its mother country, Romania, on 27 March 1918.

adly, even today, one hundred years later, the Country Council and, implicitly, the Moldovan Bloc are still denied the merit of having taken the S unification decision, on account of the stated “provisional” character of the legislature and the absence of the respective prerogatives. The Country Council actually had the most comprehensive prerogatives, at national and international level, and they were extended when the local and regional situation deteriorated. Moreover, if the Country Council’s rights of assuming the supreme power in Bessarabia, of forming a Democratic Republic, of proclaiming the independence of the state without questioning the legitimacy of their mandate up to that moment, are all recognized, then it is clear that the essence of the matter does not reside in the nature or mandate of the Bessarabian legislative institution. It is rather found in the twisted logic of those who loathe the choice made by the parliamentary majority on the memorable day of 27 March, and who, driven by resentment, are afraid of the impact of the union on the present moment, trying to suppress it by distorting the historical truth. Consequently, isn’t it obvious that challenging, under one pretext or another, the vote of 27 March, which has to be seen without hatred or bias in the context of the era, actually means contesting everything that was built through the efforts of the Country Council and of the parliamentary majority, gathered around the Moldovan Bloc, since the very day of the opening of the works of the legislative body on 21 November 1917, contesting exactly what appears to be accepted? Furthermore, history does not tolerate selective approaches, and the history of the Country Council has to be seen in its organicity, has to be understood and assumed as an inseparable and enlightening part of the Romanian spiritual heritage, with care for the past, accountability for the present, and confidence in the future that awaits us. During the one hundred years that have passed since those historic events, a lot of good and bad things have been said about the Country Council and the Moldovan Bloc, the history of which is practically intertwined with the history of the Bessarabian legislative assembly. The force of the redoubtable Moldovan Bloc, of this vigorous axis of national representation in 1917–1918, drew in- Paradigms • 39 spiration from the sorrows and needs of a people, in order to take that people out of the mists of history. They distinguished themselves through organizational coherence, courageous actions, thirst for justice, and ideological upright- ness before both friends and foes. Aware of their historic mission and of their Romanian identity, keeping their unity and widening their social support, the Moldovan Bloc knew how to navigate around the pitfalls of that time, giving meaning, direction, and a precise purpose to the complicated self-determination process, and remaining a model for the pursuit of the supreme national goal, the creator of free Bessarabia’s destiny. q

Notes

1. Lupta, no. 36, 19 November/2 December 1917. In an interview published in the same newspaper of the Romanian socialists settled in Odessa, Captain Em. Catelli, president of the Moldovan Military Committee in Odessa, stated that the relations between Bessarabia and Romania were supposed to be “those between two good neighbours, like two independent states.” “We,” said Catelli, an old militant for the socialist revolutionary party, “love the Romanian people like a brother, but we will never accept to be subjugated by the Romanian oligarchy.” Not very long after, however, Catelli mentioned that “once democracy triumphs in Romania, where other social institutions will be set up, once the Romanian peasants become free citizens and owners of their land, if Bessarabia’s annexation corresponds to the unanimous vote of the two countries, then we shall all accept it.” 2. Ardealul (Kishinev), 19 November 1917. 3. Gheorghe E. Cojocaru, Sfatul Þãrii: Itinerar (Kishinev: Civitas, 1998), 37. 4. Ibid., 39. 5. The notion of “Moldovan Republic” is first found in the minutes of the Country Council of 28 November, when a representative of the battlefront congress of the Polish military saluted (!) the “Moldovan Republic.” In response, and anticipating the 2 December Declaration of the Country Council, Pan Halippa, who was chair- ing the meeting, stated that “Bessarabia is a piece of Moldavia, broken from it. We, the Moldovans, by proclaiming the Moldovan Republic, limit ourselves to securing our rights in the territory between the Prut and the Dniester rivers. The peoples’ ultimate purpose is the union of all populations; this union is a matter of the future, and we, for the time being, will put ourselves in the service of order.” Sfatul Þãrii: Documente. Procesele-verbale ale ºedinþelor în plen, ed. Ion Þurcanu (Kishinev: ªtiinþa, 2016), 115. Ion Buzdugan regretted that the Declaration concerning the Moldovan Republic was not adopted on the very day of the inauguration of the Country Coun- cil’s works (ibid., 170). 6. For more details see: Valeriu Popovschi, Biroul de organizare al Sfatului Þãrii (27 octombrie–21 noiembrie 1917)/Republica Democraticã Moldoveneascã (Formarea ºi evo 40 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

luþia, 1917–1918) (Bucharest–Brãila: Ed. Academiei Române, Muzeul Brãilei “Carol I,” Istros, 2017). Valeriu Popovschi mentions that the Moldovan Republic, “being created out of necessity, does not have and can never have anything in common with the rassm or the rssm, established by Moscow, in 1924 and 1940 respectively, for political purposes, and neither does it have anything in common with the current Republic of Moldova,” and some people’s attempt to use this name to prove the “continuity” over time of “the Moldovan national statehood” “is nothing more than an aberration” (ibid., 231). 7. Sfatul Þãrii: Documente, 102–121, 127, 147, 155, 205–206, 214, 222, 226, etc.

Abstract The Moldovan Bloc in the Country Council: The Creator of Bessarabia’s Destiny

In this study, the author analyses the role played by the Moldovan Bloc, the majority parliamentary faction in the Country Council (Sfatul Þãrii), in the years 1917–1918. The most important decisions of the Bessarabian legislative assembly, such as the declaration of the Moldovan Demo- cratic Republic on 2 December 1917, the proclamation of its independence on 24 January 1918, the unification of Bessarabia with Romania on 27 March of the same year, were initiated and carried out by the deputies of the Moldovan Bloc, supported by other parliamentary representatives. The author points out that the history of the Country Council, including the activity of the Moldovan Bloc, must be understood and assumed in its entirety, as an inseparable part of the contemporary spiritual inheritance.

Keywords Bessarabia, Country Council, Moldovan Democratic Republic, Romania, Moldovan Military Congress The Cultural Prelude to Bessarabia’s Union

I o n N e g r e i with Romania

The political activities for the preparation of the Union of 27 March 1918 were supported by cultural events of downright historic importance. The cultural revival that the Bessarabian Romanians were experiencing at the beginning of 1918 was compared by A symphony orchestra put together the publicist George Tofan with a clear and conducted by George Enescu rain over a droughty soil. “On the during the refuge in Iaşi (the First World War). Source: Andrei Tudor, George Enescu: Viaþa dry soil of Bessarabia”—the România în imagini (Bucharest, 1961). Nouã journalist noted—“a beneficent rain has been falling, one of those rains that have the divine gift of turning a grim wasteland into a charming gar- den: it is the rain of national culture, after which everything that has been dry and withered is revived and starts a new life.” In other words, in the win- Ion Negrei ter and spring of 1918, Bessarabia was Researcher at the Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of Moldova. Author, experiencing a recovery of its ethnic among others, of the vol. Anul 1918: Ora identity, a rebirth of the national con- astralã a neamului românesc (The year sciousness of a people “whose soul had 1918: The astral hour of the Romanian lived in darkness and cold for a whole people) (1998). century.”1 42 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

The First Tours of the Iaşi National Theatre in Kishinev

n 23 January 1918, at the invitation of the Fãclia Cultural Enlighten- ment Society (the president of which, teacher Vasile Þanþu, was at that O moment also the leader of the Moldovan Bloc in the Country Council), in Kishinev arrived, for their first tour in Bessarabia, the troupe of the Iaºi Na- tional Theatre, headed by their director, writer Mihail Sadoveanu.2 The Iaºi troupe made their debut in Kishinev on 24 January 1918, a memorable and remarkable day in the history of the Romanian nation and of its Mol- dovan branch. This debut day had not been chosen by accident. On that day, Romanians celebrated the 59th anniversary of the union of the Romanian Prin- cipalities. Additionally, on that day the deputies in the Country Council had also scheduled the meeting of the Bessarabian legislature, which would proclaim the independence of the Moldovan Democratic Republic. According to the agenda, the meeting of the Country Council was opened on the evening of 23 January 1918, was carried out amid great enthusiasm, and concluded after midnight, on 24 January. The declaration of independence, unanimously adopted, represented the official historical document through which the Moldovan Democratic Republic was definitively breaking away from Russia,3 under whose domination it had been for more than one hundred years. Bessarabia’s Parliament motivated their important decision as follows:

Brought together by the blood spilt under the flag of revolution, we have shown our unflinching desire to live in a union with the republics that were established on the lands of the former Russian Empire, to create together the Russian Federative Democratic Republic. But the times are changing, and the political circumstances today are completely adverse to the creation of this union. The Democratic Republic of Ukraine, our neigh- bor on the other side of the Dniester, has proclaimed its independence, and so we have broken away from Russia and the republics established on its former territories. Under such circumstances, and in strong connection with the people’s will, we are forced to proclaim the free, fully fledged, unsubjugated Moldovan Democratic Republic, which has the right to decide its own fate in the future…4

The meeting of the Country Council on 23–24 January 1918 concluded amid rapturous applause, slogans were chanted in support of the decisions made, while deputies carried Ion Inculeþ, president of the Country Council, in their arms. A general state of euphoria engulfed the entire audience. By the decisions made, Bessarabia was finally breaking away from its former master, and was trying to shape its own historical destiny. “At sunrise, we will see great celebrations Paradigms • 43 in the streets of our city. And on this special day, we have proclaimed our independence!”5—solemnly declared from the tribune of the Country Council, early on the historic day of 24 January 1918, Pantelimon Erhan, minister of Public Instruction, who had presented in the meeting the report on the declaration of independence. Indeed, in the early morning of Wednesday, 24 January 1918, the city of Kishinev was prepared to celebrate the union of the Romanian Principalities, which became organically intertwined with the Moldovan Republic’s Indepen- dence Day. Buildings all over the city were decorated with tricolor national flags. Since it was a working day, the authorities suspended the activities in institutions, schools, commercial units, etc. The festivities started with a solemn religious service at the city’s Cathedral, officiated by Archbishop Anastasius, assisted by a group of 24 priests. Members of the Government and Parliament of the Moldovan Republic, Romanian officers, as well as inhabitants of the city and of the neighboring settlements also participated. At the end of the religious service, Archbishop Anastasius (of Russian nationality) delivered a speech in which he saluted the allied states, Romania and its army, which had come to help Bessarabia. Further on, the crowds watched the joint military parade of Moldovan and Romanian soldiers; the parade was welcomed by General Ernest Broşteanu, commander of the 11th Division. As the troops were march- ing through the central square of the city, six planes made a flyby, an action that gave a spectacular note to the entire celebration.6 At noon, on the occasion of the Principalities’ Union Day, General Ernest Broşteanu hosted a reception in honor of the Moldovan Republic’s authorities and of the communal organizations. The major topic of the public discourses given in those days was the idea of uniting all the Romanian principalities with the Kingdom of Romania. The subject was present in the interventions of the speakers participating in the reception. If President Ion Inculeþ spoke about that topic in a more euphemis- tic manner, the other orators—Pan Halippa, Daniel Ciugureanu, Ion Pelivan, Teodor Neaga, and others—were more outspoken, and Pavel Gore, president of the Cultural Society of the Romanians in Bessarabia, concluded his speech by shouting “Long live the Union!”7 At the end of the reception, the participants went out on the streets and danced the Union Hora. The România Nouã newspaper (it was under this name that the former Ardealul gazette, edited by the Transylvanian Onisifor Ghibu, would be released as of 24 January 1918) wrote: “Everybody was elated; they could only see how the dreams of our predecessors and even our own dreams are becoming a reality. From this moment on, our people has clearly started their unification work.”8 Mihail Sadoveanu, director of the Iaºi National Theatre, who had participated in the festivities, described in insightful words the completely enthusiastic 44 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) atmosphere reigning over Kishinev that day: “Greetings are made at the Casino [the Hall of the Gentry Assembly in Kishinev, where the reception was held]. Warm speeches are delivered. Then, suddenly, everybody goes out. The orchestra sing the Union Hora, and brothers from Bessarabia and Romania and the other countries of the Romanian people take their hands, and, in rows, amid cheers, start the fraternity dance. The enthusiasm is indescribable. No one has expected this. The hora of our secular aspirations expands under the clear skies of Kishinev, and everywhere around me all I see are smiling faces and tears of joy.”9 Then, in the same hall, a “literary gathering was held, where poems were read, and the Moldovan choir sang Romanian patriotic and national songs.”10 The last cultural manifestations on the day of 24 January 1918 were performed by the actors of the Iaşi National Theatre, who had arrived in Kishinev. In the evening, the spectators admired the extraordinary acting skills of the maestros of the Romanian theatre in the drama Fântâna Blanduziei (The fountain of Bandusia) written by Vasile Alecsandri. The next day, 25 January, another literary gathering was held, where the great writer Mihail Sadoveanu read before a numerous audience several excerpts from Ion Creangã’s work,11 and in the evening they performed the play Rãzvan şi Vidra (Rãzvan and Vidra), written by B. P. Hasdeu, “a famous Bessarabian Moldovan writer,” as he was presented on the posters released the day before the play. At the end of the evening, in front of all participants—spectators and artists—Vasile Þanþu, president of the Fãclia Cultural Society, read a thank you letter for the shows presented, which expressed the hope of the Bessarabian Romanians “of one day being all Romanians and of creating all together a new Romania.” In his memoirs, Pan Halippa, who participated in the events, mentioned that, as a sign of gratitude, “the artists received a beautiful crown of laurels, made of silver, as well as an impressive thank you letter.”12 The letter was then given to Mihail Sadoveanu, the director of the Iaºi National Theatre. Vasile Þanþu’s message was received with great enthusiasm by the participants, as he was several times interrupted by applause and cheering: “Long live Greater Romania! Long live New Romania!” Af- ter the end of the show and of the expressions of gratitude, the enlivened public asked the military orchestra to perform the anthem Deşteaptã-te, române! (Awaken, Romanian!). Complying with the request, the orchestra performed the anthem, and the audience stood up for the song of the 1848 revolutionaries. Reflecting upon that memorable event, the România Nouã newspaper emphasized the excerpt from the letter read by Vasile Þanþu, which stated that the Romanians in Bessara- bia had expressed their hope that their province would be “a part of the new Roma- nia of tomorrow,” and that for them “today there is no boundary left, and over the Dniester River there is no other bridge to cross than the one that helps their half a million brothers, who have also awakened to a national life.”13 Paradigms • 45

As president of the Romanian Writers’ Society, Mihail Sadoveanu, deeply touched by the warm welcome given to the Iaºi artists and by the greetings from the audience, addressed “to the Moldovan people in Bessarabia” a call from their brothers on this side of “Saint Stephen the Great’s land,” inviting them to unite with their mother country. In the România Nouã newspaper, the great wordsmith impressively described the pain and sorrow felt by the Romanian people after the seizure of the part of Moldavia located between the Prut and the Dniester rivers by the Russian Empire, on 16 May 1812:

More than a century ago, hostile circumstances separated us, and between us, brothers of the same blood, a dark wall rose. Only God knows how you managed to live, oppressed by the tsarist terror and darkness, with no liberty and no light. From our soul to yours nothing was able to cross over. We, free on our Romanian land, would sadly watch as our brothers from Bessarabia withered and died without being able to help them. . . . But the day of freedom has come. Over the cursed waters of the Prut River, a bridge has been built. The time has finally come for us to extend our hands and embrace one another. The time for fraternization, when brothers come together, is here. We were once together in the country of Saint Stephen the Great, we fought and suffered together for many centuries. Dear brothers, the time has come for the Moldovan people to know no boundaries in their love of our sweet language. Culture, language, and education now have to unite us for eternity, and we shall remain inseparable until the end of time.

Mihail Sadoveanu concluded his call with the immortal words: “Romanians from the four corners of the land, now or never, / Be united in the way you think, be united in the way you feel!”14 From a letter written by Mihail Sadoveanu to Onisifor Ghibu on 31 January 1918 we find out that, before leaving Kishinev after their first tour, the director of the Iaºi National Theatre agreed with Vasile Þanþu, the president of the Fãclia Cultural Enlightenment Society, on “the organization of regular theatrical performances in Kishinev and Bessarabia.” When he returned to Iaºi, Mihail Sadoveanu started the preparations for a new tour in Bessarabia, this time with the plays Apus de soare (Sundown) and Rãzvan şi Vidra. Moreover, he sent to Kishinev the music scores for the choirs that might perform in the plays Cinel- Cinel and Baba Hârca (The hag), which he intended to stage in Kishinev, “so that the choir there can learn them, and we shall only bring the actors.”15 At the middle of February 1918, the drama troupe of the Iaºi National Theatre went back to Kishinev. This time, the plays were performed in the Theatre Hall of the Fãclia Society, which had recently been inaugurated. On 13 February 1918, the actors of the Iaºi National Theatre performed the play 46 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Rãzvan şi Vidra, based on the work of B. P. Hasdeu,16 while the following day they performed the drama in four acts Apus de soare, written by writer Barbu Ştefãnescu-Delavrancea, the cast of which included famous Romanian actors. The part of Stephen the Great was played by Constantin I. Notarra, one of the most important actors of the Romanian theatre. For the first time, the greatest and most celebrated prince of Moldavia, about whom only historical legends had been heard in Bessarabia, addressed the great-grandchildren and the great- great-grandchildren of the free Bessarabian peasants, obviously, from the stage. From their perspective, Stephen the Great was the embodiment of the most sacred icon of the Moldovan soul. The press in Bessarabia and the one in the Old Kingdom widely presented the tours of the Iaºi National Theatre in Kishinev. George Tofan, a journalist for the România Nouã newspaper, described those winter evenings as “historic days,” when on the stage of the Kishinev Theatre was presented, to a numerous audience, the historical drama Apus de soare by Barbu Ştefãnescu-Delavrancea, with Constantin I. Notarra masterfully playing Stephen the Great.17 The Bessarabian spectators had the opportunity to meet the great maestros of Romanian theatre, since in those years (1916–1918) the troupe of the Iaºi National Theatre also included famous artists from the Bucharest and Craiova National Theatres, who had fled from the war to the old capital of Moldavia. The actresses Aglaia Pruteanu and Olimpia Bârsan, the actors State Dragomir, Victor Antonescu, Miron Popovici, and Vasile Brezeanu, as well as other maestros of the Roma- nian theatre made an unforgettable impression on the Bessarabian audience.18 Even though many of the Bessarabian spectators were not yet familiar with the modern literary language in which Vasile Alecsandri’s and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu’s plays had been written, the shows and the literary and artistic gather- ings, with the participation of the actors from Iaºi and with Mihail Sadovea- nu’s speech, deeply marked the Bessarabian consciousness, traumatized by the oppressive tsarist regime. Years later, when Pantelimon Halippa remembered those days, he wrote: “One may say that Bessarabia’s capital saw then a celebration that would never fade from our memory.”19 Apart from the laudatory appreciations, some newspapers also expressed rather reserved opinions. The author of the review published in the Cuvânt moldovenesc newspaper noted, among other things, that “the language in which Fântâna Blanduziei was written was too complicated for the Bessarabian specta- tor, while the play Rãzvan şi Vidra was more accessible.”20 Some communication problems between actors and spectators were noticed by the writer Dumitru Iov, who, in 1919, wrote that the plays Fântâna Blanduziei, Apus de soare (with Nottara), and Rãzvan şi Vidra, performed the previous year, “did not impress those Bessarabians who did not have historical knowledge.”21 Paradigms • 47

Towards the end of March 1918, a troupe of the Iaºi National Theatre went on a new tour in Bessarabia. On 20 March, they performed in Kishinev the musical comedy Baba Hârca by Matei Millo, and the comedy in one act Doi surzi (Two deaf men), while on 21 March they performed Cinel-Cinel and Florin ºi Florica (Florin and Florica) by Vasile Alecsandri. Then, the troupe continued their Bessarabian tour to Orhei, Soroca, and Bãlþi.22 The situation of theatrical performances in Kishinev and Bessarabia was contradictory. If for one important segment of the spectators there was a problem of communication and a lack of knowledge about the Romanian history, literature, and culture, the Bessarabian elites did not find great satisfaction in a repertoire composed of “easy or obsolete plays,”23 as an art reporter qualified them. Condemning such a way of treating the audience, the renowned Romanian actor, Ion Manolescu, argued: “It is wrong to believe that the people from Bessara- bia, Bukovina, or Transylvania know nothing about theatre, and that we have to start with Alecsandri’s vaudevilles, which were fairly successful, but at their time.”24 Indeed, in 1908–1910 and even earlier, the audience in Bessarabia had had the opportunity to see shows based on Vasile Alecsandri’s plays, performed by amateur artists led by Gheorghe Madan, an actor at the Bucharest National Theatre, and by troupes of Romanian artists who later travelled to Bessarabia, and who had those plays in their repertoires.25 A superficial approach to the repertoire policy made some Bessarabians (and not only them) believe that Ro- mania “did not have a theatre repertoire, or valuable artists,”26 which was not at all true. The financial problems, which were undoubtedly present at a certain point, could not have been an impediment in the selection and to sending to Bessarabia of a troupe made up of the best artists, “with plays selected from the classical and modern Romanian repertoire.” The quote was taken from the correspondence published in the Sfatul Þãrii newspaper, which also underlined that “the taste for theatre is incredibly developed in Bessarabia, and the moral success will undoubtedly be the expected one.”27

The Tour of the Iaºi Symphony Orchestra: George Enescu in Kishinev

he Bessarabians’ skill and refined taste for musical culture was demonstrated on the occasion of the Iaºi Symphony Orchestra’s tour in T Kishinev, led by maestro George Enescu. Invited to the Bessarabian capital by the Transylvanian Onisifor Ghibu, the Moldovan George Enescu, through his concerts, had the mission of proving to the Bessarabians, “both 48 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Moldovan and Russian, that we [Romanians] have great arts and artists, too.”28 As such, at the end of March 1918 in Kishinev, which was famed as a musical city (having hosted a section of the Russian Imperial Music Society, a school of music, and two other musical programs), George Enescu, the great violinist, composer, and conductor, arrived on his first artistic tour in that part of the Ro- manian land. He came to Kishinev with a large group of musicians (the whole orchestra) “to make Bessarabia see that we have many good elements, not just one here and there.”29 The România Nouã gazette made the following presentation of George Enescu: “The unrivalled artist who will conduct three great concerts in Kishinev is one of the most outstanding glories the Romanian people has had so far, . . . he is so famous and loved on the other side of the Prut River, but completely unknown in Bessarabia.”30 Responsible for this was the oppressive tsarist regime. “For one hundred years the Prut River was such a mighty wall that it almost completely blocked the spiritual relations between the brothers of the same tongue. The Bessarabian Moldovans knew nothing of what was happening in the other Romanian territories; they did not know the great personalities of their people, they did not even know the ones who stood out from among them, like A. Donici, Al. Russo, B. P. Hasdeu, and others.”31 In the Great Hall of the Gentry Assembly in Kishinev, the symphony orchestra under the baton of maestro George Enescu performed three outstanding concerts. On 24 March 1918, George Enescu conducted the Iaºi Symphony Orches- tra, having Nicu Caravia as piano soloist. They interpreted Overture to Oberon by Weber, Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra by Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 7 by Beethoven, and a piece by Saint-Saëns. The second symphonic concert directed by maestro Enescu was held on Sunday, 25 March 1918, with Flor Breviman and Socrate Barozzi as soloists. They interpreted Carnival in Paris by Svendsen, Concerto in A Minor for Cello and Orchestra by Klughardt, Danse macabre by Saint-Saëns, and Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven. The public was awed by the performance of the orchestra and by the skill of the conductor. The third performance, the maestro’s solo concert on the tour, was held on 28 March 1918, one day after the enactment of the great act of the union of Bessarabia with Romania. Accompanied by the symphony orchestra directed by Jean Bobescu, maestro George Enescu played the violin and interpreted works from the repertoire of the great world composers. He also played Tchaikovsky’s and Saint-Saëns’ Concertos, and Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole. The România Nouã journalist enthusiastically reported that the public “was completely mesmerized.” At the end of the concert, the audience, gripped by “boundless fervor,” burst into applause and standing ovations, calling Enescu back on stage over and over again, and throwing count- less flowers at the feet of the “soul-conquering” maestro.32 Paradigms • 49

In an interview to the correspondent of the România Nouã newspaper, maestro Enescu confessed that in Kishinev he had found “a public full of enthusiasm and desirous of beautiful things, and that from their attitude a strong culture can be unfolded.”33 The maestro was pleasantly impressed by the “numerous participation of Russians to his concerts.”34 Asked to express his opinion about Russian music, Enescu mentioned that “the Russian musical school is good, better than the English one, and can be placed immediately after the French and the German ones. It is definitely more interesting than the Italian one.”35 The connection made with the Russian artistic/musical public in Kishinev offered the maestro the opportunity to recall his 1909 concerts in Petrograd and Moscow. During that tour, his first one in Russia, Enescu was strangely touched by the unexpected attitude of the Russian audience towards the Romanian rhapsodies. “These rhapsodies, unknown to the Russians, appeared to them as something disrespectful in the classical program illustrated by musical celebrities, while the same rhapsodies made a huge impression in Paris and Berlin.”36 Maestro Enescu appreciated that Bessarabia was “a jewel from all points of view,” he thought it was his duty to motivate his contemporaries “to assist with all their means in the awakening of the people to the cultural and artistic life, by doing to our Moldovan brothers all the good they’ve been deprived of for so long.”37 Maestro Enescu’s generosity was indeed endless. The proceeds of the concerts performed in Kishinev were donated to the Transylvanian refugees in Bessarabia, to the orphans of the Moldovan soldiers killed in the war, and to the Fãclia Cultural Enlightenment Society in Kishinev. During his almost week-long stay in Kishinev, the maestro had enough time to understand the artistic and musical realities of the city. Therefore, Enescu outlined a project of cultural construction for Bessarabia. He thought it was mandatory to establish a national conservatory in Kishinev, which, in his opinion, would be “of great artistic and national importance.” The local musical potential allowed for the accomplishment of that project. “The musical school here can grow into an outstanding music conservatory,” the maestro contended. In Kishinev, he found sufficient musical talent to set up a symphony orchestra. His project of cultural construction also foresaw the establishment in Kishinev of a university and of a Romanian arts museum.38 When he returned to Iaşi, maestro Enescu shared with the Teatrul de mâine newspaper his impressions on the Kishinev tour, as well as his plan of cultural construction for Bessarabia. He said: “I would like to create there [in Kishinev] not only a Music Society, but also a Conservatory and a permanent Opera, with a well-organized orchestra, but this requires a lot of funds. This, however, has to be done as soon as possible, because, apart from the formal union that was 50 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) enacted [Bessarabia’s union with Romania, voted by the Country Council on 27 March 1918], there is also a need for a spiritual union to show our Bessarabian brothers that here, in Romania, we have a well-defined culture.”39 Involved in the polemics on the Bessarabians’ level of cultural knowledge, which was un- folding at that moment in Iaºi and in other Romanian cultural centers, Enescu thought it would be appropriate to mention that “the Bessarabian audience has always known how to appreciate the symphonic concerts at their real value. The people there are mostly cultivated. That is why they are very demanding, and we sent them fiddlers, dancers, and operetta artists with Baba Hârca, which made our Bessarabian brothers think we are more old-fashioned than they are. Our concerts, therefore, have provided great contrast and were quite well-appre ciated.”40 In their turn, the Bessarabians highly valued Enescu’s presence in Kishinev. “Enescu’s presence in Bessarabia”—the România Nouã journalist wrote—“is of a defining cultural importance, magnified by the circumstances in which it occurred. Through the brilliance of his incomparable art, which language is too poor to describe, words too ordinary and timeworn, and the pen of the com- moner too helpless, he has done more for the awakening and strengthening of our people than years of insistent propaganda.”41

gainst the backdrop of the democratic movements in Russia after the revolution of February 1917, the process of political emancipation car- A ried out by the Bessarabian Romanians in 1917–1918 was supported by an ample movement of national revival and recovery of the ethnic identity. The cultural revival in the Bessarabian area was stimulated when Bessarabia (the Moldovan Democratic Republic) proclaimed, on 24 January 1918, its political independence following the vote in the Country Council, an event which opened new national and cultural horizons. In this new political context, the national cultural organizations, otherwise very modest, that existed in the area between the Prut and the Dniester rivers were supported by cultural institutions from Romania. The shows presented in Kishinev by the Iaºi National Theatre in the months of January and February 1918, as well as the concerts held before the Bessarabian audience by the Iaºi Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of maestro George Enescu in March 1918—on the same days when the Country Council voted for the declaration of unification of Bessarabia with Romania— represented a first occasion for the Bessarabian public to become familiar with the authentic Romanian cultural values from which they had been alienated during the century of tsarist occupation. q Paradigms • 51

Notes

1. România Nouã (Kishinev), no. 60, 31 March 1918, apud Onisifor Ghibu, Oameni între oameni: Amintiri (Bucharest, 1990), 370. 2. Sfatul Þãrii (Kishinev), no. 17, 23 January 1918. 3. Ion Negrei, “Proclamarea independenþei Republicii Democratice Moldoveneşti,” Cugetul: Revistã de istorie şi culturã (Kishinev) 3 (March 1998): 77–81. 4. Ştefan Ciobanu, Unirea Basarabiei: Studiu şi documente la mişcarea naþionalã din Ba- sarabia în anii 1917–1918 (Kishinev, 1993), 198. 5. Sfatul Þãrii, no. 19, 26 January 1918. 6. Ibid. 7. Ion Negrei, “Cronica zilei de 24 ianuarie 1918, la Chişinãu,” Destin românesc: Re- vistã de istorie şi culturã 4 (15), 3 (61) (2009): 12–26. 8. România Nouã, no. 9, 27 January 1918, apud Onisifor Ghibu, Pe baricadele vieþii: În Basarabia revoluþionarã (1917–1918): Amintiri (Kishinev, 1992), 519–520. 9. România (Iaşi), no. 330, 31 January 1918, apud Ghibu, Oameni între oameni, 161–162. 10. Cuvânt moldovenesc (Kishinev), no. 11 (326), 31 January 1918. 11. Ibid. 12. Viaþa Basarabiei (Kishinev) 4 (1942): 1–6. 13. România Nouã, no. 10, 30 January 1918. 14. Ibid., no. 11, 1 February 1918, apud Ghibu, Pe baricadele vieþii, 523–524. 15. Ghibu, Oameni între oameni, 162. 16. Sfatul Þãrii, no. 33, 13 February 1918. 17. România Nouã, no. 23, 16 February 1918. 18. Leonid Cemortan, Teatrul Naþional din Chişinãu (1920–1935): Schiþã istoricã (Kishi- nev, 2000), 12. 19. Viaþa Basarabiei 4 (1942): 1–6. 20. Cuvânt moldovenesc, 31 January 1918, apud Cemortan, 275. 21. Rampa, 19 July 1919, apud Cemortan, 275. 22. România Nouã, no. 58, 29 March 1918. 23. Sfatul Þãrii, 19 October 1919. 24. Rampa, 27 January 1919, apud Cemortan, 275. 25. Teodor Burada, Istoria teatrului în Moldova (Bucharest, 1975), 842; Aurelian Dãnilã, Opera din Chişinãu: Privire retrospectivã (Kishinev, 2005), 10. 26. Sfatul Þãrii, 19 October 1919. 27. Ibid. 28. dãnilã, 14. 29. Ibid. 30. România Nouã, no. 52, 23 March 1918. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., no. 59, 30 March 1918. 33. Ion Mateiu, Renaşterea Basarabiei: Pagini din lupta pentru unitatea naþionalã (Bucha- rest, 1921), 103. 34. Ibid., 104. 52 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 105. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 104–105. 39. Teatrul de mâine, 18 April 1918, apud Dãnilã, 16. 40. Ibid. 41. România Nouã, no. 59, 30 March 1918.

Abstract The Cultural Prelude to Bessarabia’s Union with Romania

In the context of the democratic movements in Russia after the revolution of February 1917, the process of political emancipation carried out by the Bessarabian Romanians in 1917–1918 was supported by an ample movement of national revival and recovery of the ethnic identity. The cultural revival in the Bessarabian area was stimulated when Bessarabia (the Moldovan Democratic Republic) proclaimed, on 24 January 1918, its political independence following the vote in the Country Council, an event which opened new national and cultural horizons. In this new political context, the national cultural organizations, otherwise very modest, that existed in the area between the Prut and the Dniester rivers were supported by cultural institutions from Romania. The shows presented in Kishinev by the Iaºi National Theatre in the months of January and Feb- ruary 1918, as well as the concerts held before the Bessarabian audience by the Iaºi Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of maestro George Enescu in March 1918—on the same days when the Country Council voted for the declaration of unification of Bessarabia with Romania—represented a first occasion for the Bessarabian public to become familiar with the authentic Romanian cultural values from which they had been alienated during the century of tsarist occupation.

Keywords Kishinev, Iaºi National Theatre, Mihail Sadoveanu, Iaºi Symphony Orchestra, George Enescu, 1918 The Union of Bessarabia with Romania in the Cultural Propaganda System of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist

V a l e n t i n B u r l a c u Republic (1960–1970)

The matter of Bessarabia, brought The Moldovan Soviet Socia back to Romania through the vote cast list Republic was transformed by the Country Council on 27 March 1918, was, together with the matter of into a real laboratory for the Romanian gold, the main subject the formulation and testing in the dispute with Moscow, which marked the Soviet-Romanian rela- of the most primitive theories tions for the entire interwar period. In and conceptions about the communist propaganda, the event the history of the “Moldovan translated into an accusation against the authorities in Bucharest, and be- people.” came a means of pressuring and black- mailing the same authorities, which were considered to be “aggressors,” “occupants,” “invaders.” That is why Soviet Russia thought that the loss of Bessarabia was only temporary, caused Valentin Burlacu by a moment of military weakness and Associate professor at the Faculty of His- an unfavorable international situation, tory and Geography, Ion Creangã State and that it would act to regain this ter- Pedagogical University, Kishinev. Author, ritory at a favorable moment by means among others, of the vol. ªtiinþa istoricã of force. Against this background, all în sistemul de propagandã din rssm (anii 1960–1980): Studiu monografic means would be used: military, propa- (The science of history in the propaganda gandistic, and diplomatic. Those tricks system of the mssr, 1960–1980): A mono- of the Bolshevik propaganda would graph) (2014). find their reflection in the ultimatum 54 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) of the Soviet government addressed to the Romanian government on 26 June 1940, which led to the re-annexation of Bessarabia by the Soviet Union. During the first two postwar decades, the communist leadership in Bucha- rest, actually incorporated in the Soviet bloc in political, military, economic, and ideological terms, and obedient to the Kremlin, did not contest Bessarabia’s annexation by the Soviet Union. The politruk Mihail Roller and other communist cultural activists like him became engaged in the process of rewriting Romania’s history, and appreciated the crucial events in Bessarabia’s tragic destiny as being favorable to Moscow. As such, the 1812 tsarist annexation was qualified as “liberation and joining,” the union of 27 March 1918 as “occupation by the bourgeois-landlord Romania,” while the Soviet re-annexation of 28 June 1940 was seen as “an equitable, peaceful solution to the Bessarabian problem.” Given the fact that, until the mid–1960s, the communist regime in Bucharest did not dispute Bessarabia’s inclusion, the Soviet propaganda and historiography did not approach the problems of 1918. Still, “the matter of Bessarabia” was a constant source of tension between Moscow and Bucharest, which remained unchanged during the interwar period and even after the instauration of the communist regime in Romania. Geopolitically, Bessarabia occupied a unique position among the other territories recently re-annexed by the Soviet Union. Mostly composed of territories that were taken from Romania in 1940, the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (mssr) was the only soviet republic that could still be targeted by foreign irredentism. The signing of the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, through which the pro-Soviet regime in Bucharest accepted the incorporation of Bessarabia in the eastern empire, could not bring peace to the new master. Not only did the problem of the Moldovans’ identity, culturally connected to a national state on the other side of their border, remain on the agenda, but the relations with Romania, despite its position as a socialist state after 1947, were also affected by the Bessarabian issue, a situation which replicated in the Soviet context an older confrontation between the Kingdom of Romania and the Russian Empire.1 The “Bessarabian issue” and, implicitly, the significance of and interest for the year 1918 became topical again because of the evolution of the international situation and of the increasing interest of Western scholars in those matters which were generally favorable to the approach and message promoted by the Bucharest authorities.2 The increasingly trenchant approaches to the “Bessara- bian matter” by the Romanian leaders and, upon their recommendations, by the Romanian historians, were classified by the Soviets as “territorial claims.” As the Dutch historian Wim P. van Meurs well noted, “the return to the Bessara- bian matter in the writing of history in 1964 coincided with the formulation of Paradigms • 55 implicit political claims over this lost territory, as part of the escalation of the Soviet-Romanian conflict” and reflected “the general nationalistic tendency in the writing of the Romanian history.”3 The “declaration of independence” of the Bucharest authorities in April 1964, the promotion of an autonomous path in domestic and foreign policy, as well as the few published works of the Marxist-Leninist classicists, among which Marx despre români (Marx on the Romanians), had an irreversible impact not only on the rewriting of history in Romania, but also on the Soviet-Romanian relations generally. In this context,

the Soviet-Romanian dispute, together with other sensitive problems, would be dominated, especially in the 1960s and the 1970s, by the Bessarabian issue, which triggered a true competition. The simple fact that the “territorial problem” had appeared on the agenda of the Soviet-Romanian bilateral relations was already a sign of the unacceptance by the Bucharest authorities of the vassal status imposed to Romania by the ussr after 1944; the approach to this matter from the perspective of the historical truth, in opposition with the point of view adopted by the Kremlin, had, against the general background of those relations, the effect of an explosion, demolishing the framework of the previous “brotherhood.”4

Until the middle of 1965, Moscow preferred not to aggravate the relations with Romania and initially did not counteract the so-called “slanderous” actions of the Romanian politicians and historians. What the Soviet authorities seemed to fear the most were local nationalism and the writings of the Romanian exiles from the West.5 Given the fact that for the Soviet propaganda there was an intensification of the activity of the so-called “bourgeois falsifiers” of the history and culture of the “Moldovan people,” there was a need to strengthen their separate existence, to justify the two “liberations,” and to counteract the “local nationalism” which impinged upon the “centuries-old friendship” with the great Russian people. For almost two decades (1964–1980), the anti-Romanian propaganda and ideological campaigns, initiated by the Central Committee (cc) of the Commu- nist Party of the Soviet Union (cpsu), were orchestrated in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic by the cc of the Communist Party of Moldova (cpm), led by first secretary Ivan Ivanovich Bodiul. As second secretary (1959–1961) and then first secretary of the cc of the cpm, he promoted an ample campaign meant to distort the scientific truth about the Romanian language and the national history.6 During the so-called “blessed decade,” which coincided with the peak period of the tensions in the Soviet-Romanian relations, the Moldovan Soviet Social- ist Republic was transformed not only into a polygon for the most disastrous 56 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) economic experiments, but also into a real laboratory for the formulation and testing of the most primitive theories and conceptions about the history of the “Moldovan people.” Bodiul’s historiographic interventions, which became mandatory once the “historiographic war” between the two sides broke out, were a replica of the political actions of the leaders of the Romanian Communist Party (rcp) and of the “revisionist” historical publications released in Romania. I. Bodiul’s interference in historical science intensified as the Soviet-Romanian dissensions amplified and deepened on various matters, especially on the issue of Bessarabia. One may actually see a direct connection between the status of the Soviet-Romanian relations and the content of the historiographic discourse of the Moldovan leader. Therefore, as of 1965, the speeches of the party’s first secretary on various ideological, political, and educational matters, delivered during consultations, plenary meetings, conferences, congresses of the Communist Party, always contained a synthesis of the territory’s and republic’s history from the ancient times to the present.7 That “short compendium-like history of Moldova” focused mostly on the following main coordinates: the centuries-long friendship; the premises and the progressive act of Bessarabia “joining” Russia; the triumph of the Soviet power; the dastardly invasion of Bessarabia by the “bourgeois- landlord” Romania, and the establishment of an occupation regime; the ceaseless fight of the Moldovan people for their union with their mother country, namely, the Soviet Union; the equitable settlement of the Bessarabian issue and the reunification of the Moldovan people in a Soviet socialist state; the selfless help granted by the Russian people to the Moldovan one “during all historical eras”; the tremendous economic and cultural development of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic in the years of socialist construction. Conclusive in that context is the report presented during a large-scale repub- lican consultation of party activists, held on 22–23 December 1965, summoned as part of the campaigns meant to blame the “local nationalists” and the “incendi- ary” speeches delivered during the Moldovan writers’ congress that had recently ended, and where I. Bodiul manifestly and officially expressed his interest in the republic’s history, which, up until that moment, had only been accidentally and briefly mentioned in his speeches.8 In the report presented before the audience, he succinctly presented the history of the territory “since time immemorial,” stating the “founding myths” of Soviet propaganda and historiography.9 Bodiul admitted that “also, our science has not properly studied the period of Bessarabia’s occupation through violence. Under the pretext of ‘not stirring up the past,’ scientists don’t usually examine in depth the economic, social and cultural status quo of the people under the invader’s occupation; their heroic fight to unite with the motherland—the Soviet Union” (it is worth remarking that, Paradigms • 57 at that moment, there was no mention as to who the ‘invaders’ were). Conse- quently, one may notice that “the deficiencies of historical science, as well as the errors in the political activity among workers are being used by our ideological enemies, who are doing their best to distort Bessarabia’s past.”10 The disputes between Romanians and Soviets on the “Bessarabian issue” increased in the following years.11 In this context, the year 1967 represented one of the most eloquent examples of the impact of the relations between the two countries, which reached their lowest point in the cultural and propagandistic historiography and policy of the mssr. For the ussr, 1967 was marked by the preparations for the celebration of the 50-year jubilee of the Bolshevik revolution, while for the republic’s leaders this was an ordinary occasion to “convince” their own people and the international public opinion of the so-called grandiose “accomplishments” obtained during the years of Soviet rule. On 13 February 1967 already, during the ordinary plenary session of the cc of cpm, I. Bodiul presented the report “On the Preparations for the Semi- centenary of the Great October Social Revolution and on the Duties of the Re- public’s Party Organization,” which, beyond its mobilizing spirit, also contained a party interpretation of the role of this “momentous” event in the destinies of the “Moldovan people,” featured in an ample section at the very beginning of the report, suggestively entitled: “Some Remarks on the Revolutionary Move- ment in Moldova, the Workers’ Fight for the Soviet Power and for the Defense of its Achievements.” It is worth mentioning that, for the first time in the disputes of 1965–1967, the public speeches delivered by I. Bodiul and other party dignitaries made clear reference to the Kingdom of Romania allegedly “occupying” Bessarabia in 1918. The Moldovan leader was worried that “now, in the West, new attempts have been made to deny the separation of Bessarabia from the Soviet Russia; there seems to be a tendency to prove that this territory was not occupied, but rather annexed to bourgeois-landlord Romania, supposedly according to the people’s will.”12 Shortly after, taking the floor during the annual assembly of the Social Sci- ences Department of the Academy of Sciences of the mssr on 9 March 1967, the first secretary of the cc of the cpm outlined the fact that the “hardships” and the “delays” in the research carried out in the field of social sciences in the mssr were determined by the “special relations that started being established among the Soviet countries.”13 “Our scientists,” I. Bodiul explained, “counted on normal rapports between the Soviet Union and Romania. That is why little attention was given to some problems of the past, which are of great importance to clarify our state’s relations with Romania . . .” Then he mentioned: “We did not clarify political events. . . . And this actually worked against us . . . In the given situation 58 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) we found ourselves unprepared. We do not have a series of extremely important scientific works, based on which we could have carried out propaganda on the international arena, too . . . All around the world, allegations about Bessarabia have reached unprecedented levels. When these allegations started, we were not well prepared to carry out the counterpropaganda.”14 In this context and in order to challenge the legality of Bessarabia’s union with Romania, “the myth of the Soviet Power’s triumph” and that of “the formation of the Moldovan bourgeois nation” were devised ad hoc. Firstly, for the communist propaganda, and implicitly for the Soviet historiography, it was of utmost importance that the illegality of the Act of Union of 27 March 1918 be “demonstrated.” Copying the jargon and clichés of Bolshevik diplomacy, the Soviet historiography would claim Bessarabia because, at the moment of its “theft” by the bourgeois-landlord Romania, it was a Soviet territory where the socialist revolution had triumphed; the Country Council was a counterrevolutionary, unrepresentative body, and was not authorized to decide the fate of the population on that territory; the “occupants” set up a “colonial,” “bloody” regime; as a consequence, the people rose against the “invaders” to set this territory free and to reunite it with the Land of the Soviets. The value of the political and propagandistic idea that Bessarabia belonged to tsarist Russia and then to Soviet Russia, before “the instauration of the Soviet Power,” was obvious. It reinforced the alleged legitimacy of the Soviet regime as acceptable from the ideological point of view and was also a reference to the 1812 tsarist annexation as a liberation from the Turkish yoke. With a view to legitimize the preservation of Bessarabia, first in Soviet Russia and then in the ussr, “the myth of the Great October Socialist Revolution” was transposed in the territory as the “triumph of the socialist revolution and of the socialist power in Moldova.” The “October Revolution” represented, according to I. Bodiul, an epochal event, which crowned the “positive” consequences of Moldova’s annexation by Russia; this event led to the social and national emancipation of the “Moldovan people.” Always united throughout history by the “centuries-long friendship” with the great Russian people, the Moldovan people now had its path open towards a bright future, the communism it sought to achieve alongside the other peoples of the multinational Motherland.15 The Moldovan nationalists became the target of attacks in all the historiographic speeches made by Bodiul. They were called and labelled “traitors” and “mortal enemies of the Moldovan people.” They were responsible for all evil, for national hatred, for the tendency to maintain the old regime, etc. At a certain point, the fight against nationalists was considered one of the fundamental traits of the revolutionary movement in the territory at that time. As such, in his opinion: Paradigms • 59

one of the particularities of the revolutionary movement in Bessarabia in the period between the February Revolution and the Great October Revolution was the active fight of laborers against the Moldovan bourgeois nationalists, who were doing everything in their power to maintain and strengthen the bourgeois-landlord order, therefore setting the Moldovan people against their fraternal people in revolutionary Russia. With a view to their class-related purposes, the bourgeois nationalists created the Country Council, a counterrevolutionary organization . . . In those days, the powerful people’s movement for social freedoms swept away the bourgeois nationalists. Their attempts to hinder by any means the victory of the socialist revolution in our land proved to be in vain.16

Their purpose was to discredit the Country Council and to prove that the people opposed the act of 27 March 1918. However, when the leader in Kishinev got involved in the dispute on historical matters with his bourgeois “opponents” and the Romanian authorities and historians, although there was “proof” that the Bolshevik revolution had scored victories on that territory, the Soviet Moldovan historiography had not formulated a unanimous opinion on the date when the Soviet Power had been established.17 Consequently, an extremely important topic in I. Bodiul’s speeches, which emerged in the context of the Soviet-Romanian dissensions on the “Bessarabian issue,” was not only that of “the triumph and establishment of the Soviet Power in Moldova,” but also of the date when this event had taken place. Beyond this purely “scientific” aspect, which had no value in terms of historical truth, establishing the chronological limits of that event had, first of all, a political and ideological connotation in the case of the mssr. The communist propaganda was also partly interested in the scenario according to which “Bessara- bia’s conquest” by the Kingdom of Romania had been a first act of external “aggression” against a territory of Soviet Russia, where the power of “workers and peasants” had already been set up. This could also justify the “liberation” of 1940 as “a triumph of historical truth” and as “restoration of justice.” Further- more, “the Moldovan people” was offered a Soviet holiday, which was meant to place them alongside the other peoples of the Soviet Union—firstly, alongside the Russian people—who had carried out the Great October Revolution.18 The historians’ debates on the date when the “Soviet Power triumphed” in Moldova lasted for more than a decade, with no results. The event was first mentioned in a party document which had quite an impact of the Soviet-Romanian relations, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. The Decision of the cc of the cpm “On the Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Soviet Power in Moldova,” adopted at the beginning of December 1967, although there was no historical document allowing for this conclusion, explic- 60 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) itly stated: “On 14 January 1918 (1 January according to the old calendar), the entire state power on the territory of Moldova passed over to the Soviets. The counterrevolutionary forces were crushed and immobilized. This date entered in the history of the Moldovan people as the day of the victory of the socialist revolution in the territory, a revolution that ended slavery, oppression, cruel exploitation, ignorance, the absence of rights, and which made way for the creation of a new life.” Consequently, the cc of the cpm decided: “to mark, on 14 January 1968, the 50-year jubilee of the establishment of the Soviet Power in Moldova as one of the most important historical events in the life of the Moldo- van people.”19 The communist project of “celebrating” the triumph of the Soviet Power in the territory, as well as the propaganda campaign accompanying it, were included in the denationalization strategy aimed at the Romanians living east of the Prut River. The date finally became official on 14 January 1968, when a solemn gathering of all representatives of the republic took place in Kishinev. The event was part of the series of measures dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Bolshevik revolution in Moldova and to the “triumphal march of the Soviet Power,” also intended to counteract the measures carried out by the leaders in Bucharest. In his introductory speech, I. Bodiul strongly stated that the socialist revolution had allegedly triumphed in a fierce battle against the counterrevolution and against the Moldovan nationalists, who had sought to remain in power, mentioning that: “Using the revolutionary situation created in Russia, sweep- ing away the bourgeois nationalists and other reactionaries from their path, the workers and peasants of Moldova, allied with the revolutionary soldiers, under the leadership of the Bolshevik, established the Soviet Power on the entire territory on 14 January 1918. Today, the happy Moldovan people cheerfully and solemnly marks the 50-year jubilee of this date, which has entered in history as the day when the socialist revolution triumphed in Moldova.”20 The need for a propagandistic motivation of the allegation that the Kingdom of Romania had occupied Bessarabia also came from the fact that, referring to the events of 1917–1918, when talking about the territory located between the Prut and the Dniester rivers, I. Bodiul exclusively used the toponym “Moldova,” which, in his mind, should have meant that the inhabitants of that territory were Moldovans and were different from the Romanian people. However, it is well known that even the concept of “Moldovan people” as a separate nation, distinct from the Romanian one, was merely a tsarist invention.

fter Bessarabia’s union with Romania in 1918—an act that was never recognized by Soviet Russia—and the setting up of the Moldovan Au- A tonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (massr) (an autonomous republic Paradigms • 61 of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1924 on the left shore of the Dniester River, the Bolshevik regime started reusing the tsarist arguments about the existence of a “Moldovan nation.” I. Bodiul would later take up some elements from the Comintern, Stalinist arsenal and “develop” these outdated arguments, sometimes by simply restating or rewriting them. Although “chronologically, in the massr, the formulation of the concept of ‘Moldovan nation’ was initiated in March 1967, roughly one year and a half after the 3rd Congress of the Writers’ Association in October 1965, where the Moldovans’ Russification policies were contested and the necessity to return to the Latin alphabet was debated, and almost two years after the 1965 campaign against Romania, the West and China,21 the first secretary in Kishinev ventured to approach the matter as early as at the middle of March 1966. On 18 March 1966, in the secret informative note—one of the many such documents regu- larly sent to Moscow—addressed by the cc of the cpm to the cc of the cpsu, he reported that “the press and the bourgeois radio propaganda are increasingly de- nying the legality of the existence of the Moldovan ssr, of the Moldovan nature and culture, stating that the territory between the Prut and the Dniester rivers is part of the Romanian state, that the Soviets allegedly relocate the indigenous population to the eastern regions and populate Bessarabia with Russians, and other anti-Soviet nationalistic fabrications.”22 Similarly, on 1 July 1966, for the very first time there were direct mentions about the tendencies to revise and falsify the most important theses on the historical past and present of the Moldovan people by the party and community organizations in Romania; categorical statements according to which all Mol- dovans were Romanians were published, to which some protested and stated the opposite:

It is well known that as a result of Bessarabia’s annexation by Russia and of the development of capitalist relations, the Moldovan nation started being formed in the territory, a process that was initiated here long before that on the Romanian territory, where it started only 47 years ago. By virtue of these facts, the Moldovan nation and the Romanian one were developing separately, on distinct territories, under different conditions. The Moldovan nation was formed under Russia’s influence, while Roma- nia developed under the influence of Western countries, mostly of France. Based on those two directions of national development, profound differences appeared between the traditions, culture, languages and aspirations of these two peoples.

Even more so, as the next part shows, “even the formation of the Moldovan socialist nation was concluded long before the start of the formation of the Ro- manian socialist nation.”23 62 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

At the same time, on 10 December 1966, after having informed the cc of the cpsu on the measures undertaken for the implementation of the Decision of the cc of the cpsu on the research and ideological use of the historical past of the Moldovan people, of its centuries-old relations with the great Russian people, he was forced, however, to admit that: “For the scholars in the republic, this is an immense and difficult aspect. In order to carry out this task, it is necessary to give assistance in the study and formulation of scientific conceptions on the birth and formation of the Moldovan people, the historical factors that influenced their development and the closeness to the great Russian people.”24 In a different context, in his attempt to fundament the concept of the existence of the two eastern Latin nations and to separate the Bessarabian Roma- nians from the rest of the Romanian nation, I. Bodiul tried to make a distinction not only between “Wallachians” and “Moldavians,” but also between the Moldovans who had been split into two after 1812. Taking up the historical and ethnical argument introduced by the pan-Slavists about the Moldovan people in order to justify the creation of the “Moldovan nation,” he underlined and tended to emphasize the alleged differences which had supposedly appeared with the Bessarabian Moldovans during their century of union with Russia: “By 1812, the vassal Moldovan state already had a long history. The borders established in 1812 divided Moldova in two parts; after that, they went on their separate ways. Bessarabia developed within Russia and, 100 years after, by the time the Great Socialist October Revolution took place, the other part of Moldova had distanced itself so much that no comparison could have been made any longer as to their level of social development, except for the similarities in terms of language, customs and original folk traditions.”25 According to I. Bodiul, the Moldovan-Romanian separation took place in the 19th century, when, after 1812, a part of the “Moldovan people” developed under different, beneficial conditions and, as a consequence, the process of setting up the “Moldovan bourgeois nation” was concluded at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The specific characteristics of the “Moldo- van nation” would become stronger in the second half of the 19th century, when, following the union of the Principalities, a part of the “Moldovan people” would be integrated in the modern Romanian state, and the Bessarabian “Moldovans” no longer shared the historical and cultural experiences of the united Romanian nation. Under those circumstances, I. Bodiul contended that the “Moldovan people, who had never been part of Romania for more than one hundred years, developed within the Russian state under the influence of the pan-Russian economy, culture and progressive social-political thinking.”26 Consequently, according to this logic, the political and geographical border between the two nations was set on the Prut River. Consequently, one should conclude that Romania Paradigms • 63 had no historical right over Bessarabia, as Romania became a state only in 1859, when Bessarabia had already been a part of Russia for 47 years. Along these very coordinates, which are contrary to the historical truth, as cultural and linguistic specificities are elevated to the rank of defining national characteristics, the fundamental “features” and characteristics of the “Moldovan bourgeois nation” were established and defined. As such, following the territorial separation from the Principality of Moldavia in 1812 and after the formation of the modern Romanian state in 1859, Bessarabia remained the only successor of its statehood, while the population on this territory remained the successor of the Moldovan people-ethnos, thus determining the territory and the ethnic basis for the future “nation.” After the delineation of the territory and of the ethnic basis of the future “nation,” Bodiul continued by enumerating the “positive consequences” that followed, which were indispensable to the formation of a nation, such as the demographic increase, the accelerated social-economic development, the influence of the advanced Russian culture, the integration into the Russian revolutionary movement, and the formation of class awareness, etc., which had to prove not only the “progressive” importance of Bessarabia’s annexation by Russia, but, at the same time, the favorable premises that allowed the Moldovans to organize themselves into a distinct “bourgeois nation.” As such, according to Bodiul’s allegations, the Moldovan nation had already been formed by the time Bessara- bia was annexed by Romania; consequently, Bessarabia was taken away, and the union took place against its people’s will. Those ideas also underpinned the thesis about “the ceaseless battle of the Moldovan people to protect the achievements of the Socialist Revolution and to fight their occupants throughout the entire Romanian domination.” In devising those premises, I. Bodiul departed from the Marxist-Leninist theory, which examined the formation of the bourgeois nation from the point of view of the causal relation with the rise of capitalism. He identified the time and the territory for the formation of this nation, alongside its distinctive characteristics. Once the nation was seen as the outcome of rising capitalism, according to his point of view, “the Moldovan bourgeois nation” was formed after Bessarabia’s “annexation” by Russia, in 1812, in the context of the emergence and accelerated development of capitalist relations, based only on the “Moldo- van people” from Bessarabia. As such, “following the development of capitalism in Bessarabia, a stable community of Moldovan people started to form, and towards the beginning of the 20th century the Moldovan bourgeois nation was set up inside the multinational Russian Empire.”27 A different approach and interpretation in Bodiul’s speeches refer to the events related to Bessarabia’s union with Romania on 27 March 1918. For the 64 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) communist propaganda, Bessarabia’s union with Romania was undoubtedly a conspiracy of jointly coordinated, internal and external “reactionary and aggres- sive” actions. Under those circumstances, in describing the grandiose act carried out by the Bessarabian Romanians, the harshest terms were used, such as “theft,” “occupation,” “rupture,” etc. The speeches referring to this matter were structured taking into account the following coordinates: who had carried it out (the Entente, the Moldovan nationalists, the Kingdom of Romania, or all those forces together); from whom it was stolen (from Soviet Russia, as a Soviet territory where the socialist revolution had triumphed); what had been the attitude of the population, and, first of all, of the Moldovans (obviously “hostile,” characterized by multiple actions and ample movements against the occupants, who had annihilated their revolutionary achievements). In his reports, I. Bodiul never missed the chance of overtly manifesting—in the harshest and most negative terms—his anti-Romanian attitude. In the report presented during the previously mentioned ordinary Plenary meeting of the cc of the cpm, on 13 February 1967, he stated: “The fault for the fact that, after the triumph of the Great October Revolution, only a part of the Moldovan people started making socialist changes in their economy and culture belongs to the foreign invaders who occupied Bessarabia. At the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918, the Moldovan land was the first victim of the military intervention in the Land of the Soviets. The Kingdom of Romania, supported by the Western imperialist states, helped by the leaders of the counterrevolutionary organization known as the Country Council, started occupying Bessarabia.”28 In another article where this topic was discussed, I. Bodiul made the following remarks:

However, the allied counterrevolutionary forces, taking advantage of the difficulties facing the young Soviet Republic and having secured the support of the international reactionary elements, waged a fierce battle against the revolutionary working class, and disrupted the peasants’ movement. Unable to prevent the triumph of the socialist revolution in the territory through their own forces, the leaders of the Country Council started seeking external support and found it in the Romanian boyars who were simply waiting for the right moment to take over and expand their possessions towards the east . . . The imperialist seizure of Bessarabia at the beginning of 1918 marked the start of the international reactionary march against the first workers’ and peasants’ state in the world. Through deceit and brutal force, Bessarabia was annexed by the bourgeois-landlord Romania.29

As such, in what the high party dignitary said one can identify several political and propagandistic objectives. Firstly, with the purpose of proving the “illegal- Paradigms • 65 ity” of the act of 27 March 1918 and of dramatizing the situation even more, he used invented “arguments” according to which Bessarabia supposedly suffered the “first act of violence” from the outside and was the “first victim” torn off by world imperialism from the young republic of soviets, therefore emphasizing once more that this territory belonged to Soviet Russia. Secondly, he argued that “the theft of Bessarabia” was a concerted action of the domestic and foreign counterrevolution and was based on the actions of the Moldovan bourgeois nationalists, of other local reactionary elements, and on the intervention of the Romanian army, which supposedly benefitted from the support and collaboration of the Entente imperialists. Furthermore, he also doubted and contested the authority of the Country Council, the only representative political body demo- cratically elected and recognized by all the social and political organizations in the territory, therefore expressing the will of the majority of the Bessarabian society. This body was described as negatively as possible, as “illegal,” “unrepresentative,” “reactionary,” “bourgeois-nationalist,” and, consequently, not authorized to vote on Bessarabia’s union with Romania. Such aberrant nonsense invented by the Soviet propaganda, as well as other statements of this kind, would characterize the first secretary’s entire historiographic discourse on Romanian Bessarabia. Consequently, the absolute majority of Moldovan historians, serving the communist regime, would be made part of the implementation of the official policy in the field of history. Most of the tendencies manifest in the evolution of the Soviet Moldovan historiography in the 1970s and 1980s can be traced back to Ivan Bodiul’s so-called “programmatic” historiographic sketches, reports, and speeches. Under those circumstances, the “favorable” treatment of the “Bessarabian issue,” as a reflection of the Soviet-Romanian dissensions, became one of the main functions of the official historiography.

n conclusion, as a result of the recurrence of the “Bessarabian issue” on the bilateral relations agenda, the political and ideological activity in the Mol- I dovan Soviet Socialist Republic intensified. It was strongly supported by a new historiographic approach involving the rewriting and falsification of the entire history of the “Moldovan people.” Never before had historical science been used so much to serve the official interests in combatting the Romanian identity, in educating the population of the republic in the spirit of Soviet patriotism and proletarian internationalism, of the friendship between the peoples of the ussr. q 66 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Notes

1. See Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture (Studies of Nationalities) (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1999); Romanian translation: Moldovenii, România, Rusia şi politica culturalã (Kishinev: Arc, 2002), 96. 2. Valentin Burlacu, “Impactul relaþiilor sovieto-române asupra politicii culturale din rss Moldoveneascã,” in Tratatul de Pace de la Bucureşti din 1812: 200 de ani de la anexarea Basarabiei de cãtre Imperiul Rus: Materialele conferinþei internaþionale, Chiºinãu, 26–28 aprilie 2012, ed. S. Musteaþã (Chişinãu: Pontos, 2012), 296. 3. Wim P. van Meurs, The Bessarabian Question in Communist Historiography: Nationalist and Communist Politics and History-Writing, East European Monographs (Boulder, co: Columbia University Press, 1994); Romanian translation: Chestiunea Basarabiei în istoriografia comunistã (Kishinev: Arc, 1996), 237–238. 4. Gheorghe E. Cojocaru, “Dezgheþul” lui N. Hruşciov şi problema Basarabiei (Târgovişte: Cetatea de Scaun, 2014), 252. 5. Meurs, Romanian translation, 280. 6. Vasile Bahnaru and Gheorghe E. Cojocaru, Partidul şi oamenii de litere şi arte din rss Moldoveneascã (1961–1963): Studiu şi documente (Kishinev: Tipografia Bons Offices, 2013), 41. 7. Burlacu, 298–301. 8. I. I. Bodiul, “Starea educãrii marxist-leniniste a oamenilor muncii din republicã şi mãsurile pentru îmbunãtãþirea ei,” Moldova Socialistã (Kishinev), 5 January 1966; Cultura (Kishinev), 8 January 1966. 9. Elena Negru, “Congresul III al Uniunii Scriitorilor din rssm şi campania autoritãþilor împotriva intelectualilor,” Destin românesc: Revistã de istorie ºi culturã (Kishinev), n.s., 6 (17), 3 (73)(2011): 54. 10. Moldova Socialistã, 5 January 1966; Cultura, 8 January 1966. 11. King, Romanian translation, 107; Katherine Verdery, National Ideology Under Social- ism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauºescu’s Romania (Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); Romanian translation: Compromis şi rezistenþã: Cultura românã sub Ceauşescu (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1994), 98. 12. Moldova Socialistã, 16 February 1967; Cultura, 18 February 1967. 13. Ioan Popa and Luiza Popa, Românii, Basarabia şi Transnistria (Bucharest: Fundaþia Europeanã Titulescu, 2009), 206–207. 14. Gheorghe Negru, “Crearea conceptului ‘naþiunii burgheze’ şi ‘socialiste moldoveneşti’ în istoriografia sovieticã,” Revista de istorie a Moldovei (Kishinev) 1–2 (1998): 73. 15. Comunistul Moldovei (Kishinev) 11 (1965): 10; Moldova Socialistã 23, 24 November 1965. 16. Moldova Socialistã, 16 February 1967; Cultura, 18 February 1967. 17. For more details, see Ia. S. Grosul and N. A. Mokhov, Istoricheskaya nauka Mol- davskoi ssr (Moscow: Nauka, 1970), 78–86; A. S. Esaulenko and M. M. Ghitsiu, “Pobeda sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii v Moldavii v sovetskoi istoricheskoi nauki,” in Istoricheskaya nauka Sovetskoi Moldavii, ed. V. I. Tsaranov (Kishinev: Ştiinþa, 1984), 39–50. Paradigms • 67

18. Burlacu, 301. 19. Moldova Socialistã, 3 December 1967. 20. Moldova Socialistã, 16 January 1967; Burlacu, 301. 21. Gheorghe Negru, “Campania împotriva României şi naþionalismului românesc din rssm în anii ’60–’80 ai sec. al XX-lea,” Destin românesc: Revistã de istorie ºi culturã, n.s., 5 (16), 1 (65) (2010): 136. 22. Elena Negru and Gheorghe Negru, “Cursul deosebit” al României şi supãrarea Moscov- ei: Disputa sovieto-românã şi campaniile propagandistice antiromâneşti din rssm (1965– 1989): Studiu şi documente, vol. 1 (1965–1975) (Kishinev: cep usm, 2013), 121. 23. Ibid, Doc. 21, p. 141. 24. Ibid, Doc. 26, p. 153. 25. I. I. Bodiul, “Prisoiedinenie Bessarabii k Rossii i istoricheskie sudiby moldavskogo naroda,” Voprosy istorii 8 (1972): 4–5. 26. Ibid, 7. 27. Ibid, 5. 28. Moldova Socialistã, 16 February 1967; Cultura, 18 February 1967. 29. Bodiul, “Prisoiedinenie,” 6.

Abstract The Union of Bessarabia with Romania in the Cultural Propaganda System of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (1960–1970)

The article is dedicated to the ideological myths created by the new regime set up after 1940–1944 in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (mssr), meant to justify the domination over the tsarist and then Soviet territory between the Prut and the Dniester rivers. The communist propaganda was concerned with outlining a scenario under which “Bessarabia’s invasion” by the Kingdom of Romania had allegedly been a first act of foreign “aggression” against a territory of Soviet Russia, where the power of the “workers and peasants” had already taken hold. Therefore, the “liberation” of 1940 was a “triumph of historical truth” and “a restoration of righteousness.” Also, the “Mol- dovan people” were offered a celebration of Soviet origin designed to integrate them alongside the other peoples of the Soviet Union, and first and foremost alongside the Russian people, the artisans of the “Great October.”

Keywords ideology, revolution, historiography, occupation, regime, the Bessarabian problem, falsification transsilvanica

Historical-Economic Aspects Pertaining to the Bishopric of Transylvania As Reflected in the Pontifical Tithe R o b e r t -M a r i u s M i h a l a c h e Register (1332–1337)

The matter of pontifical tithes is The data presented here hardly a novel one, as over the past de- demonstrate that the system cade our historiography has seen the publication of various texts dealing of papal tithes also led to with this typically ecclesiastical type of the institutional territo contribution, but only in a tangential manner. This register has been ana- rialization of the parishes lyzed in the context of certain anthro- located on the eastern fringes ponymic analyses or in an attempt to outline the geographic limits of the of Societas Christiana, more Latin Church in medieval Transyl- precisely, in Transylvania. vania.1 The economic dimension has been disregarded in these analyses, which focused on the tithe register covering six years (1332–1337) drawn up by the envoys of Pope John XXII, the tax collectors Jacobus Berengarii and Raimundus de Bonofato.2 Consequently, the present article provides a historical-economic analysis

Robert-Marius Mihalache Also published in Romanian in Anuarul Researcher at the Center for Transylvanian Institutului de Istorie “George Bariþiu” din Studies, Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca. Cluj-Napoca 54 (2015): 37–50. Transsilvanica • 69 of the tithe register drawn up by the aforementioned papal tax collectors, for at least two reasons: firstly, it has never been analyzed in order to determine the main rationale behind the register, which was economic in nature; secondly, because this register is structurally more complex than the other registers drawn up by the tax collectors active in the Kingdom of Hungary prior to 1331.3 We provide an inventory of parishes4 and an estimate of the overall financial situation at the level of their archdeaconry, in order to see what were, throughout the whole of Transylvania, the tithes paid by the clergymen of the Bishopric of Transylvania to the Apostolic Chamber of Avignon, between 1332 and 1337. In what concerns the general context, it should be said that generally such registers were not drawn up only in the Kingdom of Hungary, but also in Po- land,5 Bohemia, Aragon, France, etc., that is, in the European kingdoms of the Societas Christiana.6 The papal tithe registers could be deemed as belonging to the “historical-economic heritage,” because they were drawn up for fiscal purposes by the Holy See, hosted throughout the 14th century by the city of Avignon, or indeed by its Apostolic Chamber, a fundamental component of the pontifical executive apparatus, defined as a “government” by historian Paolo Prodi,7 in order to keep a precise record of the tithes8 collected the kingdoms of Christianitas. The legal framework for the collection of tithes was created by the papal decisions adopted during the General Council of Vienne of 1311–1312, chaired by Pope Clement V (1305–1314). However, in the Kingdom of Hungary (which also included Transylvania) the actual collection of the tithe began decades after the adoption of the canons at the Council of Vienne, more precisely during the pontificate of John XXII (1316–1334), who was one of the most effective Avi- gnon popes. In the 1320s, the disagreements between the Holy See and the Holy Roman Empire, represented by Pope John XXII and the German King Louis IV (1314– 1347)—Holy Roman Emperor from 1328—intensified and even went through some acute stages. The conflict stemmed from the pope’s refusal to acknowledge the imperial title of Louis of Bavaria. A representative of the spiritual power, the pope also exercised temporal power at several levels, but to a lesser extent than the all-powerful Innocent III (1198–1216), considered to have been the most powerful pope of the Middle Ages.9 This military conflict between Pope John XXII and King Louis IV was draining the coffers of both parties involved. Apart from this conflict, the Holy See represented by Pope John XXII was involved in a grandiose project that demanded completion: the building of the new papal palace at Avignon.10 Such expenditures demanded a steady supply of funds.11 70 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

The amounts to be collected in the kingdom led by Charles Robert of Anjou (1301–1342) were inferior to the ones coming from the Western kingdoms, because the local Church in Hungary was less affluent. Still, the money provided by the Angevin Kingdom of Hungary could ensure a steady financial supply for the Apostolic Chamber.12 These may have been the reasons why tithes had to be collected in the Kingdom of Hungary, between 1332 and 1337, two decades after the adoption of the canons regulating the procedure. The official reason, however, was the well-known one: the crusade.13 The episode involving the two aforementioned tax collectors, operating in the Kingdom of Hungary between 1331 and 1337, was atypical in the sense that it did not follow the conventional model of papal tax collection in this region. Its extraordinary character also had to do with the dubious attitude of the tax collectors towards the papal desiderata, which they met with difficulty, also because of the direct or indirect influence exerted by the local protagonists (spiritual or temporal). Even if they were somewhat obstructed in the collection of the tithes,14 an action that generated the register investigated by us, the two tax collectors brought a positive contribution to the centralizing policy of the Holy See. The documents that touch upon the tithe register can be found in certain collections of sources, such as: Documente privind istoria României, Veacul XIV, C, Transilvania, vol. III (1331–1340)15; Monumenta Vaticana Hungariae, Series I, Tom. I. Rationes collectorum Pontificiarum. Pápai tizedszedøk számadásai 1281– 1375,16 and Jakó Zsigmond, Erdélyi okmánytár, vol. II (1301–1339).17 Monumenta Vaticana Hungariae is the most compact of the three aforementioned collections of sources, especially from a compositional point of view, as it records the tithes collected in eleven Hungarian bishoprics (Diocesis Waradiensis, Transsilvana, Chanadiensis, Zagrabiensis, Bosnensis, Colocensis, Strigoniensis, Va- ciensis, Quinqueecclesiensis, Agriensis, Wesprimiensis). According to the papal tithe register, at that time the Bishopric of Transylva- nia (Ecclesia Transsilvana) included thirteen subunits: archidyaconatu Albensi— Alba, a. de Thorda—Turda, Ozd, a. Hunodiensi—Hunedoara, Cojocna (Kolozs), sometimes Cluj (Kolozsvár), a. de Keukellev—Târnava (Küküllø), Tylegd, a. de Doboka—Dãbâca, Szolnok, a. de Karazna—Crasna (Kraszna), a. de Ugacha— Ugocsa, a. de Kyzdi—Kézdi, and a. de Zothmar—Sãtmar (Szatmár, Satu Mare).18 When compiling the fiscal record, the tax collectors did their best to follow the structure of the archdeaconries belonging to the Bishopric of Transylvania. This is particularly obvious in the first year of their mission, when a significant amount was collected. Maybe this came as a consequence of the impetus given to the action by John XXII who, in keeping with the traditional pontifical pow- Transsilvanica • 71 er, could resort to one of the harshest punishments against those who refused to pay the tithe—excommunication.19 The amounts paid varied in quantity and also in what concerned the type of currency used: banalis, denarius, ferto argenti, florenus, grossus, kuntinus, locto, marca, pensa, pondus, sectinus etc., all of different denominations. The purpose of the present article is to identify as accurately as possible the amounts collected in tithe from the Transylvanian archdeaconries, which requires an approximation of the types of currency employed. Consequently, the final amounts shall be expressed in silver marks according to the Buda standard (marca argenti).20 The entries concerning the taxes collected in the first year (Table 1) are more complex than those of the following years. The archdeaconry of Turda21 opens the list of those who paid the first installment for the first year of tax collecting, followed by those of Alba,22 Ozd, the deaneries of Sebeş (Szászsebes) and Orãştie (Szászváros) (belonging to the archdeaconry of Alba), then the archdeaconries of Hunedoara, Cojocna, the deanery of Spring, the archdeaconries of Târnava and Tylegd, the deanery of Bistriþa (Beszterce) (belonging to the archdeaconry of Dãbâca), and then the archdeaconry of Szolnok.23 There is no particular logic to this succession, and quite possibly the entries were made as the money was handed over to the tax collectors. The same holds true for the second installment.24 If we compare the lists of parishes in the Transylvanian archdeaconries for the first and the second installment of the first year (1332), we see a significant fluctuation. For instance, in the case of the archdeaconry of Szolnok, only one parish is listed as having paid the first installment of the tithe, while the second installment was paid by 16 parishes. However, this second figure cannot be deemed to precisely indicate the number of parishes belonging at that time to the archdeaconry of Szolnok. The main purpose of the tithe registers was to keep a record of the amounts paid by the parishes of the Transylvanian archdeaconries to the Apostolic Cham- ber. The precise number of these parishes was of secondary importance. Con- sequently, the number of contributing parishes listed in the register could not have been the total number of parishes belonging to the 13 archdeaconries,25 as an archdeaconry could not have consisted of a single parish, as was the case with the archdeaconry of Crasna, or eight parishes, as in the case of the archdeaconry of Hunedoara. 72 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Table 1. Parishes and tithes identified for the year of payment 1332 (first year)

Number Amounts identified Weight Equivalent of marks Archdeaconry of identified (in Buda silver of identified marks in kilograms parishes marks) (g) of silver Turda 32 4.7 1,153.9 1.15 Alba 97 32.1 7,881.5 7.88 Ozd 43 8.2 2,025.6 2.02 Hunedoara 8 1.9 466.5 0.46 Cojocna 20 5.3 1,301.3 1.30 Târnava 36 4.3 1,055.7 1.05 Tylegd 40 2.2 540.1 0.54 Dãbâca 40 9.6 2,369.3 2.36 Szolnok 16 1.4 356.0 0.35 Crasna 1 0.1 39.2 0.04 Kézdi 17 0.8 196.4 0.19 Satu Mare 24 1.8 441.9 0.44 Ugocsa 14 3.1 761.1 0.76

Total for 13 388 75.7 18,586.6 18.58 archdeaconries

Total for Bishopric 45.7 11,232.9 11.23 Chapter

Total general 121.5 29,831.8 29.83

Sources: dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 122–157; mvh, I, I, doc. 3, pp. 91–98.

Beyond the discrepancies mentioned above in connection to the structure of the Transylvanian archdeaconries, Table 1 shows that the largest archdeaconry of the Bishopric of Transylvania was that of Alba, a size that was commensurate with the financial might of this diocesan subunit. Alba was followed by Ozd and Dãbâca, both significantly wealthy judging by the number of parishes listed in the papal register. The archdeaconries of Turda, Târnava, and Tylegd26 consti- tuted a third tier in the hierarchy based on the number of parishes. The other archdeaconries were relatively equal, the records kept by Jacobus Berengarii and Raimundus de Bonofato showing no significant difference between the number of parishes and their financial situation. Consequently, on the basis of the tithe register, for the first year of tax collecting (1332) we could identify, in structural terms, 388 parishes, and a total paid amount of 121.5 marks (approx. 30 kg of silver). For the second year of tax collecting (Table 2), we see a decrease in the amounts paid in tithe as well as in the number of identified parishes. Even if in some arch- Transsilvanica • 73 deaconries we see an increase in the number of parishes identified for the second year, this increase does not translate into an increase in the amounts collected. On the contrary, in the concrete case of the archdeaconry of Tylegd,27 from 40 parishes in the first year we move to 60 in the second year, but the total amount paid by these parishes is much lower than that of the previous year. We believe this was also caused by the more modest economic situation of the parishes belonging to the archdeaconry of Tylegd. Additional factors may also have been responsible for this, especially the local temporal ones such as the voivode of Tran- sylvania, who could have somehow caused a decrease in the amounts collected. There is no concrete evidence to substantiate such a claim, but it remains a possibility, considering that Pope John XXII had to repeat his request that the local temporal leaders lend their support to his two tax collectors. The Holy See was trying to mobilize not just the spiritual factors, but also the temporal ones.28 The papal exhortations were reiterated on several occasions, suggesting that the local response to the requests of the Holy See had not been the expected one.29

Table 2. Parishes and tithes identified for the year of payment 1333 (second year)

Number Amounts identified Weight of Equivalent of Archdeaconry of identified (in Buda silver identified marks marks in kilograms parishes marks) (g) of silver Turda 17 1.60 405.1 0.40 Alba 54 5.50 1,350.4 1.35 Ozd 45 4.10 1,018.9 1.01 Hunedoara 1 0.10 24.5 0.02 Cojocna 27 6.30 1,546.8 1.54 Târnava 1 0.08 19.6 0.02 Tylegd 60 1.10 282.3 0.28 Dãbâca 24 1.90 466.5 0.46 Szolnok 17 1.80 441.9 0.44 Kézdi 10 0.07 17.1 0.01 Satu Mare 17 1.10 270.0 0.27 Total for 11 archdeaconries (Crasna 273 23.70 5,819.0 5.81 and Ugocsa are missing)

Total for Bishopric 14.90 3,658.3 3.65 Chapter

Total general 38.60 9,477.4 9.47

Sources: dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 159–173; eo, II (1301– 1339), doc. 1061, p. 385. 74 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

According to Table 2, for the second year of tax collecting (1333) we identified approximately 273 parishes belonging to 11 Transylvanian archdeaconries, which paid a tithe of approximately 23.7 silver marks. If we add the amounts paid by the chapter of the bishopric (14.9 marks) we come to a total of 38.6 marks (9.47 kg of silver). There are considerable differences between the first and the second year of tithe collecting: for the second year, the number of listed parishes decreases by 115, and the total collected amount goes down by 83 marks, the equivalent of 20.5 kg of silver. It is therefore possible that the local temporal factors played a negative role in the collection of the tithe in the Bish- opric of Transylvania. The situation becomes much more complicated in the third year of collection (Regestrum solutionis decimarum tertii anni in vigilia omnium sactorum Anno Do- mini MCCCXXXIV),30 and there is no possibility to make a distinction between archdeaconries, because those who paid the tithe are listed in a continuing manner, regardless of the administrative limits of the Transylvanian episcopal units to which they belonged. In other words, the entries are limited to the names of the contributors and the amounts paid. In fact, this must have been the most important element for the Apostolic Chamber, which compiled the fiscal records: the amounts paid. The register then lumps together the amounts collected in several archdeaconries such as Dãbâca,31 Turda, Cojocna, Ugocsa, Alba, Satu Mare, Ozd, Szol- nok, Târnava, where the 45 identified parishes paid to the sub-collectors the equivalent of 7.3 marks. This once again shows the unsystematic nature of their record-keeping, especially for the third year, when 46 parishes belonging to several archdeaconries paid nearly 11 silver marks. The same inconsistency applies to the third case, when an equal number of parishes paid the equivalent of more than 10 silver marks, in assorted currencies. The total amount identified for the first semester of the third year of collecting stands at 102.2 silver marks,32 186 parishes being listed for this semester. We believed that the somewhat chaotic record-keeping is also caused by the context, as this (1334) was the year when Raimundus de Bonofato, who coordinated the collection of taxes in the western part of the Kingdom of Hungary, passed away. This might have stirred in Jacobus Berengarii the desire to assume full responsibility for the collection tithes throughout the entire Kingdom of Hungary. The inconsistent record-keeping seen in the tithe register for the Bishopric of Transylvania and in other cases as well could also have been caused by the hasti- ness of those who compiled the fiscal record under the coordination of Jacobus Berengarii, whom the Holy See suspected of fraud. Fraud could also have been Transsilvanica • 75 the reason why the register for the first semester of 1334 was drawn up in such a superficial manner.

ope John XXII sent another collector, Jacobus de Lingris, to replace the one who had passed away. The quick measures taken by the Curia in the matter of tithe collecting had a beneficial influence upon the entries P 33 concerning the second semester of 1334. We identified more than 360 parishes which, in the second semester of the year 1334, paid approximately 51 silver marks, the same amount as in the first semester, even if in the first semester there had been considerably fewer parishes. In the second semester of that year, the Chapter paid 42 marks, 9 marks less than in the first payment. The amount identified for the second semester of the third year stands at 93 marks, and the total identifiable for the year 1334 is of 195.2 marks34 (47.9 kg of silver). The entries for the fourth year (1335) begin with the amount paid by the members of the Chapter, namely, 33 marks. Our recalculation, however, led to an identifiable amount of only 23 marks, the missing 10 marks having to do with the numerous gaps in the text.35 The gaps make it difficult to determine the number of parishes and the amounts paid. Nevertheless, according to the calculations, for the year 1335 we could identify approximately 200 parishes. For the aforementioned reasons, the tithe collected in the fourth year reaches nearly 119 marks: 25.5 marks paid by the parishes + 33 marks paid by the Chapter = 58.5 marks, to which we add the 60.5 marks brought in by the sub-collectors, for a grand total of 118.8 marks (29.1 kg of silver). In the fifth and last year of collecting (1336),36 the entries end abruptly after the unsystematic listing of only 24 parishes belonging to several archdeaconries. The tithes paid by the 24 parishes in question amounted to nearly 9 marks (8.7 marks = 2.1 kg of silver). The tithe register for the Bishopric of Transylvania, drawn up under the supervision of head collector Jacobus Berengarii, ends with the entries concerning the amounts paid by the parishes of the Sibiu Prepositure37 which, from an institutional point of view, had no obligations to the Bishopric of Transylvania and which, since the creation of the Saxon Prepositure (1191), had been directly subordinated to Rome, or indeed to the Holy See. They may have been included in this register because, geographically speaking, the Saxon Prepositure was located in Transylvania, and the tithe register included entries concerning this region. The fiscal records indicate that in the 1330s the Sibiu Prepositure had 27 parishes, which paid 4.3 marks to the collectors (1 kg of silver). 76 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

According to this source, the total amount collected in the region by the envoys of Avignon (without the tithes paid by the holder of the diocesan see) stood at 665.8 marks (163.5 kg of silver). If we deduct the 4.3 marks (1 kg of silver) paid in tithe by the Sibiu Prepositure, then the 13 archdeaconries of Transylvania paid 661.5 marks (162.4 kg of silver) to the Apostolic Chamber in Avignon. The same register shows that over the five years the bishop of Transyl- vania paid a tithe of 1170 marks (287.3 kg of silver). If we put together the tithes paid by the archdeaconries and the local bishop, it emerges that the total amount collected in Transylvania by Jacobus Berengarii, during the five years in question, was of 1831.5 marks (449.7 kg of silver). If we consider the amount indicated by the source, 661.5 marks (162.4 kg of silver) as the total of the tithes paid by the 13 archdeaconries, then the 483 marks (118.6 kg of silver) (Table 3) identified by us would amount to 73% of the total, with a difference of 178.5 marks (43.8 kg of silver), meaning 27% of the total. This difference of nearly 180 stems from the numerous gaps in the text. The percentage is higher if we factor in the amount paid by the bishop of Transylvania: 1,170 marks (287.3 kg). Thus: 661.5 marks (source text) + 1,170 marks = 1,831.5 marks (449.7 kg) = 100%; 483 marks (identified by us) + 1,170 marks = 1,653 marks (405.9 kg of silver) = 90.25%. In this case the difference of 178.5 marks (43.8 kg) would only represent 9.75% of the total.

Table 3. Parishes and tithes identified for five years of payment (1332–1336)

Number Amounts identified Weight Equivalent Year of of identified (in Buda silver of identified marks of marks in kilograms payment parishes marks) (g) of silver First year 388 121.5 29,831.8 29.83 (1332) Second year 273 38.6 9,477.4 9.47 (1333) Third year 360 195.2 47,927.4 47.92 (1334) Fourth year 200 118.8 29,168.9 29.16 (1335) Fifth year 24 8.7 2,136.1 2.13 (1336)

Total five years 1,245 483.0 118,591.0 118.59

Sources: eo, II (1301–1339), doc. 1060–1154, pp. 385–418; dir, XIV, C, Transilvania, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 122–221. Transsilvanica • 77

The amounts presented above (Table 3) are intended to provide, as much as possible, a complete estimate of the amounts collected in tithe in the archdeaconries belonging to the Bishopric of Transylvania between 1332 and 1336. In most cases the amounts could be identified but, given the gaps present in various places in the text, the identification rate stands at 90.25% if we also factor in the tithes paid during the period in question by the bishop of Transylvania. Without the 1,170 marks paid by the local bishop, the identification rate goes down to 73%. The 1,831.5 marks collected in the Bishopric of Transylvania between 1332 and 1337 account for 19.5% of the total amount collected in the Kingdom of Hungary (9,385 marks38 = 2,304.3 kg or 2.3 tons of silver). However, one third of the total amount went to King Charles Robert of Anjou,39 amounting to 3,130 Buda marks (768 kg of silver), while the other two thirds were sent to the Apostolic Chamber in Avignon (1,536 kg or 1.53 tons of silver). The data presented here demonstrate that the system of papal tithes also led to the institutional territorialization40 of the parishes located on the eastern fringes of Societas Christiana, more precisely, in Transylvania. This came to illustrate the theory formulated by Pope Innocent III on the universal dominium of the Latin Church, a theory that was also enacted in the canons adopted by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (Canons 53–54). q (Translated by Bogdan Aldea)

Notes

1. Adinel C. Dincã, “Vicarii generali ai episcopului Transilvaniei în secolul al XIV- lea,” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie “G. Bariþiu” din Cluj-Napoca 47 (2008): 29–42; id., “Antroponimie şi etnie în Transilvania medievalã (Epoca angevinã),” Anu- arul Institutului de Istorie “G. Bariþiu” din Cluj-Napoca 51 (2012): 31–43; Mihai- Florin Hasan, “Antroponimia clerului din registrul de dijme pontificale pe şase ani [1332–1337] cu privire la Transilvania,” Acta Musei Napocensis (Cluj-Napoca), 47/II (2010): 61–79; Şerban Turcuş, “Antroponimele teoforice în Transilvania în secolele XI–XIV,” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie “G. Bariþiu” din Cluj-Napoca 50 (2011): 15–27; Victor V. Vizauer, “Transylvanian Anthropotoponymy in the Pontifical Tithes Register for Six Years (1332–1337),” Transylvanian Review 21, Supplement no. 3 (2012): 303–320; Rãzvan Mihai Neagu, Politica beneficialã a papalitãþii de la Avignon în Transilvania (1305–1378) (Cluj-Napoca, 2013), passim; Géza Hegyi, “Egyházigazgatási határok a középkori Erdélyben (I. közlemény),” in Erdélyi Digitá- lis Adattár, http://eda.eme.ro/handle/10598/25970, accessed on 28.08.2014. 2. Jakó Zsigmond, Erdélyi okmánytár (hereafter cited as eo), II, doc. 695, p. 257; Docu- mente privind istoria României, Veacul XIV, C. Transilvania (hereafter cited as dir, C. Transilvania, XIV), vol. III, doc. 12, pp. 6–7. The document provides information about the two collectors: Jacobus Berengarii belonged to the Benedictine order and 78 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

was the steward of the monastery in Grasse. Raimundus de Bonofato was parish priest in St. Michael’s Chapel of the dioceses of Carcassonne and Limoges, in France. 3. It is assumed that the papal tithes began to be collected in the Kingdom of Hungary sometime in the year 1216, during the pontificate of Honorius III, the successor of Innocent III. The precise data are lacking, as no records survive in regard to this collection. The assumptions are based on the fact that in 1217, one year after the collection of the tithe, Honorius III corresponded on this matter with the Hungar- ian high clergy. The next collection of tithes took place in the 1270s, Gerardus de Mutina receiving the mandate for this in 1275. The register drawn up by Gerardus de Mutina is still in existence, and it is very valuable for it records the total amounts collected in the Kingdom of Hungary. However, the entries did not reflect the structure of the local Church in Hungary, as the amounts were not grouped according to the relevant archdeaconries and then bishoprics, and therefore cannot be used to determine what was collected in Transylvania. The most complex register that indicates the amounts paid by the Transylvanian prelates is the one drawn up by Jacobus Berengarii and Raimundus de Bonofato in the 1330s. 4. According to Michel Lauwers, a parish is a set of interpersonal relations (sacramen- tal and material) between the parish priest and each of the parishioners, while relations between parishioners are mediated by the priest. Michel Lauwers, “Pour une histoire de la dîme et du Dominium Ecclésial,” in La dîme, l’Église et la société féodale (Turnhout, 2012), Collection d’études médiévales de Nice, vol. 12, pp. 13–70. 5. For details regarding the collection of tithes in the Kingdom of Poland, see: http:// www.wbc.poznan.pl/Content/20067/kw_02.html, accessed on 14.03.2015. Codex Diplomaticus Maioris Polonia Documenta, et iam Typis Descripta, et adhuc Inedita Com- plectens, Annum 1400 Attingentia, Editus cura Societatis Literariae Poznaniensis, Tomus II, Comprehendit Numeros 617–1292, Annos 1299–1349 (Poznaniae, 1878). 6. Eugène Müntz, “Le luxe à la cour pontificale d’Avignon,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris) 41 (1897): 29–32; J.-P. Kirsch, “La fiscalité pontificale dans les diocèses de Lausanne, Genève et Sion à la fin du XIIIme et au XIVème siècle,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique suisse (Zurich) 2 (1908): 102–113; M. Fougères, “Problèmes de transfert: la papauté d’Avignon et ses ban- quiers,” Mélanges d’histoire sociale (Paris) 4 (1943): 78–80; Jean Favier, “Temporels ecclésiastiques et taxation fiscale: le poids de la fiscalité pontificale au XIVe siècle,” Journal des savants (Paris, 1964): 102–127; Jean-Daniel Morerod, “Taxation déci- male et frontières politiques en France aux XIIIe et XIVe siecles,” in Aux origines de l’État moderne: Le fonctionnement administratif de la Papauté d’Avignon. Actes de la table ronde d’Avignon (23–24 janvier 1988) (Rome, 1990), 329–350; Bernard Barbiche, “Les procureurs des rois de France à la cour pontificale d’Avignon,” in Aux origines de l’État moderne, 81–112; Amandine Le Roux, “Mise en place des col- lecteurs et des collectories dans le royaume de France et en Provence (1316–1378),” Lusitania Sacra (Lisbon) 22 (2010): 45–62; id., “De l’espace diocésain et provincial à la collectorie: une gestion territoriale des espaces fiscaux pontificaux en Lorraine du XIIIe au XVe siècle?” Annales de l’Est, 7th ser., 63, 2 (2013): 127–157; Mário Farelo, “Les clercs étrangers au Portugal durant la période de la papauté avignon- naise: un aperçu préliminaire,” Lusitania Sacra 22 (2010): 85–147. Transsilvanica • 79

7. Paolo Prodi, Forme storiche di governo nella Chiesa universale (Bologna, 2003), 7–8. 8. Lauwers, “Pour une histoire de la dîme,” 13–70. In a broad sense, the tithe is an expression of the ecclesiastical territorialization occurred during the Middle Ages. Apart from being the payment in cash or in kind of the contribution universally demanded by the ecclesiastical authorities, the tithe was also devised as an essential agent of the ecclesiastical and social institutional territorialization of the Church. Thus, the tithe acquires a dimension of universality. The first stage of this universality occurred during the Gregorian reformation, when the tithe, or rather its payment, defined the Christian man as God’s faithful. Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) tuned the tithe into a “symbol of the universal dominium of God.” Universal dominium meant that the tithe came before any other tax, and by paying it the believers accepted to be in the dominium, while those who refused to pay could be excommunicated. Canons 53–54, adopted at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, chaired by Innocent III, regulated the matter of papal tithes (. . . Cum autem in signum uniuersalis dominii, quasi quodam titulo speciali, sibi Dominus decimas reseruauerit, nos et ecclesiarum dispendiis et animarum periculis obuiare uolentes, statuimus ut in praerogatiua dominii generalis exactionem tributorum et censuum praecedat solutio decimarum, uel saltem hi ad quos census et tributa indecimata peruenerint. . .). Jacques Paul Migne, “Innocentii III Romani Pontificis opera omnia,” in Patrologiae, Tomus Secundus (Paris, 1855). We must not forget that the decisions in question were grounded in the Bible and were not an innovation of Innocent III. See the Bible, Genesis 14:20/28:22. “and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.” 9. “Hierocracy” is the generic term that historically defines the period of the 12th–14th centuries, during which the Curia acted in the fashion of an empire, bringing under its temporal authority most of the kingdoms in Europe. In a broad sense, hierocracy would mean “ecclesiastical government,” or indeed government by the Roman Church, an institution that led Europe in the manner of a monarchy during the 12th–14th centuries. The main feature of hierocracy was centralization, which reached institutional maturity towards the end of the 12th century, during the pontificate of Innocent III. Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in The Middle Ages (London, 1962), 1–25; James M. Powell, Innocent III—Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World? (Washington, 1994), 79–156; Edward Peters, “Lotario dei Conti di Segni becomes Pope Innocent III: The Man and the Pope,” in Pope Innocent III and His World, ed. John C. Moore (Brookfield, 1999), 3–24. 10. Maurice Faucon, “Les arts à la cour d’Avignon sous Clément V et Jean XXII (1307– 1334),” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire (Paris), 2 (1882): 36–83; ibid., Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 4 (1884): 57–130; Yves Renouard, La Papauté à Avignon (Paris, 2004), 99–105. 11. A part of the money collected by the Apostolic Chamber for the crusade was allocated to other actions, such as those targeting the heretics and the schismatics, the various wars waged in the Italian peninsula, and the construction of the papal palace in Avignon. 12. Augusto Vasina, “Il papato Avignonese e il Governo dello Stato della Chiesa,” in Aux origines de l’État moderne, 135–150; Pierre Gasnault, “L’élaboration des lettres secrètes des papes d’Avignon: Chambre et Chancellerie,” in Aux origines de l’État 80 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

moderne, 209–222; Storia del Cristianesimo, eds. Ch. Pietri, L. Pietri, A. Vauchez, M. Venard, and J. M. Mayeur, Italian edition by Giuseppe Alberigo, vol. 6, Un tempo di prove 1274–1449 (Rome, 1998), 62–63, 68–71. 13. Kristjan Toomaspoeg, Decimae: il sostegno economico dei sovrani alla Chiesa del Mez- zogiorno nel XIII secolo: dai lasciti di Eduard Sthamer e Norbert Kamp (Rome, 2009); Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (New York: Ecco, 2011). 14. The two collectors sent by Avignon divided up the territory assigned to them, as follows: Raimundus de Bonofato, based in Archbishopric of Esztergom, coordinated the collection of tithes in the western part of the Kingdom of Hungary. This area included the bishoprics of Agria, Pécs, Vác, Gyør, Nyitra, and Veszprém, all subordinated to the Archbishopric of Esztergom. The other papal tax collector, Jacobus Berengarii, operated out of Kalocsa, the archbishopric that subordinated the diocese of Transylvania as well as the other bishoprics, of Oradea, Csanád, Zagreb, and Bosnia. Each head collector had his sub-collectors. For the collection of tithes in the Bishopric of Transylvania, Jacobus Berengarii was assisted by a number of sub-collectors (Thomas, a custodian of the Church in Transylvania, and Archdeacons John and Benedict), who actually interacted with the people who paid the tithe. György Rácz, “Az Anjou-ház es a Szentszék 1301–1387,” in Magyarország és a Szentszék kapcsolatainak ezer éve (Budapest, 1996), 55–64; Storia del Cristianesimo, 729–732. 15. dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340) (Bucharest: Ed. Academiei Române, 1954), doc. 56, pp. 122–219. 16. Monumenta Vaticana Hungariae, Series I, Tome I, Rationes collectorum Pontificiarum. Pápai tizedszedøk számadásai 1281–1375 (hereafter cited as mvh, I, I) (Budapest, 2000), doc. 3, pp. 90–144. 17. eo, II (1301–1339) (Budapest, 2004), doc. 1060–1154, pp. 385–418. 18. Coriolan Suciu, Dicþionar istoric al localitãþilor din Transilvania, 2 vols. (Bucharest, 1967), passim. 19. dir, XIV, C, Transilvania, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 9, p. 4. For information regarding Pope John XXII, see: Guillaume Mollat, “Jean XXII et Charles IV le Bel (1322–1328)” [Auguste Coulon et Suzanne Clémencet, Lettres secrètes et curiales de Jean XXII (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome)], Journal des savants (Paris, 1967), 92–106; id., “L’élection du pape Jean XXII,” Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 1, 2 (1910): 147–166; August Franzen, Istoria papilor, trasl. Romulus Pop (Bucharest, 1996), 255–260. 20. dir, XIV, C, Transilvania, vol. III (1331–1340), passim. The calculations are estima- tive and intended to approximate the various currencies listed in the tithe register. As a matter of fact, the collectors themselves recorded the final amounts in marks. In other words, they as well converted the coins collected in tithe in order to have a total amount they could report to the Curia, or indeed to the Apostolic Chamber, the department in charge of the finances of Societas Christiana. 21. mvh, I, I, doc. 3, pp. 90–91. “Notandum, quod in primis de archidiaconatu de Thorda de solutione medietatis decimarum primi anni in dominica esto michi dominus Petrus sacerdos de Thorda ad manus magistrorum Benedicti archidiaconi de Tylegd et Thome Transsilvanica • 81

custodis ecclesie Transsilvane solvit....” eo, II (1301–1339), doc. 1147–1151, pp. 316–417; dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, p. 122. 22. eo, II. (1301–1339), doc. 1075–1079, pp. 391–393. 23. mvh, I, I, doc. 3, pp. 91–98; dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, p. 136. 24. dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 122–158. First installment: archdeaconry (hereafter a.) of Turda—27 parishes = 2.7 marks; a. of Alba—38 parishes = 2.8 marks; a. of Ozd—43 parishes = 3.9 marks; deaneries of Sebeş and Orãştie – Alba—28 parishes = 6.7 marks; a. of Hunedoara—8 parishes = 1.1 marks; a. of Cojocna—16 parishes = 2.6 marks; deanery of Spring—13 parishes = 1.25 marks; a. of Târnava—33 parishes = 2 marks; a. of Tylegd—40 parishes = 1.75 marks; deanery of Bistriþa—a. of Dãbâca—16 parishes = 2.5 marks; a. of Szolnok—1 parish = 0.2 marks; a. of Crasna—1 parish = 0.16 marks etc. Second installment: a. of Alba—37 parishes = 4.8 marks; a. of Dãbâca—31 parishes = 3.1 marks; deanery of Sebeş—a. of Alba—20 parishes = 9.8 marks; a. of Ozd—2 parishes = 0.5 marks; a. of Turda—32 parishes = 2 marks; a. of Târnava—36 parishes = 2.3 marks; a. of Cojocna—20 parishes = 2.7 marks; a. of Tylegd—5 parishes = 0.5 marks; deanery of Bistriþa—a. of Dãbâca—9 parishes = 3.25 marks; a. of Szolnok—16 parishes = 1.25 marks; deanery of Reghin (Szászrégen)—a. Ozd—15 parishes = 2.7 marks etc., plus the Bishopric Chapter, which paid 45.75 marks in the first year. 25. There is no data on the number of rural habitats needed for a parish in the 14th century. 26. eo, II (1301–1339), doc. 1138–1146, pp. 412–415. 27. Suciu, passim. 28. dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 76, pp. 262–263. 29. Bernard Guillemain, “Papauté d’Avignon et Etat moderne,” in Papauté, mona- chisme et théories politiques: études d’histoire médiévale offertes à Marcel Pacaut, eds. P. Guichard, M.-T. Lorcin, J.-M. Poisson, and M. Rubellin, vol. 1, Le poovoir et l’ins titution ecclésiale (Lyon, 1994), 79–89. 30. mvh, I, I, doc. 3, pp. 118–134; dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 174–204. 31. eo, II (1301–1339), doc. 1066–1074, pp. 387–390. 32. In the archdeaconry of Szolnok, 18 parishes paid tithes whose total was the equivalent of one silver mark. In the archdeaconry of Cojocna, an equal number of 18 parishes paid 3.9 marks; the 24 parishes in the archdeaconry of Turda paid to the sub-collectors approximately 2.7 silver marks. In the archdeaconry of Dãbâca the equivalent of 8.4 marks was paid by 29 parishes, and in the archdeaconry of Ozd 18 parishes paid 1.9 marks. The amounts were relatively higher than those collected in the archdeaconry of Tylegd, where approximately 86 parishes paid only 1.2 marks. As a matter of fact, many of its parishes contributed modest amounts, indicating the poor economic situation of the eastern archdeaconry. In the archdeaconry of Satu Mare, approximately 25 parishes paid to the Apostolic Chamber tithes amounting to 2.9 marks, while in the archdeaconry of Ugocsa 19 parishes paid the equivalent of 2 silver marks. dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 174–204. 33. eo, II (1301–1339), doc. 1062–1063, pp. 385–386. 82 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

34. dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 174–204. 35. mvh, I, I, doc. 3, pp. 135; dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 205–218. 36. mvh, I, I, doc. 3, pp. 142–144; dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 56, pp. 218–219. 37. eo, II (1301–1339), doc. 1133, p. 410; dir, C. Transilvania, XIV, vol. III (1331– 1340), doc. 56, pp. 219–221. 38. mvh, I, I, doc. 3, p. 401. “Summa summarum totius libri de pecuniis, receptis per dominum Jacobum Berengarii collectorem et alios subcollectores suos ac dominum Raymun- dum de Bonofato similiter collectorem, facit novem milia CCC. et LXXXV. marcas cum dimidia ad compotum Budensem computando...” 39. dir, XIV, C, Transilvania, vol. III (1331–1340), doc. 90–92, pp. 270–271. King Charles Robert requested and obtained from Pope John XXII, through his envoy Paul, the bishop of Belgrade, one third of the papal tithes that were to be collected by the papal representatives in the Kingdom of Hungary over a period of six years. 40. Michel Lauwers, “Territorium non facere diocesim: Conflits, limites et représentation territoriale du diocèse, Ve–XIIIe siècle,” in L’espace du diocèse: Genèse d’un territoire dans l’Occident médiéval (Ve–XIIIe siècle), ed. Florian Mazel (Rennes, 2008), 23–65.

Abstract Historical-Economic Aspects Pertaining to the Bishopric of Transylvania as Reflected in the Pontifical Tithe Register (1332–1337)

The paper analyzes, from a historical-economic point of view, the tithe register (1332–1337) compiled by tax collectors Jacobus Berengarii and Raimundus de Bonofato, envoys of Pope John XXII, for at least two reasons: firstly, it has never been analyzed in order to determine the main rationale behind the register, which was economic in nature; secondly, because this register is structurally more complex than the other registers drawn up by the tax collectors active in the Kingdom of Hungary before 1331. We provide an inventory of parishes and an estimate of the overall financial situation at the level of their archdeaconry, in order to see what were, throughout the whole of Transylvania, the tithes paid by the clergymen of the Bishopric of Transylvania to the Apostolic Chamber of Avignon, between 1332 and 1337. The amounts collected can be identified in most cases, but given the various gaps in the register the rate of identification stands at 90.25%, if we also factor in the amounts paid in tithe during the period in question by the bishop of Transylvania. Without the 1,170 marks paid by the local bishop, the rate of identification of the amounts paid decreases to 73%. The total amount collected by the Bishopric of Transylvania between 1332 and 1337, calculated in Buda silver marks, stood at 1,831.5 marks (the equivalent of roughly 450 kilograms of silver) and represented 19.5% of the total amount collected in the Kingdom of Hungary (9,385 marks = 2.3 tons of silver). However, of the 9,385 marks, one third went to King Charles Robert of Anjou, namely, 3,130 Buda marks (758 kilograms of silver), while the other two thirds were sent to the Apostolic Chamber in Avignon (1,536 kg, or 1.53 tons of silver).

Keywords Transylvania, parishes, archdeaconries, bishopric, tax collectors, tithes, silver marks Utopian Thinking in Transylvania German and Hungarian Case Ş t e f a n B o r b é l y Studies

’ I d like to recall two colorful cases of practical utopians here, belonging to the southern part of Transylvania, one of them a German (Arthur “Gusto” Gräser), and the other a Hungarian (Béla Bicsérdy), who actually share a formal, German-inspired Austro-Hun- garian social, moral, political and cultural tradition. Both of them had people wearing uniforms in their families, because the uniform—be it military or civilian—signified at the time of their Sanatorium Monte Verità (Locarno) initiation into life (I mean the threshold between the 19th and the 20th centuries) dignity, bourgeois respectability, social recognition and discipline. Apart from their rather liberal approach to religious matters (Gräser mocked Max Weber’s Protestant work ethics by being legen darily lazy, while Bicsérdy opted for the Oriental religions and especially for Zoroaster’s Avesta), both were town people, and both felt that they had ªtefan Borbély Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Babeº- some sort of particular, humanitarian Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. Author, mission to share. Both were Transylva- among others, of the vol. Simetrii ºi nian, that is, more cosmopolitan than discrepanþe (Symmetries and discrepan- the rest of the especially rural-centered, cies) (2017). historic parts of Romania. 84 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Arthur Gustav “Gusto” Gräser (1879–1958)

Both experienced a peculiar revolt against the values embodied by their fathers, but this was pretty common if we think about psychoanalysis, which was the revolutionary religion at that time when it come to matters of the soul. It would be therefore more important to say that both of them opted for nature to replace society, and that they conceived the human being in a larger, organic perspective, as part of a wider, cosmic order. Moreover, both felt, as Nietzsche said in his second Untimely Meditation, that the times of history are gone: that man must throw off the burdens of the past, in order to live an “enormous present,” as Norman Mailer labeled this feeling, attributed by him to the hipster, in The White Negro. When we come to the communitarian model of life Bicsérdy and Gräser had trusted, we realize that it was merely empirical rather than scientifically grounded. Gräser came to Monte Verità not only to find reclusion, but especially to Transsilvanica • 85 live a peculiar experience of the senses, shared by people floating all around the place in some sort of happy, sensorial dissemination. He was a rather solitary figure, who didn’t like Monte Verità at first, as reported, retreating, in order to fulfill the personal program of an exemplary solitude, in a series of caves and im- provised abodes, artistically adorned with ribbons, mystical symbols and other artistic oddities, where he actually managed to raise eight happy children, and to contain a cautiously dissatisfied wife. On the contrary, Béla Bicsérdy shared the belief that a clean and organized bourgeois home is essential for a prophet to be trusted and believed. Even when he moved to Ada Kaleh island on the Danube, building a house and accommo- dating his family were his top priorities. Bicsérdy was family-centered, while for Gräser family was nothing more than a living unit very similar to a pack of happy wolves or a flock of birds. Bicsérdy also liked the stability provided by money, while Gräser was an errant saint and a beggar. He also had a superior sense of artistic sufferance, being repeatedly arrested for minor social crimes, related to his life as a hippy. A saint must experience the unfair malignity of the world— he used to say—if his goal remains redemption. By redemption Gräser didn’t primarily understand Imitatio Christi, that is, via negativa, to live in such a way as to neutralize your instincts and your body, but—in the already mentioned Nietzschean terms—human elevation, artistic magnificence and charisma, that is, the access to the so-called “great gestures” (Gebärde) which characterize human superiority. “Gebärde, with its Nietzschean implications of splendor and magnificence, was a key word in the Schwabing-Ascona vocabulary”—Martin Green says in his seminal Mountain of Truth,1 the best book written on the subject so far. “It suggests the exaltation of the body to a larger than physical dignity, it expresses a splendor of life that is at once sculptural and biological.” Splendor, which is actually a term coming from the Renaissance, also means an artistic and sexual transfiguration of the body, as well as a peculiar effervescence of solar worship. As we remember, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra worshipped the sun, and called himself a “midday man,” which meant an anti-Romantic attitude, because the midday man attains excellence by completely eliminating the inner and outer shadows of his being. Gusto Gräser had resolved his “Oedipus complex” by becoming a self-made artist, to the great sorrow of the old man who was a former student at Heidelberg and a well-respected judge in his rather small town of Kronstadt, and who really hoped that at least one of his sons—of whom he had three, Karl, Arthur and Ernst—would be a respected member of the local Protestant community. Luck had apparently left him, because Karl, who became an officer at the time Gusto reached Monte Verità, decided to drop his uniform in order to join his brother in Ascona. Arthur, born on 16 February 1879, changed his name into “Gusto,” “because he felt gusto: he took pleasure in life,”2 being known later, for a short 86 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) period of time, as Arthur Siebenbürger. He was awarded the 1st prize in wood- carving at the 1896 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest, and thus he officially got his license as an artist. Two years later he joined the painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach as an apprentice, living in the Himmelhof colony of artists outside Vienna, also known for the members’ sexual liberalism and nudism, as well as for their interest in ars combinatoria type sciences and theosophy. Among the seven members who founded the Monte Verità community in Ascona we find Ferdinand Brune, who came from Graz with a vivid interest in theosophy. The others were Gusto Gräser, Henri Oedenkoven (from Antwerp) and his wife Ida Hofmann (from Montenegro), the latter’s sister, Jenny, Karl Gräser (a lieutenant at that time, Gusto’s brother), and Lotte Hattemer, who came from Berlin. They met in Munich in 1900, acknowledged that they were fed up with human society and with civilization and decided to withdraw from the world, by founding a commune of people belonging to nature (Naturmen- schen) amid the mild slopes of Ascona, in Switzerland. The pattern wasn’t exactly Fourier’s “falansterian” communal retreat, understood as a working community, but it resembled Thoreau’s immersion in nature from Walden, which implied recapturing the lost cosmic energies through sim- plicity and solitude. A further, anarchist ingredient boosted the technique, coming on behalf of the Tolstoyans, akin to the Croydon Brotherhood in England, which had founded a Tolstoyan community in Purleigh, Essex, in 1896. A prominent member of this community was John Coleman Kenworthy, who wrote the anti-capitalist Bible of the new lifestyle, entitled The Anatomy of Misery. Freely inspired by Marx, Kenworthy equaled the new technological, greedy capitalism with the dawn of the pure, nature-centered human being, but, respecting the ideas of the epoch, he was also aware that man had become too frail to fight the technological monster in a face-to-face battle. David’s sling when confronting Goliath was a good symbol of human dignity, but it was futile to believe that it could be reenacted. “It is impossible to fight the system with its own weapons,” Kenworthy declared in The Anatomy of Misery, “one cannot touch pitch without being defiled.” Accordingly, the Naturmenschen did not dream of a huge, universal revolution capable to fight and defeat the malignant System, but they believed in the exemplary force of the many, tiny local revolutions, functioning as exhibits capable to convert people by convincing them that a simpler, nature-centered existence is by all means manageable. Most of them were anarchists deep down within their souls; but they also knew that the times of direct confrontation were over. As it would happen later in the counterculture of the 1960s, the newly founded organic communities had no intention to directly fight the system, but to challenge it by establishing an alternative reality. The great Tolstoy had already pioneered the idea that Transsilvanica • 87

Béla Bicsérdy (1872–1951) the Tolstoyans were Christians too, but “Christians outside the Church.” A big consequence concerning the understanding of power came out of this, because this was the moment when people started to perceive cultural legitimacy in the terms of the tension existing between the official canon and the subversive canons coded by the adjacent subcultures.

éla Bicsérdy, who is far less known in the Western world than the Gräsers, also heralded the necessity to transcend the frailties of the hu- B man body by means of a powerful, spiritual enlightenment. We usually believe that man is good because he is ontologically so, since ontology is rooted in nature. But for Bicsérdy nature was only the starting point, not the goal; the target was to go beyond nature, to transcend one’s ontological premises, as Jesus had done it through self-sacrifice, crucifixion and ascension. Accordingly, Bicsérdy was an active prophet, wandering around to preach, to collect followers and disciples, to spread and disseminate his ideas, while Gräser was especially passive, living in his cave unnoticed and waiting for the believers to come to him. The vegetarian Master was accidentally born on the 20 March 1872 in Pest, but he was raised in Fãgãraş, a Southern Transylvanian town located in between 88 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Hermannstadt (Sibiu) and Kronstadt (Braşov), where he also graduated, becoming a functionary of the state whose task was to supervise taxes. As a tax clerk he was posted to the north-western border of nowadays Romania, where he was contaminated by syphilis at the age of 21. After he realized that no doctor could cure his illness, in spite of visiting several European health institutions, Bicsérdy decided to take life into his own hands, by turning into a radical vegetarian and by doing hard physical training everyday, which provided him with tremendous strength and made him, as it has been recorded, one of the stron- gest people in Europe. At that time, the standard was the circus acrobat; well, Bicsérdy challenged a few of them to direct combat, being always the victor. He was proud to walk around in shorts in winter, and he set five world records in weightlifting, the most notable of them happening in 1922, in Cluj (at the age of 50!), when he bench-pressed 188 kilos. His energy was overwhelming; for instance, he spoke for 50 or even 60 hours uninterruptedly during his conferences. Some people from the audience went home, took a nap, and came back, only to find that the Master was still there, more energetic than ever. Bicsérdy’s central myth was life, while his arch-enemies were fatigue and death. His seminal book was entitled A halál legyøzése, which means Defeating Death (1924). It was sold in several thousand copies, mainly through direct sub- scription, by the author who promised everlasting vigor to the future vegetar- ians and a life which would go well beyond the age of 800. The Master served as a vivid example for at least several of his promises. His outstanding physical endeavors were achieved at the ages of 45 and 50. After becoming a vegetarian, he never fell ill, his hair loss stopped and he got back several of his lost teeth. Moreover, he was twice bitten by vipers while wandering in the Fãgãraş Moun- tains, managing to neutralize the venom by overheating his body as if it was surrounded by an aura. Going to the marketplace, he easily lifted huge barrels of grain, making the peasants believe that he was possessed by the Devil. Bicsérdy started to preach the benefits of vegetarianism in 1921, in Sibiu, the early experience being later expanded in order to become a mass hysteria, never experienced in Transylvania before. Huge crowds waited for hours to take part in his sermons, amidst crashed doors and broken windows. The police closed entire streets to contain the frantic mob. The Master seemed to be alien to the slightest sign of fatigue, speaking for 60 hours in a row about the necessity to return to nature and to ingest “life” instead of “death,” which enters the body when you eat previously slaughtered animals. He was always calm and logical when speaking, entertaining the crowd with strictly rational arguments. Unlike other preachers, he never reached the ecstatic level of enlightened irrationality, suggesting that you do not need a special, trans-rational faculty in order to be enlightened and to return to the sure path of truth. Transsilvanica • 89

Again unlike Gräser, Bicsérdy was Gutenberg’s disciple; he trusted the written letter as a tool of propaganda. When he came to learn that his prophetical substance has attained a proper level of spiritual maturation, Bicsérdy, who had not been a devoted scholar at the beginning of his career, started to write books frantically and to continuously improve his existing manuscripts and versions, so that an early book of, let’s say, 240 pages was expanded within two or three years in order to become a thick tome of 700 or 800 pages. Bicsérdy was practically unstoppable when it came to writing, editing and selling out the products of his brain: he printed many thousands of copies of books, leaflets and excerpts, he sent them by mail all over the world (not for free, obviously…), which means that his belief in the force of the written letter was equaled only by his huge ego and by the belief that four apples a day and a clever fast can heal all the sorrows of civilization. He was a practical, not a speculative reader and writer, which means that he was not attracted by the philosophical or moral depths of the books he used to recommend. For him, each book was good insofar as it functioned as a recipe, as a practical guide to a better lifestyle. Martin Green quotes the dancer Rudolf Laban, an inhabitant of Monte Ver- ità, the inventor of modern dancing, full of dissonances and of broken chains of nervous, nevertheless beautiful choreography, who used to speak about the “festive being” of each person. (“A person’s proper aim, in my view, is his own festive being.”) From 1913, Laban moved his “dance farm” up to the hills of Monte Verità, urging its members to reach perfection by engaging in collective bodily performances, abusively suspected of organized pornography by the lo- cals living in the valley. Bicsérdy also believed in the healing value of the “festive being.” For instance, he solemnly announced that his transfiguration occurred on Christmas Eve 1912, within the effervescence of the feast. It was the precise moment when he had become, through vegetarian wisdom and endurance, the third embodiment of the immemorial Messiah, following Zoroaster and Christ. He did so by activating his mystic aura, the so-called feruer. Derived from the Persian concept of farvashi (or fravashi), feruer was conceived by Bicsérdy as a spiritual veil, covering the body of the few who merited to be elected. The historian of religions Friedrich Creuzer, who studied the concept in a book published in 1810,3 demonstrated that the understanding of farvashi in Persian mysticism is different from the significance of the ideal paradigm in Plato’s system of thinking, because feruer functions as an intensity attached to each being, which can be activated through specific techniques of bodily and spiritual purification. Feruer is the reminiscence of the cosmic fire inherent to all beings; therefore Bicsérdy insisted that the body must reach a certain level of incandescence in order to be healed. By eating vegetables and fruits—that is, “life”—one may sustain the incandescence, whilst by ingesting “death”—slaughtered animals—, the heat is dissipated. 90 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

The scholarly paradox of Bicsérdy’s teaching consists in its lack of interest in classical Hinduism or Buddhism, which might be explained by the Master’s special fidelity to the existing world. That is: no Nirvana, no detachment, but the ethics of staying within the world, in order to activate its potencies of healing.

ou probably remember Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, which is a novel dominated by the fictional hypothesis of an Anti-Buddha. Hesse vis- Y ited Monte Verità several times, being also the author of a widely quoted text over there, “Artists and Psychoanalysis,” written in 1918, after he left the sanatorium for mental conditions where he had been cured by one of Carl Gustav Jung’s followers, the psychoanalyst Dr. Robert B. Lang. In this essay Hesse states that persons who have already activated their artistic dimension or are evidently in search of it have specific needs, and therefore they cannot be judged on the grounds of the common rules. The novel Siddhartha features a fictional confrontation between the enlightened Buddha and the young Siddhartha, his visitor, who does not want to become Buddha. There is an inner paradox in what you are preaching, Siddhartha says to Buddha. On the one hand, you say that the world is perfection, as every creature is perfectly harmonized with all the others. And then you preach the propensity for Nirvana, the necessity to leave the world by going beyond it. If the world is perfection, how can you explain that humans can reach their excellence only by stepping out of this perfection? The challenge resounded to Nietzsche’s understanding of the mission of the so-called “Zarathustrians,” who are the special beings whose existence deter- mines the quality of an epoch or that of a generation. Nietzsche stated that the universe in itself has no capacity to activate its Dionysian energy but by the intervention of an “opener,” who opens the valve or lifts the lid of the boiling water, thus freeing the repressed energy. The “opener” must stay inside the world, not outside it. His power is not a moral one—guided by duty or limitations—, but it belongs to the vast realm of cosmic artistry. So aesthetics becomes the precise faculty which indicates that certain people managed to surpass the subtle threshold which marks the border between expressing and being expressed, between the will to create—which is human—and the never ending creative imper- sonality of the cosmic play. Gusto Gräser happily quoted Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, who said that the decay of Christian civilization originated in Christ’s decision to ascend to the heavens, instead of staying with his flock here, on earth. “Jesus preached no beyond,” Gräser used to say to his listeners, during his open-air lectures held in Ascona. “Be ye happy. Just dare to live. Instinct is nature.” The idea went up in time, permeated the counterculture of the Sixties, and later evolved in Peter Lamborn Wilson’s (a.k.a. Hakim Bey’s) idea of the taz, the Temporary Autono- mous Zone, heralded in a book published in 1991. Rooted in the political syn- Transsilvanica • 91 tax of the good old anarchists of the 19th century, Hakim Bey’s idea suggests that by using violence in their aim to exercise full control over the masses, the political regimes necessarily generate the wish to establish “temporary autonomous zones” (tazs), whose aim is to elude formal, centralized structures of control. You remember Tocqueville with his Democracy in America: the real power of a political system is measured by its will to raise dissidents… q

Notes

1. Martin Green, Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins. Ascona 1900–1920 (Hanover–London: University Press of New England, 1986), 33. 2. Ibid., 53. 3. Friedrich Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker besonders der Griechen (Leipzig–Darmstadt: Carl Wilhelm Leske, 1810), 203.

Abstract Utopian Thinking in Transylvania: German and Hungarian Case Studies

The paper intends to recall two Transylvanian personalities from the beginning of the 20th century, who triggered—each of them in his personal, specific way—lifestyle and social revolutions within a typical bourgeois community embedded in cautiousness and conformity. The protagonist of the quiet revolution was the “Wanderprediger” Gustav (Gusto) Gräser (1879–1958), “the Gandhi of the Western World” (as he was remembered), who is generally considered the “proto-hippy” of Europe. Born in Kronstadt (now Braşov), around 1900 he joined Henri Oedenkoven, his wife Ida Hofmann and a few other pacifists in order to establish the Monte Verità hippy community near Ascona, in Switzerland, also visited by prominent intellectuals like Hermann Hesse. The initiator of the noisy revolution was Béla Bicsérdy (1872–1951), who spent the first half of his life in Fãgãraş, which happens to be the native town of the presenter. Struck by syphilis in the early years of his professional career, Bicsérdy decided to overcome the disease by taking up radical vegetarianism and by preaching the necessity of a spiritual asceticism, freely decanted from Zoroaster’s Avesta. His lectures, attended by hundreds of frantic followers, ended up in a huge mass hysteria in Transylvania and in Hungary, aimed at “defeating Death,” as one of Bicsérdy’s books heralded. The Master (as he called himself) illustrated his bodily transformation by setting weightlifting world records at the age of 50, he edited books and leaflets in endless rows of several thousand copies (all sold out), and managed to promote his campaigns in a truly Hollywood style, before moving to Ada Kaleh island in the middle of the Danube (where he founded a vegetarian community), and later to the United States, where he nevertheless died before reaching the age of 800, a vague upper limit he had promised to his ecstatic disciples.

Keywords utopian thinking, practical utopia, Monte Verità, Ascona, Gusto Gräser, vegetarianism, Béla Bicsérdy, Transylvania tangencies

Religious Landscape in Post-revolutionary Russia E l e n a G l a v a t s k a y a The Case of Ekaterinburg

Introduction

thno-religious relations are an important factor of stability E and successful development in cities, regions and states. A growing number of recent studies show that Christian urban corporations were crucial for the rise of civil society in the late Middle Ages in Europe, providing precursors and models.1 Some also point towards regional variations, and stress religious models of social John the Baptist (Ioanno-Predtecha) assistance in Southern Europe.2 Our Cathedral from Ekaterinburg previous research on the religious development in Ekaterinburg proved that religious minorities, especially representatives of Evangelical movements in opposition to the Russian Orthodox Church, contributed to the development of civil society in late 19th and early 20th century Russia.3 When the Bolsheviks seized the power, reli-

This research was sponsored by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research Grant No. Elena Glavatskaya 15-06-08541A, “Religious Diversity of a Professor at the Department of History, Eurasian City: A Statistical and Cartograph- Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, ic Analysis of Late 19th Century to Early 20th Russian Federation. Century Ekaterinburg.” Tangencies • 93 gious institutions played an important role in the mobilization and preservation of other groups’ identities. The Soviet state gradually banned religious institutions and deprived them of the rights they had managed to obtain over centuries of state oppression: to register life events, to worship and preach, to have their own prayer buildings, to educate, to help the poor and those in need. In other words, the Soviet authorities seized control over a civil society in Russia which had been developing within the religious institutions. This article focuses on the history of religious landscape changes in Russia and the Soviet Union in 1917–1941, taking as a case study the city of Ekaterin- burg. We use the concept of religious landscape to analyze the representation of different religions in the city, in particular the number and types of church buildings, which were the main elements as well as the visual markers of the city’s religious landscape. The research is based on 20th century statistics and narrative data on Ekaterinburg’s religious institutions and minorities. After extracting the information from the sources and entering it into the database “Ekaterinburg religious institutions,” we ran statistical analyses. While Russia is often perceived as a religiously homogeneous entity with the Russian Orthodox Church dominating the country, in reality it has a long history of coexistence among different religious traditions. There have always been provinces with Catholic or Muslim majorities, as well as those characterized by high religious diversity. The Ural region, located in the middle of the Eur- asian continent and having Ekaterinburg (56°5'/60°4') as its capital, has always been multi-religious due to immigration. Peter the Great founded it in 1723 as the main metal production center in Russia (copper, iron, and cast iron). As a booming center of metal production in the eighteenth century, Ekaterinburg needed engineers and managers and Europeans often filled the jobs, since there were not enough Russian specialists. As exiled prisoners of war or workers con- tracted by the state, they found employment at the Ural metal plants and composed the nucleus of the Lutheran and Catholic communities, which developed into established religious institutions in the city by the late nineteenth century. Urgent need for labor attracted the Old Believers, religious dissenters since the 17th century, to the Urals. Being persecuted by the state, they found the opportunity to settle, get jobs, and enjoy relative freedom to practice their religion away from the Moscow authorities. The city owes them its fast development and prosperity in the 18th and early 19th centuries, when the state initiated a new wave of religious persecutions. Ekaterinburg’s Muslim and Jewish communities were formed in the late 19th century: the first one due to urbanization and the second due to the accession of Poland. Regrettably, because of the lack of state monitoring of religious affiliations in Russia and the Soviet Union, scholars interested in the religious composition 94 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) of the Russian population cannot rely on comparable statistics. There were two cases when such a question was included in the census forms in 1897 and 1937, but the primary manuscripts were destroyed. Only a small sample from 1897 survived and resulted in aggregate tables. As to the 1937 census, the Soviet authorities destroyed not only the primary materials but also the aggregates.4 We may, however, study religious associations and institutions and analyze religious dynamics following changes in the early 20th century urban landscape in other sources. The religious landscape, in our understanding, is a religious situation that developed in a certain place and time, and one of its main markers are religious institutions, which manifest religions in the public sphere. The religious landscape is the product of the dominant group in a society and one of the means by which it retains its power. As Robertson and Richards pointed out, the landscape is one of the principal ways in which the powerful in a society maintain their dominance.5 In the very same way, first the monarchy and then the Bolsheviks imposed their view on the majority through the landscape they created: with Orthodox dominance until 1917 and ultimate atheism afterwards. However, alternative religions also manifested themselves in the landscape, making it less homogeneous. A religious landscape carries encoded information about the religious situation, which can be “read” and interpreted.6 As Black argued, buildings are central to the symbolic reading of landscapes, for they frame and embody economic, social and cultural processes.7 The purpose of this study is to read and to interpret the changing religious landscape of Ekaterinburg from the late 19th century until 1941, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union; how the state policies affected the religious landscape; the number of religious buildings operating in the city; the weight of non-Orthodox institutions and the number of religious institutions relative to population size.

Sources

he research is based on statistics, including the First All-Russia Popu- lation Census (1897), as well as local police, church and municipal re- T cords. In addition, we analyzed local newspapers and photo documents from private archives. The information extracted from the sources was tran- scribed into a database to monitor how many religious institutions operated in each year between 1917 and 1941. That allowed us to trace the evolution of the city’s religious landscape and to find out when the destruction policy peaked. Tangencies • 95

Results

re-revolutionary Ekaterinburg was an industrial city with a marked ethnic and religious diversity. While most inhabitants were members of P the Russian Orthodox Church, there were congregations of Old Believ- ers, Muslims, Catholics, Lutherans and Jews (see Table 1).

Table 1. Religious denominations in Ekaterinburg (1897)

Denomination Men Women Together % Orthodox 18,534 21,211 39,745 91.8 Old Believers 766 1,024 1,790 4.1 Muslims 386 292 678 1.6 Lutherans 167 176 343 0.8 Catholics 167 156 323 0.7 Jews 150 153 303 0.7 Other 23 34 57 0.1 Total 20,205 23,075 43,280 100

Source: 1897 census aggregates. N. A. Troinitskii, ed., Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g. (First All-Russian Census), 1897, XXXI (Saint Petersburg, 1904), 92.

The more than 90 percent Orthodox in the city according to the 1897 population census were overwhelmingly ethnic Russians, which was also the case for the four percent Old Believers. The city’s Muslim community was the second biggest (after the Old Believers) religious minority composed of Tatars and Bashkirs—in-migrants from rural suburbs. The overwhelming majority of the 0.8 percent Lutherans were Germans and the 0.7 percent Catholics were of Pol- ish origin, while the same proportion of Jews came from various places, mostly within Western Russia. In addition, there were 24 Calvinists and seven Anglican Church members (likely British and Swiss), six Baptists and a Mennonite, adding to the well-established Protestant congregation. The Russian government had to postpone the next scheduled census due to the First Russian Revolution (1905–1907); however, a survey was conducted in Ekaterinburg in 1913 by the city’s address office. Its results show the increasing religious diversity. All the non-Orthodox denominations expanded their share in the religious composition of the city, mainly due to in-migration and natural population growth; some had increased their size several times since 1897 (see Table 2). 96 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Table 2. Religious denominations in Ekaterinburg (1913)

Denomination Men Women Together Constructeda % Orthodox 35,024 34,177 69,201 96,881 90.6 Muslims 2,854 1,139 3,993 5,590 5.2 Jews 679 456 1,135 1,589 1.5 Catholics 587 364 951 1,331 1.3 Lutherans 512 377 889 1,245 1.2 Other 136 43 179 251 0.2 Total 39,792 36,556 76,348 106,887 100

Source: 1913 Passport office data. State Archive of Sverdlovskaia oblast,’ Ekaterinburg, Russia (hereafter cited as gaso), F. 62, Op. 1, D. 524, List 126. a. Children under 14 were not registered in 1913. Based on the 1897 census data on children we roughly constructed the actual population by adding 40% to each denomination.

The revolutionary Bolsheviks attempted to take a population census already in 1920, including questions about ethnicity. This effort failed, however, due to lack of resources and could never cover the whole territory due to foreign interventions and to the civil war which was still raging.8 However some parts, Ekaterinburg among them, managed to register their population. The results reflected changes in the ethnic composition of the city, caused by the civil war. The 1920 census did not include the question on religion, however we can use ethnic markers to identify religious identity, for they were closely related to each other. In this way we can distinguish Poles as ‘ethnic Catholics,’ Germans as ‘ethnic Lutherans,’ Tartars and Bashkirs as ‘ethnic Muslims.’ Thus, according to the 1920 census, the Jewish population increased, while all other denominations suffered a drastic decrease in numbers, in particular the Muslims (see Table 3).

Table 3. Religious denominations in Ekaterinburg (1920)

Denomination Men Women Together % Orthodox 37,121 43,142 80,263 90.7 Jews 1,682 1,923 3,605 4.1 Ethnic Catholics 860 754 1,614 1.8 Ethnic Muslims 774 648 1,422 1.6 Ethnic Lutherans 199 161 360 0.4 Other 765 461 1,226 1.4 Total 41,401 47,089 88,490 100

Source: 1920 Census data. gaso, F. 62, Op. 1, D. 524, List 126. Tangencies • 97

Eastern Christianity (Orthodoxy) in Ekaterinburg’s Religious Landscape

aturally, the Russian Orthodox Church institutions and church buildings dominated the religious landscape of Ekaterinburg until N 1917. There were 45 Russian Orthodox Church buildings, including five parish churches with several thousand members each, three cathedrals and a nunnery with about 1,000 nuns, which itself had five churches and a cathedral. In addition, there were two parishes of Old Believers separated from the official Russian Orthodox Church in protest against the church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1652 and 1666. The Old Believers kept liturgical practices that the Russian Orthodox Church had maintained before the implementation of these reforms and consider the reformed Russian Orthodox Church as heretics, including former Russian Tsars. The Old Believers manifested their distinct religiosity following pre-Patriarch Nikon habits from the early 17th century: men do not shave their beards, prefer to wear old-fashioned clothes, do not consume imported products such as potatoes and tobacco, do not accept any message from the state authorities, and consider these the devil’s servants. They also maintain the pre-reform rituals with a long liturgy, using books and icons either produced before the schism of 1666 or made in the pre- reform style. The state persecuted the Old Believers, who went underground and escaped to remote areas—the Russian North, Siberia and the Urals, which became one of Russia’s centers of Old Believers. There were different soglasiia (factions) among them: the popovtcy had their own priests, while the bezpopovtcy (the priestless) had lay religious leaders. The priestless community of Chasoven- noe soglasie (Chapel faction) in Ekaterinburg had up to 1,000 members and their own St. Nicholas Chapel and Ascension Chapel for common prayer. An- other faction, the Belocrinitckoe soglasie, recognize priesthood and the church structure. The faction originated in the Russian Orthodox Monastery located in Belaia Crinitca (Romania, Austria-Hungary) in the 1840s.9 An alternative popular name for this faction is Avstriiskoe soglasie (Austrian faction). The first Old Believers of the Belocrinitskoe soglasie in Ekaterinburg were those converted by missionaries who came from Belaia Crinitca in the late 19th century. In 1882–1883, they managed to erect their own Holy Trinity Church whose parish reached almost 1,000 believers and steadily increased in the early 20th century due to in-migration into Ekaterinburg. The implementation of the 1905 Decree on Religious Tolerance strengthened the status of Ekaterinburg’s Old Believers. The Imperial Russian religious landscape also included churches belonging to the Edinovertcy, and Ekaterinburg had three of them. These parishes of eth- 98 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) nic Russians consisted of the former Old Believers and their descendants, who agreed to the compromise proposed by the state. Edinoverie was a means of joining Old Believers to the official Church, allowing them to maintain their old liturgies and rituals while being subordinated to the diocesan bishops of the Or- thodox Church.10 Thus, the Edinovertcy got official priests and at the same time kept their identity distinct from both the Russian Orthodox Church and the Old Believers. All in all Ekaterinburg’s Eastern Christianity landscape consisted of ten parishes with their own churches or chapels. The city’s non-Orthodox landscape consisted of four religious communities with Catholic and Lutheran churches erected in the very center in the late 19th century; a synagogue and a mosque operated in private houses. Thus, at the turn of the 20th century there were eight parishes representing the religious majority: the Russian Orthodox Church members and the Edinovertcy; two parishes had Orthodox minorities—the Old Believers; two parishes were Western Christian and two had non-Christian religions. The number of non-Orthodox parishes demonstrated Ekaterinburg’s diverse religious landscape. It may even suggest religious tolerance, taking into consideration the small numbers of the non-Or- thodox communities in the city. However, the number of Orthodox buildings, other than parish churches, including the nunnery, chapels and domovye (home) churches,11 churches in schools as well as group quarters placed in military regiments and prisons, demonstrated the Russian Orthodox Church’s dominance and its strong support by the state. The ratio of all Russian Orthodox Church buildings to the non-Orthodox ones reached nine to one by 1917. Political changes in early 20th century Russia changed the country’s religious landscape. Catholics, Lutherans, Jews and Muslims got more civil rights; they started to develop educational institutions and ran charity programs. The Jews and Muslims got the right to register vital events after 1905. They actively participated in the city’s social life. Small groups of newly emerged Ekaterinburg Baptists and Evangelical Christians got a chance to form their religious institutions after the 1917 revolution. Over the next ten years, they were developing dynamically; they gained several thousand followers, organized public sermons; held regional congresses, which gathered hundreds; established training courses for preachers.12 Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) was gradually losing its privileges due to secularization and atheist policies. In addition, several internal schisms weakened the Church,13 and it was steadily losing followers in a changing religious situation with growing religious indifference and rising popularity for Baptists and Evangelical Christians. The Bolsheviks started to close churches and expropriate the Russian Or- thodox Church properties, including buildings, almost immediately after the Revolution. Between 1917 and 1929, the number of Orthodox churches was Tangencies • 99 rapidly reduced. Already in 1919–1925, the city authorities closed the Novo- Tikhvin nunnery and most of the city’s domovye churches. The practice of closing Orthodox churches and depriving the Church of its buildings continued, and by 1928 only 11 Orthodox churches remained in the city, nine of which were closed in 1929. In addition, the authorities closed all churches belonging to the Edinovertcy: first the Salvation Church and the Holy Archangel Michael (former cemetery church) in 1929, and then the Nativity and the Holy Trinity Churches a year later.14 Most of the closed Orthodox Church buildings were conveyed to secular institutions, and the main centrally located churches, the Catherine and the Epiph- any Cathedrals, as well as the Holy Spirit (Zlatoust) Church and St. Alexander Nevskii (Luzin) Church were destroyed. As a result of this ten years-long campaign, there were only two cemetery churches left in the city. The destruction that started just after the Revolution peaked twice: in 1929 at the beginning of the social reconstruction campaign, and in 1937, when religious practices qualified as counterrevolutionary activity and were punished as a crime. In both cases the authorities managed to close half of the then existing Orthodox churches (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. The number of Orthodox churches operating in Ekaterinburg (1917–1941) 50 45 45 40 37 34 35 31 29 30 27 26 25 23 20 15 11 10 10 8 7 3 5 2 1 0 1917 1919 1920 1921 1924 1925 1926 1928 1930 1933 1935 1936 1937 1938 1941

Other religious denominations experienced the same blow, although some, for example the Baptists and Evangelical Christians, had enjoyed religious freedom for a decade. The Ural Evangelical movement developed in the same way as in Europe, attracting socially active and mobile urban youths and women. Being in opposition to the Orthodox Church, the Evangelical movement presented no 100 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) danger to the Soviet state, but rather contributed to the development of civil society in early 20th century Russia. Ekaterinburg was the center of the Ural’s religious non-conformists and had the largest Baptist congregation in the region, numbering 80 members in 1928, and the Evangelical Christians attracted up to 400 people to their meetings. Both Baptists and Evangelical Christian congregations disappeared from the city’s landscape in 1930. The building that they used for meetings and communal prayer was transferred to the City Council in 1930.15 There was no mosque in Ekaterinburg before the Revolution, since the number of male Muslims never reached the 300 members needed to found a mosque according to Russian law. However, the Muslims gathered for Friday prayer and holidays at the house of some Tatar merchants, the Agafurovs. This family did not support the Revolution and left the city after the White Guard retreated and the Soviet authorities expropriated their house in 1919. Despite the fact that the number of ethnic Muslims decreased during the civil war, there were no less than 1400 in 1920 (see Table 2) and they managed to regain the Agafurov house, where they met for prayer until February 1930. However in March this was closed and the building was transformed into a kindergarten which accepted the children of natcmen (literally, ethnic minorities), that is, Tatar and Bashkir ethnic Muslims.16 The Lutheran church was closed in 1920 or 1921. It was probably due to the ethnic, predominantly German, composition of the Lutheran congregation, with a high number of foreigners, that they were the first religious minority to be suppressed in Ekaterinburg. The Catholic Church was closed in 1930, and after that the Catholic community of the city disintegrated.17 The Catholic Church, erected in an elegant Gothic style, was converted into a “working youth drama theater.”18 At the same time, the authorities closed churches and chapels where the city’s Old Believers used to gather for prayer: the Holy Trinity Church of Byelokrinitskie or the ‘Austrian’ congregation and the Ascension Chapel of the Chasovennye (priestless) congregation. However, the Old Believers managed to defend the St. Nicholas chapel, where both congregations gathered for worship together with the Edinovertcy until 1941. Ekaterinburg’s Jewish community grew rapidly due to migration from the western provinces, i.e. contemporary Poland, Ukraine, Byelorussia and Lithu- ania in the early 20th century, especially after the First World War broke out. The city’s Jews and wealthy families of Jewish origin (even if baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church) established several institutions to help the refugees: an employment bureau, a housing agency, credit foundations for small business start-ups, a society for the support of the poor, free medical services, as well as free kosher dining and bathing.19 There were two synagogues in the city, but the authorities closed one of them in 1926. When they attempted to close the sec- Tangencies • 101 ond synagogue in 1930, the believers managed to have it reopened before long. Apparently, it helped that the synagogue existed along with a mikva, used as a public bath—an obviously social institution, much needed in Soviet Russia.20 Thus, most of the religious minorities’ prayer buildings were closed and all their markers, present in the city’s religious landscape of the imperial period, disappeared in 1929–1930.

Discussion

katerinburg’s religious landscape, as it had emerged by the late 19th century, reflected the position of the authorities towards religions. They E supported the Russian Orthodox Church, whose institutions dominated the religious landscape of Ekaterinburg. However, there were alternative religions presented in the city’s landscape: the best established were the Lutherans and the Catholics, whose church buildings were very visible and centrally located. The Old Believers, Muslims and Jews were less noticeable but still present in the city. All non-Orthodox religious communities, mediating between the state and the religious minorities, were the signs of an evolving civil society. Ekaterinburg’s religious landscape in the early 20th century could be interpreted as a further development of the civil society, with the religious institutions taking responsibility for promoting education, medicine and charitable activities. The Evangelical movements, attracting socially active and mobile urban youths and women, continued the development of civil society in the second decades of 20th century Russia.

Conclusion

t took two decades for the Soviet authorities to destroy the religious landscape of Ekaterinburg: the liturgical buildings of all religious denomina- I tions were closed; churches located in the historical part of the city were demolished or underwent considerable restructuring. First, the authorities crushed non-parish churches, and later the rest. Their most crucial attack on the religious organizations occurred in 1929, when nine of the eleven existing Or- thodox churches and most non-Orthodox religious organizations were banned and their buildings expropriated. The 1937 census, the only Soviet census that contained a question on religious affiliation, indicated an unbalanced religious situation in the ussr and 102 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) particularly in Ekaterinburg. More than 50% of its adult population claimed they were religious, and answered positively to the question if they believed in God.21 We have grounds to identify most of them as followers of the Russian Or- thodox Church, taking into consideration the historic and cultural background as well as the city’s ethnic composition. Therefore, for the believers who could have very well numbered in the tens of thousands of people, there was only one church left to conduct the services—John the Baptist Cathedral, the former cemetery church; the Old Believers’ Chapel of St. Nicholas; and a synagogue. The other religious buildings were destroyed or used for storage, as dorms, schools, kindergartens, theaters, etc. All three institutions remained outside the public sphere: according to the law, religious organizations were deprived of the right to carry out any activity other than liturgy, which only adults could attend. Two religious minorities managed to defend their buildings and to gather for communal prayer and keep their religious identity. They were the Old Believers and the Jews: both with centuries of history and experience in withstanding religious oppression and maintaining their religious traditions and values, even under the threat of death. The rest disappeared from the city’s religious landscape for almost 70 years. q

Notes

1. Maartin Van Dijck, Bert De Munck, and Nicholas Terpstra, “Introduction,” Social Science History 41, 1 (2017): 1–19. 2. Katherine Lynch, “Social Provisions and the Life of Civil Society in Europe: Re- thinking Public and Private,” Journal of Urban History 36, 3 (2010): 285–299. 3. Elena Glavatskaya and Nadezhda Popova, “Rossiiskii religioznyi nonkonformizm v kontse XIX v.–pervoi chetverti XX vv.: baptisty i evangel’skie khristiane Urala,” Quaestio Rossica 4, 4 (2016): 190–206. 4. Gunnar Thorvaldsen, Censuses and Census Takers: A Global History (London and New York, 2017). 5. Iain Robertson and Penny Richards, “Introduction,” in Studying Cultural Land- scapes, eds. Iain Robertson and Penny Richards (London, 2003), 4. 6. Donald W. Meinig, “Reading the Landscape: An Appreciation of W. G. Hoskins and J. B. Jackson,” in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, ed. D. W. Meinig (New York, 1979), 195–244. 7. Iain S. Black, “(Re)reading Architectural Landscapes,” in Studying Cultural Land- scapes, 19–46. 8. Gunnar Thorvaldsen and Elena Glavatskaya, “The Three Main Western Revolutions and Their Censuses,” Quaestio Rossica 4 (2017): 992–1008. Tangencies • 103

9. Alexey Krakhmalnikov and Alexandr Pankratov, “Belokrinitskaia ierarkhiia,” in Pra- voslavnaia entsiklopediia, vol. 4 (Moscow, 2002), 542–556. 10. Alexander Palkin, Edinoverie v seredine XVIII–nachale XX v.: obshcherossiiskii kontekst i regional’naia spetsifika (Ekaterinburg, 2016), 325. 11. Those churches erected or possessed by rich families, schools, nurseries, prisons, military regiments etc. 12. Glavatskaya and Popova, 190–206. 13. Valerii Lavrinov, Ekaterinburgskaia eparkhiia: Sobytiia. Liudi. Khramy (Ekaterinburg, 2001), 65. 14. Sergei Voroshilin, Khramy Ekaterinburga (Ekaterinburg, 1995), 83–88. 15. gaso, F. 575-p, Op. 1, D. 22, List 35. 16. Ibid. 17. Elena Glavatskaya, “‘…V ves’ma iziashchnom, goticheskom stile’: istoriia katoli- cheskoi traditsii na Srednem Urale do serediny 1930-kh gg.,” Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 2 (2015): 218–238. 18. gaso, F. 575-p, Op. 1, D. 22, List 35. 19. Irina Antropova and Mikhail Oshtrakh, Istoria evreev na Urale (Ekaterinburg, 2002). 20. Elena Glavatskaya and Elizaveta Zabolotnykh, “Evreiskaia religioznaia obshchina Ekaterinburga vo vtoroi polovine XIX—nachale XX v.: chislennost’ i instituty,” Iz- vestiia Ural’skogo federal’nogo universiteta, Ser. 2, Gumanitarnye nauki. 4 (2017): 206-221. 21. Valentina Zhiromskaia, “Otnoshenie naseleniia k religii: po materialam perepisi 1937 goda,” Trudy Instituta rossiiskoi istorii ran 2 (2000): 324–338.

Abstract Religious Landscape in Post-revolutionary Russia: The Case of Ekaterinburg

This article presents preliminary results from the project “Religious Diversity of a Eurasian City: Statistical and Cartographic Analysis.” The project focuses on the evolution of the religious situation in late 19th–early 20th century Ekaterinburg. The research is based on documents found in state and private archives, statistics, and visual materials. We have reconstructed the manner in which different religious denominations formed their institutions in late 19th century Ekaterin- burg and how this diversity increased due to mass migration and a relatively tolerant religious policy in the early 20th century. The paper argues that religious institutions played important roles in advancing the civil society in Russia, as most of them promoted non-governmental forms of socialization, education, and charity. The decade after the Revolution, often called “the Golden Age” of Protestantism in Russia, ended with the Soviet state’s socialist modernization and atheist policy. That resulted in the destruction of the city’s religious landscape. All the changes manifested in this religious landscape can be presented as a text, which can be “read” and interpreted.

Keywords religious landscape, Russia, Soviet Union, Revolution, Orthodox Church, religious communities Infant Mortality Now and Then

G u n n a r The Dual Role of Economic T h o r v a l d s e n Resources

A lesson for social policy in Introduction developing countries trying ontemporarily, the infant to lower their infant morta mortality rate is used as a C proxy for a society’s welfare lity is that although improv- level, on the assumption that a society ing a nation’s economy where many children die in infancy lacks adequate resources to keep them may be necessary, it is not alive.1 When comparing statistics on sufficient. infant survival with economic indicators such as the Gross Domestic Prod- uct per capita, we see how children in rich countries have the best chances to survive through infancy.2 Such use as a proxy can also be found in historical studies, for instance together with other indicators of economic development in the Habsburg Empire leading up to World War I.3 This article ex- plores to what extent the positive relationship between economic resources Gunnar Thorvaldsen The research was supported by Russian Professor at the Norwegian Historical Science Foundation grant #16-18-10105, Data Centre, Faculty of Social Sciences, “Ethno-religious and Demographic Dyna University of Tromso⁄ and at the Depart- mics in Mountainous Eurasia around 1900: ment of History, Ural Federal University, A Comparison of the Urals and Scandi Ekaterinburg. Author, among others, navia.” I am grateful to Professors Michael of the vol. Censuses and Census Takers: Drake and Tommy Bengtsson for comment- A Global History (2017). ing upon an earlier version of this article. Tangencies • 105 and infant survival holds true historically. Was the connection weaker or could the relationship be reversed so that access to economic resources was associated with higher infant mortality? In the case of a reversed relationship, how did it arise? Such historiography is in line with the expressed need to summarize historical demography research.4 While these are interesting historical questions, they can also have consequences for the ongoing fight to reduce infant mortality in developing countries. Especially in Sub-Saharan Africa these campaigns have proved more difficult than expected, the goals for infant mortality not being reached in several nations. One reason may be that the connection between economic development and mortality levels is complex, and not enough attention is paid to the difference between the past and current situations among researchers of infant mortality.5 The relationship between economy and infant mortality is part of the debate within historical demography about the degree to which economic growth caused the demographic transition during the 19th and 20th centuries. Most researchers agree that economic factors influenced the mortality decline, but many argue that the epidemic climate was more important and that the economy affected nuptiality and fertility more than mortality. While the transition is complex and not uniform across nations, there is little doubt that its first phase in the Nordic region was reduced mortality.6 However, the debate about why it declined, and the reduction in crises mortality after the Napoleonic Wars remains open.7 Infant mortality made up a significant proportion of gross mortality and often spearheaded the demographic transition.8 Their need for special nourishment and the high mortality among infants makes it likely that economic factors influenced their mortality in different ways than for other age groups.9 By distinguishing between age groups, we can in the next round find analogue correlations for the mortality of older groups with data about economic trends, such as those published for Norway.10

Mortality and Economy

variety of resources influence infant care: breast-milk versus artificial nourishment, clean water, waste disposal, housing quality, parental ed- A ucation, social capital, etc.: in sum, “the resources of reproduction.”11 These resources can to some extent be regarded as economic, but the present paper will limit itself to a discussion of two main aspects of economic resources relating to infants. First there is the economic standing of the society, typically the nation at large, usually measured in macro-economic terms such as the Gross Domestic Product (gdp). Second, there is the economic status of the family (family income), or the household head’s occupational status. The two levels 106 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) are connected and family-level indicators may tell much about the distribution of resources available in the society’s macro-economy. A nation may make its riches unavailable to the majority of families, and thus unavailable for infant care, but economic resources may benefit infants through alternative channels, e.g. through infant care centers and hospitals. This article includes findings based on source material from a wide time span, for countries ranging from modern, post-industrial nations through developing countries to historical societies. Are their economies, occupational group- ings and overall conditions for infants and their families too different to make comparisons realistic or valuable? This question is valid, especially when we discuss the underlying causes of infant death or survival. Obviously, the complex web of factors causing differential rates of infant mortality changed over time.12 However, it can still be maintained that insights about how some countries reduced their infant mortality can be of value for the developing part of the world where infant mortality rates are close to 100 per 1,000 live births.13 Further- more, insights from fieldwork in high infant mortality settings may strengthen our understanding of why infant mortality was previously so high in today’s developed countries, and why the rates varied significantly both geographically and chronologically. Another motivation is the common physiology shared by all women and infants. For instance, diarrhea type diseases were a serious killer of infants historically, and still are in present-day developing countries. Defining infant mortality seems simple: the proportion of live born children who die before reaching their first birthday. However, when we operationalize the concept, several source-critical questions emerge. Were stillborn infants included in the number of children born or dead? How was stillbirth defined, e.g. were live infants considered stillborn if they died during their first day—as was the case in 19th century Norway? Are the records of births and deaths complete, or were certain social groups omitted?14 Are surveys representative of the whole country or do they leave out, e.g., ethnic groups in remote areas? When using retrospective census variables, are there details for infants or must we combine them with older age groups?15 Whereas most Scandinavian records are complete enough for the study of social differences in imr after the Napoleonic Wars,16 this is more problematic in much of the rest of Europe until the mid–19th century. Family reconstitution data show how under-registration of infant deaths also affects the results based on full count Scandinavian records.17 Where full reconstitution data is missing, it is difficult to evaluate the representativeness of the burial records, although the distribution of infant deaths during the year may alert us to lacunae in these sources.18 The surveys and censuses we rely on in most developing countries may be unrepresentative of some population groups and not fine-grained enough to capture local developments. They do, however, give a consistent enough picture to be trusted for long-term national developments. In this article I shall limit Tangencies • 107 myself to a discussion of all infant deaths (i.e. those taking place under one year), although it would be interesting to juxtapose the factors determining the different patterns of stillbirths, neonatal (deaths under one month) and post-neonatal mortality (deaths in the second to twelfth months) in different societies.

Nation Level Correlations

tatistical analysis can show more comprehensively the relationship between the national economy and infant mortality rates. For the 20th century we have Gross Domestic Product per inhabitant for an increasing S 19 number of nations, and national imr is available for somewhat fewer countries. The problems mentioned above apply to both statistical series, and it disturbs the analysis that the number of countries with the necessary aggregates decreases when moving backwards in time. While the available figures may be inaccurate, they still give a roughly correct picture of the level of the national economy and the level of infant mortality. Infant mortality rates were found for up to 64 countries, which could be matched with historical gdp figures for all but Iceland, Northern Ireland and Barbados. Moving five-year averages were computed from the yearly infant mortality rates, while such smoothing is unnecessary for the more stable gdp. Pearson’s r correlating national gdp and imr was computed for every quinquennium from 1890 through 1998. In Figure 1, the squares represent correlations plotted against the left scale, while the number of countries included in each year is plotted as circles against the right scale. The rightmost part of the squares show stable correlations since World War II with coefficients around or above 0.6; thus, from a third to half of the variation in imr can be explained by the gdp per inhabitant. For the period before 1930, however, Pearson’s r is lower, varying erratically from quinquennium to quinquennium. It seems that the connection between national economy and infant mortality grew stronger before the First World War, but the war reversed the trend. We can ascribe the lower correlation for the postwar years to the effect of the war and to the Spanish influenza, which raised mortality also in wealthy nations. When correlating the 1920 figures for national imr and gdp without adjusting with moving averages, the correlation is close to zero. Thus, it was difficult to reduce the effect of this epidemic on infants even with adequate economic resources. The high coefficients from 1930 to 1940 may be due to resources in wealthy nations being used to launch effective campaigns for the rapid improvement of infant survival once the postwar crises were over, and a more homogeneous group of countries provided the necessary statistics before wwii. 108 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Figure 1. Quinquennial Pearson’s r between national gdp and imr r 1885–1998 represented by dark squares N

r N 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1998 0 60

1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1998 -0,1 0 60 50 -0,2 -0,1 50 40 -0,3 -0,2 r 40 -0,4 30 N -0,3 r -0,5 -0,4 30 N 20 -0,6 -0,5 20 10 -0,7 -0,6

10 -0,8 0 -0,7

Note: Number of observations represented by light circles. Confer also explanation in the text. -0,8 0

The Positive Role of Economic Resources

he message above was that infant survival may benefit from economic prosperity, although the outlier nations and the historical data warn us T that the correspondence is far from perfect. Since Malthus, many publications argue that economic factors cause the mortality cycles, and we can present only a few here. In his classic study The Modern Rise of Population, Thomas McKeown stressed improved nutrition rather than healthcare as the principal cause of mortality decline in general (he devoted less attention to infant mortality per se). Only from the 1930s, he believed that medical advances played a significant role, with the exception of smallpox vaccination. Even if his agenda was to stress the importance of economic improvements and social reforms rather than expensive medical measures for increased longevity in the industrialized world, his views are relevant for demographic policies in contemporary developing countries. McKeown highlighted the combined effect of nutrition and illness, stressing that epidemics and other diseases killed many malnourished persons.20 McKeown met severe criticism pinpointing the synergy between nutrition, health and the role of societal advances behind the mortality decline from the Tangencies • 109 early 19th century.21 Nor did he account for the effect of nutrition in infancy on health later in life, or that the survival chances of a mother’s offspring might decline if she was born during a crisis.22 Edward A. Wrigley emphasized how industrial methods enabled the population to produce and buy more food and other resources with less effort. One consequence was fewer stillbirths because the improved economy gave mothers a better diet.23 There are several problems with this hypothesis—primarily that it drew on available neonatal mortality rates rather than stillbirth data. Changing fertility and infant mortality could alternatively be due to increased breastfeeding. In a local study, So⁄ lvi Sogner found increased incomes from timber export to nearby Sweden to be the likely background factor explaining how infant (and female) mortality declined in the parish of Rendalen in southeastern Norway, in the decades after 1791. Men’s forestry work was tough, which might explain why male mortality did not decline.24 The Eurasia project also investigated infant mortality during periods of economic crises in the 18th and 19th centuries in parts of Sweden, Belgium and Italy.25 Short-term economic stress did not affect infant mortality, but it affected death rates among older children—most severely in the winter and spring. It seems the food shortage affected the mothers’ ability to breastfeed infants less than the direct effect, which the crises had on older children. In the Belgian and Swedish localities, more unclear indications of excess mortality among the poor were found than among the wealthy. A selective fertility effect may explain this—poor women were less fecund during periods of economic stress. Just like in the Dutch hunger winter, undernourished women could not conceive (cf. below). Also, infant deaths among the poor may more likely go unnoticed because these events or their social status were not noted in the sources. Since the deaths of infants and children up to two years old were merged in the Eurasia project, these differentials became less clear. The positive effect of economic growth and welfare on infant survival is stronger today than in past centuries, due to the information and healthcare available in rich societies. The success of Japan’s imr declining to record levels from high values in the 1950s is unthinkable without the parallel development of the country’s economy. We can illustrate the other ends of the resources and imr continua with the Arusha region in Tanzania, where the independent variable most strongly predicting perinatal mortality was the circumference around the mother’s upper arm.26 Thus, hard-working and less well-fed mothers bore babies with lower survival potential. This may explain the historically higher infant mortality among the land-owning peasant families compared to the landless: the work of peasant women, even when pregnant, was more in demand 110 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) on big than on small farms. In 19th century towns, however, the lower social groups’ infants suffered from low birth weights due to mothers being over- worked and undernourished.27 While these cross-sectional studies establish a positive relationship between economic resources and infant survival, this relationship becomes weaker when looking at the development of the economy. In the World Health Chart, China, for instance, moved nearly vertically during recent decades, indicating significant imr improvement without much change in its gdp per inhabitant. Inspecting the constituent factors of the Human Development Index (hdi), we find that when the hdi improved for most developing countries, it is more due to improved life expectancy than to changing economic indicators. Thus, even today there is not always a consistent positive relationship between changes in the economy and changes in mortality.28 A study from the mid–1980s attempted to correlate welfare measures with infant mortality and life expectancy in 99 Third World Countries.29 Per capita income correlated positively with the mortality measures, but the effect of other variables was stronger when measured at the national level. First came the proportion of females in primary schools one generation earlier, before other education and family planning measures. The relative number of physicians scored significantly higher than per capita income, indicating that the employment of a nation’s wealth is more important than national wealth. We should not forget, however, that a basic level of economic means is needed to provide for the necessary education, health services etc. Of especial importance is the provision of a nutritional floor during a woman’s pregnancy and lactation. High infant mortality rates in developing countries are often combined with low education, poor hygiene, lack of sanitation and health programs that also hinder economic development. How consistent is this opposite effect when we consider historical studies of countries which are now industrialized?

Unclear or Negative Effects of Economic Resources on Infant Mortality

errenoud found parallel developments in infant mortality throughout the Francophone area for the mid–18th century, hypothesizing that improved infant mortality might be explained by warmer climate after “the P 30 little ice age” in Europe. The relationship between mortality and climate is complex, however. Warmer summers may produce better harvests, but also bac- teria in food and milk, provoking diarrhea in infants. Thus, it is hard to compute significant correlations between mortality and temperature, although there were connections between summer temperatures and infant diarrhea casualties in late Tangencies • 111 nineteenth century English towns.31 Thus, good conditions for food production may affect infant mortality negatively. Turpeinen studied the high infant mortality (more than 200 deaths per 1,000 births) in Finland from 1749 to 1865.32 The annual imr fluctuations did not correlate with the success of the harvests. Rather, the highest imr was found in wealthier districts, and the moderate decline district-wise in the Finnish imr can hardly be explained by rising living standards.33 Pitkänen (1983) found higher infant mortality among the lower than the higher social classes, particularly in Finnish towns, linked to the higher illegitimacy among the poor. Opposite social differentials were found on the Swedish side of the border, an area dominated by ethnic Finns, in Brändström’s (1984) study of the dramatic infant mortality decline in the Haparanda area. The campaign to change childcare practices, particularly the introduction of breastfeeding in the 1840s and 1850s, succeeded through the dedicated work of the physician and the midwife.34 Infant mortality declined first among the middle class in Haparanda town, then among the proletariat and last among the more affluent peasants. This group-specific development was due to the midwife’s employment first being used by the Swedish urban elite, and last by the peasants, who had to pay for her services. In addition, easier access to cow’s milk among the peasants made them prioritize women’s work over breastfeeding. Health workers’ campaigns help explain why infant mortality declined rapidly in many localities, and such local factors determined what social groups pioneered the decline.35 19th century Sweden lacked a correlation between measures of wealth and infant mortality levels at the regional level, local studies showing lower infant mortality among poor crofters than among wealthier people on neighboring farms.36 A national study of infant mortality differentials, involving linked individual level 1801 census and parish register data for 48 of the 325 parishes in Norway, showed a somewhat higher mortality rate among peasants than the property- less.37 The explanations were consistent breastfeeding among mothers lacking cow’s milk and farmer families’ exposure to contagion in more centrally located homes. Positive effects on the epidemic climate from the more spacious farm- houses are difficult to demonstrate. The social differences in mortality levels were moderate, however, and the social ranging of occupations can be mislead- ing. Similar findings emerged from a study of Alsace from 1750 to 1870, with only small surplus mortality among the children of workers and servants, but the demographic differences between the Catholics and Protestants were notable, the latter having significantly lower imr.38 There were also significant differences in mortality between the religious groups in the city of Ekaterinburg, Russia, during the decades leading up to World War I, but here the Catholic minority had lower infant mortality.39 112 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Higher infant mortality in urban than in rural areas may also indicate that richer places might have unfavorable infant mortality. In late 19th century Eng- land and France, mortality declined a couple of decades earlier for older children than for infants, because the older ones enjoyed better living conditions based on incomes from industrialization.40 Infants, however, suffered because their mothers worked more. Also, there were more illegitimate births among the many female in-migrants to cities who could not provide adequate infant care and breastfeeding. In addition, we should consider the rising urban levels of pollution. A study of late 19th century Preston in England focused on industrial smoke and the deleterious impact of flies enjoying horse dung resulting from urban transportation.41 This enlarged the diarrhea problem, while the smoke ex- acerbated pulmonary deceases. High infant mortality in the areas with polluting industry has also been found in a study of contemporary Indonesia.42 Other factors could offset the unfortunate circumstances of urban babies. In the 19th century towns of Reykjavik (Iceland) and Hammerfest (Northern Nor- way) infant mortality was lower than in the surrounding countryside. Women there had easier access to childcare information (e.g. about breast-feeding), while the surrounding fishing villages were over-populated with temporary in-migrat- ing fishermen and experienced a tougher epidemic climate.43 In 19th century Venice, the Jews had significantly lower imr than other ethnic groups. People in the congested ghetto were poor, but followed strict cleanliness rules prescribed by Kosher norms. Under tough circumstances, nutrition can play a complex role. During the 1945 winter hunger in the Netherlands, perinatal mortality did not increase. One explanation is that only the better-off were fecund, so the foodless simply could not get pregnant.44 The lack of fit between business cycles and long-term infant mortality rates in 20th century Western Europe indicates that above a certain level of access to nutrition and other economic resources, extras have little influence on infant mortality. In both North and South America, unexpected relationships between the economy and child mortality levels have been found. The us studies of late 19th century child mortality, based on retrospective variables in the 1900 census, found better survival chances than expected among black babies in poor districts because they were protected by their rural environment.45 A less quantitatively- oriented study from the Nord-Este region in Brazil during the second half of the 20th century shows how replacing a peasant economy with industry work gave the mothers less chances to breastfeed, resulting in increased infant mortality. This development was reinforced by cultural factors when fathers sought to help by providing infant formula food.46 The intricate nature of social and economic influences on differential infant mortality rates can be further illustrated by a study of recent Pakistani immi- Tangencies • 113 grants to Oslo. On the basis of a detailed birth register including ethnic ancestry, it was found that children born to intermarried cousins had higher death rates than Pakistani children born to unrelated spouses in Oslo, because genetic characteristics were strengthened by a more limited gene pool. Cousin intermarriage is favored for economic reasons in many Pakistani families, since it increases the chances that family farms can be inherited undivided.47 Thus, even today own- ership of a positive economic asset can become a negative factor, causing lower survival chances for the infants. The mid-nineteenth century social scientist Eilert Sundt made a similar point about marriage strategies among land-holding peasants in certain districts of contemporary Norway. Two farmers would enter an agreement to let sons and daughters marry into each other’s farms recipro- cally. Thus the farms could stay intact while at the same time two children from each family gained favorable livelihoods.48 In the small farming communities this might involve marriage partners related by blood ties. To what extent this increased infant mortality is a matter awaiting future research.

Socio-economic Inequality

o what extent did infant mortality levels depend alternatively on the general level of economic resources versus the distribution of those resources amongst all social classes? T th Infant mortality was not a neutral political question. In late 19 century Co- penhagen, the campaign to reduce the capital’s high infant mortality rates encountered stern opposition from the conservative city physician, arguing that helping the single mothers care for children would increase the social problems among a growing proletariat and support bastardy. By the 1880s his policy was deemed so reactionary that he had to resign.49 Already from 1763 men were obliged to pay for illegitimate children in Denmark, Norway and Iceland. Although reckoned among the roots of the welfare state, this remained much of a formality until the 20th century when legitimate and illegitimate children received equal inheritance rights, and illegitimate infants were cared for in special mothers’ centers. Similarly, the lack of will to interfere with family matters within a setting of liberalistic economic policies has been blamed for bringing about the relatively high imr in 20th century usa.50 The British debate about the role social capital played for the development of mortality in England during the 18th and 19th century covers adult, child and infant mortality.51 By social capital is meant measures implemented by the society to protect its citizens against hardships such as famines. Mercantilist 114 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) measures which worked in growing industrial centers such as Birmingham and Manchester in the 18th century were weakened in the more liberalist 19th century. For infants the resources in the social network surrounding mothers could neutralize the negative effect of illegitimacy.52 Social capital can, therefore, affect infant mortality different from deaths among older persons. In the urban centers social capital was more significant for survival among the children born to unwed mothers than for the mothers themselves.53 The special trajectory for infant mortality is part of the reason why mortality development in the abovementioned industrial centers was different in London and in the countryside. Most researchers agree that social equality is correlated with infant survival in contemporary developed nations and that, e.g., the lower infant mortality in Sweden than in Britain can be explained by a flatter social distribution in Scan- dinavia.54 Another study compared infant mortality in four developing countries with their economic potential and distributive policies at the turn of the millennium.55

Table 1. The relationship between gnp per person and the imr (deaths under one year per 1,000 live births) in four developing countries

gnp per person High imr Low imr High ($ 7,138–17,016) Brazil (35) South Korea (8) Low ($ 1,516 B 3,460) Bangladesh (70) Sri Lanka (16)

The main point in Table 1 is the absence of a relationship between the levels of these nations’ wealth and infant mortality. While both Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were among the poorest developing countries, only Bangladesh had the high infant mortality level (70 per thousand children born) that one would accordingly expect. By contrast, South Korea had an imr of only 8 per thousand, whereas Brazil still had one of 35.. While Sri Lankan and South Korean authorities have managed to distribute more wealth, Brazil and Bangladesh are characterized by large socioeconomic differences. These differences are rooted in the political systems. Both Brazil and Bangladesh were ruled by military dictators, in Brazil supported by the ‘triple alliance’ between multinational corporations, state bu- reaucracy and local bourgeoisie, distributing means of production and benefits unevenly. imr levels peaked at 122 per 1,000 in the northeastern province, while rates in the central, urban areas were below average. In Bangladesh political decisions have tended to favor rich farmers, ignoring the miserable conditions of the landless. Bangladesh experienced little trickle-down effect from any economic growth. Both countries relied on commercial healthcare systems providing services for those who can pay. Tangencies • 115

In Sri Lanka and South Korea land reforms resulted in more resources being made available to the peasants. In Sri Lanka, egalitarian policies stemmed from a democratic climate, with widespread literacy, universal adult suffrage and shifting governments. The population has general access to the government’s network of healthcare institutions. The healthcare system in South Korea, however, is different and dominated by a private sector with large traditional disparities in availability and quality between the urban and rural areas. The state has, however, improved sanitary conditions, water supply and health insurance programs and educated many health workers. South Korea achieved lower imr than the usa according to cia World Factbook statistics. Table 2 bears out the importance of resource distribution for infant mortality as well as its limitations. In Brazil and South Korea the imr figures are significantly lower than in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, due to the higher gross income levels in the former pair of countries. Accordingly, infant survival improved more rapidly in the two richest of the four countries. Kidanemariam’s study would have given a better basis for evaluating the relative importance of economic growth and more equal distribution of resources if he had supported the quantitative information with more evidence. It is interesting to note that Sri Lanka is one of few developing countries holding a century-long imr series. Countries which early on financed such statistics tend to have low imr levels today.

Table 2. Infant mortality rates and key independent variables for four developing countries

Bangladesh Brazil Sri Lanka South Korea gnp per inhabitant 1999 $ 1,516 $ 7,138 $ 3,460 $ 17,016 0.66 0.60 0.35 0.34 / 0.31 Gini (1978) (1976) (1973) (1978) Female illiteracy 1980 83.3 27.2 20.5 11.2 Female illiteracy 1990 77.0 18.8 15.4 6.6 imr 1985 per thousand 123 68 30 27 imr 1999 per thousand 70 35 16 8 imr 2006 per thousand 61 28 14 6

Note: The Gini index is zero with complete equality, 1 with complete inequality in the distribution of land or income. gnp and imr data for 1999 and 2006: cf. cia World Factbook. Other figures from Kidanemariam.

Similarly, Caldwell listed a number of countries with impressive life expectancy relative to their gross national product per inhabitant, e.g. communist countries 116 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) such as China or Cuba and others like Kerala or Costa Rica. This is explained by their allocation of resources for education, especially for women, universal provision of basic medical facilities, including neonatal care and a reasonable level of nutrition for the whole population.56 However, especially developing nations in Sub-Saharan Africa were far from reaching their millennial infant mortality rate goals. Medical researchers are no longer optimistic about the eradication of infectious diseases.57 This is to a large degree due to poverty and to international economic agencies forcing the countries to cut spending on basic health and education.

Conclusion

tudies of contemporary infant mortality generally find that access to economic resources lowers infant mortality at all levels of aggregation. Im- S proving the economy usually has beneficial consequences for infant survival, and on average both rich nations and rich families experience relatively few infant deaths. But the connection between infant mortality and economic measures is not consistent and strong even today, when only a basic level of resources is needed to provide adequate infant care. The equal distribution of wealth is a crucial factor and non-economic factors such as the extent of female education correlates highly with imr. Historically, the connection between access to economic resources and infant mortality grows weaker when we move backwards in time, whether we study the national or the household level. Several historical studies show how access to economic resources could be associated with higher infant mortality rates. The results from studies connecting infant mortality with social status are contradictory, and one reason for juxtaposing contemporary and historical infant mortality research is the quite common finding that in past times, infants in relatively poor families experienced somewhat lower mortality than infants in richer families. The reasons for this are complex, but one important factor was that before the 20th century most people were unaware of those adequate childcare methods by which a good economy—be it national or familial—could be turned into optimal childcare. This neutralized the potential beneficial effect of economic resources on reducing infant mortality. Consistent breastfeeding forced by lack of alternatives and living in remote locations with a milder epidemic climate could further reduce mortality risks among infants in relatively poor families. Also, since the wealthy groups used to be relatively small, the methods and data necessary to distinguish the poor from the rich in historical sources may hide some of the effects of the economy, and chances are that more burials among children from poor homes went unregistered. Tangencies • 117

As more historical studies measure the strength of the independent variables behind infant mortality, it will become increasingly possible to employ meta- analysis to get a clearer picture of the reasons why historical studies relating infant mortality to economic resources are so contradictory. A lesson for social policy in developing countries trying to lower their infant mortality is that although improving a nation’s economy may be necessary, it is not sufficient. Distributing a nation’s resources more equally and teaching mothers adequate childcare are just as important measures. The infant mortality decline in the rich part of the Western world happened over many decades and against a background of improving economies. In addition, the trigger effect of individual reformers, often educated midwives employed locally, must not be forgotten. Their services should be replicated in the contemporary developing world, since it would make adequate and inexpensive infant care available to all mothers. q

Notes

1. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Economic Survey of Europe in 1969, Part 1. Structural Trends and Prospects in the European Economy (New York, 1970). 2. The relationship between economic measures and survival rates is pedagogically dis- played in the software application World Health Chart which is shareware at http:// www.gapminder.org/downloads (accessed 9 February 2018). 3. David F. Good, The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire 1750–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 149. 4. Samuel H. Preston, “Population studies of mortality,” Population Studies 50, 3 (1996): 525–536. 5. John C. Caldwell, “Cultural and Social Factors Influencing Mortality Levels in De- veloping Countries,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sci- ence 510, 1 (July 1990): 44–59. 6. Ståle Dyrvik, Norsk historie 1625–1814: vegar til sjo⁄ lvstende (Oslo: Samlaget, 1999). 7. Tommy Bengtsson, “Den demografiska transitionen och samhällsomvandlingen,” in Sverige—en social och ekonomisk historia, eds. Susanna Hedenborg and Mats Morell (Stockholm: Studentlitteratur, 2006), 117–143. 8. Sören Edvinsson, Ólöf Garðarsdóttir, and Gunnar Thorvaldsen, “Infant mortality in the Nordic Countries 1780–1930,” Continuity and Change 23, 3 (2008): 457–485. 9. So⁄ lvi Sogner et al., “The Rural Reward: Infant Mortality in Norway during the Demographic Transition: A Case Study,” in Historical Studies in Mortality Decline, eds. William H. Hubbard et al. (Oslo: Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi/Novus, 2002), 79–95; Gunnar Thorvaldsen, “Rural Infant Mortality in Nineteenth Century Norway,” in Historical Studies in Mortality Decline, 43–78. 118 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

10. Sven-Erik Mamelund, “Mortality and Life Expectancy in Rendalen and Norway 1770–1900: Period and Cohort Perspectives,” in Nordic Demography in History and Present-Day Society, eds. Lars-Göran Tedebrand and Peter Sköld, Scandinavian Pop- ulation Studies, vol. 12 (Umeå: Umeå University, 2001), 201–231; Ola H. Grytten, “Norwegian Consumer Price Index in a Scandinavian Perspective,” European Review of Economic History 8, 1 (2004): 61–79. 11. Susanna Hedenborg, Reproduktionens resurser: spädbarnsvård i Stockholm 1750–1850 (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2004). 12. Tommy Bengtsson and Christer Lund, “Child and Infant Mortality in the Nordic Countries Prior to 1900,” Lund Papers in Economic History 66 (1999): 1–25. 13. cia, cia World Factbook, cf. http://www.photius.com/wfb1999/rankings/infant_mor- tality_0.html (accessed 9 February 2018). 14. Bengtsson and Lund; Ragnhild Ho⁄ gset, “Begravelsesskikker og trosforestillinger i det gamle bondesamfunnet—en feilkilde når en bruker de gamle kirkebo⁄ kene til å studere do⁄ delighet?” Historisk Tidsskrift 68, 2 (1990). 15. Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines, Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nine- teenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 16. Gunnar Thorvaldsen, Håndbok i registrering og bruk av historiske persondata (Oslo: Tano Aschehoug, 1996). (The Danish, Icelandic and Norwegian church records were standardized with forms in 1812.) 17. Bengtsson and Lund, 14–15. 18. Edward A. Wrigley, “Births and Baptisms: The Use of Anglican Baptism Registers as a Source of Information about the Numbers of Births in England before the Be- ginning of Civil Registration,” Population Studies 31, 2 (1977): 281–312. 19. The Conference Board and Groningen Growth and Development Centre, To- tal Economy Database, January 2007, http://www.ggdc.net (accessed 9 February 2018); Brian R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe 1750–1993 (Lon- don: Macmillan, 1998). 20. Thomas McKeown, The Modern Rise of Population (London: Edward Arnold, 1976); Eli Fure, “Thomas McKeown og debatten om årsakene til do⁄ delighetsnedgangen i Vesten,” Heimen 42, 1 (2005): 37–48. 21. Roger Schofield, “The Modern Rise of Population by Thomas McKeown,” Population Studies 31, 1 (1977): 179–181. 22. Eli Fure, “Is It the Mother’s Health that Really Matters? Infant Mortality in the Par- ish of Asker and Bærum 1814–1878,” in Pathways of the Past: Essays in Honour of So⁄ lvi Sogner on her 70th Anniversary 15. March 2002, eds. Hilde Sandvik, Kari Telste, and Gunnar Thorvaldsen (Oslo: Novus Forlag, 2002), 73–90. 23. E. A. Wrigley, “Explaining the Rise in Marital Fertility in England in the ‘Long’ Eighteenth Century,” in Poverty, Progress and Population (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 317–350. 24. So⁄ lvi Sogner, “A Case Study of Women’s Role and Infant Mortality,” in Women’s Politics and Women in Politics: In Honour of Ida Blom, eds. So⁄ lvi Sogner and Gro Hagemann (Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag, 2000), 325. Tangencies • 119

25. Tommy Bengtsson, Cameron Campbell, James Lee, and Robert Woods, Life under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standards in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900 (Cambridge: mit Press, 2004). 26. Svend G. Hinderaker, “Perinatal Mortality in Northern Rural Tanzania,” Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition 21, 3 (2003): 8–17. 27. William H. Hubbard, “The Urban Penalty: Towns and Mortality in the Nineteenth- Century Norway,” Continuity and Change 15, 2 (2000): 331–350. 28. Nicholas Crafts, “The Human Development Index, 1870–1999: Some Revised Es- timates,” European Review of Economic History 6, 3 (2002): 395–405. 29. John C. Caldwell, “Routes to Low Mortality in Poor Countries,” Population and Development Review 12, 2 (1986): 171–220. 30. Alfred Perrenoud, “La mortalité des enfants en Europe francophone: état de la question,” Annales de demographie historique (1994): 79–96. 31. Michael Drake, “The life and times of infant diarrhea,” The sixth Local Population Studies Society conference, University of Hertfordshire in St. Albans, 2006. 32. Oiva Turpeinen, “Infant mortality in Finland 1749–1865,” Scandinavian Econom- ic History Review 27, 1 (1979), 1–21; Beatrice Moring, “Motherhood, Milk and Money: Infant Mortality in Pre-Industrial Finland,” Social History of Medicine 11, 2 (1998): 177–196. 33. Kari Pitkänen, “Infant Mortality Decline in a Changing Society,” Yearbook of Popula- tion Research in Finland 21 (1983): 46–74. 34. Anders Brändström, De kärlekslösa mödrarna: spädbarnsdödligheten i Sverige under 1800-talet med särskilt hänsyn till Nedertorneå (Umeå: Almqvist & Wiksell Internati- onal, 1984). 35. Anne Lo⁄ kke, Do⁄ den i barndommen (Ko⁄ benhavn: Gyldendal, 1998); Gunnar Thor- valdsen, “Best i verden? Spedbarndo⁄ deligheten på Helgeland midt på 1800-tallet,” Heimen 40 (2003): 37–47. 36. Jan Sundin, “Culture, Class, and Infant Mortality during the Swedish Mortality Transition, 1750–1850,” Social Science History 19, 1 (Spring, 1995): 117–145, cf. 119–120. 37. Rolf Engelsen, “Mortalitetsdebatten og sosiale skilnader i mortalitet,” Historisk Tidsskrift 62, 2 (1983): 161–202. 38. Kevin McQuillan, Culture, religion, and demographic behaviour: Catholics and Luther- ans in Alsace, 1750–1870 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). 39. Elena Glavatskaya, Julia Borovik, and Gunnar Thorvaldsen, “Urban infant mortality and religion at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century: the case of Ekaterinburg, Russia,” The History of the Family 23, 1 (2018): 135–153. 40. Robert Woods, The Demography of Victorian England and Wales (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 2000). 41. Nigel Morgan, “Infant mortality, flies and horses in later nineteenth-century towns: a case study of Preston,” Continuity and Change 17, 1 (2002): 97–132. 42. Maya Federman, “Industrialization and Infant Mortality,” uc Berkeley Working Paper, no. C05-140, 2005. 120 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

43. Ólöf Garðarsdóttir, Saving the Child: Regional, cultural and social aspects of the infant mortality decline in Iceland, 1770–1920, Report from the Demographic Data Base, Umeå University, 19 (Umeå: Umeå University, 2002); Nina P. Mo⁄ lmann, “Spedbarnsdo⁄ deligheten i en ishavsby: Hammerfest 1801–1900,” Master thesis, University of Oslo, 2004; Gunnar Thorvaldsen, “Northern, Eastern or Urban Pen- alty? Aspects of Late 19th Mortality in the North of Norway,” in Nordic Demography in History and Present-Day Society, 289–306. 44. Renzo Derosas, “Watch Out for the Children! Differential Infant Mortality of Jews and Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Venice,” Historical Methods 36, 3 (2003): 109; Nicky Hart, “Famine, Maternal Nutrition and Infant Mortality: A Re-Examination of the Dutch Hunger Winter,” Population Studies 47, 1 (1993): 27–46. 45. Preston and Haines. 46. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Bra- zil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 47. Camilla Stoltenberg, Per Magnus, Anders Skrondal, and Rolv Terje Lie, “Consan- guinity and recurrence risk of birth defects: a population-based study,” American Journal of Public Health 82, 5 (1999), 423–428. 48. Michael Drake, Population and Society in Norway 1735–1865 (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1969), 136–137; Eilert Sundt, Harham—et exempel fra fis- keridistriktene (Oslo, 1858), 47. 49. Lo⁄ kke. 50. Inger Elisabeth Haavet, “Milk, Mothers and Marriage: Family Policy Formation in Norway and Neighbouring Countries in the Twentieth Century,” in The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Appraisal, eds. Niels Finn Christiansen, Klaus Petersen, Nils Edling, and Per Haave (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), 189– 214; Alisa Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890–1920 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). 51. Peter Razzel and Christine Spence, “Social capital and the history of mortality in Britain,” International Journal of Epidemiology 34, 2 (2005): 477–478; Simon Szreter and Michael Woolcock, “Health by association? Social capital, social theory, and the political economy of public health,” International Journal of Epidemiology 33, 4 (2004): 650–667. 52. Sogner et al., 79–95. 53. Leslie Page Moch, Paths to the City: Regional Migration in Nineteenth-Century France, New Approaches to Social Science History, 2 (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1983). 54. Nick Spencer, “The effect of income inequality and macro-level social policy on infant mortality and low birthweight in developed countries—a preliminary system- atic review,” Child: Care, Health & Development 30, 6 (2004): 699–709. 55. Andemariam Kidanemariam, A Comparative Study of Infant Mortality in Four Devel- oping Countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, South Korea and Sri Lanka (Lewiston–Queens- town–Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003). 56. Caldwell, “Routes to Low Mortality.” Tangencies • 121

57. S. Jay Olshansky, “Infectious Diseases: New and Ancient Threats to World Health,” Population Bulletin 52, 2 (1997): 1–58.

Abstract Infant Mortality Now and Then: The Dual Role of Economic Resources

This article attempts to show that comparisons between historic and contemporary research on infant mortality are difficult, since economic causal factors played quite different roles in contemporary and historical settings. Economic resources can contribute to infant survival in both positive and negative ways, and mortality corresponds differently to economic factors according to age group. If these caveats are taken into consideration, today’s campaigns to improve childcare in developing countries may still learn from historical studies of declining infant mortality in industrializing regions. Results based on individual level data as well as national aggregate data are discussed.

Keywords infant mortality, economy, socio-economic inequality, statistical analysis The Nurse and the Rural World A Successful Relation E l e n a B Ãr b u l e s c u for Biomedicine

Biomedicine has been thriving in “I didn’t know who helped Romania since the middle of the 20th us, maybe God!” century. What was it that made this possible? That was the question underlying the argumentation in the present article. As the title suggests, this article aims at outlining the very fine connections between a special category of personnel within the biomedical system and the beneficiaries of this system, the patients, in a particular place— the Transylvanian rural area. In other words, we shall talk about the relation between the people living in the rural area in Cluj County, Transylvania, and the biomedical system—with reference to the special category of medium level personnel, the nurse. The biomedical system had been imposed on them before the beginning of the communist regime in Romania, but definitely not Elena Bãrbulescu at such a large scale. Senior researcher at the Folklore Archive In a few previous articles1 I was Institute of the Romanian Academy, Cluj- Napoca. Her main interests are in gender concerned mostly with the negative studies, ethnology, medical anthropology side, or indeed with what might be and rural studies. Editor of the vol. Peo- called the issues that generated a rejec- ple and the State: Divergent Medical tion of biomedicine by the people liv- Discourses (2011). ing in rural areas. It had not been my Tangencies • 123 purpose to seek the negative, this just came out from the interviews I had with the villagers. In order to restore the balance, but mainly because it was hard to believe that the negative image is the only one possible, in this article I became more interested in bringing arguments favoring the positive2 side of the relation between biomedicine and the rural areas. My entire argumentation was based on the interviews with with people living in eight villages of Cluj County, conducted in 2009, 2010, and 2014, and it was intended as a qualitative research, assuming that if key members of a community spoke of holding to certain beliefs and practices, many others would act similarly. The villages chosen were at variable distances from the city of Cluj- Napoca, a major biomedical center—with plenty of clinics, private or government-funded, and a prestigious medical university. Accordingly, some villages were peri-urban to Cluj-Napoca, some at the farthest distance from Cluj (on the fringes of the county), and others were villages at a median distance between the two categories. This item—distance—has proved irrelevant for our research because, surprisingly, it has not brought differences regarding the acceptance or rejection of biomedicine. People living in the most remote parts of the county, that is, very far from Cluj-Napoca, have presented the same perception of biomedicine as the people living in the villages next to the city. The distance was calculated according to the administrative limits of the county, and thus the farthest village would be at approximately 60 km from Cluj-Napoca, and the nearest at about 12 km. We interviewed people of different ages—the youngest born in 1975, the oldest born in 1922—about their illness and healing experiences over an extended period of time: from 1948 till the present day. A part of this research was financially supported through a grant,3 the rest was done in the framework of the institution where I currently hold a position as a researcher.4 This item of age has also failed to present differences at a general level, but some of these can still be noted in some extraordinary cases. We interviewed people of both sexes, without factoring in how a woman’s perception of biomedicine and her relation to it would be different than those of a man. This remains to be investigated in a new project. Summing up, the people living in the studied rural area had a strong tendency to perceive and relate to the biomedical system in a similar way, regardless of the physical distance to a biomedical center or the age of the people having health troubles. The core of this article consists of the local5 situation of a particular space and timeframe. Still, we could find similarities for some of the biomedical policies discussed in this article, and I would mention here Samuel Ramer’s article referring to the same program of schooling the nurses in Russia, long before a similar program was implemented in Romania.6 The main focus of my article remains, as initially intended, the possibility to bring forward a particular way of 124 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) life, in a particular space and a particular timeframe, with powerful social implications. Accordingly, we acquired a certain local knowledge that mattered, and performed an in-depth analysis of an important topic regarding the relation of a citizen with the state, in the light of one aspect that in recent years has become one of the most important fields of debate: human health. In this context, it is also definitely important that in Romania, according to the Census of 2012,7 still only 54% of the population lives in urban areas, giving the rural population important weight in the overall picture. Thus, the (bio) medical practices, used by almost half the population of the country, become even more important. Village life suffered a great deal of changes during the period chosen for study and mentioned above. Two of these changes have had major effects upon the general life of the population, and in particular upon the relation with biomedicine: the first was the advent of communism, and the second was the fall of communism, both bringing significant macro-level changes. Were those changes affecting the micro-level and, if they did, what would that process look like? Did a new system replace the old one for good? According to the communist statistics, the answer would undoubtedly be a definite “yes.” Going into details, the answer might be a little more ambiguous, even though the great success of communism in Romania was incontestable. Still, shifting our interest towards the individual level, the truth was that people did not change overnight, and regardless of the restrictions applied they still kept some knowledge, habits, and emotions, preserving oases of specific ways of life inside the system, but away from its vigilant eye. I would place the medical and healing beliefs in this category. The new humanist literature on that topic has a name for it: resistance (to the communist system), from the armed resistance of the groups in the moun- tains to the largely publicized phenomenon of abortion. As to the past twenty years, after the fall of communism, the reality has shown some similarities with the one sixty years ago, also developing a pattern of resistance: resistance against capitalism. According to the interviews, about more than fifty years ago and even more recently, the rural area was a success story without physicians or biomedicine, relying only on its old medical systems based on religion and nature. Even though the first healthcare law was passed in 1874, setting in motion the organization of the healthcare system Romania, it looked like communism was the one that made the rural world swallow biomedicine, willingly or not. In its battle with the ‘retrograde’ mentality of the peasantry, the medical system was entirely organized on biomedical principles and firmly imposed on the population. Biomedicine thus became the authoritative knowledge8 in all that referred to health and healing practices, and also the only medical knowledge accepted in Romania (by the state), all other types of knowledge in the field of healing being Tangencies • 125 dismissed. Due to the long distance between theory and practice, the implementation of the biomedical system took years and proved to be a far greater task for the fragile emerging regime: too many things to do in too little time. Similarly to the general situation, the medical system had its ups and downs throughout the second half of the 20th century. For the people interviewed, in retrospect the communist biomedical system seemed much better than the present one. Twenty years ago, it fell apart just when it was finally starting to get some trust from the people. Recently, the biomedical system has become just one facet on the medical market, facing massive competition from all sorts of medicines and practitioners. The hegemonic place it held before 1989 has faded away, leaving behind a vulnerable and nostalgic rural population. Population ageing has been a general trend in Europe and Romania is no exception, but that phenomenon has been more acute in the rural area, due to demographic factors like the very low birthrates or the migration towards urban areas and other countries. With few exceptions most of the villages under study had an aged population. In the overall picture, these were still the fortunate cases, since most of them were retired people9 living off a pension, and medicines or consultations were offered for free. Their social position kept them as clients for biomedicine. The most vulnerable segment was that of the young people in the villages, because they did not have a steady revenue and therefore no social or medical insurance of any kind. At the same time, they could not afford constant private medical care. Some- how they ended up in-between the measures intended to reform the biomedical system. Biomedicine was still reaching them at a theoretical level, through mass media, family members or acquaintances. That system of social connections has always functioned, only the agents have changed: before communism they used to go to priests, chanting women, monks, witches etc., during communism they moved towards medical representatives: clinics, physicians, nurses. Nowadays they resort to a diversity of systems, like a Babel tower of healing practices. Medical pluralism10 has reached a significant peak in both urban and rural areas. Biomedicine has continued to be in the center of general attention, both public and official (state policies), in all that concerns healing measures and techniques, but the pre-modern healing has turned into a post-modern one, catching up fast and competing heavily against biomedicine. This fact also brought a slight change in the way biomedicine and its representatives treat the patients. If during communism the authority of the state also encompassed the authority of biomedicine, outlawing other types of medical knowledge—and so the authority of the physician undoubtedly shaped an unequal healer-patient relation—presently the patient has become a client and is therefore more empowered in the healing decisions than before. That change has still not been fully understood by the rural people. Some continued to believe in the biomedical power until that 126 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) was proven wrong. Having spent most of their mature life under the communist regime, the biomedical system became more familiar to them. That situation also brought a certain vulnerability for those aged rural people who could not question or had limited knowledge to question the biomedical system and its representatives. The situation in the field revealed a whole range of attitudes, from total rejection to the full acceptance of biomedicine. For most of the communist period, the rural areas were more or less covered by modern medical institutions. Some of them were inherited from the previous period—going back to 1912. The first major re-organization of the medical system during communism took place in 1948, and it had considerable impact, involving the nationalization of facilities and the transition from private to state funding. The second re-organization took place in 1974—curiously11 for me, in the same year when the uk also re-organized its medical system—but with a less significant public impact than the one in 1948, probably due to the fact that the communist regime was in a period of stability. One interviewed nurse talked about a state project in the 1950s and 1960s—a successful one—to train people from the villages for medical positions and then send them to work in their native villages.12 Still, this effort was not enough, as trust took a longer period to build up. People did not trust institutions, they trusted other people, and they did not trust people generically, they trusted people they knew. The intuition of some party leaders (or just some directions sent from the ussr)13 was correct, when they thought of a way to educate villagers into biomedicine, as a successful method for implementing modern medicine in the rural areas. Using community members in spreading and using medical knowledge was not without its troubles, but in the end it yielded good results, as one female nurse remembered:

I lived here, here I… It is my first job and the… last one. But how did you get…? You know how it was? In… 1965, they… selected some youths from the village, whom they knew for sure would come back here, to do… actually we went to school with a contract. We graduated the vocational school in the city… [It was] The nursing school… Nursing and… after graduation I had a contract with the hospital that sent us to the villages where we were from. I wasn’t, we were… we were two from here. One of us was sent as a midwife and the other as a nurse. The other left after five years, after she… The contract was for five years? It [So] was the contract. And I remained here, I got married, I had my family, and I remained here. Well, she left. When we came here, in 1967, when I graduated, Tangencies • 127

the dispensary had moved to the new premises, this was pretty new… I don’t recall what year exactly… I don’t know, it was in 1961 when it was ready. You see, the old dispensary was there and the flood took it. Before that, there was a bridge, and there was a house, a house where the dispensary was, and a flood came and took it. It wasn’t exactly by the water but there was a flood and… There is a new building now on that lawn. We remained here… in charge. There were one physician, one nurse, not a nurse, a disinfector… (that’s what he was called), a nurse for obstetrics and gynecology; everyone did pediatrics because this was the way in those times. Then came a period, another system, probably at that time the new, younger physicians graduated, and they were compelled to do one year of internship in the countryside. Well, there was a period when there were five physicians here… five. Yes: there were dentists, pediatricians, two gps. (Nurse, born in 1947)

The nurse above was trying to convince us that she and her colleague (who eventually left) were part of the change of the system back then. Metaphorically, in her discourse nature came to wash away the old knowledge, flooding the old hospital in her village. From then on the stage was set for building a new society, new knowledge. When talking to the nurses that held such positions in the villages (as in the case above), we acquired a very dynamic picture of their duties: they were always running from one patient to another, establishing connections, helping with births, vaccinating the children etc., but most of all, spreading knowledge and convincing the members of the village community that biomedicine was the best way of healing, that its purpose was always good and that there was no room for mistakes. They were true followers of what they had been taught in school, and they were part of something ‘big’, greater than what they had previously known. But there was also a very important psychological component: everything was new—new regime, new jobs, new premises… They had the deep conviction that they were building a society. And so it was! The nurse above also referred to a second program, in the years of stability for the regime, when indeed young physicians were sent to the villages as interns. The program was less successful since physicians were usually sent to places far from their own families or native towns, and more importantly very far from their expectations regarding their future professional life. Indeed, especially in the second part of the twentieth century the progress of biomedicine was huge, and not only in Romania. Nurses talked about how their usual workdays were, and what perils and obstacles they faced, but also about the successes that made them keep going: 128 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

We were doing permanent ward shifts, there were maternity wards, rooms for children. . . . There were hard times. . . . The maternity wards were the most difficult… and we were just a few, just a few and someone always had to be on duty. Day and night. . . . You had to be (t)here. . . . We provided round-the-clock service in the field, too. . . . It was very hard. We got training, very good training, and we did practice, too… We knew the theory, but we had little practical experience. I tell you… I lived many nightmarish moments… many times . . . I didn’t know who helped us, maybe God! . . . I didn’t have any problem so big that I couldn’t solve! (Nurse, born in 1947)14

As the quote above explicitly says, nurses were always in motion, always present, having very good qualifications that needed practice. They combined their training with experience into something that brought significance to their lives: their work. The whole work situation engendered a powerful sense of self-esteem. They did fulfil their role in society, and their contribution counted in the bigger picture.15 After hearing what nurses in the rural area had to tell about their lives at work, my curiosity was piqued by the official program that might have guided them in doing what they did. I looked at the legislation and I was surprised to see that in the most recent Healthcare Law,16 nurses were mentioned just once in the chapter that defined the notion of medical staff, while for the categories of physician, dentist and pharmacist, there were pages and pages defining their status and other things connected to the respective position, some even explained in minute detail. The previous Healthcare Law was the one of 1978,17 where there were more provisions concerning the nurses, such as what type of schooling was needed in order to become a nurse, but also which were the job requirements, in art. 75, and also in art. 76 that defined the category of auxiliary staff, also important for our demonstration here, since the connection between the ordinary people and the modern medical system was also done through this auxiliary staff.

Art. 75. The secondary healthcare personnel perform their activity under the direct control and guidance of a physician and have the following obligations: a) Participate in the actions of prevention and elimination of diseases, in the activity of healthcare education; b) Ensure the individual hygiene and the permanent care of the sick people, administer food and the medicines prescribed; c) At a physician’s indication they provide treatment and medical care, carry out laboratory analyses and other medical tasks; Tangencies • 129

d) Permanently supervise the status of sick people and inform the physician on the evolution of the disease, respond promptly to patient requests, being forbidden to receive or demand amounts of money or other material advantages from the sick people in their care; e) They are responsible for the good maintenance of devices and other materials and they prepare and sterilize the instruments in full compliance with the technical-sanitary norms.

Art. 76. The auxiliary healthcare personnel consists of orderlies, caretakers and suchlike that ensure cleanliness and hygiene in medical units, the preparation of materials needed for medical activities, the accompaniment of the hospitalized sick people; they fulfil the tasks stipulated in the regulation concerning the organization and functioning of the unit.18

It appears that the new law of 2006 forgot about this type of personnel and the contribution it brought to the good functioning of the medical system, although it was incredibly thoughtful with other categories of the system: physicians, dentists, and pharmacists. What the ‘officials’ have forgotten was there, in the stories of illness of the village communities. Interviewing the rural people highlighted that contribution, when we performed an in-depth analysis on how the villagers actually got connected to the medical office or hospital. Their work was of twofold importance: for the patients and for biomedicine, at many levels but mostly in making biomedicine acceptable to people who knew nothing about it.

n my interpretation there were two types of relations of the rural people with biomedicine. The first is a formal, exteriorized one—in the sense that I they resorted to biomedicine and its representatives in case of necessity, within a relation marked by distrust. The interviews showed that they didn’t do it directly, but usually through mediators. And… they did it because they had to, not because they wanted to! The second is an interiorized one, based of the ‘emission center’ of medical knowledge, always someone from the family. The relation was not necessarily grounded on the ‘efficacy’ of the remedy but on the status of that particular member within the family. That situation functioned in both directions, that is, it might be that the status in the family was ensured precisely by the profession of nurse. Regarding the first type of relation—the exteriorized one—an interesting outcome when reviewing the interviews has been that the villagers accepted biomedicine if it was mediated by somebody. They were the ones who chose the mediator, and most often it was someone from the family, but that someone 130 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) was either a nurse or worked in a different position in the medical system, or had a relation with a representative of the medical system. There were also situations—rare cases—when the connection was done directly through a physician. According to the interviews, that was the case when the physician had worked for a number of years in their village and then moved to a clinic in the city. That situation was highly dependent on the relations that a physician established with the village community. Usually the educated people (teachers, administrative staff) in the village resorted to a physician as a mediator. Otherwise, obviously, the recommendation was done again through a nurse that was working alongside that physician. Certainly, that nurse was a member of the village community. The interviews made it obvious that not a single aged man or woman went to a physician by himself/herself, even at the time when there was a dispensary in their village. There was a major reason for that situation, completely expressed by the word distrust. There was a major distrust both towards the staff and the methods. Regarding the medical practitioners, there were two major levels of distrust: age and origin. For a population that was thinking in the terms of a monotheistic religion, and consequently had a collective mentality—that is, reaching out and accepting a remedy only after its efficacy had been proven on a community member—resorting to new, untested methods was inconceivable. Biomedicine was a new and untested healing method within their community. The pills were bitter and the shots were invasive… On the other hand, the new system came with new and… young people to a society grounded on the idea of acquiring knowledge and experience by growing old. The order of things was reversed: how could old people learn anything from the young ones?

They refused the shots. Because they hurt the children and they cried, and we scared them with the shots and with vaccines. Because after that the children fell ill… how to vaccinate them, because afterwards they would not sleep, and they cried and that place became swollen and for other reasons. (Nurse, born in 1947)19

We were women, but it did not count. There were many old women that helped with the births. We could collaborate with the young ones, but the [old] ones… we being like their children, they did not pay attention to us… because what do these young girls know? Did they give birth? Do they know what a birth is? (Nurse, born in 1947)20

A second aspect was related to origin. Except for a few people, usually holding secondary positions in the dispensary or hospital (nurses), the rest, especially the doctors, were not natives of that particular village. This aspect had and still has Tangencies • 131 a major impact on the social life of the villages where the research took place, in general and also in particular in relation to the topic under discussion. Not knowing anything about the healer became a greater risk than the illness itself. That is one reason why the gps that had surgeries in the villages, according to the new organization of biomedical services, had nurses/assistants from the respective villages. There was also a financial reason, as an employee from that village was cheaper than a commuter. Still, in a system that changed after 1989 towards the idea of a patient-client, a local villager nurse could bring more patients, using the relations and the reputation he/she had in the community. This situation was encountered in the villages were the nurses educated during the communist regime were still active, albeit retired. Almost each village had one of these. For those who did not have them, the solution was again the family: they were registered with the same gp as their children in the city. The third case was of those who were not registered anywhere, not paying contributions to gps or the Healthcare Directorate, and who solved their health problems in a private clinic and only when an emergency occurred. Metaphorically speaking, the healer-patient relation presented similarities with the ‘orthodox’ one, and it had its origin in the monotheistic type of religion that is common in Europe, as pointed out many years ago by Arthur Kleinman.21 That situation, transposed to our micro-level, would look like this: the physician—God—is rarely reached, through the intercession of nurses— saints—who put in a word for the ‘sinner,’ recte the patient. Certainly, the tri- angle rural world-nurse-biomedicine was not necessarily one lacking in tension, as not everything went smoothly… Obviously, most of the tensions were due to the failure of the treatment, but there could have been other causes as well. Among the other causes, the social image the nurse or her/his family had within the community, good or bad, was of utmost importance. At the end of the day, the nurse was still ‘one of us.’ The most important other cause of tension non-related to treatment was the intrusion of biomedicine into the way of life of the patient, with directions regarding total or partial changes to it. In these cases, the physician, the nurse, and biomedicine itself became the main enemy of the patient. This is the unfortunate outcome of a relation going in a negative direction.

Now the lady doctor is asking them, an old woman comes in… well, many of them have high blood pressure. They should not eat fats, salty food, and they ask: “But what should I eat?” “What did you eat?” the lady doctor asks. “What do you usually eat?” She says: “In the morning I have a mug of milk with bread.” “And in the afternoon?” “Yes, I make a soup.” “And in the evening?” “In the evening… potatoes and I make a cheese soup.” (Nurse, born in 1947)22 132 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

There was, though, an increasingly strong recognition and dependence on medicines for the aged people in the rural area. They did take pills, if not regu- larly at least occasionally, deeply convinced that they knew better than the doctor… leading to a secondary but nonetheless important fact: the self-medication that created situations ranging from hilarious to dangerous. Many aged people gave their pills to their neighbors, based on quick assessments of the similarity between symptoms. The results brought tragicomic outcomes when the side effects occurred. On the other hand, most of them had real trouble in understanding the indications or even the name of the medicine. One peasant woman, after getting frostbite on her hands, got scared and looked at the indications for Algocalmin23—a very popular analgesic in Romania. Since the name on the box was different, but on the box was written in small letters “Antibiotice sa” [Antibiotics plc, the name of the company that produced the medicine], she became deeply convinced that the gp had gotten her prescription wrong and given her an antibiotic instead of an analgesic. The hilarious part was that none of her neighbors, young or old (more or less educated), could accurately understand what was written on the medicine box. Certainly, the fact that she had mixed the analgesic with alcohol was of no importance to anyone… Nor that they all knew how to read but they had deep troubles in understanding the meaning. Literacy proved helpless or quite dangerous (since they all read the word antibiotics on the box). The second type of relation with biomedicine, the interiorized one, became extremely visible when the interviewed people resorted to biomedicine primarily in an illness situation, and it was at its peak when it was used as a referential system in the healing process. When analyzing the interviews, I noticed that rural people resorted primarily to biomedical healing of any sort (pill, shots) if they had a personal connection with the biomedical institution and/or representative: they had a family member (brother, daughter in law, daughter, son, cousin) who worked in the medical system—usually a nurse; or one of their family members had a close relation with a medical professional, again usually a nurse. One reason for this situation was the orientation of rural people towards jobs that require a short period of schooling, of medium difficulty and with a rapid integration into the workforce. The cases when the relation was with a physician were extremely rare and generally regarded the educated people in the village— the priest, the teacher, those with higher positions in the local administration. Generally, if the aged people had a nurse in the family, the healing methods they primarily resorted to were the biomedical ones. They did respect the authority of that person, as Professor Robert Cialdini proved with his experiments on the rules of persuasion: one of his six rules is the one of authority, which could be applied to our demonstration.24Authority refers to the tendency of people to be convinced by those they believe have knowledge and credibility Tangencies • 133 regarding a certain topic. In our interviews, their family members demonstrated enough authority and credibility in the medical field. In case they did not have a family member working in the biomedical system, they resorted firstly to herbs, religion, magic, and turned to biomedicine only when the situation was acute and the other remedies failed. The best example of using the biomedical system as a referential one was the case of a bike accident, when the grandparents had at home only biomedical remedies to treat the wounds of the grandson who had fallen off the bike. The grandson had injured multiple areas of his body. The way the whole situation was presented and also the attitudes of protagonists vis-à-vis the methods involved in healing shows an acute process of inter- nalizing the biomedical system per se and also as a source of prestige inside the community. It is a complicated, twisted relation, showing that the formal education necessary in order to become a nurse offered prestige to the respective position. Hence, by diffusion it came to offer prestige to the ones that propagated it—magic by contact. The direct contact with biomedicine and at the same time with a representative of the two worlds—biomedical and family—transferred the prestige towards the last components in the system—the grandparents who administered the treatment to the child. This combined with the accidental presence of an urban mentality powerfully dependent on biomedicine. How else? In the cities, who could have created or at least preserved a healing system based on plants, in the confines of an apartment located in a building surrounded by concrete. For the grandparents mentioned above, resorting to pills and not to old remedies meant a sui generis source of prestige, of access to a ‘superior’ world. The urban mentality proved its importance for our research, since most of the people living in rural areas were either former commuters or neo-rurals, having spent the past twenty years in the villages under research. A few of the people belonging to the old generation, as active consumers of biomedical drugs, started to have second thoughts when the effect of one drug was counteracted by another drug and so on… That was the moment when questioning the efficacy of biomedicine became acute. On the other hand, the prestige of biomedicine also lost in importance when the side effects of the pills troubled the patients. They still went to the physician, but he or she either remained deaf at their complaints, or offered another pill to counteract the effects. Neither situation was fully accepted by the patient. Consequently, they still got the prescriptions and bought the pills—most of them were 90% or 100% free of charge—but did not actually take them. They reserved their own right to do whatever they wanted at home—the famous duplicity Gail Kligman25 pointed out in her book, which was successfully employed during communism and later. Nevertheless, most aged people have come to take almost a fistful of pills, as they put it, for various illnesses and the side effects of 134 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) medication, in the strong belief that they would die without them. In this case “the human body is introduced in a power machine that is examining, disarticu- lating and recomposing it.” These people have become docile bodies doing what the system wants them to do.26

Do they take their treatment, do they keep the diet? No. Not even now. Even though they could. And they take their treatment wrongly. They say: “I didn’t take the pills because I didn’t feel ill. If nothing hurts, why should I take them?” “Well, the device says that you are not well.” “Well, when I die, I won’t be!” Then why do they take the prescriptions? To have the pills at home. “Well,” they say “I would take one once in a while, when I feel dizzy, but then it goes away and I no longer take them for two or three days.” (Nurse, born in 1947)27

As the demonstration above has shown, the biomedical system was slowly accepted, but it had its tensions, with bright days when the medicines worked and awful days when the side effects tormented the rural patients. Still, one biomedical character—the nurse—was smoothening the path of acceptance, through the trust built day by day with her work, and through her social image inside the village community. Always seen as secondary members of the medical staff, we notice that only the healthcare law issued during communism had special articles defining their status and work. This was not the case with the law passed in 2006, even though the role of this position in the overall context of biomedicine has remained pretty much the same, if we were to listen to the beneficiaries of the modern medical system. Recently, the position of the nurse in the system has been reconfigured through the creation of institutions of higher education for nurses. That brought about a wholly different perspective on the actual status of the nurse in the medical system, from the official point of view. Still, it is not the title that makes the nurse important to patients, but the way in which she takes care of them. q

Notes

1. Elena Bãrbulescu, “The Illusion of Health: Convergent Discourses,” Transylvanian Review 19, Supplement no. 5 (2010): 251–259; id., “From My Body to the Body,” Caiete de antropologie istoricã (Cluj-Napoca) 9 (2010): 151–156; id., “We and They: Family, Illness and Physicians in Transylvania (1940–1990),” Transylvanian Review 19, 3 (Autumn 2010): 62–72; id., “At the Edge of Modernity: Physicians, Priests and Quacks (1940–1990),” Philobiblon (Cluj-Napoca) 16 (2011): 549–561. Tangencies • 135

2. Since my position regarding the healing systems is a neutral one, I would use the words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ in the sense of accepting and respectively rejecting biomedicine, and not in the sense that biomedicine is positive per se. 3. cncsis tip idei–2008–2011, “The Perception of the Modernization of the Sanitary System in Communist Romania by the Rural World (1948–1989).” 4. Folklore Archive Institute of the Romanian Academy, Romanian Academy, Cluj- Napoca Branch. 5. I use the term here with the same meaning used by Clifford Geertz in his works— the idea of local worlds and local knowledge: Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1985). 6. Samuel C. Ramer, “Childbirth and Culture: Midwifery in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Countryside,” in The Family in Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Re- search, ed. David L. Ransel (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 218–235. 7. Census 2012, http://www.recensamantromania.ro/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ Comunicat-de-presa-nr-159-_rezultate-definitive-rpl2011.pdf (accessed on 29 October 2014). 8. Brigitte Jordan, Birth in Four Cultures: A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden and the United States, revised and expanded by Robbie Davis-Floyd (Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1993). 9. This mass of retired people encompasses a wide range of situations. The most fre- quent is when one or both members of a couple used to work in the factories in the county. The other situation is when the men worked in the industrial system and their wives worked the land in the cooperative farms. Some of the women that worked in the cooperatives do not get a pension due to administrative problems. As the communist system did everything to keep the workforce employed, most of the elderly population in Romania has received a pension, however small. 10. Term taken from Arthur Kleinman’s works: Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 11. This curiosity has led me to the idea that Romania was not that isolated after all, at least not at that time. 12. Elena Bãrbulescu, ed., Þãrani, boli ºi vindecãtori: Mãrturii orale, vol. 1 (Cluj-Napoca: Mega, 2010), 393–419. 13. See Ramer. 14. Bãrbulescu, Þãrani, boli ºi vindecãtori, 394–396. 15. For the relation of the people with their work see also the introduction and the first chapter in David A. Kideckel, Getting By in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). 16. Legea 95 din 2006, http://www.cdep.ro/pls/legis/legis_pck.htp_act_text?idt=72105 (accessed on 22 October 2014). 17. Legea nr. 6 din 1978, http://www.cdep.ro/pls/legis/legis_pck.htp_act_text?idt=1367 (accessed on 23 October 2014). 18. Ibid. 19. Bãrbulescu, Þãrani, boli ºi vindecãtori, p. 400. 20. Ibid., 401. 21. Kleinman. 136 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

22. Bãrbulescu, Þãrani, boli ºi vindecãtori, 407–408. 23. On the other hand, this drug is highly controversial. In European Union countries it is forbidden, for causing severe side effects. In Romania, after few years of total withdrawal as a consequence of the general European policy, it showed up again in pharmacies, this time only as a prescription drug, most probably at the patients’ request. This drug was very popular in Romania during the communist regime and the people prefer it and press for its continuing use. 24. http://www.descopera.ro/stiinta/12818224-care-sunt-secretele-persuasiunii-cele- 6-instrumente-psihologice-de-convingere (accessed in October 2014). 25. Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Roma- nia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 26. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, ed. Michel Senellart, transl. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). 27. Bãrbulescu, Þãrani, boli ºi vindecãtori, 408.

Abstract The Nurse and the Rural World: A Successful Relation for Biomedicine

The article aims to bring into light the relation between some of the actors involved in the process of healing in rural areas based on the duality patient-healer. It has been more than one hundred years since the first healthcare law was passed (1874) and the progress of biomedicine has been quite obvious, even though it has lagged behind that of Western Europe. My main interest within this topic was to see what it was that made this system work. In a few previous articles I focused on the problems that the implementation of biomedicine in the Romanian rural areas had during the second half of the 20th century, particularly on why and how the system was rejected. With this article I focused on the reverse—what was it that made the biomedical system work? Consequently, I would bring forward a hypothesis on one of the key elements that led to the acceptance of the biomedical system in the rural areas. The idea emerged from the interpretation of the results of a few sessions of interviews done in the rural area of Transylvania, in 2009, 2010, and 2014. People of both sexes were interviewed and there was no age limit. The villages were situated at a variable distance from Cluj-Napoca—an important biomedical center. The results were convergent for all the studied villages, meaning that for our purposes physical distance could be discounted as a variable. One outcome, beside the others already approached in the previous articles—rejection of biomedicine, persistence of pre-modern healing systems, etc.—was that the role of the nurse was crucial in the acceptance of the biomedical system. Even though they hold a secondary place in the biomedical system, the main character being the physician, the nurses have played the major role of actually connecting the patients to biomedicine, thus building a core of trust which lay at the foundation of this relation.

Keywords nurse, biomedicine, rural world, Transylvania, education, healing literature

Representations of History in Kazuo Ishiguro’s A n a M a r i a H o p â r t e a n The Remains of the Day

Acknowledging Linda Hutcheon’s position that postmodernism reveals a desire to understand present culture as the product of previous representations,1 this paper aims to analyze the manner in which history is represented in Kazuo Ishiguro’s third novel, The Remains of the Day.2 While postmodernism in itself is now categorized as belonging to the past,3 through its focus on ex-centricity and its undermin- Kazuo Ishiguro ing of a “grand narrative,”4 it breaks down the concept of history as a macro-narrative into a multitude of histo- ries, thus allowing the micro-narrative of national history through the lenses of individuals such as Stevens, the butler in The Remains of the Day. The novel has been interpreted as postcolonial,5 but not in a strict sense Ana Maria Hopârtean of the term. Unlike Rushdie, Achebe Lecturer at the Department of Modern or Gordimer, Ishiguro distances him- Languages and Business Communications, Faculty of Economics and Business self from the explicit realities of the for- Administration, Babeº-Bolyai University, mer British colonies. Ishiguro is mainly Cluj-Napoca. Research interests: postmo concerned with the repercussions of the dern and postcolonial literature, teaching de-colonizing process on British iden- and learning strategies. tity and, more specifically through his 138 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) character Stevens, with the retelling of personal history against the background of a wider national history. The novel is set in 1956, when the Suez Canal was nationalized by Presi- dent Nasser, which humiliated Great Britain and France. This political context is particularly significant for the way in which Ishiguro chooses to associate Stevens’s personal history, his story, with national history. Stevens reminisces about Darlington Hall in its pre-World War II years, when he was employed as a butler to Lord Darlington, a British aristocrat who sympathized with Hitler. Now working for Mr. Farraday, an American who bought Darlington Hall, Stevens is caught between past and present, idealizing the former while trying to come to terms with the latter. The novel’s great achievement lies in its ability to make the reader empathize with Stevens and thus get involved in the process of telling his story, which is ultimately a story of what it means to be a great butler in Great Britain and, more specifically, in England. “It is sometimes said that butlers only truly exist in England. Other countries, whatever title is actually used, have only menser- vants. I tend to believe this is true. Continentals are unable to be butlers because they are as a breed incapable of emotional restraint which only the English race are capable of. . . . We English have an important advantage over foreigners in this respect and it is for this reason that when you think of a great butler, he is bound, almost by definition, to be an Englishman.”6 In an attempt to come to terms with his own failed story, he embarks on a journey to find Miss Kenton, now Mrs. Benn, with whom he has never been able to share his feelings. Stevens resorts to history and national identity as a way of justifying his lifelong purpose: “Each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, and saw that, as professionals, the surest means of doing so would be to serve the great gentlemen of our times in whose hands civilization had been entrusted.”7 He is Ishiguro’s way of deconstructing the grand historical narrative of a national identity that is rooted in a past which is no longer relevant today. The novel is “imbued with a post-imperial melancholy”8 in which one’s identity only makes sense if placed in a center-periphery, master-servant type of relationship. Stevens’s quiet acceptance of Lord Darlington’s political views is, to a great extent, what defines him in this power relationship: “It is, in practice simply not possible to adopt a critical attitude towards an employer and at the same time provide good service. It is not simply that one is unlikely to be able to meet the many demands of service at the higher levels while one’s attentions are being diverted by such attempt; more fundamentally, a butler who is forever attempt- ing to formulate his own ‘strong opinions’ on his employer’s affairs is bound to lack one quality essential in all good professionals namely loyalty.”9 It is through Literature • 139 his reticence, sense of restraint and humility that Stevens disempowers himself in relation with his master. By having Stevens involve the reader into his story, Ishiguro approaches the crux of the matter—each individual, by positioning their own story in relation to the greater collective story, even to the history of a nation, contributes to the writing of that greater story. When the individual fails to assume responsibility for their own story, the entire grand narrative fails. By placing Stevens’s personal history against the background of Englishness with its ambivalent time-space representation, Ishiguro revisits national myths so as to suggest the need for a new national narrative. Stevens embarks on a journey through the English countryside and at the same into his past, thus configuring both space and time in terms of what he perceives it means to be English. Ishiguro says that he has not “attempted to reproduce, in an historical accurate way, some past period” and that what he is trying to do is to “rework a particular myth about a certain kind of mythical England.”10 Stevens’s journey into time and space is a pretext for a more meaningful identity search. The times are changing and, although he is drawn to his past, he is also faced with the need to adapt to his new employer’s demands. Mr. Farraday, the American now in power, belongs to an entirely different structure. Forward-looking and pragmatic, he requires of Stevens to shift from the emotional restraint he used to take great pride in, to a more relaxed approach to his duties, including the permission to “undertake the expedition”11 through the English countryside. At first Stevens resists his employer’s suggestion by arguing: “It has been my privilege to see the best of England over the years, sir, within these very walls.”12 In stark contrast with Stevens’s restrained and undemonstrative attitude, Mr. Farraday proposes banter as a type of discourse. Through banter one exposes oneself to the world, while at the same time being receptive to what others have to say. Banter cannot exist in isolation, it needs communion, openness, reciprocity. To a certain extent, bantering requires one to allow one’s story to be intertwined with the stories of others. This shift from inwardness to outward- ness through banter requires an ability to distance oneself from one’s identity so as to be able to understand other identities. Unsurprisingly, Stevens is skeptical of bantering. “Embarrassing as those moments were for me, I would not wish to imply that I in any way blame Mr. Farraday, who is enjoying the sort of bantering which in the United States, no doubt, is a sign of good, friendly understanding between employer and employee, indulged in as a kind of affectionate sport. Indeed, to put things into a proper perspective, I should point out that such bantering on my new employer’s part has characterized much of our relationship over these months—though I must confess, I remain rather unsure as to how I should respond.”13 140 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Gradually though, Stevens understands it is his duty to add this skill to “his professional armoury”14. However, this does not mean that he distances himself from his identity. If at the end of the novel Stevens ponders that bantering is a perfectly reasonable skill to be expected of a butler, it is only because his sense of discipline dictates his wish to conform to the standards of his new employer. It is not only the story of the English butler with all his limitations in terms of assuming responsibility, questioning the greater system that he is part of, emotional reticence and inability to relate, that Ishiguro is concerned with. The very means of telling his story is essential for Ishiguro’s work: memory as a way to access both personal and national stories. However, it is not only the object of memory—the story in itself—that is relevant. The entire process of remem- bering lies at the core of the novel. The referent is almost dissolved in the inconsistency of Stevens’s unreliable narration. Nostalgia cannot lie at the core of genuine historicity, “the past as a ‘referent’ finds itself gradually bracketed, and then effaced altogether, leaving us with nothing but texts.”15 Ishiguro works with the metaphorical, not with the concrete, thus encompassing a far deeper and more complex truth about present identity seen as a collection of journeys into the past. “We’re all like butlers,” Ishiguro says in an interview16, thus mul- tiplying and generalizing Stevens’s personal story both in terms of its focus (our own past) and means of accessing it (memory). Everything we learn about dignity and what it means to be English is formulated in Stevens’s butler terms. Stevens tells a story of a failed life. As he admits at the end of the novel, he did not even make his own mistakes. By using Stevens’s story as a metaphor for Englishness, Ishiguro poses fundamental questions as to the validity of a wider national narrative, which is further undermined by the unreliable narrator. What is it then that remains at the end of the day? The ability to transcend one’s own limitations in terms of allowing other identities to permeate one’s own is what Stevens fails at. Just as “national consciousness, which is not nationalism, is the only thing that will give us an international dimension,”17 a sense of individual identity that is not exclusively concerned with one’s own persona can allow one to exist meaningfully amongst others. Beyond labels such as postmodern or postcolonial, The Remains of the Day is, at its core, a story about the need to re-tell the past in order to make sense of present identity and, ultimately, about the need for a reassertion of one’s personal history while revisiting national history. q Literature • 141

Notes

1. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London–New York: Routledge, 1989). 2. Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (London: Faber & Faber, 1989). 3. John Frow, “What Was Postmodernism?” in Past the Last Post: Theorizing Post-Colo- nialism and Post-Modernism, eds. Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin (Calgary: University of Calgary, 1990), 139–159. 4. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minne- apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 37. 5. Dominic Head, “Multicultural Personae,” in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 6. Ishiguro, 44. 7. Ibid., 122. 8. Graham MacPhee, “Escape from Responsibility: Ideology and Storytelling in Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day,” Col- lege Literature 38, 1 (2011): 195. 9. Ishiguro, 210. 10. Kazuo Ishiguro, Kim Herzinger, and Allan Vorda, “An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro,” Mississippi Review 20, 1/2 (1991): 139. 11. Ishiguro, 1. 12. Ibid., 4. 13. Ibid., 15. 14. Ibid., 138. 15. Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” in Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Thomas Docherty (New York–Oxford: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1993), 75. 16. Ishiguro, Herzinger, and Vorda, 140. 17. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched Earth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), 251.

Abstract Representations of History in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day

This article aims to analyze the manner in which Kazuo Ishiguro deconstructs an ideal representation of Britain following World War II. By juxtaposing Stevens’s individual history, his story, with national history, Ishiguro makes a subtle critique of a backward looking post-imperial Britain. The concepts of power and responsibility as well as the metaphor of the butler are key to Ishiguro’s deconstruction of a grand historical narrative that is anchored in the past.

Keywords history, postmodernism, postcolonialism, power, dignity, emotional restraint editorial events

A n d r e i S t a t e Un récit exemplaire

Publié en décembre 2016, le livre du professeur Nicolas Tertulian sur- prend d’abord par sa forme littéraire : étant à la fois une autobiographie in- tellectuelle et une réflexion critique sur les sociétés communistes en Roumanie et en l’Europe de l’Est, une analyse édi- fiante des ouvrages de Georg Lukács, notamment de ceux écrits dans la seconde moitié de sa vie, et une reconstruction exigeante de la manière dont Pourquoi Lukács ? , Paris, Éditions de la Maison

, les idées philosophiques, esthétiques et politiques du penseur hongrois avaient ulian t

er été reçues à l’époque, le volume ci-pré- T sent constitue également une contri-

icolas bution importante à l’interprétation de des sciences de l’homme, 2016. N l’œuvre du plus important philosophe marxiste du XXe siècle. Outre les éclair- cissements qu’il apporte à des aspects qui avaient été souvent déformés par Andrei State des incompréhensions et des préju- est docteur en philosophie. Il a codirigé gés – tels que la relation entre Georg les volumes Politicile filmului. Contri Lukács et le stalinisme (p. 96-104, buþii la interpretarea cinemaului 291-295), le supposé sociologisme românesc contemporan (Politiques du et le conservatisme esthétique du film. Contributions à l’interprétation du cinéma roumain contemporain) (avec philosophe marxiste (p. 93-96, 255- Andrei Gorzo, 2014) et Plante exotice. 273) ou bien la légende selon laquelle Teoria ºi practica marxiºtilor români Thomas Mann aurait attribué au per- (Les plantes exotiques. La théorie et la sonnage Naphta du roman La Mon- pratique des marxistes roumains) (avec tagne magique la conception du monde Alex Cistelecan, 2015). du jeune Lukács (p. 65-72) –, très in- Editorial Events • 143 téressant nous paraît aussi le filon autobiographique du livre, qui offre au lecteur des informations et des suggestions concernant le fonctionnement institutionnel de l’idéologie et des politiques culturelles à l’époque du socialisme d’État. Le professeur Tertulian est né en 1929 à Iaşi, dans une famille de la petite bourgeoisie juive. Entre 1938 et 1944 il connaît les persécutions antisémites de l’État roumain, plusieurs membres de sa famille étant assassinés pendant la guerre, à la suite du pogrom de Iaşi ou dans les camps d’extermination nazis. Renvoyé en 1940 du lycée « Naþional » de sa ville natale, il passe le reste de ses examens et le baccalauréat après la guerre et s’inscrit ensuite à l’Université de Bucarest. C’est à l’époque de ses études estudiantines qu’il commence à lire les œuvres de Karl Marx, sous l’influence desquelles il va adhérer (à la fois du point de vue philosophique et idéologique) au marxisme. Les écrits de Lukács et Lefebvre, Husserl et Heidegger, Jaspers et Sartre ont une contribution ma- jeure à sa formation, certains de ces auteurs continuant à constituer des réfé- rences dans les textes de Nicolas Tertulian. (Ultérieurement, Croce, Adorno et Hartmann figurent parmi ceux qui vont le marquer de manière décisive – ce qui est visible aussi bien dans ses études philosophiques publiées dans en Rouma- nie que dans celles parues à l’étranger.) C’est cependant Lukács qui joue le rôle le plus important dans sa pensée (comme dans sa vie d’ailleurs), et ceci pour des raisons bien précises. D’abord, l’œuvre du penseur hongrois est située au carrefour de plusieurs traditions – du point de vue philosophique, la tradition marxiste, avec des racines hégéliennes et un ascendant léniniste ; du point de vue esthétique, celle de la grande littérature universelle et du roman réaliste bourgeois –, ce qui implique une ouverture vers toute la culture occidentale classique. Ensuite, la situation d’un penseur critiqué pour son révisionnisme marxiste par les responsables politiques et culturels d’obédience soviétique ne peut pas passer inaperçue par un jeune intellectuel qui ressent de plus en plus l’étroitesse de la doctrine officielle – de plus, un philosophe antifasciste qui ose manifester une attitude critique à l’égard des dogmes officiels (à l’intérieur même du mouvement communiste) fait la preuve que le « non-conformisme » par rapport à la doctrine dominante est possible, la diffusion de la pensée de Lukács prenant aux yeux de son interprète roumain la forme d’un acte dissident. Enfin, on ne doit pas oublier la relation personnelle qu’il entretient avec le maître de Budapest ainsi que l’impact de la lecture et du commentaire des deux dernières œuvres luká- siennes (Esthétique et Ontologie), que le professeur Tertulian considère comme la meilleure tentative contemporaine de forger un système philosophique. C’est ce qui explique pourquoi, tout au long de sa carrière, Nicolas Tertulian reste non seulement un interprète de Georg Lukács mais aussi un partisan tenace de sa pensée : les relations des rencontres qu’il a en France, en Allemagne et en Italie avec différents penseurs et intellectuels occidentaux révèlent que les dis- 144 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) cussions aboutissent toujours à l’importance philosophique de Lukács dont les interlocuteurs ne connaissent souvent les œuvres que de nom. Après un premier contact avec des textes lukásiens à la fin des années 1940 et au début des années 1950, la découverte de volumes comme Le jeune Hegel et Le roman historique au milieu des années 1950 a « un effet cathartique » (p. 20) sur le jeune philosophe roumain. À la suite les événements de Hongrie de 1956, dans lesquels Lukács est directement impliqué, la traduction et le commentaire de son œuvre en roumain sont reportés de plus de dix ans. Si la maison d’édition du Parti Communiste Roumain avait publié en 1947 une brochure avec la traduction d’une conférence conventionnelle de 1946, « Lénine et les problèmes de la culture », ce n’est qu’en 1969 que voit le jour Specificul literaturii ºi al esteticului (La spécificité de la lit- térature et de l’esthétique), une anthologie réunissant plusieurs textes représen- tatifs de critique et d’histoire littéraire (accompagnés d’une préface substantielle signée N. Tertulian). Jusqu’en 1980, les plus importants ouvrages de Georg Lukács sont traduits en roumain, tous introduits par le professeur Tertulian. Établi en France, où il enseigne à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Tertulian continue à s’occuper de la pensée du philosophe hongrois en publiant des études, en donnant des cours et en signant des préfaces aux éditions fran- çaises de ses écrits. Quant au parcours professionnel de Nicolas Tertulian, il peut être résumé comme il suit : après avoir travaillé pendant quelques années dans les rédactions des revues Contemporanul et Viaþa româneascã, il devient en 1969 enseignant à la Faculté de Philosophie de l’Université de Bucarest. En 1975 il reçoit l’inter- diction d’enseigner et, deux ans après, il sera illégalement renvoyé. Ultérieure- ment il s’établit à Paris, où il avait déjà publié le volume Georges Lukács : étapes de sa pensée esthétique (1980), non sans avoir effectué au préalable un stage de recherche à Heidelberg et donné un cours de philosophie en tant que professeur invité à l’Université de Sienne. (Tous les ennuis provoqués par les autori- tés roumaines sont largement présentés dans son livre.) Outre la radiographie de l’idéologie nationaliste (avec ses accents antisémites évidents) à l’époque de Ceauºescu, les parties autobiographiques de Pourquoi Lukács ? présentent, ne fût-ce que de manière involontaire, une image complexe de la situation de la philosophie roumaine sous le régime communiste. En dépit d’un certain dis- cours affecté qui décrit la situation du pays sous des couleurs sombres, certains intellectuels ont eu, semble-t-il, une vie académique fonctionnelle avant 1989. Nous remarquons ainsi que N. Tertulian avait été bien intégré dans des milieux universitaires et culturels occidentaux, comme en témoignent ses participations à des conférences et des réunions internationales, ses études publiées à l’étranger, l’échange de lettres et les rencontres avec des intellectuels occidentaux ainsi que l’accès à des livres et des revues spécialisées. Editorial Events • 145

Pour revenir à la dimension exégétique du livre ci-présent, nous remarquons un plaidoyer passionné pour l’importance de l’œuvre créée dans la seconde par- tie de la vie de Georg Lukács, en particulier pour ses grands textes théoriques : Le jeune Hegel (écrit en 1936-1937 mais publié en 1948), La destruction de la raison (1954), Esthétique (1963) et Ontologie de l’être social (écrit à la fin des années 1960 mais publié intégralement en allemand à peine en 1984-1986). En tenant compte de l’époque quand il avait été écrit (en l’Union soviétique, pendant « la longue nuit » stalinienne), Le jeune Hegel représente aux yeux de Nicolas Tertulian beaucoup plus qu’une simple contribution à l’histoire de la philosophie : « Il se dégageait à mon avis de ce livre une grande leçon de vie, je dirais presque une éthique » (p. 232). L’aspect le plus original du livre de Lukács est d’avoir pour la première fois souligné l’influence de l’économie politique britannique (principalement d’Adam Smith et de David Ricardo) sur les vues économiques de Hegel, de même que l’importance des réflexions sur l’économie et la société pour la genèse de sa méthode dialectique. De même coup, l’éloge rendu au « réalisme » de Hegel, autrement-dit la réconciliation du philosophe allemand avec la société bourgeoise de son temps, afin de préserver les acquis de la Révolution française, est considéré comme une forme supérieure de compré- hension du moment historique post-révolutionnaire, qui n’est pas sans rapport avec le soutien que le philosophe hongrois a apporté à Staline, qu’il prenait pour la seule force capable de vaincre le nazisme dans les années 1930 et de tenir les promesses d’affranchissement de la Révolution d’Octobre. Un élément essentiel de l’interprétation que Lukács donne de Hegel est la critique du romantisme, qui fait l’objet d’un chapitre (p. 113-135) du livre du professeur Tertulian d’au- tant plus important qu’il s’appuie sur des données inédites, tirées principalement de la correspondance que le philosophe hongrois avait entretenue avec les théo- riciens marxistes de la littérature, Ernst Fischer et Hans Mayer, entre 1960 et 1962. À l’encontre de la tentative de ceux-ci de proposer un concept élastique de romantisme, qui réunisse une palette riche d’orientations littéraires à la fin du XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècle, Lukács insiste sur la nécessité de bien circonscrire le phénomène romantique, qu’il ancre dans l’histoire et l’idéologie de l’Europe et qui a pour trait distinctif la réaction à l’égard de la Révolution française. Confrontés aux aspects négatifs de la société bourgeoise, les écrivains romantiques réagissent non par une submersion hégélienne « dans l’immanence des contradictions du réel », mais en adoptant des positions rétrogrades. Du point de vue historico-philosophique, Georg Lukács analyse la pensée réaction- naire « de Schelling à Hitler » dans le plus détesté de ses livres, La destruction de la raison. Car, à l’exception de Sartre, qui avait vu dans cet ouvrage une tentative tout à fait singulière « d’expliquer par leurs causes les mouvements de pensée contemporains », rares ont été les philosophes, depuis Adorno à Kołakowski et 146 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) d’Ernst Bloch à Béla Fogarasi à ne pas être scandalisés par l’audace du penseur marxiste de considérer la plupart de la philosophie et de la sociologie du XIXe et du XXe siècles comme une expression de l’irrationalisme bourgeois, les accu- sations contre Lukács allant de « sociologisme », à l’Ouest, jusqu’au « révision- nisme », à l’Est (p. 81-86). Cependant, comme Nicolas Tertulian le remarque bien, même si le concept de raison souffre ici d’un certain schématisme, qu’il va surmonter dans l’Ontologie de l’être social, la critique dans cette vaste fresque historico-sociale est « immanente », elle cherche à démontrer – et il y a peu de cas où elle se trompe – que certains concepts philosophiques (comme « volonté » chez Schopenhauer, « existence » chez Kierkegaard ou « volonté de puissance » et « surhomme » chez Nietzsche) sont des « détournements irrationalistes » qui fondent des philosophies qui déboucheront sur les visions fascistes du monde (p. 88-91). La construction catégorielle de la philosophie du dernier Lukács commence dans les années 1960 et atteint l’apogée dans les deux grandes synthèses, Esthé- tique et Ontologie, où, comme le professeur Tertulian le remarque également, une des sources d’inspiration est la rencontre avec deux philosophies éloignées du marxisme, l’anthropologie philosophique d’Arnold Gehlen et l’ontologie de Nicolai Hartmann. De plus, on rédige des véritables procès-verbaux sur la vision qu’a Lukács de certains grands écrivains, le fait qu’il les loue ou qu’il les répudié – parfois en les réévaluant complètement – étant sujet d’innombrables contro- verses stériles et répétitives. Conçu sous cet angle, l’un des mérites du volume Pourquoi Lukács ? est de ne pas rester cantonné à une simple comptabilité litté- raire, mais d’indiquer les raisons théoriques qui sous-étendent ses conceptions esthétiques. Parmi les recherches attentivement dédiées à l’esthétique de Lukács figurent la mise en avant de la signification de l’idée de particularité, « zone de médiations entre la singularité et la généralité », et des processus dialectiques à travers lesquels l’universalité, la conscience du genre humain sont concrétisées de manière immanente par des individus historiquement déterminés, dans l’art, dans la science – les expressions les plus élevées de l’esprit humain (voir, entre autres, p. 132-133, 144-146). Nonobstant, l’insistance de Nicolas Tertulian sur l’homologie de profondeur entre la conception de Lukács et celle de Croce n’est pas convaincante (abstraction faite des critiques que les deux philosophes s’étaient adressées l’un l’autre, à plusieurs reprises, au fil du temps). Car en dépit des possibles convergences indiquées dans le livre, telle, par exemple, « la défense d’une conception purement intra-modaine de la philosophie, à l’écart de toute mystagogie et des contaminations théologiques » (p. 51), elles sont toutes de l’ordre des analogies. Or, Lukács avait déjà montré lui même dans une étude sur Max Weber et la sociologie allemande que les analogies formelles ne peuvent pas se substituer aux explications causales dans l’analyse des phénomènes (his- Editorial Events • 147 toriques). La tentative de concilier un philosophe matérialiste, adepte de l’inter- prétation socio-historique des œuvres d’art, avec un philosophe idéaliste, adver- saire de toute approche extra-esthétique, et de rapprocher l’idée de Lukács de « conscience de soi » ou, autrement-dit, « la présence de l’en-soi historique dans l’immanence des œuvres », de celle d’« intuition lyrique » de Croce, de la com- préhension de l’art comme une « connaissance de l’individuel » (voir, parmi bon nombre d’occurrences, p. 363-364), est, à mon avis, hasardeuse. Étant donné qu’il est impossible de résumer ici l’examen auquel Nicolas Tertulian soumet l’ouvrage Ontologie de l’être social (pour des exemples significatifs, voir p. 353- 377), je fais mention d’un seul détail discutable : il tient l’ouvrage Histoire et conscience de classe (1923) pour une démarche « messianique ». Il est sans doute que le marxisme de ce livre de jeunesse est contraire à la plupart des idées qui vont devenir centrales dans l’Ontologie (l’existence d’une dialectique de la nature, le caractère causal et non finaliste de l’histoire etc.), mais les essais d’Histoire et conscience de classe doivent être remises dans leur contexte historico-politique, où une révolution communiste à l’échelle européenne semblait imminente, tout comme les développements théoriques de l’Ontologie de l’être social ne doivent pas être séparés de l’impasse historique dans laquelle se trouvait à ce moment-là le communisme d’État. Malheureusement, il nous est impossible, dans cette brève présentation, de montrer en détail que la pensée de Lukács est liée dans ce livre à d’autres philosophies classiques et contemporaines, surtout à l’existentialisme et à la phéno- ménologie (parmi d’autres exemples, pour le cas de Sartre et de Merleau-Ponty, voir p. 303-351), ou confrontée aux critiques des plus importants exégètes et commentateurs. Une conclusion s’impose : témoignant d’un savoir et d’une étendue exceptionnels, le volume du professeur Nicolas Tertulian est, de tous les points de vue, exemplaire. q Book Reviews

Die beiden Herausgeber erklären, was Wolfgang Zimmermann u. Josef Wolf, Hrsg. man unter den Hauptbegriffen verstehen Die Türkenkriege des 18 Jahrhunderts. sollte. Erstmals, wurden die Raum – und Wahrnehmen – Wissen – Erinnern Zeitkoordinaten für das Thema festge- Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2017 stellt: Südosteuropa insbesondere die mittlere Donau während der drei öster- reichisch-osmanischen Kriege im 18 Jh. Im Oktober 2015 wurde in Tübingen In einer solchen Zeitspanne konnte man die internationale wissenschaftliche Tagung die Entwicklung und Ergebnisse auf dem „Die Türkenkriege im 18. Jahrhundert. Schlachtfeld mit wenigen Mitteln ergrei- Wahrnehmen – Wissen – Erinnern“ veran- fen. Das indirekte Wahrnehmen gründete staltet. Die Aufsätze der Teilnehmer sollten sich damals auf Karten oder schriftlichen an den drei Leitbegriffen des Titels fokus- Quellen wie Briefe, Tagebücher, Kampfbe- siert werden: direkte und mediale Wahr- richte, Erzählungen, Zeitungen. Natürlich nehmung des Kriegs, die Produktion von ist die Rezeption mit der Produktion des Wissen in Kriegszeiten und das Erinnern. Wissens verbunden, z. B. im Bereich der Im Jahre 2017 ist im Verlag Schnell & Kartographie, Erdkunde, Kriegswissen- Steiner Regensburg der Band mit demsel- schaft, Geschichte, Etnographie. Außer- ben Titel erschienen. Mit einem Umfang ordentliche Geschehnisse, Hauptfiguren von 456 Seiten wurde das Buch – genau oder wichtige Orte der Kriege bleiben als wie die Konferenz – in drei Bereichen Teile der gemeinsame Gedächtnis Euro- aufgeteilt. Herausgeber sind Wolfgang pas. Die Vielfalt der Erinnerungsbildung Zimmerman von der Landesarchiv Ba- wird durch einige Beiträge gespiegelt. den-Württemberg – Generallandesarchiv Von Anfang an ist es deutlich, dass der Karlsruhe und Josef Wolf vom Institut Band eine besondere Perspektive bezüg- für donauschwäbische Geschichte und lich Türkenkriege vorstellen möchte. Die Landeskunde Tübingen. Neben einem Studien berühren fast keine Themen, die Vorwort, einer Einführung und einem konventionell mit Kriegsgeschichte zu- Rückblick, bietet der Band 18 verschiede- sammengehängt werden. Genau wie die ne Beiträge an. Autoren aller Beiträge sind Veranstalter der Konferenz gezielt hatten, Johannes Burkhardt, Márta Fata, Claudia sollten die Autoren „die Erweiterung des Reichl-Ham, Ernst D. Petritsch, Zsuzsa Themenspektrums um erinnerungsge- Barbarics-Hermanik, Ivan Pãrvev, Zsolt schichtliche bzw. kulturwissenschaftliche G. Török, Antal András Deák, Drago Aspekte“ in Betracht ziehen. Roksandić, Mãdãlina Veres, Josef Wolf, Um die Leser diese Art der Themati- Franz Metz, Anna Ananieva, Robert sierung schnell zu begreifen, beginnt der Born, Elisabeth Grossegger, Martin Stingl, Band mit der Einführung „Wie heute mit Harald Heppner, Wolfgang E. J. Weber. den Türkenkriegen umgehen? Eine neue Book Reviews • 149

Einordnung in die Geschichte von Krieg kommen die Leser Einzelheiten der mili- und Frieden in Europa“. Man erfährt, dass tärischen Kartografie und ihrer Wachstum einer der renommierteste Trank der Welt während der Türkenkriege mit. Österreich – der Kaffee – eigentlich einen wichtigen versuchte, mit Innovationen in der Kar- osmanisch-gemeineuropäischen Kultur- tenproduktion, den Vorrang des Osmani- transfer ist, der laut einer Legende zu- schen Reichs zu überschreiten. Auch be- rück auf Belagerung Wiens 1683 geht. vor dieser Zeitspanne arbeiteten zahlreiche Darüber hinaus stellt der Beitrag ein Ver- Militäringenieure für die Kartierung alten gleich zwischen Haus Habsburg und dem und neuen Festungen. Aber nicht nur Osmanischen Reich vor: Der Letzte war Kenntnisse über das Land und Städte wa- in einem Bereich zurückgeblieben – die ren unverzichtbar im Krieg, sondern auch gedruckte Schriftkultur – so wichtig und bezüglich der Donau und Schiffart oder ausblühend im 18 Jh. Österreich. Seit dem der Bergpässe in Karpaten. Die immer Westfälischen Frieden beginnt man in Eu- wechselnden Grenzen brauchten auch eine ropa die Friedensverträge zu übersetzen Markierung, wie die Militärgrenze zusam- und zu verbreiten – im Unterschied zur men mit vielen organisatorischen Maßnah- osmanischen Welt. men verbunden: Regimenten, Sanitätskor- Kriegserfahrungen und Friedensver- don, Volkszählungen. Die Fallstudie im träge wurden weiter im ersten Teil des Bezug auf das Banat erwähnt einige der Bandes verhandelt. Die Kämpfe der Jahre häufigsten Methoden des Mappings einer 1716-1718 bringen zwei neue Länder ins unbekannten Provinz: Berichte (Hamil- Licht: Serbien und das Banat, wo das Haus ton Bericht), Konskriptionen, Landkarten Habsburg eine ähnliche Verwaltung und und Pläne (Mercy Karte), Kupferstiche. Regierung einzusetzen versuchte. Serbien Diese sollten das ursprüngliche Stereotyp wurde von Kriegshelden und danach Gou- über das Land (ewiges Gefechtsfeld und verneur Karl Alexander von Württemberg Sumpflandschaft) verändern. geführt – genau wie das benachbarte Ba- Der letzte Teil wurde an Erinnern ge- nat unter Leitung des Grafen Mercy ge- widmet. Der erste Artikel stellt die Ver- stellt. Leider wird Serbien bald durch den bindung zwischen Kirche, der kaiserlichen nächsten Krieg verloren: 1737-1739 – der Hof und Musik vor und benutzt als Bei- sogenannte „vergessene Krieg“, dessen Er- spiele die Te Deum Lobhymnen. Haupt- gebnis vermutlich von einer damnatio me- figuren dieser Lieder und Gedichten sind moriae gefolgt wurde. Auch Begriffe wie Karl VI und Eugen von Savoyen. Über Inszenierung,Wahrnehmen der türkischen „den edlen Ritter“ redet einen weiteren Gefahr und Berichte der österreichischen Beitrag, der die Erinnerung des Helden Botschafter wurden in diesem Teil vorge- und ihre Folgen spät in den Zweiten Welt- stellt. Zwei weitere Studien debattieren krieg bringt. Damals wurden die Türken- die häufigen Topoi in Zeitungen, Bericht- kriege selber als Symbole für die deutschen erstattungen und Karten (z. B. Türken – nationalsozialistische Ansprüche im Süd- Feinde des Christentums) und der Einfluss osteuropa (und nicht nur) verwendet. Das der Menschen hintern diesen Medien. Verfahren der Erinnerungsbildung wird Die Wissensproduktion wird im zwei- auch in weiteren Formen sichtbar: Ma- ten Teil des Buches debattiert. Erstens be- lerei, Bildhauerkunst, Literatur, Theater. 150 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018)

Als Beispiele dienen die deutliche Insze- Antonio D’Alessandri nierung der russisch-osmanischen Kriege Sulle vie dell’esilio: in den Gärten von Zarskoe Selo oder das I rivoluzionari romeni dopo il 1848 berühmte Bild „Die Einwanderung der Coll. “Il Pianetta scritto,” Lecce: Argo, Schwaben“ – alle Zeugen der Folgen die- 2015 ser Türkenkriege. Genau wie der letzte Beitrag und der Rückblick beschließen, wurden die Tür- he publication of this book is a tes- kenkriege des 18 Jhs. kein Hauptthema T tament to the fact that major topics per- für Geschichtswissenschaften, deswegen taining to Romanian history, such as the bleiben noch weitere unterbelichtete As- Revolution of 1848, continue to spur cu- pekte für zukünftige Forschungen. Zent- ral- und Südosteuropa hatten damals eine riosity and interest in other historiographi- komplizierte Geschichte voller Wechsel. cal spaces, too. Antonio D’Alessandri, the Die drei Teile des vorgestellten Bandes author of this work, is a professor and bieten überraschende, ganz unterschiedli- researcher at the Faculty of Political Sci- che, malerische und wertvolle Darstellun- ences at Roma Tre University. This is not, gen der Türkengriege an. Die qualitativen in fact, his first publication dedicated to a Bilder und die ausgewählte Bibliographie Romanian topic. In 2007 the Institute for sind weiter Vorteile dieser Neuerschei- the History of the Risorgimento in Rome nung. Die Beiträge benutzen aktualisierte published his monographic study on a fas- Literatur sowie auch verschiedene Quellen cinating female personality, Elena Ghica aus der Epoche: alte Karten, Kartensamm- (Dora D’Istria). That study also saw the lungen, Archivunterlagen, Gemälde, Auf- light of print in Romanian translation in nahmen usw. Die Struktur und der Ent- 2011, at Pavesiana Press in Bucharest, un- wurf des Bandes versuchen erfolgreich, der the title Gândirea ºi opera Dorei D’Istria die Aufmerksamkeit des Lesers zu erregen. între Orientul european ºi Italia (The think- Für jeden interessierten Historiker sind ing and the works of Dora D’Istria, be- die vorgestellten Artikel wichtige Hinwei- tween the European Orient and Italy). se oder Abgangspunkte für andere For- The book we are presenting herein, schungsthemen. Der Zeitpunkt der Veröf- published in the collection “Il Pianetta fentlichung könnte kein Besseres sein: die scritto” of Argo Publishing House in Jahre 2016-2018 sind einen guten Anlass, Lecce three years ago, is a remarkable con- um die Ereignisse vor 300 Jahren zu erin- tribution to the study of an event that has nern und ins Licht zu bringen. generated a considerable amount of histo- q riography, namely, the 1848 Revolution. Sandra Hirsch The volume opens with an introduction, followed by four chapters and an index of names at the end. The introduction is especially important for two of its sections: one is dedicated to the historiography of Romanian revolutionary exile in the 19th century and the other aims to advance new Book Reviews • 151 perspectives of research on this theme. The ing the first months after their departure author tells us, thus, how he came to be into exile. The second section entitled involved in this research topic, which he “Transylvania: The Last Hope,” is interest- then completed in the form of a book: his ing in terms of the analysis he makes with effort is consistent with the growing inter- regard to the Wallachian exiles’ interest in est today, at the level of international his- a possible continuation of the revolution toriography, in transnational phenomena in Transylvania, after its suppression in and topics and in the history of exile. The Wallachia. The third section of the chapter post–1848 exile of the champions of vari- dwells on the situation of the Hungarian ous European revolutions that were sup- refugees, after the defeat of the revolution, pressed in 1848–1849 occasioned them south of the Danube, within the borders the respite for some clarifications and re- of the Ottoman Empire. calibrations of their ideological and action- The second chapter, entitled “Repre- al priorities, granting them greater aware- sentations of the Revolution,” presents in ness of the similarities and the differences the first section (“Polemics and Factions”) between their national projects, incorpo- the different approaches of the personali- rated in the revolutionary phenomenon ties that composed the post-revolutionary of 1848. Until 1857, when they were al- Romanian exile, active in London and lowed to re-enter their country, the Roma- Paris. In the author’s opinion, the period nian exiles had thus the occasion to refine, between the end of 1849 and 1850 was, along clearer and more concrete lines, the for the Romanian exiles, “a time of harsh unionist project that they would later on and polemical confrontation.” The experi- apply in practice, in the form of the Union ence of the revolution was still fresh for of the Principalities, the so-called “Little them, as they had not had the time for a Union,” on 24 January 1859. The author more detached reflection, which was to aptly highlights a significant similarity gain consistency later. Besides the national between the Romanian and the Italian ex- matter, on the agenda of the debates held iles of the 1848 Revolution: the fact that between these leaders of the defeated revo- after they were allowed to return to their lution who had gone into exile, there were homeland, they placed themselves unabat- also problems of an economic and social edly in the service of the national-political nature, as these were the areas where sub- unification and became the main, front- stantial reforms were needed (an agrarian line artisans of this process. It should be reform, among others). In the third sec- noted that Antonio D’Alessandri is a good tion, this chapter presents Ion Heliade connoisseur of the Romanian historiogra- Rãdulescu’s activity in exile, his journalis- phy devoted to the 1848 Revolution and tic work and his attempts to influence po- that he is well aware of how this problem litical life back home. was perceived during the various stages of The third chapter of the book is par- historical writing in Romania. ticularly interesting not only from the Chapter I, entitled “In Defence of the perspective of the analysis it proposes Revolution,” contains three sections (sub- but also for its documentary contribu- chapters) regarding the propaganda made tion. This chapter presents the efforts of by the leaders of the revolutionaries dur- the post–1848 Romanian exile to establish 152 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) their own press, which could serve both as on 5 and 24 January 1859. Back home, a means of launching and spreading ideas the exiled leaders of the revolutionaries and as a battlefield. An illustrious example would become ardent supporters of the in this regard is represented by România union movement. This chapter highlights viitoare, a newspaper created by Nicolae very well the complex historical process in Bãlcescu, to which were added Junimea which the leaders of the Romanian revolu- and Republica românã. An important doc- tion were involved, as well as their odys- umentary and interpretive contribution of sey after leaving the capital of France, until this work comes with the second section their return to the motherland. of this chapter, centered on the echoes of The book authored by Antonio the “Transylvanian problem” in exile, as D’Alessandri provides an interesting per- this matter inevitably divided the Roma- spective on a topic that has not escaped nian and the Hungarian leaders, despite the attention and interest of Romanian various attempts at mediation and concili- historiography. On the contrary, it has ation between the two groups. catalyzed the Romanian historiographi- Chapter IV, “The Twilight of the Revo- cal production in the form of numer- lution,” presents the actions, dilemmas ous monographic studies and articles, or and projects of the exiles in conjunction of several published editions of primary with events that were to prove decisive for sources (Documente privind revoluþia de la their whole endeavor, such as the change 1848 în Þãrile Române [Documents relat- of political regime in France, which, fol- ing to the 1848 Revolution in the Ro- lowing Louis Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup manian Countries], with its A, B and C d’état on 2 December 1851, was to re- series). Far from being a divulging work, turn to the imperial formula. This turn the Italian historian’s approach brings an of events was to cause Paris to become interesting and unique perspective on the unfriendly to all the groups of exiles of post–1848 exile of the Romanian revo- the 1848 Revolution, including the Ro- lutionaries and, in a broader sense, on a manians. These former revolutionaries crucial period in the history of the Roma- were, therefore, to leave the French capi- nians, between the 1848 Revolution and tal. The end of the Crimean War and the the Union of the Principalities. Antonio Peace Congress held in Paris in 1856 can D’Alessandri’s contribution belongs to an be said to have truly opened a new era institutional and historiographic context for the Romanian revolutionaries in ex- of high professional standing: the School ile, particularly since, shortly afterwards, for the History of Oriental Europe created in January 1857, after a long diplomatic by Professor Francesco Guida at Roma battle, approval was granted to the text Tre University, which has fully validated of the firman under which elections were itself through its research and the studies to be organized for the two assemblies in it has published so far on topics pertaining the Romanian principalities, as stipulated to Romanian and South-East European in the Paris Peace Treaty. This was the be- history. ginning of the unionist process, fraught q with difficulties, a process that eventually Ion Cârja concluded with the double election of Al- exandru Ioan Cuza in Iaºi and Bucharest, Book Reviews • 153

from the Wissenschaftskolleg of Berlin, he William Mulligan The Origins of the First World War analyses the diplomacy, the literature and Second edition (New Approaches to the history of the European space (but not European History) exclusively), seeking to find the roots of Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, the battle in order to present to the reader 2017 a complex investigation demonstrating its predictability. Divided into five big parts and accompanied by a list of illustrations (pp. illiam Mulligan’s book dedicated W VI–VII), maps (pp. VII–VIII), a biblio- to the origins of the First World War could graphical list (pp. 239–253), an index (pp. be briefly described as a historiographical 245–259), a long introduction (pp. 1–24) approach with literary, philological and and a conclusion (pp. 230–238), the book philosophical valences. Although it has not speaks about geopolitics and the way in enjoyed a success comparable to that of which the Great Powers influenced this The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War field between 1871 and 1914 (p. 25–94), in 1914 of Christopher Clark (New York: international politics and their relationship Penguin, 2013), this is still a good book with military forces and wars in the same where the huge amount of information period (pp. 95–135), the economic devel- blends with the investigation of the causes opment of the world before the war (pp. behind the events and where the causality 180–209), which is also seen as a cause of is well emphasized in the presentation of it, and the “July Crisis” (pp. 210–229). the events and their development. A proof In the introductory part, after present- in this direction is certainly the necessity of ing the conflagration from the diplomatic a second edition (eighteen years after the and geopolitical points of view, William first print) in the collection coordinated by Mulligan surveys in a critical way the pre- T. C. W. Blanning of Sidney Sussex Col- vious literature dedicated to the war and lege, Cambridge, and Brendan Simms of its background, starting right with the Peterhouse, Cambridge. time when the event was in progress. He The author, who is a lecturer in the underlines the fact that: “By the end of the School of History and Archives at the war, therefore, governments and intellec- University College in Dublin (and au- tuals had set out numerous interpretations thor of other three books dedicated to of the origins of the war, including the re- the aforementioned war or to the Euro- sponsibility of individual states, economic pean history of the 19th century), uses his rivalries between the powers, the rise of skills not only to investigate the event and militarism in Europe before 1914, the present its development (as the positivist tensions generated by popular nationalist historiographical approach does in most governments and the consequences of se- situations), but also to present the way cret diplomacy and alliances. These issues in which the evolution of European and continue to generate debate amongst his- global politics and the wars from the sec- torians to the present day” (p. 7). ond half of the 19th century led the world All these reasons but also others, men- to 1914. Helped by some scholarships tioned by other authors or discovered by from universities like Princeton or eurias him, are then investigated in the pages of 154 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) the book. Although the author gives at- century after the end of the sad event is tention especially to the European space, surely important and it would help histo- to which he feels closer and where he has rians and other readers understand how access to a richer bibliography, he doesn’t the evolution of the world and of politics neglect the important military events in in the second half of the 19th century and Asia, America or Africa. Therefore, he de- during the first one and a half decade of scribes the wars that took place there, pre- the 20th century led humanity to a war of senting the main battles and going deeper unprecedented cruelty. in order to find the reasons that generated q them. An example would be his short and Iuliu-Marius Morariu concentrated description of the Russo-Jap- anese war of 1904–1905, where he sum- marizes the event in a paragraph linking it with other contemporary ones. He argues Alberto Castaldini that “The scale of the Russo-Japanese War Il Dio nascosto e la possibilità di belied the short war myth in which one Auschwitz: Prospettive filosofiche decisive battle would deliver victory. Ad- e teologiche sull’Olocausto miral Togo Heiachiro’s attack on the Rus- Accademia Romena/Centro di Studi sian fleet in Port Arthur on 8–9 February Transilvani, Cluj-Napoca 2016 1904 gave Japan a commanding logistical advantage, but the war on land was one of attrition, rather than annihilation. The alle pagine de Il Dio nascosto e la battle of Mukden was the final major land D possibilità di Auschwitz (Accademia Ro- battle of the war and it lasted from January mena/Centro di Studi Transilvani, Cluj- until March 1905, with 270,000 men on Napoca 2016, pp. 370), a chiamarci a either side. Russian forces suffered ninety raccolta è un Dio fragile, talmente fragile thousand casualties, Japanese forces sev- da non esigere nemmeno una teodicea; enty thousand. It was another naval battle, un Dio, piuttosto, da “comprendere nella the sinking of Russia’s fleet at Tsushima domanda” (pp. 291-299) così come si fa on 28 May 1905, which brought about con l’uomo più debole. Sembrerà parados- an end of the war. Even then, peace owed sale che un’indagine sul Deus absconditus, more to the collapse of Russian credit and attenta alla tradizione apofatica e a quella domestic stability” (p. 111). ebraica (biblica, talmudica e cabalistica), ci Written in an interesting and attrac- parli invece di un Dio esposto, addirittura tive way, full of information and analyses troppo esposto. Non solo patiens ma perfi- that demonstrate the fact underlined in the no “stanco” (p. 238). La tesi stessa attorno conclusion, namely, that the war was not a cui ruota il libro di Alberto Castaldini è inevitable because of several events that assai esposta e non manca di una certa fra- took place before its beginning (pp. 230– gilità, che andrà interrogata. 231), the book of William Mulligan is Il libro sorprende per erudizione e not only an interesting and useful reading vastità di implicazioni, tanto che in ques- for a historian, but also a helpful tool for ta sede sarà possibile darne solo qualche philosophers, political analysts, psycholo- cenno essenziale. Come ogni opera di gists or even psychologists. Its reprint one ampio respiro è un libro che comprende Book Reviews • 155 molti altri libri, tra cui una sintesi efficace Non è certo una novità che Auschwitz dei fondamenti della religiosità ebraica venga eretto a tribunale di una “critica della (pp. 133-154) e una puntuale ricognizione ragione teologica”: quale diritto per Dio e delle sorti del pensiero teologico nel dopo- per il credente dopo un simile fallimento, Auschwitz (pp. 173-218). consumato nell’Europa della crescita intel- Qui ci concentreremo sulla proposta lettuale e delle conquiste socio-politiche? teologica che agita l’intero libro e converge Sarebbe superfluo rievocare le riflessioni di nel terzo capitolo (Il Dio della possibilità e Adorno a questo riguardo. Solo che ne Il il dolore del mondo, pp. 219-309, special- Dio nascosto e la possibilità di Auschwitz, di- mente il breve paragrafo: Una nuova con- versamente dal solito, lo sterminio non è trazione divina?, pp. 250-256). In estrema posto di fronte al credente come un evento sintesi, in questione è il riconoscimento, irrelato di cui dovrebbe rendere conto: Dio nell’evento storico della Shoà, della kénosis non veste i panni né di imputato né di parte – nozione paolina (Filippesi 2, 5-7) – mai lesa, viene incluso nell’evento-Auschwitz sviluppata dal pensiero ebraico. Solo at- pur senza l’aberrante (e interessata) scap- testando un processo kenotico nel divenire patoia del sacrificio. La proposta è infini- storico del Dio biblico la teologia può, tamente più sottile e comporta un ripensa- agli occhi di Castaldini, superare la sfida di mento delle basi stesse della teologia, che Auschwitz. Perché? acutamente non vengono rafforzate bensì La risposta può essere riassunta in indebolite, al fine di assecondare e rispec- forma di aut aut: o si rimane alla visione chiare il più fedelmente possibile l’orrore e teologica classica e quindi si condanna Dio la vergogna della storia. Quella che abbiamo (nessuna teodicea regge ad Auschwitz), definito fragilità della posizione, emerge oppure si rende Dio stesso partecipe di con sempre maggiore chiarezza, dipende una kénosis, ossia lo si storicizza e ridimen- in prima battuta da una precisa condizione siona, affinché torni possibile e dunque storica: quella che, con lessico ormai logoro, pensabile. Questo significa avvicinare il siamo soliti definire “nichilismo”. Non dob- Dio di Israele, condurlo – come fece il biamo infatti dimenticare – e Castaldini non Nuovo Testamento – nell’orto del Get- lo dimentica affatto – che la kénosis, stretta- semani e vederlo soffrire nel corpo di un mente legata al monoteismo, è vicinissima uomo, rifiutare, esitare proprio come un all’ateismo: il Dio kenotico “è il dio la cui uomo. Infine morire sulla croce pronunci- divinità è costituita proprio dall’assenza o il ando il più sconfortante dei Salmi. Questa dio la cui verità è proprio il vuoto-di-divin- croce, per il Dio della Torà, furono i va- ità” (J.-L. Nancy). Fare i conti con questo goni ferroviari che condussero sei milioni “vuoto-di-divinità”, pur conservandone di ebrei d’Europa verso le camere a gas l’intensità teologica, è a nostro avviso la vera come altrettanti “Menschen, Muselmänner, e propria sfida di questo libro. Stücke, e infine Figuren” (p. 321). Non Per aprire questa pista (e non lasciare la tragedia di un Dio Incarnato, dunque, al “vuoto-di-divinità” il sapore di una sen- ma la tragedia di un’intera collettività che, tenza definitiva) Castaldini si serve di al- nella diaspora, in quel Dio si identificava cuni elementi teorici di base: innanzitutto completamente. Ecco la proposta, per certi la Qabbalà luriana (che come vedremo è versi scandalosa, che viene dalle pagine di quanto di più vicino alla kénosis paolina sia questo libro. stato elaborato dalla riflessione ebraica), 156 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) filtrata dall’ermeneutica religiosa (segna- del nascondimento di Dio nel linguaggio (in tamente Luigi Pareyson) e da alcune pro- tal senso Dio è sempre contratto nella pa- fonde intuizioni dell’ultimo Schelling. rola). Non c’è dubbio che l’intero Talmud Questi elementi fanno corpo, anche se sia una profonda riflessione sui limiti del va tenuta ben presente la distanza che li linguaggio e che la cultura ebraica si nu- separa. Da una parte ci troviamo infatti di tra dei suoi sottili paradossi. Scholem: fronte a un complesso e immaginifico mi- “Dio stesso è la Torah e la conoscenza non tologema, la Qabbalà luriana appunto, sor- può uscirne”, e ancora: “La parola di Dio to nella scuola di Safed (l’attuale Safad, in è gravida di infiniti sensi ma non ne pos- Galilea) dopo la cacciata degli ebrei dalla siede uno preciso. Priva in sé di significato, Spagna per mano dei re cattolici nel 1492. essa è l’assolutamente interpretabile. [...] La collocazione storico-geografica non è Nel testo della Torah sono contenute tutte superflua, poiché la coscienza del rifiuto, queste infinite possibilità di comprensione” del pogrom subito, spostarono l’asse della (Il Nome di Dio e la teoria cabalistica del lin- riflessione cabalistica dai cenacoli misterici guaggio, pp. 66-67). alla pubblica piazza. Come ogni mito esso Non c’è certezza, dunque, salvo quel- si fa garante di un’intuizione diretta, della la del Libro. Ma in questa “certezza”, pienezza di una visione, addirittura di una non dandosi incomprensione (la Torà è visione cosmogonica. l’assolutamente non-univoco) non è data Lo Tzimtzum, o contrazione divina, nemmeno autentica comprensione. Si tratta è il movimento di un Dio che si contrae perciò di una ben misera certezza, fonte (“contrasse la Sua luce nello spazio di una piuttosto di interminabili “interrogazio- mano”, riporta una fonte antica, p. 177) ni”, per riprendere le parole di un poeta per lasciar essere l’altro da Sé; nel luogo lacerato dalla propria coscienza ebraica lasciato libero dal Senza-fine (En-Sof), come Edmond Jabès (Il libro delle inter- emanazioni (Sefiroth) della sua presenza rogazioni): “Poter dichiarare: «Sono nel li- (Shekhinà) colmarono dei “vasi” che anda- bro. Il libro è il mio universo, il mio paese, rono in pezzi per la violenza dell’impatto. il mio tetto e il mio enigma. Il libro è il Questi cocci rotti sono il mondo: ricom- mio respiro e il mio riposo». Mi alzo con la porre il disegno della creazione (Tiqqun) pagina che si apre, mi corico con la pagina lo scopo degli uomini. La rottura (She- che si chiude”. Essere nel Libro, alzarsi con virà) generò il male, il lato oscuro di cui la pagina che si apre e coricarsi con la pa- la creazione è intessuta. L’impatto ruppe gina che si chiude significa non essere in i supporti a causa di una radicale disparità nessun luogo (“il libro è opera del libro”) ontologica: questa disparità (matrice di e da questo punto cieco fare seriamente rottura e dispersione) è il male stesso. i conti con quella che Castaldini, depo- Il mitologema, ampiamente sviscerato tenziando un termine canonico, definisce da Castaldini fin dalle prime pagine, si “ri-velazione”: la Torà è dunque accolta incontra (e si scontra) con la prospettiva senza l’ingenuità della Rivelazione (luce to- ermeneutica, che è precisamente l’opposto talizzante, sostrato diafano di una visione di una visione e testimonia invece della me- completa), ma con il produttivo sospetto diazione infinita costituita dal linguaggio. (o “interrogazione”) della “ri-velazione”: L’ermeneutica religiosa, in perfetta sim- ri-velare è, nello stesso movimento, mostra- biosi con la tradizione rabbinica, ci parla re e nascondere. Nulla di meno perentorio: Book Reviews • 157 come per il non-nascondimento heideg- caso il Dio della Torà, che si palesa a Mosè geriano (Unverborgenheit), non si tratta nel roveto ardente (Esodo 3, 1-6; 33, 22- di pura e semplice apertura ma di limite 23), immagine che ricorre ne Il Dio nascos- che conserva nella chiusura la sua intima to come modello di ogni teofania, “mostra verità: fondo emergente che capta la su- la schiena”, il resto del suo passaggio, la sua perficie rendendola fluttuante. Pulsazione traccia: “Ti coprirò con la mano finché dell’esposizione, battito di ciglia che per- sarò passato. Poi toglierò la mano e vedrai mette di cogliere nello stesso istante una pre- le mie spalle, ma il mio volto non lo si può senza a rischio e il rischio di un’assenza. vedere” (p. 298). Per Castaldini questa A doversi contrarre è dunque, per pri- immagine rappresenta il percorso comune ma cosa, il pensiero di Dio. In questo senso dell’uomo e di Dio, perciò l’accento cade lo sforzo ermeneutico di Castaldini, per innanzitutto sulla salvaguardia degli occhi certi versi crudele, segna una tappa impor- – ossia della vita – di Mosè (la collettività tante nel rilancio del pensiero teologico. degli uomini) e non sul nascondimento Di fronte al binario spezzato di Auschwitz come privazione. Il nascondimento, in la voce del credente deve trovare nuova questi termini, è a tutti gli effetti protezi- linfa per poter praticare una teologia a mi- one e soccorso. Dio cela il proprio volto sura d’uomo e di Dio, contro le alternative per garantire la visione sicura, unica, uni- del “pensiero debole” e soprattutto della voca, che avrà luogo alla fine dei tempi. “teologia della crisi” (dal Ganz Andere bar- Qualsiasi visione anzitempo è impostura thiano al kèrigma bultmanniano). Questa proprio a causa della sua visibilità: falsa corrente di pensiero è molto più evasiva Rivelazione a cui deve sostituirsi la pazienza e meno radicale di quanto sembri, perché infinita della ri-velazione. Questo significa rigetta l’enigma di Dio nella pura (inat- che il Dio della Torà (della Legge scritta e tingibile) alterità, negando il pensiero ra- infinitamente interpretabile, dunque sem- zionale e obliterando il problema storico. pre ancora da scrivere) si dipana nel tempo La “teologia della crisi” è a misura d’uomo storico, nel cammino dell’uomo, nei suoi perché a dismisura di Dio, e viceversa: “La passi, soprattutto nelle sue cadute: maieuta trascendenza è per Barth «assoluta», tale egli stesso, insieme all’uomo, dell’Escathon. che ogni sua comprensione umana [...] Si tratta perciò di raccogliere i resti risulta impraticabile” (pp. 96-97). Questa della teologia in vista di un Tiqqun in- “impraticabilità” può risultare tanto scon- nanzitutto teoretico; la nozione di resto, fortante quanto, per converso, intellettual- tipicamente ebraica (Isaia 46,3; Rosen mente pacificante: comprendendo perfet- zweig, La stella della redenzione: “L’uomo tamente di non poter comprendere sono nel giudaismo è sempre in qualche misura all’altezza di un sapere definitivo. La “teo- un resto”), è un concetto chiave nel libro logia della crisi”, facendo esplodere la reci- di Castaldini. Possiamo affermare che ogni procità si dimostra, a tutti gli effetti, crisi divisione, ogni scissione, lasci dietro di sé della teologia. Ci parla di un Dio lontano un resto; ogni “resto” è un frammento ver- e inerte cui fa eco un pensiero pietrificato. so l’unificazione, verso la ricomposizione “Per Bonhoeffer”, scrive Castaldini, ci- delle disiecta membra che modulano il dis- tando il celebre teologo luterano, “è il Dio corso della creazione. Da qui l’innesto (deci- dell’assenza, della divina impotenza sulla sivo) delle riflessioni schellinghiane, mosse terra, quello che salva” (p. 327). Non a ogni volta dall’unico pensiero del frazion- 158 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (Summer 2018) arsi dell’Identità in seno all’Assoluto. Dei to” nella Scienza della logica hegeliana), ma tre “strumenti di lavoro” di cui si serve attesta inequivocabilmente un retaggio Castaldini, in Schelling va senz’altro rav- cabalistico, e precisamente luriano; tanto visato l’anello di congiunzione tra il mi- che Schelling arriva a concepire il “ritrarsi” tologema luriano e lo scavo ermeneu- (zurück-ziehen) di un’“essenza originaria” tico (dunque la chiave di volta dell’intero (Urwesen) che non somiglia più né al Dio discorso): Schelling lega l’esigenza del della più canonica teologia né all’Asso Dio vivente a quella di una logica obbli- luto propriamente filosofico, possedendo gata a rendere ragione del molteplice in per contro tutti i caratteri dell’En-Sof: seno all’unità, dunque costretta a porre il l’Assoluto (o, più correttamente, il Senza- problema del male senza mediazioni di- fine) si contrae dall’Inizio. Siamo fuori alettiche: “Il male non è [...] nient’altro dalla filosofia e non ancora nella teologia. che il fondamento originario dell’esistenza E da questo terreno vergine sorge la pro- [der Urgrund zur Existenz], in quanto posta di Castaldini, che trova qui la sua tende all’attualizzazione nell’essere creato, piena formulazione: “forse che ad Aus- e dunque, di fatto, solo la superiore poten- chwitz, di fronte a una sistematica attuazi- za del fondamento che agisce nella natura” one del Niente [...] pianificata dalla libera (Ricerche filosofiche sull’essenza della libertà scelta dell’uomo, Dio ha scelto un’ulteriore umana, 1809). contrazione, un estremo allontanamento/ Questa concezione, come noto, con- esilio della Shekinà dal mondo? Forse che duce Schelling alla nozione di “salto” Dio ha consentito in qualche modo e per (Sprung che non tarda a divenire Abfall, qualche tempo a una anti-divinità (intesa Caduta): si può “giustificare” la scissione come costruzione umana) di sussistere, at- solo facendo appello a una irragionevole traverso una sua deliberata, poiché neces- libertà, perennemente in lotta col “fonda- saria, rinunzia all’amore?” (p. 254). mento” preesistente che minaccia ad ogni Il domandare è fitto e dichiaratamente istante di riemergere. Non è infatti possibile stabilire un passaggio da incondizion- euristico: può darsi che il mondo, doman- ato a condizionato, da infinito a finito: la da ancora Castaldini, “di fronte al pericolo sola ragione è impotente di fronte a questo della sua nientificazione [...], ha [...] re- scarto. Del resto l’Assoluto stesso, se pen- sistito grazie al silenzio di un Dio che non sato coerentemente e fino in fondo, non si è mostrato, che si è esiliato, contraendosi di lascia spazio alcuno a Dio. L’Assoluto è fronte allo scenario del male operante?”. per definizione ciò che riassorbe tutto nel Per usare il lessico di Schelling: il fondo, proprio incessante movimento, fagoci- ad Auschwitz, avrebbe captato l’intera tando ogni residuo. Se facciamo di Dio superficie delle cose in una risalita senza l’Assoluto ci troviamo di fronte a un idolo, scampo, senza residui, al punto che tutto se facciamo dell’Assoluto Dio abbiamo ciò che era non-Dio (l’evento-Auschwitz è posto un limite a ciò che non ha limite, concepito da Castaldini come “anti-Dio”, e quindi soppresso l’Assoluto. Schelling ci p. 311), saturando ogni recesso, costrinse invita a compiere un gesto anomalo: porre Dio a scomparire senza residui, contraendosi l’Assoluto al “principio” della filosofia e di nuovo? Questa decisione divina (e qui i non alla fine (p. 251). Filosoficamente è limiti tra libertà e necessità diventano opa- una mossa azzardata, addirittura ingenua chi), questo soccorso silenzioso, avrebbe (cfr. p. es. il problema del “cominciamen- contribuito al mantenimento dell’intero Book Reviews • 159 creato? “Un rinnovato tzimtzum per un to, come è talora prodotto dall’ignoranza rinnovato Bereshit?”. Questa ipotesi è la umana [...] e non da un progetto voluto e vertigine del libro, l’audace tentativo di pianificato” (pp. 275-276). delineare una fenomenologia teologica di Infatti “il Dio che diviene nella storia, e Auschwitz. In questo modo “la Shoà si divenendo soffre con l’uomo e nell’uomo, confermerebbe” infatti, di conseguenza, è quel Dio che nell’uomo può persino mori- “sia drammatica cesura della storia, sia im- re” (p. 221). Poste simili condizioni, Dio previsto continuum nel progetto divino sul sconta la pena del più crudele (colui che mondo” (p. 255). Forse il “das Nichtige di pianifica il male) quanto del più inno- Auschwitz [...]” si è mutato improvvisa- cente degli uomini (colui che ignora o che mente “nel Nihil di un’assoluta solitudine subisce il male). Ancora Jabès, Il libro delle e incomunicabilità, in cui Dio si è con- interrogazioni: tratto nuovamente” (ibid.). E contrarsi, ormai lo sappiamo, significa lasciar essere. – È vero, chiese un giorno a Reb Nati Il “vuoto-di-divinità”, anziché richiudersi l’innocente Maimoun, che sono nato con su di sé, apre ad altro. Vuoto, svuotamento, il primo uomo? contrazione, kénosis: altrettanti sinonimi di – Sei nato con il primo desiderio divino, creazione. Ma di una creazione che non gli rispose Reb Nati, e il desiderio era che può permanere nell’essere senza il sosteg- tu fossi uomo. no attivo degli uomini, sempre ricomposta – È vero, chiese ancora a Reb Nati e riparata, sempre in divenire. Affinché l’innocente Maimoun, che amare Dio è il fondo oscuro, implicito, schellinghiana- amarlo negli uomini? mente, nella natura stessa (dunque nello – Amare Dio, gli rispose Reb Nati, è fare stesso Dio), non riemerga ogni volta per proprio il Suo amore per gli uomini. Dio è disperdere i resti e rinnovare la Shevirà. uno stoppino discreto che, grazie a te, sarà Ecco che il Tiqqun emerge in tutto il luce; perché esso attende, sotto il vetro, il suo potenziale di opera incompiuta, di op- gesto di fuoco che ne farà la tua lampada. era da fare e non di situazione esistenziale – Allora ho perduto il mio Dio, disse in un nella quale si è gettati; in esso si è coin- gemito l’innocente Maimoun, perché non volti, è storia e opera del tempo, frutto di amo gli uomini che hanno ucciso mio padre libera scelta: il Tiqqun non è, si fa. È praxis e, da allora, vivo nel buio. e non ousia, dunque praticabile etsi deus non daretur. Facendo proprio l’incessante La possibilità di questo “buio” (che implica interrogare talmudico, l’uomo viene per- qualsiasi genere di esercizio distruttivo, o ciò restituito alla propria responsabilità, “attivamente nientificante”, dal più inin- invitato ad “agire eticamente per rafforzare fluente al più sadicamente necroforo), in- Dio” (pp. 299-310). Anche la “colpa”, so- nestata da Castaldini al cuore della sua pro- lido bastione veterotestamentario, subisce posta teologica, è l’urgenza e lo scandalo un’incrinatura: “Il colpevolizzare l’uomo del suo discorso. Del resto, se “L’ombra alla luce del peccato originale, in una pros- è luogo e divenire di Dio sull’implacabile pettiva agostiniana, rischia di connotare il via della luce” (Jabès), oportet ut scandala male principalmente nella sua offesa a Dio eveniant ! e al suo progetto, dimenticando che il male q è sia commesso dall’uomo, sia da lui subi- Francesco Fogliotti contributors

Elena Bãrbulescu, Ph.D. 51 Lenin Ave., Ekaterinburg 620000, Russian Senior researcher at the Folklore Archive Institute, Federation Romanian Academy e-mail: [email protected] 7 Republicii St., Cluj-Napoca 400015, Romania e-mail: [email protected] Sandra Hirsch, Ph.D. Researcher at Babeº-Bolyai University ªtefan Borbély, Ph.D. 1 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 40084, Romania Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Babeº-Bolyai e-mail: [email protected]. University 31 Horea St., Cluj-Napoca 400202, Romania Ana Maria Hopârtean, Ph.D. e-mai: [email protected] Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Babeº-Bolyai University Valentin Burlacu, Ph.D. 58–60 T. Mihali St., Cluj-Napoca 400591, Romania Associate professor at the Faculty of History and e-mail: [email protected] Geography, Ion Creangã State Pedagogical University 1 Ion Creangã St., Kishinev, MD-2069 Iuliu-Marius Morariu, Ph.D. candidate e-mail: [email protected] Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Babeş-Bolyai University Episcop N. Ivan St., Cluj-Napoca, 400000, Romania Ion Cârja, Ph.D. e-mail: [email protected] Associate professor at Babeº-Bolyai University 1 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania Ion Negrei, Ph.D. e-mail: [email protected] Researcher at the Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of Moldova Vitalie Ciobanu, Ph.D. 82 31 August 1989 St., Kishinev, MD-2012 Director of the Center for Culture and Military History e-mail: [email protected] 47 Tighina St., Kishinev, MD-2001 e-mail: [email protected] Robert-Marius Mihalache, Ph.D. Researcher at the Center for Transylvanian Studies, Gheorghe E. Cojocaru, Ph.D. Romanian Academy Director of the Institute of History, Academy of Sci- 12–14 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania ences of Moldova e-mail: [email protected] 82 31 August 1989 St., Kishinev, MD-2012 e-mail: [email protected] Andrei State, Ph.D. Editor at tact Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca Andrei Emilciuc, Ph.D. 42 Occidentului St., Apt. 5, Bucharest 010984, Senior researcher at the Institute of History, Academy Romania of Sciences of Moldova e-mail: [email protected] 82 31 August 1989 St., Kishinev, MD-2012 e-mail: [email protected] Mihai Taºcã, Ph.D. Senior researcher at the Institute of Legal and Francesco Fogliotti, M.A. Political Research of the Academy of Sciences GCS/Sociocultural Youth Cinecirculars of Moldova Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Genua/Rome 1 ªtefan cel Mare ºi Sfânt Blvd., Kishinev, MD-2001 22 San Michele St., Roma 00153, Italy e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] Gunnar Thorvaldsen, Ph.D. Elena Glavatskaya, Ph.D. Professor at the Norwegian Historical Data Centre, Professor at the Department of History, Ural Federal Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tromso⁄ University Tromso⁄ N9037, Norway e-mail: [email protected]