Until the end of 1989, TVR broadcast the film at least once every two years, on the evening of August 23. Evening directed by Malvina Urcianu. A film set in the home of a prestigious professor and researcher, a home located very close to a strategic military facility, the importance of which could not escape the revolutionary vigilance of the Communists, who we were told had full credit for transferring arms against Germany.

The film has a great cast: George Motoi, Cornel Coman, Silvia Gelan, Lucia Muresan, as well as last but not least –, György Kovacs. The one who played the role of host, who had a restrained presence due to his health. At one point, I remember the sequence very well, after the broadcast of the Royal Proclamation on the radio, a teacher appeared and spoke from the stairs The world is changing, gentlemen!

It is this change, as it happened between March 1944, when it was already clear that Germany and its allies were losing the war, and March 1953, the month of Stalin’s death, that is the subject of his latest book, Stelian Tanase. The book is called Rumors about the end of the world. Bucharest, 1944-1953published in 2023 by the Bucharest publishing house Corinth. history. No, the more than 500 pages of the volume are not about natural disasters that would herald the inevitability of the Apocalypse. But about the political, economic and social catastrophe caused by the establishment of communism.

The story, told by Stelian Tenase, begins with the tangled history of representation on the theater stage Alhambra a masterpiece of Mykhailo Sebastian Nameless star. Perhaps also to emphasize the point that in the period 1944-1953 Shakespeare’s famous words were more relevant than ever The world is a stage, and we, people, are actors. However, unfortunately, with a few small exceptions, primarily from the Kremlin people who were active either in the country or in Moscow, few people guessed that in Romania, as in other countries of Eastern Europe, a transition from one world to another is taking place. That is, Sovietization, in the implementation of which, in the case of Romania, an important role would be played by a small PCR, which, a little further, was to be strengthened by the presence of all kinds of opportunists and thanks to the infusion with legionary elements, tanks of the Soviet Army, members of the Allied Control Commission, in which the main role belonged representatives of the USSR and Moscow’s tough emissaries. As it turned out, for example, Andriy Januarevych Visinsky, who on March 6, 1945 forced King Mihai to accept a government led by Dr. Petru Groza.

So far, not even those who wildly applauded the premiere Nameless stars, neither those who joyfully took to the streets after the broadcast of the Royal Proclamation, believing that peace had come and trouble was over, nor those who bought their annual almanacs at the end of 1944, did not quite understand what was in store. Perhaps they did not even know that those almanacs had already been censored, because on August 24, the censorship began to work according to new rules.

For a while, the world still had the right to hope for a return to normal life. The great hotels and restaurants were still open, the theaters gave premieres, even if they often did so in makeshift rooms because the old establishments had been razed to the ground or severely damaged in the bombings, the luxury houses of tolerance were still open, and those for the plebs (Stone cross). The parties hoped that they would be able to reorganize. And even if some have already felt the breath of Moscow on their necks, even if Mykhailo Sadovyanu announced in a famous speech at the Hall Dulles what the light comes from the east he still dreamed of the restoration of normal life and the arrival of the Americans.

In the historical mosaic that the book offers, Stelian Tenase creates an intelligent and well-balanced mixture of events of major and minor history. Successive coups by communist leaders, their increasingly aggressive presence at all levels of the hierarchy, gaining control over key institutions (primarily over institutions of power), the events of March 1945, November 1946, the elimination of liberals and peasants from political life, the appearance of defectors, traitors and fellow travelers go side by side with the generalization of books, with poverty, with the hardship of life, with the change of theater and cinema repertoires, with the Sovietization of culture.

The forced abdication of the king was not the beginning, but only a stage of the imposition of the end of the world, the end of which was confirmed by nationalization on June 11, 1948. Stelian Tenase also describes the struggle for power in the ranks of the Romanians. communists The death of Stefan Foris, the removal and execution of Lucrezio Petrashkan, the tension between Gheorghe Georgiou-Dej and Ana Pauker.

To the purely historical document, Stelian Tenase links the notes of some intellectuals of the time from various diaries and memoirs published after 1989, as well as some personal memories. A combination of what historians have written and documented and what witnesses have shown is useful here. And reading a book is both useful and pleasant.

Stelian Tănase – RUMORS ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD, Bucharest 1944-1953, Corint Publishing House, Bucharest, 2023

2. Choran is a state affair

book Choran and securitywhich was published in the summer of 2023 by the Bucharest publishing house Quantum, reproduces documents either in the Archives of the Intelligence Service of Romania or in the custody of CNSAS. The documents in question cover the period from February 20, 1941 to May 5, 1990, with some interruptions. The period when, one way or another, the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran found himself in the center of attention of the Romanian special services. Regardless of whether they served the Antonesian dictatorship or the communist regime. The philosopher from Resinari became similar to Ionesco, Eliade, Enescu state affairs.

Historian, political scientist and novelist Stelian Tenase was engaged in researching these documents and preparing them for publication. Stelian Tenase is also credited with writing the essentialized introductory study, the study that bears the book’s title, and whose central idea is that for nearly 50 years, Cioran was an important target for the Romanian intelligence services. Who closely watched not only him, but also his family members. That is, Emilian and Elvira Cioran’s parents, Aurel Cioran’s brother, who, in addition to being related to the philosopher, was also guilty of being an active participant in the legionary movement, for which he was sentenced to 7 years in prison, and Virginia Cioran’s sister.

The editor’s intention was that the volume should also receive a preface, which, by the way, was invited from Mihai Shory, an old, kind and steadfast friend of the philosopher born in Resinar. But alas, in February 2023, when the contents of the book could be read in its final form, death no longer allowed the future preface to fulfill its promise.

Antonesian secret services became concerned about Emil Choran shortly after the Legionary Rebellion. In February 1941, the philosopher, who had developed sympathies for the Legion and its doctrinaires, sympathies which he later dissociated as the mistakes of his youth, was in Paris. Where he went to study for some time and where he held the position of cultural adviser. In the new political conditions, Choran was instructed to write an article entitled Transylvania-Prussia-Romania which became a kind of accusation and argument in favor of dismissal. About a year after that, a lot of trouble will befall Aurel Cioran (continuous surveillance, house searches, accusations of legionnaire propaganda, etc.). Otherwise, as the reader of the book will easily understand, the fates of Emil and Aurel Choran, as well as other family members, will be closely connected with the special services both during the Antonesian period and after 1948. Especially after 1954, when the Communist Security opened a Local Surveillance File in the name of a philosopher who settled in Paris and who began to enjoy recognition and then celebrity in the French capital, transformed a year later into a nationwide Surveillance File. It is hard to believe that until 1954 the communist special services would have ignored the philosopher. For the repressive authorities in Bucharest, any Romanian citizen who did not return to the country after 1944 or remained after 1944, and especially after 1947 in the West, was of interest. Interest in Cioran must have been even greater given the political choices of his youth and, subsequently, his success in the West.

What were the main topics of security operations related to Emil Cioran? What the special services were looking for. 1. His relationship with family members. How close the philosopher is to them and how he communicates with them. 2. To what extent is the philosopher involved in the actions of the Romanian exile, what is his attitude to his activities, especially to those openly hostile to the Bucharest regime. 3. How Choran positions himself in relation to his former legionnaire sympathies, how close he is to the legionnaires in exile. 4. Name the reports of the author of the book The temptation to exist with radio stations broadcasting from the West to Romania. 5. Who are his friends and especially his relationship with Mircea Eliade, Eugene Ionesco, Vintila Horia, Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Yerunka. 6. What chances of success would an attempt to convince Choran to return, even for a short time, to the country have. 7. How the sinusoid of Cioran’s attitude to the politics of the Bucharest regime developed, with special attention to opinions about the Ceausescu regime.

All these themes were materialized in the tasks set before the informants who thronged both Sibiu and Paris. If Aurel Cioran seems to have been easier to approach, although the attempt to be recruited ended in a dismal failure, the operations in Paris created many problems for the Romanian guards and their informants. Cioran showed the utmost discretion towards the members of the Romanian diaspora, he did not actively participate in their actions, he is not aloof, except for the desire to show himself as a public figure, it seems that he learned some lessons from what happened with Vintilă Horia on the occasion of the award nomination Goncourthe was and was not friends with Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunka (regarding this relationship, I think it is necessary to carefully evaluate the notes of informants who sometimes fell victim to the tendency to please the bodies in Bucharest), he was afraid of the possible interventions of a Marxist sociologist (Marxist) of literature by Lucien Goldman, whom he met in the Romanian capital. The most active informer seems to have been someone from Sibiu called Sirbu Ioan (there were obviously others, and there were many), while the top of the list illegal persons it belongs to a certain Anton. Could we be talking about Ion Karaion? – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro