Writer Dan Petrescu turned 75 on February 26. Beautiful, gentle and complex age – depending on the person. He was one of the young intellectuals of Iași who actively read cultural magazines Dialogue and Student’s opinion detained and investigated by the Securitate since May 18, 1983. Dan Petrescu, Luca Pitsu, Sorin Antohi, Liviu Antonesei, Alexandru Kelinescu, Liviu Antonesei, Dan Alexe, Mihai Dinu Georgiou, and others, will be identified after the revolution as a community. The “group from Yass” would represent a “unique and unpredictable meeting of like-minded people” (according to Dan Alexe), but also a “cultural myth with political dimensions” (Sorin Antohi), whose image is “ultimately imposed on the public space” after the fall of communism[1]. Paradoxically, the symbolic relevance of the Group, a counterexample to the liberal community of the Peltinish school, will be perceived only in the 2000s.[2]

Among the Iasi intellectuals who woke up at the dawn of May 18, 1983, Dan Petrescu brought iconoclasm (not only political), inner autonomy and its subversive manifestations, a playful dimension of spirit, also found in humor or irony, a rebellious instinct with fire resistance and unruly options, inclusion and the cultural clarity that characterized them all, in varying degrees, down to the obvious resentment against the Caucusists and anti-communists that turned him into a dissident.

Before his arrest in 1983, Dan Petrescu was targeted by the Ia Directorate, which dealt with opponents. In the report dated March 27, 1981, it was already stated that he would write an autobiographical novel, “in the content of which he tended to touch on some social and political problems of our country.”[3].

In 1984, he would also attract the attention of the 3rd Administration through the connections he and his wife, Teresa Petrescu, had established with her brother, Ioan Petru Culianu, who was then in Holland. In a report dated January 11, 1984, with proposals to start an informational pursuit, the law enforcement officers note in the counter-intelligence dossier of the persecution of Dan Petrescu, “how he appeared as a liaison of the French lecturers Mathieu Jean.”[-] Noel and Romain Rechu [Réchou]”. The same measures also applied to his wife, “who has a brother of Culianu Ion-Petru, who stayed abroad illegally and settled in the Netherlands, and with whom he maintains frequent contact through two teachers.”[4]

I quote the above document mainly to insert the holographic note in the margins of the officer in charge of surveillance: “When we discussed the action, I indicated the tasks and measures to compromise or influence it – something – positive. I appreciate that we can warn both Dan Petrescu and his wife several more times without affecting their concepts [subl.mele]”. Dan Petrescu has already given them the opportunity to “warn him”[5] and from that time will bring them pleasure from doing their work[6]including by preparing criminal proceedings[7].

The prudence of the comment is, of course, unusual. This is also stated in the officers’ actions aimed at preventing the radicalization of Petrescu’s family. On May 5, 1984, the 3rd Directorate sent a warning to the Iasi District Security Inspectorate at the address:

“Thanks to the measures we will continue to take against the Petrescu family of Iasi, let us not give any opportunity to act hostile to the interests of our country on their part and the connections they have in the West. Until this end in no way hinder the opportunity to work and earn honestly – in accordance with your training (emphasis mine)”.[8]

It would seem that the officers sensed the persistent psychology of the persecuted and took it into account. They had evidence today after opening the security archive. Among other things, the file contains a copy of a “Letter sent to Lord Nicolae Dan, forwarded by Dan Petrescu,” which I reproduce with great pleasure. In her words and tone, she takes revenge for the almost universal submissiveness of those times:

“Dear Mr. Chief Editor [“Domnule” subliniat de securist!],

In view of the repeated attacks launched by your protégé Artur Silvestri and directed against Mr. Ioan Petro Culianu, I have the honor to ask you to respect the current law on the press and immediately publish the following few clarifications in the journal you manage […]; the undersigned, along with his family and a group of friends, are now the victims of a rigorous investigation by the Security Service, who in previous searches of our homes were looking for exactly the same material used by your employee: what explanation can you give for this? Personally, I want to emphasize that if I am charged with criminal proceedings for informing my son-in-law about what is happening in the magazine “Luceafărul” or about the fact of keeping so-called “subversive literature”, I will demand I insist that such the same attitude was applied to the magazine “Luceafărul” and to the person who signs its pages with the name Artur Silvestri.

In conclusion, I state that this is an open letter and that if it is not published exactly as it is written, in accordance with the provisions of the Press Law, I will take such measures as I think appropriate against Luceafărul magazine. and the personally mentioned Arthur Silvestri.

Sincerely, Dan Petrescu, May 24, 1983.”[9]

Radicalization of Dan Petrescu. Dissent of the last years of the communist decade

Dan Petrescu will continue such cat-and-cat games in the years to come. In 1988 and 1989, he went from insults to sudden opposition demonstrations. At the beginning of 1988, he will give an interview to the journalist Gilles Schiller, whose name is from Release“Ceaușescu is not the only culprit!”, already presented lèse majesté. In another article published in the same year, on February 15, in Release, “A Little Study in the Anatomy of Evil,” the Yesian intellectual condemned the system of chosen villainy “in the face and likeness of him who dictates it.” Another interview, recorded in Iasi in April 1988, given to the French news agency Gamma, will be broadcast on TV France 3 and on Free Europe a year later. He perfectly captures the obsessive ideas of the moment: queues have become a nationwide institution, the climate of despair has changed even people’s physiognomy. Dan Petrescu began writing together with Liviu Cangeopol (they took turns at the former’s typewriter, as Dan Petrescu did with Sorin Antohi, writing about Magazine from Paltinish) dialogue later became a book What else can be said in the spring of 1988. The tape recording of the original text, read by Dan Petrescu, would be completed in the autumn of the same year, reaching Paris around Christmas through the Italian lecturer Anna Alasio, who passed it on to Monica Lovinescu. In 1989, after the recording was transcribed by Dan Alexe, who emigrated in 1988, the conversation will be published in the journal Agora. Monica Lovinescu read several fragments at the station.

Another open letter addressed to the repressive authorities was sent to “Free Europe” on August 30, 1989. In it, Dan Petrescu condemned the persecution of his friends and, as the icing on the cake of debunking the conspiracy, listed the security officers who had been monitoring and investigating the iconoclastic youths of Iași. At the beginning of October of that “last year”, Dan Petrescu announced a hunger strike. He will make a statement against the re-election of Nicolae Ceausescu as General Secretary at the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Romania and collect a list of signatories starting with Doina Cornea. The statement will be broadcast on the Munich radio station on October 9, 1989[10]. In November 1988, he signed the Call for the organization of the Day of Romania. The chosen day, November 15, confirmed international solidarity with the workers of Brasov, who took to the streets a year ago.

To get to know the “then Dan Petrescu”, I return to the interview he gave to the journalist Gilles Schiller.[11]. The following fragment introduces the reader to the style of Dan Petrescu, to some extent even the “style of the Iasi group”: radical, but relaxed, with a lot of content in simple formulations, with a lot of humor, but as if restrained. There:

“Now we are creating a kind of enclave in this geographical part of the world, but I want to believe that according to a certain principle, which I would call connecting vessels, the time is not far when we will be in unison with what is happening in our geopolitical zone. It is true that now this enclave of which I speak is taking on the character of forced albanization. That is why I allow myself to say that if President Nicolae Ceausescu accused four of the six party figures who addressed him with a letter of being agents of different forces, it seems logical to me that he himself is an agent, namely the Albanian one. agent”[12].

Former dissident after the revolution

If I had to make a hierarchy of fame among dissidents, subjective and based solely on impressions, but not free, I would say that in the first months of 1990, Dan Petrescu was in third place after Doina Cornea, the great heroine of the last communist decade, and Paul Goma, the hero of the previous one[13]. His activity during the last two years was widely publicized throughout Free Europe, so his actions were alive in people’s memory. It was almost inevitable that immediately after the fall of the regime, he was co-opted into the National Salvation Front Council in Iasi. He soon resigned when he saw that it had been won over by supporters of the former regime. Then he was appointed Deputy Minister of Culture under the leadership of Andrii Plesha. He kept a clean spirit and spoke publicly, as was his custom, about the poison spread in public life by such persons as Cornel Vadim Tudor. He was continuously criticized in front-line newspapers (e.g Today) and transitional ultra-nationalists. He was one of the few Romanian dignitaries (actually I don’t know of any others) who asked for the resignation of the Minister of Interior after the conflict in Tirgu Mures. The newspaper was notified truthalready installed on the anti-Hungarian front[14].

He moved away from the temperamentally familiar political life to the cultural life close to him professionally. He was the director of the Museum of Literature, then found refuge in an even more solitary activity: director of the Albatros publishing house, editor _Read the rest of the article at Contributors.ro