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Translation by Maria-Magdalena Anghelescu

Foreword by Simion Pop

Based on extensive ethnographic research, this book delves into the thriving industry of religious infrastructure in Romania, where 4,000 Orthodox churches and cathedrals have been built in three decades. Following the construction of the world’s highest Orthodox cathedral in Bucharest, the book brings together sociological and anthropological scholarship on eastern Christianity, secularization, urban change and nationalism. Reading postsocialism through the prism of religious change, the author argues that the emergence of political, entrepreneurial and intellectual figures after 1990 has happened ‘under the sign of the cross’. (From the webpage of Berghahn Books)

What people are saying about it:

“The result of careful and in-depth research, also enriched by interesting references to the history of the Romanian intellectual classes, the volume brings into dialogue theories and instruments of the international debate with local sources and research. The work also confirms the ethnographic validity of an observation centered on the material infrastructure and on the exploration of the social, economic and symbolic networks connected to it; it thus offers a polyphonic representation of the importance – also economic, monumental and ideological – that Orthodox Christianity assumes in the new public space, while speaking at the same time about the arrangements and orderings that allow religious actors to manipulate and construct it.” (Davide Carnevale, ANUAC. Rivista della società italiana di antropologia culturale) [original review in Italian]

“Drawing upon detailed ethnographical research, leavened with an impressive command of theoretical literature on the social life of architecture and urban special symbolism, the author examines the development of religious infrastructure in Romania, where four thousand Orthodox churches have been constructed over the three decades since the revolution. At the same time, Tateo’s book offers an analysis of secularization and urban change, and their impact upon the course of nationalism in the country.” (Dennis Deletant, Slavonic and East European Review)

“There is much to like in Tateo’s analysis. Throughout this book he uses stories and case studies to illuminate the broader relationships between the state and the Orthodox Church in Romania, at both national and local levels. He also demonstrates persuasively that to understand the role and importance of religion in a postsocialist context it is necessary to move beyond explanations grounded in religious revivalism, and consider the range of actors with diverse political and economic interests which intertwine to shape the religious landscape.“ (Duncan Light, Eurasian Geography and Economics) 

“Giuseppe Tateo’s book is an important contribution to the recent history of the Romanian Orthodox Church and its current crisis in a slowly secularizing Romania. […] Combining the sociology of religion, space theory, cultural anthropology, and church history, Tateo’s book serves as an important example of a transdisciplinary approach in the academic study of religions in Central-Eastern Europe.” (Csaba Szabó, Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe)

You can buy the book here.

About the author: 

Giuseppe Tateo is postdoctoral fellow at the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest and researcher at the Bruno Kessler Foundation (Trento, Italy). After earning his PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle), he taught at Charles University (Prague) and at Riga Stradins University, and he was a postdoctoral researcher in Bucharest, Prague and Leipzig. His current research interests focus on the link between political authority and religious architecture in post-socialist Europe with a specific focus on Romania.

[The English-language edition, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania, received the 2017 Society for Romanian Studies (SRS) Book Award]

Translation by Marius-Adrian Hazaparu

“Founded in 1927, Romania’s Legion of the Archangel Michael was one of Europe’s largest and longest-lived fascist social movements. In Holy Legionary Youth, Clark draws on oral histories, memoirs, and substantial research in the archives of the Romanian secret police to provide the most comprehensive account of the Legion in English to date. Clark approaches Romanian fascism by asking what membership in the Legion meant to young Romanians. Viewing fascism “from below,” as a social category with practical consequences for those who embraced it, he shows how the personal significance of fascism emerged out of Legionaries’ interactions with each other, the state, other political parties, families, friends, and fascist groups abroad. Official repression, fascist spectacle, and the frequency and nature of legionary activities changed a person’s everyday activities and relationships in profound ways. 

Clark’s sweeping history traces fascist organizing in interwar Romania to nineteenth-century grassroots nationalist movements that demanded political independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It also shows how closely the movement was associated with the Romanian Orthodox Church and how the uniforms, marches, and rituals were inspired by the muscular, martial aesthetic of fascism elsewhere in Europe. Although antisemitism was a key feature of official fascist ideology, state violence against Legionaries rather than the extensive fascist violence against Jews had a far greater impact on how Romanians viewed the movement and their role in it. Approaching fascism in interwar Romania as an everyday practice, Holy Legionary Youth offers a new perspective on European fascism, highlighting how ordinary people “performed” fascism by working together to promote a unique and totalizing social identity.” (From the Cornell University Press webpage)

What people are saying about it:

“Highly interdisciplinary, analytically comprehensive, and informed by a prodigious array of both primary sources and secondary literature, Clark’s book is a much-awaited reading for researchers, university professors, and students alike.” (Ionuț Biliuță, Hungarian Historical Review)

“Clark’s book is a fresh, reflexive, witty, and well-documented exploration of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, the central fascist movement in interwar Romania, in its own context, doubled by an attempt to approach Romanian ultranationalism on its own terms.” (Cosmin Sebastian Cercel, H-Nationalism)

“Clark tries to immerse himself in the lives of the legionaries. He is interested in the Legionary “everyday,” in the experiences of Codreanu’s followers. The everyday is defined in such a way that the “willingness to make sacrifices for the national battle” against the “Jews” and the “system” lifts up the everyday and permanently exults it. If my reading is correct, one must affiliate oneself with the Legion as if it was a “drug”: activity replaces helplessness; building activities; demonstrations; only the unutterable can be uttered; music; lyrics; parades; discussions. Whoever wants to join the Legion cannot complain about lacking employment, excitement, or appreciation.” (Armin Heinen, H-Soz-Kult – original review in German)

„Avem de-a face, odată cu acest volum, cu un studiu care analizează Mişcarea Legionară nu doar şi nici în primul rând „la vârful“ ei sau în privinţa evenimentelor majore care au punctat naşterea, creşterea şi de­căderea acesteia; Sfântă tinereţe le­gio­nară descrie şi analizează infrastructura Mişcării Legionare, scanează direcţiile – la un nivel pe care aş îndrăzni să îl desemnez cu termenul de „capilar“, – în care aceas­ta era prezentă. […] ţinem în mână, odată cu această carte, una dintre cele mai „colorate“, mai nuanţate şi mai den­se lucrări despre subiectul în discuţie.“ (Cristian Pătrășconiu, Revista 22)

“ Prin apelul la enorm de multe surse documentare, de la volume de memorii la colecţii de ziare, manuscrise, arhive ale Siguranţei, dosare penale şi de anchetă ale Poliţiei etc., cercetătorul urmăreşte modul în care a acţionat Legiunea la nivelul vieţii cotidiene, modul ei intern de funcţionare, felul în care şi-a articulat şi schimbat în timp ideologia, ritualurile şi formele de socializare, impactul social şi politic, dar şi la nivelul formării unei subiectivităţi specifice, pe care l-a avut această organizaţie în altminteri nu atît de scurta, dar nici îndelungata ei existenţă.“ (Iulia Popovici, Observator cultural)

“Roland Clark’s Holy Legionary Youth is a truly remarkable book. … Without detracting from the movement’s criminal nature, Clark’s book brings to our attention their sincere idealism and thirst for spiritual fulfillment. In this way, he helps us better understand not only this movement’s appeal in the interwar and World War II periods but also the endurance of Legionaries’ myth in Romania today.” (Vladimir Solonari, H-Romania)

“Sfîntă tinerețe legionară… este mai mult decât o lucrare despre semnificaţia fascismului pentru membrii de rând ai Mişcării Legionare, ci capătă însuşirile unei istorii sociale a Gărzii de Fier, organizaţie încadrată printre „cele mai mari mişcări fasciste din Europa“ (p. 15), dacă o raportăm la numărul de membri şi la totalul populaţiei. Roland Clark este interesat de modul în care fascismul a transformat vieţile oamenilor de rând şi nu este întâmplător că volumul începe cu înmormântarea unei tinere din Craiova, Maria Cristescu, o adolescentă simpatizantă a Mişcării Legionare, eveniment care mobilizează zeci, sute de persoane într-un ceremonial specific, cu valenţe inclusiv politice.” (Cristian Vasile, Contributors.ro)

“Clark’s book offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the interwar Legionary movement from the perspective of the history of everyday social life. Moving away from abstract paradigms of ‘the nature of Romanian fascism’, Clark tells us more about what the Legionaries actually did (and did not) do, using a large number of new archival sources… Especially impressive is the way Clark situates interwar Romanian political phenomena in the context of broader paradigms of international social, cultural, political and religious history; and brings the topic up to date with a closing reflection on the memory of Legionary activity in post-war and present-day Romanian society. For the breadth and depth of its analysis, its rich documentation and clear writing style, Clark’s work stands out against a very strong field.” (The 2017 SRS Book Award Committee)

You can buy the book here.

About the author: 

Roland Clark is a Reader in Modern European History at the University of Liverpool (UK). His research focuses on fascist movements, antisemitism, religion, theology, and the Holocaust in East-Central Europe, especially in Romania. He has written Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (2015), Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania: The Limits of Orthodoxy and Nation-Building (2021) and edited European Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook (2022) as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. He hosts on the New Books Network podcast and publishes in Fair Observer, Open Democracy, and Rantt Media.

More about Roland Clark is available here.

Translation by Justina Bandol

The English-language edition, Socialist Heritage: The Politics of Past and Place in Romania, received the 2020 Ed Hewett book prize offered by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies for “an outstanding monograph on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe.”

“Focusing on Romania from 1945 to 2016, Socialist Heritage explores the socialist state’s attempt to create its own heritage, as well as the legacy of that project. Contrary to arguments that the socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe aimed to erase the pre-war history of the socialist cities, Emanuela Grama shows that the communist state in Romania sought to exploit the past for its own benefit. The book traces the transformation of a central district of Bucharest, the Old Town, from a socially and ethnically diverse place in the early 20th century, into an epitome of national history under socialism, and then, starting in the 2000s, into the historic center of a European capital. Under socialism, politicians and professionals used the district’s historic buildings, especially the ruins of a medieval palace discovered in the 1950s, to emphasize the city’s Romanian past and erase its ethnically diverse history. Since the collapse of socialism, the cultural and economic value of the Old Town has become highly contested. Bucharest’s middle class has regarded the district as a site of tempting transgressions. Its poor residents have decried their semidecrepit homes, while entrepreneurs and politicians have viewed it as a source of easy money. Such arguments point to recent negotiations about the meanings of class, political participation, and ethnic and economic belonging in today’s Romania. Grama’s rich historical and ethnographic research reveals the fundamentally dual nature of heritage: every search for an idealized past relies on strategies of differentiation that can lead to further marginalization and exclusion.” (From the webpage of Indiana University Press)

What people are saying about it:

“There are important lessons thus taken from Grama’s monograph […] on the malleability of heritage and the strategic use of the past to push forward narratives in the present comes across. Moreover, the clear political use of heritage is expertly and vividly analysed throughout the monograph, as Bucharest’s Old Town and its residents became targets and victims to the authorities’ manipulations of time and their reinterpretations of place. […] Emanuela Grama gracefully moves across different areas through with her use of secondary sources, bringing together urban planning, political studies, economic and social analyses.” (Cristina Clopot, International Journal of Heritage Studies)

“Socialist Heritage represent an outstanding contribution in the field of anthropology of heritage, retracing the transformation of Lipscani street and the central district of Bucharest, the Old Town, from a socially and ethnically culturally diverse place in the early 20th century, into a benchmark of nationalist rewriting of local history during socialism, finally morphing again, beginning with the 2000s, into the historic center of an European capital. […] Grama’s monograph is a gripping and intensive lesson on the fluidity and plasticity of heritage, the multiple uses of the past in shaping urban spaces, the intricacies of (un)making heritage and the political states that bound and throw local communities against the state, the state against its history, and political time against spatial politics.” (Dana Domșodi, Studia UBB Sociologia)

“This is an impressive piece of scholarship. The strengths of this book are the breadth of the data sources, which have enabled the author to uncover in detail how change in a particular historic urban landscape is shaped by broader issues of power and identity (in both socialist and post-socialist contexts). Socialist Heritage will be of interest to postgraduate students and academic researchers in disciplines such as history, anthropology, human geography, urban studies and sociology. For anybody wanting to understand Bucharest’s Old Town there is no better source available.” (Duncan Light, Eurasian Geography and Economics)

“Bucharest is not a historic city, but it is rich in history. The distinction turns out to be important not just for our understanding of Romania, but of politics and historiography more generally. Emanuela Grama uses the politics that surrounded the Old Town of Bucharest over the past century to force us to reconsider the constitution of the state, the relationship between identity and ideology, and the balance in historical development between grand narratives and incremental change. Moreover, she does all this by demonstrating that the study of history and the stuf of history are rarely, if ever, the same. […] Grama does a brilliant job bringing [this] story to our attention and explaining why we should care about it. Her book deserves to be widely read.” (Erik Jones, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy)

You can buy the book here.

About the author:

Emanuela Grama is Associate Professor in the History department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. She specializes in the history of 20th century Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on urban politics, processes of state-making, property, memory, and cultural change in 20th and 21st century Romania. She received her PhD from the Interdisciplinary Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has conducted extensive archival and ethnographic research in different locations in Romania, and has published on a range of topics, including 1) the politics of archaeology and nationalism under socialism 2) urban planning, state-making and material practices, 3) petitions, intertextuality, and citizenship in socialism, and 4) plagiarism in post-socialism. She is also a recipient of fellowships from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (dissertation research grant), the American Council for Learned Societies (dissertation writing grant), and the Max Weber Postdoctoral Program of the European University Institute, Florence, Italy.

More information about Emanuela Grama is available here.

Romanian edition translated and revised by the author.

Winner of the 2022 Observator Cultural Book Award

“Exploring the largely positive representations of Romanian Germans predominating in post-1989 Romanian society, this book shows that the underlying reasons for German prestige are strongly connected with Romania’s endeavors to become European. […] Cercel argues that representations of Germans in Romania, descendants of twelfth-century and eighteenth-century colonists, become actually a symbolic resource for asserting but also questioning Romania’s European identity. Such representations link Romania’s much-desired European belonging with German presence, whilst German absence is interpreted as a sign of veering away from Europe. Investigating this case of discursive “self-colonization” and this apparent symbolic embrace of the German Other in Romania, the book offers a critical study of the discourses associated with Romania’s postcommunist “Europeanization” to contribute a better understanding of contemporary West-East relationships in the European context.” (From the Routledge webpage)

What people are saying about it:

”[The] book […] marks an important step forward in understanding complex processes such as Europeanization, cultural interaction, and social change. Beginning with the subtitle, Cercel put[s] forward a puzzling problem when it comes to explaining […] philo-Germanism without Germans in Romania. By emphasizing this issue, Cercel attempts to grasp a very broad perspective by moving from the peculiar electoral curiosity of ethnic Romanians electing a German candidate in a medium-size town in Transylvania, to the way westernization and Europeanization concur in shaping Romanian identity. The preference for an ethnic German candidate in a city almost deserted by its German-speaking citizens sheds light on the broader phenomenon of intimate self-colonization, fueled by a power discourse on the shaping of Romanian identity as forged by numerous interactions and representations in a very complex ethnic, social, and political environment. […] The current philo-Germanism without Germans is strongly connected with Romanian aspirations toward Europeanization, an effort to overcome cultural, social, and political dilemmas of being caught between east and west.” (Dragoș Dragoman, Slavic Review)

”This is an original work which examines the political and cultural expression of a Romanian nostalgia for the German past and the former presence of Germans in Romania.“ (Margit Feischmidt, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

”The volume informs […] readers about the German–Romanian relationship in the turbulent postsocialist years. The richness of detail and their careful contextualization helps readers to form an accurate image of these relationships. […]Cercel argues that it was the treatment under communist rule that led Germans to acquire an exaggerated sense of victimhood, which after 1990 became the driving force of their ‘exodus’ from Romania. Deserted Saxon and Swabian villages in Southern Transylvania are proof of this, as is the acute nostalgia expressed in the media by many ethnic Romanian intellectuals. The latter is interpreted by Cercel, throughout the volume, using the theoretical framework of “self-orientalization.” With this concept Cercel aims to explain the intellectuals’ deep admiration for the Western model of modernization during the 19th and 20th centuries. This idolization then led, he maintains, to their rejecting any model that might have ultimately proven to be better suited to describe Romania’s society.” (Stelu Şerban, Südosteuropa)

“All in all, Romania and the Quest for European Identity: Philo-Germanism without Germans is one of the most important scholarly contributions to the investigation of Romanian identity in the last couple of decades, and will hopefully spur scientific debate and a more reflexive approach to the processes, inter-ethnic- and class relations, and democracy and politics whose main driving forces it tries to deconstruct.” (Tibor Toró, Intersections)

“The book definitely represents an extremely valuable contribution to theliterature on philo-Germanism and, moreover, on the discursive and identity construction of the Self and Other in post-communist countries.“ (Andreea Zamfira, Nationalities Papers)

”[Cristian] Cercel pune cu succes în lumină aspectele subiective care au stat la baza reprezentării unei comunități generice a germanilor din România care în perioada ultimilor 30 de ani – de altfel epicentrul cronologic al studiului de față – s-a aflat, în mare parte, relocată în Germania, altfel spus o comunitate cu o existență diasporică, beneficiară a unei alterității idealist – pozitivate și ca urmare a opțiunii de a se salva prin exil într-un stat de același neam. Aspectele socio-economice care au stat în spatele recuperării nostalgice și eminamente pozitive a germanului au fost condiționate de această relocalizare a germanilor din România în acest puternic stat central european asociat de români cu prosperitatea, progresul și implicit cu proiectul european. În această constelație de factori trebuie înțeles „filo-germanismul fără germani” al românilor. Cum bine arată autorul acestui studiu, dubla asociere/afinitate simbolică a germanilor locuind cândva în teritoriile actualului stat român modern cu „patria” (Heimat), respectiv, cu statele germane central europene, a fost o trăsătură a imaginii de sine încă din discursurile promovate de către membrii acestor grupuri chiar din veacurile anterioare. Această dublă afiliere le-a conferit, mai mereu, un capital de imagine în mediul românesc chiar și în situații mai contondente (ca perioada postbelică marcată de deportări pe criteriul etnic) lucru confirmat de faptul că diverși decidenți politici români nu au fost adepții unor discursuri denigratoare de lungă durată.” (Marian Zăloagă, Anuarul Institutului de Cercetări Socio-Umane „Gheorghe Şincai”)

You can buy the book here.

About the author:

Cristian Cercel is a researcher with the Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies (University of Tübingen). He has a BA in European Studies (University of Bucharest), an MA in Nationalism Studies (Central European University), and a PhD in Politics (Durham University). Before his current appointment, he held research positions and fellowships at several institutions, including New Europe College (Bucharest), the Centre for Contemporary German Culture at Swansea University, the Centre for Advanced Study (Sofia), and the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum. He has published in refereed academic journals such as Nationalities Papers, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, History and Memory, and Immigrants and Minorities. 

More information about Cristian Cercel is available here.

Heroes and Victims explores the cultural power of war memorials in 20th-century Romania through two world wars and a succession of radical political changes—from attempts to create pluralist democratic political institutions after World War I to shifts toward authoritarian rule in the 1930s, to military dictatorships and Nazi occupation, to communist dictatorships, and finally to pluralist democracies with populist tendencies. Examining the interplay of centrally articulated and locally developed commemorations, Maria Bucur’s study engages monumental sites of memory, local funerary markers, rituals, and street names as well as autobiographical writings, novels, oral narratives, and film. This book reveals the ways in which a community’s religious, ethnic, economic, regional, and gender traditions shaped local efforts at memorializing its war dead. Maria Bucur is John W. Hill Chair in East European History and Associate Professor of History at Indiana University Bloomington. She is author of Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania and editor (with Nancy M. Wingfield) of Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (IUP, 2006).

What people are saying about it:

“In this superbly researched book, Bucur juxtaposes state-sponsored commemorative activities with localized, private memories. […] The book’s source-base, its theoretical sophistication and its wide-ranging scope make it an invaluable study in the way that communities and states work together—and independently—in remembering the past.” (Roland Clark, Cultural and Social History)

“Heroes and Victims demonstrates not only how individual, local, and national discourses of remembrance have operated in the complex geopolitical and ethnic world of 20th-century Romania but also how and why post-communist Romanians and others in the 21st century have moved to a post-memory discourse.” (Melissa Bokovoy, University of New Mexico)

“An important book by one of the major emerging voices in east European studies.” (Charles King, Georgetown University)

“[A] historical tour de force, compellingly written and powerfully demonstrated. … Bucur’s truly illuminating study explores the Romanians’ tortuously dramatic efforts to accomplish a long-delayed coming to terms with their past.” (Slavic Review)

“An engaging read, written in an elegant style accessible to both academics and non academics, this volume will be of interest to historians, scholars of Romanian history and politics, as well as anthropologists and sociologists alike.” (European Legacy)

“[Bucur] is to be congratulated on a superb piece of scholarship which both sheds light on existing questions and raises important new ones. As such it can be recommended to teachers and researchers alike.” (European History Quarterly)

“[T]this is an ambitious book that effectively straddles disciplines, historical eras, and analytical levels. The data are remarkably comprehensive for such a difficult theme. Bucur’s narrative tells a complex story that few historians of Eastern and Central Europe could handle in such a sophisticated manner.” (Canadian American Slavic Studies)

“This is an ambitious and important contribution to the field of European memory studies and the study of war and its commemoration in the twentieth century.” (Women’s Studies International Forum)

Based on original sources, this important new book on the Holocaust explores regional variations in civilians’ attitudes and behavior toward the Jewish population in Romania and the occupied Soviet Union. Gentiles’ willingness to assist Jews was greater in lands that had been under Soviet administration during the interwar period, while gentiles’ willingness to harm Jews occurred more in lands that had been under Romanian administration during the same period. While acknowledging the disasters of Communist rule in the 1920s and 1930s, this work shows the effectiveness of Soviet nationalities policy in the official suppression of antisemitism. This book offers a corrective to the widespread consensus that homogenizes gentile responses throughout Eastern Europe, instead demonstrating that what states did in the interwar period mattered; relations between social groups were not fixed and destined to repeat themselves, but rather fluid and susceptible to change over time.

What people are saying about it:

“Dumitru’s multifaceted, detailed description of the still under-researched events in Bessarabia and Transnistria is based on many previously untapped sources. Her attempts […] have unearthed a lot of facts about Jewish history in the region. The book is thus a pioneering comparative work that furthers research on a hitherto neglected part of the Shoah.” (Markus Bauer, H-Net Reviews)

“Can states school their citizens for genocide? Does valuing cultural diversity, by contrast, create a lasting buffer against state-organized violence? Diana Dumitru’s thesis is provocative: that the Soviet ideology of ‘friendship of peoples’ attenuated popular antisemitism. Using the Romanian-Soviet borderland as a kind of natural experiment, Dumitru finds substantial differences between how neighboring populations in Romania and the USSR viewed their Jewish neighbors. Dumitru’s work will open new debates about the power of political choice in determining the course of the Holocaust in different lands.” (Charles King, author of Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams)

”Dumitru’s history shows the incredible power of the state’s rhetoric and regulations to shape the attitudes and beliefs of its citizenry. This is a shocking and essential story for scholars of Central and Eastern Europe.” (Kate Brown, author of A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland)

”The Holocaust in Bessarabia and Transnistria is much less familiar than that in Poland and the Baltic states, while by many accounts it was just as bestial. Diana Dumitru’s research explores an even less familiar reality: that Stalin’s totalitarianism fostered a climate that was relatively benevolent toward the Jews by comparison with the hostility fostered by the more traditional authoritarianism of Romania. In bringing to the surface this apparent irony, she demonstrates how the Holocaust remains an inexhaustible field of study, which continues to shed a revealing and troubling light on our present.” (Robert D. Kaplan, author of Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History, and In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey through Romania and Beyond)

”Diana Dumitru’s important contribution to the burgeoning study of the Holocaust in the East demonstrates convincingly that Transnistrian Moldova, under Soviet rule from 1918 to 1940, witnessed far less collaboration than did Bessarabian Moldova, under Romanian rule. Her argument that Soviet internationalism explains this difference is an important challenge to both Holocaust Studies and Soviet history.” (Terry Martin, author of Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923‒1939)

The documents emerging from the secret police archives of the former Soviet bloc have caused scandal after scandal, compromising revered cultural figures and abruptly ending political careers. Police Aesthetics offers a revealing and responsible approach to such materials. Taking advantage of the partial opening of the secret police archives in Russia and Romania, Vătulescu focuses on their most infamous holdings—the personal files—as well as on movies the police sponsored, scripted, or authored. Through the archives, she gains new insights into the writing of literature and raises new questions about the ethics of reading. She shows how police files and films influenced literature and cinema, from autobiographies to novels, from high-culture classics to avant-garde experiments and popular blockbusters. In so doing, she opens a fresh chapter in the heated debate about the relationship between culture and politics in twentieth-century police states.

What people are saying about it:

“Vatulescu insightfully draws upon archival material from both Russia and Romania to shed valuable light on the way the secret police informed—or in formed on, as the case may be—artists of the era . . . Although her subject matter lies in a shadowy, politicized realm located somewhere between ‘subversion and complicity,’ Vatulescu provides her readers with much needed illumination of that murky penumbral realm.” (Tim Harte, Slavic Review)

“In this fascinating and ambitious study, Cristina Vatulescu examines secret-police files, surveillance methods, and interrogation techniques in the Soviet era, and the impact of resulting ”police aesthetics” on writers and films directors. Like a good mystery novelist, Vatulescu draws us into rooms forbidden to the average reader – courtrooms, interrogation rooms, and secret police archives – creating and image of Soviet culture that is at odds, as herself asserts, with easy binary oppositions. Instead, she presents us with a complex network of imagery and associations that underlies texts from the Soviet period, ranging from police files to underground novels.” (Eric Laursen, Slavic and East European Journal)

“Police Aesthetics most deservedly received the Barbara Heldt Prize in 2011: Vatulescu opens up new lines of investigation (to stay within the police jargon) for a reading of the relationship between fact and fiction in Stalinist culture.” (Birgit Beumers, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema)

“Vatulescu’s outstanding book focuses on the fate of the unregimented creative intelligentsia in Stalin’s Russia and Stalinized Romania, the interplay between artistic creation and police supervision, coercion, and persecution. Drawing from secret police archives in Russia and Romania, this superbly researched and original book captures the tragic destinies of major artists caught at what Lionel Trilling called the bloody crossroads where politics and literature meet.” (Vladimir Tismăneanu, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History)

“This is a very important, groundbreaking book, one of the most original and illuminating works I have seen in recent years in comparative Slavic studies. Police Aesthetics will unquestionably position Cristina Vatulescu as one of the foremost scholars of Soviet culture.” (Catharine Nepomnyashchy, Columbia University)

“Rarely have I encountered a book that managed to incorporate original archival research (and what findings!), new work in history, literary, and film theory, and close analysis in such a clear and compelling way.” (John MacKay, Yale University)

“Sunt trei domenii, deci, convocate, pentru a intra, în sumă, cumva „prin la­te­ral“ într-o tematică deloc demodată (chiar dacă, aparent, ea aparține, istoric, mai degrabă de secolul trecut): literatura, filmul și narațiunile despre poliția secretă. Urmarea acestei atât de fecunde intersecții e un studiu și o carte așa cum, pentru mi­ne, nu e niciun dubiu, nu avem în ro­mâ­nește. Mai precis: nu aveam până la acest volum.” (Cristian Patrasconiu, 22)

“Volumul – impresionat și ca efort de documentare, și în privința liniilor de discurs atins, și ca ipoteze de cercetare propuse (și foarte bine argumentate) – sta la umbra unui citat oarecum misterios și, în orice caz, intrigant din ”Vorbește, memorie” a lui Vl. Nabokov … Foarte pe scurt: nu aveam un studiu pe această tematică de asemenea finețe, anvergură și cuprindeere. De acum îl avem – și este foarte bine că e așa. (Cristian Patrasconiu, Banatul Azi)