Journal of Romanian Studies, 2, no. 2 (2020)

Special issue: Law, History and Justice in Romania. New Directions in Law and Society Research

Guest Editors: Mihaela Șerban and Monica Ciobanu

Editors: Peter Gross, Diane Vancea, Iuliu Raţiu

Contents

Articles

Mihaela Șerban and Monica Ciobanu

Law, History and Justice in Romania. New Directions in Law and Society Research (pp. 9-23)

This special issue of the Journal of Romanian Studies examines law as a social institution and the ways in which it intersects with the larger social, historical, political and economic world. While the articles included here mostly explore the intersections between law, history, and justice, they consciously reject positivist and doctrinal analyses of law and an understanding of law as primarily a (repressive) instrument of the state. Instead, we focus on “living law” and the complex interactions between law and social issues, including how law is created, interpreted and implemented, and how individuals and organizations live, shape and evade it in everyday interactions within and outside of the state. We also want to situate this flourishing area of research not only within broader fields, such as transitional justice and legal history, but also in the expansive law and society tradition that has been open to interdisciplinary legal research worldwide, but is perhaps less well known in Romania.

Cosmin Cercel

Reversing Liberal Legality: Romania’s Path to Dictatorship, 1930-1938 (pp. 23-52)

Romania’s anti-liberal turn at the end of the interwar period is a useful case study for analysing the dissolution of the liberal nomos fostered by the Versailles arrangements against the background of the authoritarian takeover in Europe. In this article, I explore the legal and constitutional mechanisms at the core of the instauration of King’s Carol II dictatorship. I propose to do so by mapping the reconstruction of the concepts of legality and authority within the political and legal processes seeking to contest, challenge and ultimately reverse the liberal features of the constitutional armature of the Romanian state. Drawing on jurisprudence, political theory, and constitutional history, I seek to unearth the ideological underpinnings of this regime of power and to reflect on the nexus between law and anti-liberal projects of state-building at the end of the interwar period.

Ştefan Cristian Ionescu

Perceptions of Legality during the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 (pp. 53-80)

This article examines how legality was perceived by the highest officials of Romania’s pro-Nazi Ion Antonescu regime and by a group of intellectuals (mostly jurists) closely connected with the judiciary. For Antonescu, legality meant a new type of authoritarian understanding of the role of the law in a state and its subordination to the will of the ruler; for him, legality mainly had an instrumental role. He understood his power to be discretionary and, usually, not bound by the extant law, even though he sometimes referred to the idea of constitutional order (a convenient source of legitimacy). Intellectuals, including jurists, harbored a diversity of opinions regarding legality. Some jurists supported the regime’s authoritarian legalism, or at least accepted it, while others, especially those with a more democratic mindset or belonging to minorities, perceived legality differently than Antonescu, and favored a liberal democratic version of legality involving the rule of law.

Mihaela Şerban

Litigating Identity in Fascist and Post-Fascist Romania (1940-1945) (pp. 81-108)

This paper examines legal mobilization and resistance to efforts through law to delineate ethnic identities during World War Two in Romania. Anti-Semitic legislation adopted under the fascist regime attempted to create and classify Jewish identity, while the end of war legislation formally reversed all discriminatory statutes and decrees and more broadly banned all inquiries into the ethnicity of Romanian citizens. Under both legal regimes, one’s identity, whether de jure or de facto, was decisive for repressive state policies that targeted Romanian citizens based on their ethnic identity. The concept and content of ethnic identity, however, were far from a clear matter. I explore in this paper how the local administrative court in the city of Timişoara (both first instance and appeal) constructed ethnic identity based on the wartime racial legislation, and how the court continued to apply this judge-made identity to the newly disfavored groups, primarily Germans, at the end of the war.

Monica Ciobanu

Writing History Through Trials: The Case of the National Peasant Party (pp. 109-134)

This article provides a comparative account of two criminal trials that addressed the role played by the National Peasant Party (PNŢ) in national history. The focus is on the ability of legal trials to construct historical narratives. The first was conducted in 1947 by the newly-established communist regime and resulted in the legal ban of the party. In 2015, the narrative was entirely reversed in court. The PNŢ was presented as a fully democratic actor. Alexandru Vişinescu – a former commandant of the Râmnicu-Sărat prison where prominent party leaders were subjected to repression – was sentenced for crimes against humanity. The sharp differences between these two legal proceedings – a Soviet-style show trial versus legal action that was oriented to providing some redress for the victims of communism – is emphasized.  But the conclusion is that criminal trials in general fall short in providing historical lessons and that retrospective justice does not necessarily produce reconciliation or accountability.          

Emanuela Grama

Restitution Reversal or “Re-nationalization”? An Analysis of Law, Property, and History Through the Case of the “Szekely Mikó” High School in Transylvania (pp. 135-164)

In 2002, the Reformed Church in Transylvania requested the retrocession of the Reformed Szekely Miko high school in Sf. Gheorghe/ Sepsiszentgyörgy, Covasna’s capital city. The state restitution commission at that time approved the return. In 2012, a court invalidated the initial restitution decision, accused the members of the former commission of fraud, and requested that the Church return the building to the city authorities. A close reading of the legal arguments that each party employed to justify or reject the restitution reveals competing temporalities of law and visions of history. This paper analyzes the long and tense debates around this case of property restitution – reversal, to further explore several interconnected phenomena: broader ideologies about the relationship of historical, ethnic, and property rights in contemporary Transylvania; the political mobilization of Romania’s ethnic Hungarians around property restitution; the ways in which negotiations around property propelled more conservative elites to the leadership of Transylvanian Hungarians and enabled them to strengthen their ties with their kin-state, Hungary.

Simona Livescu

Institutional Memories and Transgenerational Dynamics: The House of Terror and the Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance (pp. 165-194)

This article provides an insight into the twenty-first century politics of institutionalized memory in two former communist countries, Romania and Hungary, as illustrated by their respective human rights memorial museums’ practices of documenting communist era abuse. After discussing the ways in which the two museums under consideration here inscribe themselves into the red and dark tourism phenomena, the article focuses on acts of over-remembering and misremembering that affect the politics of museal representation, highlighting the emotional communities created by these museums as well as the incomplete representation of the victim-victimizer rapport. In doing so, the article argues that institutionalized museal interventions into recent collective national and regional memories are representative of the still undecided legacy of communism in East and Central Europe.

Dragoş Petrescu

Law in Action in Romania, 2008–2018: Context, Agency, and Innovation in the Process of Transitional Justice (pp. 195-218)

This article tackles a hitherto-unnoticed innovative mechanism of transitional justice. Creatively interpreting the legislation, CNSAS, the institution dealing with the former secret police files, gradually transformed itself from a vetting agency into a fact-finding commission. While the law restricted the meaning of collaboration, CNSAS produced an open-access electronic database including digest versions of the screening process and providing quick access to excerpts from secret police documents. This repository demonstrates the multifaceted nature of collaboration, the wide variety of information gathered and the complicity of individuals originating from all social, cultural, and professional backgrounds. The e-database created by CNSAS offers not a simple list of wrongdoers, but evidence of wrongdoings according to rule-of-law principles. In brief, this registry of shaming represents a para-legal mechanism of transitional justice, which allows moral judgement, promotes transparency, and legitimizes the mission of CNSAS in fostering democracy by widely illustrating what democracy is not.          

Book Reviews

Marian Voicu, Matrioşka Mincinoşilor: Fake News, Manipulare, Populism.
(Review by Peter Gross)

Matei Călinescu and Ion Vianu, Scrisori din exil: corespondenţă inedită.
(Review by Iuliu Raţiu)

Journal of Romanian Studies, 1, no. 2 (2019)

Special issue: Romania and the Paris Peace Conference (1919). Actors, Scenarios, Circulation of Knowledge

Guest editor: Svetlana Suveica

Editors: Lavinia Stan, Margaret Beissinger, Radu Cinpoeş

Contents Page

Articles

Svetlana Suveica

Introduction: Romania and the Paris Peace Conference (1919). Actors, Scenarios, Circulation of Knowledge (pp. 9-26)

Lucian Leuștean

Romania, the Paris Peace Conference and the Protection System of “Race, Language and Religion” Minorities—A Reassessment (pp- 27-46)

In 1919, Ion I. C. Brătianu, the Romanian Prime Minister and head of his country’s delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, vehemently op‐ posed the establishment of a system of minority protection and preferred to resign rather than agreeing to sign the treaty by which the Romanian state accepted such obligations. Romania was finally a founding member of the League of Nations and a participant from the very beginning in the protec‐ tion system of the minorities “of race, language and religion” endorsed by the organization. In spite of the genuine enthusiasm that the leaders in Bu‐ charest showed to the general targets of the League, the issue of minorities’ protection remained a delicate subject. Romanian and foreign historians dealt extensively with this topic, but a fresh view based on new archival findings and a balanced approach is necessary.

Gavin Bowd

Between France and Romania, between Science and Propaganda. Emmanuel de Martonne in 1919 (pp. 47-64)

In the aftermath of the Great War, the geographer Emmanuel  de Martonne, who began his scientific work in Romania and was a vocal advocate of that country’s intervention in the conflict, placed his knowledge and prestige at the service of redrawing the frontiers of what would become Greater Romania. This article looks at the role of de Mar‐ tonne as traceur de frontières during the Paris Peace Conference, notably his manipulation of ethnic cartography. At the same time, as this partisan use of “science” shows, de Martonne is also a propagandist for the Roma‐ nian cause and post‐war French influence. Thus, his confidential reports  on the “lost provinces” of Transylvania, Banat, Bessarabia and Dobrogea must be seen in parallel with his published interventions and the place he occupies in a wider Franco‐Romanian lobbying network. During the sum‐ mer of 1919, de Martonne’s participation in a French mission universi- taire to Romania plays a diplomatic role at a delicate stage of the Paris negotiations. The fate of his scientific interventions is also subject to the vicissitudes of the war’s aftermath and to the weight of lobbies hostile to Romanian territorial claims, notably on Hungary and Russia, two coun‐ tries plunged into civil war.

Doina Anca Cretu

Humanitarian Aid in the “Bulwark Against Bolshevism”: The American Relief Administration and the Quest for Sovereignty in Post‐World War I Romania (pp. 65-88)

Abstract: This article examines the diffusion of humanitarian assistance via the American Relief Administration (ARA) in Romania immediately after World War I. This exploration is articulated around two “arenas” of the as‐ sistance process. First, it follows the initial behind‐the scenes negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference and subsequent diplomatic tensions around the conditions of aid. Second, it addresses the practices and meaning of ARA’s assistance beyond Paris, on the Romanian ground. This analysis shows that post‐war destruction, social vulnerability and fear of anarchy and Bolshevism enabled the Romanian leadership to seek and access ARA’s humanitarian aid. Romanian state officials of the time contested ARA’s con‐ ditional humanitarianism, seeing it as a challenge to economic and political autonomy. Ultimately, the quest for sovereignty defined by the Greater Ro‐ mania project informed the state leaders’ reception of American humani‐ tarian agendas and efforts after World War I.

Svetlana Suveica

Against the “Imposition of the Foreign Yoke”: The Bessarabians Write to Wilson (1919) (pp. 89-112)

This article discusses the little‐known effort of the “Bessarabian delegation” in Paris against the recognition of the 1918 union of the region with Romania. During the Paris Peace Conference, representatives of the former Bessarabian elite worked along with Russian political émigrés and diplomats to gain Allied support for the anti‐Bolshevik campaign and the recognition of Russia’s interest in her former Western gubernias, including Bessarabia. While planning Bessarabia’s return to Russia, the Bessarabians claimed that allowing the inhabitants to express their will through a plebi‐ scite was the only “just” solution for the territory contested by Russia and Romania. The three appeals, addressed in 1919 to the American President, offer “evidence” of the Romanian regime’s abuses in the region, the failure of the American Relief Association in Romania to reach Bessarabia, and the unfair and abusive character of the food distribution in the poorest Roma‐ nian region. While appealing to issues of high sensitivity for the Americans, the “Bessarabian delegates” hoped to persuade the American delegates to reject a decision over Bessarabia that legitimized Romania’s rights over the territory, and back Russia’s interest in the region instead.

Gábor Egry

Made in Paris? Contested Regions and Political Regionalism during and after Peacemaking: Székelyföld and Banat in a Comparative Perspective (pp. 113-134)

After World War I, when boundaries were redrawn in Europe, two territories were contested. Székelyföld, the eastern‐most part of the de‐ funct dualist Hungary, was predominantly inhabited by Hungarians. Banat, which was to become a borderland of Greater Romania, was home to four significant ethnic groups (Serbian, Romanian, German and Hungarian) and a thriving Jewish community. These historically distinct regions were united with Hungary after the Settlement (Ausgleich) in 1867, but when borders were redrawn they were portrayed as specific entities within distinct na‐ tional spaces. This article compares how different state and non‐state ac‐ tors capitalized on the distinct nature of Banat and Székelyföld, how differ‐ ent types of arguments were deployed, and how proxies for a plebiscite (na‐ tional councils, mass assemblies and demonstrations, deputations and memoranda to the Paris Peace Conference) were used to sway the decision to include these regions in Hungary or Romania. These efforts were part of a broader repertoire championing national goals, but in both cases the his‐ torical peculiarities and the pre‐1918 local social realities fueled regional identities that were distinct from Transylvanianism. The symbolic recogni‐ tion of these regions as the most authentic Hungarian and Romanian ones during the mobilization of the masses around the Peace Conference rein‐ forced Banat and Székely regionalism, which was then used by rival Hun‐ garian and Romanian nationalist politicians to question the other nation‐ ality (distinguishing Székelys from Hungarians or emphasizing the loyalty to Hungary of certain Banat Romanian groups before 1918) leaving the Banat and Székelyföld entangled with different varieties of nationalism.

Florian Kührer‐Wielach

“A Fertile and Flourishing Garden.” A Political Assessment Ten Years after Versailles (pp. 135-152)

The present study examines reflections on the institutional and mental unification process of “Greater Romania” ten years after it was recognized by the Peace of Versailles and the subsequent treaties of Saint‐Germain‐en‐Laye (1919) and Grand Trianon (1920). A first section outlines the relationship between the government and the opposition or the struggle for the future design of state and society. The second section subjects the paradigmatic text “10 Years of Greater Romania” by the important Transylvanian politician Alexandru Vaida‐Voevod (1872–1950) to critical discourse analysis with a focus on the interplay between discursively awakened hope and real‐political disillusionment, which led to a sustained loss of faith in the possibility of realizing a democratic, pluralist society.

Review Essay

George Kordas

Antisemitism, Holocaust and Memory in Eastern Europe: Romania from the Peasant Revolution until Today

Book Reviews

Roxana Bratu, Corruption, Informality, and Entrepreneurship in Romania.
(Review by Clara Volintiru)

Mircea Vasilescu, Cultura română pe înțelesul patrioților.
(Review by Cătălin Constantinescu)

Journal of Romanian Studies, 1, no. 1 (2019)

Editors: Lavinia Stan, Margaret Beissiger, Radu Cinpoeş

Contents Page

Articles

Vintilă Mihăilescu

A Subjective Centenary: The Peasant Footprint in Recent Romanian History (pp. 9-34)

This article approaches Romanian history from the perspective of the peasantry. It treats the role of the peasantry throughout the modern period as well as some of the legacies it has transmitted up to the present day. The history of Romania’s peasantry is viewed in the Balkan context. Beyond various similarities and differences between the neighbouring countries, significant is the fact that the large agrarian properties lasted much longer in Romania than in the rest of the Balkans. This explains why the last great peasant revolt in the history of Europe took place in Roma‐ nia (1907) and why Romania is still the largest agrarian, rural country in Europe, with a land distribution identical to that in 1905. The article also identifies what present‐day Romanian society has inherited from this long‐ lasting peasant culture and its structural peculiarities, focusing on the broad, all‐encompassing consequences of its enduring “orality” (i.e., lack of “graphic reason”). This article was originally delivered as the first keynote address on 26 June 2018 at the triennial Society for Romanian Studies conference held in Bucharest.

Katherine Verdery

Notes on a Century of Surveillance (pp. 35-52)

The formation of Greater Romania in December 1918 entailed building up its intelligence apparatus, both foreign and internal—a development crucial to its survival in the twentieth‐century system of national states. Events during the war and provisions of the peace treaty lent special urgency to this development, for the rise of the communist movement in Russia posed grave problems for Romania’s eastern border (regularly breached by both refugees and communist agents), and revisions of the border with Hungary increased the threat of Hungarian irredentism. The intelligence services were once again challenged by World War II and the communist takeover; the events of 1989 repeated these challenges. To examine this series of transformations is to ask, among other things, what it means for the form of the state or its ruling regime to change. The paper, delivered as a keynote address at the 2018 international conference organized by the Society for Romanian Studies in Bucharest, explores continuities across these various transitions.

Dennis Deletant

Shattered Illusions: Britain and Iuliu Maniu, 1940–1945 (pp. 53-76)

During World War II the military situation was never conducive to a defection strategy for Romania. Fear of the Soviet Union had driven Romania into alliance with Nazi Germany and the threat posed by the former continued to cast a shadow over the British Government’s efforts to persuade Romania’s leaders to steer the country to abandon the Axis. For the British, Iuliu Maniu, the leader of the National Peasant Party, was the pivotal point for any action against the regime of Ion Antonescu. This article uses documents from the British Foreign Office and the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) to trace the British perception of Maniu in 1940–1945, and the steps taken by the Foreign Office and the SOE to maintain contact with him and to encourage him to bring about  the overthrow of Antonescu.

Maria Bucur

The Queen Is No Sister: Three Faces of Marie of Romania (pp. 77-104)

This essay provides a gender analysis of Queen Marie of Romania’s autobiographical works to ask how we can best make sense of this complex and much discussed historical character during World War I as a woman of her time. My focus will be on her work as a politician/diplomat during the war; her efforts on behalf of the military campaign, particularly medical aid and other related services; and her relationship with the feminists who sought to gain the vote during the war. My conclusions offer some appreciative, though overall critical evaluations of the efforts Marie of Romania made in terms of using her dynastic position and popularity on behalf of other women.

Marius Stan and Vladimir Tismăneanu

Stalinism and Anti‐Stalinism in Romania: The Case of Alexandru Jar Revisited (pp. 105-122)

Communist writer Alexandru Jar (or Solomon Iacob, “Paşchela” for friends, 1911–1988) is the most prominent Romanian case of disenchantment with Stalinism. The 1956 “Jar Affair,” as it came to be known in Romania and abroad, reveals the persistence of the Stalinist engagement of the Romanian communist leadership under Gheorghe Gheorghiu‐Dej (1901–1965). By singling out Jar, a veteran party member and a former French Resistance fighter, the hegemonic nucleus within the Romanian Workers’ Party succeeded in neutralizing political and intellectual challenges similar to those in Poland and Hungary. Based on newly discovered materials in the archives of the Romanian Communist Party’s Central Committee, including Jar’s party file and his numerous letters asking for political rehabilitation, this study offers a novel interpretation of the relationship between party leadership and intellectual unrest in Romania during the hectic year 1956. The authors explore the “Jar Affair” in a comparative, transnational historical perspective meant to highlight the complexities of political awakening in the aftermath of Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech. The article adds significantly to the understanding of the dialectics of de‐Stalinization in East‐Central Europe.

Book Reviews

Katherine Verdery, My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File.
(Review by Radu Cinpoeş)

Cristian Vasile ed., “Ne trebuie oameni!’’: Elite intelectuale şi transformări istorice în România modern şi contemporană.
(Review by Roland Clark)

Ioana Em. Petrescu & Liviu Petrescu, Scrisori Americane (1981‐1983), ed. Ioana Bot.

(Review by Iuliu Raţiu)

Bruce O’Neill, The Space of Boredom. Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order.
(Review by Petru Negură)