C OMMUNIST R OMANIA

Gabriel MOISA



Abstract. Gheorghe I. Brătianu‟s political and historiographical destiny under the Communist regime was a very interesting one, since he was approached by the ideological regime, both as a politician and as a historian, according to the regime‟s interests.

If as a politician he was mentioned at the index for the entire Communist period due to his Liberal- Brătienist past that could not be forgotten, as the Liberals were the Communists‟ enemies, as a historian he called the regime‟s attention in well-defined moments, mainly due to his work that made references to Bessarabia and that stated Romania‟s right over this historical province.

Keywords: Gheorghe I. Brătianu, exclusion, acceptance, Communist, historian.

In the morning of 23 September, 1944, newsagents were selling the new edition of the Communist paper Scînteia (The Sparkle), legal only since 24 August, 1944. An unsigned editorial whose main topic was politician Gheorghe I. Brătianu was published on the front page, in the most visible spot, shocking through its violent language. The article was entitled Schimbarea la faţă a d-lui Gheorghe I. Brătianu (Mr. Gheorghe I. Brătianu‟s Transfiguration). This was the first episode of a very long series of attacks on Gheorghe I. Brătianu, meant to alter the truth about the historian and politician: “One of the greatest joys brought to us on 23 August, 1944 was the discovery that Mr. Brătianu is a Democrat! Moreover, a few days later, the same Gheorghe I. Brătianu started giving us lectures on the true democracy. It is time for this pathetic and yet ridiculous show to stop! The Romanian working class is very familiar with Mr.

Gheorghe I. Brătianu‟s past of aligning Romania‟s foreign politics to that of Germany, to that of Europe‟s and our country‟s plunderers and invaders.

Killinger‟s ill-fated speech delivered at “The Romanian-German Association”,

 Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Faculty of History, International Relations, Political Sciences and Communication Sciences, University of Oradea, gabimoisa@hotmail.com

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- The awards and decorations received by Mr. Gheorghe I. Brătianu from Hitler for his services, - The anti-Soviet instigator role he played for years in the Parliament, - His intense participation at the treacherous and foolish war of the nation‟s interests against the USSR. – All these have not been forgotten by our working class and by the entire people, Mr. Gheorghe I. Brătianu!– this person does not belong to the Block of Democratic Parties, but to the clique he himself has joined, next to the Hitlerists and members of the Iron Guard”¹. The text marked the beginning of a shameful propaganda against Gheorghe I. Brătianu that ended tragically for him in April, 1953, when he died in prison in Sighet.

Gheorghe I. Brătianu was one of Romania‟s greatest historians. He brought an essential contribution to connecting the Romanian historiography to the European and world trends of the historical writing, especially to what the School of Annals is and has been. Contemporary with March Bloch and Fernand Braudel, Ferdinand Lot and Charles Diehl‟s student, Gheorghe I. Brătianu is, most likely, the best known Romanian historian follower of this historiographical school². His work Marea Neagră. De la origini până la cucerirea otomană³ (The Black Sea. From Origins to the Ottoman Conquest) is representative from this point of view. This is an excellent volume published posthumously, the equivalent of Fernand Braudel‟s Mediterana şi lumea mediteraneană în epoca lui Filip al II-lea⁴ (The Mediterranean Sea and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II) for the space of the Black Sea.

Gheorghe I. Brătianu‟s historiographical work is much ampler. His arrest at the age of 50 prevented him from writing, directly influencing his scientific production. Practically, Gheorghe I. Brătianu could no longer produce any scientific paper beginning with the night of May 7-8, 1950 when he was arrested and sent to prison. He died in prison in Sighet sometime between April 23 and April 27, 1953. The circumstances of his death are still unclear.

1 „Schimbarea la faţă a d-lui Gheorghe I. Brătianu”, in Scînteia, 23 septembrie, 1944, anul I, nr. 3, p. 1

2 Gheorghe I. Brătianu was born on 3 February, in Ruginoasa, Iaşi County. He was the son of the great Romanian politician lon I. C. Bratianu (Ionel). He graduated from the National High school of Iaşi, then from the Faculty of Law from the Al. I. Cuza University and from the Faculty of Letters from Paris. In 1923 he got his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Kishinev and in 1929 the one in Letters in Paris (1929). Between 1923 and 1940 he was a professor at the Faculty of Letters and History from Iaşi, then, from 1940 to 1947, at that of Bucharest. He succeeded N.

Iorga at the chair of world history. N. Iorga was assassinated on 27 November, 1940 by representatives of the Iron Guard. Between 1940-1941, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy from Bucharest. During the period in Iaşi (1935-1940), he was the president of the Institute of General History of the Al. I. Cuza University, and in Bucharest he became the president of the Nicolae lorga Institute of World History (1941-1947)

3 Gh. I. Brătianu, Marea Neagră. De la origini până la cucerirea otomană, vol. I-II. The book was published in several editions

4 Fernand Braudel, Mediterana şi lumea mediteraneană în epoca lui Filip al II-lea, Editura Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1986, vol. 1-6

Gheorghe I. Brătianu‟s political and historiographical destiny under the Communist regime was a very interesting one, since he was approached by the ideological regime, both as a politician and as a historian, according to the regime‟s interests. If as politician he was indexed for the entire Communist period due to his Liberal-Brătienist past that could not be forgotten as the Liberals were the Communists‟ enemies, as a historian he called the regime‟s attention in well-defined moments mainly due to his work that made references to Bessarabia and that stated Romania‟s right over this historical province.

Practically, historian Gheorghe I. Brătianu‟s name was mentioned in Romania only in negative terms before 1978. Leonte Răutu, one of the major ideologists of Communist Romania, began to harshly accuse him in 1949. He was guilty of being cosmopolite, a very severe accusation in the first years of the Communist regime. He was also classified as a “Hitlerist who has forgotten Romania‟s history, preferring to deal with the English and Chinese history”⁵. The ‟50s are full of abuse against him under the circumstances of a Stalinist historiographical monopoly held by Mihail Roller, the leader of the Romanian historiography in those years. He was the only one appointed by the regime to classify the Romanian historians. In the mid ‟60s, Ştefan Voicu, editor-in-chief of Lupta de Clasă (The Class Fight), accused the same Brătianu, considering him, along with Iuliu Maniu, the former political leader of the National Peasants‟ Party, Ion Antonescu‟s and Adolf Hitler‟s⁶ accomplice. Ion Antonescu was the leader of the Romanian state between 1940 and 1944.

The first positive statements to his address are made in the ‟70s in a slightly relaxed atmosphere from the ideological point of view, when the Romanian historiography received new political guidelines that also referred to the Romanian-Soviet historiographical disputes. In 1978, the paper Enciclopedia istoriografiei româneşti (The Encyclopaedia of the Romanian Historiography) mentioned Gheorghe I. Brătianu among the prestigious Romanian historians and considered him the founder of “a historiographical school that prepared many leading historians”⁷. After decades of silence, the Romanian historiography was reassessing the historian as the ideology and the political regime needed him because of his works on Bessarabia, and because of the political context within the Communist Bloc. Other two studies signed by Lucian Boia, Gheorghe I. Brătianu (1898-1953)⁸ and L‟historiographie

5 Leonte Răutu, Împotriva cosmopolitismului şi obiectivismului înştiinţele sociale, Bucureşti, 1949, p. 30

6 Ştefan Voicu, „Pagini de luptă a Partidului Comunist Român împotriva fascismului, pentru independenţă şi suveranitate naţională (1934-1940)” , in Lupta de Clasă, nr. 6, 1966, p. 68

7 Enciclopedia istotiografiei româneşti, Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, 1978, p.

78

8 Lucian Boia, „Gheorghe I. Brătianu (1898-1953)”, in Studii şi Articole de Istorie, Bucharest, 1978, p. 169-173

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roumaine et l‟école de Annales. Quelques interferences⁹ (The Romanian Historiography and the School of Annals. Some Interferences), opened new perspectives on the Romanian historian.

Around 1980, several historians were already resorting to Brătianu‟s work on the Romanian ethnogenesis and on the Genovese colonies from the Black Sea shore. The first historian to mention Brătianu‟s historiographical work on Bessarabia was researcher Alexandra Zub from Iaşi, in 1980. The same year was marked by the publication of the first post-war edition of Brătianu‟s work entitled Tradiţia istorică despre întemeierea statelor româneşti¹⁰ (The Historical Tradition on the Setting up of the Romanian States), a fundamental book for the understanding the setting up of the Romanian medieval states.

The same year, the historian and literary critic Valeriu Râpeanu went even further and tried Brătianu‟s timid political re-evaluation. In the foreword of the above-mentioned volume, Valeriu Râpeanu avoided the inappropriate appellatives that had been addressed to Brătianu in the post-war years, and even tempered his inter-war political activity. Valeriu Râpeanu was the first Romanian historian who denied the agreement between political leader Gheorghe I. Brătianu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, head of the Iron Guard, a Fascist political party. This represented a clear signal that the situation was changing for Gheorghe I. Brătianu after decades of being called a “Fascist”, a

“Hitlerist” and “hungry for power” by the Romanian historiography and consequently, unworthy of being called a historian. Valeriu Râpeanu was now shocking with his statements on Brătianu. Thus, according to him, Brătianu was a “man of a high moral integrity, he did not try to go on in his social life, scientific and university career through his political activity. His ideology, characterized by a large humanist attraction, showed no affinity to that of the chauvinistic, racist and mystical currents that he explicitly and implicitly rejected in his work through his conception”¹¹.

Tradiţia istorică despre întemeierea statelor româneşti (The Historical Tradition on the Setting up of the Romanian States) was printed on the occasion of the 15^th International Congress of Historical Sciences and presented to the worldwide historians. From this point of view, the anti-Soviet signal was pretty clear, and the intention was to introduce the present foreign historians to the new Romanian historical and historiographical path.

Once the access to Gheorghe I. Brătianu allowed, he benefitted of several approaches, even in the cultural media of the time. In an article on the book that

9 Idem, „L‟historiographie roumaine et l‟École des Annales. Quelques interférences”, in Analele Universităţii Bucureşti, Bucureşti, 1979, p. 31-40

10 Gh. I. Brătianu, Tradiţia istorică despre întemeierea statelor româneşti, Editura Cartea Românească, Bucureşti, 1980

11 Ştefan Gorovei, „Un eveniment (nu numai) editorial”, in Cronica, anul XV, nr. 39 (765), 26 septembrie, 1980, p. 2