![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
Between 1944 and 1964, Romanian Orthodox Christians were imprisoned in large numbers, for political reasons. They have been regarded not as individual victims, nor just as members of a particularly vulnerable group targetted in a political climate of ‘scientific atheism’, but in a theological and eschatological light, as part of a cosmic conflict between good and evil. Within the overall context of imprisonment, this article examines the USSR-inspired ‘re-education’ programme, carried out primarily on Orthodox students in Piteşti prison, 1949–1951, to produce the New Man for the new communist era, and the Orthodox group, Rugul Aprins [The Burning Bush], active from 1943 to 1948 and from 1955 to 1958. This group was deeply rooted in the monastic life, first at Antim Monastery, Bucharest, then more widespread, involving Orthodox monastics, theologians, intellectuals from many walks of life and students from a variety of disciplines, many of whom were imprisoned, some to the point of death. The communist New Man emerges as a walking parody of the Christian vision of the human person; in both the above groups, martyrdom appears as enigma, for extant evidence attests to holiness and maximal human freedom attained by many, in the most extreme suffering.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the National Council for the Study of the Archives of the Securitate, Bucharest, for access to original material used in this article and to the Philip Usher Memorial Trust for financial assistance towards recent research visits to Romania.
Notes
1 Solzhenitsyn’s novel, In The First Circle, the action of which begins on Christmas Eve, 1949, was completed between 1955 and 1958, and initially published only in 1968, in a shortened and significantly amended version. The ‘restored version’ has been available in English since Citation2009. See Ericson’s ‘Foreword’ to this version for an account of the history of this and other works of Solzhenitsyn.
2 The reader may wish to note that, as in Greek, Romanian has cognate words for martyr [martir], martyrdom [martiriu] and confession of faith [mărturisire], indicating a connection not immediately obvious in the juxtaposition of the English words, ‘martyr’, ‘witness’ and ‘confession’.
3 A rapid succession of three visits exchanged between 1946 and 1948, had an obvious political thrust (see Rus & Dorin-Demostene, Citation2011, pp. 83–115); also Hall, Citation2012, pp. 198–203, for an account of these visits and citation of Romanian sources.
4 Official title: Directorate of State Security. This organisation was not exactly de novo: it replaced a previous state security system, though it had features all its own.
5 Raport Final (Citation2006, p. 463). NB This Report was finally published 18 years after the fall of the communist régime in Romania. The composition and work of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania was not greeted with universal acclaim by Romanian historians and others. I have quoted from it selectively but some may think not advisedly.
6 That is, between the entry of the Red Army into Romania and the year when Romania claimed to have amnestied its political prisoners.
7 See Binecuvȃntată fii, închisoare! (Prison, be blessed!), film directed by Mărgineanu (Citation2002), based on Nicoleta Valeria Bruteanu Grossu’s account of her imprisonment in Malmaison interrogation centre, Mislea prison and the Danube-Black Sea labour camp (1949–1953), recorded also in Valéry and Collins, Prisoner, Rejoice (Citation1982).
8 A student at Bucharest Polytechnic, imprisoned from 1949 to 1956. His book was a significant and valuable source; he was held in Piteşti after re-education had been abandoned. He managed to settle in France in 1959 (Codrescu, Citation2011, p. 5).
9 Bacu, Piteşti (1963); published in English as The Anti-Humans (USA, Citation1971).
10 Dumitrescu, a law student of the University of Bucharest, was imprisoned in Piteşti from 1948 to early 1949, and from 21 December 1949.
11 E.g. ‘I will divulge nothing; neither where I have been, nor what I have experienced. If I do, I will suffer the consequences of the written and unwritten (sic!) laws of the People’s Republic of Romania’. Text given by former prisoner Nicolae Itul (Ursu & Ursu, Citation2011, p. 197).
12 Nichifor Crainic was, for a time, in a cell next to the folklore specialist, Harry Brauner, and sharing a cell with Admiral Măcelariu, former commandant of the Romanian Black Sea fleet. Măcelariu could communicate very rapidly in Morse code with Harry Brauner, who received Crainic’s poetry, memorised it, then set it to music (Crainic, Citation1996, p. 184).
13 ‘Literatură pentru sertar’ (literature for the drawer) became almost a literary genre (see Hall, Citation2011, p. 156).
14 See Andronescu, poems in ‘Peisaj Lăuntric’, reprinted in Reeducarea de la Aiud, pp. 247–374; also Yannaras, on the definition and manifestations of evil, in Enigma of Evil, pp. 1–13.
15 Ţurcanu and his accomplices were apparently promised their own freedom, and entertained the hope of appointment as officers in the Securitate. Other ‘re-educated’ students were added to their number as the re-education programme developed in Piteşti.
16 Aiud, where some of Romania’s most prominent intellectuals and cultural figures, and members of the Legionary Movement, were imprisoned, was the prison where the last of the re-education attempts took place between 1959 and 1964, as detailed in Andronescu, Citation2009.
17 For the incongruity of this ‘idealised image’, see Gregory (Citation2009, p. 71).
18 Though he was tortured by Ţurcanu, by the time re-education began in earnest, Valeriu Gafencu – later called ‘the saint of the prisons’ (see Monahul Moise, Citation2007) – was seriously ill with TB. He was transferred to Văcăresti Prison, then moved on to Tȃrgu Ocna, the ‘sanatorium prison’. Ianolide was transferred to Tȃrgu Ocna not long afterwards; he experienced the start of the Piteşti re-education programme but was not himself subjected to its worst torture (Ianolide, Citation2006, p. 118).
19 The Legion of the Archangel Michael, founded in 1927, was a nationalist and religious movement, whose members called themselves ‘legionaries’. They were anti-communist, and the accusation of being a ‘legionary’ is commonly made in Securitate records of the communist period, when there was an obssessive and irrational fear that ‘legionaries’ were everywhere, secretly planning a coup d’état. The history of the Legion’s involvement in what came to be called the Iron Guard is complex.
20 For an account of Oprişan’s suffering and death, see Calciu, in an interview posted on http://www.miscarea.net/1-constantin-oprisan-martyr.htm
21 For clarity and avoidance of repetition, I use here mostly two sources of many that were possible: Ianolide, Întoarcerea la Hristos, a personal and extensive body of witness, and Lăcătuşu and Mureşan, 2009, because of the extent of their research on Piteşti and their judicious use of Securitate archives, which fill in some of the existing historical lacunae.
22 The foregoing is my summary from Ianolide (Citation2006, pp. 96–99).
23 Other prisons allowed more exercise, some had workshops; even in forced labour camps, there was a rest day on Sundays. In one prison camp 1000 prisoners included 100 priests, and small congregations were set up to look after everyone physically and spiritually (Părintele, Citation2007, pp. 32–33). The experience in Piteşti was incessant persecution ratchetted up to the highest possible degree.
24 Statistics dated 15 December 1958 give the number of monasteries as 224 and the number of monastics as 6214, figures regarded by the government as far too high for Romania (Enache & Petcu, Citation2009, p. 56).
25 In 1945, on demobilisation, he sold all that he had and became a brother at Antim Monastery in Bucharest, where he was later tonsured as a monk, taking the name Agathon – a contraction of the name of the Holy Mountain of Athos, where his conversion had begun.
26 The Library is still there; the icon painting on the walls is by Olga Greceanu, a participant in Rugul Aprins, who was also responsible for the mosaic iconography in the porch of the Monastery church.
27 The order from on high is thought to have come from the Department of Cults, hence from the government. The drafting of politically vulnerable people away from Antim was ordered by Patriarch Justinian, for their protection.
28 NB other sources say this took place at Neamţu.
29 Tourists from inside Romania or possibly Eastern bloc visitors, though others cannot be excluded.
30 The obsession of the new régime with the Legionary Movement, and the idea that former legionaries were hatching counter-revolutionary plots everywhere, to overthrow it, led to many who had never been members of the legionary movement being described as such, and being forced to admit to it under interrogation. Even if the obsession were known to be largely unfounded, it was still a useful ploy to discredit opponents.
31 For the legionaries, see note 19 above.
32 From the earliest days of persecution of Christians, martyrs for the faith were recognised as saints by virtue of their martyrdom. When persecution became less acute, those who had not died a martyr’s death but had led a holy and sacrificial life also came to be recognised, and a process of ‘canonisation’ developed.
33 This is an ability known in the Orthodox tradition (Greek term, diorasis), by which some duhovnics are able to see into the hearts of people who come to them and to know intuitively their needs and circumstances. It is not an innate talent, which can be improved by training, but a spiritual gift of God.