Romania: reflections on the street protests and the country’s communist past

Protests have continued in Romania despite the government revoking a controversial decree that would have decriminalised some forms of misconduct by public officials. Dennis Deletant traces the roots of the protest through Romania’s communist past, writing that corruption, autocratic impulses, and incompetence have characterised the attitudes and actions of successive governments and the bureaucracy since the revolution

Romania's protests and the PSD: understanding the deep malaise that now exists in Romanian society

Anti-government protests in Romania have made international headlines, with over 400 people left injured following clashes between protesters and police on 10 August. Dennis Deletant writes that the protests are a symptom of a growing malaise in Romanian society fostered by the ruling Social Democrats that is estranging the citizen from the state

The Healing Power of Play: therapeutic work with chronically neglected and abused children

This article concerns a therapeutic intervention with a group of abandoned children living in a Romanian pediatric hospital. The children, ranging in age from one to ten years old, had suffered chronic neglect and abuse. They had previously spent most of their lives tied in the same cot in the same hospital ward. They were poorly fed and their nappies were rarely changed. Although able to see and hear the other abused children, they experienced little in the way of social interaction. The article focuses on the play-based methods that were employed to aid the children’s recovery, while at the same time highlighting the general benefits of this very specific therapeutic approach to children’s recovery and development. In particular, there is an exploration of concepts such as symbolic representation, negative capability, joining, and the significance of play cues. However, despite the clear value of these individually focused techniques, the article proposes the tentative hypothesis that the most powerful healing factor was the unfettered playful interaction between the children themselves. In other words, the children in a very real sense may have healed each other while playing

What does it mean to be a kin majority? Analyzing Romanian identity in Moldova and Russian identity in Crimea from below

Objective This article investigates what kin identification means from a bottom-up perspective in two kin majority cases: Moldova and Crimea. Methods The article is based on ∼50 fieldwork interviews conducted in both Moldova and Crimea with everyday social actors (2012–2013). Results Ethnic homogeneity for kin majorities is more fractured that previously considered. Respondents identified more in terms of assemblages of ethnic, cultural, political, linguistic, and territorial identities than in mutually exclusive census categories. Conclusions To understand fully the relations between kin majorities, their kin-state and home-state and the impact of growing kin engagement policies, like dual citizenship, it is necessary to analyze the complexities of the lived experience of kin identification for members of kin majorities and how this relates to kin-state identification and affiliation. Understanding these complexities helps to have a more nuanced understanding of the role of ethnicity in post-Communist societies, in terms of kin-state and intrastate relations

Does inequality erode generalized trust? Evidence from Romanian youths

Generalized trust is a critical component of liberal democratic citizenship. We evaluate the extent to which exposure to socioeconomic inequality erodes trust among Romanian youths. Using national survey data of Romanian eighth-grade and high school students, we evaluate this effect as a product of socioeconomic diversity within the classroom, controlling for the social status of the students as well as socioeconomic inequality within the community where the school is located. Our analysis shows that generalized trust is higher for students in higher grades. However, despite this maturing effect, students exposed to greater levels of socioeconomic diversity have significantly lower levels of trust. The effect is particularly acute for students in the ninth grade. This finding holds when controlling for socioeconomic diversity and polarization in the community. The result reinforces the idea that generalized trust develops early in one’s life and is quite stable, although a major life transformation, such as entering high school, may alter trust depending on the social context

Interview with Dennis Deletant--April 4, 2013

Interview Themes: How Deletant came to be interested in Romania in the mid-1960s (2:10); Deletant's approach to the issue of "backwardness" in Romanian historiography (4:59); What changed in Romania over the period of Deletant's study of it (10:45); British views of Romania in the 1960s and '70s (15:25); On what Deletant wanted his British students to know about Romania (16:09); On the legacy of British scholars like Hugh Seton-Watson and R.W. Seton-Watson and others (18:24); The 1980s in Deletant's career and Romanian history (23:36); Writing about the difficult periods of Romanian history as a labor of love for Deletant (28:23); Can the model of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) that we associate with Western Germany after WWII be "exported" to East-Central Europe? [on the role of the C.N.S.A.S. - Consiliul Naţional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securităţii/National Council for the Study of the Archives of the Securitate] (33:52); How Deletant came to get access to select Securitate (Romanian communist secret service) documents in 1993 (41:10); On Deletant's own Securitate file (53:54); Deletant's role as a Romanian expert giving interviews with the BBC (1:02:43); Recent developments in Romania that are cause for concern (1:04:23); Would there be a place for dissidence in Romania now? (1:07:00); Was the 1989 revolution in Romania a real revolution? (1:08:40); Deletant's sense of what scholars should be addressing now when writing about Romanian history and politics (1:10:08)Interview with Dennis Deletant, Professor Emeritus of Romanian Studies at the University College London and now the Visiting Ratiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University. Interview conducted in Washington, D.C. on April 4, 2013. Deletant has written a number of books and articles on Romanian history of the twentieth century, including Hitler's Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his regime, Romania 1940-1944, published by Palgrave in 2006 and recently translated into Romanian.1_evbtcov