Notification
The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania (IICCR) merged with The National Institute for the Memory of the Romanian Exile (INMER), thus resulting a new institution, namely The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER).
The Law on Declaring August 23rd the Day for the Commemoration of the Victims of Fascism and Communism and December 21st the Day for the Memory of the Victims of Communism in Romania
The IICCMER has initiated, since the spring of 2010, as legislative project on Declaring August 23rd the Day for the Commemoration of the Victims of Fascism and Communism and December 21st the Day for the Memory of the Victims of Communism in Romania. The Project aims to honour the memory of the victims of fascism and communism as totalitarian regimes. It reflects the recommendations of the Prague Declaration and those issued by the Parliament of Europe and the European Council. The above-mentioned project was adopted by the Romanian Parliament as Law no. 198/7 November 2011. This Law will allow for the development of coherent policies of remembrance and it will offer the opportunity to set up a pedagogy that would educate young generations in the light of respect for all the victims of totalitarian regimes.
CALL FOR PAPERS FOR 2012
Communism, Nationalism and State Building in Post-War EuropeHistory of Communism in Europe, new series, vol. III/2012
The forthcoming issue of History of Communism in Europe will focus on the topic of Communism, Nationalism and State Building in Post-War Europe. The emergence of communism as praxis after the Second World War overlapped with the need of certain nations to reinforce their claim for statehood. This gave rise to a series of historical phenomena that reshaped post-war Europe. In this context, any research on these transformations must address a series of questions: What is the role of national ideology in postwar state formation? How do various ideologies (e.g. communism and nationalism) interact in the complex processes presupposed by state building? Is there a pattern of state formation in communist Europe in comparison with Western Europe or elsewhere? If so, which were the short and long term consequences of it within a post-conflict landscape? Which narratives of identity were employed as post-1945 Europe took shape? Which were the incumbent tensions as a Soviet bloc of socialist nations came about? Nevertheless, the main issue to be addressed remains that of the differences that appeared from 1945 onwards between the institutionalization of communist polities on the basis of national communities and the consolidation of a supposedly unitary camp of Marxist-Leninist regimes. Moreover, at the end of the day, the legacies of the second half of the twentieth century could be better explained if analyzed from the point of view of the tribulations of nationalizing nation-states (to use Rogers Brubaker’s coinage) across the East and West divide.
More detailsIICCMER’s Yearbook: Repression and Social Control in Communist Romania, Polirom Publishing House, 2011
The Yearbook brings together contributions dealing with the following topics: the institutions and agents instrumental to repression during the communist period; the methods of mobilization, co-option, and social control; and, the practices of the communization of culture and science in Romania. Moreover, the Yearbook contains case studies that offer relevant data on the anti-communist resistance, the victims of repression, and the situation of religious communities under the communist regime. The new issue provides an interdisciplinary and nuanced inquiry on the consequences of communist rule over Romanian society.
Among the authors are: Vladimir Tismăneanu, Paul Hollander, Smaranda Vultur, Cristian Vasile, Bogdan C. Iacob, Mihail Neamțu, Andi Mihalache, Silviu B. Moldovan, Liviu Pleșa, Luciana M. Jinga, Dumitru Lăcătușu, etc. The contributions in the Yearbook make use of archival documents that have only recently been available to scholars, thus providing a novel insights on the various topics analyzed.
More detailsThe End of Silence:The Final Report and the Democratic Future of Romania (In Memoriam Vaclav Havel)
By Vladimir TismăneanuI am dedicating this article to the memory of Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) critical intellectual, anti-communist dissident, founder of Charter ’77, playwright, president of post-communist Czechoslovakia, then president of the Czech Republic, author of the timeless essay “The Power of the Powerless”. Together with Pope John Paul II, Andrei Sakharov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel symbolised what I called the reinventing of politics - the courage to defy revolutionary Machiavellism and to reaffirm the rights of subjectivity in a world dominated by obtuse bureaucracies and totalizing ideologies. To Havel, co-author of the Declaration of Prague, speaking the truth about communism as well as fascism was an explicit imperative. Vaclav Havel’s death fills with grief the community of those who believe that human rights are universal and non-negociable, that the crimes against humanity are exempt from prescription.
More detailsConference: Gulag: What We Know and Why It Matters
Ana Blandiana, President of the Managing Council of the Civic Academy Foundation, Romulus Rusan, Editor of the Sighet Annals series, Andrei Pleşu, Rector of New Europe College, Holger Dix, Director of the Konrad Adenauer branch for Romania and the Republic of Moldova, Alain Blum (EHESS), Jean-Charles Szurek (Institut des sciences sociales du politique, CNRS), Marek Szczygiel, the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Romania, Maja Wawrzyk, Director of the Polish Institute in Bucharest, and Constantin Gembaşu, the Romanian translator of Czeslaw Milosz, attended the event as well.
More detailsDecember 2011: The Launch of IICCMER’s International Yearbook, History of Communism in Europe, vol. II
Moreover, within the project entitled The Assuming of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania/Aufarbeitung Der Kommunistischen Diktatur in Rumänien, undertaken by Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur in collaboration with the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the Romanian Cultural Institute, Dr. Bogdan Cristian Iacob, Secretary of IICCMER’s Scientific Council, presented the activity of the Institute and the Yearbook.
More detailsLegacy of Robert C. Tucker: Marxism, Sovietology, Political Science
an article by Vladimir Tismăneanu / Contributors.roOn Sunday, the Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies concluded in Washington. During this elite scientific reunion, a debate dedicated to the legacy of a giant of Sovietology and Marxology in the last 50 years, Professor Robert C. Tucker, took place on Friday, 18 November. I was very pleased to announce the publishing of the late thinker’s classical work, “Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx”, within the “Constellations” Collection of Curtea Veche Publishing House, with the support of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. Benefiting from the remarkable translation of Emanuel-Nicolae Dobrei, Tucker’s volume remains, five decades since its release, a landmark for all those who wish to understand the essence of Karl Marx’s philosophy, the issue of present-day alienation, and the relationship between myth, utopia and revolution within the Marxist doctrine. For Tucker, young Marx was a Hegelian obsessed with the sense of history, living by the belief that he had found Archimede’s point for a definitive explanation of the mystery of human unhappiness. The American thinker quoted Marx himself in order to demystify the hubris of Marxist radicalism, stating that the philosopher, as an alienated part of this world, perceives himself as its unit of measure.
More detailsThe digitization of the archives of the Romanian exile (January – October 2011)
The Exile and Minorities Department is announcing the digitization of several IICCMRE archival collections containing publications of the Romanian exile, as well as documents or manuscripts from various personal archives (e.g. ˝the Romanian exile archive˝ created by Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca). As a result of several projects developed in January-October 2011, approximately 29 000 pages from various publications and archival collections of the Romanian exile and 23 video recordings are available in electronic format for researchers.
More detailsDocuments Archive
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The Signing of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience
21 European institutions specialised in the memory of the communist, and, respectively, the fascist regime, constituted the international association entitled the Platform of European Memory and Conscience.
On Friday, 14 October 2011, in the Lichtenstein Palace of Prague, 21 institutions from thirteen countries – among which the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile – signed the founding document of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, in the presence of Mr. Petr Nečas, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Mr. Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, and Mr. Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland. The Vice-President of the European Parliament, Mr. László Tökés, was represented at the signing ceremony by Mr. Zsolt Szilágyi, Head of Office. The foregoing event paralleled the Summit of the prime ministers of the Visegrad Group.
More detailsPEMC Agreement
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