Dilema veche 306, 27 November 2009

Andrei Plesu
A short commentary to Herta Müller
Andrei Plesu believes that Herta Müller always told the truth even when risky, thus acquiring a sacrificial dimension. Under the dictatorship she uttered forbidden truths, after emigrating she spoke about the same forbidden truths, risking the disappointment of a public with other priorities. In her adoptive world she risked telling unconventional truths to the hosts: that from communism nothing could be saved, except what opposed it.

Cristian Ghinea
The country is headed in a good direction
– who's to blame?
An article in Prospect magazine from October last year entitled "20 years in the making" analyses former Eastern Germany and draws the conclusion that there, as well as in other ex-communist European countries, the state of mind is many times worse than reality itself. There is a discrepancy between how the elites regard the democratic post communist changes and the way in which "simple citizens" do it. Krastev, in another article from the same magazine entitled "The greengrocer's revenge", talks about this phenomenon: the elites no longer need the greengrocer (as they did in communist times), who is left with only two options: to admit that he is a loser, or to hate the elites and be frustrated.

Corina Boldeanu
The dream, the reality, the nightmare
– the Museum of Communism in Prague
A visit to the Museum of Communism in Prague (situated between a McDonald's and a casino) reveals the museum's commercial atmosphere: a display of objects gathered there under a reductive label. An American label: the museum was opened in 2001 by Glenn Spicker, an American businessman interested in totalitarianisms.

Marius Chivu
A minimal balance sheet
2009 is a year which seriously "shook" the Romanian publishing houses. Herta Müller won the Nobel prize. There was a revival of the short story as a national novel (among which the author mentions Medgidia, the city after by Cristian Teodorescu, a volume of short stories). There were also published a number of interesting novels, among them The book of whispers by Varujan Vosganian and And Hams and Regretel by Matei Florian. The same year, Salmon Rushdie came to Romania (brought by Polirom Publishing House) to give a public lecture and hold an autograph session. The most widely sold books of the year in Romania were by Dan Puric (a famous pantomime actor), Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer.

Maria Balabas
Enescu, from genius to pop icon
George Enescu, Romania's greatest composer, is almost impossible to find on the Internet: he has only a small, unsubstantial site. Lucian Ban, a Romanian jazz piano player who lives in New York, tried to revive Enescu through a new concept: "Enescu re-imagined", by jazz piano players all over the world. Also diggers, clubbers and other representatives of musical subcultures tried to acknowledge and interpret Enescu in their own ways. The idea is not to transform Enescu into a pop icon but just to take him down from the pedestal he is now on and bring him closer to the public.

Weekly dossier
UNESCO monuments in Romania

Simona Sora
We have seven UNESCO sites. What do we do about it?
In Madrid in December last year, at the INTEGRA fare, there was a presentation of the seven albums published by the Artec Publishing House in Segovia and dedicated to the UNESCO Romanian patrimony. The project, sponsored by the Romanian Cultural Institute, comprises: The Danube Delta (Radu Anton Roman, re-published by Catalin C.Constantin); Sighisoara (Ioana Pîrvulescu); Wooden churches in Maramures (Teodor Baconsky); Churches and fortresses in Transylvania (Emil Hurezeanu); The Hurezi Monastery (Bogdan Tataru Cazaban); The monasteries in Bucovina (Neagu Djuvara); The Dacians'castles in the Orastie Mountains, by Simona Sora. The volumes, presented and coordinated by Ioana Zlatescu, will also be launched in Romania at the end of 2010. The problem is that the access to these monuments is still bad, and the authorities in charge (The Ministry of Culture and local authorities) have not done anything about it yet.

Ioana Pîrvulescu
Sighisoara – the play with time
Sighisoara, Romania's famous medieval city, has many faces: in winter one of a provincial, dark and silent town; in July, during the Medieval Festival a livelier, younger one. And another one if you visit the Hill Church – where among other interesting things the Holy Spirit is portrayed as a woman.

Neagu Djuvara
At the gates of heaven
– about painted churches in Moldavia
These churches, now ten (45 in Petru Rares's time – Romanian Renaissance prince, son of Stefan cel Mare) are most admirable and odd, at the same time their appearance, as well as the sudden disappearance of their pattern after less than century, continues to provoke disputes between historians and art critics. In the author's opinion, among all the Moldavian churches, Sucevita (1584, the latest built) is the most interesting.

Teodor Baconsky
Maramures, the colourful prayer
The wooden churches in Maramures (ten), regional assemblies in a neo-Gothic vernacular style, built from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries and filled with the ecological symbolism of eastern Christianity, are built with remarkable subtlety, even modernity. Their naive paintings remind us of Romanic art in Catalonia or Ethiopian icons. Among them: St Paraschiva in Poienile Izei, the Birth of the Virgin in Ieud Hill, Sf Paraschiva in Desesti, the church of the Birth of the Holy Virgin in Bîrsana.

Dilema veche 307, 30 December 2009

Mircea Vasilescu
First the government, then what?
José Manuel Durão Barroso's message to the newly re-elected Romanian president, Traian Basescu, stated that the president's most urgent task is to form a new government capable of getting the full support from the Parliament. The government was, indeed, quite quickly formed but in Vasilescu's opinion that is not what counts. The government should concentrate on concrete actions and most of all on obeying and applying the rules imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission.

"If you ride or drive fast and suddenly brake, you'd better wear the safety belt" – interview with Tonny Lybek, International Monetary Fund representative in Romania
Taking into account that the International Monetary Fund is soon going to decide whether to support Romania or not, Cristian Ghinea's conversation with Tonny Lybek focuses on the tasks which the Romanian government should fulfil in order to get financial help. Apart from this, Tonny Lybek gives details on what will happen if Romania disobeys the conditions stipulated in the agreement with IMF and also explains why our country needs IMF's watchful eye to start a reform.

Grigore Vîrsta
Switch identity
An old Ford factory producing Lincoln Continental cars has been closed down because of the poor interest in buying cars. The owner finally sold the place and got rid of an unproductive factory, and the buyer made the transaction for $100 million and got himself 160 hectares to produce environmentally friendly cars. Running on electricity, all it takes to fill the batteries is to plug it in for eight hours. It should be enough to take the driver as far as 400 kilometres before the next charge.

Liliana Nicolae
Chisinau seen as a postcard
No street confrontations or fights, no gun shots or arrests disturbed this year's Christmas in Chisinau, only a friendly discussion between the government and the town hall on who should decorate the Christmas tree. The author tells a story on this city which she describes as calm for the first time in a very long time. She writes about its people, the city centre, public transport and marketplaces.

Ilinca Sandu
"Romanians still suffer from a kind of Balkan fatalism" – interview with Alain Garlan, professor at Lumière University in Lion and deputy manager of the National Dramatic Centre in Saint Denis
Alain Garlan is an old friend and collaborator of Silviu Purcarete, a well known Romanian playwright. Ilinca Sandu met him at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre in Lyon, and invited him to talk about his work and friendship with Purcarete. They spoke about the cultural relations between France and Romania and Garlan said the French seem less interested in the Romanians than they were ten years ago. Back then, Romanians and their plays were famous and constantly invited to perform. This no longer happens for no obvious reasons.

Weekly dossier
2010 – a short sketch

Bogdan Voicu
Future social scenarios
Taking into account the economic crisis Bogdan Voicu describes the beginning of 2010 in Romania as still "haunted" by uncertainty. He imagines two scenarios: in the worst case the crisis will not come to an end. In the best case we might get through it in no time. Voicu also tries to see what may happen on some of the most important levels of our society – social values, equal opportunities, education, international migration and child birth.

Rupert Wolfe-Murray
Waiting for 2012
People talk obsessively about financial crisis and global warming, while there is almost no public debate about Peak Oil – the least known of the big dangers facing us but the one that is likely to have the most dramatic impact. It will take 20 years to develop alternatives to the oil and gas that we currently rely on for our transport, heat and food supplies. 2010 could be the first year in which we start making serious preparations for the oil shock that will probably hit us in 2012.

Laurentiu-Gabriel Rosoiu
An expensive bill and just a few good news
Although there won't be much talk in 2010 about the depreciation of the national coin – as we have already surpassed the crisis – unemployment and the high cost of food, heat, electricity and water supplies will be a problem in the new year.

Dilema veche 308, 6 January 2010

Codrin Liviu Cutitaru
About meaning
Life can be changed say the young, you belong to life discover the old. A Romanian post communist university can be very disappointing. Impostors survive alongside professionals, and nobody seems interested in making the separation. Reality is more prosaic than we are willing to accept. There are geniuses and idiots, real and fake; however the university (here or elsewhere) remains the same, travelling on her historical path. Meaning is not in details only in the absolute. Even an extraordinary individual reaches his limit and eventually dies but communities conquered space an time and changed life. We hope, not to find the meaning, but only propose a number of variants.

Weekly dossier
A Romanian mystery and historical miracle: fool's luck

Rodica Zafiu
About stupidity, again...
It seems that instead of ethical norms and social codes, words like stupid and intelligent are used to differentiate between people. It is an irritating practice because wellbeing and balance depend on ethical habits, while intelligence deviates to tricks excusing inconsequence and collaboration. Meanings of the word stupid inherit old ones: simple, common, regular. Frequent usage, multiple senses and many derivatives indicate its importance. Its metaphors are animals (ox, sheep, goose) and assume lack of reaction, inertia (bat, wood, stone). The most frequently used superlative indicates total darkness, lack of any spark of intelligence (stupid as night).

Mircea Kivu
Was Ceausescu stupid?
"Ceausescu was stupid. If we had more heat in the houses and food on the table he would have been ok, even democratically re-elected." This is something we often hear. Timisoara in 1989, however, was one of the few cities were you could find some "free" meat and Serbian trade made it a commercial paradise. Also the weather in December 1989 was unusually warm. So lack of food and heat was not the only immediate cause for the revolt, or their presence in our life a cause for post-transition happiness. The rumours about the collapse of communism in neighbouring countries, and the fear that history might bypass us, determined the outcome. The fact that Romanians had to queue for food generated a lack of dissidence. While Czech intellectuals founded Carta 77, Romanians queued for potatoes. So if Ceausescu had been softer, maybe things would have changed sooner. However, the surprise of history can not be totally excluded; dictators come to power through democratic elections. Historical irony makes most of us miss the only thing we had in abundance 20 years ago: the safety of tomorrow's misery.

Selma Iusuf
More fools than smart people
The dictionary definition of stupidity is far from its thousand instances. The most annoying proof of stupidity: concrete-certitude. Stupidity is innovative, fresh. There is also daily stupidity: snow thrown on the street and from the street to the sidewalk and back. Applied stupidity takes up five loans on almost minimum wage, starves and blames the Swiss currency. Stupidity combined with malevolence has devastating effects. Can stupidity be cured? They say no. They say some timidity may put the brake on imbecility. How to dosage timidity? That is a dilemma.

Dilema veche 309, 14 January 2010

Andrei Plesu
With or without dilemmas?
Today, as we celebrate seventeen years since the launch of the magazine Dilema, its founder Andrei Plesu believes the dilemmatic spirit in the Romanian society is still the same. Although the transition has gone, the man without dilemmas, with full certainty, is still omnipresent. This is a good base for a long life of the magazine, believes Andrei Plesu.

Mircea Vasilescu
Tax on fats and noble principles
Romanian authorities wish to impose a tax on fast food. Mircea Vasilescu notes that similar concerns exist in other European countries. He notes, however, that there is a difference between initiatives in Austria and Denmark, for instance, to those proposed in Romania. In Austria and Denmark the debate proceeds on the principles, ideas and realities concerning citizen issues. In Romania, the authorities impose taxes (often unnecessary) and then try to justify them by some noble ideas and principles such as human health.

Gabriel Giurgiu
Solidarity or competitiveness
Gabriel Giurgiu wonders who should be in charge of Romania in the European Union for the distribution of European funds. At first glance it seems that the interest would be based on the idea of solidarity. Romania is poor and needs funds to reach the standard of other member states. But is Romania ready to apply this principle also within its borders, to distribute funds to poorer areas and not only to those that are highly competitive and productive?

Cristian Ghinea
Thinkers vs. intellectuals
Cristian Ghinea comments on the recent ranking of the top 100 global thinkers compiled by the magazine Foreign Policy. He notes that the ranking, this time referring to thinkers, is more relevant than the previous one which used the term intellectuals, and which was created based on popular vote on the Internet.

About cultural images and printed words. Interview with Daniela Zeca-Buzura, manager of TVR Cultural
Daniela Zeca-Buzura explains how they have managed to get an audience for a cultural television station and ponders what obstacles lie ahead.

Weekly dossier
For what good journalism is not dying?

Matei Martin
Read this article
Matei Martin describes the Readerscan experiment, invented by the Swiss Carlo Imboden, which determines exactly how and what readers look for in a newspaper. Martin says that the results contradict what media managers commonly believe. In conclusion he is of the opinion that printed newspapers are not dying, nor are their readers becoming fewer, but that they have gone too far in the factoring of news and aggressive marketing.

Manuela Preoteasa
Dilemma magazine collectors and the new users of Blackberries or iPhones
Manuela Preoteasa believes that the closure of several newspapers in Romania is not caused by the economic crisis but rather the abandonment of quality and the fact that these newspapers depended too much on economic and political circumstances. She notes that people who get a lot of their information from the Internet continue to read and collect such magazines as Dilema veche.

Dilema veche 310, 27 January 2010

Sever Voinescu
The intellectuals and the politics – the eternal story
Sever Voinescu relates his experience as a young intellectual who became a member of an important Romanian party and went on to be elected MP: is it possible for politicians and intellectuals to work together? What are the misconceptions of each group regarding the other?

Radu Cosasu
Albert Camus
Radu Cosasu dedicates his article to the fiftieth anniversary since Albert Camus' passing. "We can tell with complete ideological certainty: Albert Camus was a man of the left, not in general an anti-totalitarian, but precisely anti-Stalinist and anti-Soviet."

Madalina Schiopu
The avatars of a movie
Madalina Schiopu summarizes the international media's reactions and debates in connection with the latest James Cameron movie, Avatar. From the Vatican to controversial politicians such as Evo Morales, many who commented projected their own ideological and political bias to a work of fiction.

Dilema veche's interview with Leonard Orban, former European commissioner for multilingualism: "There were huge expectations regarding the office of multilingualism"
Leonard Orban was the first Romanian appointed as a European commissioner. As our special guest he answered questions related to his experiences from the executive branch of the European Union.

Adina Popescu
Places to smoke
Recently, Romania has adopted many EU regulations limiting smoking in public places. How will the Romanians adapt to these new laws? Adina Popescu tries to answer, often in a humorous style.

Weekly dossier
Unequal opportunities
The weekly dossier focuses on aspects involving discrimination and equal opportunities in Romania. Women, the Roma community, the disabled and the inhabitants of rural areas and small towns still have a long way to go before they benefit from equal opportunities, both in legal and practical terms.

Interview with Yannis Vardakastanis, the president of the European Disability Forum
Yannis Vardakastanis says in this interview: "Even if maybe it is not visible enough, your country has made real efforts to promote and protect the rights of the disabled. The steps made so far are, although small nevertheless very important for the people with disabilities not to be excluded, ignored or discriminated against".

Mircea Kivu
The abstraction called equal opportunities
The sociologist Mircea Kivu comments on the disparity between equal opportunities as a principle and its implementation. Justice, politics and access to public resources are among the many areas where Romanian citizens are not treated equally.

Alexandru Gruian
Equal opportunity is called good luck
The inhabitants of the Romanian villages and small towns are particularly discriminated against in relation to their access to education, says Alexandru Gruian. The real educational resources can still be found only in the big cities.

Cristian Preda
Both the others and us
Cristian Preda was elected member of the European Parliament last summer. Did he ever feel discriminated against as a Romanian? Did he ever encounter cases of discrimination against Romanians living and working abroad? The author acknowledges that such cases exist but thinks Romania is partially responsible for not being involved enough in the protection of its own citizens.

Published 2010-02-08

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