COURAGE

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Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa (1925–2006) was a Romanian Greek-Orthodox priest, an anti-communist dissident, and a fighter for human rights. He was born on 23 November 1925 in Mahmudia, Tulcea county, near the Danube Delta, in a large poor family; he was the only one of the eleven children who managed to go to school (Bourdeaux 2007). During his high school years, Calciu-Dumitreasa joined for two short periods of time Frăția de cruce (Blood Brotherhood), the youth organisation of the Romanian extreme right political party, the Iron Guard. Because of his political sympathies, he was put on trial, but he was acquitted by the Military Court of Constanța in 1942. After the end of World War II, Calciu-Dumitreasa again joined Frăția de cruce as a medical student in Bucharest. After the communist takeover in 1948, he was imprisoned and sentenced to eight years in prison because of his political allegiance to the Iron Guard. As he told The Washington Post in 1989, he was jailed because he and other like-minded friends protested against “atheism, the collectivisation of the means of production, and the destruction of the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie”(Sullivan 2006).

In 1949, Calciu-Dumitreasa was sent to the Jilava penitentiary and then transferred to the prison in Pitești. At Pitești he participated in the infamous process of re-education that used permanent torture as the main instrument for transforming detainees into “new men.” In 1954, as the regime tried to distance itself from what happened in the Pitești prison, he was tried for his part in the re-education programme and received another sentence of fifteen years. He was released from prison in 1964 when the communist regime declared a general amnesty for all political prisoners (Deletant 1995, 39; Cătănuș 2007, 243). According to his own confession, tormented by the terrible sin of being one of the torturers at Pitești prison, Calciu-Dumitreasa found in Orthodox Christian faith a means of coming to terms with his painful past and thus decided to become a priest and distanced himself from his former political allegiances. Because on his release from prison he was forbidden from studying theology, he studied French. Then, with the consent of Patriarch Justinian of the Romanian Orthodox Church, he secretly completed his studies for the priesthood (Sullivan 2006). Ordained as a priest in 1973, he became a teacher of French and New Testament at the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Bucharest (Cătănuș 2007, 243).

Calciu-Dumitreasa’s dissident activities began in September 1977, when he deplored the demolition of churches in the centre of Bucharest, especially of the Enei church, the first such historical monument which was torn down after the earthquake of March 1977, on the grounds that it was too damaged to be consolidated. On 30 January 1978, he delivered a sermon in the Patriarchal Cathedral in Bucharest against atheism and labelled materialism as “a philosophy of despair.” One year after the earthquake of 4 March 1977, Calciu-Dumitreasa delivered another sermon to commemorate the death of the students who had died under ruins of the collapsed building of the seminary. His actions were severally sanctioned by his superiors who forbade him to preach in the Patriarchal Cathedral and questioned his decision to organise a service in memory of the seminary students (Cătănuș 2007, 244). Despite these early warnings, Calciu-Dumitreasa decided to hold a series of seven non-conformist sermons at the church of the seminary between 8 March and 19 April 1978. Targeting both seminary students and young people in general, the sermons dealt with sensitive issues for the communist regime and the Romanian Orthodox Church, such as atheist education, the relation between the state and the church, and the role of priests, who were supposed to take care of their parish communities and should thus oppose the demolition of the churches (Cătănuș 2007, 244).

The new patriarch, Justin Moisescu, considering that Father Calciu-Dumitreasa had betrayed the Church, expelled him from his teaching position at the Orthodox seminary. Harassed by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, he endorsed in 1979 the initiative of a group of workers and intellectuals in the city of Drobeta-Turnu Severin to create the Free Trade Union of the Working People of Romania, and agreed to act as its spiritual leader. On 10 March 1979, he was arrested, put on trial, sentenced to ten years of imprisonment on the charge of “propagating fascist ideology,” and sent to the prison in Aiud. The charge was fabricated, as the communist regime tried to use his former political engagement with the Iron Guard to discredit him and justify his imprisonment. His arrest triggered a wave of international protests involving British, French, and Swiss members of parliament, members of the US Congress and international organisations such as Christian Solidarity International. Due to this international pressure, Calciu-Dumitreasa was released in 1984. As the renewal of Most Favoured Nation status for Romania by the US Congress was conditional on the observance of human rights, the authorities granted Calciu-Dumitreasa and his family exit visas in 1985 (Deletant 1995, 100, 231, 195). During his exile in the United States, he worked in construction as an unqualified worker to support himself and his family. Calciu-Dumitreasa did not abandon his fight against the communist regime and its atheism, as he continued to deliver radio sermons, to give interviews to foreign radio stations, including Radio Free Europe, to lead demonstrations, and to lobby the US Congress. All his actions were aimed at raising the awareness of international public opinion about the repressive nature of the Ceaușescu regime (Sullivan 2006; Cătănuș 2007, 246-260). From 1989 until his death in 2006 he ministered at the Holy Cross Church in Alexandria, Virginia. He is buried in Romania.

Constantin Caraman (b. 4 august 1912, Oancea, Galaţi county; d. 11 July 2001) was a Pentecostal minister who signed the open letter of protest against infringements of human rights in Romania relating to religious freedom entitled: The neo-protestant denominations and human rights in Romania, which was broadcasted by Radio Free Europe in April 1977. He was imprisoned for practising his faith from 1950 to 1951 and from 1964 to 1965. After signing the open letter he was arrested and interrogated by the Securitate (Silveșan and Răduț 2014, 66–67).

Mircea Carp is one of the best known Romanian journalists who worked for the radio stations Voice of America and RFE. Carp was an uncomfortable journalist for the communist regime in Bucharest because of the critical message he conveyed in his radio programmes, which were very popular in Romania.

Mircea Carp was born on 28 January 1923 in Gherla (Cluj county) in a family with roots in the nobility, with a long intellectual and military tradition. Following in the footsteps of his father, who was a career officer, Mircea Carp enrolled in the military high school, and then, in 1942, he was admitted to the School of Cavalry Officers and sent to Germany for specialised studies. He fought in the Romanian army against the USSR, but also against Nazi Germany, after Romania left the Axis Alliance on 23 August 1944. In August 1946 he was purged from the Romanian army for political reasons, and in August 1947 he was arrested and interrogated for his anti-communist convictions and activity. Because no evidence against him was found, he was released shortly after. After the forced resignation of King Michael I in December 1947, Carp decided to head for the West, wishing to join the opposition against the communist regime as part of the Romanian exile. In January 1948, Carp managed to cross illegally the border between Romania and Hungary and to reach Austria, where he worked for the American military mission until 1951, when he emigrated to the USA. Here he joined the Press and Documentation Department of the National Committee for a Free Europe, being in charge of editing the magazine Cronica Românescă (The Romanian Chronicle). This anti-communist organisation had been founded in New York in 1949 in order to increase American influence in Europe and to limit that of the Soviet Union. A year later, the National Committee for a Free Europe created the radio station RFE, which it continued to manage.

In the period 1955–1979, Carp worked for the radio station Voice of America, where he occupied the position of anchor, editor, and, from 1969, chief of the Romanian section of Voice of America. In 1973, the management of the radio station decided to reassign him as chief correspondent of the Voice of America office in Europe. Carp’s activity at Voice of America ended in 1979, when he relocated to RFE. Here he was in charge of the radio show “The Political Programme”, which had a great impact on the Romanian public during the 1980s.

Starting from 1969, Carp visited Romania several times, as an American journalist accredited to Bucharest, or as a member of certain American official delegations, such as the one that accompanied President Richard Nixon during his official visit to Romania in 1969. As shown by his surveillance file compiled by the Securitate, Mircea Carp was perceived as an enemy by the political police because in his radio shows he virulently criticised the communist regime in Romania. As a result, Carp was followed by Securitate during his visits to Romania, and his correspondence with friends and family in Romania was carefully monitored. After 1995, Mircea Carp published two biographical volumes. The first, entitled Vocea Americii în România, 1969–1978 (Voice of America in Romania, 1969–1978), focuses on the activity of the Romanian section of the radio station, whereas the second is a volume of memoirs whose title reminds us of the words with which Carp used to end his radio programme at RFE: Aici Mircea Carp, să auzim numai de bine! (This is Mircea Carp, wishing you all the best!).

Igor Cașu (b. 8 October 1973, Borogani, Leova district, Republic of Moldova) is a Moldovan historian, who specialises in the communist period. In 2010, he created the Centre for the Study of Totalitarianism at the State University of Moldova, serving as its founding director. As a member of the Commission for the Study and Evaluation of the Communist Totalitarian Regime in Moldova (created by presidential decree in 2010), Igor Cașu was part of the Moldovan “archival revolution” that led to an unprecedented access to formerly restricted archival collections (notably those of the KGB, the Interior Ministry, and the Communist Party). However, this period was short-lived, and access restrictions were reinstated after the Commission ended its work. This increases the value of this private collection, which holds a significant number of copies of archival documents that are not available to the broader public. These carefully selected sources allow an in-depth study of the communist period in Moldova, despite the obstacles that systematic research in public archives still encounters. Igor Cașu is willing to share these documents with the broader research community, which represents a welcome departure from the reluctance of public depositories to open their collections to the public without any restrictions.  At present, Igor Casu continues to serve as Director of the Centre for the Study of Totalitarianism and is also an Associate Professor in the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the State University of Moldova. 

Although he had no anti-regime family background, Igor Casu states that his first critical attitudes towards the regime surfaced in late 1988 or early 1989 and were connected to his membership of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol). He decided to leave the organisation in the context of the wave of glasnost’ and of the emerging historical debates of the Gorbachev era. This act was also possible because of the relaxation of the regime, as a result of which the consequences of this type of behaviour were less severe compared to previous periods. He did not participate in other significant or crucial events related to the movement for “national emancipation” in Moldova.

In his understanding, the extent of cultural opposition in the MSSR was significant, but it was present “to a smaller degree than in other regions of the Soviet Union (e.g., the Baltic states, Western Ukraine or Georgia).” Igor Cașu’s definition of cultural opposition encompasses certain “acts perceived as less political, but nevertheless critical of the regime,” mainly in the field of “cultural policies, linguistic issues, but also [cases] of intellectuals in different spheres (writers, painters, other artists) who expressed ideas that were defined as anti-Soviet or dangerous to the regime.” Cașu emphasises that defining the concept of “cultural opposition” raises a “very difficult methodological issue,” mainly due to the shifting attitude of the authorities towards cases of oppositional discourses and activities.  As he aptly observes, the changing priorities of the central institutions influenced their perception on dissent and implicitly their reaction to such cases. To illustrate his point, Cașu gives the example of the use of the Latin alphabet in the MSSR. Despite the official prohibition of this practice, the consequences for its users could vary widely from one decade to another. Also, for Cașu, “the concept of ‘cultural opposition’ is a construct, whereas the concrete cases of cultural and political opposition can hardly be separated in reality.” This uncertainty also stems from the fact that, in the eyes of the communist authorities, the hierarchy of the relative danger associated with certain acts varied widely, not only across time, but also across space, in the case of different communist regimes.