Bine ati venit!

Romani.co.uk este principalul loc de intalnire al  romanilor care traiesc in Marea Britanie. Speram ca veti considera utila vizita pe site-ul nostru si va asteptam sa va alaturati noua pe lista de discutii.

Romanian For Sale 

A very religious country

when I went home

One last time

upon the dusty room.

My Danube

My Danube not Strauss’

Watercycle

NEW
from Cornell University Press
THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION OF DECEMBER 1989
By Peter Siani-Davies

The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was the most spectacularly violent and remains today the most controversial of all the East European upheavals of that year. Despite (or perhaps because of) the media attention the revolution received, it remains shrouded in mystery. How did the seemingly impregnable Ceausescu regime come to be toppled so swiftly and how did Ion Iliescu and the National Salvation Front come to power? Was it by coup d’état? Who were the mysterious "terrorists" who wreaked such havoc on the streets of Bucharest and the other major cities of Romania? Were they members of the notorious Securitate? What was the role of the Soviet Union?

Blending narrative with analysis, Peter Siani-Davies seeks to answer these and other questions while placing the events and their immediate aftermath within a wider context. Based on fieldwork conducted in Romania and drawing heavily on Romanian sources, including television and radio transcripts, official documents, newspaper reports, and interviews, this book is the most thorough study of the Romanian Revolution that has appeared in English or any other major European language.
Recognizing that a definitive history of these events may be impossible, Siani-Davies focuses on the ways in which participants interpreted the events according to particular scripts and myths of revolution rooted in the Romanian historical experience. In the process the author sheds light on the ways in which history and the conflicting retellings of the 1989 events are put to political use in the transitional societies of Eastern Europe.
PETER SIANI-DAVIES is Director of the Centre for South-East European Studies and Senior Lecturer in Modern South-East European Studies, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He is the co-author of Romania (revised edition) and editor of International Intervention in the Balkans since 1995.

MICHAEL OF ROMANIA.
THE KING AND THE COUNTRY
by Ivor Porter
This is the first biography of King Michael of Romania for many years. Based on royal archives, Queen Helen’s unpublished diaries, sources in Romania, and interviews with King Michael, Queen Anna and Crown Princess Margarita, it integrates the story of Michael with that of the country which he once ruled, and which he once tried to save. Michael was the only constitutional monarch to have led his people in person during the Second World War. After refusing to be a puppet to give legitimacy to the regime Hitler had set up in Romania, personally protesting against Jewish massacres, he led a coup d’etat against the Germans which shortened the war and postponed the communist dictatorship of his country. For three years, from 1944-7, with the Soviet army in occupation, the Western Allies unable to help, and the two main democratic parties virtually destroyed, he hung on grimly to some degree of constitutional democracy until Stalin showed his hand.
Exiled after the war for fifty years, Michael continued to be regarded with affection and support by the Romanian people. When he returned in 1996 he told them, as no communist leader would dare to do, ‘I love you. Don’t forget that.’
Ivor Porter was brought up in the Lake District and educated at Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School and Leeds University. In 1939 he was sent to Romania as a British Council lecturer at Bucharest University but was transferred to the British Legation soon after the war broke out. The Legation withdrew in February 1941 when it became clear that Romania would become an ally of Germany.
He was recruited by SOE and became one of a three-man delegation led by Colonel Gardyne de Chastelain sent into Romania in December 1943 to persuade the Resistance to break with the Germans at any cost. They were dropped in thick mist too far from the target, were arrested, imprisoned and released on the night of King Michael's coup d'état of 23 August 1944.
Ivor Porter joined the Foreign Office in May 1946. and served in Washington, India, Cyprus, the delegation to NATO in  Paris and  was Ambassador in West Africa and the Geneva Arms Control Committee. Since retirement he has revived his interest in Romania and in 1989 published Operation Autonomous: with SOE in wartime Romania.
In 1961 he married Katerina Cholerton. They have a son and daughter, live in London and usually spend part of the year at their house in Provence. 

You can purchase this book from Hatchard’s bookshop, 187 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9LE, Tel. 020 7439 9921  ( Source: RCC)

 

’This is a unique work on an important, but neglected, subject. It deals with the transition from totalitarian to democratic rule in Romania and examines the question of why the promotion of reform of the political and economic system in Romania has proved to be more difficult than in most of the other countries of Central Europe. In doing so, the book makes a significant contribution to the political history of Romania and Central Europe, as well as to the literature on the dynamics of political and social change in the region.' - Professor Dennis Deletant

Book Description (selected from www.amazon.co.uk)
’Romania had the chance of a fresh start politically after the collapse of the brutal and macabre dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. Instead bad governance has persisted within an incomplete democratic system with disastrous results for many millions of people.
Tom Gallagher explores why continuity rather than change has been the dominant feature of political life after 1989. He provides an inspiring portrait of the post-communist leadership centred around Ion Iliescu, Adrian Nastase and their clients and allies, showing how defence of private or group interests has usually been their primary concern. He shows how they promoted bogus nationalist movements in order to cover up systematic misuse of state resources. The failure of the non-communist democratic alternative, centred around Emil Constantinescu, Romania's President from 1996 to 2000, to break this pattern of misrule, is closely examined.
The author warns that NATO and EU membership are unlikely to provide the impetus for national recovery unless convincing local partners are found, prepared at all times to defend Romania's national interests. (…) Incisive portraits of the political elite, the security services and the new economic oligarchy are provided in this study. Tom Gallagher is convinced that Romania can break free from the communist past and enjoy close and fruitful links with the West only if strong reformist movements emerge from increasingly self-aware sections of society that reject the political practices of the past.’

TOM GALLAGHER BA PhD Manc holds the Chair of Ethnic Conflict and Peace at Bradford University in the UK. Much of his teaching and research focuses on the evolution of post-communist states of South Eastern Europe.
Tom Gallagher has written two books ‘Outcast Europe: The Balkans From The Ottomans To Milosevic: 1789-1989’, (Routledge 2001) and ‘The Balkans Since The Cold War: From Tyranny to Tragedy’, (Routledge in 2003) which examine the long-term mishandling of the problems of the region by the great powers and the failure of timely conflict prevention measures to avert the tragedy of Bosnia and build a durable peace.
Tom Gallagher is a regular analyst for well-known consultancy groups and he is a frequent visitor to the region. Romania, Macedonia, and Kosovo were among the countries he visited in 2003-4. He is one of the few specialists who has expert knowledge of both the former Yugoslavia and those parts of the post-communist Balkans that remained at peace in the 1990s and beyond.
Romania is a country about which he can claim particular expertise. ‘Romania After Ceausescu: The Politics of Intolerance’ was published by Edinburgh University Press in 1995.

This book launch event is organised by The Romanian Cultural Centre in London together with Grant & Cutler.
The Romanian Cultural Centre is an independent association that promotes Romanian cultural programs, maintains connections within the Romanian community in Britain, facilitates cultural exchanges between Britain and Romania and maintains an information and data base service. Should you require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at mail@romanianculturalcentre.org.uk. RCC OPEN DAY: Every Monday, between 11.00 - 19.00, you can visit us (7th floor, 54 - 62 Regent Street, London W1B 5RE) or call us with your queries on Tel. 020 7439 4052, ext 102.
Founded in 1936, Grant & Cutler is now the UK’s largest foreign-language bookseller, located in London, near Oxford Circus. The shop is open to the public and it also supplies universities, libraries and schools across the world. Although specializing in Western languages and Russian, the shop is now increasing its attention to East European languages/literature, including Romanian. The current Romanian section contains fiction, classics, reference and language learning books and is being developed. Free catalogues are available, including the recent ‘Eastern European Languages’ one and they can also be viewed on the website www.grantandcutler.com

The book will be introduced by Professor Dennis Deletant in the presence of the authors.

'The Day We Won't Forget. 15 November 1987, Brasov' by Marius Oprea and Stejarel Olaru (Polirom Editors, 2003, pp. 240; Translated by Oana Mitchell. Translation revised by Brenda Walker. Preface by Dennis Deletant)

Two young historians reconstruct a unique event in Romanian history: the workers' revolt from Brasov, on 15 November 1987. The route chosen by Marius Oprea and Stejarel Olaru, researchers at the Romanian Institute for Recent History (IRIR), is one that is hard, but rewarding: they set on gathering testimonies from the actual people who took part in the events.

The reader will be surprised and moved reading the accounts given by people who dared to speak their anger in a time of brutal repression. Those men and women who uttered their discontent were afterwards arrested, beaten and tortured. Many of them underwent trial and were imprisoned for their defiance of the Dictator, the Communist Party, and therefore of the State.

Entrance is FREE but advance booking is necessary, due to limited seating. Please confirm by Monday 10 May at mail@romanianculturalcentre.org.uk or Tel. 020 7439 4052 (ext. 120), if you are able to join us.

This event is organised by:
The School of Slavonic and East European Studies - UCL
The Ratiu Foundation UK
The Romanian Cultural Centre in London

The book launch follows the Romanian Studies Afternoon organised by SSEES. See details below:

ROMANIAN STUDIES AFTERNOON
ROMANIA AND BRITAIN:
RELATIONS AND PERSPECTIVES FROM 1918
TO THE PRESENT
Convenor: Professor Dennis Deletant

12 MAY 2004

Venue: NG14 Senate House, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Malet Street, London WC1E

The extension of Nato membership to Romania this spring, coupled with the organization by The British Council and the Romanian authorities of a UK-Romania Cultural Festival - a series of bilateral events staged in the two countries between April and November 2004 - offers an appropriate backdrop for a review of Britain’s relations with Romania over the past century. Romanian language and literature have been taught at SSEES since 1919, when Marcu Beza, a member of the Romanian legation in London, gave the first courses to students, and lectures in Romanian history were given by two of the founding fathers of the School, Robert Seton-Watson and H. Wickham Steed. Romanian language classes were offered on an occasional basis until 1947 when a lecturership in Romanian language and literature was established. Eric Tappe (1910-92) was appointed to the position. In 1974, he became Professor of Romanian Studies at SSEES, the first holder of such a post in the English-speaking world. Since 1990, the teaching of Romanian studies in the School has been consolidated by the establishment of new posts in the subject, and the creation of a significant research base under the aegis of the Centre for South-East European Studies. Some of the fruits of that research activity are reflected in this programme.

Programme

Fees and Contact details

The conference is free to staff and students of academic institutions, and to the unwaged. For others the fee is £10.

For further details and to register for the conference please contact Ms Sasha Aleksić at SSEES. Email: s.aleksic@ssees.ucl.ac.uk, telephone: 020 7862 8557.

Notes on the speakers/convenor

Dr Felix Ciută joined SSEES in 2002 as lecturer in International Relations and European Security. He is currently working on projects on the reconceptualization of security, alliance theory, and Romanian foreign and security policy. His recent publications include 'Why Did We Join NATO?', Sfera Politicii no. 102-103, 2003, (with R.S.Ungureanu) (in Romanian), and 'The End(s) of NATO: Security, Strategic Action and Narrative Transformation', Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 23, no. 1, April 2002, pp. 35-62.

Dennis Deletant is Professor of Romanian Studies at SSEES. He is the author of several volumes of studies on the recent history of Romania, among them Ceauşescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-89 (London; New York: Hurst, 1996), and Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-1965, (London; New York: Hurst, 1999). His most recent book is Security Intelligence Services in New Democracies: The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, (London: Palgrave, 2001) (with Kieran Williams).

Alex Drace-Francis lectured at SSEES between 2000 and 2003 in Romanian history and culture. He completed his PhD entitled Literature, modernity, nation: the case of Romania, 1829-1890 in September 2001. He now works at SSEES as Research Fellow on the "East Looks West" travel-writing project where, among other things, he is selecting, translating and editing Romanian accounts of Europe to be included in an anthology. Recent publications on the subject of national and regional images include "Zur Geschichte des Südosteuropakonzepts bis 1914." Wieser Enzyklopädie der Europäischen Ostens, Bd. XI: Europa und die Grenzen im Kopf. Graz: Wieser Verlag, 2003, p. 275-286; "Paradoxes of Occidentalism: on travel literature in Ceauşescu's Romania." In Andrew Hammond, ed. The Balkans And The West. Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming 2004.

Rebecca Haynes is Lecturer in Romanian Studies with a research interest in interwar Romanian history. She is currently undertaking research on the history of the Romanian Legionary Movement. Recent publications: Romanian policy towards Germany, 1936-1940, Macmillan, 2000; editor (with an Historical Introduction) Occasional Papers in Romanian Studies, No 3, Moldova, Bessarabia, Transnistria, 2003.

Maurice Pearton is an Honorary Fellow of SSEES. He is the author of Oil and the Romanian State (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971) and Diplomacy War and Technology since 1830 (Kansas University Press, 1986). His most recent publication is 'Romanian neutrality, 1939-1940', European Neutrals and Non-Belligerents during the Second World War, ed. by N. Wylie, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Peter Siani-Davies is Director of the Centre for South-East European Studies at SSEES. He is the author of a number of works on Romanian history and politics, including the forthcoming The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004) and with Mary Siani-Davies Romania (revised edition) (Oxford: Clio Press World Bibliographical Series, 1998). He has recently edited International Intervention in the Balkans since 1995 (London: Routledge, 2003) and with David Phinnemore South-Eastern Europe, the Stability Pact and EU Enlargement (Cluj-Napoca: Cluj-Napoca University Press, 2002).