Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Encyclopedia
Dnipropetrovsk
Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk formerly Yekaterinoslav is Ukraine's third largest city with one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central region of the country...
(modern Dnipropetrovsk), then in Imperial Russia—1920, Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
) was a Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
theorist, politician, sociologist
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, literary critic
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
, and journalist.
He was also an entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
in the city of Ploieşti
Ploiesti
Ploiești is the county seat of Prahova County and lies in the historical region of Wallachia in Romania. The city is located north of Bucharest....
. Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a father of the communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
activist Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea or Alexandru Gherea was a Romanian communist militant and son of socialist, sociologist and literary critic Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea...
.
Biography
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was born in Yekaterinoslav GovernorateYekaterinoslav Governorate
The Yekaterinoslav Governorate or Government of Yekaterinoslav was a governorate in the Russian Empire. Its capital was the city of Yekaterinoslav .-Administrative divisions:...
of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
to Ukrainian Jewish
History of the Jews in Ukraine
Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus' and developed many of the most distinctive modern Jewish theological and cultural traditions. While at times they flourished, at other times they faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discriminatory...
Katz family. After studies at Kharkiv University
Kharkiv University
The University of Kharkiv or officially the Vasyl Karazin Kharkiv National University is one of the major universities in Ukraine, and earlier in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union...
(where he engaged in revolutionary politics), Dobrogeanu-Gherea fled persecution by the Okhrana and settled in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
(1875). He was active in socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
politics, giving shape to the first centers of activism in Romania, and contributed to left-wing magazines such as Contemporanul
Contemporanul
Contemporanul is a Romanian literary magazine published in Iaşi, Romania from 1881 to 1891 being sponsored by the socialist circle of the city....
.
The group centered on Dobrogeanu-Gherea became the most preeminent one to form the Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party. At the same time, he introduced Narodist ideas to Romania, which were to have a crucial contribution to the emergence of Poporanism
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...
(although his group and the Poporanists became political adversaries after the latter joined the National Liberal Party
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...
and began using anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
slogans).
Literary criticism
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
guidelines of Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...
and its most important voice, Titu Maiorescu
Titu Maiorescu
Titu Liviu Maiorescu was a Romanian literary critic and politician, founder of the Junimea Society. As a literary critic, he was instrumental in the development of Romanian culture in the second half of the 19th century....
. To the Junimea vision of art for art's sake
Art for art's sake
"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...
, created through the merger of moment and authentic feeling, he added conditioning through social necessities (art with tendency). Maiorescu had been a critic of forms without substance (i. e.: cultural institutions that did not blend into, nor borrow from, society), but he had shown himself skeptical to the notion that art could ever be directed to serve a political purpose (especially if that purpose was socialism, which he rejected as a viable option).
He wrote extensive studies on literary figures, and engaged in vivid polemics with many of his contemporaries. Dobrogeanu-Gherea had a lifelong friendship with Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
, giving an interpretation of his works through parallels established with writers of his generation in other cultures. For example, he compared Caragiale's short story An Easter Torch, a reflection on the brutal outcome of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
, with writings by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
. The two exchanged letters for a large part of their lives: while never a socialist, Caragiale admired Dobrogenu-Gherea's attitudes and used his critique of Romanian society in the writing of his work 1907. From Spring to Autumn (expressing his beliefs about the causes and outcome of the 1907 peasants' revolt
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....
).
Sociology
Alongside small-scale works on dialectical materialismDialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
, Dobrogeanu-Gherea published his most debated volume, the 1910 Neoiobăgia (Studiu economico-sociologic al problemei noastre agrare) - "Neo-Serfdom
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
(A Social and Economical Study of Our Land Issue)". The work argued that Romania was trapped in Feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
, with the minimum of capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
vehicles present only to ensure an easier exploitation
Exploitation
This article discusses the term exploitation in the meaning of using something in an unjust or cruel manner.- As unjust benefit :In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for...
of the peasantry by the social élite
Elite
Elite refers to an exceptional or privileged group that wields considerable power within its sphere of influence...
. According to Dobrogenu-Gherea, the land reform
Land reform
[Image:Jakarta farmers protest23.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia]Land reform involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution,...
carried out under Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza was a Moldavian-born Romanian politician who ruled as the first Domnitor of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia between 1859 and 1866.-Early life:...
(in 1864) had only procrastinated a dramatic outcome.
In 1915, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, citing Dobrogeanu-Gherea alongside Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky was a Bulgarian socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist...
as a major figure of Socialism in Romania, commented on Neo-Serfdoms conclusions:
- "All the contradictions of the social and political life of Rumania: the bondage of the peasants, judicially repealed but resurrected by the logic of economic relations; the parliamentary regimeParliamentary systemA parliamentary system is a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch get their democratic legitimacy from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined....
set up on the basis of Asiatic agrarianismOriental despotismOriental despotism is a term used to describe a despotic form of government that opposes the western tradition. Historically, the term's meaning has varied and today it is hardly ever used at all, largely because of all the issues surrounding the concept of orientalism.- Origins in Ancient Greece...
; "British" freedomsFreedom of the CityFreedom of the City is an honour bestowed by some municipalities in Australia, Canada, Ireland, France, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, Gibraltar and Rhodesia to esteemed members of its community and to organisations to be honoured, often for service to the community;...
in the cities, the old style TurkishOttoman EmpireThe Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
despotismDespotismDespotism is a form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute power. That entity may be an individual, as in an autocracy, or it may be a group, as in an oligarchy...
in the countryside -all these phenomena are subjected in Gherea’s great book to a truly masterly analysis where clarity and simplicity go hand in hand with a genuine Marxist profundity."
Legacy
Dobrogeanu-Gherea's works were adopted by the Romanian Communist PartyRomanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
. However, few of Dobrogeanu-Gherea's writings could be said to advocate political revolution, and all of them fit in the patterns of Reformism
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
.
In 1948, he was posthumously made a member of the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
.
Reference s
- Profile of Gherea by Trotsky at Marxists.org