Ovidiu Pecican
Encyclopedia
Ovidiu Coriolan Pecican (born January 8, 1959) is a Romania
n historian, essayist, novelist, short-story writer, literary critic, poet, playwright, and journalist. He is especially known for his political writings on disputed issues such as regional autonomy
for Transylvania
, and for his co-authorship of a controversial history textbook for 11th and 12th grade high-school students.
Pecican is co-editor of Caietele Tranziţiei and a contributor to major newspapers, including Contemporanul
, Cotidianul
, and Ziarul Financiar
. He has also written works of science fiction
, main stream literature and cultural history studies. Since 1994, he has been a member of the Romanian Writers' Union.
, Pecican graduated from the University of Cluj-Napoca
(currently known as the Babeş-Bolyai University, UBB) in 1985. He published his first short story in 1978. During the late 1970s, he was active in the underground movie-making movement in his native city, as a member of the Atelier 16 Club, together with Gheorghe Sabău, Mircea Mihăieş, Ioan T. Morar
, Valentin Constantin, Alexandru Pecican and others. As a student, between 1981 and 1985, he became a member of the staff of the periodicals Napoca Universitară and Echinox. Regularly featured in various literary magazines, his prose was first edited in a single volume in 1990 (Eu şi maimuţa mea, "Me and My Monkey" — published by Editura Dacia
).
Between 1985 and 1990, Pecican worked as a high school professor of history in Lipova
, Arad County
; in 1991–1994, he was a researcher for the UBB's Center for Transylvanian Studies (Centrul de Studii Transilvane), before becoming a Lecturer
at the UBB (1994). The recipient of a BA
in History and Philosophy (1985) and of a PhD
in Medieval History
(1998), both from the UBB, he specialized in the social
and cultural history
of Central
and Southeastern Europe.
In 1994, Pecican published a book of interviews with novelist Nicolae Breban
(O utopie tangibilă, "A Tangible Utopia"; Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică). In 1995, he also authored, together with Horaţiu Mihaiu, the experimental theater show 17 acte cu Piet Mondrian ("17 Acts with Piet Mondrian
"), which was hosted by the National Theater in Cluj-Napoca
, before being showcased at the Belgrade Summer Festival and winning several Romanian awards. After 1997, books by him were published yearly or in several volumes each year.
Pecican is a Professor (since 2004) and was Chancellor at the Babeş-Bolyai University Faculty of European Studies (1997–1999) and served on the staff of the UBB's "The European Idea" Foundation for European Studies as its first manager (1997–1999). He has been the recipient of TEMPUS
grants from the University of Sussex
, Utrecht University
, the University of Münster
, the University of Milan
, and the INALCO
, as well as receiving grants from the Central European University
, Michigan State University
and a DAAD
grant from the University of Münster.
He is a coordinator of the Other Europes series for the Foundation's publishing house, EFES, and, between 2001–2005, he headed another publishing house, founded by the Desire Foundation. He also coordinates the Limb series for the Limes Publishing House. Pecican was also head of the Post-Totalitarian
Studies, an office he shared with Emil Boc
(who was a Lecturer at the time). He has edited Romanian-language versions of, among others, works by Geoffroy de Villehardouin (De la Conquête de Constantinople
), Robert de Clari
(La Conquête de Constantinople), Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
(Olteneştile), and Yves Ternon
(L'État criminel).
, led by Andrei Marga
at the time, decided to allow new textbooks to be published as alternatives to the official ones in use, Pecican, together with Sorin Mitu, Lucia Copoeru, Virgiliu Ţârău, and Liviu Ţîrău, published a version of a 12th grade manual of Romanian history with Editura Sigma. The volume was submitted to Ministry approval, and caused a political scandal after its content became known to the public — its critics argued that it lacked structure and balance, that it discarded traditional historiography
in themes and discourse, and even that part of the information was purely trivial. Pecican identified most of these concerns with support for nationalist
tenets, and argued they were unscientific.
The volume was immediately faced with criticism from the ultra-nationalist opposition group Greater Romania Party
, through the voice of Anghel Stanciu (who called the textbook "anti-national"). Soon after, Romania's largest opposition group at the time, the Social Democratic Party
, joined in the protest, and Parliament
ary groups from outside the governing Romanian Democratic Convention
(CDR) issued a formal protest: their motion was rejected on November 15, but the scandal, deepened by major coverage in the press, probably contributed to weakening support for the CDR.
Academia was divided over the issue: while the Romanian Academy
expressed concern that the Sigma textbook was not up to educational standards, several, especially young, historians supported it. The National Liberal
politician and historian Adrian Cioroianu
, himself the co-author of a new manual and a vocal critic of the methods of Pecican's adversaries during the polemic, publicly sided with the Sigma authors, and argued in their favor during televised confrontations with Marius Tucă
and Octavian Paler
.
Eventually, the original version failed to win Ministry approval. In later editions, the Sigma textbook was published with significant changes in content. In 2002, the PSD Minister Ecaterina Andronescu
removed it from the list of endorsed textbooks, which caused Pecican to issue a formal protest, supported by, among others, the historian and West University
professor Victor Neumann
. Both Pecican and Neumann expressed concerns that this was signaling a return to official history, and made mention of inconsistencies in educational policies.
and Magyar intellectual
s from Transylvania, Pecican founded the Provincia Group around the magazine Provincia (April 2000); it was created as an advocacy group
in favor of debating the majority-minority relationship in Romania, dedicated to reshaping Romanian administrative policies and renouncing centralism
. On December 8, 2001, it issued a Memorandum calling for a public debate on the issue of Transylvanian autonomy.
The Memorandum drew criticism from several sources. In an editorial for Ziua
, Adrian Cioroianu expressed his own support for a degree of decentralization
, but argued that the document was unrealistic in its assumptions and more radical goals, and that it did not represent a unitary perspective on the issue. The Memorandum was dismissed outright by President
Ion Iliescu
, a gesture which prompted Pecican to address him in an open letter
. The more nationalist political forces called on authorities to indict the document's authors, based on an interpretation of the Constitution of Romania
.
on the issue of Pecican's alleged candidature for government office in Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu
's Justice and Truth
cabinet. The article made reference to Pecican's involvement in the textbook scandal (focusing on a reference to "Decebalus
' sensual lips", made in the Sigma volume) and identified Pecican's ideas with those of Sabin Gherman, the advocate of a high degree of Transylvanian autonomy (it alleged that Pecican shared Gherman's statement "I'm all fed up with Romania!"). Replying in Cotidianul
, Pecican dismissed the tone and content of the article as "deliberate manipulation and distortion", while recalling that, during the 1999 polemic, the respective journalist had published what he called "curse words" (sudălmi) aimed at Sigma authors.
Also in 2005, Pecican was among the group of intellectuals who reacted to the controversial views held by the exiled writer Paul Goma
on issues involving Bessarabia
and World War II Romanian history
. Alongside Radu Ioanid, Michael Shafir, Laszlo Alexandru, Andrei Oişteanu
and others, he accused Goma of Antisemitism and Holocaust denial
, and concluded that his Săptămîna Roşie volume, reflecting Goma's theory on the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, was spurious.
His polemics include the one against the new treatise on Romanian history, published by the Romanian Academy
beginning 2002. Coordinated by the historians Dan Berindei and Virgil Cândea, the large collective work was sharply criticized also by Şerban Papacostea, Leon Şimanschi, Ştefan Andreescu and some other historians for alleged ethical problems, but Pecican accused the synthesis for its perceived nationalist and statist
views. Later, when one of the authors, Mihai Bărbulescu, reacted against Pecican's arguments, the latter answered and presented new arguments.
. Trapped between Eastern Orthodox
ethos
and Slavonic language, on one hand, and the Western
or Latin
influences, on the other, the old Romanian culture of the 11th-17th centuries faced a large variety of challenges, and showed a remarkable diversity. Pecican uncovered the prehistory of various enigmatic texts, reconstituting both lost texts and contexts, as well as the image of a whole written culture expressing the choices made by medieval Romanians in the Balkans
and the territory between Danube
and the Carpathians
.
Troia, Veneţia, Roma (1998) deals with the imagined homelands of the Vlachs
as they result from old written fragments conserved in later contexts, outlaying some of the main characteristics of Romanian identity at the time of its first making. The cultural origins of the Romanians' negative self-image, both inherited and developed, is the topic of Pecican's Lumea lui Simion Dascălul (1998), where he attempts to define the cultural elite
s of Early Modern Moldavia
(17th century) and to determine the reasons why Simion Dascălul, one of the leading Romanian chroniclers of the time, is misunderstood. Pecican's Arpadieni, Angevini, români (2001) focuses on the Romanian-origin lesser nobility
in the Kingdom of Hungary
under the Árpáds
and the Angevins
until the end of the 14th century; the volume contradicts both Romanian and Hungarian historiographic tradition, which have traditionally claimed that Romanians were only serfs
under Hungarian rule or that Romanians were brought from the Balkans and into Transylvania only to guard the Hungarian border. The volume raised debates between the author and historian Ioan-Aurel Pop, who claimed that Pecican's views favored the Hungarians. Realităţi imaginate şi ficţiuni adevărate în evul mediu românesc (2002) and Trecutul istoric si omul evului mediu (2002) center on newly-discovered medieval historical writings from Transylvania, Wallachia
and Moldavia. They include annals from the times of Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler
, as well as from previous and subsequent periods, which, Pecican indicates, show the vitality of a culture in its development and the dialog with the neighboring cultures.
The debate on regionalism prompted Ovidiu Pecican to write a new book on the regional political forms before and after the founding of the Danubian Principalities
, under the title of Originile istorice ale regionalismului românesc (2003). The historian argues against the essentialist
image of the nation-state
, and points to a rich originality of political forms, autonomy experiments on the lower Danube and in the Carpathians, foreign influences and original answers.
Some of the other volumes written by Pecican also reflect his questioning of official versions provided for the past. Sânge şi trandafiri. Cultura ero(t)ică in Moldova lui Ştefan cel Mare (2005) attempts to provide the reader with a different image of the national hero Stephen the Great
, Prince of Moldavia (1457–1504), who was sanctified by the Romanian Orthodox Church
. The volume focuses on erotic
and heroic mixture of instinct and behavior at Stephen's court, as it appears to have been reflected in literature and arts of his time. In Între cruciaţi şi tătari (2006), the attempt is to understand the challenges confronting post-1989 Romania
and its longing for integration into NATO and the European Union
, by comparing them with the years between the Fourth Crusade
(1204) and the Mongol Invasion
(1241–1243), when the Western world extended itself down to the Carpathians.
Pecican is also interested in how Eastern European culture developed in contact with the Western culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. Haşdeenii. O odisee a receptării (2003) and B. P. Hasdeu istoric (2004), books developed from his PhD thesis, attempt to explain how, through the efforts of several leading intellectuals during the second part of the 19th century, modern nationalism, together with liberalism
, formed a nationalist identity. Poarta leilor. Istoriografia tânară din Transilvania (Vol.I: 2005; Vol.II: 2006) is a synthesis concerning the young historiography from Transylvania after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
, investigating its attraction to the Western model and its polemic with the nationalist-communist
autochthonous model as developed by the Communist regime
.
's dictatorship. The modular formula of the narrative contributes to creating a lyric atmosphere, underlying the contrast between the purity of the love story, on one hand, and the dark context, on the other.
Later in the same year, Ovidiu Pecican and his cousin, Alexandru Pecican, completed work on a second novel, Razzar, a mythical and archetypal
metaphor
of the human destiny elaborated within the literary conventions of the science fiction genre. Razzar received the Nemira Publishing House Prize for novels in 1998.
Nine years later, Pecican published a third novel, Imberia, which depicts the daily dilemmas a young intellectual has to face in post-communist Romania during the transition period (including sexual alienation and the trauma of his father's death).
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 historian, essayist, novelist, short-story writer, literary critic, poet, playwright, and journalist. He is especially known for his political writings on disputed issues such as regional autonomy
Regional autonomy
Regional autonomy is the term for the decentralization of governance to outlying regions. Recent examples of disputes over autonomy include:* The Basque region of Spain* The Catalonian region of Spain...
for Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
, and for his co-authorship of a controversial history textbook for 11th and 12th grade high-school students.
Pecican is co-editor of Caietele Tranziţiei and a contributor to major newspapers, including 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....
, Cotidianul
Cotidianul
thumb|right|Old logo of Cotidianul newspaper, used in the [[inter-war period]], and in the early 1990sthumb|right|The logo used between 2003 and 2007...
, and Ziarul Financiar
Ziarul Financiar
Ziarul Financiar is a daily financial newspaper published in Bucharest, Romania. Aside from business information, it features sections focusing on careers and properties, as well as a special Sunday newspaper...
. He has also written works of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, main stream literature and cultural history studies. Since 1994, he has been a member of the Romanian Writers' Union.
Career
Born in AradArad, Romania
Arad is the capital city of Arad County, in western Romania, in the Crişana region, on the river Mureş.An important industrial center and transportation hub, Arad is also the seat of a Romanian Orthodox archbishop and features two universities, a Romanian Orthodox theological seminary, a training...
, Pecican graduated from the University of Cluj-Napoca
Babes-Bolyai University
The Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca is an university in Romania. With almost 50,000 students, the university offers 105 specialisations, of which there are 105 in Romanian, 67 in Hungarian, 17 in German, and 5 in English...
(currently known as the Babeş-Bolyai University, UBB) in 1985. He published his first short story in 1978. During the late 1970s, he was active in the underground movie-making movement in his native city, as a member of the Atelier 16 Club, together with Gheorghe Sabău, Mircea Mihăieş, Ioan T. Morar
Ioan T. Morar
Ioan T. Morar is a Romanian journalist, poet, dramatist, novelist, literary and art critic, and civil society activist. He is a founding member of the satirical magazine Academia Caţavencu and, since 2004, a senior editor for Cotidianul...
, Valentin Constantin, Alexandru Pecican and others. As a student, between 1981 and 1985, he became a member of the staff of the periodicals Napoca Universitară and Echinox. Regularly featured in various literary magazines, his prose was first edited in a single volume in 1990 (Eu şi maimuţa mea, "Me and My Monkey" — published by Editura Dacia
Editura Dacia
Editura Dacia is a publishing house based in Romania, located on Pavel Chinezul Street 2, Cluj-Napoca. Named after the ancient region of Dacia, it was founded in 1969 by a group of Transylvanian intellectuals, and printed works in Romanian, German and Hungarian.According to its official site,...
).
Between 1985 and 1990, Pecican worked as a high school professor of history in Lipova
Lipova, Arad
Lipova is a town in Romania, Arad County, located in the Banat region of western Transylvania. It is situated at a distance of 34 km from Arad, the county capital, at the contact zone of the Mureș River with the Zarand Mountains, Western Plateau and Lipovei Hills...
, Arad County
Arad County
Arad is an administrative division of Romania roughly translated into county in the western part of the country on the border with Hungary, mostly in the region of Crişana and few villages in Banat. The administrative center of the county lies in the city of Arad...
; in 1991–1994, he was a researcher for the UBB's Center for Transylvanian Studies (Centrul de Studii Transilvane), before becoming a Lecturer
Lecturer
Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise research students, as well as teach...
at the UBB (1994). The recipient of a BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in History and Philosophy (1985) and of a PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in Medieval History
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
(1998), both from the UBB, he specialized in the social
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
and cultural history
Cultural history
The term cultural history refers both to an academic discipline and to its subject matter.Cultural history, as a discipline, at least in its common definition since the 1970s, often combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at popular cultural traditions and cultural...
of Central
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
and Southeastern Europe.
In 1994, Pecican published a book of interviews with novelist Nicolae Breban
Nicolae Breban
Nicolae Breban is a Romanian novelist and essayist.-Biography:He is the son of Vasile Breban, a Greek Catholic priest in the village of Recea, Maramureş County. His mother, Olga Constanţa Esthera Breban, born Böhmler, descended from a family of German merchants who emigrated from Alsace Lorraine...
(O utopie tangibilă, "A Tangible Utopia"; Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică). In 1995, he also authored, together with Horaţiu Mihaiu, the experimental theater show 17 acte cu Piet Mondrian ("17 Acts with Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
"), which was hosted by the National Theater in Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
, before being showcased at the Belgrade Summer Festival and winning several Romanian awards. After 1997, books by him were published yearly or in several volumes each year.
Pecican is a Professor (since 2004) and was Chancellor at the Babeş-Bolyai University Faculty of European Studies (1997–1999) and served on the staff of the UBB's "The European Idea" Foundation for European Studies as its first manager (1997–1999). He has been the recipient of TEMPUS
TEMPUS
The TEMPUS programme encourages institutions in the EU Member States and partner countries to engage in structured cooperation through the establishment of "consortia". The "consortia" implement Joint European Projects with a clear set of objectives. Such projects may receive financial aid for...
grants from the University of Sussex
University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....
, Utrecht University
Utrecht University
Utrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....
, the University of Münster
University of Münster
The University of Münster is a public university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The WWU is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a society of Germany's leading research universities...
, the University of Milan
University of Milan
The University of Milan is a higher education institution in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with about 62,801 students, a teaching and research staff of 2,455 and a non-teaching staff of 2,200....
, and the INALCO
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales
The Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales is located in Paris, France. It was founded in 1795 after the French Revolution and is now one of the country's Grands établissements with a specialization in African, Asian, East European, Oceanian languages and civilisations...
, as well as receiving grants from the Central European University
Central European University
For other uses, see European University Central European University is a graduate-level, English-language university offering degrees in the social sciences, humanities, law, public policy, business management, environmental science, and mathematics...
, Michigan State University
Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...
and a DAAD
German Academic Exchange Service
The German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD is the largest German support organisation in the field of international academic co-operation....
grant from the University of Münster.
He is a coordinator of the Other Europes series for the Foundation's publishing house, EFES, and, between 2001–2005, he headed another publishing house, founded by the Desire Foundation. He also coordinates the Limb series for the Limes Publishing House. Pecican was also head of the Post-Totalitarian
History of Romania since 1989
- 1989 revolution :1989 marked the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. A mid-December protest in Timişoara against the eviction of a Hungarian minister grew into a country-wide protest against the Ceauşescu régime, sweeping the dictator from power....
Studies, an office he shared with Emil Boc
Emil Boc
Emil Boc is the Prime Minister of Romania, having served since December 2008. In June 2004, he was elected Mayor of Cluj-Napoca, the largest city in Transylvania. Boc is also the president of the Democratic Liberal Party, who designated him as Prime Minister in 2008. On October 13, 2009, his...
(who was a Lecturer at the time). He has edited Romanian-language versions of, among others, works by Geoffroy de Villehardouin (De la Conquête de Constantinople
Villehardouin's De la Conquête de Constantinople
De la Conquête de Constantinople , is the oldest surviving example of historical French prose, and considered to be one of the most important historical works of the Fourth Crusade...
), Robert de Clari
Robert de Clari
Robert de Clari was a knight from Picardy. He participated in the Fourth Crusade with his lord, Count Peter of Amiens, and his brother, Aleaumes de Clari, and left a chronicle of the events in Old French...
(La Conquête de Constantinople), Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a Romanian writer and philologist, who pioneered many branches of Romanian philology and history. Hasdeu is considered to have been able to understand 26 languages .-Life:...
(Olteneştile), and Yves Ternon
Yves Ternon
Yves Ternon is a French physician, author of historical books about the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Doctor of medicine's history of University Paris IV Sorbonne...
(L'État criminel).
Sigma textbook
In late 1999, when the Ministry of EducationMinistry of Education and Research of Romania
The Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sport is one of the nineteen ministries of the Government of Romania.Over the years the Ministry changed its title...
, led by Andrei Marga
Andrei Marga
Andrei Marga is a Romanian philosopher, political scientist, and politician. Rector – for the second time – of the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, he was a member of the Christian-Democratic National Peasants' Party , serving as Minister of Education in the Democratic Convention coalition...
at the time, decided to allow new textbooks to be published as alternatives to the official ones in use, Pecican, together with Sorin Mitu, Lucia Copoeru, Virgiliu Ţârău, and Liviu Ţîrău, published a version of a 12th grade manual of Romanian history with Editura Sigma. The volume was submitted to Ministry approval, and caused a political scandal after its content became known to the public — its critics argued that it lacked structure and balance, that it discarded traditional historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
in themes and discourse, and even that part of the information was purely trivial. Pecican identified most of these concerns with support for nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
tenets, and argued they were unscientific.
The volume was immediately faced with criticism from the ultra-nationalist opposition group Greater Romania Party
Greater Romania Party
The Greater Romania Party is a Romanian radical right-wing, ultra-nationalist political party, led by Corneliu Vadim Tudor. The party is sometimes referred to in English as the Great Romania Party....
, through the voice of Anghel Stanciu (who called the textbook "anti-national"). Soon after, Romania's largest opposition group at the time, the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party (Romania)
The Social Democratic Party is the major social-democratic political party in Romania. It was formed in 1992, after the post-communist National Salvation Front broke apart. It adopted its present name after a merger with a minor social-democratic party in 2001. Since its formation, it has always...
, joined in the protest, and Parliament
Parliament of Romania
The Parliament of Romania is made up of two chambers:*The Chamber of Deputies*The SenatePrior to the modifications of the Constitution in 2003, the two houses had identical attributes. A text of a law had to be approved by both houses...
ary groups from outside the governing Romanian Democratic Convention
Romanian Democratic Convention
The Romanian Democratic Convention was an electoral alliance of several political parties of Romania, active from early 1992 until 2000....
(CDR) issued a formal protest: their motion was rejected on November 15, but the scandal, deepened by major coverage in the press, probably contributed to weakening support for the CDR.
Academia was divided over the issue: while 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....
expressed concern that the Sigma textbook was not up to educational standards, several, especially young, historians supported it. The National Liberal
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...
politician and historian Adrian Cioroianu
Adrian Cioroianu
Adrian Mihai Cioroianu is a Romanian historian, politician, journalist, and essayist. A lecturer for the History Department at the University of Bucharest, he is the author of several books dealing with Romanian history...
, himself the co-author of a new manual and a vocal critic of the methods of Pecican's adversaries during the polemic, publicly sided with the Sigma authors, and argued in their favor during televised confrontations with Marius Tucă
Marius Tuca
Marius Tucă is a Romanian journalist and TV host.He distinguished himself in the 1990s as a political analyst and a TV host. He also contributed to the transformation of the Jurnalul Naţional newspaper into the best selling broadsheet in Romania. In 1997–1999, he hosted Milionarii de la miezul...
and Octavian Paler
Octavian Paler
Octavian Paler was a Romanian writer, journalist, politician in Communist Romania, and civil society activist in post-1989 Romania.-Biography:Octavian Paler was born in Lisa, Braşov Country.He was educated at Spiru Haret High School in Bucharest...
.
Eventually, the original version failed to win Ministry approval. In later editions, the Sigma textbook was published with significant changes in content. In 2002, the PSD Minister Ecaterina Andronescu
Ecaterina Andronescu
Ecaterina Andronescu is a Romanian engineer, professor and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party , she sat in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies from 1996 to 2008, representing Bucharest, and has been a Senator since 2008, for the same city...
removed it from the list of endorsed textbooks, which caused Pecican to issue a formal protest, supported by, among others, the historian and West University
West University of Timisoara
The West University of Timişoara is a university located in Timişoara, Romania. Established in 1962, it is organized in 11 Faculties.-Organization:...
professor Victor Neumann
Victor Neumann
Victor Neumann is a Romanian historian, political analyst, and professor at the West University in Timişoara. He is a well-known specialist in the recent cultural and intellectual histories of Eastern and Central Europe...
. Both Pecican and Neumann expressed concerns that this was signaling a return to official history, and made mention of inconsistencies in educational policies.
2001 Memorandum
With Molnar Gusztav, Smaranda Enache, Marius Cotmeanu, Miklós Bakk and other RomanianRomanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
and Magyar intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
s from Transylvania, Pecican founded the Provincia Group around the magazine Provincia (April 2000); it was created as an advocacy group
Advocacy group
Advocacy groups use various forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and/or policy; they have played and continue to play an important part in the development of political and social systems...
in favor of debating the majority-minority relationship in Romania, dedicated to reshaping Romanian administrative policies and renouncing centralism
Centralized government
A centralized or centralised government is one in which power or legal authority is exerted or coordinated by a de facto political executive to which federal states, local authorities, and smaller units are considered subject...
. On December 8, 2001, it issued a Memorandum calling for a public debate on the issue of Transylvanian autonomy.
The Memorandum drew criticism from several sources. In an editorial for Ziua
Ziua
Ziua was a major Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest. It was published in Romanian with a fairly sizeable and often informative English section. Ziua was founded in 1994 by Sorin Roşca Stănescu, eventually becoming foreign-owned...
, Adrian Cioroianu expressed his own support for a degree of decentralization
Decentralization
__FORCETOC__Decentralization or decentralisation is the process of dispersing decision-making governance closer to the people and/or citizens. It includes the dispersal of administration or governance in sectors or areas like engineering, management science, political science, political economy,...
, but argued that the document was unrealistic in its assumptions and more radical goals, and that it did not represent a unitary perspective on the issue. The Memorandum was dismissed outright by President
President of Romania
The President of Romania is the head of state of Romania. The President is directly elected by a two-round system for a five-year term . An individual may serve two terms...
Ion Iliescu
Ion Iliescu
Ion Iliescu served as President of Romania from 1990 until 1996, and from 2000 until 2004. From 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 until his retirement in 2008, Iliescu was a Senator for the Social Democratic Party , whose honorary president he remains....
, a gesture which prompted Pecican to address him in an open letter
Open letter
An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....
. The more nationalist political forces called on authorities to indict the document's authors, based on an interpretation of the Constitution of Romania
Constitution of Romania
The 1991 Constitution of Romania, adopted on 21 November 1991, voted in the referendum of 8 December 1991 and introduced on the same day, is the current fundamental law that establishes the structure of the government of Romania, the rights and obligations of the country's citizens, and its mode...
.
Other polemics
In late October 2005, the journalist Melania Mandaş Vergu published an article in GândulGândul
Gândul is a Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest. It was founded in May 2005 by Mircea Dinescu, who used to write a daily editorial called "Vorba lu' Dinescu", and Cristian Tudor Popescu, who was also the editor-in-chief until January 2008. Its initial circulation was about 52,000...
on the issue of Pecican's alleged candidature for government office in Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu
Calin Popescu-Tariceanu
Călin Constantin Anton Popescu-Tăriceanu is a Romanian politician. He was the Prime Minister of Romania between 29 December 2004 and 22 December 2008...
's Justice and Truth
Justice and Truth
The Justice and Truth Alliance was a political alliance comprising two political parties in Romania: the centre-right liberal National Liberal Party and the initially social-democrat Democratic Party , which later switched to center-right ideology.As the political formation with the largest...
cabinet. The article made reference to Pecican's involvement in the textbook scandal (focusing on a reference to "Decebalus
Decebalus
Decebalus or "The Brave" was a king of Dacia and is famous for fighting three wars and negotiating two interregnums of peace without being eliminated against the Roman Empire under two emperors...
' sensual lips", made in the Sigma volume) and identified Pecican's ideas with those of Sabin Gherman, the advocate of a high degree of Transylvanian autonomy (it alleged that Pecican shared Gherman's statement "I'm all fed up with Romania!"). Replying in Cotidianul
Cotidianul
thumb|right|Old logo of Cotidianul newspaper, used in the [[inter-war period]], and in the early 1990sthumb|right|The logo used between 2003 and 2007...
, Pecican dismissed the tone and content of the article as "deliberate manipulation and distortion", while recalling that, during the 1999 polemic, the respective journalist had published what he called "curse words" (sudălmi) aimed at Sigma authors.
Also in 2005, Pecican was among the group of intellectuals who reacted to the controversial views held by the exiled writer Paul Goma
Paul Goma
Paul Goma is a Romanian writer, also known for his activities as a dissident and leading opponent of the communist regime before 1989. Forced into exile by the communist authorities, he became a political refugee and currently resides in France as a stateless person...
on issues involving Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
and World War II Romanian history
Romania during World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania officially adopted a position of neutrality. However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. Fascist political forces such as the Iron...
. Alongside Radu Ioanid, Michael Shafir, Laszlo Alexandru, Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
and others, he accused Goma of Antisemitism and Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
, and concluded that his Săptămîna Roşie volume, reflecting Goma's theory on the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, was spurious.
His polemics include the one against the new treatise on Romanian history, published by 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....
beginning 2002. Coordinated by the historians Dan Berindei and Virgil Cândea, the large collective work was sharply criticized also by Şerban Papacostea, Leon Şimanschi, Ştefan Andreescu and some other historians for alleged ethical problems, but Pecican accused the synthesis for its perceived nationalist and statist
Statism
Statism is a term usually describing a political philosophy, whether of the right or the left, that emphasises the role of the state in politics or supports the use of the state to achieve economic, military or social goals...
views. Later, when one of the authors, Mihai Bărbulescu, reacted against Pecican's arguments, the latter answered and presented new arguments.
Medieval studies and historiography
Ovidiu Pecican's main contribution to medieval studies addresses the first stages of Romanian cultureCulture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
. Trapped between Eastern Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
ethos
Ethos
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of...
and Slavonic language, on one hand, and the Western
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
or Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
influences, on the other, the old Romanian culture of the 11th-17th centuries faced a large variety of challenges, and showed a remarkable diversity. Pecican uncovered the prehistory of various enigmatic texts, reconstituting both lost texts and contexts, as well as the image of a whole written culture expressing the choices made by medieval Romanians in the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and the territory between Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
and the Carpathians
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
.
Troia, Veneţia, Roma (1998) deals with the imagined homelands of the Vlachs
Vlachs
Vlach is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. English variations on the name include: Walla, Wlachs, Wallachs, Vlahs, Olahs or Ulahs...
as they result from old written fragments conserved in later contexts, outlaying some of the main characteristics of Romanian identity at the time of its first making. The cultural origins of the Romanians' negative self-image, both inherited and developed, is the topic of Pecican's Lumea lui Simion Dascălul (1998), where he attempts to define the cultural elite
Elite
Elite refers to an exceptional or privileged group that wields considerable power within its sphere of influence...
s of Early Modern Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
(17th century) and to determine the reasons why Simion Dascălul, one of the leading Romanian chroniclers of the time, is misunderstood. Pecican's Arpadieni, Angevini, români (2001) focuses on the Romanian-origin lesser nobility
Nobility and royalty of the Kingdom of Hungary
This article deals with titles of the nobility and royalty of the Kingdom of Hungary.-Earlier usage :Before the accession of the Habsburgs, the nobility was structured according to the offices held in the administration of the Kingdom...
in the Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
under the Árpáds
Árpád dynasty
The Árpáds or Arpads was the ruling dynasty of the federation of the Hungarian tribes and of the Kingdom of Hungary . The dynasty was named after Grand Prince Árpád who was the head of the tribal federation when the Magyars occupied the Carpathian Basin, circa 895...
and the Angevins
Capetian House of Anjou
The Capetian House of Anjou, also known as the House of Anjou-Sicily and House of Anjou-Naples, was a royal house and cadet branch of the direct House of Capet. Founded by Charles I of Sicily, a son of Louis VIII of France, the Capetian king first ruled the Kingdom of Sicily during the 13th century...
until the end of the 14th century; the volume contradicts both Romanian and Hungarian historiographic tradition, which have traditionally claimed that Romanians were only serfs
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...
under Hungarian rule or that Romanians were brought from the Balkans and into Transylvania only to guard the Hungarian border. The volume raised debates between the author and historian Ioan-Aurel Pop, who claimed that Pecican's views favored the Hungarians. Realităţi imaginate şi ficţiuni adevărate în evul mediu românesc (2002) and Trecutul istoric si omul evului mediu (2002) center on newly-discovered medieval historical writings from Transylvania, Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
and Moldavia. They include annals from the times of Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler
Vlad III the Impaler
Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia , also known by his patronymic Dracula , and posthumously dubbed Vlad the Impaler , was a three-time Voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462, the period of the incipient Ottoman conquest of the Balkans...
, as well as from previous and subsequent periods, which, Pecican indicates, show the vitality of a culture in its development and the dialog with the neighboring cultures.
The debate on regionalism prompted Ovidiu Pecican to write a new book on the regional political forms before and after the founding of the Danubian Principalities
Danubian Principalities
Danubian Principalities was a conventional name given to the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which emerged in the early 14th century. The term was coined in the Habsburg Monarchy after the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in order to designate an area on the lower Danube with a common...
, under the title of Originile istorice ale regionalismului românesc (2003). The historian argues against the essentialist
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
image of the nation-state
Nation-state
The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity...
, and points to a rich originality of political forms, autonomy experiments on the lower Danube and in the Carpathians, foreign influences and original answers.
Some of the other volumes written by Pecican also reflect his questioning of official versions provided for the past. Sânge şi trandafiri. Cultura ero(t)ică in Moldova lui Ştefan cel Mare (2005) attempts to provide the reader with a different image of the national hero Stephen the Great
Stephen III of Moldavia
Stephen III of Moldavia was Prince of Moldavia between 1457 and 1504 and the most prominent representative of the House of Mușat.During his reign, he strengthened Moldavia and maintained its independence against the ambitions of Hungary, Poland, and the...
, Prince of Moldavia (1457–1504), who was sanctified by the Romanian Orthodox Church
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
. The volume focuses on erotic
Eros
Eros , in Greek mythology, was the Greek god of love. His Roman counterpart was Cupid . Some myths make him a primordial god, while in other myths, he is the son of Aphrodite....
and heroic mixture of instinct and behavior at Stephen's court, as it appears to have been reflected in literature and arts of his time. In Între cruciaţi şi tătari (2006), the attempt is to understand the challenges confronting post-1989 Romania
History of Romania since 1989
- 1989 revolution :1989 marked the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. A mid-December protest in Timişoara against the eviction of a Hungarian minister grew into a country-wide protest against the Ceauşescu régime, sweeping the dictator from power....
and its longing for integration into NATO and the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
, by comparing them with the years between the Fourth Crusade
Fourth Crusade
The Fourth Crusade was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire...
(1204) and the Mongol Invasion
Mongol invasion of Europe
The resumption of the Mongol invasion of Europe, during which the Mongols attacked medieval Rus' principalities and the powers of Poland and Hungary, was marked by the Mongol invasion of Rus starting in 21 December 1237...
(1241–1243), when the Western world extended itself down to the Carpathians.
Pecican is also interested in how Eastern European culture developed in contact with the Western culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. Haşdeenii. O odisee a receptării (2003) and B. P. Hasdeu istoric (2004), books developed from his PhD thesis, attempt to explain how, through the efforts of several leading intellectuals during the second part of the 19th century, modern nationalism, together with liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
, formed a nationalist identity. Poarta leilor. Istoriografia tânară din Transilvania (Vol.I: 2005; Vol.II: 2006) is a synthesis concerning the young historiography from Transylvania after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, investigating its attraction to the Western model and its polemic with the nationalist-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...
autochthonous model as developed by the Communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
.
Novels
Pecican's first novel, Eu şi maimuţa mea, written in 1994, speaks about love in a psychiatric hospital in the times of Nicolae CeauşescuNicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
's dictatorship. The modular formula of the narrative contributes to creating a lyric atmosphere, underlying the contrast between the purity of the love story, on one hand, and the dark context, on the other.
Later in the same year, Ovidiu Pecican and his cousin, Alexandru Pecican, completed work on a second novel, Razzar, a mythical and archetypal
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
of the human destiny elaborated within the literary conventions of the science fiction genre. Razzar received the Nemira Publishing House Prize for novels in 1998.
Nine years later, Pecican published a third novel, Imberia, which depicts the daily dilemmas a young intellectual has to face in post-communist Romania during the transition period (including sexual alienation and the trauma of his father's death).
Authored
- Eu şi maimuţa mea, 1990. ISBN 973350145X
- Un român în lagărele sovietice, 1991.
- Europa - o idee în mers, 1997. ISBN 9739826822
- Troia, Veneţia, Roma, 1998
- Lumea lui Simion Dascălul, 1998
- Romania and the European Integration, 1998. ISBN 973996270X
- Arpadieni, Angevini, români. Studii de medievistică central-europeană, 2001. ISBN 9738551250
- Clipuri, 2001
- Darul acestei veri, 2001
- Realităţi imaginate şi ficţiuni adevărate în evul mediu românesc, 2002. ISBN 973351439X
- Trecutul istoric şi omul evului mediu, 2002
- Haşdeenii. O odisee a receptării, 2003. ISBN 9738583349
- Originile istorice ale regionalismului românesc, 2003
- B. P. Hasdeu - istoric, 2004
- Rebel fără pauză, 2004. ISBN 9738687241
- Poarta leilor. Istoriografia tânară din Transilvania, I, 2005. ISBN 9737651111
- Sânge şi trandafiri. Cultura ero(t)ică in Moldova lui Ştefan cel Mare, 2005
- Zilele şi nopţile după-amiezei, 2005
- Imberia, 2006
- Între cruciaţi şi tătari, 2006
- Puncte de atac, 2006
- Poarta leilor. Istoriografia tânără din Transilvania, II, 2006
- Ce istorie scriem, 2006
- Trasee culturale Nord - Sud, 2006. ISBN 978-973-9279-83-3
- Istorii intersectate, 2007
- Troia, Veneţia, Roma, I, 2007
- Poveşti de umbră şi poveşti de soare, 2008
Co-authored
- with Horaţiu Mihaiu: 17 acte cu Piet Mondrian
- with Enikö Magyari-Vincze: Transition in Central and Eastern Europe, 1997
- with Alexandru Pecican: Razzar, 1998
- with Sorin Mitu, Lucia Copoeru, Virgiliu Ţârău, and Liviu Ţîrău: Istoria românilor. Manual pentru clasa a XI-a and Istoria românilor. Manual pentru clasa a XII-a, 1999
- with Mihai Pătraşcu: Acasă înseamnă Europa, 2003
- with Gheorghe Grigurcu and Laszlo Alexandru: Vorbind, 2004
- with Laszlo Alexandru and Ion Solacolu: Spirala. Paul Goma şi problema antisemitismului, 2004
- with Alexandru Pecican: Arta rugii (theater), 2007 (prize from the Cluj branch of the Union of Romanian Writers)