Foreword

Summary

Nicolae Mărgineanu's autobiographical memoir is a unique and invaluable addition to the literature in English on the experience of political prisoners, not only in Communist Romania but in authoritarian states in general. It graphically uses the author's incarceration (1948–64) to underline the arbitrary abuse of authority in Communist Romania and his courage in maintaining his moral integrity and dignity in the face of iniquity. But its appeal goes beyond his postwar suffering, for it offers a wistful and sensitive account of episodes from the author's youth in Transylvania in the period 1916–18. He was born in the village of Obreja in central Transylvania on June 22, 1905. As the first member of his peasant family and the only one of his generation from his village to attend a Romanian-language school in Hungarian-ruled Transylvania, his achievement underscores the challenges faced by Romanians in the province before the proclamation of its unification with Romania in December 1918. Mărgineanu's subsequent professional success in academia in the interwar years and his distinction in his chosen field of psychology are engagingly described, while his description of the Soviet advance into Transylvania in fall 1944 and its impact upon the local population is a rare such testimony.

To explain the significance of these remarks, some historical background and context is necessary. The province of Transylvania was regarded by both Romanians and Hungarians as an integral part of their ancestral homeland, and in the minds of both peoples their own survival as a nation was linked to the fate of Transylvania. In this regard, the question of historical antecedence in Transylvania was invoked to buttress a political claim to control of the territory. Emphasis was—and is—placed on an uninterrupted Romanian presence in the territory of Romania, primarily in Transylvania. Most Romanian historians claim a continuous Romanian presence in Transylvania from the time of the Roman colonization of Dacia after its conquest by Trajan at the beginning of the second century AD. The Romans introduced into the province settlers from all parts of the Empire who intermarried with the local Dacian population and romanized it, thus producing the Daco-Roman people who were the forebears of the Romanians.