Idealists Against Ideologues: Andrei Plesu—A Case Study in the Political History of the Romanian Intelligentsia

|RSVP |

June 10 2009, 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Event Details

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Less well-known than the anti-communist circles in Czechoslovakia and Poland, several important Romanian dissidents during the 1970s and 1980s provided the Romanian public with tokens of hope and models of resistance against Romanian Communist Party leader Nicolae Ceausescu's political tyranny.

Mihail Neamtu will explore the contributions of several philosophers and poets, especially Andrei Plesu who served as both Romania's Minister of Culture and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Along with other friends and colleagues, Andrei Plesu redefined Romanian contemporary culture. His biography includes not only impressive scholarly achievements, but also political episodes that are unusual for Western intellectuals--his 1989 exile at Tescani and his two ministerial assignments. 

An eminent representative of several research fields in the humanities, Andrei Plesu has been a reformist figure in Romania's post-communist transition. The discussion of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe should incorporate the less well-known but equally important stories of the Romanian public intellectuals who employed various strategies of underground resistance to both mock and usurp the power of totalitarian ideology.

History and Public Policy Program

Woodrow Wilson Center
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