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This article aims to critically discuss the foreign policy of communist Romania, especially towards Western Europe and the socialist bloc. It does this firstly by reviewing Elena Dragomir's recent ample analyses of communist Romania's foreign policy. Its second section consists in a critical problematization of the allegedly "pragmatic" and "adaptative" nature of communist Romania's dealings with its Western and Eastern partners, as established both by Dragomir's recent contributions, as well as the traditional scholarship. The paper ends with some more general methodological and conceptual reflections on the role, weight, and meaning of "pragmatism," "realism," "context" and "ideology" in historiographical reconstructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the dynamics of women's fashion marketing in advertisements and promotional materials related to Western ideas, materials or products, published in interwar Bucharest. The aim is to ascertain the degree and nature of Western women's fashion influence in interwar Romania as a reflection of larger social, political, cultural and economic phenomena at a local, regional, European and global level. The study also offers an overview of the various individuals and entities involved in the textile and fashion industry of interwar Bucharest, with various budgets and means of propagation, and possible ethical and accuracy concerns regarding their messaging. Also discussed are the major trends in interwar Romanian advertising in relation to the West, namely the import of ideas, raw materials and finished goods. The recourse to semiotics and discourse analysis offers a wider understanding of interwar Romania through the lens of fashion as marketed to interwar Bucharesters, covering all aspects relevant to the fashion industry, from conception, production and dissemination to consumption and interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the topic of eugenics ("Erbgesundheitslehre" or "Rassenhygiene") among the Germans in Romania, which was mainly carried by Transylvanian Saxon actors. Based on Tudor Georgescu's monograph The Eugenic Fortress: The Transylvanian Saxon Experiment in Interwar Romania (2016), the topic is analyzed in depth for the 1920s. Using Heinrich Siegmund's Sächsisches Wehr- und Mehrbuch, which was published in 1914 and in a revised form in 1922, as well as other source examples, it is shown that the eugenic discourse was not only a transfer from the "West" to Transylvanian Saxony, but took on a specific form. The central actors of the biopolitical discourse among the Transylvanian Saxons, especially Heinrich Siegmund and later Alfred Csallner, acted in an interpersonal and intertextual network, especially one supported by institutions, that was primarily connected to Germany--the exchange on eugenics was thus a reciprocal process, not an exclusively one-sided "import" from the "West." However, it is further noted that there was relatively little demonstrable exchange with Romanian and Hungarian eugenicists. The implementation of the teachings of eugenics was intended to counter a demographically induced decrease in the population of the German minority. The main target was the younger generation, especially in rural areas--this milieu was seen as having the best chances of resisting the "decline" by means of biopolitical measures. On the one hand, the analyzed discourse reveals the intertwining of traditional and contemporary topoi; on the other hand, a radicalization of biopolitical concepts can be seen parallel to political developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper begins by discussing the loyalty-faith-betrayal triad in relation to the Crown, the empire, and one's one nation, and then it proceeds to analyze the situation of the Banat region in the aftermath of World War I and the attitude of the local German population towards the tumultuous events that took place after November 1918. Among the elements thus highlighted we find the confusion experienced by the region's multiethnic population (Romanians, Germans, Serbs, and Hungarians), the intervention of the Entente forces, as well as the attempts made by the authorities in Budapest to maintain control over Banat--among other things, by trying to set up an administrative unit of Banat sometimes referred to as a "republic," which was never actually proclaimed, was never granted international legal status and never acquired its own institutions or distinct legislation, and was therefore ephemeral and practically non-existent. The authors then examine the options available to the German population in what concerned their chances of still living as Germans in a land they had profoundly shaped in economic and cultural terms for the past 200 years, at a time what the Romanians had clearly opted for a union with Romania, the vacillations of a population that included a modest intellectual class between the old loyalty towards the Hungarian state, the loyalty towards one's own community (amid the renewed hope of a German revival), and also the loyalty expected by the Romanian state (of which they knew little, and the little they knew tended to be mostly negative), without forgetting the decision--otherwise influenced by the Saxon leaders (Rudolf Brandsch)--to accept the union with Romania and to support this decision at the Paris Peace Conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The living language of the press, the stylistic expressiveness of the texts, gives us countless topics of analysis. 33 years after the Romanian Revolution, the local written press in my hometown of Arad is continuously transforming in terms of both form and content. Affected by the market economy and the lack of serious investment, newspapers have had to restructure their staff and style. Right now, in Arad there are only two newspapers, Jurnal arãdean and Glasul Aradului. A similar situation can be found in every major city in Romania. In my paper I will try to present several media trends in the local written press of Arad. My study focuses on the press in my hometown of Arad between 2018 and 2021. If we want to find out how a certain language looks today, a glance at the regional media offers the opportunity for countless analyses and reflections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the Papers of the International Colloquium of Romance Civilizations, Literatures and Languages (Bucharest, 14--27 Sept. 1959)--held under the aegis of the Romanian National Commission for UNESCO and of the Academy of the Popular Republic of Romania--as well as on an unpublished document from the private archive of Alphonse Dupront, the present article describes the visit to communist Romania made by the Sorbonne historian, the former director of the French Institute in Bucharest (1932-1940/1941). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]