Costin Murgescu
[3][6] Around that time, he was also a staff writer for the Oradea literary newspaper, Noua Gazetă de Vest, where he conducted a questionnaire survey on the state of cultural life in the provinces of Greater Romania.[9] Starting in August 1940, a full month before the Guard proclaimed its National Legionary regime, Murgescu published a series of political musings in Universul, as well as in periodicals such as Buna Vestire.[10][11][12] The general conclusion of the work, partly based on direct quotations from Mein Kampf, was that totalitarianism, moving beyond authoritarian regimes and their "everyday ephemera", was centered on the promise of a "new man"—whose creation would both rehabilitate humanity and change history "for eternity"."[11] In the official newspaper Țara, Nicolae Ciuceanu noted: "With this work, Mr Costin Murgescu has won himself a leading position in Romanian journalism, and this accomplishment is all the more important, given that the writer is presently just 24 years of age.By September 1942, the elder Murgescu was the commandant of Vapniarka, a concentration camp for Jewish deportees, ordering them to be fed on grass pea, which caused an outbreak of lathyrism and resulted in several deaths and many more crippling infirmities.[20][21] In a 1987 article, L. Eșanu argues that Murgescu's participation in the left-wing resistance to Antonescu was already visible in January 1943, the alleged date at which the underground newspaper România Liberă had been set up.[25] During or immediately after the August 23 Coup which toppled Antonescu, Murgescu involved himself with left-wing political circles, including the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and the Union of Patriots.[32] In late 1945, Murgescu was employed by the communized Propaganda Ministry and the Siguranța detectives, the latter of whom vetted him as a regime loyalist, noting his friendship with PCR activists such as Simion Oeriu and Grigore Preoteasa.[1] Invited by the Fatherland Front in neighboring Bulgaria, Murgescu witnessed first-hand the Bulgarian legislative elections on October 27, 1946; he was part of a journalists' delegation that also comprised Aurel Baranga, Paul Georgescu, Ștefan Tita, and Gheorghe Zaharia.[33] Ahead of Romania's own elections in November, Murgescu played down Peasantist concerns about vote-rigging and intimidation, and declared such claims to be part of a ploy against the leftist parties in government.[44] At the time, the ICE also offered employment to the formerly repressed scholar Gheorghe Zane, who was protected by the PCR eminence Alexandru Bârlădeanu[45] and who, as Murgescu put it, was thus allowed to continue his interwar research, with input from "dialectical materialism".Writing at the time, Marxist philosopher Ernő Gáll suggested that Murgescu's tract offered "rich and convincing material" about the pauperization of Romania's peasant class before and during World War II.[47] As noted in 2009 by scholars Dorin Dobrincu and Constantin Iordachi, the study, written "during the Stalinist years", has "limited analytical value", but still stands out as the only land reform monograph in "domestic historical writing" under communism.[48] As noted by historian Cristian Vasile, Murgescu's work was politicized, and presented praise of Gheorghiu-Dej, now the regime leader, voiced in terms similar to his earlier panegyrics for Codreanu.[50][51] These rural expeditions, recounted by Murgescu's articles in Contemporanul (August 1957), allowed for a discussion of collectivization, which they presented as a relevant success (particularly so in the model regions of Constanța and Hunedoara).In reply, the Paris-based magazine La Nation Roumaine published ample revelations about the fascist past of Murgescu, Mihai Ralea, Mihu Dragomir, and various other figures of the new regime.[69] From June 1969, he had a Tuesday evening show on Radio Romania, as part of the series Tableta de Seară, which also featured, among others, actor Radu Beligan, mathematician Grigore Moisil, writer Marin Sorescu, and literary scholar Edgar Papu.[2][3] The Romanian position regarding the Comecon was given expression in a 1969 tract România socialistă și cooperarea internațională ("Socialist Romania and International Cooperation"), which came out at Editura Politică with Murgescu, Mircea Malița and Gheorghe Surpat as the three authors.It explained the regime's policy of cooperating with the West in industrial development and scientific research, noting that socialist economies had to catch up with capitalism before the latter could experience a final crisis.[78] He was again focused on exposing the old monarchic system as a vehicle for economic fraud—his 1970 tract about the royal family's role in market manipulation was welcomed by Alexandru Puiu in the communist paper Scînteia Tineretului.[80] During early 1977, the School of International and Public Affairs in New York City played host to a delegation of Romanian historians, including Murgescu, Virgil Cândea, Constantin C. Giurescu, Ștefan Pascu, and the President's brother, Ilie Ceaușescu.He notes that most of these, including Isărescu, were not trained in econometrics, and that their expertise needs to be treated with "great caution"; Tulbure also proposes that more genuine economic experts could be found among Manea Mănescu's associates at the Cybernetics Faculty, but also that these had been sidelined, on Ceaușescu's orders, after 1977.The latter text was carried in a December 1990 issue of Academica journal, with an introduction by Mircea Măciu (in turn criticized in Contemporanul for stretching Murgescu's conclusions, and for using the "wooden language" of official Marxism).[3] As a learning institution, the IEM was the alma mater of economists who rose to political prominence after 1989, among them Eugen Dijmărescu, Mugur Isărescu, Napoleon Pop, and Victor Babiuc.