REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

106
Remembrance in Time
It is worth mentioning that many books, previously moved to index, were reedited
after 1965, however with justifying forewords and amputated passages. We
remind thereof writings by N. Iorga, B.P. Hasdeu, Sextil Puşcariu etc, with
eliminated fragments referring to Bessarabia, Bucovina, other books in which critical
references to the Bolsheviks were made etc. The critical editions from the classics,
other modern authors’ opuses appeared with “crochets“ (elimination signs). We are
witnessing the gradual diminution of the control exercised over reading, although we
would have expected, especially after 1971, for the measures to be increasingly
harsh. The consultation becomes permissive, the foreign readers being pre-eminently
restricted.
The last decade of communism resembles the first in many respects, if we refer to
the issuance of lists on “authors whose works would be withdrawn from the circuit
of reading“. This way, in 1983 and 1988, lists with 36, respectively 152 forbidden
authors were elaborated, those mentioned in the first list being also included in the
second.
In such a list “of the authors whose works would be withdrawn from the circuit of
reading”, elaborated on July 28, 1983, were mentioned among others Gabriela Melinescu,
Petru Popescu, Mariana Şora, Ion Caraion, Dumitru łepeneag, Dana CrivăŃ-Lovinescu,
Gelu Ionescu etc.
The transcendental-meditation scandal caused some yoga books to be moved to the
index, and the list from 1988 contains even more books on the bridge game, reckoned
“capitalist“. There was no unitary practice for marking in the files the passage of these
books to the special collection, the operation being made in special times, without the
consistency during the first two decades of communist regimes. It seems the local censors
had not completely gone out of hand, but they also made confusions, leaving forbidden
books to be consulted and moving others to the index, even by the same author, that were
mentioned in no act.
There are, in libraries, authors moved with their entire opus to the index, especially
those present in the list of 1983, but also others with a single book, especially in the list
from 1988. Priority was given to those left for the Occident, prohibited with their entire
work. Sometimes even the bookstores withdrew late the books of the authors having left
Romania. Books existed that were withdrawn from the circuit of reading, because of the
licentious language, prejudicing some national sensibilities, anti-Semitism.
In a country with no food left, especially after 1980, to deal with moving books to the
index seemed a useless luxury. In reality, things were much more complicated. A series
of documents were identified whereby the depuration of the books was asked for, but it is
possible for part of the dispositions to have been verbal. Those who fulfilled such orders
were maximum-trust people, enough scared not to divulge the operation.