Review

Lucian Boia, Capcanele istoriei. Elita românească între 1930 și 1950 (The traps of
history. The Romanian elite between 1930s and 1950s), Bucharest: Humanitas, 2011, pp. 358
(first edition)
In Anuarul Institutului de Cercetari Socio Umane Gheorghe Sincai, Issue 15 ( 2012):
203-204

Intellectual history in Romania is rarely a discussion on ideas and schools of thought.

Few authors challenge this assertion argues historian Lucian Boia. And he names them: Zigu
Ornea, Florin Țurcanu, Cristian Vasile, Lucian Nastasă, or Maria Mureșan. Other researchers
he uses for their archival and research work but finds their interpretative skills poorly
digestable (this is the case of Ana Selejan). Therefore Boia takes on the challenge to write the
intellectual history his fellow specialists did not and still are not writing. The book Capcanele
istoriei (The traps of history) sets off to discuss the relationship between the Romanian
intellectual elite and political power in the mid part of the last century.
The period he choses is controversial (Romania from the 1930s to the 1950) and so is
the hypothesis. He sets out to discuss the continuities that can be observed between sometimes
opposed political regimes rather than the breaks, how the Romanian elite survived the
numerous regime changes in this short period of the two decades in the history of Romania.
The strategies they employed, their adaptability in what regards their discourse, their
ideological allegiance, their political allegiance were part of explaining and demonstrating the
hypothesis of the prolongations of one regime into the others.
His book is a challenge to the clasic way in which the Romanian historiography with
few, discardable exceptions, deals with the chronology of the 20th century. The focus so far
was on breaks, on the ruptures, ends and beginnings, on the major dates like 1918, 1947,
1964. The author is prepared to take on this interpretation. He does indeed talk about the
continuities between regimes, sometimes peculiar continuities between democratic and
authoritarian, between authoritarian and dictatorial. He measures these continuities in the
number of intellectuals that changed allegiances, switching from one ideology to another,
from supporting one regime and with the regime change becoming supporters of the newly
installed one. However his promises fall short when it comes to really engage what is behind
these continuities, these quick changes of allegiance, these confusing ideological stretches and
sometimes antithetical positionings from left to right and back, from extreme right to
communism. His focus is on the individual choices, on the oddities of one’s changes and
while engaging, the book still reads like a collection of mini stories rather than a coherent
demonstration to a hypothesis so courageously brought forth. The book could have used from
the large spectrum of theoretical discussions on the relationship between intellectuals and
political regimes and especially on this problematic associations between authoritarian,
extreme right or left political regimes and the intellectual. Some of this literature is accessible
to the Romanian readership (thus also to the author) like for instance the impeccable
translation of Mark Lilla’s The reckless mind.
This is probably one of the most disappointing short comings of the book. The author is
focused too much on making this a cross between pop history and serious research, to address
it to a larger audience by inserting savory details about the life and practices of the Romanian
intellectual elite in its bid to power. Thus we learn about Closeti a nickname Radu Rosetti
picked up by being too interesting in the cleanliness of the Romanian Academy Library’s
bathrooms and we are invited to such nitpicking details about private lives and tabloid like
details.
However, navigating through the lives and political destinies of over 120 actors in the
political drama unfolding in the few decades from the Carol dictatorship to the installation of
communism is one enormous research project and the difficulty of settling the hundreds of
narrative lines is impressive and not successfully undertaken until now. Going from left to
right and covering the entire political spectrum is also innovative. Usually one receives one
sided histories of the intellectual elite in the interwar (see Stelian Tănase’s Aunt Varvara's
Clients. Clandestine Stories covering the interwar Romanian left, or the multitude of books
researching the interrelations between the right and the intellectual elite of interwar Romanian).
Innovative is also the research on the crossovers – the intellectuals that survived the first years of the
communist regime and carried on their carriers (at different levels) adapting to the new requirements
of the communist regime.
A commendable effort, the book is breaking some of the historiographical barriers that
Romanian historians have laid so far. In control of the narrative Lucian Boia still needs
theoretical and contextual arguments for his hypotheses. However his book should ease a path
for fellow researchers into a discussion on the adaptability of the Romanian intellectuals to
sometimes opposing political regimes and might involve a discussion on the continuities
between the communist and post-communist period.