A propaganda instrument of the Communist regime, the press was its top priority. As a rule, the press was associated with censorship. The General Press and Print Department was charged with controlling and supervising any piece of information targeting the public at large and was subordinated to the Romanian Communist Party\u2019s Central Committee. Despite strict control, there were exceptions from the party\u2019s general policy, which were not able however to weaken the regime. The Communist regime\u2019s obsession was so big, that one of the exceptions grabbed more attention than necessary, given the measures taken against it.<\/p>\n
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Constantin Dumitru was an editor-in-chief with the student\u2019s magazine \u201cAmfiteatru\u201d published by the Union of the Romanian Communist Students\u2019 Associations. He recalls how the Communists banned an issue of the magazine he coordinated because of certain poems written by poet Ana Blandiana, which were considered an attack against the regime.<\/p>\n
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\u201dIt was December 1984. When reading Ana Blandiana\u2019s poems, I obviously had a certain reflex and I told myself, this cannot be published. But then I wondered, why shouldn\u2019t it? So I okayed them for print. I took the magazine to the Romanian Communist Students\u2019 Association, because it wasn\u2019t us who gave the print approval. After the Press Directorate was dismantled, the approval was given by the central bodies that controlled the publications, namely the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Union and the Council of the Romanian Communist Students\u2019 Association. We, the editors in chief and deputy editors in chief, would approve the publication of each article in part. However, further approval by a higher authority was required, because they didn\u2019t trust us. Another comrade had to check everything. I was the deputy editor in chief, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Union and a member of the Communist Youth Council, because, let\u2019s be honest, one could not be editor in chief unless one was a member of the nomenklatura. Constan\u0163a Buzea, poet Adrian Paunescu\u2019s first wife, was the head of the poetry department. And all she did was to approve the publication. Grigore Arbore was in charge with the respective issue, but I made the decision<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmfiteatru\u201d had a monthly circulation of 7,000 copies, of which 3,000 were distributed in kiosks, 1,000 went to subscribers and another 3,000, paid for by the Union of the Communist Students\u2019 Associations of Romania, were distributed to halls. Constantin Dumitru recalls how the scandal started:<\/p>\n
\u201dI went to the Nifon attic to visit a friend of mine, a fine artist, to brag about it. I just couldn\u2019t help myself. So I took the galley proof with me, went to him and said \u2018Look what I\u2019ve done!\u2019 I had no idea he was working for the Securitate. In a way I reported myself. That\u2019s why they kicked me out. For having bragged I did it. What happened next was easy to predict. I was kicked out from all organisations I was part of. Meetings were held in my absence for this particular purpose. I found about them from the Free Europe radio station. Then, on January 15, 1985 I was fired. I was unemployed for about three months. Then I was hired by the Labour Protection magazine, against my will. My wife, pregnant at the time, was fired as well, to make her pay too for what I had done. After all, we had a contract and I violated it. But I did not complain then and I don\u2019t complain now. I had a big salary, my own driver and secretary, all of these just to show respect to comrade Ceausescu and I still wasn\u2019t showing him enough respect. It was at that time that I stopped looking up to politicians<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n
As officially there could be no unemployment back in those days, Constantin Dumitru was given a job with a magazine specializing in industrial labour safety, but not in a management position. We asked him about the consequences of banning that issue of \u201cAmfiteatru\u201d magazine:<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in the day, photocopying was not for everyone, as it is now, you needed a lot of official passes for it. Copying machines of any kind were closely monitored. One of the greatest shocks I had was when a political police officer told me years later that those poems were copied five or six thousand times in Romania back then. In a manner of speaking, it made up an entire regular issue of the magazine, in fact it was double the issue of the magazine. And if so many Securitate officers were writing so many reports, there is no way Radio Free Europe wouldn\u2019t catch on, and so those poems were broadcast on Radio Free Europe after I got dismissed. Not before that, though. The communists made a mistake, in a way. If they hadn\u2019t made such a big deal out of it, it would have blown over. As that beautiful poem said, \u2018I believe we are a vegetal people, who has ever seen a tree revolt?\u2019 That poem was truly beautiful<\/em>\u201d. <\/p>\n
After 1989, Constantin Dumitru had the opportunity of meeting the poetess that got him fired:<\/p>\n
\u201cAs strange as that may sound, I didn\u2019t know Ana Blandiana. I had published some of her pieces, but didn\u2019t know her. No harm came to her, as opposed to me. The more so as she later published \u2018Shallot the Tomcat\u2019 at Ion Creanga Publishing House, which got more people fired. I was at the US Embassy in 1990, and writer Mircea Dinescu comes to me and said: \u2018Hey, here\u2019s your buddy, Ana Blandiana.\u2019 He couldn\u2019t believe I\u2019d never met her. He went to Ana Blandiana and told her that I was the one that got her published in Amfiteatru. To which Ana Blandiana replied with a line that I truly admire: \u2018That was his job!\u2019 And I realized that she was right, that was my job. I did my job, and so did she, I suspect<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Constantin Dumitru learned a lesson that should be valuable for others too. When you tell the truth, no matter how inconvenient, no price is too small to pay, because the satisfaction is even greater.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The history of one of the most controversial magazines in the communist era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":128134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[35553,42541,42540,42539],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-128133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-ana-blandiana","tag-censorship","tag-romania-in-the-communist-rule","tag-the-amfiteatru-magazine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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