It is a well-known fact that the communist
\nregime and its dignitaries could not abide by criticism. In Romania
\nduring communism, the press was slave to the state, and the Western press was
\nbent on criticising it severely. The most vocal in this sense was Radio Free
\nEurope. As a result, there have been many cases of intimidation of its
\njournalists by the communist regime, and there have even been claims that the
\nregime in Bucharest was responsible for the death of some of the journalists. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Writer and literary critic Monica Lovinescu
\nmoved to France in the late 1940s. Together with her husband, Virgil Ierunca,
\nshe produced the feature Thesis and Antithesis in Paris, running on Radio Free
\nEurope, which openly criticised the communist regime. In a 1998 recording
\npreserved in the Radio Romania archives, Monica Lovinescu spoke about the
\nsuspicious death of the director of the Romanian service of Radio Free Europe: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The directors of Radio Free Europe included
\nDimitrie Ionescu, Noel Bernard, Mihai Cismarescu, Vlad Georgescu, and in the end
\nNicolae Stroescu. The ideal was Noel Bernard. I think he was peerless as head
\nof the service. He was second to none! He was exceptionally passionate,
\nquick-thinking and with a great capacity for reflection. Noel Bernard was
\ndirector up to his death and was followed by Mihai Cismarescu, a subtle man and
\nexcellent essay writer. Curiously, at some point Radio Free Europe’s directors
\nstarted dying of cancer one after the other. Noel Bernard thought he had been
\npoisoned with radiation, same as Mihai Cismarescu, as well as Vlad Georgescu,
\nwho was a very good historian. Deputy director Preda Bunescu also died a very
\nsuspicious death. He was completely allergic to eggs, he never ate even a bit
\nof egg and even avoided sweets made with egg. They found him dead in his
\napartment after a long weekend, after he failed to show up at work. At the
\nautopsy, they found lots of eggs in his system.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The communist regime used several methods to
\nsilence Monica Lovinescu. The first was slander: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
They started simply by attacks in the press,
\nwhich started very early on in the life of Radio Free Europe, articles in the
\npress started appearing, especially against Virgil. At first, there were only
\nattacks against him in the press in Bucharest written by George Calinescu and
\nZaharia Stancu. Then the most vocal against us were the magazine Glasul Patriei
\nand Eugen Barbu’s Saptamana. For three years in a row the press focused on
\nattacking the group in Paris. The Securitate had a certain technique, a tactic
\nrather, which they thought was very clever. They sent all kinds of… how shall
\nI put it, so-called ‘writers’ or ‘intellectuals’ to Radio Free Europe in Munich
\nto say that the broadcast from Munich would have been great if it hadn’t been
\nfor the two nutcases in Paris, meaning Virgil and I. They tried to destroy the
\nbroadcasts from Paris every which way, using every sort of intrigue. The
\ndirector back then was telling us about them right away. That was the first
\nform that the attacks took.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
As Monica Lovinescu would not quit, the communist
\nregime upped the stakes, and went physical. Here she is telling us about it: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
When they realised it wouldn’t work,
\nespecially after I dedicated almost all our 1977 instalments to the Goma
\nmovement, they started attacking directly, meaning physically. In November
\n1977, one day before Paul Goma arrived in Paris, on November 18, two
\nPalestinians were waiting for me. I found out from Pacepa’s book that they were
\nPalestinians. They asked me to get into my house, that they had a message for
\nme. They seemed suspicious because they addressed me as ‘madame Monica’, and in
\nFrench you don’t use ‘madame’ with the first name. This is how I realised what
\nwas going on, I didn’t let them into the house. When they saw that, they
\nstarted hitting me over the head. I fell down, I passed out, I screamed, and
\nsomeone off the street came to help me. They ran, and the man who helped me ran
\nafter them, but didn’t catch them. I was sprawled on the ground, I was bleeding
\na bit, and I got taken to the hospital. I came to after a few hours, when they
\nwere X-raying me. I stayed in the hospital only five days, because I wanted to
\nbe at Paul Goma’s press conference, when all this was revealed. It was not
\nbecause of Paul Goma, obviously, but that moment was picked so that General
\nPlesita could tell Paul Goma before leaving for France: ‘You will be given a
\nsign, when you arrive in Paris, that the arm of the revolution is long!’. I got
\naway only with a broken nose, my face and arm swollen. After that, in 1983,
\nthey sent an agent who called himself Bistran, I don’t know his real name, they
\nsent him to kill Virgil. That is when the French police stepped in, alerted by
\nthe German police, and this Bistran individual turned himself in.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
The intimidation of the press was used by all
\ntotalitarian regimes to reduce their enemies to silence. When the free press is
\npersecuted, one can be sure that that regime has a big problem with views that
\ncontradict its own. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Radio Free Europe journalist Monica Lovinescu about the attempts of the Romanian communist regime to stifle dissenting voices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":129948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[42714,33737],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-129947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-monica-lovinescu","tag-radio-free-europe"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n