Dan Ciachir, Around the short cultural revolution
This article evokes the 70s in Romania, a period of moving from the time when the censorship of the state power went easy, allowing some cultural freedoms and an almost normal social and religious life – which the intellectuals call „the thaw” of the communist Romania – to Ceauşescu short „cultural revolution” inspired by one of his trips to Asia, by the ideological actions done by China and its satellites. Coming home after visiting these countries, Ceauşescu imediately called, on july 5 1971, for a working conference of the department of ideology and political and cultural educational activities resulting in a list of stipulations that suggested an appalling return to the 50s. Due to the strong opposition of the intellectuals, mostly writers, our culture and literature were not returned to the 1950, as Ceauşescu was hoping. After the initial ephemeral outrage to the cultural mini revolution of Romania, the West quickly forgot this episode. Ceauşescu attempted cultural revolution is one of his few failures, the result being a long conflict of mutual wearing with the artists and the intellectuals. The population of the country did not experience the cultural mini revolution, nor, even less, sensed it as a begining of the end.

Keywords: communist Romania, the short „cultural revolution”, „Cultural revolution” of China, Ceauşescu

DAN CIACHIR