Andrei Cornea
Andrei Cornea is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest and a leading Romanian essayist.
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2004-08-13
| Romania's most vicious anti-Semitic and ultra-nationalist politician, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, is trying hard to persuade people that he has changed his ways. For most journalists and political pundits in Romania, this self-proclaimed Damascene conversion looks like just another political farce from someone with unrivaled histrionic gifts. ... read |
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2003-12-19
| "We must see to it that the pig--this animal that we, the Romanian nation, cannot afford to live without--is not wiped out." So a socialist deputy in Romania's Parliament exclaimed in panic a few weeks ago. "Within a year, 4.5 million pigs will be killed, but chickens will still enter the European Union before we do," chirped the president of Romania's Pig Breeders Association.... read |
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2002-11-24
| Hundreds of thousands of Romanians cheered President Bush as he welcomed us into NATO, and we meant it. Just like we meant it when we cheered Nicolae Ceausescu - both when he spoke and when he was executed. We are good at cheering. What we are not good at is understanding what we are cheering for. Our new NATO membership sounds great, but we really don't know why. ... read |
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2001-09-07
| Recently, cousins of Romania’s former King Michael asked for ownership of Bran Castle to be returned to them. Bran Castle once belonged to Princess Ileana, King Michael’s aunt. In the 15th century its owner was Vlad the Impaler, better known as Dracula. But this vampire-count’s heirs are not alone in seeking to reclaim family properties confiscated half-a-century ago by the Communists. With these claims, however, the old class war also seems to be rising from the dead. ... read |
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2001-03-06
| BUCHAREST: Perhaps only our greatest playwright, Eugene Ionesco, could have gotten this story right. Ionesco’s genius was to portray a world in which the absurd is triumphant. Imagine the scene: Bucharest, le petit Paris, a city of three million people with wide boulevards and grand bourgeois villas, stands now a city half in ruins. Poverty runs rampant, orphanages overflow with abandoned children, countless packs of wild dogs roam the streets. ... read |
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2000-11-20
| BUCHAREST: “Paris,” Protestant King Henri of Navarre quipped before ascending the throne of Catholic France, “is worth a mass.” Is EU membership worth the life of Romania’s democratic parties, perhaps its infant democracy? That question will be on the lips of many of Romania’s reformers and democrats when going to the polls next week for general and presidential elections. ... read |
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1999-12-20
| BUCHAREST: Across Eastern Europe throughout this year, people have celebrated their peaceful, victorious revolutions against communism. In Romania, however, there was nothing “velvet” about communism's end. Ten years ago this December the center of Bucharest was ravaged by tank and sniper fire, leaving many people dead, as the part of the Romanian army that sided with those who wanted liberation fought street by street with loyalists of Ceausescu's Securitate. ... read |
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1999-10-01
| BUCHAREST: As Chile’s former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, under house arrest outside of London, awaits a final decision on whether he is to be extradited to Spain to face charges of having committed crimes against humanity, Romania has tried and convicted one of its own military leaders for his role in the massacre of civilians in the city of Timisoara ten years ago. The confused reaction to this verdict should, perhaps, give pause to all those who think that putting the past on trial is a straightforward thing. ... read |
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1999-04-22
| BUCHAREST: The decision this week by Romania's government to open its air space to NATO warplanes is the most difficult any of the country's postcommunist governments has taken since the death of Nicolae Ceausescu. For the moment NATO initiated its air strikes against Serbia what can only be called a bout of "Serbomania" has gripped the country. What I mean by "Serbomania" is an extremely unbalanced, biassed, almost neurotically emotional pro-Serbian attitude, one completely lacking in any serious or reasoned critique of NATO' military action. ... read |
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Romania’s Pits of Despair
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Andrei Cornea 
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BUCHAREST: Nearly at the gates of Bucharest, Romania’s miners were turned back by a combination of bribes and threats. Sullenly, bitterly, they are returning to their pits. What they were attempting was no mere strike, however, but amounted to nothing less than a failed coup. The government’s "victory" over them may, perhaps, turn out to be equally important for Romanian reform as Mrs. Thatcher’s facing down of Britain’s radical mining unions in the 1980s. This year started ominously for Romania, with living standards declining and heavy foreign debt repayments - $2.3billion - falling due. This was the background to the miner’s march, armed with clubs and axes, on Bucharest; this and the memories of a previous "visit" to the capital by rampaging miners in the early post-Ceausescu years. Halfway to the capital, the miners inflicted two humiliating defeats on police and security forces, injuring 30 soldiers and taking hundreds prisoner. Some police and army officers deserted and the commander-in-chief ran away from the battlefield dressed as a peasant. Darkly, many local people joined in as miners began to shout for the government’s overthrow. ... read
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2004-08-13
| Romania's most vicious anti-Semitic and ultra-nationalist politician, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, is trying hard to persuade people that he has changed his ways. For most journalists and political pundits in Romania, this self-proclaimed Damascene conversion looks like just another political farce from someone with unrivaled histrionic gifts. ... read |
-
2001-03-06
| BUCHAREST: Perhaps only our greatest playwright, Eugene Ionesco, could have gotten this story right. Ionesco’s genius was to portray a world in which the absurd is triumphant. Imagine the scene: Bucharest, le petit Paris, a city of three million people with wide boulevards and grand bourgeois villas, stands now a city half in ruins. Poverty runs rampant, orphanages overflow with abandoned children, countless packs of wild dogs roam the streets. ... read |
-
2003-12-19
| "We must see to it that the pig--this animal that we, the Romanian nation, cannot afford to live without--is not wiped out." So a socialist deputy in Romania's Parliament exclaimed in panic a few weeks ago. "Within a year, 4.5 million pigs will be killed, but chickens will still enter the European Union before we do," chirped the president of Romania's Pig Breeders Association.... read |
-
2001-09-07
| Recently, cousins of Romania’s former King Michael asked for ownership of Bran Castle to be returned to them. Bran Castle once belonged to Princess Ileana, King Michael’s aunt. In the 15th century its owner was Vlad the Impaler, better known as Dracula. But this vampire-count’s heirs are not alone in seeking to reclaim family properties confiscated half-a-century ago by the Communists. With these claims, however, the old class war also seems to be rising from the dead. ... read |
-
2002-11-24
| Hundreds of thousands of Romanians cheered President Bush as he welcomed us into NATO, and we meant it. Just like we meant it when we cheered Nicolae Ceausescu - both when he spoke and when he was executed. We are good at cheering. What we are not good at is understanding what we are cheering for. Our new NATO membership sounds great, but we really don't know why. ... read |
-
2000-11-20
| BUCHAREST: “Paris,” Protestant King Henri of Navarre quipped before ascending the throne of Catholic France, “is worth a mass.” Is EU membership worth the life of Romania’s democratic parties, perhaps its infant democracy? That question will be on the lips of many of Romania’s reformers and democrats when going to the polls next week for general and presidential elections. ... read |
-
1999-12-20
| BUCHAREST: Across Eastern Europe throughout this year, people have celebrated their peaceful, victorious revolutions against communism. In Romania, however, there was nothing “velvet” about communism's end. Ten years ago this December the center of Bucharest was ravaged by tank and sniper fire, leaving many people dead, as the part of the Romanian army that sided with those who wanted liberation fought street by street with loyalists of Ceausescu's Securitate. ... read |
-
1999-10-01
| BUCHAREST: As Chile’s former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, under house arrest outside of London, awaits a final decision on whether he is to be extradited to Spain to face charges of having committed crimes against humanity, Romania has tried and convicted one of its own military leaders for his role in the massacre of civilians in the city of Timisoara ten years ago. The confused reaction to this verdict should, perhaps, give pause to all those who think that putting the past on trial is a straightforward thing. ... read |
-
1999-01-24
| BUCHAREST: Nearly at the gates of Bucharest, Romania’s miners were turned back by a combination of bribes and threats. Sullenly, bitterly, they are returning to their pits. What they were attempting was no mere strike, however, but amounted to nothing less than a failed coup. The government’s "victory" over them may, perhaps, turn out to be equally important for Romanian reform as Mrs. Thatcher’s facing down of Britain’s radical mining unions in the 1980s. This year started ominously for Romania, with living standards declining and heavy foreign debt repayments - $2.3billion - falling due. This was the background to the miner’s march, armed with clubs and axes, on Bucharest; this and the memories of a previous "visit" to the capital by rampaging miners in the early post-Ceausescu years. Halfway to the capital, the miners inflicted two humiliating defeats on police and security forces, injuring 30 soldiers and taking hundreds prisoner. Some police and army officers deserted and the commander-in-chief ran away from the battlefield dressed as a peasant. Darkly, many local people joined in as miners began to shout for the government’s overthrow. ... read |
