User talk:Will Beback/TM-R

Transcendental Meditation affair (Romania)

1982 Romanian Transcendental Meditation purge

Online sources

Offline sources

THE recent reshuffling of the Rumanian Government by President Nicolae Ceausescu recalled a grand tradition of the Byzantine court - moving officials around to avoid responsibility for a truly wretched performance. [..]A piquant and also Byzantine aspect of the shifts is that two of the affected principals, Mr. Verdet and Cornel Burtica, are related to Mr. Ceausescu by marriage. Mr. Verdet is married to a Ceausescu sister and Mr. Burtica to a Ceausescu niece. [..] Mr. Burtica was released from the office of deputy prime minister, according to the party announcement. Both men retained their memberships in the Politburo, as did Emil Bobu, another ousted deputy prime minister. Mr. Verdet further was given a vice presidency on the largely ceremonial Council of State. [..] A peculiarity of the latest Bucharest shuffle is that some of those demoted had links with a transcendental meditation cult with headquarters in the capital. One was the ousted Education Minister, Aneta Spornic, who also lost her membership in the Politburo. She was reassigned, however, to the State Planning Commission where, given Rumania's persistant economic problems, transcendental meditation could come in handy.
- THE RUMANIAN SHUFFLE IN A FEW EASY LESSONS BInder, David. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: May 30, 1982. pg. A.2

This spring Mr. Ceausescu ordered the dismissal, and in some cases the arrest, of Government officials on the ground that they had participated in a plot by a transcendental meditation movement to obtain Rumania's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet bloc's military alliance. One of those ousted was the Education Minister, Aneta Spornic, a friend of the President's wife, Elena, who holds almost as many positions as Mr. Ceausescu himself does. In June, there was another shuffle, with the Prime Minister, Ilie Verdet, five Deputy Prime Ministers and the Minister of Foreign Trade all losing their jobs. Earlier this month, still more officials of the national and Bucharest city governments were dismissed. Finally, it emerged during the summer that a Rumanian agent had been ordered to kill two Rumanian emigre writers in Paris. French security officials say the assassination plot was foiled with the help of the agent, who has since defected, but the Rumanians deny any knowledge of the affair. Western diplomats have been unable to find any clear pattern in these developments, and they are mystified by the role attributed to the transcendental meditation movement, whose goal is personal and global peace. Officially, most of the dismissed officials are accused of corruption and incompetence. The party leadership recently announced that it had received 1.8 million letters from citizens complaining of inefficiency and illegality. But diplomats describe the official explanations, and indeed the dismissals themselves, as part of an attempt to demonstrate, in the words of one Western European envoy, that there is nothing wrong with Ceausescu, nothing wrong with his policies and everything wrong with some of his subordinates.
- IN RUMANIA, 'PLOTS' AND HARD TIMES R.W. APPLE Jr., Special to the New York Times. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Oct 20, 1982. pg. A.3

The persecution against Mr. [Marin ] Sorescu became serious in 1982 when his name came up during a campaign by the Securitate, Mr. Seausescu's secret police, against people who practice transcendental meditation. Mr. Sorescu was not involved in the movement, but after an autograph book of his poetry was found in the possession of one of the Securitate's targets, he too was hounded. He later learned that a Securitate psychologist had diagnosed him as having a tendency towards manic degradation of Socialism. But the malicious gamesmanship did not stop Mr. Sorescu. On the contrary, it gave me energy, he said. In these conditions, writing was a form of breathing.
- Upheaval in the East: Voices Revived; Long Silenced, Rumanian Artists Break Free CELESTINE BOHLEN, Special to The New York Times. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Dec 31, 1989. pg. A.1

At various times targets included the Hungarian minority in Transylvania, human rights campaigners using the Helsinki treaty as a basis for their challenge, opponents of the destructive sistematizare (systematisation) campaign to transform the countryside (and Bucharest), and even the mildest forms of deviance from prescribed artistic and human expression. This last led, for example, to the bizarre crackdown on transcendental meditation in 1982.
- Ceausescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-1989 Ronald H Linden. Europe - Asia Studies. Abingdon: Dec 1997. Vol. 49, Iss. 8; pg. 1551, 2 pgs

Former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was so terrified of even traditional psychologists he feared were a threat to communism that he abolished psychology departments across the country and banned the word from the official dictionary. In 1982, he staged a crackdown against people who were allegedly practicing transcendental meditation, purging the interior ministry and dismissing scores of officials who were allegedly involved, including a deputy interior minister.
- Occult cited in Romanian election; Top contender recalls `negative energy attack' Alison Mutler, George Jahn. Boston Globe. Boston, Mass.: Jan 24, 2010. pg. A.7

The majority of Romanian poets either stayed out of politics in disgust or became dissidents and exiles. One of them, Marin Sorescu, was watched by Securitate and received death threats simply because one of his books had been found at a center for transcendental meditation, an illegal practice in Romania.
- Writers Improvise the Revolution Andrei Codrescu. Review of Contemporary Fiction. Normal: Spring 2010. Vol. 30, Iss. 1; pg. 78, 16 pgs

How to approach this

Hello, and sorry for the long delay. Having by now had my time to mull, I want to suggest the following approach: since the most complete account of the entire incident is in the Cioroianu book I mentioned, I'm thinking of sketching the article with it as a source, and then we add quotes or citations from the others. If you okay me, I'll start something later today or tomorrow. Dahn (talk) 07:35, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No rush. That sounds like a good plan. The only other source that I'm waiting on is Ceauşescu and the Securitate: coercion and dissent in Romania, 1965-1989 by Dennis Deletant, 1995, ISBN 9781563246333. Judging from the Google excerpts, it looks like it devotes three pages or so to the topic.[8] I have it on order from the library but there's no indication of when it will arrive. Will Beback talk 07:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I have prolonged the deadline far beyond the acceptable, but part of that's because I am still unsure about if we should start sketching with my Cioroianu or your Deletant. The latter is a good option because I will adapt myself to the editing style you're most comfortable with, plus it gives me a chance to see what info Cioroianu and Deletant agree/disagree on, and adapt the citations accordingly. (This for instance is the case with some of the quotes above: some sources I read contradict the news according to which the cabinet reshuffling was entirely owed to the TM affair.)

I am also unsure about the diacritics in quotes, if we use those parts of the quotes where diacritics are needed. With Verdet-Verdeţ, Burtica-Burtică etc. should we follow the original or adapt it somehow ("Verde[ţ]" perhaps?). Dahn (talk) 05:15, 23 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've been away from Wikipedia for a few weeks, so pardon my absence. I don't know why the Deletant book that I have on hold hasn't shown up. However most of it is available on Google, so it might not be necessary to wait for it. As for diacriticals, I think we should follow the English-language sources. As for starting, I could try to summarize Deletant. Will Beback talk 05:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]