The Sociological School of Bucharest between Apogee and Suppression
1939 marks the apogee of the Sociological School of Bucharest, led by Dimitrie Gusti. The School has published a proeminent and innovative Encyclopedia of Romania in four volumes, it has initiated a Museum of the Romanian Village and Gusti has functioned as Commissary General for the Romanian Pavilions at the Universal Expositions in Paris and New York. The Romanian Social Institute has become the nucleus of a federation of 50 institutions under the global name of Romania’s Institute for Social Research. The Royal Foundations, also directed by Gusti, send student teams that combine social research with concrete action in various villages and towns of Romania. Bucharest has been chosen to host the XIVth International Congress of Sociology and, to this effect, the extensive monographs initiated by Gusti in Nerej (1927) and Drăguş (1929, 1932) are in the process of being finalized and published with respectively H. H. Stahl and Traian Herseni as coordinators. A typological series in five volumes entitled Sixty Romanian Villages, coordinated by Anton Golopentia and D. C. Georgescu, and a new monograph of the village of Clopotiva are in the making, as well as a volume assembling all the questionnaires developed by members of the monographic teams along the years and a Bibliography of the Romanian Village. The communications sent to the organizing committee are published in five volumes (with a plan for five additional ones after the Congress). Over one hundred Romanian communications are in preparation. And then, all of a sudden, the war leads to the postponement of the Congress (first for the Spring of 1940 and later on sine die) while Romania’s Institute for Social Research has to return to the initial format of the Romanian Social Institute. After a brief interlude during which D. Gusti, is President of the Romanian Academy for a while and travels to New York to present a project for an International Social Institute first to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and later on to colleague sociologists from Columbia University, the postwar installation of the communist regime will ban sociology from universities and schools and suppress the Romanian Social Institute. Some of the School’s members will be arrested. In 1950, despite organizer’s Corrado Gini insistent and repeated invitations, Gusti will not be allowed to participate in the XIVth International Congress of Sociology finally held in Rome. Derealized, the Congress that had mobilized the efforts and energies of the Bucharest School during two long years does no more have a numerical designation. The last years of D. Gusti are chronicled in A. Golopenţia’s letter exchanges (with Philip Mosely as well as with a former student in Sociology now member of the nomenklatura, Miron Constantinescu) and in prison declarations.
Keywords: Sociological School of Bucharest, Romania’s Instit
1. Cf. „Soc. rom.” IV/1942, nr. 7-12, între p. 670-671. Toate citatele privind structura I.C.S.R. sunt extrase din această schemă şi-i aparţin lui D. Gusti.
2. În schema gustiană e marcat Conjectură.
3. În numele de atunci, Linguistică.
4. Cf. rapoartele asupra activităţii I.C.S.R. în „Soc. rom.” 1-3/1939 (p. 132-136), 4-6/1939 (p. 332-337).
5. În Direcţia Publicaţiilor fuseseră detaşaţi comandanţii de echipă N. Betea, Miron Constantinescu, Dumitru Corbea-Cobzaru, Theodor I. Mărculescu, C. Pavel, Mircea Tiriung şi, ca subdirector, Mihai Pop. Ulterior li se adaugă la serviciul administrativ I. Measnicov, Dumitru Praporgescu, Victor Popescu şi Panait Petrini; la serviciul publicaţiilor, Constantin Lalu, Axente Sever Popovici, Zoe Olimpia Georgescu şi Constanţa Boboc. Sunt
angajaţi temporar în vederea Congresului Fr. Lebrun, Raymond Gicart şi D-ra Teodoridis (pentru traduceri); N. Păunescu, Mircea Eliade, Nina Façon, Anghel Grama, Sofia Sachelarache (pentru corecturi în limbi străine); N. Economu (pentru corecturi în română);
Cleopatra Popescu, Vasile Crinteanu, Aurelia Ţopa, Emilia Turcu, Nicolae Ganea (pentru corecturi statistice) şi Aristiţa Demetriad (pentru lucrări de dactilografiere). Cf. Sanda Golopenţia, Cronologie (în A. Golopenţia, Opere I, Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, p. LXXXIV).
6. Cf. Caius Jiga, Contribuţiuni la bibliografia satului românesc (Făgăraş: Tipografia „Haţiegan”, 1945, p. 1).
7. Cf. Terry N. Clark, Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences, Harvard University Press, 1973, p. 228-229. Menţionăm aici că arhiva lui Corrado Gini a fost depusă la Arhivele Naţionale ale Statului din Roma.
8. Cernea, Mihail, Gheorghe Kepes, Maria Larionescu, şi alţii. (Colegiu de redacţie: H.H. Stahl, M. Cernea, Gh. Kepes) 1970. Două sate: Structuri sociale şi progres tehnic, Bucureşti: Editura Politică.
