Authors

Discussion

Nicolae Ceausescu’s socialist regime in Romania took a strong nationalist turn at the beginning of the 1970s, in seek of legitimisation within the masses. The socialist propaganda was to revisit Romanian history and culture and provide strong arguments for nation-wide support for Ceausescu’s regime. Still, Romania was deeply anchored in transnational networks pertaining to the socialist bloc, which were both military and commercial. Economically, the Romanian socialist modernisation program was also financed by Western credits and partnerships, and therefore relations with the West were extremely important.

A national-transnational paradox occurred and one of the areas in which this tension had been unwound was Humanitarian Aid. While some renowned international organisations, such as the Red Cross, had been reorganised and adapted to the regime’s specificity, others’ help offerings were apparently embraced and accepted as such in times of crises. 

The current presentation seeks to answer the following questions: how did the Romanian socialist government manage the relationship with Western humanitarian international organisations and how did it integrate it in its new nationalist turn? How did the Romanian government deal with Western help during situations of crisis, such as the floods in 1975? It does so by relying on documents from the Romanian National Archives and the Archives of the Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives in Romania.