ABSTRACT
The starting point of the institutionalization and centralization of history production in Romania under communism is the year 1948. At the time, the Academy turned into an enormous institution with several sectors/sections covering all the recognized sciences, history included. This initial stage was part and parcel of the so-called “Sovietization” of Romania (also known in the literature as “High Stalinism”). The Academy was to become the pinnacle of a pyramidal system, an omnipotent institution which aimed to “bring science closer to life” (nauka v zhizn’). However, a second look at this institution’s development throughout the communist period reveals a much more complicated picture. Several stages of re-organization generated alternative functionalities and roles for the Academy (implicitly, for its institutes of history-production as well). The Academy was one of the crucial arenas for the ups-and-downs of the continuity-change process under communism. It was among the first spaces for an upswing towards a “national turn.”2 Moreover, it was the hub of historical syntheses and of historians’ aggregation.
