fagaras
Originally uploaded by Janrito Karamazov.
Caught in between the development of new economic centers and the shutting down of gigantic communist era factories, small towns in Romania struggle to find new life. Fagaras, a once commercial and political center of the Feudalist Europe is a clear example of this phenomenon. Fagaras was once the home of Doamna Stanca, wife of Mihai Viteazul, the man responsible for the first unification of the three Romanian Principates into roughly what is now Romania and part of the Republic of Moldova. The ‘cetate’ (fortress) in its center was modified from a previous military base to house the noble family. It later went through a series of modifications, and enlargements (w) to house other prominent families, or serve different purposes. Today the ‘castel’ is turned into a museum that presents the history of the location and a few pieces of important artists of the area.
Outside the ‘castel’ though is a different story. Fagaras faces the closure of the majority of the operations of a Chemical products manufacturer that directly or indirectly employed the majority of the people in the surrounding areas. The chemical industry, as many others in Romania, was part of the centralized plan of the Ceausescu’s communist regime. And as many others, after the so called revolution, it was shut down. The sudden change of regime, and complete lack of planning and leadership, left these functioning industrial monsters paralized.
With no work, the fagaraseni left, looking for a better future. Many left early on to bigger cities close by, Sibiu and Brasov. In recent years, however, the young and hungry for new opportunities, have left to western Europe, mainly Italy and Spain. In a sunny day in August, the streets are flooded with brand new Peugeot, Alfa Romeo, Volkswagen, and a black Mercedes Benz or Audi here and there. Strange in a street where only the ubiquitous Dacia, the local automaker, and a donkey pulling a cart would be seen in the streets. A surprisingly big minority though, has left for America. It seems like a ‘glitch’ on the visa lottery has favored hundreds of fagarasenii.
Although there are some that see these returns as the migrants coming back to show off, the underlying factor is that these people have left to work, and they have been successful. Recently, there has been a strong criticism from the UK and other European Union member states to Romanians tendency to flee their own country. They fear that the Romanians coming to their countries are going to create problems with their own people by taking their jobs and occupying their living spaces. These states, however, neglect the fact that these people are hungry for work, and are not leaving their country willingly. They are forced out due to lack of opportunities. The majority of these people are not going into the UK to joyfully work in the fields, factories, or as janitors and servers. These people are well educated and would gladly stay in their own country if they could make a good living as engineers, lawyers, or managers. Furthermore, when these people get to establish themselves in Italy, Spain, England and even the US, they constantly bring back success stories. They are looking for a better future, and if they cannot find it, they will make one for themselves. It is unacceptable that the large European economies blame these hardworking individuals for their own social problems.
Yet, the fancy cars disappear by the beginning of September, and only the Dacias remain. With an aging population, and an ever-shrinking economy, this once symbol of the Romanian unity, might soon be forgotten.
5 Comments
Excellent post. Thank you for sharing.
we lament outsourcing for the same reason, but how can you fault the people the jobs are going to when they are generally better educated and will do the same job for less. the system is broken. everone complains but nobody seems to want to take acountability to fix it.
great post buddy.
Thank you for the beautiful photograph and the cogent and well-informed remarks.
One should add a further piece of history to the jig-saw puzzle of Fagaras; The “castel” in the picture was turned into one of the most infamous prisons under the communist regime and only now, after the demise of Ceausescu, stories start to trickle down from the families of those pollitical prisoners who died at Fagaras and whose bodies were thrown into unmarked graves.
Numbers of people killed by any regime in the world should not be a statistical means of relativising the bestiality of a dictator or a dictatorship, but if one is to take into consideration the figures recently suggested by the Romanian presidential committee of Investigating the Crimes of Communism there could be as many as 1.5 million of people who died, or simply vanished during the five decades of “people’s dictatorship” (the exact figures will never be known because records were never accurately kept and documents have been destroyed by the secret services. So if one is to use statistics to gage the ferocity of dictators since WWII, perhaps only Pol Pot might have scored a greater number of genocide then the Romania’s communist dictators.
Indeed by comparison with Gheorghiou-Dej, Ceausescu’s predecessor and with ceausescu himself many of their counterparts of Latin American fame might appear to be quite benign. Please do not misread such statement: this should not absolve any criminal of its misdeeds, because even a handful of victims represent an unprescribable crime, yet the crimes perpetrated against its citiozens of all social classes by the communist regime of Romania are little known elsewhere in the world and their attrocity and sheer inhumanity defies imagination.
An account of a survivor of the Fagaras prisons was a medical doctor whose memoirs were published by his grandson in the United States; the book is entitled “My Second University” (found on Amazon) and the review appears on:
http://www.romanianstudies.org/modules/nsections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=54
This is a an accurate description of the state of affairs in provincial post-communist Romania, especially coming from an outside observer.…
Nevertheless, I would like to add some details to the story of the castle pictured above: “FăgăraÅŸ Castle was first mentioned in 1310, built on the former site of a 12th century wooden fortress. Placed in the center of a feudal estate, the fort was rebuilt and enlarged between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, to serve as protection against Tartar and Turkish invasions. The citadel, accessible only through a bridge, served as residence to Iancu de Hunedoara (1455) and Michael the Brave (1599–1600), and included Maria Theresa (1740–1780) as one of many owners. By the end of the eighteenth century, the fortress was turned into a military garrison and in 1948 was seized by the Communists, who misused it as a dreadful political prison. Nearly 5,000 individuals were detained here in the 1950s. Since the early 1960s, the castle has housed the Museum of FăgăraÅŸ County.” An exhibition describing the struggle of the local population against communist rule has recently been added to the museum.
FăgăraÅŸ’s tragic history is directly responsible for its current socioeconomic shortcomings and out migration. An example of that history is in the above mentioned memoir, My Second University.…
Addendum: web site for My Second University http://ddusleag.home.insightbb.com