The Re-education Experiment in Romania A Survivor's Views of the Past, Present, and Future

Very little is known--not only by the Western world but also by the Romanian youth--about the magnitude of the horrors the communist regime in Romania committed over its 40 years of dictatorship. This book is a collection of essays written between 1995 and 2011, chronicling the experiences and presenting the views of a former political prisoner about past and current events in Romanian history. A retired professor of operations research, Boldur-Latescu is one of the few survivors of the 'Pitesti Phenomenon', the experiment launched in the 1950's in communist prisons by the Romanian Securitate, which aimed at re-educating political prisoners through peer exerted torture. This book is a continuation of the analysis that started with "The Communist Genocide in Romania", published in 2005 by Nova Publishers) with a particular emphasis on the examination of the social, political, cultural, and economic evolution of Romania after the 1989 Revolution. Some of the essays go beyond the analysis of the Romanian context by tackling current challenges faced by Western democracies through a unique prism. The link between communism and terrorism, the lack of reference to Christian values in the EU Constitution, and the relevance of Tolstoy's work or the Testament left by Peter the Great to the current situation in world politics, are only a few examples of the author's unique interpretation of current world events.