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Henri H. Stahl (b. 1901, Bucharest – d. 9 September 1991, Bucharest) was one of the most respected sociologists in Romania, a member of the so-called Bucharest School of Sociology, which, in the interwar period, developed under the guidance of Dimitrie Gusti the method of monographic study of villages with the help of a multidisciplinary team. At the same time cultural anthropologist, social historian, and rural sociologist, Henri H. Stahl became a key name in each of these fields. He was the son of the writer and historian Henri Stahl, who is known for his creation of an original system of shorthand and for founding the Romanian schools of graphology and palaeontology. The same family of Alsatian-Swiss origin, an unusual background even for pre-war Bucharest, produced another two very well-known intellectuals of the interwar period: the novelist Henriette Yvonne Stahl and the theoretician of social democracy Şerban Voinea, sister and half-brother respectively of Henri H. Stahl. Having graduated from the Faculty of Law in 1921, Stahl began his collaboration with the founder of Romanian sociology, Dimitrie Gusti, in 1930. As part of the famous monographic teams that roamed the villages of Romania, he made his mark as one of Gusti’s closest and most creative collaborators, working as his assistant in the Department of Sociology, Ethics, and Politics of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Bucharest. As a sociologist, he published numerous studies, especially about rural sociology, but also regarding methods of sociological investigation. In 1943, he moved to the newly founded Department of Rural Sociology, before going on to become head of the Department of General Sociology.

In 1948, with the full installation of the communist regime in Romania, the study of sociology was forbidden because the discipline was considered a “bourgeois subject.” Consequently, Henri H. Stahl was forced out of teaching, despite the fact that he was among the few genuine leftist intellectuals in Romania. As he himself put it, his convictions were purely theoretical and not political; in any case, their origins lay in Marxist tendencies, but not in Bolshevism: “I was convinced that historical materialism was an admirable tool of scientific research, but that was all. I wasn’t even particularly enthusiastic as a socialist. Kautskyist, Kautskyist, but I had read Bernstein too, not to mention many others as well. I was very impressed by Proudhon, by the French communist socialists; I wasn’t at all convinced that Marx was right when he said that we would inevitably arrive at a socialist society. And in any case, I wasn’t at all convinced that a socialist society would look like what the Bolsheviks wanted. I couldn’t go along with that business. […] I was up-to-date with all these debates. And I was convinced that the social democrats were right. Kautsky was for me a great teacher. […] Indeed that was one of the faults that was held against me when I was judged and put out of the Communist Party. As a social democrat, I was passed to the communists, and there I was judged and thrown out” (Rostás 2000, 14).

After being purged from the University, he had to work at the Institute of Urbanism in a marginal professional capacity, as a technical draftsman, until 1956, when he was forced to take early retirement. It was only ten years later, in 1966, after the reintroduction of sociology as a section of the Faculty of Philosophy, that he was called back to teaching. Starting from this period, he contributed to the revival of Romanian sociology, within frameworks well coordinated and controlled by the Romanian Communist Party, together with Miron Constantinescu, himself an important figure both in the political circles of the first three decades of Romanian communism and in academic circles. At the same time he had the opportunity to publish extensively on themes regarding rural sociology and research methods and techniques. Particularly deserving of mention is the volume Amintiri şi gânduri din vechea şcoală a monografiilor sociologice (Memories and thoughts from the old school of sociological monographs) (1981). This was initially rejected for publication in the format of a history of Dimitrie Gusti’s sociological school including a contribution by Traian Herseni, Stahl’s former colleague in the teams carrying out monographic studies of villages, an intellectual of the extreme right between the wars and a former political prisoner under communism. After Herseni’s death, however, Stahl managed to publish his contribution to this history in the form of a memoir under the title mentioned above. In view of this example of differentiated treatment of authors, it may be said that in the Ceaușescu period Henri H. Stahl’s pre-communist leftist convictions contributed to his rehabilitation by the regime. In 1969, he was elected a member of the Academy of Social and Political Sciences, and, from 1974 he was a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy. It was only after the fall of communism that he became a full member of that institution, in 1990. He was also a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

Włodzimierz Staniewski was a student of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University and later at the University of Wroclaw. As a student he joined Krakow's Theatre STU. He worked with Grotowski's Laboratorium theatre in 1971-1975. Before founding his own theatre centre, he had travelled extensively throughout eastern Poland in the 1970s. His ethnographic research trips were aimed at finding a new, natural environment for creativity, and at creating theatre in which the line between pop and elit culture would be mingled. In the 1980s he organised a number of international symposia attended by representatives of the humanities and theatres around the world. He also gave lectures, i.e. at the U.S. universities, in Dallas, New Hampshire, New York, as well as Mexico City and the Theatre Academy in Paris.

András Stark (1948-) is a doctor, psychiatrist, and professor. Together with Ferenc Erős, he led the interview project on the experiences of second-generation Holocaust survivors.

Stark completed his PhD at the medical university. He graduated in 1972. He is an expert on psychoanalysis. In 1979, Stark and Erős decided that they would do interviews with second-generation Holocaust survivors. The idea was prompted primarily by their family histories. Their Jewish origins played a major role in their scientific interests. As a psychiatrist, Stark dealt with the Holocaust and traumas which ensued from the suppression of the memories of these traumas within families.

Judith Kestenberg’s study on the children of people who had suffered persecution was an inspiration for them. They planned similar research. Initially, they held lectures in a professional circle about their conclusions. The first public presentation was organized as part of an event held by the Hungarian Psychiatric Society in 1983. (The title of the presentation was “A társadalmi diszkrimináció hosszantartó hatása a személyiségfejlődésre: A holocaust utáni nemzedékek identitásproblémái” or “The Effect of Social Discrimination on Personality Development: Identity Problems of the Generations after the Holocaust.”) Some of their colleagues were disgusted by this topic, and they contended that it was not “relevant” and would foster the Antisemitism.

Iryna Stasiv-Kalynets (b. 1940-d. 2012 in Lviv)  was a poet, philologist, member of the „sixtiers” and human rights movements in Ukraine. She was arrested in 1972 along with much of her social circle for „anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation.” Stasiv-Kalynets studied Slavic languages and literatures at university in Lviv in 1959-1964, after which she worked as a teacher and librarian in local schools. In 1969, she began teaching Ukrainian language and literature at Lviv Polytechnic Institute and also published a number of children’s books at this time. As a result of Khrushchev’s thaw, she took great interest in developments in neighboring Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which radicalized her. In 1970, she and nine others signed a letter of protest in response to the arrest of historian Valentyn Moroz, after which she was fired from her job. The following year she and her husband declared their public support for the microbiologist Nina Strokata, a human rights activist arrested in 1971.

After her own arrest in 1972, along with many of her other dissident compatriots, nearly 100 of her students were interrogated by the KGB, of which only a handful submitted denunciations against her. She was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment in a forced labor camp and three years of exile in the far reaches of Siberia, in the village of Undino-Poselye, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia (with her husband Ihor Kalynets, who was arrested and sentenced to a similarly long imprisonment). Her sentence was not commuted despite exhortations on her behalf that this verdict was far too harsh a response for writing non-conformist poetry. 

After her release in 1981, she returned to Lviv, where she returned to active life but struggled to find employment. She was finally able to find work after the intervention of the KGB itself, as a cashier and secretary in the regional teachers’ center. In 1987, Stasiv-Kalynets played an active role in reviving cultural and civic life in Lviv. In November, she and her husband Ihor were among the founders of a Ukrainian association for an independent creative intelligentsia. She gave public lectures about Vasyl Stus, worked with independent cultural journals, helped found the Ukrainian branch of “Memorial” as well as the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh), which was part of the republic’s democratic opposition.

Stasiv-Kalynets was also involved in the revival of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC). In 1988-1989, she participated in many rallies and meetings, many of which had not been sanctioned by the authorities. She was detained on several occasions as a result. Her participation in a rally on January 22, 1989, which marked the 80^th anniversary of the 1919 declaration of an independent Western Ukrainian National Republic, resulted in 10 days of custodial arrest. She was also detained in February 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev visited Lviv.

In 1990, Stasiv-Kalynets was elected a deputy to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada. In May 1990, she became head of the Lviv Regional Department of Education, playing an active role in school reform.  In 1992-1994, Stasiv-Kalynets served as chairperson of a parliamentary subcommittee on education. Prior to her death in 2012, she also played an active role in making the Prison on Lonskogo St. a museum-memorial for all the inmates incarcerated there. 

A leading Romanian intellectual of Jewish origin, Nicolae Steinhardt (1912–1989) came to be known mostly for his “literary testament,” an autobiographical volume which focuses on his conversion to the Christian Orthodox faith while imprisoned under communism. Published after 1989 as Jurnalul fericirii (Diary of blissfulness), this book epitomises the idea of “resistance through culture,” a post-1989 definition of the pre-1989 mainstream intellectual reaction to the system of values imposed by the communist regime in Romania (C. Petrescu 2008). Steinhardt was a member of the so-called generation of 1927, which comprised the most prominent intellectuals of the interwar period. Although he held a doctoral degree in legal studies, he nonetheless dedicated himself to cultural activities. As a Jew, he suffered from the wave of anti-Semitic persecutions perpetrated by the extreme right Iron Guard party and the military dictatorship of Marshal Ion Antonescu. Consequently, he lost his job as editor of the state-sponsored Revista Fundațiilor Regale in 1940. Under the communist regime, Steinhardt was a political prisoner for five years following a trial which the communist authorities staged against a group of prominent intellectuals from his generation during the wave of repression unleashed in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. 

It was not because he really belonged to an opposition group that Steinhardt was imprisoned; the accused in this trial were an informal group of highly educated and cosmopolitan intellectuals, who were transformed in the vision of the Securitate into an alleged “hostile group.” Taking his Jewish origin into consideration, the secret police summoned him to testify against his Romanian friends and fellow intellectuals, for the intention of the secret police was to incriminate them as “mystic and legionary [i.e., fascist] intellectuals.” Because he refused, the Securitate put him alongside the others and set up a trial against the entire group, which later came to be known as the Noica–Pillat trial, after the names of two leading personalities in the group. Due to the prestige and number of those involved, this event was the most notorious persecution perpetrated under communism against non-political intellectuals (Tănase 1997). Sentenced to thirteen years of imprisonment, Steinhardt went through the worst prisons in communist Romania, such as Jilava, Aiud, and Gherla.

A secularised Jew, Steinhardt converted to Christianity in 1960 in the Jilava prison, following an ad-hoc religious service performed by several of his inmates who were clergy of various Christian denominations, including Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. It is worth emphasising the striking similarity between Steinhardt’s baptism and the widely known conversion to Catholicism of a Polish intellectual of Jewish origin, Aleksander Wat, while in a Soviet prison (Wat 1988). Steinhardt was released before completing his sentence, with the general amnesty of political prisoners in 1964. He resumed his literary activities as journalist and translator, managed to publish several books, and re-established himself as a reputed intellectual. A turning point in Steinhardt’s life occurred in 1980, when he became an Orthodox monk at the secluded monastery of Rohia in the northern region of Maramureș. Even there, he was continuously kept under surveillance by the Securitate. However, he dedicated himself to the writing of his secret memoirs, which he considered his literary testament. In spite of the constant surveillance, Steinhardt managed to transmit his extraordinary life experience, in particular that of his imprisonment and conversion to Christianity, through the manuscript entitled Jurnalul fericirii (Diary of blissfulness). He stubbornly rewrote the manuscript each time the secret police confiscated the version he was working on. He even managed to send some copies abroad to RFE, which broadcast them back to Romania. His funeral in March 1989, which was attended by some of the most prominent intellectuals in Romania, was also monitored by Securitate employees.

Nicolae Steinhardt was not involved directly in the making of any collection, but he is the author of one featured item from the Confiscated Manuscripts at CNSAS Collection, which seems to be a condensed version of his Jurnalul fericirii. This non-ad-hoc collection founded by the Securitate includes today only a copy, for the original was returned to his heirs in 2002, in accordance with the 2001 decision of the then Collegium of CNSAS to return confiscated materials upon request. Besides this abridged version of his memoirs and that which reached RFE, at least two other versions survived communism to be published. Before his death, Steinhardt was able to pass a version to a friend and to hide another in the monastery. Steinhardt’s memoirs became extremely influential during the time of ideological decay in the late 1980s for three reasons: (1) the author spoke about the solace of religion and proposed a different vision of the world than that based on the atheist communist system of values; (2) some versions of the manuscript, which was intended to be Steinhardt’s intellectual testament, circulated as a kind of samizdat in the intellectual circles close to the author; (3) the message of the memoirs was widely spread among Romanians via RFE. Thus, Jurnalul fericirii became after 1989 not only a bestseller, but also the epitome of what Romanian intellectuals name “resistance through culture” and claim – rightfully or not – to have been the only possible reaction against the Ceaușescu regime, which the powerful and ubiquitous Securitate defended until 1989 (C. Petrescu 2008).