Interview with Dennis Deletant, Professor Emeritus of Romanian Studies at the University College London and now the Visiting Ratiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University. Interview conducted in Washington, D.C. on April 4, 2013.
Deletant has written a number of books and articles on Romanian history of the twentieth century, including Hitler's Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and his regime, Romania 1940-1944, published by Palgrave in 2006 and recently translated into Romanian.
Interview Themes
How Deletant came to be interested in Romania in the mid-1960s (2:10)
Deletant's approach to the issue of "backwardness" in Romanian historiography (4:59)
What changed in Romania over the period of Deletant's study of it (10:45)
British views of Romania in the 1960s and '70s (15:25)
On what Deletant wanted his British students to know about Romania (16:09)
On the legacy of British scholars like Hugh Seton-Watson and R.W. Seton-Watson and others (18:24)
The 1980s in Deletant's career and Romanian history (23:36)
Writing about the difficult periods of Romanian history as a labor of love for Deletant (28:23)
Can the model of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) that we associate with Western Germany after WWII be "exported" to East-Central Europe? [on the role of the C.N.S.A.S. - National Council for the Study of the Archives of the Securitate] (33:52)
How Deletant came to get access to select Securitate (Romanian communist secret service) documents in 1993 (41:10)
On Deletant's own Securitate file (53:54)
Deletant's role as a Romanian expert giving interviews with the BBC (1:02:43)
Recent developments in Romania that are cause for concern (1:04:23)
Would there be a place for dissidence in Romania now? (1:07:00)
Was the 1989 revolution in Romania a real revolution? (1:08:40)
Deletant's sense of what scholars should be addressing now when writing about Romanian history and politics (1:10:08)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/33423
What changed in Romania over the period of Deletant's study of it (10:45)
British views of Romania in the 1960s and '70s (15:25)
On what Deletant wanted his British students to know about Romania (16:09)
On the legacy of British scholars like Hugh Seton-Watson and R.W. Seton-Watson and others (18:24)
The 1980s in Deletant's career and Romanian history (23:36)
Writing about the difficult periods of Romanian history as a labor of love for Deletant (28:23)
Can the model of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) that we associate with Western Germany after WWII be "exported" to East-Central Europe? [on the role of the C.N.S.A.S. - National Council for the Study of the Archives of the Securitate] (33:52)
How Deletant came to get access to select Securitate (Romanian communist secret service) documents in 1993 (41:10)
On Deletant's own Securitate file (53:54)
Deletant's role as a Romanian expert giving interviews with the BBC (1:02:43)
Recent developments in Romania that are cause for concern (1:04:23)
Would there be a place for dissidence in Romania now? (1:07:00)
Was the 1989 revolution in Romania a real revolution? (1:08:40)
Deletant's sense of what scholars should be addressing now when writing about Romanian history and politics (1:10:08)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/33423
