Dennis Deletant

Nicolae Margineanu's journey started in 1905 in the village of Obreja in Transylvania and ended in 1980 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He began his life under Austro-Hungarian rule, was witness to the 1918 Union, lived under three kings (Ferdinand, Carol II, and Mihai) and survived all of Romania's dictatorships, from absolute monarchy to the Legionnaires' rebellion, the Antonescian dictatorship and, finally, the years under Communist rule. Margineanu studied psychology at the University of Cluj and attended postgraduate courses in Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, and London. He was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship that enabled him to do research for two years in the United States, at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and Duke. He returned to Romania and became chair of the psychology department of the University of Cluj. In 1948, he was arrested on a charge of "high treason," based on his alleged membership in a resistance movement against Communist rule. He was sentenced to twenty-five years' imprisonment, of which he served sixteen, passing through the jails at Malmaison, Jilava, Pitesti, Aiud, and Gherla. This book, his autobiography, is a shocking testimony to the fate of the intellectual elite of Romania during the Communist dictatorship. It is a unique and invaluable addition to the literature in English on the experience of political prisoners, not only in Communist Romania, but in authoritarian states in general.

"British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War is the first monograph to examine the activity throughout the entire war of SOE and MI6. It was generally believed in Britain's War Office, after Hitler's occupation of Austria in March 1938, that Germany would seek to impose its will on South-East Europe before turning its attention towards Western Europe. Given Romania's geographical position, there was little Britain could offer her. The brutal fact of British-Romanian relations was that Germany was inconveniently in the way: opportunity, proximity of manufacture and the logistics of supply all told in favour of the Third Reich. This held, of course, for military as well as economic matters. In these circumstances the British concluded that their only weapon against German ambitions in countries which fell into Hitler's orbit were military subversive operations and a concomitant attempt to draw Romania out of her alliance with Germany"--From publisher's website.