Ideology, nation and modernization - Victor Rizescu

All throughout the decades following after the demise of communism, the reinterpretations of particular topics of Romanian history went together with a search for the re-conceptualization of the historical evolution of the country taken over the long run. Various layers of the process of change could be selected as privileged targets for the deployment of such an effort.

The present book has to be seen as an instance of this collective search. It is premised on the conviction that any meaningful engagement with specific subjects involving the interplay between ideological patterns, social structures and public policies over the modern and contemporary periods of Romanian history can only have as a precondition the forging of an appropriate broad vision regarding the unfolding of basic political ideas from the beginning of modernization on the western model to the installation of the communist regime.

Pursuing in his series of works investigations leading from general to ever more particular areas of research, the author has felt the need of recurrently coming back to the specific accents and conceptualizations laid down here, in order to elaborate further upon them without ever discarding the basic statements advanced. The second edition of the book is the result of this search for clarifying broad meanings behind historical details.

Victor Rizescu