Beyond History: A different view of politics, entrepreneurship and the world
After World War II Romanians were the victims of the Soviet regime that spread its influence on the countries like Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany and so on. Many people perished while trying to escape, only a few succeeded. Maybe the most notorious cases are those of Nadia Comăneci, the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score at the Olympic Games. Her coaches Béla and Márta Károly defected in 1981 during an official tour in the United States. Nadia, one of the most admired and loved person in Romania, followed their lead 1989, just a few weeks before the fall of the Communist regime. She risked everything, including her life, just to be free.
Maria Alexandra Pantea was born in the Romanian rural environment, in the last decade of Ceaușescu´s dictatorship. But even though she was very young, she remembers the empty shelves in the “Alimentara” (the food store) and how Romanians were waiting in great lines just to buy the daily bread or the increasingly scarce meat. Maria talks about the differences between the rural and urban areas in that period with the voice of the historian researcher she is and the heart of someone that saw the suffering of too many people. She can express herself in the most academic language, adding her highly cherished rural accent. She can transmit a beautiful mixture of thought and History from the old manuscripts she loves to research and the modern ideals of a strong woman. She got her PhD studying from 2012 to 2015 about the “The modernization process in the Romanian rural world in the parts of Arad”. Like every good historian she is interested in all aspects of the field from the lessons of Arad´s small rural communities, to the geopolitical tensions that unfortunately crush our world. Of course, she can talk for hours about an issue, revealing the most astonishing insights. Below are some of her answers to my questions.
What is the role of history in the current context?
I once saw a cartoon on the Internet depicting two historians talking. One said to the other, “Those who do not study history risk repeating it. And yet, those who study history look helplessly as those who do not study history repeat it”. It was a joke, of course, but a joke with a very solid kernel of truth, unfortunately. Those in charge, in particular, should study the past more and learn from its lessons. We feel painfully, these days, how a dictator who is not stopped in time can bring a lot of destruction, death and suffering. In the 1930’s, Hitler was allowed to arm himself and annex territories from other states or even entire states before the foot was put down and a world war was needed to rid the world of him. In 2014, the West did not react at all to the annexation of Crimea and the de facto occupation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, although, in the December 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom pledged to respect Ukraine’s independence and integrity. We can find other examples from the past in which people who did not study history made mistakes that cost.
Knowing the local history helps us to find out who we are and to preserve our identity, but at the same time to live in peace with people belonging to other ethnicities and denominations, because history helps us to know and understand others and thus teaches us to be tolerant.
What should society do now?
I believe that history must play a more important role. I think that the works of historians should be better known, and historians should receive more support through various projects to capitalize on local heritage. But at the same time, historians have the obligation to get closer to the great mass of the population, to write works that will be understood by the general public, but also works that will support investors. For example, based on research by well-documented historians, some investors and manufacturers may build their own brand for their products. You can write the history of the products, and this information can make them more attractive.
What have you done in this regard?
From the very beginning, I also worked for the private sector, I made documentaries for the wines produced by a company from Petrovaselo, Timiș County. In 2010, I started researching in libraries and archives in Banat to obtain information on the antiquity of viticulture and I managed to establish important links between the cultivation of wines, wine production and the mentality of the Romanian peasant in the XVII-XIX centuries. After a decade I resumed the theme, but now I researched other aspects related to viticulture in the parts of Arad, the importance of the Arad Vineyard, where since the second half of the eighteenth century wines were produced that were also appreciated by the leaders of Vienna and Budapest, which made important nobles from Austria-Hungary become wine producers in the area. The heritage of the Arad Vineyard, both material and immaterial, can be used today to promote different wines obtained here, and when associated with the “story” and the architectural monuments that are still preserved in the region, it would reach a unity but also a high quality cultural product. See https://brandingistoric.ro/branding/un-brand-aradean-cadarca-de-minis/
Please, tell us about your scientific path.
I have been doing research for 12 years, during which time I entered important archives and libraries in Romania and Serbia where I found interesting data that have been more or less capitalized on in published works. I am the author of three volumes, published by prestigious publishing houses in Cluj Napoca, Bucharest and Timișoara and then co-author of four volumes and the editor of other two volumes, but also the author of numerous articles on modern history published in various volumes and magazines in Romania, Serbia and Hungary. You can find me on the website https://uvvg-ils.academia.edu/MARIAALEXANDRAPANTEA
I was noticed for my contributions researching the change of mentality and the modernization of society in Banat and Crișana in the 19th and early 20th century. I also researched various aspects of the First World War and its aftermath in Central Europe.