Inside the Archives of the National University of Music Bucharest
Inside the Archives of the National University of Music Bucharest

Summary/Abstract: This research aims to highlight the effects which the 20th century totalitarianism had on the National University of Music Bucharest. To this effect, we referred to the institution’s Archives Collections as well as to the Human Resources Archives section relating to the years 1939 to 1954, namely, the times of the far-right dictatorial rule before and during the World War II, and of the first years of communist rule in Romania. The two periods are covered unevenly, this quantitative disparity being obviously due to their different duration and, as such, it is the second one, lasting for more than forty years, that is favoured. The impact of the two extremes of the political spectrum on the University had different intensities and consequences. The dictatorial regimes of the first period put pressure on an institution still defended, both from the outside and from the inside, by democratic forces, and didn’t therefore succeed in their goal to modify the very structure of the prestigious establishment. Things were to change, though, with the instauration of “people power” which took pains to radically and systemically change the substance of the Romanian culture, while those targeted had to make a tremendous effort to both resist it and dissimulate their resistance behind a variety of means of expression.

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