Nicolae Enciu
în vol. Trasee și convergențe culturale și naționale în România Mare. Provincii, identități, destine, coord. Maria Tătar-Dan, Nicolae Enciu, Corina Teodor, Giordano Altarozzi, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Mega, 2026, ISBN: 978-630-372-121-7, pp. 161-178.

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Habent sua fata libelli. A pioneering work in interwar Romanian historiography

Published in 1919 by the “România Nouă” Institute of Graphic Arts in Chișinău, the work by C. Filipescu and Eugeniu N. Giurgea “Basarabia. Consideraţiuni generale, agricole, economice și statistice” (Bessarabia. General, agricultural, economic, and statistical considerations) was banned as early as June-July 1940, then after August 1944, becoming inaccessible not only to the reading public but also to professional historians. Today, only one copy can be found at the National Library of the Republic of Moldova, at the Scientific Library (Institute) “Andrei Lupan” and the Library of the National Archives Agency, General Directorate of the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova. As shown by the analysis carried out in this study, the importance of the work “Bessarabia. General, agricultural, economic, and statistical considerations” lies in the fact that it responded to the imperative and objective need to estimate the economic, demographic, social, and cultural “dowry” with which Bessarabia left the Tsarist Empire in 1917–1918, in order to reintegrate into the Romanian cultural and civilizational space from which it had been abusively torn in 1812. Overcoming all the difficulties of documentation, C. Filipescu and E.N. Giurgea managed to present with the greatest possible accuracy, at that time, the economic, demographic, social, and cultural potential of Bessarabia in the year of the Great Union, producing one of the most original syntheses of Bessarabian history.

Keywords: Bessarabia; transition; integration; interwar period; censorship

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