Dr Edward Kanterian from the Department of Philosophy is the keynote speaker at a conference commemorating the anti-Communist uprising in Temesvar (Timisoara), Romania, entitled ‘25 Years After: What Did We Dream? How Did We Wake Up?’, held today and tomorrow in Timisoara itself.
This uprising was the initial event which eventually led to the fall of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, his execution and the end of Communist rule in Romania, and thus in Eastern Europe as a whole. Some leading historians and intellectuals are participating at this event, including Stéphane Courtois, the editor of the famous Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press, 1997), and Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan, founders of the Sighet Memorial of the Victims of Communism, a former political prison and now an institution unique in Europe, funded by the EU and the Romanian government.
At the conference, Dr Kanterian will be analysing the sources of Communist repression from a philosophical point of view, while other speakers will offer novel historical facts and interpretations of the Communist rule and its end, not only in Romania, but also in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Among the participants are also survivors of Communist prisons.
For details of the conference, please see the webpage here:
www.memorialulrevolutiei.ro/index.php?page=evenimente/2014/conferin-