Abstract

Leftist Critique or Fight for Democracy? Contimporanul Covering the Trial from Dealul Spirii. The general knowledge about the political dimension of the Romanian historical avant-garde places the groups on the left of the political spectrum. However, there is little work on what this means precisely when it comes to the concrete historical situations. It may well be that Contimporanul, the main press organ of the avant-garde supported a political agenda of socialist origin, but what does it mean specifically? In order to give a complete historical-intellectual picture of the Romanian avant-garde, specifically of Contimporanul, one must also account for the first couple of years of its appearance, when it published a large number of political opinion articles, written mainly by the same authors that would become central for the artistic movement as well. We aim to fill this gap in the scholar writings by giving a detailed account of the reactions found in the pages of Contimporanul related to the political events of that time, notably those that involved the socialist movement. The case in point is the Trial of Dealul Spirii and the alleged political assassinations against socialist leaders committed or condoned by the state authorities. The overall image of the political ideology of Contimporanul from those years shows rather a marked democratic attitude towards the events, and a great deal of journalistic objectivity behind the attacks against the liberal establishment.