Horia-Roman Patapievici (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈhori.a ˈroman pataˈpjevit͡ʃʲ]; born March 18, 1957) is a Romanian physicist and essayist who currently serves as the head of the Romanian Cultural Institute. Between 2000 and 2005, he was a member of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives, supporting more openness regarding the files of the Securitate.
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Denis Patapievici, his father, moved from Cernăuţi (now in Ukraine) to Occupied Poland in 1940, after the Soviet Union occupied Bukovina.[1] Horia Roman Patapievici was born in Bucharest and graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Physics in 1981, being specialised in lasers. Between 1986 and 1994, he worked as a scientific researcher at the Academy Institute, starting 1990 being also a university assistant at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest until 1994, when he gave up this job, because he thought professorship was boring and he wanted more independence.[2]
Patapievici was then the director of Center for German studies at the University of Bucharest, between 1994 and 1996, after which he served until 2000 as the programme director of Group for Social Dialogue (GDS). He is also a member of the Writers' Union of Romania, one of the founders of the Research Group for Essentials in European Modernity and an honorary member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
His debut as an essayist was in 1992, in the Contrapunct journal and since then, he had various contributions in the Revista 22, LA&I, Dilema (now Dilema Veche), Orizont, Vatra, Secolul 20, ID. He wrote editorials in 22 (1993–2003), LA&I (2003–2004), Dilema Veche (2004–2005), ID (since 2005) and Evenimentul Zilei (since 2006).[3]
Patapievici was also a TV producer for two shows for TVR Cultural: "Idei în libertate" (2002) and "Înapoi la argument" (2005).
Since 2004, Patapievici is the director of a cultural journal, Idei în dialog (Ideas in dialogue), published by the Academia Caţavencu Trust.[4]
Patapievici married in 1981 and he has one son, born in 1989. In 2005, while driving in the village of Cunta, Alba County, he fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed his car, but he escaped with only minor wounds.[5]
In December 1999, Patapievici was nominated by the National Peasants' Party to be a member of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives,[6] an institution which has the purpose to study the files of the Securitate, the secret service of the communist-era Romania.
Patapievici was initially rejected by the Parliamentary committee, their decision being that although he satisfies the legal criteria, he fails the "morality" criterion,[7] for allegedly "not respecting the Romanians".[8]
Following the demand of the National Peasants' Party, the issue of Patapievici's candidacy was reopened in late January,[9] the Parliamentary committee approving his candidacy, despite a dissent of the Greater Romania Party representative, Dumitru Bălăeţ, who accused Patapievici of lack of patriotism.[10]
The council met some difficuties in obtaining some documents from the SRI archive,[11] and because of this, Patapievici, together with Mircea Dinescu and Andrei Pleşu began boycotting the council in October 2001, while demanding full access in the SRI's archives.[12]
The activity of the council, which investigated the former collaborators of the Securitate, drew criticism from the far-right Greater Romania Party. Daniela Buruiană claimed that Patapievici, Dinescu and Pleşu help foreign secret services which want to discredit the Romanian state institutions,[13] prompting them to announce that they'll sue her.[14]
In September 2002, the council decided to publish a list of the former Securitate officers who were involved in the political police. The Romanian intelligence agency, SRI, initially opposed this,[15] but, following a meeting between the council and SRI, they reached an agreement. Nevertheless, Patapievici argued that the council is blocked because of political reasons.[16]
The following month, Patapievici, together with Pleşu and Dinescu attempted to change the head of the council, Gheorghe Onişoru, who, they argued, sided with the SRI in attempting to open up more of Securitate's files, but they failed in gathering the six needed votes among the eleven council members.[17][18]
The activity of the council continued slowly, publishing the first list of 33 officers of Securitate in October 2003.[19] There were a few attempts of ousting the Patapievici, Pleşu and Dinescu trio, especially from the Social-Democrats and Greater Romania Party,[20] but eventually they gave in to public pressure and canceled them.
Before the 2004 Romanian presidential election, the council decided that Corneliu Vadim Tudor was not a Securitate informer, with a minority dissenting view (Patapievici, Pleşu, Dinescu and Secasiu). Pleşu and Dinescu resigned in protest and Patapievici announced he'd do the same thing after the elections.[21]
In January 2005, Traian Băsescu, the newly-elected President of Romania, named Patapievici as the new head of the Romanian Cultural Institute, replacing a 15-year rule of Augustin Buzura.[22] The way this naming was done, without a competition or a debate brought a bit of controversy, being argued that Buzura, Iliescu's man was replaced with Patapievici, Băsescu's man.[23]
Patapievici began a reform inside the Institute under a new vision, under which, the institute ceases to be a creator of culture, but instead it facilitates cultural exchages.[24] He decided shutting down of the Cultura journal,[25] which he saw as a way of wasting taxpayers' money, because similar private-owned journals have a profit.[24]
An incident arose in July 2008 at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York City, after a Romanian-language publication, New York Magazin attacked the ICR's exhibition named Freedom for Lazy People, accusing it of obscenity and anti-semitism, the latter because of a pink My Little Pony toy with a swastika painted on it.[26][27] The president of the Romanian Senate, Nicolae Văcăroiu asked the Culture Commission of the Senate to investigate this issue.[28] Patapievici defended the exhibition from the accusations of anti-semitism, arguing that the swastika sign is not forbidden in the United States and that the pony is just an art object.[29]
About the same time, the Romanian–German writer Herta Müller published in Frankfurter Rundschau an open letter addressed to Horia-Roman Patapievici, in which she criticized the initiative of ICR Berlin to organize a summer school in collaboration with two people who were formerly Securitate informers: Sorin Antohi and Andrei Corbea-Hoişie.[26]
Patapievici is a supporter of libertarian economic policies, arguing that it's "the most efficient cure against the laziness of thought".[30] In 2006, during a debate over the display of Orthodox Christian icons in classrooms, he defended such display, labeling the people who opposed it as "human rights fanatics".[31]
In Omul recent, Patapievici has a critique of the modern ideologies, including socialism, multiculturalism and post-modernism, arguing that the only way of stripping "evilness" out of the modern society is to return to traditional Christianity.
He always had a good relationship with president Băsescu, whom Patapievici defended when, in 2007, the parliament began an impeachment procedure,[32] but blamed the disagreements between the presidents and prime-ministers on the Romanian Constitution.[33] Critics of Băsescu labeled Patapievici, Gabriel Liiceanu, and Vladimir Tismăneanu as "Băsescu's intellectuals"—a label that the three refuted.[34]
On the day of the Romanian presidential election 2009, Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia published an interview in which Patapievici was asked about a video recording, which had been repeatedly broadcast in Romanian media, allegedly depicting Băsescu hitting a 10-year old boy. Patapievici said that he though Băsescu only pushed the child, and that Băsescu's error was that he did not deny it immediately. Patapievici then compared the incident with the Lewinsky scandal, and added that president Traian Băsescu refused to use in his campaign a tape depicting Mircea Geoană receiving oral sex: "By the way, I know from reliable sources that a tape showing Mircea Geoană receiving oral sex was offered to Băsescu who refused to use it. He's an honest man, trust me."[35]
Patapievici's interview was met with a strong reaction from Mircea Geoană, who called it a "sinister lie",[36] and Victor Ponta, who called the statement "sleazy";[37] Traian Băsescu's spokesman, Sever Voinescu, denied that the campaign team was ever aware of any such video.[38] The spokesman of the Romanian presidency, Valeriu Turcan, also denied that Băsescu or his campaign staff had such a recording.[39]
Patapievici later issued a statement asserting that he "only mentioned the tape to emphasize the difference in attitude between Băsescu and his opponents"; moreover, he cited an e-mail sent in English by the Spanish interviewer, Félix Flores: "Mr. Patapievici did not mentioned [sic] the existence of any tape about Mr. Geoana: he just said that Mr. Basescu was offered such a thing and he rejected it. He was not talking about videos -true or fake or may not exist- or against anybody but about Mr. Basescu's moral attitude."[40]