The year 2004 unfolds in Romania under the sign of war. Three rounds of elections, local, legislative and presidential, oppose the post-communists (Social Democratic Party, PSD), meanwhile a pro-European and pro-market party to the anticommunists, meanwhile chaired by former postcommunist leaders. Despite the common roots of those involved in these fierce battles, the roles they play remind one the beginning of the political decade, hotly contested in Romania. The government is aggressive to the point of being authoritarian, and its attempts in controlling the media have alienated from it everybody with a democratic mind in the country; the opposition, despite blood transfers from members of the first Petre Roman government (the two leaders of the opposition, Traian Basescu and Teodor Stolojan both served in the first National Salvation Front government) is as fierce an opposition as if radical anticommunist Christian Democrats would still be part of it (they are meanwhile struggling to meet the electoral threshold for the legislative elections after being outside Parliament since 2000). The political debate revolves around corruption more than on substantial ideological issues. The battle is therefore about credibility: whom should the Romanians trust it would govern capturing the state less? The odds are against the current government, as its members proved they are better at it than everybody else so far. But it is not unlikely that in four years time disappointment would ride high again.

In parallel to this battle between the post-communists and the anticommunists, between the more corrupted and the less corrupted, another one is ravaging the intellectual community. It has nothing to do with Europe, poor governance of Romania, the disaster of the higher education system after years of failed or wrong reforms- or the disappointingly insignificant role that the intellectual has come to play in our public life. In short, it is a battle about nothing worthwhile, but still it is fought with intensity worthy of a better cause. As the review article of this issue shows, this is a battle about prestige. Its origins lie in the deeply held belief that prestige is a limited good and a scarce resource, and therefore prestige of another person or group is detrimental to our group and ourselves. This belief typical for the peasant psychology, as anthropologist George Foster once wrote has set against one another large camps of Romanian intellectuals, poorly delimited because of the large number of individuals who cannot make up their mind in whose camp they are until it becomes a little bit clearer who would emerge stronger. The battle’s pretext is the book by Sorin Adam Matei reviewed in this issue, which adds to a few truthful, but trivial observations- that cultural life is structured around groups rather than individuals, that the greatest success is necessarily the greatest promotion success, and so forth- a few badly digested sociological terms such as prestige groups, giving it the shabby appearance of a sociological work. Such an article would have never been published in this journal or any peer-reviewed journal due to serious methodological objections, although clearly the author is entitled to his likes or dislikes. It is an opinion article, and it is not fair to present it as an academic article, although some observations of the author or even his irritation on how Romanian cultural life works are justifiable. However, being strictly apolitical, the book by Mr Matei misses one crucial cause of the underdevelopment of a public sphere in Romania: the unfinished political revolution, with the national communists intellectuals still running a great deal of the cultural and academic affairs in Romania.

When this journal was first issued by transformation from Foreign Policy Review we wrote in its first editorial that what our intellectual life needs most are clear criteria, competent and objective referees and procedurally strict review criteria. Mr. Matei is right on one important point: that we do not have universal criteria in our intellectual life, that interested parties cannot be successful referees, and that procedures are not even formally enacted. Quite to the contrary: the more we go on, the more intellectual groups feel entitled to substitute any claim to objectivity by the struggle to legitimate their own group’s friends and family approach. It is sad that Horia Roman Patapievici, the bright Romanian essayist and anticommunist character was the example chosen by Mr. Matei in his clumsy attempt to clarification. Because Mr. Patapievici, of all people, is not an adept of this type of behavior, and has often proved he is an open and objective mind. Regardless his own writings, which may draw criticism like any other’s, he is among those who could lead a battle to change these rules of the game. Pushing him in the narrow corner of a semi-invented camp is perhaps depriving him of future choices he might have made. It is also enforcing the idea that we hate our best people, and we cannot find a way to warn them when we consider that they have gone astray other than by lynching.

In our public and political life we were also missing referees for this struggle against corruption. Now we have them. The Coalition for the Clean Parliament, proudly chaired by the Romanian Academic Society, and which reunites Romania’s top NGO’s and her best journalists, is documenting the biographies of each and every Parliament candidate and mayor to help voters check on their preferred choices. Such a coalition in the intellectual life, to check on the good will, the objectivity and the competence of those who fight for leadership, and are therefore involved in a battle for power and supremacy, is unthinkable. The miracle may then happen that political life starts its process of clarification before the intellectuals are able to conceive theirs. From the vanguard of ‘return to Europe’ revolution which started in Romania only as late as 1989, the intellectuals risk falling to the rearguard, well behind NGOs, democratic politicians and the millions of Romanian students and laborers who have left the country, not just in search of a better material life, but in search of a society where a public sphere exists with clear criteria, norms and trustees. Only these societies are worth living in, and only the long-term war to turn the Romanian society into such is worth fighting.