Epurarea corpului didactic al Facultății de Medicină din Cluj în primul deceniu communist / Purging the teaching staff of the Faculty of Medicine in Cluj in the first communist decade

Abstract

The period of purges represented a dark page in the history of Romanian education and did not end on September 1, 1945, according to the provisions of Law no. 584/1945 regarding the purification of public administrations, but was continued in the following years, disguised under other political decisions. The Faculty of Medicine faced three waves of purges followed by periods of calm. After the first law on the purification of public administrations was passed (Law no. 461 published in the Official Gazette on September 19, 1944), many teachers were temporarily purged, others permanently, whereas others “arranged” their pension rights. This article discusses how the repressive state machine carried out the purges of teaching staff from Cluj medical education establishments in the first communist decade, as well as the employment criteria in the fall of 1958. The paper analyses the social origin of the teaching staff. Social origin was an essential criterion of retention or exclusion from the education of students and teaching staff. Archival documents illustrate that in 1950, 42% of Cluj Medical-Pharmaceutical Institute (I.M.F.) teachers were party members. Four years later the rate of the Romanian Labourer Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Român – P.M.R.) teachers members increased to 50%. In 1959, this rate was 50%. This percentage of P.M.R. members in 1959 can be explained by the teaching staff ’s lack of interest in the party policy, and the exclusion of some members from the party. Also, the article tries to decipher the local party bodies’ influence on the decisions made by the I.M.F. in the purifications.