REVIEWS 585 ‘Germans in the East fulfilled a vital historical function of helping to bring the East into the orbit of West European civilization’ (p. 302). If the twentieth century taught us anything at all, then it is precisely the opposite, namely that the trope of mature Western and German civilization resulted in catastrophe. Department of History James Koranyi Durham University Cipăianu, George. Catholicisme et Communisme en Roumanie, 1946–1955. Une Perspective Diplomatique Française. Editura Fundaţiei pentru Studii Europene, Cluj-Napoca, 2014. 436 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Price unknown. Catholic opposition to Communism has its origins in the second half of the nineteenth century. Successive popes alerted the world to what they saw as the danger represented by the development of the Communist ideology and launched bitter attacks against its spread. Pius IX (Giovanni Maria MastaiFerretti ), pope from 1846 to 1878, denounced Communism as ‘a noxious doctrine radically opposed to natural law: such a doctrine, once adopted, will be the complete ruin of all rights, institutions, property and human society itself’ (Encyclical Qui pluribus, 9 November 1846). For their part Communists, aside from their atheist mentality, were driven by the conviction that the occupants of the Holy See were implacable enemies, and that Catholicism was a redoubtable obstacle to the propaganda and political and social system proposed by Communism. That Communist regimes broadly speaking carried out an anti-religious policy is not beyond dispute, but research shows that their attitude in the period after the Second World War was more hostile towards the Catholic Church since the autocephalous Churches in countries under Soviet control in Central and Eastern Europe presented less of an obstacle to Communization than the Church of Rome and the pope who presented a broader and more prestigious religious profile throughout the world, and therefore one which was more insidious. The anti-Catholic policy of the Communist satellites, inspired by Moscow, served to resolve several problems. The first was the removal of an ideological rival,thesecondtodisruptorsuppressanimportantchannelofcommunication with the West which was outside the control of the regime, and the third was the mobilization of the Orthodox faithful, once the destruction of the Catholic Church of the Eastern rite (Greek Catholics or Uniates) had been accomplished, so as to render credible Soviet initiatives on the international stage, such as ‘the struggle for peace’. SEER, 93, 3, JULY 2015 586 In the decade after the Second World War, the Orthodox Church was used, following the suppression of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine and Romania, as a vehicle for Moscow’s political interests. The Greek Catholic faithful, being deprived of their property, institutions, publications, and their bishops and priests, reluctantly migrated to the Orthodox Church, thus losing their spiritual direction from Rome. At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church was undermined and its bishops goaled. It was thus prevented from maintaining direct relations with the Holy See, being eventually transformed into a renegade Church, independent of Rome, which could be controlled more easily by the Communist regime under orders from Moscow. In Romania the interests of the Orthodox hierarchy coincided with the action of the Communist Party in suppressing the Greek-Catholic Church. This campaign can be seen not only as an attempt to destroy a religious identity, but also to extinguish a spiritual and social milieu which carried within it identification with the West. By imposing the decree of suppression, issued on 1 December 1948, the Communist regime in Romania trampled upon those norms universally recognized as human rights. Not surprisingly the West could not remain indifferent to such abuses. France, which had recently emerged from a dark period in its history, sought after the Second World War, to resume its special relationship with Romania, but in circumstances in which the Communists had come to power on the back of the Red Army, and which placed at risk the French colony in the country. The Communist regime’s orientation eastwards rather than westwards for its political, social and cultural model required the removal of French culture from a society whose middle class was still strongly francophone, and the expulsion of French priests, monks and nuns who, belonging to French orders and congregations, threatened to...