James Morris

Letter

Kings Grew Pale

1 June 2023

Neal Ascherson writes that the ‘last formal slaves in Europe, the forty thousand or so Roma “gypsy slaves” who were still the private property of individuals, were liberated in July 1848 when the revolution reached Moldavia and Wallachia’ (LRB, 1 June). But it was only in Wallachia that a revolutionary government took power and attempted to emancipate enslaved Roma. There were considerable...
From The Blog
25 August 2016

In winter, the Black Sea earns its name. The waters churn and it’s easy to imagine how the Evangelia ran aground in October 1968, leaving its rusting carcass to become a tourist attraction off the Romanian coastline, a few hundred metres from the Costinești shore. The resort was still under development then – the Romanian Communist Party intended it to be a summer camp – and in winter a dull gloom dims the colourful buildings. It’s empty much of the year; a problem that was noted at the time of construction. The first wave of Communist-era resorts were built in the late 1950s and 1960s without concern for expense, but in 1967 Ceaușescu demanded building costs be halved: ‘We must take into account that these hotels are not being built in Bucharest, Brașov, or other parts, but at the seaside, where they remain unused for eight months of the year.’

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