THE SOCIOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF BUCHAREST BETWEEN ITS HEYDAY AND SUPPRESSION

Abstract

1939 marks the culmination of the Bucharest Sociological School (BSS) led by Dimitrie Gusti. In recognition of its achievements, the XIVth International Congress of Sociology has been scheduled to take place in Romania. The foreign papers sent to the organizing committee are published in five volumes (whith five additional ones planned to appear after the Congress). According to documents here published for the first time, over one hundred Romanian papers are in preparation. And then, suddenly, WWII broke out. The Congress had to be postponed. During the war, however, the BSS continues its publishing activities in view of the Congress. Betwen 1946 and 1947 Gusti travels to New York and presents a project for an Social Institute of Nations to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and to colleague sociologists from Columbia University. In 1948 the communist regime will ban sociology from universities and schools and suppress the Romanian Social Institute. Some of the School’s members will be arrested. In 1950, despite organizer’s Corrado Gini insistent and repeated invitations, Gusti will not be allowed to participate in the XIVth International Congress of Sociology finally held in Rome. The last years of the BSS are chronicled in A. Golopenţia’s correspondence and in prison declarations