new national ethos was an occasion to enhance this direction, and kept on believing in a common ground of the dialogue with power.84 Even by the end of the 70s there were only few lucid minds able to foresee the dead end of the profession. For instance, when the architects were asked to participate in the so-called competition for the new civic centre of Bucharest, only Mircea Alifanti turned down the “presidential invitation”.85 Later, in the middle of the 80s, Ascanio Damian presented his resignation from the Party, under the motivation that “he could not remain in a party which takes arbitrary decisions in architects’ stead”.86 Eventually, Gr. Ionescu’s and Aurelian Triscu’s written protests against the destruction of , villages, sent to the Union of Architects, were hardly known (they were probably destroyed or hidden). At this point, it must be stressed that the Union of Architects, organism that for many years did its best to reinforce the position of the profession, became (under Cezar L˘az˘arescu’s leadership) the obedient tool Ceausescu wanted. , A very peculiar case is that of the last decade of the Arhitectura magazine. On the one hand, with the exception of the official announcement of the start of the works on the civic centre, there was no trace of the designs concerning this area. The magazine published only other buildings, and especially young architects’ more progressive projects and studies, never to be achieved. On the other hand, the theory in the magazine acquired the unusual character of a coffee-parlour or of a literary circle. Yet, under this inoffensive appearance many young architects tenaciously wrote on various post-modern cultural issues, at the same time presenting projects and buildings from abroad. The examples were drawn after the few foreign architectural magazines or books that were circulated underground. For the first time in its life, the magazine was no more the mirror of the architectural practice; it was rather the support of a diffuse hope. It was, to some extent, a sort of “subversion”, not really effective yet there. It is now time to ask what is the relevance of the Dacia 1300 moment for the architectural development, and how could we explain the nostalgic architectural memory embellishing this period. From the economic point of view, Dacia 1300 represented a certain success, the “crowning” of the Romanian communist economy. For the public it meant even more: a Western car produced in Romania was a sign of freedom. As for the architectural landscape through which the new “national” car started its run, the end of the 60s meant the end of an epoch of enthusiasm. Most of the successful architectural works were already built (or designed) at that time, and Ceausescu’s grip on architecture was imminent. Yet, what followed was not predictable - even less , so after his public opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, in 1968. He succeeded in hoaxing the entire world; why would he not succeed to fool a professional community that had just begun to taste the spirit of freedom and the delight of realignment with the Western architectural culture. Dacia 1300 was still running in a landscape full of promises: in fact, it was a landscape of unstable, hollow hopes. This is the trick that memory often plays: different moments overlap each other; the final image
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84Restoration was a continuous activity all over the period, till 1977, when Ceausescu dismantled all the design and building organisms of the , DMI (Department of Historical Monuments). Even after this moment, architects, art historians and historians tried to fight for the cause. For details, see GIURESCU, D. op.cit. 85I still remember the long discussions I had with the professor when I was trying to understand his decision. To my argument that his design could have been better for the city, he answered that “nobody can do a good architecture under these circumstances”. I understood the meaning only after a few years, when the turn of events became clearer.