Dr Cornel Micu

August - September 2012
Mail: micucornel(at)yahoo(dot)com

Cornel Micu is from August to September 2012 is a fellow of Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena, with a research topic about the urbanisation in Romania and Bulgaria in comparison, during the last three decades of the communist regimes. Between October 2011 and July 2012 he was a fellow of the New Europe College in Bucharest, with a research project regarding the urbanisation in communist Romania. From October 2010 is he Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Communication and International Relations at "Danubius" University in Galati, Romania. Between 2006 and 2009 was a member of the Research Training Group 1412 Kulturelle Orientierungen und gesellschaftliche Ordnungsstrukturen in Südosteuropa in Jena and since 2010 has a PhD from Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena. He graduated in history and political science from University and Bucharest.

Research project at the Kolleg

During the interwar period and the first two decades of the communist regime the Romanian policy toward agriculture was comparable with the one promoted by the rest of the South-eastern European states: agrarian reforms in 1921 and 1945, collectivization between 1949 and 1962. Yet, this situation changed during the eighth decade of the twentieth century, when Romania chose to reject the agricultural policy promoted by the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA).
Therefore, what I propose is a comparison between the Romanian the Bulgarian agricultural policy during the last two decades of the communist regimes, especially in regarding the development of agro-industrial complexes as a response to the underdevelopment of the countryside. Such a comparison is meaningful for the Eastern European area at the transnational level as both countries represent extreme cases for the policy of rural modernization: Bulgaria, which chose to intensively apply the agricultural policy promoted by the CMEA and Romania which rejected it. Furthermore, the late decision of the Romanian communist regime to speed up the development of agro-industrial complexes beginning with 1986, seems to indicate that such policy was in fact less ideologically motivated that it may seem at a first glance, and can offer interesting insights in the general problem of development in the rural area.

Main areas of research

Social history
Economic history
Social transformation in South Eastern Europe
Development of institutions in South Eastern Europe
Political systems and public policies

Monographs

Micu, Cornel: From Peasants to Farmers? Agrarian Reforms and Modernisation in Twentieth Century Romania. A Case Study: Bordei Verde Commune in Brăila County, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Vienna, 2012.

Articles

Micu, Cornel: Partidul Naţional Liberal în România interbelică între "naţional" şi "liberal" [The National Liberal Party in interwar Romania between "national" and "libera">], in: Analele Universităţii Bucureşti, secţia istorică [The Annals of Bucharest University, the Section of History], Bucureşti, 2003.

Micu, Cornel: Centru şi periferie în procesele electorale Româneşti. Studiu de caz: Judeţul Brăila [Center and Periphery in the Romanian Electoral Processes. Case study: the County of Brăila ], in: Müller, Florin (ed.): Elite Parlamentare şi dinamică electorală în România, 1919 - 1937 [Parliamentarian Elites and Electoral Dynamic in Romania, 1919 - 1937], Bucureşti 2009.

Micu, Cornel: Development of the Rural Problem in Romania: an Interpretative Framework, in: Acta Universitatis Danubius. Relationes Internationales, Vol 1, No 1 (2010).

Micu, Cornel: Social Changes during the Collectivization Period in Romania, in: Müller, Dietmar/ Harre, Angela (eds.): Transforming Rural Societies. Agrarian Property and Agrarianism in East Central Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Jahrbuch für Geschichte des ländlichen Raumes 2010, Wien 2011.

Micu, Cornel: The Legal Background of Agricultural Reforms in the Twentieth Century Romania. An Interpretive Framework, in: Analele Universităţii "Ovidius" Constanţa, Seria Istorie, Vol. 8, 2011.

Reviews

Micu, Cornel: Review to Katherine Verdery, What was Socialism and What Comes Next, in: Murgescu, Bogdan (ed.): Revoluţia Română din Decembrie 1989. Istorie şi memorie [The Romanian Revolution from December 1989. History and Memory], Iaşi 2007.