page_title: Radu Rosetti
section_title: Memoirs and final years
hierarchical_section_title: Radu Rosetti / Biography / Memoirs and final years
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster for the world premiere of Victor Beldiman's film, Țigăncușa dela iatac ("Gypsy Girl at the Alcove"), at Cinema Clasic, Bucharest.
context_page_description: Radu Rosetti was a Moldavian, later Romanian, politician, historian and novelist, father of General Radu R. Rosetti and a prominent member of the Rosetti family. From beginnings in traditionalist conservatism, he adopted progressive agrarian stances, and experimented with modernizing his estate in Căiuți. A Moldavian regionalist sitting on the left of the Conservative Party, he collaborated more or less formally with the National Liberal opposition during his tenure as prefect of Roman, Brăila, and Bacău. Also serving two terms in the Assembly of Deputies and briefly employed as general director of prisons, Rosetti adopted an anti-elitist and reformist discourse. This pitted him against Conservative chiefs such as Nicolae Filipescu and Titu Maiorescu, but he was protected by Lascăr Catargiu and, later, by Petre P. Carp.
  Rosetti was financially ruined by his poor investments in the grain trade, and, from 1898, withdrew to secondary jobs in the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Although he lacked a formal training, he was a treasured polyglot, and achieved his notoriety as a scholar and social critic.
context_section_description: In December, Radu Jr returned to Romania with General Berthelot and the Entente mission, before spending two years as a military attaché in London. His father then lived to see the creation of Greater Romania, which confirmed the expectations of the pro-Entente side but, thanks to Marghiloman, also included Bessarabia. As Radu Jr notes, he was "thankful" and felt no bitterness toward the PNL, being in this set apart from other Conservatives. Meanwhile his ideas on agrarian issues had a lasting an influence on late Poporanism, which, during the interwar, became the official doctrine of the Peasants' Party and then the National Peasants' Party. According to political economist Ion Veverca, Rosetti, Iorga and Dobrogeanu-Gherea were also exponents of a stage in Romanian economic theory, between classical economics and cultural relativism. Moreover, Rosetti's work on Moldavian village history became a source for Iorgu Iordan's research into regional toponymy.
  Rosetti returned to publishing in 1920–1921, with two selections of "Moldavian tales" (Povești moldovenești). He followed up with a 1922 memoir, Amintiri, which Iorga recognized as a "precious" source. Part of it doubled as oral history, collecting testimonies from Rosetti's elders, including details of Jewish toleration and pogroms, as well as on the looting and raping by marauding Ottomans and the intermingling between Romanians and Roma slaves. In its polemical fragments, it showed glimpses of the author's Russophobia and critique of manorialism, with jibes against landowners such as Costache Conachi.
  As noted by literary historian George Călinescu, overall the series showed the boyar class being "unbelievably obsolete", "dazzled" by "the new liberal society"; Rosetti's style was "always agreeable." Similarly, Ornea concludes that the "sympathetic reconstruction [they offer] can be considered entirely reliable as a document", but also "veritable literature." Critic Eugen Lovinescu praises Rosetti as one of the great and distinctly Moldavian raconteurs, placing him alongside Gheorghe Sion and Dumitru C. Moruzi. The "Tales", fictionalizing Moldavia's more distant past, were noticeably more daring in subject matter and conflict. Praised by Călinescu for their accomplished narratives, they included episodes of double-dealing over land property, vengeful castration, and forceful religious conversion.
  By April 1923, he was again frequenting Viața Românească, at the Poporanists' new club in Bucharest. The modernist Felix Aderca, who also paid a visit, recalls that "lily-white" Rosetti was showing signs of senility, for describing medieval genealogies to a bindery foreman. Also that year, Rosetti indirectly contributed to the history of Romanian cinema, as one of his novellas became the basis for Alfred Halm's The Gypsy Girl at the Alcove. A lost film adapted by Beldiman (who also appears in it as Taverner Ștrul), it is noted for starring both Elvira Popescu and Ion Finteșteanu, as well as for its depiction of sexual abuse by the boyars on their female slaves. Rosetti's final scholarly work was a 1923 piece on medieval Moldavia from Lațcu to Alexander I, followed in 1924 by a third edition of Cu paloșul.
  Rosetti died on February 12, 1926 in Bucharest and was buried in Bellu cemetery, Plot 97. A second and final installment of Amintiri came out in 1927, with the "Moldavian tales" parodied in Viața Românească by Păstorel Teodoreanu. The historian's eldest son, from 1924 Brigadier General Rosetti, continued his scholarly work and, in 1927, joined the Romanian Academy, presiding over the Academy Library in succession to Bianu. Although he detested fascism, he agreed to serve as Education Minister for Ion Antonescu during 1941. According to Boia, Rosetti's 1914 warning about Russia was inaccurate for its day, but "terribly close to facts" when contemplated in relation to the Soviet occupation of 1944–1958. Implicated in the Antonescu trial through the doctrine of collective responsibility, Rosetti Jr was sentenced by the Romanian People's Tribunals. He died in Văcărești prison, an
caption: Poster for the world premiere of Gypsy Girl at the Alcove at Cinema Clasic of Bucharest, December 1923
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