Recuperarea memoriei interbrigadiștilor și maquisarzilor români: Studiu de caz; Ion Călin

Abstract

This study depicts the biography of a young communist (Ion Călin) who volunteered for the International Brigades in Spain, and thus it features - within the historiography of the topic - the destinies of the antifascist Romanian combatants. Since the vast majority of these combatants was composed of members and supporters of PCdR, the regime of popular democracy honored and glorified them after March 6, 1945, in the same vein as those Communist inlanders who were repressed by the "bourgeois regime". The Romanian Communists who fought in the French Resistance received a similar follow-up. After 1989, the names of the Romanian volunteers who had joined the Spanish Republicans' cause went in the shadow due to their political affiliation to a party utterly compromised in the eye of the public. This study also deals with a broader context, including international politics, the reasons behind such an enthusiasm binding young people to go abroad to a front at over 2.000 km, the social strata they derived from, PCdR's efforts to organize and send combatants across the borders, Ion Călin's clandestine journey to the Iberian peninsula (via Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, or France), as well as aspects and details of the fights of which he was a part of during the war.