Early life and fascist militancy Born in
Râmnicu Sărat, the future economist was the son of a
Romanian Land Forces officer, Ion C. Murgescu. Young Murgescu was originally interested in jurisprudence, and entered the law faculty of the University of Bucharest. His beginnings were as a literary critic, with an essay on the literary and artistic life of
Balcic. It was picked up by the magazine
Familia, and deemed "interesting, but insufficient" by chroniclers at
Revista Fundațiilor Regale. Aged nineteen, Murgescu wrote a historical work, about the trial of the
Transylvanian Memorandum signatories. Around that time, he was also a staff writer for the
Oradea literary newspaper,
Noua Gazetă de Vest, where he conducted a questionnaire survey on the state of cultural life in the provinces of
Greater Romania. During the first years of World War II, Murgescu was a supporter of the fascist
Iron Guard and, in his own definition, a theoretician of "
totalitarian" politics. He began a collaboration with the newspaper
Universul, where, as later recounted by his colleague
Ștefan Baciu, he was one of the three staff writers who showed up for work wearing the Guard's green-colored shirts. He was also allegedly involved in brawls at the university. These pitted him against students such as
Dan Amedeo Lăzărescu, who had defaced portraits of the Guard's founding father,
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Starting in August 1940, a full month before the Guard proclaimed its
National Legionary regime, Murgescu published a series of political musings in
Universul, as well as in periodicals such as
Buna Vestire. The general conclusion of the work, partly based on direct quotations from
Mein Kampf, was that totalitarianism, moving beyond authoritarian regimes and their "everyday ephemera", was centered on the promise of a "new man"—whose creation would both rehabilitate humanity and change history "for eternity". As a literary chronicler at
Universul,
Constantin Fântâneru saw in Murgescu "that model of an author who will win people over to a doctrine simply by outlining clearly its ideas." Envisaging the "new man" as "strong, lively, and immaculate", Moreover, he penned warnings against the Guard's enemies: "those who have martyred this People—no mercy for them. They should expect a terrible punishment." He still had contributions as a literary critic, such as a short introduction to
Japanese poetry. Murgescu remained active in the press after the Guard fell from power in the
violent purge of early 1941. With Antonescu as the uncontested dictator, Romania became involved in the
anti-Soviet war as an ally of
Nazi Germany. Murgescu was drafted into the Romanian Land Forces, but continued to write (including an unpublished novel and war diary) and was allowed to pass his examinations at the university. By 1943, his articles in
Vremea and
Revista Fundațiilor Regale were turning toward economics and
economic history, citing
Victor Slăvescu as a model and inspiration. Murgescu's father, Ion, had "strong pro-Nazi sympathies" and was a willing participant in
Antonescu's war crimes. By September 1942, the elder Murgescu was the commandant of
Vapniarka, a concentration camp for
Jewish deportees, ordering them to be fed on
grass pea, which caused an outbreak of
lathyrism and resulted in several deaths and many more crippling infirmities.
Communist turn and România Liberă In a 1987 article, L. Eșanu argues that Murgescu's participation in the
left-wing resistance to Antonescu was already visible in January 1943, the alleged date at which the underground newspaper
România Liberă had been set up. Eșanu includes Murgescu on a list of its founders. As noted by historian
Lucian Boia, he had fully renounced his "juvenile totalitarian illusions" by January 1944, with Romania facing the possibility of
a Soviet invasion. Finding himself in open conflict with his own father, His
Vremea articles, arranged for print by the antifascist editor
George Ivașcu, looked forward to a new era of peace, shaped by
international cooperation. According to Boia, he may have been encouraged to explore the subject by the
Propaganda Ministry, which was sending out signals that some dignitaries were willing to sue for peace. During or immediately after the
August 23 Coup which toppled Antonescu, Murgescu involved himself with left-wing political circles, including the
Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and the
Union of Patriots. The latter's newspaper,
Tribuna Poporului, had him as an economic columnist from its first issue, on October 16. As a display of his loyalty to the new regime, he volunteered for war against the Nazis, fought in
Northern Transylvania, and was badly wounded. He was a personal witness to the recapture of
Târgu Mureș in October 1944, writing a
România Liberă reportage on this subject. His piece on the taking on
Cluj appeared in 1945, as part of a reportage collection curated by architect
George Matei Cantacuzino. From 1944 to 1952, He contributed various articles on national affairs and international relations, praising the 1945 visit to Moscow of the PCR
Minister of Transport Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej as "a momentous start" in
Soviet–Romanian relations. His own far-right engagement in the 1930s was the object of scrutiny by
Dreptatea daily put out by the opposition
National Peasants' Party. In April 1946 its correspondent, George Păun, listed Murgescu,
George Macovescu and
Dumitru Corbea as communist propagandists who had previously served the fascist cause. In late 1945, Murgescu was employed by the communized Propaganda Ministry and the
Siguranța detectives, the latter of whom vetted him as a regime loyalist, noting his friendship with PCR activists such as
Simion Oeriu and
Grigore Preoteasa. Ahead of
Romania's own elections in November, Murgescu played down Peasantist concerns about vote-rigging and intimidation, and declared such claims to be part of a ploy against the leftist parties in government. His statements were polemically reviewed by
Dreptatea, which introduced him as
bine cunoscutul legionar ("that notorious Guardist"). He was also a prominent contributor to the communist literary magazine,
Contemporanul, where he praised the party for its "consolidation of democracy". His first theoretical work appeared in 1947, outlining his belief that the new economic regime would be based on the development of
heavy industry. In August 1948,
Veac Nou magazine, put out by the
Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union, featured his article on Soviet–Romanian economic cooperation, rendering his belief that Soviet backing was crucial for both Romania's industrial development and her consolidation as a "
people's democracy". Around 1950, Murgescu married
Ecaterina Oproiu, a fellow
România Liberă journalist who went on to establish the official film magazine,
Cinema. and a promoter of
socialist feminism. Following the country's change of orientation, Murgescu's father had found himself arrested, and appeared before the
Romanian People's Tribunals in April 1945. However, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment with hard labor on June 1, 1945. Passing through the notorious
Aiud prison, he may have still been alive during the mid-1950s. Murgescu focused entirely on his work in economics. From 1953 to 1956, he was a scientific researcher in the
political economy department of the University of Bucharest. At the time, the ICE also offered employment to the formerly repressed scholar
Gheorghe Zane, who was protected by the PCR eminence
Alexandru Bârlădeanu and who, as Murgescu put it, was thus allowed to continue his interwar research, with input from "dialectical materialism". Murgescu himself was assigned to work on an economic overview of the
1945 land reform, which he published in 1956 at
Editura Academiei. Writing at the time, Marxist philosopher
Ernő Gáll suggested that Murgescu's tract offered "rich and convincing material" about the pauperization of Romania's peasant class before and during World War II. As noted in 2009 by scholars Dorin Dobrincu and Constantin Iordachi, the study, written "during the
Stalinist years", has "limited analytical value", but still stands out as the only land reform monograph in "domestic historical writing" under communism. As noted by historian Cristian Vasile, Murgescu's work was politicized, and presented praise of Gheorghiu-Dej, now the regime leader, voiced in terms similar to his earlier panegyrics for Codreanu. By the end of the 1950s, with a slight relaxation of
communist censorship, he tried to promote a reevaluation of interwar Romanian sociology, and organized at the ICE work-groups that were basing themselves on
Dimitrie Gusti's sociological research teams. These rural expeditions, recounted by Murgescu's articles in
Contemporanul (August 1957), allowed for a discussion of
collectivization, which they presented as a relevant success (particularly so in the model regions of
Constanța and
Hunedoara). Also in
Contemporanul, Murgescu published an essay that sought to
rehabilitate Gusti, but his effort was smothered by the Communist Party in 1959. According to fellow economist
Egon Balas, Murgescu was also able to use political censorship for his own gains, "manufacturing a conflict" with Constantinescu, who was a somewhat dissenting communist, and obtaining his ousting. As a result of this intrigue, Murgescu became sole editor of the ICE academic journal,
Revista Economică, in 1958. He also resumed his position as second director, but was placed under tight surveillance by
Securitate agents in 1959; according to Vasile, he was most likely recruited as a Securitate informant (code name "Barbu Rîmniceanu"), and tasked with reporting on the activities of former fascists such as Bucur Țincu and Ion Veverca. Making occasional returns to the field of Marxist economic history, Murgescu wrote propaganda works, accusing the deposed
Romanian royal family, and in particular
Carol II, of having organized a "plunder" of Romanian assets. In 1960, the anticommunist
Romanian diaspora stood accused by the communists of covering up for fascism. In reply, the Paris-based magazine
La Nation Roumaine published ample revelations about the fascist past of Murgescu,
Mihai Ralea,
Mihu Dragomir, and various other figures of the new regime. Also in 1960, Murgescu and N. N. Constantinescu were editors of a major economic history tract,
Contribuții la istoria capitalului străin în Romînia ("Contributions to the History of Foreign Capital in Romania"). This work, also put out by Editura Academiei, was revisited some 20 years later by historian Vasile Bogza, who noted that, despite some flawed interpretations, it remained one of the "thorough studies" in the field. A University of Bucharest professor, Murgescu was received as a corresponding member of the
Romanian Academy in 1963, earning a doctorate in economics from the
Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies in 1964. He also served the
Institute of South-East European Studies as an academic supervisor for its
Revue des Études Sud-est Européenes.
National communism By 1963, Murgescu was called upon by the regime to inform the world about Romania's economic ideology, which was increasingly
de-satellized, and altogether different from Soviet policies. That year, he denounced the
Comecon's "pseudo-theories" on industrialization, which seemed to offer Romania a subservient economic position within the common market. In 1964, the PCR leadership called upon Murgescu to publish an even more virulent official reply against the Soviets and the Comecon. By advancing a "
Valev Plan", the Soviets had suggested that Romania become an agricultural
hinterland for the more industrialized socialist countries. Murgescu's selection by the regime was an implicit recognition of his scholarly authority; his critique of the Valev proposal also announced a new political stage, of
national communism. His articles called for a reform of the Comecon, and, defying the
Sino-Soviet split, suggested the accession of China. With the inauguration of
Nicolae Ceaușescu as Party Secretary, and later
President of Romania, Murgescu had more opportunities to expand on his economic theories. Serving only as ICE department head from 1965, he continued to edit
Revista Economică to 1968, then
Revista Română de Relații Internaționale (from 1968 to 1970). He also partook in the effort to reassess
Mihail Manoilescu as the interwar doctrinaire of
economic nationalism, and is regarded by economist Dan Popescu as Manoilescu's intellectual heir. From June 1969, he had a Tuesday evening show on
Radio Romania, as part of the series
Tableta de Seară, which also featured, among others, actor
Radu Beligan, mathematician
Grigore Moisil, writer
Marin Sorescu, and literary scholar
Edgar Papu. Murgescu moved from ICE to the Institute for World Economy (IEM), where he worked from 1970 until his death, In 1976, he was elected vice president of the International Marketing Federation. In 1971, the same venue put out Murgescu's tract on
team management within the socialist economy, which he theorized as a function of
democratic centralism. In 1974, he published, at
Editura Meridiane, the French-language introduction ''L'economie socialiste en Roumanie'' ("Romania's Socialist Economy"). It explained the regime's policy of cooperating with the West in industrial development and scientific research, noting that socialist economies had to catch up with capitalism before the latter could experience a
final crisis. According to Canadian economist Jeanne Kirk Laux, Murgescu was trying to reconcile Romania's relations with
multinational corporations with Ceaușescu's "national sovereignty obsession". Indirectly, the book documents the regime's efforts to compensate for the high price of Western technology by proposing various methods of
counter trade (methods which, Kirk Laux notes, Murgescu claimed as original Romanian contributions to the theory of international trade). Murgescu was particularly interested in Romanian economic history in relation to the global economy, and a pioneer of
interdisciplinarity. In 1967, he returned to sociology by contributing to a collective study on "the effects of industrialization on
social mobility". He was again focused on exposing the old monarchic system as a vehicle for economic fraud—his 1970 tract about the royal family's role in
market manipulation was welcomed by Alexandru Puiu in the communist paper
Scînteia Tineretului. As argued by Puiu, the book was one of "irreproachable scientific standing", though also a minute exposé of a robbery "in all its ugliness." In 1972, Murgescu put out a "biography of ideas" for
David Ricardo, analyzed within the larger context of the
Industrial Revolution. During early 1977, the
School of International and Public Affairs in
New York City played host to a delegation of Romanian historians, including Murgescu,
Virgil Cândea,
Constantin C. Giurescu,
Ștefan Pascu, and the President's brother,
Ilie Ceaușescu. Their lectures were picketed by protestors who argued that national communism was a form of Stalinism, and that it directly threatened the community life of
Hungarians in Romania. With Damian Hurezeanu, Murgescu was a guest of the 15th
International Congress of Historical Sciences (Bucharest, 1980), where they presented a new synthesis of land reform policies in interwar Romania. A Romanian Ambassador to the
United Nations in the early 1980s,
Dissidence, death, and legacy Murgescu followed up with several studies of his own. In 1980, he put together Zane's complete works, with his own preface. His effort was praised by Cândea, who recommended that Murgescu expand his contribution into a Zane monograph. The initial volume was welcomed by literary critic
Mihai Ungheanu as a contribution to the "necessary recovery of Romanian values in social and economic thinking"—alongside contributions by
Ilie Bădescu and Ion Ungureanu. The work was instead met with criticism by the literary sociologist
Zigu Ornea, sparking a debate which was to be Murgescu's last. Upon accessing Murgescu's Securitate file in the 2010, historian Narcis Tulbure concluded that the ICE doubled as a Securitate hub, providing
operation cover to spies of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate. He notes that most of these, including Isărescu, were not trained in
econometrics, and that their expertise needs to be treated with "great caution"; Tulbure also proposes that more genuine economic experts could be found among
Manea Mănescu's associates at the Cybernetics Faculty, but also that these had been sidelined, on Ceaușescu's orders, after 1977. Isărescu himself reports that Murgescu spent the last stage of his life as a dissident, in latent conflict with President Ceaușescu. At the IEM, he helped organize debates about politics and economics, introduced Romanian students to the core notions of
supply-side economics, and made hints about the need for profound change. Murgescu's 1982 work on the
Japanese economic miracle was done from personal observations from his extended trip there; overall, he concluded that Japanese companies had fully focused on technological innovation, and had planned ahead with a focus on such changes. It was a Romanian best-seller. Another inner-PCR dissident and former diplomat,
Silviu Brucan, indicated Murgescu as one of his main sources for critical reports which were sent to foreign ambassadors in Romania. Murgescu died a few months before the
anti-communist Revolution of December 1989. He was buried at
Bellu Cemetery on September 2. Obituary pieces included one by Ornea. He quoted Murgescu's letter to him, in which the economist had applauded any constructive debate between "men of culture". Murgescu was survived by his wife, Ecaterina Oproiu, who went on to serve as a Presidential appointee on a visual media regulatory agency, the
National Audiovisual Council, between 1992 and 2000. Murgescu's nephew,
Bogdan Murgescu, also trained in economic history, and achieved notoriety for his analysis of economic backwardness. He credits Costin Murgescu as an early influence on his own work. In 1990, it was renamed the "Costin Murgescu Institute of World Economy", becoming part of the Romanian Academy network. According to Isărescu: "At the Institute for World Economy, professor Costin Murgescu was able to fulfill his calling on many levels. Constantly preoccupied with establishing a Romanian school of economic research, he turned [the IEM] into a veritable creative workshop." As noted in 2010 by sociologist
Zoltán Rostás, Murgescu's "sinuous youth" was "hardly mentioned", "but [he] was nearly sanctified by the elite of economists who are now in their sixties." ==Notes==