Anton Makarenko and the Pitești Phenomenon

Can any connection be justly postulated between re-education according to the views of Anton Makarenko (1888–1939), a Soviet and Ukrainian educational theorist, and the “re-education” of political detainees in the Pitești prison in Romania (1949–1952)? How did Makarenko come to be regarded as the “father of Pitești re-education”, as well as a “criminal Bolshevik educator”? His major work, the famous Pedagogical Poem, was published in 1933 in the uSSR, and the first translations of Anton Makarenko’s writings into Romanian were published in 1949 and 1950, while “re-education” was in full swing, and we do not doubt either the recollections of the survivors, or the fact that Makarenko’s work was recommended for reading in several prisons. The present study compares Makarenko’s work, more precisely the particulars of “re-education” according to him, with the main elements of the truly criminal experiment at Pitești. To ascertain the truth, we follow the biography of the educator, his complex relationship with the Soviet secret services, and the main aspects of the re-education process apud Makarenko. Although there are certain common elements between the two types of “re-education”, the Soviet educator does not bear the blame for the atrocities of Pitești prison.