Interviuri la Radio Europa Liberă

I had been working at Radio Free Europe for more than nine years, but I was not part of the Broadcasting department, but of the Research Institute of Free Europe, about which little was known and still is known in the country, although well known, especially at that time, to politicians, journalists, diplomats and, in general, the Western media. (...) I had a surprise in director Nicolae Stroescu's office. Following the refusal of the management of Free Europe to extend the employment contracts of Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca, their broadcast space remained vacant and I was proposed to take it over and make a 50-minute show, East-West Controversies, which would correspond to the "new times". Nicolae Stroescu already had the approval in principle of the American leadership and I only had to prepare two pilot shows, in order to obtain the final confirmation. (...) It was a decision that I have never regretted. The show offered me contact with personalities of the cultural life at a different level than the one at the Research Institute, where the information remained confidential, not being able to cite as a source the name of the person who offered it to us. In the case of the show, on the other hand, we had countless conversations and interviews, broadcast on airwaves. (...) I offer them to the readers with all my heart. They say much more than I could in a word before. Some interviews were published in literary magazines or posted, fragmentarily, on Facebook. Gathered now between the pages of a book, they seem to have a different impact, they seem to enhance each other, penciling in strong strokes, full of substance, an era, called transition, but which seems to continue even today, when everything changes dramatically and we still don't know where we are heading. Crisula Ştefănescu