Mihai Șora

The son of an Orthodox priest,[1] Șora studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest from 1934 to 1938, where he was a student of Mircea Eliade. From 1939 to 1948 he studied in Paris and Grenoble on a fellowship granted by the French government. He joined the French Communist Party during this period.[2]

After travelling back to Romania in 1948, Șora became a member of Romanian Communist Party and was employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the time led by communist leader Ana Pauker. In interviews published after the fall of Communist Party rule in 1989, Șora claimed that he was unofficially "arrested".[3] He was allegedly barred from holding a teaching appointment in communist Romania, but nevertheless became an influential editor for one of the main Romanian publishers, ESPLA.[2] Șora's family emigrated to the West in the 1970s, and he was allowed to visit them in the 1980s. According to Aurelia Crăiuțu, he was allegedly forced to publish under pseudonyms rather than use his own name.[4] However, Șora was still able to publish his third book in 1985.[5]

In March 1989 he joined intellectuals protesting the treatment of dissident poet Mircea Dinescu. After the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu in December 1989, he briefly served as minister of education in Petre Roman's postrevolutionary coalition. He was one of only two cabinet members to endorse the March 1990 Timișoara Proclamation, which unsuccessfully proposed a law to prevent former Securitate members from occupying leading political positions. He was a member of the Group for Social Dialogue, writing for its weekly publication Revista 22, and the Civic Alliance Foundation, which later became the Civic Alliance Party.[4]

He has been married twice: the first time with writer Mariana Klein[6] (1917–2011), in 1939, with whom he has three children,[7] and the second time with Luiza Palanciuc, an essayist and poet, in 2014.[8] He turned 100 in November 2016.[9]