Facla

[1] The magazine appeared the same year as the Social Democratic Party of Romania (PSDR), and its positions largely reflected those adopted by the emerging socialist movement and its chief ideologue, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea.

Its contributors were mainly moderate socialists who espoused the liberal tradition of Western European socialism, in contrast with the radicals who formed the Romanian Communist Party in 1921.

Facla defended the interests of the working class, campaigning for ideological maturity in the spirit of socialist doctrine, for the raising up of political consciousness through the democratization of public life — goals which, once achieved, would alight “the flame of an unextinguished ideal of culture and of social justice”.

The first issue of 1911 launched an “Appeal to the nation’s democracy” (Apel către democrația țării), announcing that Facla, together with the socialist newspaper România Muncitoare, would open a subscription list for the PSDR's electoral fund.

[1] A supporter of Marxism and internationalism, the magazine political pamphlets using irony to criticize the “retrograde” bourgeois ideology of the governing parties and any school of thought rooted in the past, such as Junimism.

(“Long Live Greater Romania!”)[1] Literature was less present, with special attention focused on debates, polemics and articles on political, social and cultural themes.

The young poet Vinea signed literary columns and reviews, Emil Isac wrote the 1914 articles Ardelenism (“Transylvanianism”) and Dușmanii mei (“My Enemies”), while the same year, Camil Petrescu published a few notes titled Femeile și fetele de azi (“The Women and Girls of Today”).