Nestor Ignat Filotti (2 March 1918 – 29 August 2016) was a Romanian journalist, writer and graphic artist. He was best known for his strong support for Marxist-Leninist ideology in culture.
Journalist
Born in Iași in 1918, Ignat graduated from the of Bucharest in 1936 and continued his studies at the University of Bucharest.
Nestor Ignat joined the Romanian Communist Party while it was still illegal. In 1944 he joined the staff of the Scînteia newspaper, where he was appointed editor.
Working with the chief editor and deputy chief editor Silviu Brucan, Nestor Ignat wrote editorial attacking the non-communist political parties and vocally demanding the sentencing to death of their leaders. This part of his activity is often quoted as an example of an expression of the Stalinist ideological excesses and intolerance.
Ignat's journalistic activity focused mainly on the ideological aspects. A staunch supporter of proletcultism, he defended the ideological purity of the socialist society and exposed the "bourgeois" intellectuals. He also published articles in literary magazines where he exposed not only the writers which he considered as being "reactionary" but also communist critics who were insufficiently pugnacious. An example is his study on Lucian Blaga published in Viața Românească in which he wrote:
"Now when justice is under way for sentencing big and small criminals, it is our duty to denounce, to dispel all confusion, to tear off masks however well they might be composed, to through light into the darkness where fascism swarmed. We must eradicate evil, to extirpate it from every corner of the spirit. Those are the reasons for which we opened the "Blaga case", to enable all those who dreamed of an "aeonic" future, that the hour of reckoning has come and that nothing and nobody can escape from the crushing judgement of history."
A new wave of attacks started after student movements of 1956. A typical article of this period is a criticism of Anatol E. Baconsky, editor in chief of the magazine "Steaua" published by the Cluj section of the Writers' Union of Romania. This time Nestor Ignat disagrees with Baconsky's study of Mateiu Caragiale, accusing him of moving away from Marxism and from the "Leninist methods of revaluation of cultural heritage", of ignoring socialist realism and militant literature.
Ignat was one of the most zealous supporters of socialist realism; he was part of the first team of professors at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, one of the most ideologized institutions of higher education in Romania at the time. Together with , Ofelia Manole, Mihail Roller, Ștefan Voicu, Traian Șelmaru, Nicolae Moraru, Paul Niculescu-Mizil, he was part of the group of zealots in the immediate entourage of Leonte Răutu, then head of the Propaganda and Culture Department. Subsequently, Ignat was in charge of the theoretical journal of the Central Committee of Communist Party, Class Struggle. By the nature of the positions he held, he was directly involved in all the important ideological decisions of those times.
He held important functions in various professional organizations. He was chairman of the Union of Journalists and member of the National Council on the Romanian State Radio and Television Networks. He was also dean of the Faculty of Journalism of the University of Bucharest, giving up his position after the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
Though he remained close to the higher hierarchy of the Romanian Communist Party, he became less active after Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej's death in 1965. In 1974, at the 11th Congress of the Communist Party, he was not elected a member of the Central Committee, although he had been proposed by his County Organization. There were only two political figures whose candidacy was rejected by the Congress.
Poet and writer
Ignat started writing poems while he was still in university, one of his first being "Magic" (Magie) published in 1939 in the "Jurnalul literar":Ignat started writing poems while he was still in university, one of his first being "Magic" (Magie) published in 1939 in the "Jurnalul literar":