About the Author — Victor Manta
A few words about Victor Manta, author of Romania on Stamps and other philatelic websites.
At the EFIRO 2008 World Philatelic Exhibition in Bucharest, Romania, I represented the Philatelic Webmasters Organization (PWO). In the exhibition’s main entrance hall, I presented a display introducing visitors to websites devoted to Romanian philately and Romanian themes on the web.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
— Benjamin Franklin, 1759
I was born at the end of the Second World War in the USSR, in the Ural Mountains. Then I lived in several villages in Bukovina, a former Romanian territory that became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic after the war. In 1956 my parents decided to leave the USSR and moved to communist Romania. I lived in Bucharest until 1983.
It was the reality of life under the dictators Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceaușescu that opened my eyes about what was actually happening around me. After a hard, long and dangerous fight with the Romanian authorities, I was finally permitted to emigrate, and I established myself, with my family, in Switzerland.
Here I got access to as much information as I could process, and I was profoundly influenced by Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, and then by the works of Ayn Rand, Frédéric Bastiat, Arthur Koestler, Ludwig von Mises and Jean-François Revel, to cite just some of them.
These writers and thinkers helped shape my philosophical beliefs about freedom, beyond my own experiences of life under communist regimes.
I studied electronics, physics and computer programming; I hold a master’s degree in physics and a diploma as a computer systems engineer. I worked in Romania and Switzerland as a meteorologist, physicist, electronic engineer, researcher, IT specialist and technical director of a Swiss company. I am now retired.
My reading about communism was facilitated by my knowledge of several languages, including Russian, German and Romanian. I had the privilege to read the works of Ayn Rand and Frédéric Bastiat in their original languages.
For over 45 years I have collected stamps, mainly those related to art. My Art on Stamps website, as well as Romania on Stamps, received international awards, including recognition from the International Philatelic Federation (FIP).
I founded the Philatelic Webmasters Organization (PWO) and served as its president. On behalf of PWO, I organized an event at the EFIRO 2008 World Philatelic Exhibition in Bucharest.
I was a member of Romanian and Swiss philatelic associations. Some stamps from my youth, as well as humor related to stamp collecting, can be found on the website dedicated to Spanish Africa. My other hobbies include reading, listening to music and digital photography. Sometimes I design my own stamps.
Biographical text adapted from the author's original page. Original publication: July 27, 2003; revised December 23, 2023.