More controversial still was his agitprop piece of 1950, "Începutul epopeii" ("The Start of the Epic"). The text praised the regime for designing and ordering work to begin on the Danube-Black Sea Canal, which, in reality, was to prove one of the harshest sites for penal labor, where thousands of political prisoners were to be killed. Historian Adrian Cioroianu cited the reportage, alongside Petru Dumitriu's "Drum fără pulbere" and other writings of the time, as an example of "mobilizing-deferential literature". He summarized the content of such texts as claiming to depict a "final battle, of mythological proportions, between the old and new Romania—offering [...] a clear prognostic in respect to who would win."