romania revealed

Herta Muller on her Securitate file.

Suddenly I found my file, too, under the name of Cristina. Three volumes, 914 pages. It was allegedly opened on 8 March, 1983 – although it contains documents from earlier years. The reason given for opening the file: "Tendentious distortions of realities in the country, particularly in the village environment" in my book "Nadirs". Textual analysis by spies corroborate this. And the fact that I belong to a "circle of German-language poets", which is "renowned for its hostile works".

The file is a botched job by the SRI on behalf of the old Securitate. For ten years they had all the time in the world to "work" on it. You could not call this cooking the books, the file has simply been emptied of all substance.

(Excerpted from a great interview at sign and sight)

My parents, an interior monologue in photos.

He thought winning made the world a better place and the snow slightly sparklier.

She thought healing people was the ultimate challenge for a broken heart. Being beautiful didn't hurt.

Even the sunglasses couldn't hide them from each other.

They celebrated their discoveries.

They agreed on being the best and the strange enchantment of American dreams. When her mother died, there wasn't much to moor them.

They held hands and ran fast, far, leaving a baby behind as a souvenir. 

The baby grew like a weed, thriving in the in-between places, the soft wedges called steps.

They called her "Bunfla" and named her after a ghost.

Running requires leaving the ghosts behind and agreeing to be haunted.

Oh my Mai.

A few pieces of Romanian history from books around my house.

From the inside cover of an abecedar.

From the inside of a story book- it looks awfully competitive for "communism".

An ode to "The Party" and its metaphysical gifts.

"Requiem in a Classical Style", a poem by Magda Carneci.

Requiem in a Classical Style
For those who died in Bucharest, December 1989

by Magda Carneci

1.
With a drop of blood, innocent bright liquid,
  could a putrid, slumbering sea of marrow be purified?
Could only one body, mine, inscribed crosswise upon you,
  cure your sickness, o homeland?
 
And a thousand bodies, young boys, young girls,
  thrown into the starry vault of your mouth, your greedy belly,
your bloated memory, could they satisfy your hunger?
 
Let me be the solitary seed for a redemptive and young matter,
  Let me become the flowering field for an unknown, invincible plant,
Would that we were myriad of unconsumed pyres to light your darkness?
  Could a shower of love, a downpour, save a land?
A cataract, a flood, a billowing sea of blood?
  Could your corpse be reanimated by a sea of blood?
  
3.
Should I be the one to defy you, to accuse, to curse,
  the first to cast the stone at your face, in reproach and hatred?
Should I be the one to crucify you one more time-
  you, so often cut and wounded, stoned, nailed up, disfigured?
 
Should I set fire to your ever multiplied, ever burning pyre?
  to this famished destiny that devours you, should I add a blasphemy,
Never to be satisfied with hunting you, through all eternity?
 
If I do not burn together with you, then it would be in vain
  for the tormented light of your body to illuminate the dark.
If I do not crucify myself with you, mocked and martyred within you,
  then your endless sacrifice would be in vain.
 
If I do not love you, then it is myself I do not love.
  Alienated and festering, I would vanish into the corrupt world.
If we do not love each other, who or what could bring this sad land
  back from the dead, this blood, these bitter words?
 
6.
Come once more, vast suffering woman, unconsoled,
  follow in the wake of your martyrs, young girls, young boys,
those who have not yet become weary, who have not fallen asleep,
  who have not run away, and who will never forget anything.
 
Come, o homeland, before your dead and your living,
  to bathe yourself in the clean dust of their feet,
to purify yourself in their endless suffering.
 
You will be created anew. In each of us. You will be forgiven once more.
  Reborn. A virgin. How many times? Again and again.
Ocean of old marrow, chaotic magma, greedy ravenous mud
  spread everywhere, through hamlets and recesses, fields and towns,
 
You will engulf us, you will again swallow us into you-
  luminous tide of blood, loving lava of fire,
your powerful current will wash us into the final delta of our silence:
 
where out of eternity
new worlds
new worlds
unborn children
and your Ideal Form
dreamed once again
are forged
for all Eternity.

(Online source)

Ghita Ionescu's legacy to Romanian history.

One of Ghita Ionescu's most critical contributions to Romanian and post-communist studies  was his emphasis on the academic study of "opposition" to political regimes. He founded a journal at LSE, Government and Opposition, which explored this topic in many countries which were communist-led at the time. He also wrote a book, Opposition: Past and Present of a Political Institution, with Isabel de Madariaga, emphasizing his view of opposition as a civil institution. 

At the time, the field of "Soviet Studies" still focused on analysis of formal government institutions under communist regimes, including the COMECON. Content analysis of party documents was all the rage. Professor Ghita ameliorated the study of communist regimes by introducing the test posed by opposition and its role in the evaluation and popular legitimacy of a political regime.

Certainly his association with Radio Free Europe played a role in his interest in the social phenomenon of political dissidence. In fact, Radio Free Europe would have been a pointless endeavor without the assumption that popular legitimacy remained critical to a communist regime's long-term hold on political power.

In fact, Ionescu believed that popular movements, as opposed to internal government reform, would eventually bring an end to the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. 

More links, information, and works influenced by Professor Ghita Ionescu:

• His obituary by John C. Campbell in The Independent
• Ionescu's books are available in Romanian from Humanitas
• Hlavacek, Petr and Holzer, Jan (2009) "Opposition in Non-Democratic Regimes: Notes on Possibilities and Limits of Current Theory," World Political Science Review: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1, Article 5.
• Cas Mudde, "Populism in Eastern Europe", Radio Free Europe, 8 March 2000.
• Robert Cutler, "Soviet Dissent Under Khruschev: An Analytical Study", utilizes Ionescu's opposition paradigm.
• Laura Radulescu, "An Intellectual Cleansing Which Never Took Place, Or How We Became What We Are"

Acuma: 25 things that make me smile about Romania right now.

1. Andrei and his Harley looking for friends in Constanta. Somebody show him some Harley hospitality, please. Or just direct him to Red Bull Romaniacs...
2. Razvan Vintilescu's razor-sharp blog is just that. He will cut all fools to the quick. And nothing makes me smile like crying fools.
3. The new US ambassador to Romania plans to focus his efforts on corruption and adoption. He won't be distracted by small-scale social problems like poverty, housing shortages, or disease.
4. But someone, apparently, still cares about the plight of Romanian canines. Janak has some dog biscuits for sale and all the profits go to Romanian dogs. Brigitte Bardot seems a little old for the young Janak, but you know, you can't dispute taste.
5. A blogger watching the Enescu Festival in Bucuresti, the fond voyeur.
6. The discussions surrounding Charging the Rhino keep getting hotter. J'aime bien.

   

7. Organic food carves its market niche in Eastern Europe. Finally, the granolas and the yippies can start planning their vacations to Romania.
8. Architecture & Mortality compares the Romanian and German experiences under communism from a somewhat removed perspective.
9. Meanwhile, Abhishek waxes poetic about the Danube Delta with the help of a postcard.
10. More school choice and decentralization in Romania? Or is this just a change in management protocol? Hard to say from here.
11. The Ukraine accuses Romania of breaching environmental obligations. On that note, a new legal publication is due soon on Romania v. Ukraine with respect to maritime delimitation rights in the Black Sea.
12. Hardiek "books a rest" in Bucuresti and reveals his limited capacity to engage a culture he can only superficially apprehend.
13. Six things about teaching English in Romania.
14. Banesa Forest, north of Bucuresti, gets a quick view.
15. UN rights experts warn of "impact" of Romanian migration trends. If I didn't know better, I might think they were talking about a swine flu epidemic. 
16. Romania gets its own Muslim TV station. Why not?
17. The University of Bucuresti. Because it's still there.
18. If you can ignore the terrible pronunciation, this video "A World Without Romania" is actually quite illuminating.
19. US auto giant, Ford, starts work at its new factory in Craiova.
20. Bovine anthrax in Romania? Or maybe just doom and gloom.
21. How to outsource Romania's maps.
22. Romania is the first country in history to win three Pomme d'Or Tourism awards in one year.
23. Looks like Romania might also be at the top of another list-- the list for top ten spammers in the world.
24. A day with Michael Shermer in Romania.
25. Great post about Ceausescu court poet Adrian Paunescu, which also deserves credit for the image you see above. Clever caption from Poor Mouth describes Paunescu, walking next to the Ceausescus, in the act of "dissent". The smile that just won't go away.

Gica Popescu shows how patriotism becomes an excuse for being pathetic.

Gheorghe (Gica) Popescu, the former captain of Romania's national soccer team, finally admitted to having been an informer for the country's secret police during the communist era. Popescu's admission comes just three days after he denied the allegations, calling a newspaper report that he had been a Securitate informant "a big lie"-- a big lie followed by bigger evidence. 

In an interview with the daily Evenimentul Zilei, Popescu said he wrote four notes informing on teammates and other colleagues while he was playing at Universitatea Craiova. The defender was part of a Romanian team that qualified for three consecutive World Cups, starting in 1990 and for two European Championships. He also helped Barcelona win the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1997. When the allegations surfaced on Monday, the 41-year-old Popescu said he had only signed a document in 1985 promising to "defend the national interests" during the regime of the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Always the seasoned opportunist, Popescu defended his actions under communism--  "Even if I wrote notes, I wrote good things", he insisted. "I praised [those] people." 

Romania's star soccer player Gheorghe Hagi, who is related to Popescu through marriage, came to his defense, saying sports had brought glory to Romania in the communist era. "We [sportsmen] were the ambassadors for Romania. They should look elsewhere" for Securitate agents, he said. Hagi, of course, maintains that he did not inform-- or, at least, that no one has evidence to the contrary.

It seems to me that such unselfish, noble athletes love to be looked upon by cheering crowds only to blush modestly when one attempts to look at how they really served their countries under communism. In case no one taught Popescu and Hagi how to be "good sports", here's a quick lesson: When you get caught cheating, at least have the honor to admit what you did without adding all those apparatchik-inspired excuses.

Iliescu, Iran, Christian Suciu, and genocide: Odd equations.

Jon Lee Anderson replies to Christian Suciu on an error in his June 19th post on the “Iran’s Basij militias,”  In Anderson's words now:

Christian Suciu wrote in to point out an error I had made in comparing the relationship between the Basij and its theocratic regime with “the one between Nicolae Ceausescu and the loyalist miners trucked in from the Romanian countryside to strong-arm pro-democracy protesters.” Suciu writes:

Actually, the events referred to (the “Mineriads”) happened in 1990 and 1991, by which time Ceausescu was dead and buried. Ion Iliescu was President of Romania at the time, and it was he who trucked in the miners.

Siciu is absolutely right. The miners had been loyal to the Ceausescu regime for many years, but it was Iliescu—a former senior party figure and erstwhile ally of Ceausescu’s—who succeeded him after his execution in 1989, and when there was pro-democracy ferment in the capital afterward, it was Iliescu who brought in the miners to break heads and quell things. At the time, Iliescu was facing accusations that he represented little more than a face-change of the ancient regime, i.e. “Ceausescuismo without the Ceausescus.”

As in present-day Iran, the protests that were ended violently by Romania’s miners (who used bats and clubs and killed up to a hundred people) had taken place just after an election; The Party man Iliescu had been sworn in as a caretaker president following Ceausescu’s execution in December 1989. In elections held in May 1990, Iliescu won eighty-five per cent of the vote. But pro-democracy demonstrators, including many students, protested what they saw a hijacking of power by the country’s ex-communists. 

After the miners’ rampage, Iliescu thanked them for their “attitude of high civic conscience” and disparaged the demonstrators as “hooligans,” as part of a “right wing neo-fascist international conspiracy.” In announcing his own crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tehran last Friday, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei referred to the demonstrators as Iran’s “enemies” and as “espionage machines working for Zionists and the Americans,” who were determined to destroy Iran’s Islamic revolution. 

Last week, coincidentally, a court in Bucharest cleared Iliescu of genocide charges in his responsibility for that crackdown and a bloodier, previous one that had immediately followed Ceausescu’s downfall, in which as many as twelve hundred civilians were killed by security forces—suggesting that repression often follows time-honored patterns, and that demands for accountability in such cases are not as easily met as one would hope.

The metal-omania of Constanta.

Constanţa, once known as Tomis, is the second largest and also the oldest living city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast, with a beach length of 13 km. 

The Port of Constanţa has an area of 39.26 km² and a length of about 30 km, it is the largest port on the Black Sea, and the fourth largest port in Europe. Here, ships can be seen as white dots on the Black Sea, moving to and from the port. The city itself is bright white, while most of the surrounding land is used for agriculture.

While seeing the statue of Ovid, as well as the old casino, is impressive, the sheer size and scale of the actual port dumbs the serenades of ancient history in this town. You can see an image of Constanta from satellite here. You can also see a map of the northern port area here, though the best satellite image I've found is this one.

The strange attractions of socialism: A roundtable worth re-visiting.

In October 2006, Horia Roman Patapievici moderated a roundtable on "Intellectuals and Socialism", which explored the attraction posed by socialist ideology to Western intellectuals and academics in the 20th century. Over one hundred invitees attended this event at the Institute for Romanian Culture, and the vitality of the discussion can be appreciated in the video below.  

Why did the traditionally skeptical intellectual class find itself seduced by promises of government's power to work for that lovely abstraction otherwise known as the Common Good? Why do we assume that the state can provide better solutions to human problems than the marketplace of goods and ideas? What did the experience of communism teach us about the effectiveness of the state in working for the Common Good? Among other interesting explorations at this event: the relationship between culture and the state, the meaningfulness of left-right distinctions, the possibility of libertarianism as a credible alternative, the unspoken etatism of the EU, and more.... Don't take my word for it. See for yourself. 

A word of thanks to my comrades at Liberalism.ro for keeping the fires burning.

Former general manager of Romania's state-owned railway company, Mihai Necolaiciuc, is arrested in Palm Beach: A poetic take on yet another story of corruption.

Mihai loved the feel of his toes in the white sands of West Palm Beach, almost enough white to wash away the memories of the gritty, dark textures in Mamaia. And Mihai liked the kinds of memories, like stains, that washed away. 

He hadn't even bothered to check the calendar on the day he was arrested. The Securitate, it seems, had come all the way to Palm Beach dressed up in the local police costumes in order to punish him for being far-sighted, for thinking like an entrepreneur, for making money when others only manufactured complaints.  Was he the only Romanian patriot who walked away with $111 million that did not belong to him? How slick the walkway from businessman to criminal.

Of course Mihai knew he was wanted. His mother had always parted his hair with a comb in the mornings, a clear sign of how much she wanted him. The young Romanian girls at the beach loved his fabulous hats and sunglasses; they wanted him like a paycheck. The Romanian government wanted him for embezzling millions from a Romanian national railway company. Mihai had made them wait their turn. 

When Mihai was arrested on charges of violating the US Immigration and Naturalization Act, he knew how to spell every word in this sentence. No one could fool him anymore. He was smart enough to attract the attention of Cuban street musicians, hot dog vendors, and Interpol. His two condos in the CityPlace Tower were valued at $400,000 each, and he made sure his neighbors knew that he had paid for them up front. No dishonest mortgages for him. 

His name, Necolaciuc, wasn't Dacian enough. The nationalists in power must be behind his arrest. When the National Anticorruption Department initiated criminal investigations against him in March 2006, he wished he had paid that priest an extra $25 to bless his office in addition to his house. In the grand scheme of things, one can never be too careful. The other 29 defendants, drawn from the uppercrust of the Ministry of Transport and the National Railroad Company, couldn't tell good whiskey from old tuica. Hadn't he enthusiastically promoted the modernization of Romanian railways to Oana Bran? Hadn't he worked for the good of the Romanian railways, and a little bit of socialism on the side, since 1973? 

People, like the color of sand, like the scent of salvation, could hardly be trusted. He could name his friends on one hand-- Illeana Preada, Frank Barbieri, Danielle Darling-- and leave the hair follicles on his back to count his lovers and special companions. But even the faces of his friends blurred. Was Danielle the girl who ran in the 5k? Had she been married to a Mr. Toscano before it all began? Was Frank the one who started programs for schools in Florida, the humane man who always gave back more than he got? Who was who since Ceausescu's death turned everything from black-and-white to the horizon of gray? 

Mihai secretly hoped that his arrival would be greeted by a parade in Bucharest. 

The half-hearted study of communist archives in Romania.

The National Council for the Study of the Archives of the Securitate was founded by a law passed in the Romanian parliament in 1999. It has nine members, who are proposed by the political parties, and a few researchers who deal with the archives. When it began, one could find among the nine councillors former dissidents and important intellectuals, including the poet Mircea Dinescu (who had been placed under house arrest in 1988 after he gave an interview to Libération, in which he protested against Ceausescu's policies); the philosopher Andrei Plesu (who during the Ceausescu regime had been removed from the Institute of Art History in Bucharest and exiled to rural Romania to work as an administrator of a regional museum after signing a letter criticizing Ceausescu); and the essayist Horia-Roman Patapievici (who became a public figure after 1990 and is currently the president of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest). 

From the start, the functioning of the Council encountered a major obstacle: a clause in its constitution (inserted by a senator later unmasked as having collaborated with the Securitate) mentioned the "political police". Accordingly, the Council could reveal only the cases of collaboration with the communist secret services with a "political police" connection, as opposed to cases that were about "defending the national interest". We are in a land of metaphors: in practice, it was very difficult to distinguish "political" from other forms of collaboration with the Securitate.

Mircea Vasilescu has more on the "fairy tale" aspects of Romania's self-reckoning with its communist past in this excellent essay. 

Anna Louise Strong's description of Moldova and Romania: Part 1.

Anna Louise Strong was an American Soviet sympathizer who published numerous propaganda books and pamphlets during the post-war period. In Peoples of the USSR (1944), Strong offers an interesting description of Romania and Moldova, tinged with bright Redpropaganda. This is a wonderful read for anyone who needs reminding that history is always written from a certain arm chair by a certain person with a particular perspective.

Soviet Moldavia lies between the Ukraine and Romania. The Carpathian mountains bound it on the north, while its southern shores are washed by the Black Sea. It is 13,600 square miles in area, half again as large as Holland, and has some 2,200,000 people. It is a garden of rich black, soil. But for centuries it has been a neglected garden. Only a small part of Moldavia has been in the USSR for any length of time. Most of it was annexed in 1940 when the territory called Bessarabia was returned by Romania to Russia. Bessarabia forms about five-sixths of Soviet Moldavia.

In Soviet Moldavia, now that the Nazis have gone, the village elders in the shabby clay villages bring out the ceremonial tray of bread, salt, and wine, the traditional peasant welcome, and offer it to the Red Army. Dark Moldavian women present earthen pitchers of cold well water to the thirsty troops. Barefoot boys in brown homespun and tall sheepskin caps crowd around the Red Army planes on sodden fields, their brown eyes staring as if a miracle had come.

Moldavia lies at the gap between the Black Sea and the Carpathians, through which in ancient days the tribes from Asia migrated into Europe. This territory was conquered by all the tribes that passed; if they failed to conquer it, they did not get through. The gap was narrow and the tribes were many. So the population became very mixed. Some say that Moldavians are largely Slav, others that they are largely a Romanian people from Thrace.

The early Greeks knew this territory as the stronghold of the dreaded Cimmerians. Later there were Scythians here. When Trajan conquered the territory, making it part of the Roman province of Dacia in AD 106, the tribes of the area were Slavs. The Slavs built cities in the sixth century, some of which still exist. They joined Kiev-Russ in the great campaign against Constantinople in the tenth century. When Kiev-Russ split into principalities, one of the largest and richest was located in the area. It was Chervonaya-Russ-- Red, or Golden, Russ. 

A Romanized tribe from Thrace known as Vlachs came north in the thirteenth century and drove the Slavs from part of the land. Almost at once the great Mongol invasion overwhelmed both Slavs and Vlachs in a common slavery. In the sixteenth century, the Turks seized the area and the hapless land became the battleground for many successive wars between the Turks and the Poles. During this period it became known as the principality of Moldavia......

Later the Western part of Moldavia, then under Turkish rule, joined with another subject state to form Rumania, a vassal state of the Turkish Empire. In 1877 Rumania helped Russia against the Turks and thereby won independence. The new Rumanian state wanted Bessarabia too. But the same conference of European powers that recognized Rumania as an independent state recognized Russia's right to Bessarabia.

Remembering the Romanian anti-communist resistance in memory of a few newly-recovered heroes.

A mass grave containing the bodies of three members of the Romanian anti-communist resistance group, White Guard, turned up on April 27th near the village of Nepos in northern Romania. The grave contained bones and a boot that will undergo forensic analysis, said experts from the Romanian Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes.

The resistance members were identified as Ioan Leonida Bodiu, Ioan Burdet and Toader Dumitru. They were executed and buried by the Securitate, the Communist secret police, in 1949, and will be exhumed at the request of their relatives.

Two years ago, on April 24 and 25, 2007, the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes, in co-operation with the Military Prosecutor’s Office, unearthed the remains of nine men shot on March 9, 1950. They had also been buried in a mass grave near Bistrita-Nasaud. Following inquiries, it was discovered the men were shot by a group of soldiers with the Securitate, sent to capture and punish people for their refusal to be conscripted, which was considered dissention by the Communist regime.

In the postcommunist re-reckoning of Romanian history, the native resistance to communism has received limited attention. In fact, details about what was called “anti-communist armed resistance” were not made public until after Ceausescu's overthrow in 1989. It was only then that the public learnt about the numerous small groups of "haiducs" who had taken refuge in the Carpathian Mountains, where some resisted for ten years against the troops of the Securitate. The last “haiduc” was killed in the mountains of Banat in 1962.

The Romanian resistance was one of the longest lasting armed movement in the former Soviet bloc. Its continued relegation to the realm of historical shadows is partly due to the tendency to conflate resistance to communism and statements of fascist sympathy. Scholars are reluctant to provide historical accounts of Romanian communist resistance for fear of being considered fascist revisionists. The end result is a significant, lamentable lack of scholarly work on the Romanian resistance to communism.

If young Romanians are not educated about this non-fascist resistance to communism, they will be vulnerable to cultural determinists and demagogues who argue that Romanians are not fit for democracy, that their traditions require strong leaders, that their history is a testament of fatalism and defeat, that only a Romanian Putin or a local nationalist can preside over a secure Romanian nation. With the coming presidential election, there is reason to be concerned about the Social Democratic candidate, Mircea Geoana, and his condescending view of Romanian citizens. Needless to say, the confusion in Molodva also provides an excellent political distraction to the current economic crisis-- a distraction which could be mobilized as a resurgent Romanian nationalism should unemployment and social discontent increase. The history of the Romanian resistance to communism offers an empowering, alternate narrative to the helplessness and victimhood emphasized by extremists lining the halls of the Greater Romania Party.

In 1948, non-violent opponents of the Romanian communist regime were arrested. Liberal and social democratic leaders were taken to prison as "enemies of the revolution", since they refused to compromise with the new communist "democracy" as instituted by the "will of the people". The members of the National Peasant Party and the Legionaires, who openly opposed the Sovietization of Romania, were eliminated from public life. Since many were indeed political fascists, their imprisonment was easily justified in the post World War II atmosphere. But most Romanian anti-communist resistance was not related to support for fascism, but rather, to the extreme irrelevance of Marxist ideology to a primarily agrarian, non-industrial nation with the tiniest indigenous Communist party in the Eastern bloc. Communism was truly a Soviet export to Romania; the resistance underlines this important and neglected fact.

Beginning in the summer of 1948, individuals or small groups went underground into the Carpathian mountains, forming various groups of armed resistance in what was a relatively large movement, gathering several thousand people. The rebels came from all social strata and all areas of the country, spreading everywhere the terrain could shield them. The movement is related to the spate of mass arrests hitting the country after the communist power seizure on the eve of 1948, as well as to the political and economical measures which destroyed a large part of the peasantry and the middle class. People sought shelter in the mountains for different reasons-- some to escape imminent arrest, some who fled in fear after being economically ruined. Significantly, entire families took flight in late 1948 and early 1949.

Retreating in the mountains from internal or external oppressors was a spontaneous and ancestral strategy of the Romanian peasantry. Significantly, the members of the armed resistance were not called "partisans" by the population, but haiduci, the word for the generous bandits that had fought the Austrian occupiers and were considered folk heroes. A further major component of the armed resistance consisted of individuals and groups motivated by anti-communist convictions and persuaded that only an armed engagement could contain increasing terror and prevent irrevocable communist takeover. Some of the resistance groups were led by ex-army officers and acted in a more coordinated and planned way. It appears that they put their hope in stirring up a more general armed insurrection, which never came to life. A smaller category of insurgents were Romanian refugees recruited in Europe by the Office of Policy Coordination, trained in France, Italy and Greece and then dropped in the Carpathians. It seems, however, that most of them, not being able to create local contacts imperative for survival, were soon captured.

Ion Gavrilă-Ogoranu led a resistance group in the Făgăraş Mountains from 1948 to 1956, and remained undetected until 1976. Among other haiduci in the anti-communist resistance, one must include the Cross and Sword Organization in the Rodna mountains, Decebal's Guards in Suceava, Fetea in Sibiu, Avram Iancu's Haiduci in Bistrita, the in Dobrogea, Capt. Brancusi Mihai in Gorj, the Haiduks of Mustel in the Southern Fagaras mountains, the Young Partisans of Romania in Bukovina, and many, many more.

The White Army, which I assume is another name for the White Guard, worked from the Apuseni mountains. Sadly, there is little detailed information about its members and its history online. Most searches lead me to information about the Soviet army or football teams. I will do my best to find more information in the coming week so that these men who died in the fight against communism can be properly acknowledged and honored.

Sources: Romanian Times + Wikipedia + Claudia Dobre's article in Memoria + Ionitoiu Cicerone's article for Gindirea Romaneasca + Tripatlas article

The 7 wonders of communism.

I translated this Romanian joke from Bancuri cu Politice because it illustrates the conflicts in paradise on earth. One can only be speechless with wonder at the "7 wonders of communism":

1. Everyone had a job.

2. Although everyone had a job, no one worked.

3. Although no one worked, the central plans were met at over 100%.

4. Although the central plans were met at over 100%, no one could purchase anything.

5. Although no one could purchase anything, everyone had everything.

6. Although everyone had everything, everyone stole.

7. Although everyone stole, nothing was ever missing.

Worst of all, everything is funny because it means nothing.

Reading history in the stars: The charm of horoscopes in the post-communist literary landscape.

When I visited Romania at the beginning of 1990, I scoured the newsstands for any and every shard of information about Romanian culture, the revolution, recipes, history, commi-nostalgia, concerts, life as lived and dreamed in the immediate post-1989 period. Imagine my surprise to discover that almost every newspaper or magazine boasted of its horoscope section. There was a horoscope available for every month, day, decade, and period. Horoscopes littered the dusty sidewalks of Bucharest, promising answers and explanations. My university-educated Romanian relatives would ask me quite seriously if I had consulted my horoscope before x and y.

In the post-communist period, the horoscope had become a reference guide in an unsure world and a source of revisionist history. Before the Romanian intellectuals settled into their desks to revisit the history of Romanian communism, the horoscopes had already published definitive guides to the truth about each and every important Romanian. The horoscopes were not burdened by Securitate files or ties to former leaders-- their information was pure as the night sky and powerful as the sun. Before Romanians could read revisionist history in the libraries, they could read it in the stars.

Does Romania's notorious and legendary fatalism explain why horoscopes gained such a following in the immediate post-communist period? Only for those who prefer the cosmos of cultural stereotypes to the cosmos of stars. In fact, Romanian fatalism is a facet of literary culture more than a facet of general culture (though one might argue that Romanians tend to be more Stoic, a philosophy which has its roots in fatalism). Romanian horoscopes, like Romanian legends, have the texture of a rich tapestry in which disparate colors and elements bind together as revelation.

Rather than the pithy American-style two-liner, Ceausescu's horoscope reads like an intimate portrait, a legend harvested from the stars. Among other salient details, the horoscope asserts that Ceausescu was supported by the US. I've heard this position expressed by a number of Romanians in hushed tones, but the horoscope sets it above rumor by relegating it to the realm of the stars.

It is alleged that Ceauşescu was supported overtly and covertly by the United States throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Romania gained "most favored nation" trading status in 1975, six years after a favourable visit by President Nixon. According to Noam Chomsky, it was partially due to Ceauşescu's divergent views on policy (such as the invasion of Afghanistan, opposition to Molotov-Ribbentrop, etc.), Ceauşescu garnered support from the Bush Administration, particularly George Herbert Walker Bush himself and then-Secretary of State George P. Schultz . There were negative comments regarding Romania during this time by both Schultz and Bush, but the former also called Ceauşescu a "good Communist" and the latter praised Ceauşescu's "respect for human rights" . This support, it is argued, was a major obstacle to the overthrow of Ceauşescu.

The horoscope is a superb historical vehicle in the dusk of the absurd. When unemployed dissidents would find work writing horoscopes for various journals, they were engaging in another form of dissent. Astrology, like religion, was not acceptable to the communist regimes grounded upon the predictive value of historical materialism and scientific socialism. In this environment, authoring a horoscope offered a subtle way in which to criticize communist leaders (for example, by predicting negative events in their future due to character traits like 'egoism'). When Czech writer Milan Kundera's work was banned in 1969, Kundera made a living by writing an astrology column under a fictitious name, which eventually got him and his friends in even more trouble.

It is no secret that Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Adolf Hitler relied on astrology in making political decisions. The Kremlin seems to have star-gazed quite frequently. The stars, like palms, books, and coffee grounds, must be read as life is lived, with a smile to illuminate the darkness. To explore Poland's national horoscope, venture here. For more on the absurdist humour of communism.

A collection of non-culturally deterministic explanations of the Romanian transition.

I am wary of the overly-simplistic, culturally-determined arguments for the harshness and depth of the Romanian communist experiment. Those familiar with Romanian history know that the Orthodox Church plays a minor role in communism's ascent and maintenance of power in Romania. What really kept the communists in power was their ability to harness nationalism and the forces of history in the creation of a novel, indigenous, national-greatness communism whose vestiges pollute political discourse to the current day. Smug commentaries on Romanian political culture do not offer new frameworks for understanding the Romanian transition; they serve only to cement existing stereotypes and offer excuses for truly liberal scholarship.

What follows is a collection of resources which locate the challenges of the Romanian post-communist transition in something more sound than Samuel P. Huntington's overgeneralized framework.

I'll begin with Cheng Chen’s notable paper, “The Roots of Illiberal Nationalism in Romania: A Historical Institutionalist Analysis of the Leninist Legacy”, which traces the post-communist problems of resurgent Romanian nationalism to the period of Leninist nation-building in Romania. A number of the resources which follow reaffirm Chen's historical institutionalist approach. He notes:

The initial condition for Leninist nation-building in Romania could not be more ominous. Not only was there no indigenous revolution, but also nowhere in Eastern Europe, with the exception of Poland, was the Soviet role in imposing Leninism more open… Paradoxically, the regime’s inflexibility in adopting Leninism was intrinsically related to its extremely weak starting point and its non-Romanian and even anti-Romanian origin.

Chen chronicles the communist leadership's attempt to indigenize communism through appeals to Romanian nationalism.

J.F. Brown's Eastern Europe and Communist Rule examines the history of East European communism, distinguishing the foreignness of communist ideology to Romanian political movements.

Stefan Auer's paper, "Nationalism in Central Europe-- A Chance or a Threat for the Emerging Liberal Democratic Order?", critiques the assumption that Eastern Orthodoxy is inherently more illiberal than Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Auer observers that Croatia, a predominantly Catholic country, has more serious and divisive problems with illiberal nationalism than Romania.

Katherine Verdery's National Ideology Under Socialism examines the "modes of control" implemented by the Ceausescu regime to keep internal dissent at bay.

Vladimir Tismaneanu's Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel is a wonderful example of thoughtful and thought-promoting scholarship on the postcommunist transitions.

Romanian anti-Semitism was encouraged and promoted by the Ceausescu cult's emphasis on the purely Romanian communism which replaced the foreign, Russian, and Jewish communism of the Pauker days. Contrary to its universalist creed, Romanian communism reinforced existing anti-Semitic impulses. Given that communist ideology lacked an indigenous following in Romania, many Romanians were able to blame "Others" for communism, particularly Russians and Jews. For an interesting perspective on Romanian anti-Semitism, read "Anti-Semitic Propaganda and Official Rhetoric Concerning the Judeo-Bolshevik Danger: Romanian Jews and Communism Between 1938-1944".

Juliana Geran Pilon's book, The Bloody Flag Post-Communist Nationalism in Eastern Europe, invokes a personal, incisive view of postcommunist nationalism in Eastern Europe with a special focus on Romania. As a Romanian Jewish emigre, Geran Pilon is particularly well-equipped to analyze social trends in Romania.

Daniel Fehrer's paper, "Long Lasting Legacy Dangerous Games and Dangerous Consequences, The Impact of Romanian National History Writing Under Ceausescu on Politics in Post-Communist Romania" is delightful and on-pointe.

Odds & Ends - The webpage dedicated to transdisciplinarity in science and religion provides a wealth of resources on Romanian transdisciplinary studies. The discussion of Daco-Roman theory as instituted by Gheorghiu-Dej at the Ancient Roman Forum is quite rich. The photo, Galati 2006, was taken by Jana Cavojska. I welcome any more suggestions to add to this list.

Nicolae Ceausescu looks so sweet on a vase.

The Romanian Museum of National History just added images of Ceausescu porcelain to its online collection. For those who miss seeing Ceausescu's smug smile in the front pages of every Romanian book, this porcelain is sure to set the scene for any fine dinner or coup that you might be planning.

Moldovan students fight for more than their rights to party.

Protests against the Communist parliamentary victory turned violent as students took to the streets. According to the BBC:

Tear gas and jets of water were blasted at protesters by security forces defending the parliament building. The presidential office was also attacked.

Representatives of the opposition parties, are among the thousands of mainly young people protesting in the centre of the capital, Chisinau.

They believe the elections result was fraudulent.

The mayor of Chisinau, Dorin Chirtoaca, who is deputy head of the opposition Liberal Party, said the protests were justified "because people did not vote for the Communists in such large numbers".

Meanwhile, Romanian member of  the European Parliament, Marian Jean Marinescu, participating as observer in the Moldova elections, declared that there are strong suspicions regarding the number of electors who participated in the scrutiny on Sunday:

"The number announced by the Central Office was 2,540,000 people, some 150,000 more than those who participated last year at the local elections. The figure is important because the scrutiny would have been annulled in case the turnout was under 50%."

More than 240 Romanians have been denied entry at the Moldovan border over the past three days. Hotnews.ro reports that all news websites in Moldova are blocked, while the Moldovan TV stations are not broadcasting any of the events in Chisinau. The revolution, however, can be followed live on the internet, as Moldova is the hottest tag on Twitter. Get twitter updates via Tweetscoop.

I have enormous respect for all the courageous Moldovan students out there right now. Viva la revolution!

Good news from Moldova + the usual suspects in Romania.

Meanwhile, heroes and thugs continue emerge. Romanian Capt. Petre Tiberius was killed in Afghanistan. Gigi Becali is going to jail. Traian Bujduveanu pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy count to export US military airplane parts to Iran. He acted as his own lawyer and faces up to five years in federal prison when sentenced June 11. He's a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Romania. Former Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu resigned from the Liberal Party. He used the word "sad".

Ulwe Klussman writes exciting news from Moldova. It seems the Moldovans are increasgly dissatisfied with the Communists and have begun to express hopes for reunification with Romania. No small wonder that Moldovan authorities have limited freedom of movement recently. Klussman observes:

The party most keen to keep Moldova independent is the Communist Party, which has ruled the country for eight years. It draws strength from the fact that the poor region enjoyed a significant boom during the Soviet era. For years, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, who leads the Communist Party, spurred the electorate with hopes for a "rebirth of the socialist community." Now he's taking a more pro-Europe stance.

The graying party functionary still lays Soviet-style wreaths at Lenin monuments on holidays and the Communist Party program still invokes the "volcano of social creativity, born in the revolution." The Communist Party is popular with their German comrades in the far-left Left Party, whose delegations get driven through the country's sunny wine country in Russian Volga cars. The Left Party members rave about their "friendly" and "warm" Moldovan counterparts.

Those affable Communists, though, are becoming less and less popular among their own people. The only people who listen obediently to Voronin's monotonous speeches are pensioners in worn coats. Speaking in a cultural center in Ustia, a village in the east of the country, he promises that they will soon "be no worse off than the people in the cities."

A Communist election poster, glued to the door of a grocery store, shows a beautiful young woman with impeccable teeth and the slogan: "We are building a European Moldova together." But there is little sign of young beauties with perfect smiles in the village. The customers coming into the store are mainly long-term unemployed with missing teeth. "The young people have gone to Russia or Europe," says Mikhail, a villager in his late fifties. "They are building their futures there."

Among those who are left behind, there are frequent outbursts of rage at the corrupt Communist Party regime, which has helped the president's son Oleg become one of the richest "biznesmen" in the country. The average monthly wage is €175 ($232). "We have no fear" is the slogan at a rally of liberal and right-wing opposition parties in the capital Chisinau, attended by some 30,000 people.

Alexandru Eftode backs Klussman's observations with his own views on the failure and consequent fade of communism in Moldova. He notes that Voronin's ideological loyalties have distorted his assessment of PR lately, leading to odd speeches and uncomfortable moments:

It wasn’t the first time that the Communist leader had invoked Leninist ideals of a “social state,” which his party has arguably been building in Moldova for the past eight years in power. But this time he seemed more confident, as governments from Washington to Moscow were intervening to bail out their capitalist or quasi-capitalist economies in times of economic crisis. “The teachings of the classics of Marxism-Leninism are still relevant and can become a road map for solving the problems of our days,” Voronin declared.

Wouldn't it be awesome to celebrate the funeral of another communist regime? Metaphorically, of course.

[The photo of industrial Craiova was taken by Bogdan Panait.]

A surreal-less post on Gellu Naum, who reads his poems "in a low voice, extremely low, in the deepest silence."

Gellu Naum had immeasurable respect for the art of boulevard strolling. As an early institutionalizer of Romanian surrealism, Gellu noticed that the large cracks in the sidewalks made women cringe. This observation might have turned him into a forerunner of magical realism were it not for ...

Communism made the publication of poetry difficult because the ink was always invisible for those in the avant-garde. But Gellu had his Zenobia-- if he didn't have her, he would have invented her, and, in fact, having her made her invention somewhat less daunting. So Gellu did (and had) both. In 1968, a miraculous intervention made the ink black so Romanians could read again and writers could publish. Unfortunately, those writers who required colored ink for their publications would have to wait until 1990, when the Turks would open bazaars on the streets of Bucharest.

Gellu was a man, but he could have been more. He could have been a long, winding shopping list curled around a baba's fist, each line another symptom of Gellu's existence. If a young lady were to discover such a list crumpled up near a Happy Meal bag, she would be in possession of Gellu's list-fulness, the sum of his parts, the sum-thing like this:

• Love as a literary game
• The dialectics of the imaginary
• A critique of misery
• Comana
• A blue shore
• A children's book
• An old military uniform without epaulettes
• Vacationing vultures
• The road of foreshadowings
• Thick dark hair
• The Eastern Front
• The secret being
• Eloge de malhombra
• Athanor
• A framed portrait of Victor Brauner
• An empty obit
• Nobody for a long time
• A pulse just as blind and obscure

Four official statements on Romanian foreign policy about the Warsaw Pact.

APRIL 1958

"Given the present favorable circumstances, we agree to your proposal to cancel the further stationing of Soviet troops in the People's Republic of Romania. We have no doubt whatsoever that this decision will have a major impact and would be seen by world public opinion as a new palpable contribution of the USSR, of the Romanian People's Republic and of the entire socialist camp, to the strengthening of peace and to détente in international relations. We assure you that the armed forces of the Romanian People's Republic shall honorably fulfil, in whatever circumstances, the duties incumbent on them within the socialist camp."

[Letter of reply, from Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, First Sec. of the CC of the RWP  to the Soviet leadership agreeing with the Soviet proposal for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Romania, 20 April 1958.]

MARCH 1969

In connection with Corneliu Manescu’s statement, I.I. Jakubovsky mentioned that he observed, during the various travels to Romania, when – on the occasion of military training exercises or working visits – he had passed through towns, villages and other localities, that people had a friendly attitude to the representatives of the armies of the fraternal countries, that the Romanian population had sentiments of genuine esteem and love towards the Soviet Union. Similar appreciations were made by V.V. Kuznetsov and the ambassador A.V. Bashov.

[Memorandum of discussions at a dinner hosted by Corneliu Manescu in honor of Marshal Yakubovsky, Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive, secretariat, no.12/00234, file 231, 9v3, 1 March 1969. DR, vol.1, pp.423-26.]

SEPTEMBER 1969

"Within the framework of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union tends to organize all acts of foreign policy. There was the tendency to create within the Warsaw Pact a branch that would decide, with a majority vote, foreign policy affairs. The tendency to establish supranational bodies existed: in military affairs—in the organization of the United Commandment; in economic affairs—in the organization of Comecon as a supranational body, as well as in external political affairs. We opposed all these tendencies and said: the treaty that established the Warsaw Pact shows that the participant countries will consult on matters that they deem important and that they agree to consult on. Therefore, every country, as an expression of its sovereignty, has the right to practice the foreign policy that it wishes to practice, taking in account the engagements it made. I think that the Soviet Union is unhappy with the fact that we are leading an independent foreign policy. We had a different position from the Soviet Union on an entire series of issues. To answer your question, I don’t believe that the Soviet Union is pleased with us."

[Cde. Ion Gheorghe Maurer directs this comment to Zhou Enlai, Minutes of Conversation between the Romanian Delegation to Ho Chi Minh’s Funeral, Led by Ion Gheorge Maurer, and the Chinese Delegation, Led by Zhou Enlai,11 September 1969.]

NOVEMBER 1978

"After we speak about NATO, we think it would be necessary to firmly assert the decision of the states participating in the Warsaw Treaty to proceed to the stage of abolishing this pact simultaneously with the abolition of NATO. At the same time, [it is necessary] to take concrete steps for reducing the military activity of these blocks, by adopting a program of measures for doing away with them as soon as possible. We must tell openly to all the peoples that security and peace cannot be ensured by strengthening military blocks but by proceeding to their abolition, to effective measures of general disarmament. This would be another issue. I must tell you that, as our comrades there inform us, the most active in sustaining the point of view that they cannot renounce the presence of foreign troops and the strengthening of troops are the Czechoslovaks and the East Germans. The Czechoslovaks said they needed foreign troops."

[Ceausescu to all attendees, Transcript of the meeting of the Consultative Political Committee of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party on 20 November 1978, ANIC, Archive of the Political Executive Committee of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, no.2561, 1.xii.1978. CWIHP Document Reader, vol.2.]

Protochronism and the Ceausescu regime: Creating a culture of national socialism.

The insistence on the need to develop the self-consciousness of the Romanian people on all spheres of life was an early and persistent theme in Ceausescu's cultural policy. The theoretical vehicle for this development first emerged with Athanase Joja's concept of "national specificity", which emphasized the uniqueness and special characteristics of Romanian culture. As Ceausescu's goals came to encompass a global role, Joja's concept was replaced by the theory of "protochronism", which emphasized not just the uniqueness but also the superiority of Romanian culture over all other cultures. For Ceausescu, national culture was a tool for comparison and confrontation.

Edgar Papu's essay, "The Romanian Protochronism", caught Ceausescu's eye in 1974. He adopted the idea of Romanian chronological (and hence cultural) superiority as a tool to expand the intellectual reach of national socialism. At the 11th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party a few months later, Ceausescu's chief ideologues linked protochronism to Marxism with the argument that the Dacians created a permament and unorganized State, the seed which later sprouted into the Greater Romanian nation.

At the Cultural Congress of 1976, Ceausescu stressed the need to rewrite Romanian history in a way that would correct the "grave errors [which] have been made in the interpretation of our history, of the formation of our people, of the language, and of the Romanian nation itself" (Scienteia, 3 June 1976).

Most Romanian academics hailed Ceausescu's statement as an opportunity to embolden Romanian national history and culture, previously given shorter shrift by Stalin's emphasis on the Soviet Union's primary role in world history. Those on the political and nationalist Right were especially pleased with Ceausescu's speech, as it turned the Romanian Communist Party into a national socialist state founded in a xenophobic, right-wing glorification of ethnic history. Protochronism led Romania away from the internationalism and global brotherhood suggested by Marx and other socialist theorists and back towards the fascist militarism so lamentable popular in last war. The Russians were not models for Romania after all, as Romania would pursue its own special and superior path to socialism.

Some academics, however, were not comfortable with this direction. Ovid S. Crohmalniceanu and Nicolae Manolescu protested the theory of protochronism. Apart from the warning that "every forced note risks sounding shrill", Crohmalniceanu and Manolescu disparaged even the term chosen to denote protochronism, as it was created in obvious counterpoint to Eugen Lovinescu's theory of synchronism launched in the 1920's. Papu's paper had suggested that Lovinescu's goal of "synchronization" with the West between the two world wars prevented the Romanians from discovering their own magnificence. Papu's critics knew better-- the protochronist theory would only institutionalize Ceausescu's totalitarianism even deeper by drawing disaffected Romanian right-wingers (who might have formed an opposition) into the folds of Romanian national socialism.

For more on Romanian protochronism:

• Maier, Anneli, "Romanian Protochronism and the New Cultural Order" (RAD Background Report #226, 16 November 1977).
• Mocanescu, Alice, "National Art As Legitimate Art: National Between Tradition and Ideology in Ceausescu's Romania" (Conference paper).
• Gavrila, Bogdan Cristian, "The Political Discourse of National Communism 1971-1979" (The Dept. of Nationalism Studies, CEU, 2004).
• Martin, Mircea, "Cultural romana intre comunism si nationalism II" (Revista 22, 31 October 2002).
  

[Credit for the great photo goes to the Nicolae Ceausescu blog.]

Ion Mihai Pacepa returns to sell more snake oil to gullible Western journalists.

There is no faster way to get my undivided attention than to whisper sweet nothings about Cold War myths into my ear. Consider me captive. And don't expect me to be ashamed of the shiver which bolted down my spine when I read the first paragraph Lauren St. John's delicious piece on the Transylvanian sex schools. Alas, the shame came later. For in postcommunist history, rapture comes rarely.

St. John opens the book to the forests and mountains of Transylvania, where she locates a myth from the cold war era:

This, some say, was the location of an extraordinary “sex school”, one in which the most beautiful and handsome of cold-war spies were trained in lovemaking before being sent forth to seduce and inveigle secrets from western diplomats and agents. In the mid-1960s, one American author claimed he’d been taken to one such school, housed in a former royal hunting lodge outside Brasov. He alleged that it had a curriculum of sex studies run by the Romanians and that at least three of its young students were jaw-droppingly beautiful.....Four decades on, the myth of an intelligence school for government whores is still deeply ingrained in the Romanian psyche. So is there any truth in it?

So far, so good. Unfortunately, after speaking with a few dismissive Romanians, St. John decides to seek the truth from one of the most notorious Romanian defectors of the Cold War-- Ion Mihai Pacepa. St. John displays her Western vulnerabilities when she admits:

I was told that one of the few people alive who might be able to confirm if such a school ever existed was Lt-Gen Pacepa, the former deputy chief of Romania’s espionage service. Now living in the US, where he is one of the country’s leading authorities on cold-war spies, he resides under cover so deep that, despite two Ceausescu-imposed death sentences and a $4m bounty on his head — $2m from the Romanian state, $1m from Yasser Arafat and $1m from the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi, who sent Carlos the Jackal after him — he has never been found, officially. But thanks to the internet I reached him in days. He dismissed the idea of the “school” as pure fantasy, but in a letter confirming Romania had, nevertheless, employed prostitutes as spies, five words stood out: “You are onto something real.”

Ah yes, Pacepa. Everyone's favorite sell-out, "dissident", truth-teller, expose-writer, scum-dwelling ex-Secret Police-man. Suddenly St. John's article rankles. Who is this man, Ion Pacepa, that provokes my skepticism? I'll start with the facts and end with my opinion. Pacepa was the former head of the DIE (Departamentul de Informatii Externe), Romania’s foreign intelligence service. In other words, he was a top Communist whose skills at deception, propaganda, and counterintelligence led him to the top post in Ceausescu's socialist paradise. St. John, like many Western Newsweek intellectuals, buys into Pacepa's latest incarnation as anti-communist hero when she writes nonsense like this:

He helped trigger — with his 1987 defection and autobiographical book Red Horizons — the revolution that destroyed one of the cruellest, most corrupt dictatorships of modern times; Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were sentenced to death in 1989 largely on the basis of the evidence it contained.

Did Pacepa provide St. John with this extraordinary piece of information which crowns him as king of the Romanian revolution from his cush home in the United States? As a matter of fact, he did. St John proudly announces Pacepa's exclusive participation in an interview with The Sunday Times.

In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times, Pacepa, who ran the DIE from 1968 to 1978, revealed that, while all communist countries, including Russia and East Germany, used prostitutes, both male and female, as spies, “my DIE excelled at it”. But there wasn’t any school. “All training was individual and was done in special safe houses that were studded with hidden microphones and video cameras. But these were no ordinary agents. They were, for the most part, “illegals”, recruited for their very particular skill sets and attributes, the most important of which was their genitalia. The highly classified PGU (Pervoye Glavnoye Upravleniye — KGB foreign intelligence) manual for illegal operations puts it this way: “A regular foreign-intelligence officer has an official position, a diplomatic passport and a country behind him; an illegal officer acts under a foreign flag and has only his penis — that’s his cover, his source of information, his immunity.”

My excitement, by now, assumes the character of a haunting. St John proudly reports the dirty details from the trenches:

Having, as Pacepa calls it, a “king-size penis” was still the rule for male Soviet-bloc illegal officers from 1972 to 1978, when he ran the ultra-secret DIE component dealing with this category of spy. “These lady-killers were supposed to exploit their unusual sexual endowment [and outstanding academic or technical credentials] to achieve social status, usually by marrying wealthy or influential women,” he says. Hence the PGU manual’s dictum that an illegal’s penis is “his cover, his source of information, his immunity”. It was up to the agent to use his sexual and technical prowess, as well as his wits, to gain all those things. 

St. John leads Pacepa away from large penises and back to the Transylvanian sex schools, but Pacepa cannot be distracted from the "big" picture:

In Romania, the training of these “sexy” illegals took three to eight years and was done not in a Transylvanian school but in 150 safe houses where trainee agents were kept under round-the-clock control. Many of these safe houses were ordinary flats, moved from time to time to avoid suspicion. There, illegal agents perfected the language of their target country, learnt appropriate skills, such as tennis and bridge, and were taught how to infiltrate western scientific and industrial targets.

Despite the high priority given by the DIE to recruiting illegals with huge penises, Pacepa says only one seduction operation was used externally by his organisation, and that was a honeytrap involving a female Stasi agent, also used by the DIE. In May 1958, he was at a meeting in East Berlin with Markus Wolf, the famed chief of the Stasi’s foreign-intelligence service, when Wolf heard that a Moscow-trained DIE illegal, Gheorghe Mandache, who’d been moved to the city to perfect his German, had vanished with his East German girlfriend. It took over a year to find them; they were living under new identities in Düsseldorf, West Germany. The PGU wanted Mandache killed to discourage other illegals from defecting, and decided that “Gerda”, a German-born Romanian spy, would seduce him.

Pacepa is pitiful enough to ignore, but powerful enough to require refutation. I'll let him speak for himself again, this time, on the Kennedy assasination:

Gerda was one of a number of agents who Pacepa claims underwent cosmetic surgery on their genitals by specialist PGU surgeons. This surgery was most commonly practised on “wives” — women illegals whose role came into being in the 1950s and early ’60s, when the DIE’s Soviet advisers insisted they provide Romanian “wives” to as many western agents as possible in order to keep them “tied” to the DIE for ever. Under PGU guidelines, a “wife” had to have a “tight sex orifice, so that she could squeeze her lover’s penis like a vice,” alleges Pacepa. “PGU doctors specialised in mould-ing the sex orifice according to the particularity of each case,” he explained. It was crucial that the “wife” was sexually experienced. “Each candidate was secretly filmed making love; those selected were helped to perfect their sexual technique by illegal officers who could no longer be sent abroad.” In Programmed to Kill, Pacepa builds a convincing case that Marina Oswald, the wife of Kennedy’s assassin, was a KGB “wife” created specially for Lee Harvey, a loner who was unlikely to have had the social skills necessary to marry a Russian woman in the brief time he courted her.

St. John ends on an ominous note:

Unfortunately, if Pacepa is to be believed, the devastation suffered by victims of Romeo and Juliet agents, and the activities of illegal officers in general, did not end with the cold war, and we may still be at risk even now. This assertion was proven by the 2006 arrest in Montreal of the Russian spy known as Paul William Hampel, who confessed to being an officer of the SVR (the PGU’s successor). “The concept of the illegal officer was and still is unique to Russian intelligence,” says Pacepa. “It is Russia’s most secret weapon of the future.”

Apparently, there are still Russians with large penises that might pose a threat to our freedom. Call me crazy but I am more concerned about the threats posed by Pacepa's continuous media disinformation campaigns than by sex as usual. What better way to distract interested parties from a true investigation of Cold War myths than sordid blatherings about penis size?

Pacepa has demonstrated his talent for exaggeration and embellishment before. As a strong supporter of the Iraq war and Bush-style big government conservatism (which shares some principles with Ceausescu's national socialism), Pacepa penned a piece for the gullible gentlemen at the National Review arguing that international opposition to the war in Iraq was actually a communist plot originating in Moscow. When Pacepa's attempt to initiate a Red Scare failed, he decided it might be better to make Moscow a part of the international terrorist threat. So Pacepa published an article agruing that Moscow had moved Saddam's WMD. Of course, when St. John asked Pacepa about the Transylvanian sex schools, he could be counted on to provide the most lurid, exciting, and conspiratorial account.

I am disappointed in St. John's reluctance to research Pacepa's past and provide a genuine reportage of the Transylvanian sex school myth. Responsible journalists wishing to revisit history should never offer their sources an open podium without first checking to see if they preached snake-oil in the past. Rather than getting anti-communist Romanian emigres like myself aroused by the possibility of an honest report on historical myth, St. John gives the microphone to the Master snake-charmer/myth-maker and elevates him to the status of a prophet.

Of possible further interest:

• "Am tradat Romania in anii cand am servit Securitatea", Pacepa's interview with Ziua in 2006.
• Ovidiu Jur's wonderful website chronicling the history of Ceausescu in documents and images.
  
• "CIA dezumfla mitul Pacepa si il trimite la consult...", a fascinating post at Frauda si Vot Illegal in Senat.
  

[Cross-posted at totalitarianism today.]

Why Ceausescu's systematization failed.

Wikipedia describes systematization as "a program of urban planning carried out under Nicolae Ceausescu's communist regime". After a visit to North Korea in 1971, Ceausescu was favorably impressed by the effectiveness of the personality cult in controlling and keeping an iron grip on the population. He was also pleased with the urban planning that catered to ideological mobilization. In the same year, Ceausescu further embellished the patina of his democratic socialism by appointing himself President of Romania. In his extremely readable Romania: Borderland of Europe, Lucian Boia describes the North Korean influence on Ceausescu:

As President, he appeared like a monarch, with a sceptre in his hand (to the enthusiasm of Salvador Dali, who sent him a congratulatory telegram-- the whole thing was surrealistic indeed!). Then, Elena Ceausescu climbed the ladder of power to become number 2 in the Party....

The Romanian model ended up close to that of North Korean dynastic communism... In its interpretation of history and in the justification for its political actions, Communism puts the masses in the foreground: everything happens through the people and for the people. But in fact, the masses are represented by the Party; and the Party by its leaders. Everywhere, the Communist leadership became personalized to an appreciable, though of course varying, degree. All the Romanians and the North Koreans did was to take the final step. A closed system in which decisions were taken at the top by a restricted group permitted, and indeed almost encouraged, such a shift.

In 1974, Ceausescu applied systematization to destroy and reconstruct existing villages, towns, and cities with the goal of turning Romania into his favorite mysticism, "a multilaterally developed socialist society". According to a country study on Romania:

An especially controversial aspect of systematization was the theory that concentrating the rural population would promote more efficient use of agricultural land. New housing in rural areas after 1974 was subject to strict regulations. Villages were to be structured like towns, with construction of housing concentrated within specified perimeters. The buildings had to be at least two stories high, and surrounding lots were restricted to 250 meters. Private lots for agriculture were to be moved outside the settlement perimeter, diminishing the ability of the village populations to produce their own food, as they were required by law to do after 1981. Moreover, because private plots produced much of the nation's fruits, vegetables, and meat, full implementation of systematization would have jeopardized the food supply for the entire country.

The international community, particularly Hungary and West Germany, criticized systematization as a blatant attempt to forcibly assimilate national minorities. Each village escaping systematization was to have a civic center, often referred to as a "Song to Romania House of Culture." These institutions promised to be useful tools for indoctrination and mobilization and were apparently intended to replace churches as the focal point of community life. By 1989 many churches had already been destroyed, and no plans for rebuilding were evident. The destruction of churches and villages not only severed cultural and historic links to the past, but also threatened community bonds and group autonomy. Much of the international criticism of systematization deplored the investment in such a grandiose scheme amidst rapidly deteriorating living conditions, which had been on a downward spiral since the 1970s. The Victory of Socialism Boulevard was replete with irony as the 1980s witnessed serious food shortages and an energy crisis that prolonged the disparity between urban and rural Romania.

The trigger for systematization in Bucharest was the huge earthquake of 1977 (my father had to take my mother down the stairs over his shoulder because she refused to leave behind her blue jeans and Kents). Apparently, the earthquake mostly struck buildings and objects built prior to World War II, while the structures dating from the communist period held out well. Ceausescu's regime naturally interpreted this as proof of communist superiority to pre-war regimes, thus paving the way for a paradigm shift in its urban development policy. Wapedia provides the details:

The immediate consequences of this new urban policy were the demolition of monuments like Enei Church (founded 1611, rebuilt 1723; with murals by Gheorghe Tattarescu), the Neo-gothic Casa Cerchez or the elegant Baia Centrală public bath house and the suppression of the Authority for the National Patrimony. However, the most pervasive consequence was the commitment of Ceauşescu to accomplish his earlier vision of the monumental Centrul Civic ("civic centre"), which would concentrate and symbolise the emblems of his power.

Ceausescu's systematization scorned traditional architecture, culture, and history with its nihilistic attempt to start society from scratch. Many Romanians were livid. In fact, Wapedia even defines the word Ceausima as a Romanian vernacular linkage of Ceausescu to Hiroshima "coined in the 1980's to describe the huge urban areas of Bucharest torn down on the orders of President Ceausescu, comparing the results with the nuclear attack on Hiroshima".

Some believe that the failure of systematization was a contributing factor to the violent end of the Ceausescu regime in 1989. As I nod my head to agree, I can still remember the Romanian exile community in the 1980's complaining about the demolition of special churches and buildings in Bucharest. Whispers about Ceausescu being a Satanist or planning to cryogenically freeze his body-- because anything is possible in a person who lacks the European respect for the past.

Ceausescu made a huge mistake-- he bet on national socialism, but then he tried to do away with the national heritage he previously deified. Every good dictator knows you can't erase the physical carriers of national mythology without opening the doors for other Gods, histories, and versions of truth. Ultimately, systematization failed because Ceausescu invested too heavily in the national mythos to explain his break from the Warsaw Pact. This investment in "cultural patrimony" required him to keep a solid eye on the past and a devout reverence for tradition-- neither of which was compatible with the construction of a new socialist man.

More on this thread:

• For those who love the dim beauty of Bucharest as it is, Asociatia Bucuresti Pro Urbe is fighting for Cismigiu Park right now. Anyone can get involved, and everyone should.
• Systematization at Ceausescu.org.
• Vladimir Tismaneanu, "The Tragicomedy of Romanian Communism", September 1989.

[Credit for images goes to Bukres Blog.]

The vampire fetish in Western conceptions of Romania: A collection of links.

It is easier to indulge a fetish than to fight it, since a fetish most often designates the unconscious power accorded to a particular object, being, or body part. Why does the vampire continue to haunt the imaginative recreation of Romania?  Certainly the bloodthirty history of Romania's rulers, including Ceausescu's recent grotesque regime, makes the vampire myths attractive to Westerners seeking to understand the turmoils of Romanian history. And the vampire analogy is irresistible when describing the parasitism of Romanian socialism or the market malaise. The surrealist tradition in literature certainly exploited the vampire as a literary device.

Of course, there is nothing I enjoy more than talking to common-sensical Protestants who express concern over the superstitions of Eastern Orthodoxy while planning pilgramages to Romania in search of Dracula. This post is for those who are divided amongst themselves-- fascinated by the vampirology but moored to rationalism by the banality of everyday life. Indulge yourselves....

• "The Vampire in Roumania" by Agnes Mourgoci describes the vampire in Romanian folk-lore.
• The Communist Dracula Pageant brought vampires, communism and beauty pageants to the stage in Boston.
• More folk-lore and legend about Romanian vampires.
• Thomas M. Sipos is the authorial king of the vampire-communist credenza. His latest fictional foray, Vampire Nation, was nominated for a Prometheus Award. The premise: communism leaves behind vampires, a form of parasite, that make the construction of civil society quite challenging.
• Ceausescu adored Vlad Tepes-- he had a soft spot in his un-heart for him.
• Dracula's Castle, an introduction by one steeped in myths.
• Vampress profiles vampires in fiction and literature.
• Vampire-hunting in Romania is a business venture like any other.
• Vampire-slaying kit from 19th century Romania.
• Andrei Codrescu's commentaries on NPR are always spiked with vampirisms. 
• Vampires in a Romanian cemetery from National Geographic.
• Accusations of vampirism levied against Microsoft in Romania.
• "Vlad the Impaler or Dracula?" plus the connection to St. Andrew's Day.
• The Passive Vampire by Gherasim Luca attracted the attention of Romanian surrealists after its publication in 1945. Read and excerpt here.
• How the US military learned from Romanian vampires.

The re-construction of Romanian civil society.

Romania's gradual evolution from one of the most repressive communist dictatorships to a European market democracy continues to astound many scholars and academics, who cited Ceausescu's complete annihilation of Romanian civil society as an almost insurmountable obstacle to transition. How did civil society develop in the Romanian transition period? How did the narrative of the 1989 revolution adjust to revelations of the National Salvation Front's communist ties? How did the Romanian people find a way to claim the revolution as their own and thereby legitimize the movement towards a European democracy?

Julia Brotea and Daniel Beland's paper, "“Better Dead than Communist!” Contentious Politics, Identity Formation, and the University Square Phenomenon in Romania", traces the Romanian struggle to construct a livable national identity in the wake of communism. The authors attempt to show that "the political identity gained during the University Square Phenomenon and the repertoire for political protest it generated played a decisive role in its aftermath and the naissance of a democratic civil society in Romania".

The persecution of the Greek-Catholic Church under communism.

In a paper for the Nicolae Iorga Institute backed by information from the Securitate archives, Cristian Vasile probed the perception of the Securitate on relations between the Vatican and Greek Catholics in Romania. Vasile offers an introduction to the historical issue:

After December 1, 1948 the Romanian Greek Catholic Church was banned and many of its clergy were injailed under the pretext of political offences or even "spying activity”, whereas their only “fault” was the fidelity to their faith. The Communist authorities tried to break the Greek Catholic faithful’s resistance even through the agency of absurd measures, such as the removal of the Romanian language from the Transylvanian Catholic Latin-Rite churches, for instance. Even after 1965, the Greek Catholics, especially priests and prelats (honourable persons like bishops Iuliu Hossu, Alexandru Todea, Iuliu Hirţea, Ioan Dragomir and Ioan Ploscaru) were considered as “dangerous elements”, and they were put under strict surveillance by the Securitate; they could not leave the country for the sittings of the Second Vatican Council although the Holy See invited them.

Among other things, Vasile's paper looks at Greek Catholic dissidents, including Doina Cornea, Viorica Hesia, Puiu Neamtu, and Maria Angelin. The persecution of the Greek Orthodox Church by the Romanian communist regime marks another sad chapter in the history of Romanian communism. For more on this topic:

• The Romanian Greek Catholic Church has a very resourceful website with lots of information in English.
• Memorandum to the Romanian State from the Greek-Catholic Believers from Romania and from the Entire World, September 2002.
• A document from a meeting in Sibiu 2007 in which the Romanian Orthodox and Greek-Catholic churches are declared "sister churches". 
• Romanian Greek-Catholic Church History through the ages.
• For the specific history of a congregation, the History of St. Mary's Parish and of the Romanian Catholic Church is excellent.
• The Dintre Brazi Church (picture in this post) is the oldest Romanian church in Sibiu.
  

A photo of the Securitate in Timisoara circa December 1989.

From Asociatia Memorialul Revolutiei, "F11," Making the History of 1989, Item #572.

Life in Romania circa 1986 according to Pavel Campeanu.

In1986, Pavel Câmpeanu, a Romanian sociologist who had built his career on support for socialism and who had shared a prison cell with Nicoale Ceauşescu during World War II, smuggled out an article which was subsequently published anonymously by a purported "visitor to Romania" in the New York Review of Books. At the time, it was assumed that the Securitate punished and assasinated dissidents even after they left the country.

The article is significant for its detailed description of the painfully bleak quality of life for Romanians living through the final years of Ceausescu's national socialism. I've excerpted a bit, but the article is well-written and worth reading in full:

One of my friends said that to understand the recent developments I must first consult a decree by the Council of State of the Romanian Socialist Republic issued on October 10, 1981. The exact text ran as follows:

It shall constitute illegal trading activities and, in accordance with the terms set down in the Penal Code, shall be punishable by six months to five years in prison, to purchase from any state commercial center or cooperative store, either with a view to hoarding or in any quantity that exceeds the requirements of a family for a period of a month, oil, sugar, wheat or corn flour, rice, coffee and all other foodstuffs the hoarding of which might affect the interests of other consumers and proper provisioning of the population.

Since then, he said, the situation has changed drastically. Coffee can no longer be bought by private citizens and has been replaced by an ersatz substance disapproved of by physicians, which the public, guessing at the ingredients, has nicknamed "henna." Meat, buttermilk, and bread are rationed in most districts, sugar and cooking oil throughout the country—and the ration is much more generous than the shops charged with distributing them can supply.

Since 1968, it should be explained, Romania has been divided into more than forty districts, each with a Party secretary, who is its supreme head. He is responsible for delivering a quota of food from his district to the central government—a task that must give him bad dreams. For it poses an insoluble problem: if he distributes locally less food than is called for by the plan—as he is virtually obliged to do—he will be popular with the authorities but held in contempt by the people of the district; and if he tries to help the population get more food, he will be unpopular with the authorities. Everyone has a different approach to the same dilemma—for even in the CP no district secretary is quite like another—and this psychological diversity makes for diversity in the distribution of food shortages throughout the country. In Cluj or Pitesti the situation, I was told, is frankly horrible; in Sibiu or Vilcea it is merely wretched. Thousands go from district to district on shopping excursions from which they often return empty-handed.

Romania seems unique in many ways. It is the only European country in which one can be sentenced to five years in prison for buying excessive quantities of food that is generally unavailable to the public. It is also, in my experience, the only such country in which the legal work week is forty-six hours and the urban population often spends three to four hours a day shopping for groceries. In Romania President Ceausescu takes upon himself to compose lyrics for a new national anthem, rather than entrusting the task to a poet. And in spite of a republican form of government of which he is the constitutional head, the president carries a scepter and is grooming his son as his successor.

Workers often spend entire days waiting for raw materials that their factory cannot obtain. If they leave the premises without permission or bring alcoholic beverages, or cigarettes, or lighters, or matches onto the shop floor, they are regarded as having broken the law and can receive prison sentences from three months up to two years (Decree 400 of December 29, 1981, Article 18).

The Letter of the Six from 1989.

In March of 1989, six big wigs in the Romanian Communist Party sent Nicolae Ceauşescu an open letter that was also strategically leaked to the international press. In this letter, the six openly disagreed with Ceausescu's policies and suggested reform measures. Scholars differ over the extent to which the writing of this letter was truly risky or bold, since their privileged status as old-school members of the communist coterie provided them with protection.

On Silviu Bruncan's view, "the six signatories of the letter did suffer some reprisals, such as house arrest, but they were treated relatively gently, since they were widely respected in the Romanian Communist Party and had important international connections". As a signatory to the letter, Bruncan's opinion is not a statement of fact but rather a historical account of how the six signatories wanted to be perceived by international public opinion. Personally, I am skeptical about the extent to which this letter reflects anything except the power-hunger of its signers, but educated gentlemen like Immanuel Wallerstein have a less cynical perspective.

Among the six signatories to the letter:

• Gheorghe Apostol, former member of the Politburo and chairman of trade
 unions
• Alexandru Birladeanu, former member of the Politburo and chairman of the planning committee
• Corneliu Manescu, former minister of foreign affairs and president of the UN General Assembly
• Constantin Pirvulescu, founding member of the Communist party
• Grigore Raceanu, veteran of the Communist party
• Silviu Brucan, former acting editor of Scinteia

 Without further ado, here is an excerpt from this letter:

To President Ceausescu:
At a time when the very idea of socialism, for which we have fought, is discredited by your policy, and when our country is being isolated in Europe, we have decided to speak up. We are perfectly aware that by doing so we are risking our liberty and even our lives; but we feel duty-bound to appeal to you to reverse the present course before it is too late.

The international community is reproaching you for nonobservance of the Helsinki final act, which you have signed yourself. Romanian citizens are reproaching you for nonobservance of the constitution, which you have sworn to observe. Here are the facts:

• The whole plan for systematization of villages [i.e., their "modernization" by destroying             existing buildings] and the forced removal of peasants to three-story apartment blocks runs             against Article 36 of the constitution, which protects the right to personal property of a household, with its annexes and the land on which it is situated.
• The decree forbidding Romanian citizens to have contact with foreigners has never been voted on by the legislative body and never been published; thus it lacks legal power. And yet our citizens are threatened with being fired, harassed, arrested, and sentenced for doing so.
• The Civic Center [in Bucharest], the biggest multibillion lei investment made in Romania, has no public budget and is being built in violation of all existing laws regulating constructions and their financing. The cost of the immense building has tripled because of changes you order every month in the interior and exterior of the building.
• Securitatea [i.e., the State Security Service], which we created to defend the socialist order against the exploiting classes, is now directed against workers demanding their rights, against old members of the Party, and against honest intellectuals exercising their rights to petition (Article 34) and freedom of speech (Article 28) guaranteed by the constitution.
• Factories and institutions have been ordered to force their employees to work on Sunday against Article 19 of the constitution and the labor code.
• Mail is systematically violated and our telephone conversations are cut off in violation of Article 34, guaranteeing their privacy. To sum up, the constitution has been virtually suspended and there is no legal system in force. You must admit, Mr. President, that a society cannot function if the authorities, starting from the top, show disrespect for the law.

Planning no longer works in the Romanian economy. The meetings of the Executive Political Committee are all oriented toward the past, [and taken up with] exhorting the workers to make up for the unfulfilled plan of the previous year, previous semester, or previous month. An increasing number of factories lack raw materials, energy, or markets. 

Agricultural policy is also in disarray. Harsh administrative measures are directed against the peasants, who, according to your own data, provide 40 percent of the country's vegetables, 56 percent of the fruit, 60 percent of the milk, and 44 percent of the meat, though they have only 12 percent of the arable land. But, of course, what is now predominant in the villages is the fear of being "systematized," with seven or eight thousand villages threatened with being razed. Above all the economic, cultural, and humanitarian objections of the civilized world to that program, a legitimate question arises: Why urbanize villages when you cannot ensure decent conditions of urban life in the cities, namely adequate heating, lighting, transportation, not to mention food? A government that for five winters in a row has been unable to solve such vital problems for its population proves itself incompetent and incapable of governing. Therefore, we are not pressing on you any demand in this respect.

The very fact that Germans, Hungarians, and Jews are emigrating en masse shows that the policy of forced assimilation should be renounced.

Finally, we are deeply worried that Romania's international position and prestige are rapidly deteriorating. As you know, this is concretely shown by the decision of quite a few countries to close their embassies in Bucharest. Most alarming, embassies of such European nations as Denmark and Portugal have already been closed and others may follow. Our growing isolation affects not only diplomatic relations. We have lost the most-favored-nation status for trade with the United States and as a result some of our textile factories have no orders. The EEC is unwilling to extend its trade agreement with Romania, which will negatively affect other sectors of our economy. You have always maintained that summit meetings are decisive in improving relations between states. But how are you going to improve Romania's external relations when all the leaders of the non-Communist nations of Europe refuse to meet with you? Romania is and remains a European country and as such must advance along with the Helsinki process and not turn against it. You started changing the geography of the countryside, but you cannot remove Romania to Africa. To stop the negative processes, both domestic and international, besetting our nation we appeal to you, as a first step, to take the following measures:

1. To state categorically in unequivocal terms that you have renounced the plan of systematization of villages.

2. To restore the constitutional guarantees regarding the rights of citizens. This will enable you to observe the decisions of the Vienna Conference on Human Rights.

3. To put an end to the food exports that are threatening the biological existence of our nation.

Once such measures are taken, we are prepared to participate in a constructive spirit in a dialogue with the government on the ways and means of overcoming the present impasse.

The last days of Ceausescu's dicatorship.

Mircea Munteanu revisits the last days of Ceausescu's dictatorship with a few new documents from the archives. One of these documents contains the Romanian minutes of the conversation between Nicolae Ceausescu and Mikhail Gorbachev on 4 December 1989,  twelve days before the start of the Romanian Revolution and 20 days before the Romanian dictator’s execution. It reveals the extent to which Ceausescu's chosen detachment from the Soviet efforts at reform communism also detached him from reality in a more general sense.

In this conversation with Gorbachev, Ceausescu urges him to take military action against the "velvet revolutions" occurring in Eastern Europe. Ceasescu never asks for Soviet assistance to Romania-- he does not indicate any concerns about potential uprisings on his own turf. He also does not seem concerned about spillover effects. Though Munteanu does not mention this, I suspect Ceausescu worried about the effect of these uncontested velvet revolutions on his foreign policy position of Romanian exceptionalism. The leverage that Ceausescu had in his dealings with non-communist governments depended on maintaining the perception that Ceausescu was an honest broker in a sea of Soviet-satellite chaos. If other satellite states adopted democratic or market-based reforms with no protest from Moscow, Ceausescu would lose his bargaining position.

What kept Gorbachev from considering military intervention (which he later pursued in the Soviet republics)?  Mircea Muteanu sums the changing policy environment as follows:

Fortified in his confidence in US President George Bush following the 2-3 December 1989 Malta summit, Gorbachev rejected the idea of military intervention. Later, the Soviet government would outright reject the possibility that Soviet troops be used on the behalf of the Romanian dictator, or the revolutionary forces.3 Following the Romanian coup d’etat, Washington made clear that it no longer viewed Soviet actions in Eastern Europe as necessarily a cause of instability. The US–Soviet talks, along with Gorbachev’s unwillingness to use force to maintain communist regimes, proved that the Brezhnev Doctrine was dead.

The publication of these documents is all the more significant for the glaring lack of primary documents on what happened in the last few days of Ceausescu's regime. As Munteanu observes, no one really knows what happened between December 22nd and December 25th. Unlike the Securitate files, the majority of Romanian Communist Party files remain classified.

The conversation minutes leave the reader with a gothic aftertaste-- Ceausescu's insulated existence emerges in his responses and statements to Gorbachev. There are several instances in which Ceausescu seems to be reading from a dated script of Communist orthodoxy, and other instances in which Ceausescu's dreamworld rears its beehived head. First, Ceausescu makes it clear to Gorbachev that communism cannot admit mistakes or attempt to reform since its very nature as the culmination of historical materialism precludes error. History cannot be wrong. When Gorbachev discusses perestroika and the new course of socialism, Ceausescu insists that a change in tactics or policy is not deserving of mention in the history books, where communism's perfect, infallible march must continue in spite of missteps in its implementation. The Revolution demands a perfect record:

"Of course, in such a grandiose activity there have also been mistakes and abuses, but history only records that which assures advance. "

Ceausescu seems determined to set up an exploratory committee for the possibility of coordinating a conference for the socialist countries, but Gorbachev explains that the interest in an international conference does not exist, since most socialist states are struggling with domestic pressures to reform. Ceausescu declares his opposition to these reformist movements. Then he tries again to get Gorbachev's agreement on a future conference. Here is the conversation record:

Ceausescu:  But we have received requests from many parties and, since this is such a dire time for the communist movement, we have a responsibility to do something even if a small number of parties might show up. Do you know what Lenin said in 1903?

Gorbachev: No, I do not.

Ceausescu:  No matter how few we are, we must raise the flag. The people need to see that we  are taking action to extend the influence of socialism and the revolutionary movement.

Gorbachev:   I was under the impression that what we do regarding the renewal of socialism does raise the interest of others in the development of socialism.

Ceausescu: We do not have the time to discuss this. There are some good things, there are a few things  that are not as good, and if we are to discuss this right now we would need a great deal of  time. There are some good things.

Gorbachev remains unswayed by Ceausescu's pleas for the conference; instead, he urges Ceausescu to set up an exploratory committee on his own and not to worry about trying to involve the Soviet Union. But Ceausescu insists, citing the fact that other political parties have international conferences to solidify the bases and discover potentials for cooperation.

Ceausescu:  ...Then why can not thecommunist parties meet as well?

Gorbachev:  Because, some time ago, Cdes. Ceausescu and [Italian Communist leader Enrico] Berlinguer9 were against that.

Surely Ceausescu's cheeks were feeling a little warm at this point in the conversation. But he plows forward and begins to express his concerns about his communist neighbors:

Ceausescu: We are very preoccupied about what is going on with a few European socialist countries. We understand the drive to perfect, to renew, but I do not want to discuss this right now. The format of this renewal places in grave danger not just socialism in the respective countries but also the very existence of the communist parties there. If we allow this flow of events, a dire situation will develop. In any case, one can not say that socialism did not accomplish anything in those countries. I believe that the Soviet Union, and I am referring primarily to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, could have a certain role—not by the force of the military—to help produce a better orientation. You were speaking today about a better orientation for those parties and countries. Of course, a meeting between the socialist countries and our parties could help, but we have to think hard about the actions taking place in some countries.

Gorbachev: Here we need to ask how we all could act and more importantly how they should act. Who prevented Czechoslovakia and the East Germany—countries that had a high level of economic development and high living standards—from beginning in time the process of modernization and [from] taking into account the changes that began to take shape in the development of society? If they would have done this at the right time, today’s events would be different. We too, in the Soviet Union. If we would have taken care of the modernization of the technology and of economic development at the right time, there would be a different approach today. There was a lot of talk at the time, in meetings and during congresses, about the technological and scientific revolutions, about the development of our country. Yet in the end, all was set aside. Right now we have a report in the Central Committee about the technological and scientific revolution from 1973, and, look, 15 years later, we are just beginning to do what needed to be done then. I believe that we have lost a lot of our prestige because we have not taken direct action regarding those problems at the right time.

Now Gorbachev assumes the role of father to Ceausescu's naive child. Ceausescu gets defensive, insisting that Romania has experimented with a few reforms and the results were not stellar. Gorbachev uses this point to begin articulating his policy of differentiation-- each country will have different ways and reforms on the path to communism. The Soviet Union will not attempt to force its views on other socialist states any longer.

Ceausescu: We have worked on and succeeded in bringing about the development of society and the economy. What you are doing now we have tried in the past. We created then the so-called private-holders and after a year we saw they are getting rich and we put a stop to the entire
situation.

Gorbachev: Is this the future you see for us?

Ceausescu: If some get rich by playing the market, that is not a future, you know that I’m sure. We have introduced the idea of economic self-rule, the new economic mechanism, and the leadership councils.

Gorbachev: As I listen to you I cannot help but think that in a year you have time to visit every administrative region in your country.

Ceausescu: Maybe not quite all the regions.

Gorbachev: Tell me, though, in a country as big as ours, how could we rule in the same manner as you? We need to think of different methods.

Ceausescu: We, too, have autonomy, but there is a difference between the autonomy of republics or even regions and the autonomy of factories. In any case, general direction and control from the center are necessary, even for the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev: Comrade Ceausescu, we too desire a powerful center, but we think of it in a somewhat different manner.

As Gorbachev intimates a policy of decentralization, Ceausescu gets panicky and begins to defend the virtues of central command.

Ceausescu: In any case, it is mistaken to allow the factories, even at the national level, to be outside central control. A lot of autonomy, a lot of rights, of course, but under a central guidance. About 20 years back, we gave them a lot of rights and, the first thing they did was to take loans
and make all kinds of poor economic investments. Then we realized that we needed to control certain things so we took some of their liberties away. For Romania, $11 billion debt in 1980 was a grave problem. As a matter of fact, I can tell you that in my discussions with Brezhev at the time, he told me: don’t go and get yourself in debt. He told me that a number of times, but my mistake was that I gave too much discretion to the factories and all of them decided that if they have discretion then they can take credits from outside.

Gorbachev is unconvinced. He urges Ceausescu to move on to bilateral matters. Ceausescu wants to discuss economic relations but he notes that the prime ministers have not had the chance to meet. The prime ministers then agree to meet on January 9th, 1990 around the COMECON meeting. Then Gorbachev makes an odd statement to Ceausescu, who must have given an impression of concern about this date for the meeting:

Gorbachev: You shall be alive on the 9 January. In any case, what are the problems that preoccupy you?

As we know, Ceausescu did not live to see January 9th of 1990. The discussion moves to oil, and Ceausescu notes that Romania has depleted its oil reserves. The procurement of petroleum has become a critical economic issue. Ceausescu would like to make arrangements in which Romania provides iron ore to the Soviet Union in exchange for petrol or other critical resources. This was a customary bilateral arrangement between the Soviet Union and its satellite states. However, the prime minister speaks up to explain why this is no longer possible.

Ryzhkov: ... I am not against [this] and I assume we will talk about specialization and cooperation, in production and every other aspect, but I want to mention that, and this is not targeted at Romania, we will present a report on 15 December regarding our plans for the development of the economy. We have prepared the necessary documents and have distributed them to the deputies for debate. When we prepared those documents, we began with the idea that we need to move from the exchange of goods, the barter system, towards regular commerce. This is why, on 9 January, when the meeting between the chiefs of governments will take place, we will bring this problem up. We know that many countries agree with us, many have suggested that we move from the barter system to world prices and payments in hard currency. We understand that this can not be done over night. Maybe we will need to wait 1-2 years until we can switch over to this system. This does not mean however that we can not or will not negotiate long term deals, even in
regard to bartering for goods, but we have no other solution in the long term. Neither for us, nor for the other countries, can [we] continue in this [old] system. This is why you should think about this yourself.

Clearly uncomfortable with the ramifications of this statement, Ceausescu tries to play along. However, Gorbachev insists on being explicit.

Gorbachev: We desire that, in this whole process we also incorporate the redesign of our financial system and the system of prices, to try to quickly reach the convertibility of the ruble. The most important thing is to integrate ourselves in the world market, otherwise we have no basis
of comparison.

Ceausescu: This problem will need to be discussed, discussed for a long time.

Rather than draw broader conclusions from Gorbachev's dismissal of conventional bilateral ties, Ceausescu presses on, trying again to secure a visit from the Soviet prime minister to Romania. Clearly he wants to mount a propaganda campaign about Romania's strong position in the international community, and a visit from the prime minister provides the press shots. They agree to find a date in February for this visit.

The conversation ends; little has been accomplished. Ceausescu probably congratulated himself on his diplomatic prowess. The last days of Ceausescu's dreamworld were barely weeks away.

Also of possible interest:

• "Gorbachev's Brest-Litovsk: The Kremlin's Grand Compromise in Eastern Europe", Leon Aron, Heritage Foundation Policy Backgrounder #724, 15 April 1989. Written prior to the big events of December 1989, this backgrounder encourages American policy officials to court Gorbachev and assist him in disengaging from the Eastern European satellite states.

The first anti-communist DJ: Cornel Chiriac.

Eugen Tomiuc shares his affection for Cornel Chiriac in an article at RFE/RL:

No other figure was more influential for my generation than the legendary music presenter Cornel Chiriac. A perpetual rebel, Chiriac and his radio music show "Metronom" had been hugely popular in Romania even before his defection in 1969. But once Chiriac joined Radio Free Europe, "Metronom" achieved cult status.

I remember that the streets in many Romanian cities were deserted on Sunday afternoons -- that's when "Metronom" was aired. A whole generation of young Romanians looked forward to staying home, glued to their shortwave sets, to hear this:

"Cornel Chiriac salutes you and invites you to enjoy the album of a band that is about to disappear..."

Like the unknown band he was presenting, Chiriac, too, would soon disappear. He was stabbed to death in March 1975 in a parking lot in Munich, leading to whispers that the dreaded communist secret police, the Securitate, was behind his death.

The regime feared him. His shows were never about music alone. They were about liberty, oppression, politics, dictatorship -- and music. Perhaps he had become too popular and influential among Romanian youths.

In the days after Chiriac's death, my friends and I discreetly wore black bands on the lapels of our school uniforms. When asked whether someone close had died, we would all reply, "Yes, a very good friend." Many Romanian youths made the same gesture. While other RFE journalists had been targeted or even killed by the Securitate, it was Chiriac's death that hit closest to home -- for he was one of us.

In fact, I remember my parents' hushed whispers about the Securitate chasing and killing Chiriac-- a reminder that even in America, we were not truly safe. The power of the Securitate was ever-present in my childhood home; my bright, educated parents could not be convinced that the secret police would not somehow come and find us.

Chiriac provided a flash of light and levity in the drab spirituals dungeons of communist Romania. Rather than stick to the scripts provided by Ceausescu's regime, Chiriac played the latest rock n' roll music straight from America or the UK. He gave young people an opportunity to dream outside the context of the commutopia.

You can listen to a number of Chiriac's broadcasts here. Or you can read "Make Love Not War" by Monica Andrei. Or you can read "A Fost Odata.." by Doru Ionescu. Or you can learn why Chiriac earned the title "First Anticommunist DJ".

Ceausescu's communist monarchy and the role of jokes in postcommunist history.

Ben Lewis directed a documentary film in 2002, When Propaganda Ruled: Nicolae Ceausescu, King of Communism, intended to put Ceausescu's theatrical propaganda skills center-stage. For those interested in the personality cult developed by Ceausescu in the 1970's and 1980's, this film is a gold mine. It documents the absurdity of life under the Ceausescu personality cult, including grimy and humiliating details of daily rituals and symbolic rites. According to this film, newspapers were required "to mention his name 40 times on every page" and "factory workers spent months rehearsing dance routines for huge shows at which thousands of citizens were lined up to form the words Nicolae Ceausescu with their bodies".

Lewis used Ceausescu's own archive of propaganda films to make this documentary, and the truth therein is stranger than fiction and more mind-numbing than the cliche-infested chatter of cocktail parties. In an interview with the BBC, Lewis discusses how he got the idea for his more recent film, Hammer and Tickle: The History of the Communist Joke, while hanging out in Romania with his friends listening to the many jokes they told to pass the time. He notes that the atrocity of communism is best understood through the humorous ways in which people dealt with it:

"First I observed that there was this anonymous body of literature in communist countries, namely the jokes. Then I asked former citizens of communist states if they remembered the jokes. They all replied with a tangible passion and enthusiasm, that these jokes were important to them. They told me ones I hadn't yet heard spontaneously, and told me how they used to spend evenings round the kitchen table telling each other political jokes. That convinced me that the jokes were important - they not only had a significance as historical documents, they had an emotional significance to the people who told them. I don't know if communism 'depends' on humour but it is, as Deleuze and Guattari would say, a humour-producing machine. The absurdities of communist economic theory, and the obvious gap between what the state said was happening and what people were experiencing in their daily lives, was in itself absurd and ridiculous and therefore humorous. As one interviewee told me "Reality contained jokes, and the jokes contained reality."

Lewis fascination with the communist joke led him to write an essay, "Hammer and Tickle" (pdf version), for The Prospect, in which he reveals some fascinating history:

In 1950-51, a group of Harvard anthropologists undertook one of the most influential research projects of the postwar era. The US government wanted to find out how Soviet citizens might react if the US invaded Russia. So the academics interviewed thousands of displaced Russian citizens living in camps in Germany. When asked to describe what Soviet society was like, the refugees told jokes: "Did you hear the one about the sheep who tried to leave the USSR? They were stopped at the border by a guard…." "Why do you wish to leave Russia?" the guard asked. "It's the secret police," replied the sheep. "Stalin has ordered them to arrest all the elephants." "But you aren't elephants." "Try telling that to the secret police."

In the 1950s, the New York Times Magazine would devote the odd page to jokes from the Harvard project. From the 1960s onwards, volumes of communist jokes were published in paperback form in Europe and North America. Willy Brandt was a renowned communist joke-teller, but there was one western politician who took the jokes more seriously than anyone else: Ronald Reagan. He ordered the state department to collect the jokes and send them to him in weekly memos. As a result, Paul Goble, head of the Balkan desk in the 1980s, assembled a collection of 15,000 communist jokes. Reagan often used Goble's gags in his speeches and negotiations. When Gorbachev came to Washington, Reagan told him a communist joke, later boasting at a press conference that he had laughed. The joke, which made fun of the communist theory that a transitional era of socialism was preceding the communist utopia, went like this: Two men are walking down a street in Moscow. One asks the other, "Is this full communism? Have we really passed through socialism and reached full communism?" The other answers "Hell, no. It's gonna get a lot worse first."

Here is a YouTube bit on the communist queen Elena from Lewis' movie. And here is Ben Lewis on the Internet Movie Database.

Doina Cornea's Securitate file.

The Securitate files remain a complicated and dark part of recent Romanian history. In 2002, Le Monde published an article about the selective opening of the files. In this article, they profiled Doina Cornea's experience with her own files:

"I’ve always liked a cigarette with my coffee,” Doina Cornea continues. “At one point, I was contacted by a young African who was studying in Romania. He told me how much he admired me, and offered to carry my protest letters to the West. Each time he came to visit me, he would bring a packet of coffee, something you didn’t often see at that time. I suspected this young man was up to something, and my husband told me to stop accepting his gifts. But I always took his coffee. For a year, I drank coffee which I imagined was paid for by the Securitate, and had a lot of fun sending their informer off on wild goose chases. It turns out I was right. When I was able to read my file, I found reports the student had written about me. Sometimes he would exaggerate so as to look good. This is typical of informers. They make certain things out to be bigger than they are, so as to seem invaluable to their bosses.”

It was in April 2001 that Doina Cornea made her first request to see her secret police file. She had to jump a series of bureaucratic hurdles, but eventually, 28 voluminous files were opened to her on condition she go consult them in Bucharest, more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) from where she lives. “It’s been tough,” she admits. “My pension isn’t big enough to pay for frequent trips to Bucharest, or to pay for all the photocopying I’d have to do. I don’t think I’ll live long enough to read all they wrote about me.”

In spite of the revelations of human deception occasioned by her files, Cornea is glad she made the decision to see them.

“I’m happy and at peace. The past hasn’t spoiled my friendships. I still see friends who know that I know. We don’t ever speak of this, but I think all Romanians should go see their own file and get to know themselves better, because we can’t move forward by hiding behind lies.” The truth hurts, though. The truth is that the Securitate would not have succeeded in its totalitarian enterprise without the help of many ordinary Romanians. The secret police with its 20,000 or so officers could never have kept watch on several million people. The Securitate’s secret, so to speak, was its ability to recruit some 600,000 informers from among the men and women in the street. According to a study done by the Romanian Political Prisoners Association, 39 percent of the informers were university-educated, while 37 percent had finished high school. An even more troubling statistic: Just 1.5 percent of the collaborators were paid and 1.5 percent were blackmailed, while fully 97 percent were motivated purely by “political and patriotic feeling.”

In an interview with Ziua last year, Cornea noted that Romanians have gotten used to being ordered around. The post-communist period has been more difficult because everyone is a little "lost" or disoriented, searching for a leader or a scapegoat. Cornea also shares her perspectives on Romanian politicians, monarchy, and civil society in this interview. She does not appear to have suffered for seeing her Securitate file.

Perhaps the emigre situation is different. Every year, as we purchase our tickets to visit Romania, my mother struggles with the decision of whether to request her files. She is sure that the files will be damning, for a defector in 1979 was nothing if not an enemy of the communist state. Selfishly, I hope that this year, she will make the appeal. My interests are impure-- I am fascinated by history, seduced by the prospect of first-hand accounts of the communist bureaucracy, haunted by dreams of bygone totalitarianisms.

The purpose of history as understood by Ceausescu.

Thanks to book stands of Bucharest which lined the streets in the early 1990's, I was able to purchase a number of Romanian history books and textbooks issued under the Ceausescu period. At first glance,the texts are remarkable only for their dramatic, airbrushed pictures of the Great Leader, Ceausescu, posted immediately inside the cover.

I thought I would share a little excerpt from an "official" history published by the Romanian News Agency Publishing House in 1980 entitled, Romania: Pages of History. This book was produced to serve as international propaganda supporting the aims of Romanian national socialism. My copy is printed in English on the flimsy, toilet-paper-like pages so popular in communist countries. However, the book indicates that the book is also available in French, German, Russian, and Spanish.

At that time, Ceausescu's concern about Russian intervention (best execmplified in the sending of troops to Poland and Czechoslovakia to punish unfriendly local leaders) led him to become the mouthpiece for rights of national self-determination. The tension between his assertion of these rights to national self-determination and the presence of large minorities of Germans and Hungarians in Transylvania forced Ceausescu to dance a rhetorical jig. Ultimately, his commitment to national socialism made little sense in light of his purported commitment to international communism. He provides his own convoluted version of this view in the introduction to this book:

In our epoch, when the nations have strongly asserted themselves, it is in this sense that one should understand the question of the nationalities which live on the territory of one state or another as an outcome of a long, historical coexistence. They should enjoy all the gains of the socialist society in our countries, all the freedoms, use the language they choose, as it is guaranteed in Romania. At the same time, we should understand that we have the common duty to make socialism triumph through the joint work of all citizens, regardless of nationality, in each of our countries, to ensure, by close cooperation, their fast and multilateral progress, observing the principles which underlie the ideals of the socialist society.

We must firmly be against the imperialist policy of strength and dictate, for a broad economic, cultural-scientific policy of equality and respect among all peoples. This is the only way in which history can serve the real purposes of science and, at the same time, our socialist aspirations, the policy of developing Romania, our people, securing it a dignified and equal place among the socialist nations, among all world nations.

Ceausescu's verbal ju-jitsu does not shy away from revealing the true purpose of history as understood by the Romanian communists, namely, "to serve the real purposes of science and.. socialist aspirations". As Ceausescu makes clear, history exists to serve the needs of the state. If the state needs to provide a scientific basis for historical materialism, history must assume its proper position as story-teller for this campaign. If the state needs a justification for political repression, history must reveal the true enemies which lie within. History is government's hostage.

According to Romania: Pages of History, Bucharest is the "capital of world historiography". In an essay by Ion Popescu-Puturi, Ceausescu himself is revealed as the father of history, second only to the invisible Hegelian dialectic which compels Marx's march towards communism. Popescu-Puturi writes:

Romania's capital city is the venue of the 15th International Congress on Historical Sciences held over August 10-17 under the high patronage of President Nicolae Ceausescu. The choice of Romania as the place for a scientific event of such scope is a recognition of her prestige enjoyed in the world, of her contribution to the defence of peace, development of broad relations among peoples, among scientists all over the world. The holding of the world congress of history in Bucharest comes also as a recognition of Romania's long traditions and reputed school of historical research which enjoys the president of the country's direct support and guidance. President Ceausescu's profound concept of the origins and historical fate of the Romanian people laid down in true essay form in his speeches has given broad propsects to the Romanian historiography to elucidate the major moments in Romanian history, to approach and solve essential problems of world history.

The writings in this book provide an triumphalist, Romano-centric, and often anti-Slav interpretation of historical events in the founding of the Romanian state. The fact that this history was taught to millions of young students in Ceausescu's Romania certainly accounts for the political power of Romanian nationalism in the current postcommunist environment.

For more information on Ceausescu's historiography, the 15th International Congress, and related threads:

• An article from History Today on the 15th International Congress for which this book was produced.
• An excellent article by Razvan Paraianu titled "The History Textbooks Controversy in Romania".
  
• The report from the 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences) on the theme, "The Uses and Misuses of History and the Responsibilities of Historians, Past and Present".
• Dr. Lajos Kazar takes issue with a few assertions made at the Bucharest Congress about the dates of Romanian statehood. His concerns are duly noted.
• Other activities in which Ion Popescu-Pututi gained fame and reknown, apart from writing historical propaganda, of course.
  

Repercussions of Polish strikes in Romania, 1981.

Browsing through the CIA's Freedom of Information Act releases,  I discovered an interesting bit on how Ceausescu worried about the impact of the Polish strikes on disgruntled Romanian workers.

Codrescu on censorship in communist Romania.

These chunks of writing are drawn from Andrei Codrescu's wonderful memoir, The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto For Escape in which he details his experience under Romanian communism and his life in exile. In the excerpt below, Codrescu describes the role and confusion of communist censors:

The Janus-faced censors in the towers had to look both outside and inside their domain for unauthorized books. In addition they had to define and maintain the official ideology they were sworn to defend. It was not an easy job, particularly since no one, at least in Romania, was doing it with any particular zeal. After Stalin had written all the books, only exegetes and enforcers were left. Our schoolteachers, forced to parrot the line of the textbooks, were bored out of their minds, as were we. The immense boredom into which I was born was an ideal conductor for the forbidden and the transcendent. The (real) penalties meted for breaching this boredom made it all worthwhile: my world was made to order for adolescent rebellion. I viewed my teachers and the countless Party small-fry who ran everything as insects (particularly since I'd read Kafka). These bugs were trying to confine my world with their unconvincing edicts because they were not well. They were ill.

The censor was a flawed person because he could not be entirely loyal. To be so, he'd have to have an exact idea of what he was being asked to forbid, and the State could not provide one. Consequently, he embarked upon his enterprise of interdiction with only the vaguest of guidelines, and found that he had to invent the enemy. The use of imagination, even under such minimal conditions, was self-defeating because imagination, once kindled, could not be extinguished. The censor, at the mercy of his blazing imagination, began to see enemies everywhere while beset simultaneously by the suspicion that they did not exist at all. This sort of paranoia followed by radical doubt eventually became self-paranoia and self-doubt: the censor questioned his own existence. He became invisible to himself at certain times and in varying degrees, states for which he compensated by making himself extremely visible and dangerous at other times. These moods determined the weather and depth of censorship.

A few pages later, Codrescu turns to the self-censorship practiced by so many under communist regimes. In return for icing Ceausescu's birthday cakes, the self-censored were ensured vacations to Mamaia. But no vacation can take a man far enough from the treacherous self.

The self-censored, who pursued a life without intellectual minefields, suffered from tameness. They were timid academics who kept their jobs through endless kowtowing and mandarin reasoning. Their conservative forms were quite well crafted, hiding the empty insides. Content had vacated them, leaving in its wake a sterile virtuousity that was the subject of endless, equally sterile reviews.

The self-censored kept the literary machine grinding on to no one's surprise, pleasure or delight. They turned up dutifully at congresses, readings, conferences, and rallies, their puffed-up, gray faces with large, dark circles under heavy, horn-rimmed glasses. Their air of weariness was a signal to the world to leave them alone so that they could start drinking. The self-censored drank themselves to death at the red-clothed tables of the Writer's Union, in dives, and at home. When they traveled abroad, their first order of business was getting expensive booze to drink. It was their payoff for years of restraint, deliberate suppression of talent, thought, and life....

The self-censored lied, but they were so unconvincing that every word they wrote was the opposite of what they would have liked everyone to believe. They served as weather vanes. Their only hope, and one that was,  alas, being realized, was that eventually everyone would exhibit the same ambiguous,  ironic disposition. At that point, the lie moved on to a new level, where it was authenticated by ubiquity. Foreign journals and books were confiscated at the border, not because of their content but because they conferred status to the censor who could display them on his coffee table. Too amorphous to hurt, too ambiguous to catch, too faceless to love, the self-censored flowed heavily, as a sort of intellectual molasses, into the life of the country, gumming up the works.

Andrei Serban's production of Hamlet.

Reading the May 2000 issue of Parabola in bed last night, I was surprised to find an interview with Romanian theatre director Andrei Serban on his production of Hamlet in New York City starring Liev Schreiber. In this production, Hamlet is not constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but rather, is understood as a man on a mission. The play itself is interpreted as a mythic tale about the redemption of humanity through right action. Serban emphasizes the conflict as a discovery process of the right action:

"So Hamlet is stuck in the not knowing, in the dilemma of how to be. He feels lost. There is no sense, no direction to his life. Then he meets the Ghost. He didn't know about the crime. The Ghost tells him the truth, gives him the task of revenge, and leaves. From then on, Hamlet has to find his own way. He has to become a seeker of the truth. Unless he verifies the facts for himself, he cannot do the act."

On Serban's view, this discovery of the truth, like a visit from a ghost, is meant to haunt us, since we should grapple with how to act based on this discovery. He believes Shakespeare used theater "in order to awaken conscience", loosely defined as this deep knowledge of truth. For Serban, Shakespeare's plays offer "theater as the mirror of life", not reality, but "the reflection of reality", which, in turn, provides a "possibility of seeing in a way that one can learn".

As to what one should learn from Hamlet, Serban seems to suggest that Hamlet teaches us the what I would call the responsibility of the radical-- the requirement of action in accordance with the truth. Hamlet is not free-- he is unrealized and unsure of his role in the world-- until he acts on what he knows.

In the same vein, the Queen's suicide is not a tragic action but a noble and sensible one, given her knowledge. Serban describes the Queen's situation:

"At the beginning of the play, we start with a very satirical court scene, to make the audience feel that the whole court, including the Queen, is in a hypnotic trance, hypnotized by Claudius. This is what Communism and Fascism did in our century. When one watches Hitler today on television, he looks almost like a caricature, a parody of himself, and one wonders: how can this one man have hypnotized millions and millions of people? But is happened. Claudius is a reminder of this kind of dictator, so that his seduction of the court is almost comedie grotesque. He's a seducer. The Queen is part of the trance until the scene with Hamlet. Then she slowly escapes her hypnotism. She awakens from her hypnotic sleep."

Like many living under totalitarian dictatorships, the Queen's conscience is paralyzed by a deep sleep. A somnambulist for whom trance offers safety of sorts, the Queen resembles those of us who prefer the soft sleep of middle grounds and compromise to the rude awakening of reality. For acting in accordance with truth and reality creates its own imperative-- why should we open our eyes to see that the emporer has no clothes when this means we will have to expose him? And then, should we expose him, the costs to our families and loved ones will be great. When the Queen meets Hamlet, a man openly seeking truth and its active correlate, she cannot avoid the mirror. Her somnambulism is shattered.

Serban's Hamlet is a powerful character-- a force for change. On this view:

"....what they are all mainly afraid of, what's most dangerous about Hamlet, is the fact that Hamlet thinks-- and thought is dangerous, because nobody thinks in Denmark. Nobody thinks in a totalitarian system. They're all obeying what Claudius, the great hypnotist, tells them to do. But Hamlet thinks, so he is dangerous. That's his weapon, his thinking."

But thought alone would not pose a threat to Claudius or life under the trance if it did not lead to radical action. Ultimately, this is the true problem with thinking persons in a totalitarian system-- eventually, the ghosts will not leave them alone. Eventually, they must act. The trance is broken, and the thinker cannot return to a life lived by the hum of the trance so long as the weapon-- the thinking mind-- continues to throb. (Hence the reeducation via psychiatric hospital for the intellectual dissidents of communism.)

On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of Romanians did not protest communism. Does this mean that everyone was sleepwalking? Did they all suffer from the Queen's trance? I would argue that the trance is all the more insidious because it is accepted on the basis of utility. Let's assume the rationality of most individuals living under Ceausescu. Let's assume that almost everyone knows, by this point, that communism has increased human suffering and made a casualty of truth and meaning. Acting on the basis of this knowledge would be very common in a democratic system, where incentives for action include social change, the placement of new candidates, legislative action, etc. Under Ceausescu's system, however, the incentives for action are nonexistent. A man who stood for truth and dissented would not even reap the satisfaction of "heroic action", as he would quickly be dismissed as a crank, removed from his position, and placed in an environment (prison, house arrest, hospital) where he could exercise zero influence. The costs for truth-driven action proved extremely high, and the incentives were non-existent.

On the other hand, the incentives for playing the game, for maintaining the illusion of the trance, were very powerful-- career promotions, food, bread, vacations in the West, publication (if you were an intellectual), an extra room in the apartment, etc. Under such conditions, most pleasure-maximizing or profit-maximizing individuals select to maintain the illusion of the trance. Perhaps only the haunted man, the man confronted with the ghosts of Hamlet, finds commitment to truth and action worthwhile. If so, then we are still left slightly perplexed by the supposed potency of what he stands to gain.

• An interview with Andrei Serban on his production of The Taming of the Shrew.
• Ulrika Brand's review of Serban's Hamlet.
• John Simon's ugly and un-inventive review of Serban's Hamlet.

A brief introduction to the writing of Bogdan Tiganov.

Bogdan Tiganov writes about life in Romania following the end of communism. In The Wooden Tongue Speaks, he covers the last twenty years of post-communist Romania in the form of poems and stories which reveal the illusory freedom of totalitarian socialism. One of the short stories in this book, "The Old Man's Village", is available for free to read online. You can also access four poems, including the one posted below, in addition to his "Colour Poems" (aka "colour aphorisms").

Everything, Something, and Nothing

We live in separate rooms
Each to their own, fair enough,
Equals.

We take what we need and when we need it,
Whether it's a slice of pizza or a slice of affection
And we don't give back. Democracy.

We walk down the street like morons
Not knowing what to do and where to go
Or whether to escape like Gauguin.

And secretly or openly we discuss escape
Like we discussed the meal last night,
Quick and microwavable.

What will we do
There
When the only thing we can't escape
Is us?

Who's going to love us and accept us
When we've spent our time
Denying
Us?

And all the beauty, the landscapes, the sunsets,
They won't make much sense to us,
Just like modern art,
Vision, principles or dignity.

Welcome to London, friends.
We won't ever talk as I've forgotten how to
And we won't ever feel, no, not really,
As we've paid out our feelings daily,
Whored out our emotions for survival,
Given everything in return for something.

He is currently working on a novella entitled Last Rights of Modern Man.

"Anti-nostalgia links".

"On the level of historical insight and political thought there prevails an ill-defined, general agreement that the essential structure of all civilizations is at a breaking point. Although it may seem better preserved in some parts of the world than in others, it can nowhere provide the guidance to the possibilities of the century, or an adequate response to its horrors…

The conviction that everything that happens of earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces. Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden that our century has placed on us — neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality — whatever it may be…

We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain."

I thoroughly enjoyed chasing the "anti-nostalgia links" posted at O'Connor's Opinions-- enough, in fact, to start working on an anti-nostalgia links list of my own. Hat tip to the O'Connors for the inspiration. And due respect to Hannah Arendt for the above-listed quote from the preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism (a.k.a. my guidebook).                                      

• "The Gulag Archipelago in Romania: The Story No One Has Told Before" by Sandro Magister. This includes information garnered from the Vatican.
• Memo from Henry Kissinger to President Nixon on May 15, 1973 urging "high priority" relationship between US and Romania.
• "Behind the Facade of the Ceausescu Regime" by Vladimir Tismaneanu for RFE/RL
• The names, the short sentences describing their fate, the condemnations, the many who simply disappeared.
• The archives of Romanian state television in the 1970's.
• The Museum of Communism, created by one of my favorite people in Arlington, Virginia.
• Cum era? Cam asa: Memories of Romania's Communist Years edited by Calin-Andrei Mihailescu with excerpt at link.
• Bless This Prison video from Fundation ICAR.
• "Pioneers Forever" by Vasile Ernu.
• "The Legacy of Elena Ceausescu" by Catherine Lovatt for Central European Review

9 great articles on the Romanian revolution.

1. "Romania's Bloody Revolution" by William Horsley for BBC News
2. "The Glorious Revolution" from Radio Romania International
3. "The Role of Religion in the Romanian Revolution" by Earl A. Poe
4. "The Political Regrouping of the Romanian Nomenklatura during the 1989 Revolution" by Raluca Grosescu
5. "Romania's Revolution of 1989: An Enduring Enigma" by Donald G. McNeil Jr. for The New York Times
6. "Whose Revolution in Eastern Europe" by Michael Eliot Howard for Harper's Magazine
7. "Politicienii si revolutia din 1989"
8. "What Should Be Required Viewing for Anyone Interested in the Romanian Revolution of 1989 (or Denial Takes A Bloody Bow" posted by Richard Andrew Hall (including tons of links, video footage, and information)
9. "The Revolutions of 1989: Causes, Meanings, and Consequences" , a paper by Vladimir Tismaneanu

Norman Manea's "Compulsory Happiness".

If happiness is a choice, then what does it become when compelled? Norman Manea's collection of novellas, Compulsory Happiness, toys with "the institutional optimism" required by a systemic application of communist ideology whose results insist, contrary to physical evidence, on the best life for everyone. These four novellas were written in Romanian during the deepest murk of the Ceausescu dictatorship. One was published in Romanian in 1981, the others in German in 1988 or 1989. They were first collected in a single volume in French.

The novellas do not follow the conventional plot scheme. Instead, the reader is invited inside the head (or perhaps only inside the room) of a person/s living in fear, intellectually bound by an ideology so inconsistent that insanity is not a plea but a mentality. Manea writes with the clean-cut despair of Kafka, but, unlike Kafka, manages to address human relationships and the external world with nostalgia. There are no conclusions or plot resolutions-- only a hovering, contagious terror that poisons the thoughts, loves, relationships, and hopes of its citizens.

In "The Interrogation", a young woman prisoner is tortured and starved as the secret police attempt to get information about her intellectual associates. However, when it is decided that the Plenipotentiary will meet with her, the prison wards immediately feed her caviar and insist that she begin to behave "normally", or at least offer the pretense to "normalcy", for the Plenipotentiary, despite his big name, is very sensitive to that which lies outside the realm of the normal. During the meeting, the Plenipotentiary asks questions and then tells the young prisoner that he is appreciated because his reports come to "an optimistic conclusion, the compulsory optimism, the institutional optimism" required by a system with the pretension to absolute control.

"Composite Biography" takes Ceausescu's infatuation with control to its absurd conclusion-- an systemic attack on "chance", or luck, which does not play into official plans. The novella is lengthy, but the most interesting part occurs when a Comrade proposes that the winners of national lotteries should no longer be selected by lot but, instead, "chosen from deserving citizens" to "avoid the injustices caused by chance". Here we get a frightening view of the central-planning mindset taken to its logical extreme. At this extreme, even luck (not to mention nature) is an enemy of the state, especially if this state mandates happiness.

According to the Comrade, this is "ideologically consistent with the concepts of dialectical materialism regarding the world, life, and the active role of man, who is not subject to fate, but is the master and creator of events".

Did the end of communism usher in a rightful heir in fatalism? After all, if Romanian communism, which purported to uproot fate and empower man, was revealed as a sham, what was left to believe? Clearly the communist experiment dealt a blow to the idea of human agency and responsibility, particularly in creating and sustaining a culture which repeatedly denied both. In "Composite Biography", for example, the protagonist suffers from a "generalized syndrome" which he witnesses in others. He believes this syndrome is due to an inability to make, do, or be anything anymore, since everything is decided by others. The Party members are "Puppets" dancing on their pre-ordained strings; the non-Party members are silent shadows, not real or strong enough to assert physicality. The ultimate goal is "to control chance"-- the become the gods which have been dethroned.

Of course, there is more.... just not in my words:

• The best bio I've found on Manea so far is this one.
• "A Lasting Poison", an article by Manea in which he remarks upon Milan Kundera's claims that communism never happened.
• "Norman Manea on the lasting poison of Stalinism" via podcast.
• Unlike Herbert Mitgang, I think the word "satire" is far too flimsy and loaded with Western regalia to do Manea's work justice. Instead, i prefer to say that he draws on the tradition of using the absurd to convey the problems of meaning and life under totalitarianism.
• Don't miss Michael Shafir's "The Man They Love to Hate: Norman Manea's 'Snail House' Between the Holocaust and the Gulag" in PDF format.

An excerpt from "The Neighbors of Franz Kafka".

One of the more interesting tracts on the postcommunist experience from a stylistic standpoint was penned by Vladimir Tismaneanu and Mircea Mihaies in the form of a "novel". I've always wondered if this was meant as a play on the dissident tactic of writing the truth and then insisting upon its fictional character to communist authorities. The book, The Neighbors of Franz Kakfa: A Novel of Neuroses skims the difference between Romania and other Eastern bloc countries with a collection of observations on the cultures of European communism. In it, the alleged Romanian fatalism is continuously contrasted with the more activist spirit of its Catholic neighbors.

The authors refer to Emil Cioran, the prophet of the Romanian fatalist approach, regularly. They also bemoan the new nationalist scourge rising in the wake of communism. 

Paul Goma is right: 1956 was the occasion manquee in Romania. The Romania intellectuals continued to enjoy their isolation from their peers in the other Eastern European countries. There was no thaw in Romania, just the perpetuation of the terrorist mechanism. Could it have been different? What if some of the literary barons of the time, the Petru Dumitrius, Marin Predas, Eugen Jebeleanus, G. Calinescus, and Geo Bogzas had opened their mouths and spoken the truth? Cioran's desperation about his former motherland was rooted precisely in this sentiment of historical impotence. His frantic excitement about the Hungarian revolution was matched only by his painful regret that history had once again passed Romania by. As for Noica: his response to Cioran was meant to explain why Romanian intellectuals were silent. For this justification of failure he was later sentenced to many years in jail. In prison, instead of pondering the responsibility of Hegelian-Marxist dialectics for the Leninist nightmare, he learned how to love his tormentors. When he was liberated in 1964, he even volunteered to become a 'trainer' in Marxism for the younger generation. The regime's failure to recruit himfor such a pedagogy was just another proof that Romanian communists were poor ideologues.

A cornucopia of thoughts on Romanian fatalism.

Nae Ionescu gathered a group of despairing young men about him and began to theorize. These men would later speak about the impossibilities of speaking to everyone around them.

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Mircea Vulcanescu died insisting that there could be no true revenge-- that no action possessed the power to create a hero, that the struggle for freedom was its own prison. The communists arrested him in 1946. Convicted as a war criminal, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Fellow prisoners told the story of his death: he and a group of 12 other convicts form his cell were all punished to stay naked, without any clothes or chairs, in a very cold and wet cavern in the prison's dungeon, for reciting poetry (poetry was very popular in prisons that communists used to condemn people just for being intellectuals; it was one of the few resorts of resisting the mental torture). An young man fell to the floor, risking to die of a lung disease, and Mircea Vulcănescu practically forced him to stay on top of him, rather than on the wet stone floor, and thus saved his life. He said: "I'm an old man, how can I let a young man like you die?". Yet he was only 48, an age many do not regard as "old". Soon after this, the young man was better, but Mircea Vulcănescu developed pneumonia, and soon after he died. His last words to the world were: "Do not avenge us!"

His death, of course, remains unavenged. As he wished.

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Constantin Noica believed Romanians fell under the spell of determinism. Some things were fated.

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Stan Farnya sees an organic connection between Romanian fatalism and the rise of what he calls the "new fascism". From the fomer fascism of the Ionescu school to the "new fascism" stands a great gulf. But Farnya sees the seeds. And he believes the soil is well-nourished.

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The Filter, citing the Romanian response to a pile of rotting meat, can't see the fatalism for the trees. 

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The Union for the Reconstruction of Romania, goes so far as to limit membership to applicants who do not subscribe to the tenets of "Romanian fatalism". Members argue on sidewalks about the complacency of the pensioners perched on park benches.

If people only undertook those initiatives whose success was guaranteed we would all still be living in caves and pick fruit with sticks. The only guarantee we have is our name and reputation. You can believe us and come with us to take action to solve the many problems our country faces or sit on the fence to see what happens and wait for guarantees. Skepticism is a legitimate attitude but, unfortunately, not at all constructive. This precise attitude of the people allowed the political class to degenerate to the parasitic stage it is in today. Sociologists call this a "self-fulfilling prophecy". This means that if you strongly believe that something, good or bad, will happen then the chance of that event to happen significantly increases. The explanation is very simple: what you believe will influence the way you act and your attitude influences the events around the particular event. In our particular case, skepticism and fence-riding generates inactivity and negative thinking which in turn makes one see more the mistakes than successes which in turn produces inactivity and more inactivity. But changes don't come by magic, they need activism and energy. So the initiative will fail: bingo! You were right! "Just another political party, did I not tell you?" Isn't it wonderful to be always right? Even if it serves no purpose? This is the Romanian fatalism at work and it has already turned us into a spectator nation.

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In An Ontological Definition of the Romanian National Identity, Mihaela Alexandra Pop cites Vulcanescu's view that Romanians tend towards a "theophanic" identification rather than an individualist one-- they accept what comes as part of the universal order in which struggle is just the other side of foolishness. Rather than nourish a Protean self-understanding, Romanian folk tales and stories reward the man who sits back and thanks God for the troubles in life, as well as the freedom from responsibility for the outcomes.

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An executive study entitled "The Evolution of Mentalities in Eastern Europe and the Future of the European Project" from a summer school session asserts:

Romanian intellectuals such as Mihail Sebastian, Emil Cioran, Panait Istrati have described Romanians sometimes as fatalistic but also slightly megalomaniac, subdued, endowed often with a low self-esteem and a tendency to blame others for their mishaps. Romanians often see themselves as having good humor, as being optimistic and hospitable people.

One of the big thinkers at this session was Mircea Malitza, who served as Ceausescu's ambassador to the USA in the 1980's. Malitza knows a lot about the Romanian national psyche, and how Romanians can be broken into a thousand tiny pieces, so tiny that the edges fray. Malitza was a good servant to the communist regime. And fate was on his side. He now maintains an illustrious career as a member of the Romanian academy and an expert on Romanian national identity.

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Z. Ornea looks at Cioran's contribution to Romanian fatalism via his book, The Transfiguration of Romania. Ornea quotes Cioran extensively:

Truths sprung from compliance are not a matter of glory. No historic act was borne by wisdom; wisdom can only be manifest in sub or trans-history. Wisdom can be the negation of history, for it is distance taken from life, whereas history reinforces it. The daily truths of Romanians are paralyzing. They tend to strip man of any responsibility. Fatalism is an a-moralism of evolution. I can well understand the drives of individual and internal fatalism, translations of the dynamism of the inner demon, but it is a deviation and an anthropological blasphemy to cede to times… The fatalism of our people is a curse we shall have to rout in thunder. To the heart shall the lightning strike us. I want another people! The centennial plague that has befallen the Romanian is skepticism… A skeptical soul is not a creator as any structural skepticism implies exhausted sources, original sterility… Romanian skepticism – superficial in its scope and the nature thereof – is nonetheless deep-seated by its enrootment in the popular soul.

Reagan's captive nations speech.

On July 16th, 1984, in commemoration of Captive Nations Week, President Ronald Reagan declared:

Once each year, all Americans are asked to pause and to remember that their liberties and freedoms, often taken for granted, are forbidden to many nations around the world. America continues to be dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. If we are to sustain our commitment to this principle, we must recognize that the peoples of the Captive Nations are endowed by the Creator with the same rights to give their consent as to who shall govern them as those of us who are privileged to live in freedom. For those captive and oppressed peoples, the United States of America stands as a symbol of hope and inspiration. This leadership requires faithfulness towards our own democratic principles as well as a commitment to speak out in defense of mankind's natural rights.

Though twenty-five years have passed since the original designation of Captive Nations Week, its significance has not diminished. Rather, it has undeniably increased -- especially as other nations have fallen under Communist domination. During Captive Nations Week we must take time to remember both the countless victims and the lonely heroes; both the targets of carpet bombing in Afghanistan, and individuals such as imprisoned Ukrainian patriot Yuriy Shukhevych. We must draw strength from the actions of the millions of freedom fighters in Communist-occupied countries, such as the signers of petitions for religious rights in Lithuania, or the members of Solidarity, whose public protests require personal risk and sacrifice that is almost incomprehensible to the average citizen in the Free World. It is in their struggle for freedom that we can find the true path to genuine and lasting peace.

For those denied the benefits of liberty we shall continue to speak out for their freedom. On behalf of the unjustly persecuted and falsely imprisoned, we shall continue to call for their speedy release and offer our prayers during their suffering. On behalf of the brave men and women who suffer persecution because of national origin, religious beliefs, and their desire for liberty, it is the duty and the privilege of the United States of America to demand that the signatories of the United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Accords live up to their pledges and obligations and respect the principles and spirit of those international agreements and understandings.

During Captive Nations Week, we renew our efforts to encourage freedom, independence, and national self-determination for those countries struggling to free themselves from Communist ideology and totalitarian oppression, and to support those countries which today are standing face-to-face against Soviet expansionism. One cannot call for freedom and human rights for the people of Asia and Eastern Europe while ignoring the struggles of our own neighbors in this hemisphere. There is no difference between the weapons used to oppress the people of Laos and Czechoslovakia, and those sent to Nicaragua to terrorize its own people and threaten the peace and prosperity of its neighbors.

Indeed, Reagan was credited with tremendous insight and integrity for the creation of Captive Nations week. And I've always assumed that it was a White House idea. My parents, along with many other immigrants faring from totalitarian states, would fight back tears when listening to his speeches on captive nations. Except, of course, that it wasn't really Reagan's idea.

Captive Nations week was actually the brainchild of Lev Dobriansky, a professor at Georgetown University who influenced many future policy makers with his anti-Soviet approach to politics and economics. A former student, Chris Robling, describes Dobriansky's role in Reagan's anti-communist policy:

The foreign policy establishment considered the Captive Nations to be “lost causes.” With the possible exception of Cuba, there were no plans anywhere to win any of them back. We had not helped the Czechs in 1967. The Bay of Pigs was a disgrace. We did not help the Hungarians in 1957. The Berlin airlift was more than 25 years past. Congressional Democrats told President Ford he must abandon our allies in South Viet Nam. And Jimmy Carter told us our fear of communism was “inordinate.” It was all very sad, yes, but what exactly was the point?

Lev knew the point. He started Captive Nations to keep memories alive. To keep faith with the enslaved. To show that the blandishments of freedom had not blinded us to the suffering of innocents abroad. To change the world.

And Ronald Reagan understood. He attended. He spoke and sang, cried and comforted. He remembered, and he would never forget. And in time, he would do something about it.

I do not know if what we heard in class, Reagan heard at the University Club. I do not know if Lev’s “reports” came from unofficial official sources. I do not know that Reagan’s knowledge of the rot within the Soviet economy was based on – or expanded by -- his friendship with Lev Dobriansky.

But I do know that Reagan’s policy of building our arms to a point that the Soviets would collapse if they tried to equal us, and then doing it, and then watching the Soviets implode peacefully for the lack of goods, was the A+ answer to Lev Dobriansky’s ultimate final exam.

What Reagan thought was every bit as out-of-step as what Lev taught. What Reagan did amazed the experts and, frankly, upended their quaint notions of inevitable decline.

I'll finish this quick post by quoting another emigre from a formerly-communist country. Andrew Fedynsky describes the power of Captive Nations week for those living under communism, as well as their families, some of whom emigrated to the United States:

Prior to the adoption of Captive Nations legislation, the struggle against communism was waged on terms set by Lenin and Marx. Communists would point to the shortcomings of capitalism: depression, crime, unequal income distribution and racism, and offer their "utopia" as an alternative. The West found itself defending a flawed capitalist system that existed in the real world, against the vision of Communist perfection sometime off in the future. As for communism's repressive nature? This was either denied or downplayed as something that had to be done to bring about "paradise on Earth."

The Captive Nations Week Resolution (Public Law 86-90) officially introduced a new element to the debate: national self-determination. Forget economic utopia, Ukrainian Americans said. That's a phony vision anyway. The reality is more like famine and labor camps. With the annual endorsement of Congress and the president, Ukrainian Americans demanded the restoration of Ukraine's national symbols, its language, its heroes. Standing next to them at Public Square rallies were Balts, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, Czechs and others - each with grievances and Captive Nations agendas of their own.

Over the years, people in Washington who are paid to look at the big picture came to accept the Soviet Union as a permanent fixture. Ultimately, for the State Department, focused on big-power diplomacy and the minutiae of arms control, wheat contracts and cultural exchange negotiations, the separate Captive Nations agendas voiced by people with funny names and strange accents were a distraction and an embarrassment. For the Soviets they were a mortal threat.

As the people at the top cut deals, millions of Americans at the grassroots were spreading the world about national self-determination. The countless channels of personal communication, the brave publishing houses like Smoloskyp, Ardis and Kultura, the Voice of America, Radio Liberty and the sacrifice of dissidents within the Soviet bloc ultimately overwhelmed the ability of the KGB and other secret police organizations to control political thought.

Each national group represented in the Captive Nations coalition had its separate agenda, yet was each linked politically to the other, because each shared the same political objective: the demise of the Soviet Union. East and West might have found a way to "peacefully co-exist" - what other choice was there? - but still, each July, the president issued a proclamation that said it was the objective of the United States to free the Captive Nations, i.e., destroy the Soviet Union. Millions of Americans worked to make it happen, despite the best efforts over time of our diplomats to downplay the significance of Captive Nations Week.

You can listen to Ronald Reagan's speeches here. And you can read about the players involved in Reagan's Cold War speeches in Paul Kengor's article, "The 'March of Freedom' From Reagan to Bush" published in Policy Review.

Exploring Ceausescu's warm relationship with the USA: Part 2.

Perhaps the most revealing book on the political battle over communist Romania's MFN status is Pinstripes and Reds by David Funderburk. Funderberk was a Reagan appointee who served as ambassador to Romania from 1981-1985. Funderburk's book is an indictment of the Romanian communist government as well as the US State Department and foreign policy establishment that helps to keep Ceasescu in power. It is also a more personal indictment of foreign policy demi-gods including Lawrence Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, President George Bush, Paul Tsongas, Ronald Reagan, and especially Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

The policy which Funderburk deplores is the policy of differentiation, which "dates back to the late 1960's strategy developed by Nixon and Kissinger" and "has continued to be the American policy through Republican and Democrat administrations in large part because the elite of the State Department has made it a litmus test for any who would advance in the Eastern European affairs area". As a policy, differentiation was a fairly simple and sensible one-- the US government would treat European communist countries differently, not as a solid monolithic bloc, based on their records of economic liberalization, respect for human rights, and putative independence from Moscow. This meant that "good" communist regimes would be rewarded with official visits, MFN status (including trade credits and tariff reductions), and "friendship" treaties, while "bad" communist regimes would receive none of these carrots. At the time of the book's publication, Hungary and Romania were "good" MFN status states, while Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Poland were not.

Vice President Bush made a clear statement of this differentiation policy in his Vienna speech on September 21, 1983:

"In our relations with the countries of Eastern Europe, we take these differences into account, our policy is one of differentiation-- that is, we look to what degree countries pursue autonomous foreign policies, independent of Moscow's direction; and to what degree they foster domestic liberalization-- politically, economically and in their respect for human rights. The United States will engage in closer political, economic, and cultural relations with those countries such as Hungary and Romania which assert greater openness or independence."

The perceived benefits of this differentiation policy for the United States included trade, emigration, and "leverage". MFN would give the US leverage in human rights and emigration cases. In a footnote, Funderburk expresses his concern about the effectiveness of this "leverage":

"MFN was intended for countries to improve human rights and allow freer emigration, not those that decide on getsures just prior to annual MFN renewal. State (Dept.) post facto puts the cart before the horse. If Romania lost MFN, it would be hard to imagine treatment of political and religious dissidents getting worse."

Funderburk is a fascinating fellow in his own right-- a passionate Baptist Christian who refers to his "conservatism" throughout the book with pride and yet calls Ceasescu to task for outlawing abortion and contraception. It is difficult to read this book without admiring his passionate commitment to human rights. As a self-described foreign policy "realist", Funderburk wants Romania's MFN status to be revoked on the grounds of consistent human rights violations, secret transfers of American technology to the Soviets, illegal arms trade, abuse and persecution of Christians and Jews, and incessant duplicity with regards to official agreements. The State Department's longstanding commitment to differentiation policy keeps the US government from seeing the farce that is Romanian "foreign policy independence", from condemning Ceausescu's brutal treatment of his own people, and from acting in accordance with the evidence. As a result, the US government is rewarding one of the most devious, anti-American communist regimes in the world. He notes:

"Romania's leadership gained pretige, support, and credibility with the Third World and non-aligned countries by having a steady stream of US visitors in Bucharest. Ceausescu's harsh domestic policies were in effect given a stamp of approval by such visits."

Rather than advance his position in the foreign policy establishment, Funderburk chose to resign from his post in 1985 and return to teaching at a university. When Funderburk resigned, the MFN battle was continuing in Congress, with those who opposed MFN status for Romania lining up behind Senator Jesse Helms. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act linked the assignment of MFN status to the establishment of free and open emigration procedures. This Amendment was at the core of the political dispute over MFN.

In spite of the information provided by Funderburk, Romania received MFN status again in 1985 and 1986. At this time, the Ceausescu regime had implemented a new policy which required hopeful emigrants to pay the Romanian state for the cost of their public education before being granted a visa. In a country without money, this meant that that a recent graduate would have to find $50,000 hard currency when owning that kind of hard currency was considered a crime.

In 1987, Romania's MFN status was suspended for six months contingent on an improvement in the human rights record. Ceausescu called this a "free emigration" policy, and the US government concurred.

• "Exploring Ceausescu's warm relationship with the US: Part 1" preceded this post. In it, I explore the origins of Romania's independent foreign policy.
• The Foreward for this book, written by Phillip M. Crane, is available online.
• Reagan's nomination of Funderburk for Amabassador.
• If you scroll down, there is a good discussion of Funderburk and US policy at "US Administration, the Hungarian lobby, and the Romanian-Hungarian conflict".
• Funderburk was right about the Romanian government selling military secrets and technology to the Soviets. A great article on Romanian-Soviet relations is "Romania and the Soviet-Union, 1965-1989".

One man's escape from communist Romania: The tale of Kalman.

As a child, I blushed profusely when my mother would speak to me in Romanian at school or in public places. The sharp sound of the Romanian language always turned heads in Alabama:

"Wow? What language was thaa-at? Where are you guys from? Ro-MA-nia? Where is thaa-at?"

My face stayed warm as my mother explained that Romania was in Europe, not Africa. If the conversation continued, somehow my mother might explain why we lived in America; she might open the door to the convoluted, almost mythical story detailing, their escape, more technically termed, their "defection".

The term defection, like the description illegal aliens, makes my skin crawl. The vocabulary of American immigration is quick to diagnose-- to sterilize and de-humanize the human beings it purports to describe. A defector bears some secret relation to defect, and who in their right mind would trust people who are secretive with their broken accents and the defect at the core of their being? They speak in a funny language that no one understands; you never really know what they mean.... They are probably communists because Romania is a communist country. And so the thoughts continue-- whether in my young head or theirs, I'll never know.

For those who have not heard my mother's story, there are many similar versions populating American cities. In fact, you can learn about the story of how they ran, how fast, how furiously, from "Kalman's Great Escape from Communism". I am grateful to Kalman, and other members of the Romanian diaspora, who, like him, have opened their past to the world, thus opening the world to the story of Romania. And Romanians.

Richard Nixon's birthday greeting to Ceausescu.

As Romania-watchers know, Ceausescu's 65th birthday in 1983 was the occasion for unsurpassed celebration of the personality cult. Court poets, including Dumitru Radu Popescu, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, Ion Cringuleanu, Ion Brad (a poet who managed to become ambassador to Greece), Mihai Beniuc, Viorel Cozma, Ion Machidon, and Ion Gheorge, among others, issued odes and heroic poems aplenty, resulting in the publication of three volumes of Ceausescu-worshipping poetry by the Military Publishing House.

What is not so often mentioned is the telegram sent by President Richard Nixon wishing Ceausescu a happy birthday. The telegram read as follows:

Ever since we first met and talked together in 1967, I have followed your evolution as a statesman. Your vigor, your independent spirit, your acute intelligence, and particularly your skill in handling both internal and international problems place you in the first ranks of the world's leaders.

I am saying this because at the very moment you will celebrate your birthday you will attain the pinnacle peculiar to every great leader. At 65 most people are ready to be pensioned off, but for many of the greatest leaders of the world the most efficient and productive years start from then on.

I am sure that your best moments will come during your second decade as president, when you will continue the same daring and independent course you have decided upon for your people.

Mrs. Nixon joins me in sending you the warmest congratulations and best wishes to you and your wife and capable comrade Elena, as well as to the other members of your family.

Nixon proved rather prophetic in a dark way-- Ceasescu's biggest and "best" projects, including systematization, were yet to come...

• Footage from Nixon's first visit to Romania in 1969.
• "Nixon lauds Romania" includes transcripts, images, and audio files that sheds light on the confused foreign policy perceptions generated by the Nixon-Kissinger alliance.
• An article from The New York Times detailing a fascinating lawsuit which knotted together Nixon, Ceausescu, and the Iraqi government as business partners.