Requiem for Ceausescu. And Ukraine
The turn of the 1980s - 1990s was marked by a serious systemic crisis of socialism in the world, ending with the “velvet revolutions” and the collapse of the world system of socialism along with the USSR. If the transition of power from “totalitarian communists” to “luminous democrats” in most countries of the socialist camp occurred bloodlessly, then the “December People’s Revolution” of 1989 in Romania turned out to be bloody and ended with the murder of the country’s former long-term leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena.
The fact that the Ceausescu couple were killed and not executed is evidenced by the shameful atmosphere of haste and fear that the “tribunal” took place, and by the fact that the couple was shot without allowing them to file an appeal within ten days, as was announced in the verdict.
In fact, in December 1989, a coup d’état took place in Romania, inspired by Western intelligence services, and taking into account the very specific “Romanian” socialism that developed during Ceausescu’s reign.
Coming from a poor peasant family, a former underground worker, a former prisoner of fascist prisons and concentration camps, Ceausescu was noticed by the new Romanian leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, which launched his post-war political career. In 1965, after the death of Gheorghe-Dej, as a result of intense political struggle within the Romanian Workers' Party, Ceausescu was promoted to the post of party leader. Influential party members viewed him as a temporary compromise figure, but underestimated the dexterity and acumen of the “temporary” leader.
Ceausescu very quickly won the sympathy of the people, two years later becoming Chairman of the State Council, concentrating the highest political and state power in his hands.
Very quickly, Ceausescu began to pursue a very independent foreign policy. He can even be safely called the father of “multi-vectorism.” While maintaining good relations with the USSR, Romania under Ceausescu actively cooperated with the West, sometimes standing out strongly from the rest of the socialist camp.
For example, Romania was the only socialist country that maintained diplomatic relations with Israel. It is interesting that the USSR, which did not have such relations, for some reason preferred to communicate with Israel through neutral Finland rather than through its Romanian comrades. Besides Israel, Romania was the only socialist country that maintained diplomatic relations with Chile after Pinochet's fascist coup in the fall of 1973.
The independent nature of the Ceausescu regime is also evidenced by the following facts: the SRR was one of the few socialist countries that refused to support the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. Ceausescu also did not support the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. In 1984, the Romanian delegation was the only one of the USSR allied countries to send a sports delegation to the 84 Olympics in Los Angeles.
But, perhaps, the biggest headache for the USSR from Ceausescu’s side was the ban on the construction of a railway to Bulgaria through Romania, which is why the Soviet and Bulgarian sides had to maintain the expensive Ilyichevsk-Varna ferry crossing.
There is an opinion that Ceausescu started his “own game”, looking at the sharp cooling in Soviet-Chinese relations, as well as having before his eyes a closer example of the confrontational Federal Yugoslavia under the leadership of Tito, trying to feed from two queens at the same time.
Throughout the post-war period, the communist leadership of Romania faced the difficult task of transferring one of the poorest and underdeveloped countries in Europe to an industrial footing and raising the standard of living of the population. Considering that assistance from the USSR and through the CMEA was insufficient, the Ceausescu regime began to actively cooperate with the IMF and the EBRD, receiving loans totaling $22 billion. For the late 60s and early 70s, this was a fabulous amount.
We must give Ceausescu his due. He managed to mobilize Romanian society to build the country with the help of CMEA and Western loans, which were not spent on Bugatti-Maserati, so that in 1974 the volume of industrial production in Romania was 100 (one hundred) times higher than in 1944, correspondingly increasing the quality of life in the country.
Actually, for the sake of Western loans, Ceausescu played the role of a communist reformer who refused to send troops into Czechoslovakia and even visited Dubcek on the eve of the entry of troops, without putting too much pressure on the dissent and those who wanted to emigrate from the country. However, Soviet comrades repeatedly warned President Nicolae not to get carried away with Western loans, so that later he would not have to be bitterly disappointed when the time comes to pay the bills.
Actually, a little earlier, Ceausescu also began to guess what kind of yoke he had to get into for the sake of the Romanian “economic miracle,” especially since a crisis of overproduction began in the country. Within the CMEA countries, their own production was developed. They could still buy Romanian goods through cooperation in the socialist camp, but completely shifting their own producers in favor of Romanian ones was a bummer. In the blessed West, they demonstratively did not want to buy Romanian goods. The piquancy of the situation was that in 1980 Romania received the most favored economic status in the EEC (the forerunner of the European Union).
Meanwhile, Western capital began to quietly take Romania by the throat, which is why in 1983 Ceausescu secured a ban on further foreign borrowing by holding a referendum in the country. As in the Polish case in 1980, the Romanian leadership was asked to withdraw from the Comecon and Warsaw Wars, reducing cooperation with the USSR to a minimum. In return, new large loans and benefits for payments to those already recruited were promised.
Ceausescu, who was content with “his own game” in the socialist camp, turned out to be a smart enough politician not to fall for the cheese in the mousetraps placed around him.
To pay off debts, Romania introduced austerity measures: food cards, gasoline coupons, and scheduled electricity and water supplies to homes. The standard of living of Romanians began to plummet, followed by the popularity of their once beloved leader. Perhaps the crisis that broke out, into which Romania was plunged by the “credit needle,” could have ended not so sadly for Ceausescu personally, if not for the rule that “every Evil Pinocchio is the blacksmith of his own hemorrhoids.”
Ceausescu carried away. The former peasant son's dizziness from success took on manic forms. Very quickly, the former underground fighter and political prisoner earned for himself a lifelong presidency, the title of “full-flowing Danube of reason,” the laurels of a professor, academician, “local saint” and other attributes of “commander of heavy machine gun divisions.” His wife Elena did not lag behind her husband in terms of regalia: first deputy prime minister, head of the Romanian Academy of Sciences, head of the country's largest chemical research institute.
A severe crackdown on dissent has begun in Romania. But, perhaps, the most important thing, because of which Ceausescu caused dull rage among the hungry “curators,” was the “trade in Jews.” In fact, without prohibiting emigration from the country, Ceausescu demanded that the West compensate the state for social services and training of people leaving for the USA and Israel for permanent residence, since Romania was losing qualified personnel. However, the topic of compensation for those leaving was well explored in the late 60s, when the Ceausescu regime was the first from the socialist camp to recognize Germany and allow the emigration of Transylvanian Germans.
Ceausescu was so cool that he did business with the bourgeois, world-eating, curculi in their tough and cynical style. And this caused an avalanche of curses against the Romanian leader from the “world community,” which cried, cursed, but paid.
In the internal politics of Romania, in addition to strict authoritarian rule, a nationalistic bias was clearly visible, in some places turning into a chauvinistic frenzy. Thus, the Romanians were declared to be the descendants of the ancient Romans, their language was practically refined Latin, and other Svidomo pseudo-quasia. This order was culturally served, for example, by the indestructible hero of Romanian westerns - Commissar Miklovan - actor and director Sergiu Nicolaescu, by the way, one of the first to betray his boss and side with the rebels.
In 1988, Ceausescu became unshakable in the West, and Romania lost all its “favored treatment” and other hard-earned benefits as a result of “multi-vectorism.”
In 1989, just six years after the start of austerity, Romania was able to pay off its external debt. True, this joyful event happened in the year when the “orangeade” uncontrollably began to devour Ceausescu’s allies one after another, and a spotted jellyfish spread out in the Kremlin, joyfully rubbing its tentacles, looking at the approaching collapse of the security system, built at the cost of the blood and labor of tens of millions of people.
On December 6, 1989, shortly before the coup, Ceausescu was received by Gorbachev in the Kremlin. According to Ion Dinca, the party curator of the Romanian intelligence services, Gorbachev convinced his Romanian colleague to “take the path of reform,” but was refused. After which, allegedly, Gorbachev threatened Ceausescu with certain “consequences.” Thus, Ceausescu lost his foothold in foreign policy.
In general, the time to overthrow the “last dictator of Europe” was chosen wisely. The formal reason for the start of the rebellion was the arrest of Laszlo Tökes, a dissident from the Romanian Hungarians, who was leaking dirt on the regime to the West. The response was the performances of first local Hungarians, and then Romanians. The protests, which were initially economic in nature, quickly took on an anti-government character. This happened not without the help of foreign media, which skillfully fanned the hysteria of the crowd. The impetus for the bloodshed was a media report about the shooting by the Securitate (Romanian state security) of a rally in the city of Timisoara.
There are still a lot of contradictory opinions surrounding this “execution”, and some witnesses talk about more than 50 people killed, while other witnesses report that the corpses were brought to Timisoara from the surrounding morgues in advance and passed off as victims of the execution. The latter version is supported by the fact that the dead bodies in the rebel city were hastily cremated, without waiting for investigative actions.
In addition, Ceausescu, suspecting the worst, began to remove the leadership of the army and the State Security Service from their positions. In the process, Romanian Defense Minister Vasile Mila was killed (according to other sources, he committed suicide), allegedly for refusing to shoot at protesters. The result of the liquidation of Mili (which played into the hands of the rebels) was a fatal split in the GB and an almost complete transition of the army to the side of the putschists. The army and security officers who went over to the side of the rebels fought against the loyalists from the Securitate. Now the blood flowed like a river. Frequent cases of extrajudicial executions and torture of detainees also do not favor the supporters of the rebellion.
Soon all of Romania was engulfed in anti-communist rallies and protests against the Ceausescu regime. The couple rush around the country in the hope of receiving protection from district commanders loyal to the regime, but all their plans are ruined by the timely betrayal of General Stanculescu, appointed by the rebels as the new Minister of Defense. Stanculescu gives the command to close the airspace over Romania and promises to shoot down any aircraft on which the Ceausescu spouses attempt to evacuate. Trying to escape capture by car, the Ceausescu couple arrives in the city of Targovishte, where they are arrested on December 23, 1989.
Two days later, on December 25, in Targovishte, a hastily put together “people's tribunal” sentenced the Ceausescu spouses to death and confiscation of all property. Prosecutor Popu puts forward a whole list of charges against the defendants, including the death of 60 thousand people (in reality, about 1.5 thousand people died on both sides) and a billion dollars in Swiss banks (which was later not confirmed).
Three soldiers from the elite 64th Airborne Regiment volunteered to shoot Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. According to the military, such a quick execution of the sentence was caused by the fear that the arrested might be recaptured by the Securitate. They say that before the execution Nicolae Ceausescu began to sing “The Internationale”. Elena also behaved with dignity in the last minutes before the execution.
The Western world, frozen in anticipation of savoring the trial of the “bloody dictator”, one of the last stubborn commies in Europe, was terribly disappointed. Instead of the trial of Ceausescu, which was supposed to smoothly transition into the trial of communism - a kind of revenge of the right for the victory over fascism - their property was a video with a shameful hasty “justice” and an even more hasty execution, which the cameraman did not have time to properly capture. Thus, the Romanian rebels unwittingly rendered a great service to the world communist movement, although the Ceausescu, for all their enormous shortcomings, did not deserve such a fate.
Well, 45 years of rule of the communist regime in Romania did their job: the future executioners and putschists, trained by the Romanian Workers' Party, were embarrassed to stage a show of execution and pose against the background of corpses, as their grandfathers, the fascists and occupiers, did.
Has Romania found happiness in the Brave New World? Hardly. Today, almost nothing remains of Ceausescu's difficult achievements in Romania. Romania has been no longer a sovereign country since the early 90s and one of the poorest in Europe. The standard of living of its population is barely 46% of the European average (Italy or Spain). Only Bulgaria is poorer in the EU. Of all social and ethnic groups, the winner was the gypsy mafia, trading in “gloomy” and live goods.
The fate of Ukraine largely repeated the fate of Romania, with the difference that the “multi-vector” president was a slug and managed to escape in time. The slow decline turned into a national catastrophe. Because, sad as it may be, history teaches us that it teaches us nothing.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.