Ceausescu the Impaler
Tim Garton Ash
Bucharest The trouble with Romania is the RomaMans. Without them it would be a marvellous country.' The speaker was a German Pastor, a leader of the dwindling German Minority in Transylvania. I could see what he meant. The German and Hungarian communities, which together make up over 10 per cent of the population of present-day Romania, are orderly, hard-working, and honest. Their settlements are clean, their restaurants and hotels well-run. Descend from the mediaeval German town of Kronstadt (today Bra§ov), which crowns the great arch of the Carpathians, to the Romanian capital in the centre of the sultry Wallachian Plain, and you are confronted with dirt, disorder, dishonesty. The waiter at the Skyscraper Intercontinental hotel overcharges you outrageously for a miserable breakfast. The beggar at the corner of the levardul 1848 thrusts his filthy, rucotine-stained bandages into your face and threatens to cut his wrists (again) unless You give him a cigarette. There is grit in Your salad and the sausages are made of gmtle. The Romanian sharing your table Ogles the passing Italian girls, scratching his Unshaven chin in an exaggerated, ape-like gesture of admiration. The Romanians are inordinately proud of their latinity'. Ethnic 'Vlachs' (or ‘Wallachs', not to be confused with the 'Lame Vlachs' who inhabit parts of Northern Greece), they claim to be the direct descenpants of the autocthonous rornanised popu tion of the Roman province of Dacia: heirs of Ancient Rome. Furious polemics are fired off at such of their Slav neighbours as dare to deny that the Daco-Roman people have been in continuous occupation of the Carpathian basin since the Emperor Aurelian withdrew his legions in the year 221. The historiographical battle kgr'agYar Hungary is especially bloody. For agyars have lived in Transylvania since ',Ile ninth century. The territory was part of trie kingdom of Hungary until the Allies awarded it to Romania after the first world war. The Latin word 'Transylvania, means 'across the forest' —across, that is when seen from Hungary. Embarrassingly, the Romanians' own word for the area, 'Ardear, is derived directly from the Hungarian 'Erdely'. They must one day 'discover' a native Latin word for it: why not Ceausescuania?
To most Englishmen Transylvania is a joke: the land of Dracula, 'transvestite Transylvania' in the Rocky Horror Show. To the Hungarians who live there, and they comprise 8 per cent of the total population of Romania, it is no joke. They want to rejoin their motherland — Hungary. The desire does not weaken with time. It becomes stronger as socialist Hungary grows more, and socialist Romania less, attractive for the consumer. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the 400,000 Germans left in the fortified mediaeval towns of Transylvania and on the fertile plain of Banat. Their adoptive motherland is West Germany. The Romanian government is no more eager to let these people go than it is to give up one hectare of the territory that once belonged to 'Greater Romania' to its neighbours. Hence the historiographical war. Hence the Ruritanian obsession with names and titles. A 19thcentury kind of Balkan nationalism, bristling with tenuous ethnographic claims, has re-emerged like a fairy-tale dragon from the woods of Transylvania. To Western European eyes it is a monstrous anachronism. Such unabashed nationalism, red in tooth and claw, could never repossess the stage in the West. To match Ceausescu's performance the next King of England would have to style himself — as King James still did in the Authorised Version — King of France; and Germany would have to lodge a claim on Alsace-Lorraine with the European Court.
The national tradition which the Romanian academicians are assiduously constructing runs from Dracula to Ceausescu. The vlach Dracula who is first mentioned in Wallachian chronicles in the 15th century has nothing in common with Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, except a thirst for blood. His real name was Vlad the Impaler. His title derived from his penchant for impaling his subjects on sharpened stakes. His castle at Bran has been wonderfully restored: a spectacular Gothic affair, gabled and turreted in the approved horror film fashion. (Its visitors' book repays inspection. An Israeli visitor, for example, writes; 'better ten Draculas here than one Arab terrorist in Israel.' As there is a prize for the least inspiring newspaper headline, so there should surely be one for the least inspiring visitors' book entry. I offer this from Bran: 'quite a nice place. Honor Parrish, England, Devon.) Vlad is celebrated as a national hero. He is the subject of a big-budget film — the Romanian Man For All Seasons —which I saw in a cinema in Bucharest on a double bill with Beauty and the Beast. I can honestly report that this is the worst film I have seen in my life. The ranks of Vlad's trusted henchmen are repeatedly depleted by orgies of impalation. The impalees go to the stake confessing their guilt and loudly proclaiming the superior wisdom of the Great Leader. As Vlad purged nine out of ten generals for the third time I suddenly realised who the moustachioed hero uncannily resembled. It was Stalin, of course.
As it nears the 20th century the Great Tradition becomes a series of dates. The custom of glorifying dates, indeed of anthropomorphising them, is common to all the Soviet bloc countries. 'Long live 1st May!' banners throughout East Germany proclaimed five months ago. Near Bucharest there is a town called simply '13 December'. This is the date on which the Romanian 'revolution' apparently took place in 1918. Perish the thought that this day should not be remembered. But one does feel for the inhabitants of the new town. Imagine applying for a passport: 'I was born in 13 December. No not on, in. . .
Not that many of them would be granted a passport in any case. The Ruritanian nonsense should not deceive. Romanian nationalism is a serious business. The place-names and the mythology are concomitants of the independent course which has been steered by the 'great helmsmen' Gheorge Gheorgiu-Dei and Nicolae Ceausescu since the early Sixties. If you went to school in 1959 you still learned that Romania was 'liberated' by Soviet forces, with a little help from the Romanians. To-day's schoolchildrenlearn that Romania was liberated by the Romanians, with a little help from Soviet forces. Romania is the only country in the bloc to have made a territorial claim against the Soviet Union. Ceausescu has asked for the return ol Bessarabian Moldavia, seized by the Soviet Union during the second world war. In an economically and strategically vital enterprise, the Iron Gates hydro-electric project, Romania co-operates with Yugoslavia without the involvement of Comecon. Rela stilovenisywcuitititivCatheid n China and the West are inte This spirit of independence vis-a-vis the Soviet Union is plainly a Good Thing; therefore President Ceausescu is a Good Thing. That, crudely, would seem to be the logic of most Western treatment of Romania; and in particular of American policy over the last decade. The first advocate of this policy was none other than Richard Nixon, who visited the country in 1969. In 1975 President Ford signed an agreement granting Romania 'most favoured nation' status. On the face of it this makes sense. A dissident colony in the Soviet empire should be encouraged. The Ceausescu phenomenon is a symptom and a cause of the withdrawal of the Soviet leadership from its giddy hopes of 1945. At that time the nations of central and southeastern Europe were regarded as potential Soviet Republics, to be swallowed, sooner or later, into the body of the Union. The Russian digestion has proved weaker, and the nations of the bloc more indigestible, than many Soviet leaders imagined in that first, fine careless rapture. Instead of being swallowed up, the satellite states have all increased their independence since the early Sixties. Furthermore, the non-Russian nationalities which constitute the original Republics of the Union have begun to make themselves heard, from inside the bear. These peoples are growing at a greater rate than the Russians. Nationalism in Eastern Europe has increased, is increasing, and will continue to increase. It is a source of worry to the Soviet leadership. Is it not therefore to be unreservedly encouraged?
Ceausescu's example, however, suggests some reservations. His nationalist policies, for example, are directed quite as much against his neighbours as against the Soviet Union. At the end of July his government announced drastic petrol price rises. From now on, it was further decreed, all visitors to the country would have to pay in hard (i.e. Western) currency for their petrol tourists from the Warsaw Pact states not excluded. These steps were taken unilaterally, without any prior consultation through Comecon. Thousands of East European tourists were stranded. The Polish authorities protested, and then started handing out American dollars to their nationals through their diplomatic missions. The Czech authorities protested, and even granted Czech holidaymakers permission to drive via Yugoslavia to the Black Sea resorts of Bulgaria, thus bypassing Romania altogether. (A gesture which resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of Czechs seeking asylum in Austrian refugee camps.) The Bulgarian authorities protested bitterly, for the Romanian measures cost them valuable tourist trade. Even the East German authorities protested, limply. The most bitter protest came predictably from the Hungarians. The unbuttoned vehemence of the exchanges between these two soCialist states would be unthinkable in Western Europe.
Should we rub our hands in glee at the sight of Comecon in disarray and the satellite states' falling out among themselves? Herb Read Research Director of Radio Free Europe, argues very forcefully that we should not. This disunity can be exploited by the Soviet Union: far from undermining the Soviet hold on the bloc it could strengthen it. Even Romania is not immune from the old Roman principle of dominion: divide and rule.
Ceausescu's independence in foreign policy is won at the cost of his neighbours. It is also won at the cost of his minorities. This is nothing new under the Romanian sun. There are not many fields in which Romania leads the world, but in political opportunism they are second to none. In the First World War they jumped the right way at just the right moment. Large areas of Hungarian territory were their rich reward for joining the allies in 1916. In the Second World War they were not quite so nimble. But the sacrifice of their Jewish population (some 750,000 human beings) was, they could reassure themselves, a small price to pay for German protection. They were also rather slow to abandon the sinking German ship in 1944. Yet when Stalin demanded a conscript labour army as compensation, they came up with a simple solution: they sent their Germans. Virtually the whole German population of working age — women as well as men — were sent to assist in 'reconstruction work' in the Soviet Union in 1945. Scarcely half of them returned.
Those who did return are still captives inside the frontiers of Romania. The Saxons of Transylvania and the Swabians of the Banat are two of the oldest among the puddles of Germanity which are left slowly drying out across the breadth of what used to be called Mitteleuropa. Like the 'Sudeten' Germans in Bohemia, the 'Zipser' Germans in Slovakia, and the ethnic Ger mans of Silesia, they are not content with their lot. West Germany is to them what Israel is to the Jews — an ideal and a refuge. The Federal Republic has attempted to negotiate an agreement for their release. But Ceausescu's government has been dragging its feet, with good reason. Given the course of forced heavy industrialisation which he has chosen, the skilled German labour force, engineers, and managers, are indispensable. I was told of one large engineering factory in the Banat (the '6 March' works) whose labour force is 95 per cent German. The enterprise would simply collapse if the workers were granted the basic freedom of movement.
Every German and every Hungarian has a better place to go to: that is, one in every ten Romanian citizens. But Ceausescu's nationalist policy costs his own people dearly too, although the ethnic Romanians have nowhere else to go. The quasi-dynastic system which he heads is the most corrupt in Eastern Europe. Not only is nepotism rife. Bribery is the everyday norm. Take the Health Service for example. The average bribe required to obtain a hospital bed is 1,000 lei. The surgeon will take a further 1,000 even for a minor operation. This is difficult to afford from an average monthly wage of 1,800 lei, of which up to 800 lei can go on rent (for a single man). For a worker a single operation can mean the sacrifice of the car which he has saved for ten years to buy. The standard car costs 70,000 lei. It is called, characteristically, the 'Dacia' after the Roman province. (In fact it is just a Renault 16 made under licence.) Two years ago there was actually a small workers' uprising, in a mining concern. Several hundred workers were sacked, and then given miserable jobs in other parts of the country. There were two ringleaders. One was run over in a 'car accident'. The other was shot, as the official German language newspaper explained (I have seen the cutting) `aus versehen' — `by mistake . Romania's rulers have learnt a few tricks since the time of Vlad the Impaler. The principle is the same. It is difficult to gather more precise information because people are afraid to talk freely. Romanian citizens are legally obliged to report every contact with a foreigner to the police. The penalties for failing to do so are Draculonian. There are few signs of coherent opposition, and none of true resistance, among this people who have, as Olivia Manning writs in her splendid portrayal of Bucharest in 1940 (The Spoilt City), 'outworn more than a dozen conquerors and survived 800 years of oppression'. They still wait to see which way the wind is blowing, with a lazy Latin opportunism. The domestic consequences of Ceausescu's nationalist foreign policy are Stalinist. Nationalism itself is a powerful instrument of domestic policy, an ideology more potent in the Balkans than MarxismLeninism has ever been, an opiate of the people. To adopt the jargon of the political scientists, it 'legitimates' the regime in the eyes of the Romanian people. In short, nationalism a la Ceausescu may not ultimately work to the disadvantage of the Soviet Empire and remains the bulwark of a corrupt, repressive regime. Should wde really be falling over ourselves to applau it?
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