A LETTER TO CEAUSESCU
Doina Cornea asks her president to leave Romanians in their villages
'WHY don't they resist?' is often the response to any description of the destitu- tion which Nicolae Ceausescu's policies have imposed on the Romanian people. Any visitor to the country who meets the wrong people quickly discovers the reasons. Subsisting on inadequate rations in fear of the continuous demolitions is demoralising enough, but to its dispiriting effects is added the surveillance by the secret police and informers, who will sell out their neigh- bours for a bag of coffee or for milk for their children. Despite these pressures, peo- ple have risked their lives and the well-being of their families to protest against the irrational schemes of their ruler. Doina Cornea, the author of the Open Letter, has already suffered for her criticisms. She was sacked from her position as a philosophy lecturer in 1983. Recently, she was released from a spell in prison. Members of her family have been victimised. When I met her earlier in the summer, she was living in poor conditions. Her flat is bugged and the house opposite is used to watch all comings and goings. Clearly very ill, Doina Cor- nea's mother was on a bed in the room where we talked, or rather passed notes to each other. Severe consequences face the ordinary people who have added their names to this letter.
Mark Almond 28 August Cluj MR President of the Council of State, We would be unworthy of our people if we did not stand, with our protest, alongside the hundreds of thousands of peasant families who will be made homeless if you put into practice the so-called plan of 'territorial systematisation', which implies the demolition of so many thousands of peasants' houses, and the destruction of the rural way of life.
Over the last 40 years, the Romanian peasant has experienced only disappoint- ments and hardships; these have gravely weakened his vital and spiritual roots, which had formerly seemed steadfast. Wasn't it enough to have brutally forced the greater part of the rural population into collectivisation, and even into proletar- ianisation, which at the same time meant the destruction of its moral and religious order, the destruction of its psyche, of its mentality and of its traditions as they had evolved over centuries? Are the last rem- nants of our unhappy peasantry now going to be destroyed?
Try to imagine the grief of these people driven out of their homes, from their villages! Human beings are not objects. A human settlement is not a random con- glomeration of blocks inhabited by imper- sonal creatures, gathered together by chance. A village is a spiritual community which has grown together over the centur- ies. It is the love of the people for their land, and for the house in which they were born. A village is the graveyard where their parents are buried. The church sometimes several hundred years old and often preserved as if by a miracle from the scourge of the Tartar and the Turks — is the church in which they were married, in which they baptised their children and in which they prayed in times of trial.
We call on you to stop the demolition of the country's villages. Driving people from their ancestral settlements where they have a purpose, where they have houses built to meet the needs of life and labour, is a sacrilege. The peasant house is identified
'She just used it to go to the ball.'
with the soul of its builder. By striking at the peasant house, by replacing it with a poky flat in a tower-block, you strike not only at the soul of the people, but also at a patrimony which belongs to all mankind.
To justify this measure you will invoke 'the elevation of the standard of living' of the peasants. The peasant could be helped, it is true. They even need to be helped, but in a completely different way — not by demolishing their villages, destroying their culture. They could be helped to improve their settlements within their traditional framework with modern equipment, as in the Western European countries. They could be helped by returning the land to them to revive family farming. Because on a family farm everyone is responsible for his work, prosperity would increase. The peasants could also be helped by giving them loans for the purchase of some modern tools, like peasants in the de- veloped countries. Finally, they could be helped by being given permission to sell their produce freely, inside the country or abroad, without any obligations other than paying legal taxes and duties.
A community, a nation, is based on individual lives, lived not under constraints or in fear, but on the variety of aspirations and the struggle of people to fulfil these aspirations in liberty. Every human being has the right, if not the duty, to fulfil his natural, social and spiritual destiny. Do not destroy the sacred laws that are at the roots of any human existence! Do not crush the lives of the people! What right do you have to do it? And in the name of what? To obtain more arable land? But who will plough it? Land is not tilled with tools alone, but with the will to make it bear fruit. Weighed down with so much grief, how do you expect these people to work? Why don't you realise that for 40 years the whole Romanian people has been in an instinctive defensive hibernation, a kind of semi-strike if you like, in an attempt to protect the last remnant of its existence against dissolution.
We ask for the goodwill of Romanians in exile, but also of foreigners who are equally concerned about the preservation of our native values, to support this pro- test.
Signed: Doina Cornea Who adds: 'I have the authorisation of the following people to add their names to this protest: George Vasilescu — lawyer, col- onel; Iulius Filip — worker; Dumitru Pop — worker; Haralambie Chirica — teacher; Samoila Popa — teacher.'
Since this letter was broadcast by the Romanian Section of the BBC and Radio Free Europe, four more Romanians have responded to the appeal and added their names to this protest. They are Marian Crucita, Isola Vatcav — painter, Puiu Neamtu — electrician, and Teohar Mihadas — writer.
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