THE MINERS AND THE MESSIAH
Mark Almond on the reconciliation
of Rumania's intellectuals and the workers who beat them up
ONE face was missing from the array of East European heroes feted at last month's Conservative Party Conference in Bourne- mouth. Last June, the battered features of the Bucharest students' leader, Marian Munteanu, were the flesh and blood evi- dence of Rumania's failure to' follow the path of tolerance and democracy since the fall of Ceausescu. Munteanu was invited to Bournemouth but the Rumanian govern- ment refused to allow him out of the country because he is still awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy to provoke a coup d'etat. President Iliescu's government may not have forgiven him for his opposition, but Munteanu has been reconciled to the miners who — bussed into Bucharest by the government — beat him and hundreds of other dissidents in the middle of June. At a meeting of dissidents in Brasov a delegation of miners appeared, to the surprise of many participants, including clearly Munteanu himself. Munteanu was face to face with his former tormentors. It required the intervention of the poetess, Ana Blandiana, to relieve the tension. Then Cozma Miron, the union leader, was embraced by Munteanu and the two men kissed and were reconciled.
It was not a Judas-kiss. By making the 'Would dog registration help track down errant fathers?' gesture, and still more because of his sincerity, Cozma Miron risks reprisals. He has admitted that his miners committed terrible acts in June. It may be that they were deceived by the government, but now their repentance offers the government an escape from its own responsibility for the violence. Western governments were out- raged by the mob rule in June and deman- ded punishment of its perpetrators as a condition for resuming aid. Now the Rumanian authorities have a good idea who to blame for the trouble: the repen- tant miners will be the scapegoats.
There is an almost self-consciously bib- lical quality to the miners' contrition. The physical appearance and manner of their chief victim adds to the aura of a parable. With his long, fair locks, and light beard, pale and clearly still suffering the after- effects of his beatings, Munteanu stands tall, but slightly bowed, with his hands clasped in front of him, and a simple wooden crucifix hanging from his neck. He is the living image of Rembrandt's `Ecce Homo'. He even talks like a prophet. He makes simple ethical demands and rejects all compromise with communism or its former apparatchik , lliescu, a false prophet leading the people astray. The mood of many of the miners has undergone a radical change since June. Then the shift emerging from pits in the Jiu Valley 200 miles to the west of Bucharest could be persuaded by local officials of President Iliescu's Front of National Salva- tion that Munteanu and his like were 'fascists' bent on toppling the government and stealing the 'People's' revolution. Four months later, many were no longer so sure that they were right to exercise the 'peo- ple's justice' on the streets of Bucharest. The failure of the Front to fulfil its election promises of May and the precipitate col- lapse of living standards since its massive victory at the polls no doubt reinforced the miners' regrets about terrorising the opposition. Most of all, there is the feeling that their simple loyalty was misused and now they have to bear the guilt.
The miners are not alone in feeling disenchanted with the failure of the Front to improve living conditions or to disman- tle the everyday structures of communism. Many other industrial workers who be- lieved the Front's charges that its rivals would sell out the country to foreigners and produce unemployment, now find themselves as poor as ever and faced by a radical economic plan proposed by the Front's Prime Minister, Petre Roman. Roman's plan envisages one million unem- ployed and a series of privatisations. Food prices will double before Christmas.
The Brasov meeting was summoned by a local independent trade union called '15 November' in memory of the revolt against Ceausescu in the town on that day in 1987. It is the model for other genuinely free trade unions which are springing up in competition with the old, scarcely re- vamped official unions. Even more danger- ous to the Front is the way in which 15 November is acting as a force for integrat- ing the workers with other discontented elements in the population.
The old pre-communist political parties failed to form an effective umbrella alliance against Iliescu and the Front in the spring. Only now is Rumania seeing the equivalent of Poland's Solidarity or Czechoslovakia's Civic Forum. It calls itself the 'Resistance'. Brought together by 15 November and the Brasov journalist, Vasile Gogea, this Resistance is an attempt to unite the intellectuals of Bucharest with people from the rest of the country. Despite its militant-sounding name, the Resistance emphasises non-violent app- roaches to dismantling what its members call the Front's 'neo-communism'. Under Ceausescu, a nation-wide network of opposition was impossible. Any potentially successful opponent simply disappeared. Now, despite his U-turn on the economy, Iliescu faces both.
Munteanu's painfully earned aura as one who has suffered for his belief in the need to 'live in truth' is likely to make him the living symbol of the movement for a complete break with the old order. The cult of Vaclav Havel remains within bounds by comparison with the almost blasphemous reverence of some of Mun- teanu's supporters, though at the moment he remains an unknown quantity to many Rumanians worn out by daily tribulations and obsessed by dreams of escaping them. His haggard physique and wounds com- bined with his simple and moving gospel help to explain why the whisper goes around that he is the 'Rumanian Christ'.
Rumania is in such a crisis that it is understandable that people should look for a messiah, but Munteanu's evident indif-
ference to politics and the details of policy suggest that he may well be the forerunner of great changes rather than their architect — a Rumanian John the Baptist. He believes, probably correctly, that moral renewal will lead to the collapse of the motley collection of old communists and opportunists who make up the Front, but
when asked what sort of policies will be needed to clear up the mess left behind. Munteanu continues to preach. The more down-to-earth members of the Resistance do not reject Munteanu's moral tone and in fact regard it as essential, but they are also prepared to contemplate where the loaves and fishes will come from.
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