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The Agony of a Marxist Monarchy
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14544 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1988 |
3,234 Words |
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Vladimir Tismaneanu
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For many years Western reports on Eastern Europe have described Romania as a state where opposition was nearly absent. References to that country focused on Prime Minister Nicolae Ceausescu's cult of personality, the economic decline, and some autonomous initiatives in foreign policy. Unlike other Soviet bloc nations, it seemed that Romanians had abandoned any hopes of change for the better. There were the strikes of the coal miners in the Jiu Valley in 1977, as well as a short-lived attempt to create an independent trade union, but they were both suppressed. All forms of organized dissent met with the harsh reaction of the ubiquitous Securitate, the regime's secret police. Resistance to the leadership's willful course became an individual rather than a collective option. Mathematician Mihai Botez, engineer Ion C. Bratianu, priest Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa, professor Doina Cornea, Historian Vlad Georgescu, and other courageous personalities have exposed the irrational evolution of the regime. Some of them were forced into exile, others have continued their activities in Romania. Unfortunately, because of the prevailing repressive conditions, these critics have failed to mobilize significant social support.
Until very recently, it seemed that Ceausescu could count on the political apathy of the working class. On the other hand, his supremacy within the party elite was basically unquestioned. Recent social unrest in the major industrial center of Brasov has modified this situation. Ceausescu's dictatorship is now publicly challenged both by rebellious workers and discontented party apparatchiks.
Following the Brasov riots on November 15, 1987, Silviu Brucan, a veteran party member and former ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, made a statement with far-reaching political implications. Brucan's declaration was published by the London Independent on November 28, 1987. According to him, the Brasov workers' protest against economic hardships and political repression dispelled the myth of national unanimity surrounding Ceausescu: "The workers' demonstration in Brasov is a watershed in Romania's political history as a socialist state."
Warning to Ceausescu
"A period of crisis has opened up in the relationship between the Communist Party and the working class which until recently has ensured the political stability of the regime." Brucan's views are widely shared by influential members of Ceausescu's entourage. His statement is an undisguised warning to Ceausescu by those officials who realize the failure of the current regime.
President Ceausescu has managed to become the visible symbol of everything Romanians abhor. The carnival of absolute power, with its ritualistic processions and deluge of sycophantic literature, appears increasingly preposterous to a population systematically deprived of basic goods and threatened with starvation. In their frozen apartments, their entertainment limited to the two-hour television broadcasts extolling the president and his wife, disgusted with the misery of their everyday life, Romanians reflect on the tragic course of their country's history since the Communist regime was established in the late 1940s. They understand that Ceausescu has carried to a fateful perfection the perverse logic of Stalinism. His regime has not only developed the cult of personality to an unprecedented extent, but it has also invented methods and institutions that would have
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